18/19 months

It's been too long since I sat down to write again.

We are having an extraordinary time with Jaiden. He continues to blow us away each and every day, and yes I still run home every night from work to see my lil dude.

Our lil baby is no longer...he really is a little toddler. Doing toddler things like, climbing on the chair, saying "no...no," ( I thought I would somehow skip that stage...I was dreaming), throwing things like his cars and sticks and rocks.

In my last blog I mentioned that we had bought 2 potty's for Jaiden. He checked them out for 3 days and said while pointing to the potty, "pee pee." I quickly took his diaper off, he sat down and to our grand surprise he went "pee pee' in his potty. We screamed and cheered him on but unfortunately I was not prepared with stickers and rewards. However we did the best we could at showing him how proud we were. I thought omg, our 18 month old is going to be potty trained just like that. Not so, he did not approach the potty for about 3 more weeks. Since then I have stocked up on stickers and now our bathroom mirror has about 14 stickers on it. We are not pushing the issue but we certainly are making it very exciting when he goes.

We have been on two more camping trips since our last blog. We ventured up to the Sequoia's, to a place called Peppermint, one of Jesse's favorite places. It was green and lush with a creek running through the campsite. Within a 10 minute hike we were at waterfalls and big pools where people sunbath and slide down the side of the mountain right into the water. It was beautiful. At night it would get completely dark only to be lit up by the stars. Jaiden ran around with a flashlight exploring the dark which was so cool to watch. There were two other group of friends with us and 4 more children. The kids were a bit older than Jaid but he had a blast with them. They took him to the water, feed him snacks all day long, explored trees and all sorts of bugs with him. It is definitely on the list of annual camping excursions.

Our next camping trip was to Capenteria the week before labor day weekend. We arrived on a Tuesday and left on Friday. We scored on the campsite and will try to reserve the same one on future trips. Our campsite was right on the beach, complete ocean view. All night long we listened to the ocean. During the day we rode our bikes, went into town, took long walks, played on the beach, watched Jaiden throw rocks and get dirty. Had breakfast out one day, and even ventured to a nice restaurant for dinner one night. We met some really nice people who we are hoping to meet up with again. This is my kind of camping although Jess would rather camp in a secluded place in the mountains.

Jaiden's vocabulary grows by multiple words a day. It's crazy how much he can say and how much he understands. Some new words, are "all good," "one more," and " hold me." His absolutely favorite word right now is "Da Da." EVERYTHING is "Da Da." Jesse of course just eats it up. I'm like...what about Mommy?

I always remembered seeing little tikes walking in their parents shoes but I did not know if it was something Jaid would do or when he would do it, but the other day I turned around and Jaiden was in my high heels. With his head up high he was prancing around like some sort of crazy dancer I about peed laughing so hard. Then he got to tap dancing like Elmo does on his dvd and almost ate it which of course sent me into another laughing attack. The kid is funny.

Jaiden still likes his 2 naps each day so we are just stickin to it for now. He goes down around 9:30 and wakes around 11:30. And then he takes another nap around 2:30 for an hour or two. When we are out and about which is often on the weekends he's flexible and sleeps when he is in the car or in the stroller.

When Jesse puts him to sleep at night I can hear him say "nite nite Jaiden" and then I hear Jaiden say, "nite nite." It's about the cutest thing I have ever heard. Jaiden goes to bed around 8:30 pm and wakes up around 8:00am. Now that's a kid who makes it easy on his parents!

One of our favorite rituals is every morning Jaiden comes into our bed and has his milk. Of course that's after he points to both of us and says, "Da Da" "M aaah m." He then reaches his head forward and kisses us. He's really good at playing equals!