Gearing up for the weekend.

This week has been business as usual.

We have been running errands, cleaning, playing, and cooking.

I attempted making cookies Monday. They turned out yummy, and I wonder why it has been years since I have made chocolate chip cookies. Probably because I could polish them off in a couple of days. :)

Yesterday I came across a bargain at Goodwill, and we are now the proud owners of 2 dressers and 2 nightstands. They are broyhill and in great condition. I can't believe that I stumbled across them and that someone gave this great stuff to goodwill. We are so grateful for all of the drawers and storage space.

Today we took a meal to our friends. They just had a baby. Henry. This is Hayden's first friend that has become a big brother. It is exciting.

Tomorrw is PDO and Friday we are getting packed up for our weekend in Waterloo/CF. We are meeting the Bellows family and the Shroyer family in CF. The Shroyer's are getting a hotel and we are going to hang out and let the kids swim. We are looking forward to a fun weekend with "old" friends.

Hayden has been a blast lately. We have been busy playing trucks, tractors, "guys", reading, crafting, snuggling, and laughing. He still loves trucks and tractors and making a mess. We rarely use a sippy cup anymore and he prefers to eat with big utensils and plates. He is consistently flexing his independence and is getting better at entertaining himself. He still loves the wiggles, but is now into Blues Clues. We canceled cable, dusted the vcr off and found some videos of blues clues.
He is quite the singer and loves to sing in public. He finally will sit in a cart which makes shopping more enjoyable.
He is also getting a lot better at following direction. 9 times out of 10 he will go to his room for time out when he is told to and stays there until he is told to come out.
He is doing great at sleeping in his room. He still likes the door open and never comes out. He lays in bed and reads books.
He is still naping. He naps usually from 1:30 - 4. He loves his naps.
We now hear "yes" more often, but "no" is still used more frequently.
We have attempted the potty. He sits on it all of the time in clothes, and does the whole rutine, but if I take his diaper off he refuses to sit on it stating that it is "too scary". Hopefully he will get over that soon.
Words that make me smile, "thank you mommy", "bless you", "I love you", "let's snuggle", "Hayden sleep in mommys bed", "what's wrong", "kiss", "ohhh Bud Saul (while givving bud saul a hug", "bye, kiss (when he gets done on the phone)", "have a good day", and the sound of him screaming "yay" and runung through the house.

Shoot

Soooo....
I have been shown more in the past 2 years that I am NOT in control of my life, and everything that I thought was going to happen or planned to happen, has not or not happened to my plan. Make sense? I guess what I am getting at is that I always seem to have things figured out and God shows me how he has it figured out. Which 9 times out of 10 is way different that I thought it should be.
I have also learned that every assumption I had of parenting or every thing I said I would not do or would not say, I have ended up doing or saying.
Which all leads me to this situation yesterday.

Hayden: "Shit"
Me: "We don't say shit, we shay shoot"
Hayden: "I don't say shoot, I say shit"

Ummm yeah.

He didn't say it in a defiant way like "listen here sister, I say s***", it was more a matter of fact thing, like he prefers to say s*** over shoot.

A) I would of never thought my child would talk this way
B) Before children I would of thought "those parents need to get their kid under control"
C) I wondered all day yesterday if it is going downhill from here
D) Is he going to come home from PDO tomorrow smoking a cigarette, tattooed, and flipping me off?

So far I have not heard him repeat the S word.

Scary Lobsters

Tonight Hayden informed me that he couldn't sleep in his room because it was scary. He was insisting that he sleeps in Mommy's bed. I asked him why it was scary and he said that the lobsters come out and punch. Not pinch, punch.

Hmmmm...... Ok

So I told him it was ok and that we could leave the light on and the door open and it wouldn't be scary. He said ok and laid down.
I wonder if he is dreaming about lobsters?

Speaking of sleeping issues, I should document what has been happening around here at bedtime. I realized that I need to post more about the logistics of our day, because as my sister has been asking me questions and I am not remembering what Hayden was doing at a certain age.

So.... Hayden was sleeping with us for about month. In between traveling for the holidays etc. he seemed to end up in our bed more than his own. While we all love sharing a bed, we realized a month straight is too long and Hayden is getting to big. Age wise and size wise. (Plus it will give our pediatrician one less thing to tease Joey about. Since Joey is the softie , our pediatrician tells us that he usually has to have the talks he does with Joey with moms, not too many dads).

Hayden used to sleep in his room with a night light, his sound machine, and his door closed.
The first night we put him back in he wanted his lamp on and the door open. I was convinced he would run out, but gave him a chance. He didn't run out. He got up and read some books in bed (which he always does) and then fell asleep. Since then he has only been out of his room at bedtime once and seemed to understand my warning that the door would be closed if he came out again.

We also did some rearranging. We moved his train table up to his room. He has done great during naps and night time. Sometimes I can hear him playing with it for a little bit, but he has always ended up back in his bed and sound asleep.

Every night he does says he wants to sleep in mommy's bed and climbs in, but doesn't protest too much when we take him into his room.

Inauguration

Avery and Barack


Today is a great day in American History. I have been up since 7 watching the festivities. I got chills last night when they reminded people that Obama will be living in a house built by slaves and giving his speech on land where slaves were once sold.

I have always been fascinated with government and it's procedures.

Perceptive boy

So we all know how Hayden LOVES baby Jesus. I think he has missed him because Christmas is over and the constant visual is gone.
Yesterday we were snuggling in bed. He comes in every morning and we snuggle. Even if I am already up, back to bed I must go to snuggle. I must admit I like it.

I digress....

