Christmas

Yeah, I know, I know!!! I've already been "informed" from several sources that it appears that I "forgot" to blog about Christmas. So not true!! I only had time for one post last time and I was too excited about Jaden being in Sunbeams that I couldn't help myself. For all you anal retentive types that reading about a January event before a December event, well... so sorry. My advice? Read 'em out of order! Christmas this year was really good. Really quiet too! We decided that we were really needing to stock up the family time since Bryan is never home and so we kept our holiday "commitments" to a bare minimum!! Bryan HAD to go to his works Christmas party. It was MANDATORY! Can you believe that? To add salt to the wound, it was $30 a person!! Needless to say, he went alone! We went to our wards Christmas party and the wonderful, stupendous Mallorys put together a "night in Bethlehem" for us. It was really nice. No Santa. Awesome!! Just what I needed! We got snow the night of the ward party too! Several inches before all was said and done. I'm good for the year, my snow quota has been met... just in case anyone with influence in the weather department is reading my blog! Christmas Eve morning we went to the Dubes' annual Christmas Eve Breakfast. YUM! They always cook a breakfast fit for kings and invite a lot of people to come and eat it! Christmas Eve we did the whole new Christmas pajamas thing. I hoped that it wasn't a mistake after I saw the way Jaden reacted. I thought, "Great. What did I just do??!! Now there is NO WAY I'm gonna get this kid to bed!!" To say he was excited over his Mickey Mouse Pj's WITH feet is an understatement. Which, by the way, is the picture that goes with this post. All the kids liked their PJ's and went to bed without too much fuss. It was a late night for all, but thankfully, Santa's elves were a little smarter than last year and had everything already wrapped. Christmas Day was nice too. It was quiet... well, Hutcherson standard quiet! It was just us. We did the whole "mom's turkey with Grandma's stuffing" thing that we missed out on at Thanksgiving. Our oven lost an element on Christmas day so we didn't eat turkey until like 6:00!! We had planned on a 3 or 4 pm meal, but the turkey took forever! It was sad too because it was dry and I NEVER make dry turkey! All was good though, 'cause we were together. I miss Bryan now that his company command makes him very, very scarce around here, but days like Christmas I am reminded off the years that we spent Christmas without him at all. It was a wonderful day.

Sunbeam!!

Today my BABY started Sunbeams!! Can you believe it???!!! I know I can't! He did great. He was a little confused that we didn't stop at the door to the nursery, but didn't make a fuss when I told him to keep going down the hall. This past week, we have talked up the fact that since he was 3, that he would get to go to the "big kids primary" now! He seemed excited about it and we were hoping for a smooth transition. Fortunately, we were surprised beyond just a smooth transition! He went to his class with no fuss, tears, or shyness! He sat still during class and then again during sharing and singing time. He wasn't fidgety or wiggly. He didn't talk out of turn or (more impressively for him) he did talk when called upon!! The only thing he did that wasn't perfect was during sharing time. He was humming "I am a Child of God" too loud! When I went to pick him up after it was all over, I asked if he had been good. He told me yes, and his teacher told me that it was the best behaved Sunbeam class that she had ever seen! I guess it helps that there are only two of them. Go Jaden and Kayla!

Toothless wonder...

Well, on Friday Jacob finally let me pull it out. His tooth that is!! It wasn't even connected and he balked at the last second and pulled away from me. I had a hold of the tooth though, so he really pulled it out himself! He didn't even realize that it was gone because he said "OK mom, I'm really ready this time." When I showed him the tooth that was already in my hand, his eyes got big and wide and he said, totally surprised, "that didn't hurt at all!!" The tooth fairy, with a big reminder from her husband, slipped him a dollar that night. Today he spent his dollar on Bubulicious Gum. I think it's a conspiracy on his part. Buy sugary gum so more teeth will fall out, so that tooth fairy will bring more money. It might just work as his other bottom front tooth is loose too. Hmmmm... with my luck it'll come out on Christmas Eve and I will be without a dollar! I better stash one away so that can't happen!

Last week we woke to a thick, thick, fog. You couldn't see anything past the grass in our front yard! It still hadn't burned off completely when at 11am I went to pick Jaden up from school. I got him loaded and buckled into the car (no small feat mind you!), when he starts yelling excitedly something about the moon. I couldn't understand him at all at first, mostly because he was so excited that he was squawking at a pitch high enough to shatter glass! He finally calmed down enough to shout it loudly, but within human ear range instead of hummingbird range, "It's a moonhole!" It was the sun. The fog and low clouds were so thick that you could look at the sun direct and it just looked like there was a full moon out visible in the day time. I'm sure he actually meant "whole moon/ Full moon" as he tells us "half moon" or "quarter moon" as appropriate, but that didn't stop Daddy from posting "moonhole" as the "Word Of The Day" at work. As in "Quit being a moonhole!"

Gladi-bone-spidey-soldier-jedi man!

Gladi-bone-spidey-soldier-jedi man is Jaden's new name. Anybody want to guess why? Last night, Kaylee took Jacob and Jaden upstairs to play to get them out of my hair while I cooked dinner for the crew. About 15 minutes later, I hear yelling and screaming coming from Jacob and Kaylee and fierce "growling" coming from Jaden. What in the world is going on up there? I head up to see what the ruckus is all about. I am hoping for no blood at this point. I walk in to Jaden and Jacob's room and see only Jaden standing there. He is wearing dress up clothes; army camo pants, a gladiator breastplate, a skeleton glove, a Spiderman mask, and he is brandishing up in the air a Star Wars light saber. I look at him and say "nice dress ups , bud" and immediately I hear, "mom help us!" coming from the closet. Jacob and Kaylee are being held at saber point in the closet. Jaden chased them there with his "deadly" hard plastic light saber and was holding them as prisoners with a few well placed smacks with the Jedi weapon of choice when they tried to leave. Yes. A three year old trapped a 5 and 10 year old in the closet and was a talented enough guard to keep both of them pinned. Do I really want to know what he is going to be like at 9 or 10?

