1st day of daycare

Jaydon started daycare this month. He was very excited and woke-up promptly at 6:30 and ate a very good breakfast of cereal. He's decided hands are so much easier to eat with than those silly utensils we keep forcing on him.
He got dressed and found his school bag and pulled it around the house while Mommy finished getting ready.

Right on schedule at 7:30 he was in the car and ready to go. We made a quick detour to view some tractors then set off to Starfish.

When we arrived he was bright eyes and excited to see the neat play ground outside with a full size sand-box. He immediatly asked for 'shoes off' so that he could go play on the slide and in the sand. I succeded in convincing him that even more fun stuff was inside so he decided we better go check it out. First place he ran too was the big playroom, he decided these toys looked interesting and dug right in. After I fetched him from this room and drug him back to reception not 10 seconds later he was gone again. This time I found him sitting nicely on the carpet in the classroom of the older kids digging right into their game of legos. He couldn't understand why I had to keep ruining his fun. Finally my turn at reception came and they showed us to Jaydon's classroom. He loved it and immediatly went to the cute table and chairs and dug into a puzzle they had laid out. He enjoyed his new friends and only had a few tears for mommy when she left. By the next morning he was ready to go back and have fun with his new firends, teachers, toys and playdoh. When I went to pick him up he was more interested in the play-doh than with going home. The teachers all said that he did great and was a good example at snack time by finishing all his food. Right now he's going 3 days a week with me picking him up at lunch-time but the teachers are already telling me how much he loves it and that they'll miss him when he's gone.

New Tricks

Jaydon's verbal development has taken leaps and bounds. Everyday he's saying new words and putting new combinations together to make new sentences. His favorite game is peek-a-boo which he figures out how to play in all types of situations. Here's some dinner time fun for you...

Jaydon is very good at his animal noises...

Oh Yeah and he counts to 3 now too (actually he can count to 4 but getting these moments on video never works quite as planned).

Here's a little bare cheeked 4-wheeln' after a pool date. This is a picture that was taken back in June but I just found it on the camera. It's the boys having dinner al fresco style on the curb.

Summer Carnival

The carnival came to town and fortunately the convention center is big enough that all the fun can fit inside. We brought Jaydon to it just to give us something to do on a hot Friday afternoon not realizing that his favorite thing in the world was there. Jaydon LOVES tractors! I've been known to take detours on the way home just to drive by a few more and sometimes we even take mini car trips just to go see some. Since all of Doha is under construction it doesn't take long to find them and most morning we can spot a few from the windows. Anyway, one of the merry-go-rounds had a tractor on it which Jaydon thought was great. If it was up to him he would of stayed on that ride the whole time. The next weekend we even went back so Jaydon could show his friend Jacob how much fun the tractor ride was. He also made some new friends at a local toy both. He spotted the doggy from across the hall and ran all the way to it. Good thing most people were on the look out for little kids by so he didn't get run over in all his excitement. He also got to try one of mommy's favorite treats... ...popcorn. He figured out the best technique for it very quickly. We also convinced him to try a merry-go-round without tractors. He finally agreed and had fun riding the horses and looking handsome as ever. But no trip to the carnival is complete with out one last treat. Cotton Candy. Jaydon learned how to get extra sticky and mommy was happy the baby wipes were handy.

Summer...

It's been a long hot summer already. I think we're all starting to get a little cabin fever. Not much has been going on so here's just a few random photos. We bought Jaydon a new chalk board, the trick is getting him to understand that inside chalk is different than outside/sidewalk chalk. We have a few marks on the walls but he's been doing much better. He's also advanced from lines to actual scribbles and loves to play the game of figuring out what you've drawn for him (fish, duck, tractor, frog - you get the idea). I stuck this picture in so you could see my new hair color. I got sick of having the lines from re-growth and I had highlighted my hair so often that the ends were dry. nasty and always lighter than the rest of my hair. I went to the salon and said to go back to my natural color. Well I think she went a little overboard and I'm still washing brown color out of my hair.... Here's a couple fun clips of Jaydon listening to his new favorite song by Usher. He loves to dance and sing to it. We tried to get it on video for you to see too :)

Happy 4th

Happy 4th of July. You know you've been living out of the states too long when the 4th roles around and it doesn't even occur to you to celebrate. Fortunately we have lots of recent American transplants who took the initiative to plan a BBQ. All the Dads put on their swimsuits and took the kids into the pool. Jaydon ate his first hot dog which he loved and completely gobbled down - and this was after he had already eaten an entire dinner. It was 95 degrees out but with the sun down and humidity low we all commented on how nice it was to be outside. The next day that changed with the humidity making a rude appearance and we haven't seen the heat ease up since.
I also included a short video of Steve and Jaydon having fun in the pool.

