1st haircut

Yep - it's time for Jaydon to take his first trip to the barber. His bangs were so long that they kept getting in his eyes. It would always happen right at meal time when Jaydon had a fist full of food. He'd rub his eyes to get the hair out then put food in his eyes and then rub some more to get the food out. As you can imagine it was a big mess so off to the hairdresser... Here's the before shot. After giving the lady explicit instruction on how to cut Jaydon's hair the first snip didn't quit go to plan, way too short and too straight. I also wanted her to save the cute curls Jaydon had behind his ears. Well, I can now tell why she does kids hair - she's super fast and can get a whole cut done within a short attention span but she's not so good at listening to instructions. Fortunately Jaydon's cute enough that any hair cut looks good on him. My mom has also been working on book of Jaydon's first year and we realized that we didn't have any pictures of Jaydon and his nanny Semina so with Jaydon's new due we posed them for some pictures. This picture made me realize that my little baby is starting to look a lot more like a little boy...

Happy New Year...

After a nice long visit back in the US it was time to head home. Jaydon did a pretty good job on the trip, I still think the short domestic flights are a lot more difficult than the long-hauls over the ocean with a baby. The worst part about going home (besides leaving everyone behind) was that we had to take 2 flight just to get to DC to start the 16 hour flight. That makes for a very looong day for everyone but Jaydon did sleep for more than half the flight home. We sat next to a mom and her 13 month old daughter who was flying with a bunch of other relatives on the plane. They would come by every so often and read the little girl stories or play with her and Jaydon thought they were lots of fun. He laughed at their games and was interested in their stories and it helped a bunch to have other people entertaining him. Jaydon did pick up what the doctor called 'travellers tummy' on the way home. It waited until the next day to show itself but poor Jaydon had awful diarrhea for about 4 days straight. This made getting over the jet lag and getting into the new time zone very difficult. He also ended up passing it on to Steve and I. No pictures in this posting because I spent New Years Eve throwing up and New Years day curled up on the couch in a ball. It hit Steve the next day. It took about 12 days to get Jaydon back into his routine and sleeping at night and once that happened we were all happy to be home again. We've decided that we're going to save our New Years celebrating for the Chinese New Year which we will be in Hong Kong for. We will definitely have pictures for that...

Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas. Jaydon started the day by opening up a few presents. The first one was from his Great Aunt Patricia. She got him a wonderfully soft blanket that he just loved to cuddle with. After a few more gifts Jaydon got into his celebratory Christmas gear and was the cutest reindeer anyone had ever seen. He had lots of fun playing with all his new toys and hanging out with his family, especially his Uncle Mike. It was a beautiful sunny day and Jaydon had fun outside in the grass - even if it was a little brown it was a lot better then the cement and sand he's used too. All that fun and playing made everyone hungry for a yummy Christmas dinner. But Jaydon's favorite part was the pumpkin pie and whipped cream - he even got to help clean up the beaters...the best part. After all that good food we went out and saw a few Christmas lights in the neighborhood and called it a night.

Christmas Eve and Happy Birthday Mike

Christmas eve is my brother Mike's birthday so our tradition is birthday presents and cake. By this time Jaydon had started to get the hang of unwrapping presents so he pitched in to help his Uncle Mike open up his. The 2 of them made a pretty good team. After Mike opened his birthday presents it was time to let Jaydon open a few... he liked the big red one which wasn't for him so had to settle for just stealing the bow. The presents he did get to unwrap were from his great Aunt Bun Bun who got him all the cute items every baby needs for Christmas like a HO HO beanie and a personalized Christmas bib and Santa hat. Finally we ended the night with a little birthday cake but that time Jaydon was already in bed getting lots of rest for the big day.
Happy Birthday Mike!

More snow and learning to play the drums

Jaydon discovered a new toy back at my parents house in Palisade... my Dad's drum set.

It didn't take long for Jaydon to get the hang of the game. But everyone had to watch out - it's a little dangerous giving 11 months old 2 sticks. And he loved it. While in Steamboat we had no snow so fortunately, once we got back to the valley it decided to snow on us again. We were all happy that it waited until after we had made the 4 hr drive back. We bundled Jaydon up and got a few more shots of him playing in the snow.

Steamboat

We headed up to Steamboat to spend a few days skiing and to see some more relatives. Well the travelers from Doha didn't do any skiing - we're a little low on winter gear and Jaydon came down with a bad cold and passed it on to Steve and I so we all just hung out in the condo, sniffiling, and enjoyed the view of the mountain. The condo was fully carpeted, which is a luxury for us so Jaydon got a chance to try out some stairs. We also now have a sneaking suspension that Jaydon may be a Raiders fan. We were watching the game and the Raiders blocked a Broncos field goal. Everyone in the room groaned and Jaydon perked right up and started clapping to the chagrin of everyone. Jaydon also got to meet his cousin (actually my Dad's cousin) Marsha and Westy. They had brought along some Christmas gifts so Jaydon got to practice opening more presents. At first he wasn't so sure if he should be tearing the paper but after a little encouragement he got right into it. His favorite part was meeting his new friend inside the box... ....a green monster named Walley (Marsha is a big Red Sox fan). Walley and Jaydon had lots of fun together in and out of the box. We also went into downtown Steamboat which has a lot of character and characters. We got to see Abe and meet the Light & Sons horse. We also stopped by a cute little cantina and had some real Mexican food - something we don't get in Doha. You'll also notice that Steve is now in the pictures. He was able to surprise us all and jumped on plane 3 days earlier than we had expected. It was great to finally have all of us under 1 roof again.

Getting ready for Christmas in Colorado

Next stop on our trip was back home to Colorado. And first order of business was getting Jaydon his first Christmas tree. We went out to a cut your own tree farm which was perfect because then we could get the Jaydon proof tree. Here's grandpa cutting it down for us. When we picked it out and cut it down with such a long trunk I don't think any of us appreciated just how convenient it would be. We set it up and Jaydon crawled right over and that's when we discovered that keeping Jaydon out of the tree wasn't going to be that difficult... ...he couldn't even reach it. No ornaments on the bottom and the Jaydon proofed tree was ready to go. It also started to snow a little so we bundled everyone up and went for a walk so that Jaydon could see his first snow. What we didn't realize is that it was going to snow and snow and snow. Here's us going for a walk the next day.... Some reports claimed that areas of the Grand Valley hadn't received that much snow in a day since the 1920's. Good thing Jaydon has his snugly warm blanket. One final thing to do before Christmas was go visit Santa. Palisade had their own Christmas festivities so we went down to join the fun and tell Santa we'd found one of his reindeer in Doha and flew all the back to get him home before Christmas.