When we went to our pediatrician for Jaxson’s 18 month appointment, she still had not received any of the H1N1 shots. So we decided to take matters into our own hands and go to an open health clinic to get the shot.
Today was the day. There were 300 doses available so we knew that we needed to get there bright and early. We got to the clinic about 15 mins before it opened, got a number (we were number 175) and found our place in line. We waited in line outside for 2 hours and then when we finally got to go inside we assumed that it would be quick but nope–we waited another hour inside. We thought this was gonna be miserable for Jaxson but instead he ate all the food in my diaper bag, he played with every toy I had and he read every book, piece of literature, and brochure I could find (twice). He did amazing. Not a tear was shed or a whine was heard the whole time (well-until the actual shot itself). He just rolled with the punches and patiently waited his turn in line.
The shot itself was a whole other story. Jaxson cried for the actual shot and then wanted to leave. He said “all done” when it was over and then pointed to the door. But we were not allowed to leave for 15 minutes because they wanted to make sure that he would not have an immediate reaction. So instead we sat in a waiting room for 15 minutes with a ton of kids who were all crying because they all just got shots. This was miserable and Jaxson had had enough–he wanted to go home and so many tears were shed there. Plus I had nothing to give Jaxson to distract him or make him happy since he had pretty much cleaned out my diaper bag during the 3 hours previously. So i gave him my cell phone (which i really try not to do since he broke my last one) and that worked to calm him down (except he might have accidentally called a few of you–sorry). And then we headed home!
So now we have to wait until december 3rd before we can get the booster and hopefully by then, Jaxson’s doctor will have the vaccine and we won’t have to wait in another ridiculous line because even though Jaxson had the patience of saint–I don’t think I do.
I have given you 3 days to get your sleep routine back to normal after the time change. That should be plenty of time to readjust your schedule. Why are you waking up so early???? Seriously, you used to sleep till after 7am but now you have been waking up at 5am! This is just not acceptable and it does not make sense. The time change was only an hour so why are you waking up 2 hours earlier?
Your mommy and daddy are exhausted and see absolutely no point in waking up at 5am. So please please please get back on your normal routine by the end of the week because I need sleep!
He is 26 lbs (50th percentile), 33.5 inches (80th percentile) and had a head circumference of 18.75 inches (50th percentile). We have started to notice how tall Jaxson has gotten recently because 1) his pants actually fit lengthwise 2) he can reach things on the counters that he never could reach before and 3) he can’t run thru my legs anymore without having to duck.
His vocab has grown so much in the past few months that it will only be a matter of time until he is using full sentences. He completely understands everything that we say and will usually respond correctly 90% of the time. Today at the doctor, the nurse was getting ready to measure Jaxson’s head and she said “Can I measure your head circumference?” and Jaxson responded “no” and she said “are you sure?” and he said “yea”. We all got a good laugh out of it.
He also got one shot today and at first he was super scared when the nurse was prepping his legs. So I was holding him and he was squeezing me super tight and squinty his eyes so that he did not have to watch and even before she gave him the shot he was saying “owwwwww” and then she gave him the shot and he said “owwww……ooooh”. It was as if he was saying ‘it is gonna hurt, it is gonna hurt, it is gonna hurt, wait–no it doesn’t’. And then the nurse said “all done” and Jaxson responded with “all done..bye bye”. He was ready for her to leave before she tried to give him another shot. Luckily he only needed one shot.
So we have a healthy happy tall 18 month old. Seriously–where does the time go?
Plus he got a haircut after his appointment today and that made him look even older! Where did my baby go?????
He was randomly smiling like this one day and I said that is such a cheesy smile and he giggled. And from then on, every time we say “can we see your cheesy smile?” we get this in response. He is such a ham!
We headed over to Kyle and Bethanys for trick or treating last night.
While we were waiting for everyone to get in their costumes, Mason (the transformer) was trying to teach Jaxson (the monster) his colors. Mason would ask “what color is this?”, Jaxson would reply “yellow”. Yellow is the only color he knows and it was too cute watching Mason trying to teach him all the colors. Mason would say “no–it is purple” and then Jaxson would say “purple”. And then Mason would ask again Jaxson would say “yellow”. Mason was very determined to get him to say all the colors…but Jaxson was very determined in just saying “yellow”.
Miss Nika then appeared in her bumble bee costume. Adorable.
And last but not least, Miss Payton the lady bug. Could she be any cuter? I think not.
