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Hangin’ OutWith all the snow and super super cold temps (like -13 with wind chill), I’ve pretty much been trapped in the house. Not really a lot to post about, but here’s some new pictures for you to stare at. :) Willow will be 4 weeks old tomorrow, and in exactly 1 week, we will be on an airplane flying back to Washington for Christmas! Yaaaahooooo!!!! 3 weeksWillow is 3 weeks old today! My parents are back in Washington, Royal’s back at work (although, he really didn’t take any time off when she was born, so that’s not that new), and so far both kids are mostly clean, dressed, and really most importantly, alive! So far, so good :) Here’s to making it through another week….
SnowIt finally snowed today!!! It seemed a little freakish to me, being from the northwest where the weather is very consistent, once it gets cold, it stays cold, usually rainy and cold, but pretty much every day is about the same. Yesterday, here in Wichita, it was 60 degrees. Even when the sun went down, it didn’t cool off, it was still about 60 degrees outside. So, maybe you can see how surprised I was this morning when I woke up and it was snowing outside. I checked the weather and today’s high is a whopping 30 degrees. What the heck? A drop of 30 degrees in 1 day? It just doesn’t seem right. However, the wind is blowing here today like there’s no tomorrow, so while the temp outside says it’s 26, the wind chill drops it about down to 11, so when Jayden said he wanted to go outside and play in the snow, I wasn’t that excited. So, I enlisted Papa, especially since today is Jayden’s last day to play with Papa… :( sniff sniff
Papa was freezing! Once they came inside and warmed up, Jayden decided he needed to wear Papa’s clothes so he could go back outside and make some snowballs.
For Whiny Aunt Kay-KayHere are a bunch more pictures for poor Aunt Kay-kay (and the rest of you who are complaining silently about not getting to hold and stare at little Willow). Here’s Willow at 8am this morning, we were just rolling out of bed. Here’s Papa and Jayden at 8am this morning, they’d been up for a couple hours. Jayden, after a failed attempt to get mom and dad out of bed at the crack of dawn that got him put back in his own bed, managed to sneak out of his room and go downstairs and wake up Nana and Papa. Jayden’s been real protective of Willow. If anybody he doesn’t know very well comes over and tries to hold her, he tells them to put her down and give her back to mom. Jayden loves to get his back scratched. Lucky for Papa, you only need one hand, so he can drink his coffee with the other. :) Willow wanted her back scratched, that’s what she’s staring at. Here’s what Willow was doing while I took a shower this morning. Sleeping. Shocking, I know. There’s just nothing like the newborn coma… Later on, she woke up for awhile. I told her we were going to the yarn store and she got real excited.
What? What is this? I actually made it in a picture??? Willow got so excited for the yarn store, she wore herself plum out….asleep again… Cougar KidsI know this is a little late…but give a girl a break, I just had a baby. :) Let’s just say that Jayden and Willow were less than thrilled to have to root for the cougs, obviously Royal’s purple and gold blood has been passed on. :) (I didn’t even ask him to frown, he did it all by himself) More PicturesJayden was a little shocked that an actual baby came out. We’d been talking about it for months, I’m just not sure he thought it would ever happen. He goes to sleep one night, then wakes up the next morning and there’s a baby??? And in the spirit of the Apple Cup, Willow is dressed all in purple! GO HUSKIES! However, Royal (a UW grad) has a bet going with his sister Lisa (a WSU grad) that our kids have to be dressed in the winning school’s colors, pictures taken, and then put where everyone can see. So…stay tuned… Mochas!Royal and I don’t like coffee one bit. We don’t ever drink it, the only reason we own a coffee maker is for people in our family who can’t live without it when they are over…like grandma’s and Royal’s dad who averages about 12 cups a day…well actually I think he’s cut it down to 6 now, and I’m not talking measuring cups, I’m talking gigantic coffee cups full. And really, we only own a coffee maker now, we don’t have a pot. Jayden managed to break it awhile back. You see, Jayden is obsessed with coffee. He pretends to make coffee ALL the time, numerous times a day. He was carrying “coffee” outside the time he managed to drop the coffee pot on the cement. I didn’t care so much, other than I had to clean all the glass off our front porch. Now, Jayden just put his cup under the coffee maker and pretends it’s dripping into his cup instead of the pot. At Royal’s parents house, Jayden gets to grind the coffee beans with grandpa and then scoop the grounds into cups and then back into the jar and on and on until the counter tops, floor, and Jayden are covered in coffee. At my parents house, Jayden gets to help nana make her mocha’s in the morning with nana’s espresso machine. He gets to scoop the chocolate into the cup, turn on the steamer, watch the thermometer to tell nana when it’s ready, and help stir. And then when Aunt Jojee is working some coffee magic down at Riverside, Jayden gets to stop in and order a mocha. Jojee makes him a hot chocolate in his own cup and he gets to sip a mocha just like a big kid. Well, Jayden got a Halloween package from Papa and Nana a couple days ago. And in it, was a Halloween coffee cup full of candy. While Jayden was excited about the candy, once I told him his cup was for mochas he hasn’t been able to stop asking for one. So today, I found some hot chocolate and Jayden got to have a mocha in his new coffee cup after naptime. Boy is this kid lucky. :)
J: I’m so excited for my mocha!