So he looked at the nightstand and saw my book The Shack and said "baby Jesus, read it mommy, the bible, baby Jesus.
Ummmm what did you just say??? It was strange. After I really looked at the cover of the book I thought maybe he was thinking the shack was the manger? Now I am wondering if that was what the author was going for, and it took a 2 year old to point it out to me. Strange.

Then we were upstairs cleaning he came to me with a basket and said "Baby Moses, baby Moses goes in there". Ummmm ok.

I won't get into the third one where he pointed to a picture of Barack Obama and said Jesus, then I held the newspaper down to his level to make sure I saw correctly what he was pointing at. It turns out it was a picture of some missiles above Obama's that looked like the northern star. Whewwww. We would of had an issue there.

Yes I will be watching the Inauguration Kari. Thanks for the shout on facebook in front of a million people. :)

New paint and baseboards

Before Color

After color. A lot less shiny and yellow. It may not look that way in the picture.

After color, and new baseboards. Oh and Hayden's new camera from Grandma and Grandpa P.


I need to take some pictures of the kitchen. We are still working on the trim under the cabinets, and Joey and Hayden are putting all of the outlet covers back on. Our goal for the year is to get new counters and take a stab at tiling a backsplash.
My goal this weekend is to empty out every cupboard and reorganize.

Cousins

Hayden was so happy to have his cousins here last weekend to celebrate Grandpa's 60th birthday.

Spanish

We were at Nancy's house Wednesday eating some cake with our new neighbors from El Salvador. Nancy had some Spanish speaking fairy tale movies for the kids to watch, and was speaking Spanish at the time to our neighbor. Nancy asked me if Hayden would get upset because he couldn't understand the movie, and they were espeaking spanish. I said probably not, but we will have to see.
As the movie played, he started looking around the room at Nancy, the movie, back at Nancy, the movie. He started to smile and then looked at the kids and said "blalalalblalalalblal". He did this by moving his tounge in and out of his mouth very fast. Then he had the biggest smile on his face, like he was joining in.

Stubborn

I am simply amazed at how strong willed and stubborn my child is.

Record breaking cold

-29. That was the temperature here this morning. The coldest day ever recorded here since 1891. That was when they started keeping records.

Hayden didn't have PDO today. Yesterday we went to Nancy's for cake. We meet the new neighbors from El Salvador. Today Nancy brought over Swedish pancakes. No school tomorrow either, I wonder what Nancy will come up with.

Cold

Right now it is 11:45 am and the true temperature is -9. The wind chill is -27. I just checked the forecast and saw that we are supposed to get 5 inches tonight. I was shocked. Snow keeps popping up. We got 7.5 inches Saturday, when the forecast was only for 3.
MOPS was canceled today. We are keeping warm inside, and continuing to get our kitchen put back together. Pics to come.
At least the sun is out!

Prep and painting

Today we are prepping the walls for painting. Yesterday I removed some old tile above the sink and the rubber back splash around 2 of the counters. I always despised that stuff. Joey spent most of the morning "evening" out the walls where I removed the stuff and where it needed to be before. Kind of a never ending job since it is hard to even out old plaster. The only solution would be to re plaster or sheetrock the whole room. Call me crazy, but I prefer the "imperfect" look. I will prove it when I post a picture of the wood floor between the dining room and kitchen.
It is full of holes and looks rough, but I think it is beautiful. Strange I know. We are hoping to get at least one coat of paint on today. In a perfect world we would get 2 on and get our appliances back in the kitchen tomorrow. We will see.

We got 7 inches of snow. Hayden keeps asking to go outside, but when I remind him that he needs to wear gloves, he drops it. :) Even though he has been telling me today all of the things you need to wear when it is cold out. I think they just went over that in PDO.

Bev and Joe were going to watch Hayden today and bring him down tomorrow. Neither of us wanted to drive in all of the snow, so Hayden stayed with us. I was a little nervous having him here because of the possibility of lead paint showing up somewhere, but he has been good at staying out of the kitchen and we haven't had to disturb the old walls to much.

Joey's family is coming here tomorrow to celebrate his dad's birthday. Hopefully they won't mind the mess, or the smaller space we have now with the house in disarray. :)

New Floor

All I can say is I LOVE MY NEW FLOOR. And I also have to say I can not BELIEVE we did it on our own. It was HARD work, but we did it. Now we are going to paint the walls and then take a break for a bit. I would LOVE new counters, but that will have to wait. I also plan to re paint the kitchen cabinets, but that will probably happen slowly this spring/summer.
The kitchen feels way cleaner, considering they built in the fridge, and my guess is it hasn't been moved for 30 years. Same with the huge 50's stove. It was nasty underneath both to say the least.

A random shot of the floor before..... stay tuned for after pics.

I am actually getting a new kitchen floor. I can't believe it. It all started with me doing research and discovering we could get an updated floor ( peel and stick linoleum) for a reasonable price. Joey surprisingly agreed (I thought it would take a lot of persuasion since he only had a few days left of his extended vacation). We went out and bought the supplies, and John and Darliene came down to help us move the oven, fridge, and help us get the floor put in.
As we moved the stove, there was a patch of linoleum missing and Joey said, "look there is hardwood under here". After some detective work by Darliene and me, there actually was hardwood underneath.
Sooooo... we decided that we should rip up the linoleum and glue. We have done some serious back breaking work tearing up the NASTY linoleum, and steaming/mopping up the old glue, but it will be worth it.
We sanded all day today. Joey rented a big sander and got a lot done. It took almost 4 hours in our small little kitchen with the big sander, which surprised us. We spent the rest of the day on the floor with hand sanders. I did a test spot with the polyurethane, and it looks like we won't have to stain it because it matches the floor in the living room and dining room.
Pics to come......
Then we just need to paint the walls, paint the cabinets, get new lights....... :)