Happy Holidays!

Merry Christmas everyone!!  I hope everyone had a wonderful holiday.  We had a very nice Christmas.  (Except for the fact that Payton was sick the entire time!  More on that in a bit...)  I think Payton has gotten the hang of this presents thing!  He was trying to open up everybodys presents.  Even some that I had left under the tree that I need to mail to Iowa.  We all received some wonderful and thoughtful gifts from everybody.  Thank goodness for our play room, because I have no idea where I would put all of the toys if we didn't have it!  On Saturday the three of us celebrated with my mom, my sister and Kellen and had a great time.  I have a few pictures in the photo album, but I can never seem to remember to take very many.  Maybe I should put someone else in charge of being the photographer!  Since mom is still in an apartment we had it at our house.  So I took Friday off of work to prepare!  Mom's house at Christmas is always filled with homemade goodies, so I tried to do the same.  I made lots of cookies, fudge, chocolate covered pretzles and lots of food!!  

Monday morning (after Santa had came) we had Christmas at home with the three of us and later that day my mom and Justins sister, Kristin came over.  We had a big dinner and played with new stuff all day.  (And ate lots of cookies and candy, etc!!!)  Now tomorrow is back to work.   Justin is very happy that the holiday season is over.  He is now back to working normal hours.  It has been a long month for him.  Payton is also very happy to have daddy home more often.  Yesterday he was a daddy's boy and would not let Justin too far out of his sight. 

 

Saturday when we woke up Payton was sick with a really bad sore throat.  And he has had it since.  So needless to say he was not a happy boy most of the weekend.  He would perk up throughout the day (mostly because of new toys and all of the people coming and going) but nighttime has been pretty bad.  So today I took him to the doctor, along with every other child in Kansas apparently, to find out that it is not strep like we had thought.  So that is good news.  Basically it is just a virus and it just has to run its course. We are now on day four, so lets hope it is almost over. 

Our goal was to get mostly potty trained these 4 days that we were home, but with him being sick, that took a back seat.  He has been doing pretty well and is doing pretty good at day care, so hopefully it won't be too long now.  Kristin helped a lot with the potty training yesterday.  She works at a day care, so she has the hang of it! 

 

Payton has now moved up to a toddler bed.  I was a little apprehensive at first.  I had visions of him roaming the house at night.  But he loves his big bed.  He has not gotten out of it once!  The first night I thought it was just a fluke, but it has been over a week now and he is still doing great!  I will continue to keep my fingers crossed!

Payton is now 2 years old!!

Sunday was Paytons birthday!  I can not believe he is already two!  Payton had a lot of fun on his birthday.  He loves trains, so we did a Thomas the Train party.  Everything was Thomas!  Even his cake had a little train on it that moved around on a track.   Payton loves to act silly when other people are around, so he was having a blast showing off to everyone that was here!  My sister even came down from Iowa and my Grandma even flew up from Florida!   He was so exhausted by the end of the party, he could barely hold his head up.  But he was so good the entire night.

We got his 2 year pictures done on Saturday.  I really feel bad for the people working at the portrait studio!  He will be really good in the waiting room, and the minute we go in to the studio he has a complete meltdown!  For some reason he gets scared.  He loves to pose for the camera at home, but this is different. It happens every time, so I shouldn't be shocked.  We did get a couple of okay pictures, not the ones I had in mind, but they will work.  So be looking for them in the mail in a few weeks!

 

He moved up to the two year old room at day care a couple of weeks ago.  So now he is a "big boy".  They have projects to take home and even have show and tell once a week! 

 

He is growing up so fast.  He is starting to talk a lot more and put a couple of words together.  I can usually understand what he is telling me.  He is very good most of the time, but he does have his typical two-year old moments.  Luckily they don't last long and he forgets pretty easily why he was mad or frustrated.  We have started introducing the potty chair.  Nothing real serious yet, but just getting used to the idea. They do it at day care too, so that will help.  I think I will wait until after the holidays before I get to serious about training him. 

Hope everyone is doing well and staying warm and I will try to update this a little more often!