J: Mmmm, Mocha J:What do you think mom? Do you like mochas? J: Oh mom, you’re so funny. I LOVE MOCHAS!!!! J: I think I’ll have some more Carving Punkins and Some New BootsWe finally carved up those pumpkins we picked up at the pumpkin patch. It took Jayden awhile to touch the pumpkin guts, he thought they were pretty slimy and gross and he preferred to remove them with a spoon. He’s a strange one, but I really like him. :)       Jayden wanted to sleep with the lit pumpkins. I think he might of been a little cold since it’s getting down in the 20’s at night. 
Jayden also got a new pair of boots tonight. He would of liked to sleep with those too. Battle of WillsOk, so it’s been awhile. Kaylee keeps harassing me, telling me I’m way down on her blog reader and I need to get it together. Sure there’s been things to blog about that would at least let people see something other than AppleJack Pumpkin Patch, but come on, I’m ginormous and pregnant and sometimes it’s just too far to walk across the room and get the camera and who wants to read a post with no pictures? Because let’s face it, you’re really not interested in my stories, it’s the cute pictures of Jaydo that make it all worth while. I could of posted some pictures of Jayden’s new drawings of Jojee. He’s been sitting at the table drawing Jojee over and over and over again. He even drew Jojee with her owie - her big nasty oozy burn on her arm. Jojee gets drawn with blue eyes and black eyes and green eyes and orange eyes, I have more pictures of Jojee than I know what to do with - they don’t look anything ike Jojee of course, but that’s what he’s calling them. I’m thinking of putting them together in a book and giving them to Jojee (Merry Christmas! ha ha). I could of written a post about all the food I made last weekend to freeze in preparation for the baby showing up, because if this one is anything like Jayden, it’ll show up early when I least expect it, which means I only have a couple weeks to go - I need to make it about 10 more days until I get to week 37, so I can have this baby at home like I want to, otherwise to the hospital I go. (come on, early baby! small and slippery! i’m just sure this one is gonna shoot out like it’s covered in crisco. i’ll let you know how that turns out for me) I could of written a post about how when Jayden and I are singing Old McDonald and I ask him what animal lives on the farm, he says, ‘ummmm….roast beef’. What the heck kind of a sound does roast beef make? Anyways, you’re not going to get to read about those little things we’ve been doing, I’m going to tell you all about poop. Royal and I decided back in July that we were gonna get Jayden potty trained. We spent one weekend with him running around naked, pumping him full of fluids, and getting him to pee in the toilet. And wouldn’t you know it, for the most part it worked. He was wearing undies, not having too many accidents, and we were pumped to not have to do the whole diaper thing. However, poop was another issue. Jayden REFUSED to poop in the toilet. He would hold it and hold it and hold it and eventually poop in his underwear. I HATE poop in underwear. So, after a couple weeks of fighting that battle, I decided to give up. Jayden needed to decide that he was gong to poop in the toilet, there’s just not a whole lot you can do about forcing someone to do it besides slipping him a little exlax and I really didn’t want to make it more traumatizing then it needed to be. Jayden was very consistant about when he would poop and would only do it if he had a diaper on. So, I’d put a diaper on him right before naptime and right before bedtime and let him do his business. He’d run off to some room in the house, close the door, and do his business. Every few weeks, we’d try and get him to go on the toilet, but he refused. Royal made him sit on the toilet for 2 hours one night, nope nothing. We promised treats, presents, whatever he wanted if he would just do it. Jayden still refused. There was nothing he wanted, until September rolled around. When the Wagner’s came to visit and we had a birthday party for Wyatt, Wyatt got a bunch of Cars toys. Jayden suddenly realized that he could have a Lightening McQueen all his own that he could play with and he kept asking for one. So, I decided to use it as leverage. I told him if he pooped in the toilet, I would go buy him his very own Lightening McQueen. This got him to sit on the toilet a couple of times, but in the end, even Lightening McQuen wasn’t a good enough reason to just do it. So, as this last package of diapers has slowly widdled away, (yes, i was using disposables at this point. he’s too big for the