Where has the time gone?

So much for my goal of writing at least every 2 weeks! It's been a month since the last post and, oh boy, what a month!! Literally. I do mean, oh boy. As in "oh boy, yes it's a boy!" It seems statistics are working against adding a girl to the Hutcherson bunch! He is beautiful though, gotta love the 3-D ultrasounds that they can do these days!! Everything looks good with him. Nice strong heart and measuring just fine for our estimated, "best guess" due date! I am feeling a bit better, for which I am truly grateful! I was not looking forward to 7-9 months of morning sickness that I have had in the past. I have stopped the weight slide that seems to plague me. I know, how fair is that? The one time in my life that I can lose weight easily and quickly and it's not good for me or the baby! I am doing ok health wise. There is a slight problem in that area, but its TMI, so I won't go there. Don't want that floating around in cyberspace! If you just HAVE to know or it'll send you to the loony bin, you can call me and I will fill you in. Not a big deal, just a situation that has potential for bad things. The only good thing about it is that I am limited to 30 pounds of lifting, so... guess what Jaden? You are 30.2 pounds! Time for you to WALK! I am 22 weeks today, only 18 more to go! And before you ask, we have NO idea on names for him yet! Any ideas?
Other things of very great importance and impact on our family have happened this month too. As of November 23rd, Bryan is the command of W company in the 266th Battalion of the 23rd Quartermaster Brigade... or something like that! All I know for sure is that it means very long, tiring hours for poor Bryan. 18 hour work days, 6 days a week, plus work on Sunday no matter how hard he tries to avoid it! He is going to be a great commander though and I am hoping that things will settle down really soon and bring things back to a sustainable work load for him.

Progress? Ummmm... not so much!

Jaden's latest and greatest. If I am in the kitchen loading the dishwasher or in the family room picking things up (or in the bathroom!!), Jaden seems to know it. He migrates to the "unguarded" portions of the house. We have to keep the kitchen locked now, all the time. He can unlock both the fridge and the deep freeze (YIKES!), and of course, as you all know after the last post, there isn't a "safe" spot when it comes to my dare devil. It used to be that if I could hear suspicious activity in another room and I called his name and ask him to "come here, please", he would ignore me. Pretend-that-I-can't-hear-her-and-then-she-can't-hear-me sort of thing. A few days ago that changed. Now when you call, "Jaden what are you doing in the kitchen/bathroom/bedroom/etc? Come here, please", you get a clear as day, "Just minute!! Busy!!" right back at you!!! Is it really progress that he no longer ignores, completely, my summons??

Deep Breathing...

I am convinced that all that separated my two youngest children from meeting "psycho-mommy" today was deep breathing. OK this afternoon, Jaden was first. I was in the kitchen loading lunch dishes into the dishwasher and Jaden was upstairs playing with his trucks and blocks (those came down from an "attic vacation" today so he has been enthralled! So nice!). Anyway, I walked out of the kitchen to change the laundry out (the laundry room is all of 3 feet from the kitchen for those who haven't seen my house before) and I carried the clean basket into the living room and set it on the couch. I turn back around and there he is. He HAD to have been watching me and waiting for me to leave the kitchen. He had pushed a chair over to the counter, climbed up from the chair to the counter, to the microwave to the TOP of the fridge, and reached across and got the scissors down. He then got the unopened bag of chocolate chips out of the freezer, cut them open, and was "hiding" under the kitchen table eating as fast as he could. Deep breathing.... This evening was round two. Jake was in the shower upstairs, Kaylee was supposed to be in the shower downstairs (that's a whole other deep breathing story right there!!), and again Jaden was playing in his room. I finished cleaning up dinner dishes and went to fold that basket of laundry and yes, it WAS still sitting on my couch! I only folded like 4 things when I realized that I could hear Jake talking, but it sounded like the shower was still running. Deep breath. I go up stairs expecting that he got out of the shower, but didn't turn it off. Deep breath. It turned out it was the toilet, the chain had gotten twisted up a little and the flap wasn't closing. No biggie. I figured that since I was already upstairs, I would get the boys teeth brushed, PJ's on, etc. and that we would have time for a few extra stories tonight. I go into their bedroom and Jake blurts out, "Jaden has chocolate and he is hiding over there!!" Deep breath. I look and he is sandwiched between the dresser and the edge of the bed, a bag of chocolate chips in one hand, a little cup from the play kitchen full of chips in the other, and his cheeks looking more like a squirrels then a little boys! Deep breath. I took away the chips and Jake goes, "and he had these chocolates over here too!" and produces a little play frying pan full of chips... from the other side of the room. Hmmm.. I think something STINKS! Sure enough I was right. I asked Jake if he had eaten any and he said no. I could SMELL the chocolate!! I mean come on! I am a mom, a pregnant woman, and a chocoholic to boot, OF COURSE, I can smell it!! Deep breath. So I tell him to open his mouth, I check his teeth, and they are covered with chocolate too! Deep breath. I told him, "Jake, don't lie to me! I know you had chocolate!" You know what he says to me? "Huh-uh!! Jaden was dropping them into my mouth!" I just looked at him. Deep breath. "He even made me chew them too!" Deep breath. If they don't cut it out soon I'm gonna hyperventilate!!