All the kids were finally dressed and we were ready to go trick or treating. But first, the obligatory group picture (they are all so cute!)
It started to rain as soon as we stepped out of the house, but luckily it only lasted for a few houses otherwise it would have been a very short trick or treating adventure for us.
Jaxson was a fantastic trick or treater. He walked almost the whole time (we were out for about 1.5 hours) clutching tight to his candy filled elmo bucket. He trick or treated like he had been doing it for years. He walked right up to the house, climbed every step, knocked on the door and said ”roar” (that is monster talk for trick or treat), flashed his super cute smile and grabbed one piece of candy from the bowl, put it in his bucket and then waved bye bye. He was such a rock star–and he kept grabbing reese peanut butter cups! Those are my favorite so thank you Jaxson!
He was exhausted towards the end but nothing that a sucker couldn’t fix.
Having a kid on Halloween is awesome. They do the work to get the candy and I get to eat it all. lol. I don’t think that will work next year. Pretty sure Jaxson is gonna want to eat his loot and not share any of it with me. So i need to enjoy it while I can.
Today Jeremy decided to steam clean the carpet in the living room. So after we moved all the furniture out, we stood in the middle of our empty living room and thought it would be cool to do somersaults and cartwheels since there was so much open room. Seemed like such a great idea…
Jeremy did 3 somersault in a row from one side to the other and then laid on the floor in pain. He pulled some muscle in his back. And as I see him laying there, I decided to do a cartwheel. Well the cartwheel went fine, it was when I tried to do a roundoff cartwheel where things went down hill. I landed and pulled some muscle in my inner thigh. So here we are–two almost 30 year olds–laying on our living room floor in pain because we thought it would be cool to attempt some gymnastic moves. Stupid. We are too old for this stuff. I honestly don’t think it occurred to me that I am not as flexible as I used to be. I just saw a big open room and thought–how fun would it be to bust out some cartwheels. I need to start acting my age, because my body can’t handle my 12 year mind.
This weekend my parents came to visit and Jaxson was super excited to see “papa” and “nana”. At first he was a little shy because he has not seen them in a few months and so he needed to be reminded that they were real and not just people that we point to in a picture. Once he realized that they were good people (which took about 2.5 seconds) he was loving on them all weekend.
We took grandma and grandpa to the playground on friday and Jaxson got to show them how every.single.thing. worked. He would play with one thing for 30 seconds and then move on to the next and the next and the next until he did everything. Then he went back and played with the teeter totter because apparently that is his new favorite thing.
Actually, everyone had fun playing on all the toys–lol.
This picture cracks me up…this was Jaxson’s hair after coming down one of the tunnel slides.
Saturday was my niece, Nika, 3rd birthday party. My mom and I spent to the morning helping my brother and sister-in-law prepare things for the party while my dad and Jeremy were in charge of Jaxson. It was a halloween themed birthday party so after we got everything ready for the party we headed back home to get dressed in our costumes and to pick up the boys. The party was awesome–there was about 100 people there and I would say that 95 of them dressed up. So much fun.
I did not get a picture of my costume but I was dressed in a blue shirt with cotton balls taped to it and I carried around a squirt gun. Everything someone asked me what I was, I said “party cloudy with a chance of rain” and then I sprayed them. lol.
Can anyone guess what Jeremy is?
(not a single person got it–I will tell you in a later post, if no one guesses it)
The party was alot of fun but Jaxson was starting to get crabby because it was past his bedtime and so we left before a huge meltdown occurred. So we were done with the halloween party by 7:30pm. At least we able to stay long enough to see Nika loving her cake!
(p.s. I have no pictures from the party because I left my camera at home–grrr. so i “stole” this picture of nika from facebook)
And then today my parents headed home We will miss them alot but christmas is only 2 months away! Jaxson especially missed them. He woke up from his nap and went looking for “papa” but there was no “papa” to be found. So he settled for us.
Tuesday Jeremy went to work at 8am with his lunch in hand and was home by 10am he was walking through our front door with not only his lunch but the contents of his entire office. He got laid off yesterday. Business is just not what it used to be. He is (was) a civil engineer for a land development company and when people aren’t spending money to build things, his company has no land to develop. His company had already gone through a first round of lay offs about a year ago and a few months after that every employee was cut hours. So when he make it through the first round of lay offs we were super excited and honestly when he got his hours cut we were initially bummed but it turned out for the better because then was able to spend an extra day at home with Jaxson. But this lay off is gonna be tough for us. First, because we have lost his income (he applied for unemployment but seriously it is not even close to what he used to make) , second because we need to take Jaxson out of daycare and third because Jeremy really like working for his company. Not many people can say they actually like their job but Jeremy did and so it is going to be hard for him to go work for another company.
