February Catch-Up!

Besides sleep training, February has been full of other fun stuff, too! (I just can't believe it's March already... in spite of the weather we're having down here in So Cal making it feel like summer already!)

Jadon's acrobatic skills continue to improve. I really need to enroll him in our local gymnastics program...but we have yet to have 6 weeks in a row that would work out. My next goal is in May. Until then, he continues to find plenty of practice on his trampoline (still don't have a good picture of that)...and other apparatus in our house:

Jadon's imagination is also growing in leaps and bounds, which I love. He loves the Toy Story trilogy, and I think the creative Andy is starting to rub off on him. It isn't the tea parties and orphanages that I remember playing as a little kid, but it is still so cute to play with him as we fight dragons and sharks and "mean fish"! Oh, and Jadon likes to go through the nighttime routine with me in his bed, where he asks me if I want to cuddle with monkeys and then warns me, "Don't get out of bed or I lock the door!" (Hey, we never really locked it...we just told him we would...) This afternoon, as he was closing the door, I said I was lonely, and he told me, "Jesus in your heart." Awww! I'm glad that part sunk in, too! :) 

One of Jadon's favorite imagination stations is our queen bed. Most mornings start off with some sort of battle, usually with Jim leading the way. I love my boys!

For Valentines' Day, I took my first crack at letting Jadon paint with "real" paints (in contrast with the Color Wonder ones that we usually use). I had some fun ideas for making valentines for his MOPS teachers and the grandparents, but Jadon very quickly decided that he much preferred to paint on the newspaper rather than the cute pink paper. Oh well. I think his creativity ended up better than mine!

 

 We have been getting a TON of use out of our 3-month Legoland passes (which expire in a week...sad day!). Earlier in the month, we went with our family friends, the Coddingtons. Jadon LOVES their 2 boys, and they are so great with him...

 We went again with my parents on Valentines' Day, and spent a bit of time at the aquarium. I think my dad was more into it than Jadon was, but he did enjoy seeing the Mr. Potato Head (filled with shrimp) dropped into the tank for the octopus feeding. (Unfortunately, the octopus wasn't hungry that morning...I wonder if that had anything to do with Jadon tapping the glass before we could stop him?...)

 

In addition to frequent Legoland visits, we also discovered a new place called Kidsville thanks to a great deal on Living Social. It's basically an indoor play gym/park, with lots of trampolines and gymnastics equipment and a castle/slide and rope swings and train tables and a princess playhouse with costumes and kitchen and a boys workshop with costumes and tools...and basically a ton of fun stuff to let Jadon run around on. We went with Kristen and Molly, and the kids had a blast.

(In this picture, we thought Jadon and Molly were playing so well together...until I realized that, in typical fashion, Jadon had made a gun out of the duplo blocks and was shooting Molly. She thought it was hilarious. We thought it was something we could work on later... :))

Jadon went to his first hip-hop concert when our friend Nomis performed as a fundraiser at church. All of my pictures of him dancing in the crowd turned out to dark and blurry, but he did like the beats.

I just think this is a cute picture of my boys: :) 

And finally, Jim convinced me to give Jadon a haircut. I love him with short hair, but his little curls were getting so cute!

 (Mom! No more pictures!!!)

A moment of in[spiration][sanity]

Jadon is cutting one of his top teeth. He hasn't slept much the past 2 nights. Which means I've slept event less. Poor little guy. He's usually okay during the day, just a little more needy. Which just so happened to correspond to the moment I decided to take a shower this afternoon. The shampoo was just sudsing up my hair when his cute little face pulled up to the shower and peered in...and burst out in a full-on meltdown. He wanted to be able to see me...but when I opened the curtain up, water splashed in his face and brought on an even bigger torrent of tears. What he really needed was a hug...but that's a little hard to do when you're all wet and soapy.

I rushed through, dried off, and picked my little guy up, and he was immediately fine again, making faces at himself in our mirrored closet doors. So I started combing my hair, annoyed once again at its limp, stringy lameness. I've been talking about cutting it for awhile now, but just haven't had the guts to do so. I put it in a ponytail and tried to picture it shorter. And then in a burst of either inspiration or insanity, I pulled out the scissors and started to cut before I got squeamish. And of course, Jadon chose this moment to crawl around the corner and start hugging my legs wanting to be picked up again. But I was committed...I couldn't stop halfway. So with a crying baby clinging to my leg, I finished the chop, chop, chopping as fast as I could, and then picked him up, let him tuck (his sleepy pose), and he was promptly asleep. Poor little guy. After placing him in his crib (which he is finally great at napping in! Yay!), I went back to survey the damage. It's hard to tell until the next morning, but so far, I think I like it. Ahhhh, motherhood...