Random Pics

This is a selection of a few random pictures we took to finish up the disposable camera. Jaydon having fun with his doggy Athena, he's almost getting too big for this game. Jaydon, Semina, Clarissa, and Deloras out for their morning walk. Jaydon finally has his very own sand box. His nice rosy cheeks are a sign of just how hot it's been getting around here. Jaydon is one cool dude in his fancy sunglasses.

Seychelles pics

I finally got the disposable cameras developed that we had to buy since our camera decided to jam on the first day of the vacation. I don't know if all the fancy cameras make us worse photographers or if the disposable cameras are just that hard to use. Most of the pictures were blurry with bad lighting but we got a few good ones that I've added in below. My favorite is the one above of Jaydon and Steve in the sunset. Steve and Jaydon enjoying the ocean before dinner time. The island is full of gigantic fruit bats with wing spans wider than your arms. Jaydon got very good at spotting them and would spend most of the late afternoon with his eyes to the sky to spot the next one. The resort had golf carts to get from the beach to the restaurants to the villas perch up in the cliff. Jaydon loves tractors and to him the carts were a perfect replacement for the tractors he usually sees at home. He loved to ride in them and by then end of the week when all the drivers knew him he usually sat on their lap and helped drive. Here's a couple of good beach shots, it was only after I saw this one on the big computer screen when I realized why Steve might have been taking it :) Jaydon and Steve made a great team building and destroying sand castles. Jaydon loved the water and got pretty brave about going into it even with the waves crashing (it meant Steve and I had to be on high alert and ready to grab him before they swallowed him up). He had fun playing with the ice and ate about as much sand as he did ice. We also spent a lot of time in the pool. The ocean was a bit to rough too swim in with Jaydon and by the end of the week only the body surfers were venturing out into the waves. On the last day Steve decided that he had enough relaxing and needed to go out fishing. As I mentioned the ocean was getting very rough so he ended up feeding as many fish as he caught but he did catch some beautiful ones. His very first sailfish which ended up spearing the deck hand in the knee (that's why his spear is missing). He took the tuna home and had the chef at the restaurant cook it up for us. The rest of the fish he left with the captain to hand out to all his buddies.

swimming lessons

It's summer time which means all the schools are closing and they've opened up their pools for swimming lessons. Jaydon has always liked the water but lately he's getting more cautious about getting his head wet. Bath time is fun only until it's hair washing time - then it's a battle usually ending with tears. In addition to having something to do I was hoping swim lessons would help Jaydon get used to water on his head. He loves the fact that the pool is full of other kids - or be-be's as he says. When ever they sing activity songs he always signs and asks for more when they're finished. The time of morning is a little tough since its 8:30 am which is right when he usually goes for his morning nap. It usually means the ride home is a little tough but I think the fun he has a t the lessons makes up for it. He's also taking the lessons with 2 of his friends from the compound Jacob and Clarissa. They're much younger than Jaydon but seem to enjoy the swim lessons just as much.

Seychelles

We spent the week at the Seychelles relaxing in the beautiful 4-seasons resort. Steve hadn't been able to join us on any of the recent adventures so he was due for a little pampering and relaxing. We definitely went to the right place. The resort was beautiful. Each room it's own separate villa with a private infinity pool. The beach was gorgeous the sand was white and as fine as baby powder. The staff was excellent and were all Jaydon's buddies by the end of the trip. I did yoga every morning at the spa perched at the top of the cliff with an amazing view of the sea. The only problem is our camera broke within hours of arriving. It didn't even have time to get equilibrated with the temperature so the lens would stop fogging up before it jammed. This meant that we only have these few foggy pictures. We ended spending about 70 euros 2 disposable camera which now each have about 5 pictures remaining before I can get it processed the old fashioned way. We also have a short video so you can see the view from our pool. This will have to suffice until the pictures come back of Jaydon having fun in the sand and Steve catching his first sailfish.

It was bound to happen...

...we've lived in Doha for over four years now and it has one of the highest auto accident rate per capita of any country in the world. I think a few other middle east countries beat it in the rankings. The day before we left on vacation Steve got hit by a Qatari entering a frontage road by going the wrong way on an off ramp. Fortunately Steve saw him coming and accelerated so he hit the passenger door rather than the driver door. Nobody was hurt, the guy who hit Steve had his wife with their kid on her lap in the front passenger seat with him. Overall everyone was very lucky - except for Steve's car. Now we get to figure out how to be a one car family for awhile while we navigate through the bureaucracy of getting a car fixed by insurance. We're hoping it will only take 2 weeks but who knows...