This loss of income is gonna be hard but I know we will be fine. We just will have to cut back on some (or all) of our extra spending. I know that I could cut back on my 401K if things get really rough and we could lower the amount we put into Jaxson’s 529 account but this market is so good right now for all that stuff that I would hate to not be putting in the maximum amount. But again–if worse comes to worse, we have a fallback plan. Plus, we are most definitely applying for a home modification loan now. Our home has decreased so much in value that there is no way we could even sell if we wanted to. And hopefully with our loss of income we will qualify and we can lower the interest rate on our mortgage. That would help out so much–but I have this gut feeling that we will get denied because we can still make our mortgage payments. We shall see. Maybe that will be the door that opens for us first
As for taking Jaxson out of daycare, this is going to be very hard for me because Jaxson LOVES daycare. He loves seeing his friends everyday, he loves painting and singing and playing and dancing that it pains me to take that away from him. We ask him every morning if he want to go to school and he says “YEAH”. He gets excited when we pull into the parking lot. Plus he has learned sooooo much in the past couple of weeks after moving up to the toddler room that I don’t want that learning to stop. And the last thing that scares me is that if Jeremy gets a job soon after we take Jaxson out of daycare, then he would need to go on a waiting list to go back in. And that is not really an option for us–so I fear that we might have to try a different daycare. This is all so ironic considering how after my maternity leave I did not even want him to go to daycare. I wanted him to stay home every day and we had actually discussed Jeremy quitting and staying home with him. and now that he is so happy there, I hate to have to take him out. I wish he was of age to go to preschool. Since really he does not need a daycare setting–he does not need to eat or nap there. he just needs to be in a classroom setting with other kids his age for a few hours a day. But he is too young for that.
The upside of taking him out of daycare is that he will nap better (which will make him less crabby), he will not come home with paint in every crevice of his body, and he will hopefully be less at risk for getting sick this winter (which means I will be sick less too).
We are paid through the middle of November for daycare so Jaxson will still be going on Tuesdays-Thursdays and Jeremy will use this time to find a job and not have to worry about Jaxson tugging at his leg all day. Crossing fingers that he find a job soon. Do I hear a door opening????
The other thing that is gonna be hard is that I currently work at home! and I work from our den–which does not have doors on it. So with just jeremy here, it is not horrible since he will be on the computer most of the time, but with jeremy and Jaxson here–things could get out of control quickly. I think I might have to move my office to our bedroom or I might have to go back to work at the office. Which I would not mind doing, because I really don’t like working from home, but then I will only get to see Jaxson for about an hour a day before bedtime. The commute is killer considering a 10 hour day turns into a 12 hour day with a commute. Urgh. So many things I need to think about.
As tough as it is gonna get over the next couple of months, we need to remind ourselves of all the positives in our life. We have so many things to be thankful for that this will NOT destroy us. It is going to bring us closer (literally since we will need to turn the heat down to save money and we will all need to cuddle a little bit more–lol) and make us stronger. I know it.
The Buddy Walk for Payton and Nika was this past Saturday. This is the fourth year we have participated in this walk and this is the first year that we have had crappy weather. And I mean crappy weather! It was freezing and raining and windy. But there was no way that weather was gonna keep us from supporting our nieces. So we bundled Jaxson up in his snow suit, winter jacket, snow boots, hats and gloves and we got dressed in our snow pants and rain coats and headed out. Even though it was cold and rainy and everyone was wet and frozen, nobody was complaining. This is a day for celebration. Everyone completed the walk with umbrellas, ponchos, strollers with rain covers, and smiles on their faces. We headed home shortly after the walk because of a little boy who was tired and whiny so we did not get to participate in the events after the walk (pony rides, moon bounces, funnel cakes–lol). Despite the weather, we still had fun and would have done it again in a heartbeat. We would weather any storm for those little girls
Here are some pictures:
Jaxson’s coat was so puffy that he looked like the Michelin tire man or the little boy from the Christmas Story. He could barely walk in his winter get-up.
The girls of honor
Mason playing in some puddles (which there were plenty of)
We will miss them alot but christmas is only 2 months away! Jaxson especially missed them. He woke up from his nap and went looking for “papa” but there was no “papa” to be found. So he settled for us.