size of g-diapers i have and i didn’t want to buy the next size to just use for a small amount of time. i know, i feel guilty….the poor toxic landfills….sorry my future great great great grandchildren…i was using it as incentive to convince Jayden to poo in the toilet) anyhoo, i was saying, as this last package of diapers has widdled away, Jayden and I have been talking about what we were going to do when they were all gone, where was Jayden’s poop going to go. Jayden came to the conclusion that he was “gonna have to poop in the toilet…ALL…THE…TIME!” (his words) Well, Tuesday was d-day for me. The diapers were all gone and the poop was going to have to go somewhere, I was praying it wasn’t going to be in his underwear, and I was really praying that I wasn’t going to have to break down and buy more diapers. So, we started getting ready for nap about an hour ahead of time, and Jayden asked for his diaper, we went to his little cupboard to look and there were none, so off to the bathroom we went. It took about 40 mins of jumping between the little toilet to the big toilet to no i’m not pooping i’m going to bed to no i’m not taking a nap i’m pooping. Hallelujia, after 40 mins he drops a bomb in the toilet. The minute he was done, he looked at me and said, ‘I get a present!’ Guess he remembered. :) So, after naptime we went and bought him his very own Lightening McQueen. I also bought a few extra cars incase he needed incentive in the future. Well, 3 days went by and Jayden was refusing to poop in the toilet or anywhere for that matter again. I was starting to get a little worried. I mean, you don’t go to the bathroom, it just gets all plugged up and then it’s really hard to go. But he refused and was throwing major fits about it, and Jayden is my little battler. He makes his mind up about something, he will pretty much just stare you down, so I knew I was going to have to wait this one out. So this morning I took matters into my own hands. I knew he had to go…who the heck doesn’t after 3 days??? and he wasn’t eating very much which made me think his stomach was starting to hurt. So, I made him a fruit smoothie and I put some Arbonne Fiber shake in it. About 20 mins afterwards, I told him it was time to go to the bathroom and I pulled out the big guns. I got a little Lightening McQueen car from my stash and told him he could have this car to play with as soon as he pooped in the toilet, then I put the car up on a high shelf where he could see it but not reach it. He sat on the toilet for about 5 seconds, then decided to get all the stools from around the house and see if he could climb up and reach it himself. After he determined he couldn’t reach it, he told me he didn’t want the car afterall and went downstairs to play with his toys. 15 minutes rolls by and he comes up stairs, grabs his stool to get on the toilet (it was under the shelf where the car was sitting) and walks into the bathroom. Like 30 seconds later I hear, ‘mom, i pooped’. Hallelujia! I win!!! So what, I have to pay my kid to poop in the toilet. It’s cool, at least I’ll get a couple week break from having to deal with poopie diapers before the next one comes along.  Applejack Pumpkin Patch!
Our friends, Laura and Jessie and their 2 girls, came down to visit from Kansas City this weekend and we decided to try out a Kansas pumpkin patch. Royal did all the research and found one about 8 miles away from our house called AppleJack Pumpkin Patch! It’s where farm fun grows, just look at the sign.
It was a good find, there was a ton of stuff for little kids to do. First off, Abby and Jayden had some water races with ducks. Next up was the train ride. It was a little windy here at the farm, check out Abby’s hair, it’s not because the tractor train was going so fast. Then Jayden and Martha hit the swings, while Abby raced a tricycle around the racing track. The girl was ferocious, rubbing tires with other trikes practically knocking other kids over, she ran her trike off the track in order to pass someone, and she practically was sliding around the corners. Next we headed over to the big slide, Jayden was pumped! He went down once with Royal, than after that, went down all by himself, which was a pretty big deal as he is usually pretty cautious. After checking out the animals - pigs, goats, llamas, rabbits - we headed over to the corn maze. This is what Jayden thought of the corn maze. Sadly, this is what Martha thought of the corn maze and all my picture taking. Then finally, we hopped on the tractor pulled wagon that took us over to the pumpkin patch to find our perfect pumpkins! Jayden found one for himself and his little sister. |
