Jacob's 1st B-day Party

Jaydon's good buddy Jacob just turned 1 so we had a party to celebrate (of course). The theme was Texas, down on the farm. All the kids had fun playing with the hay and the water in the trough. Jacob had the honour of having both his grandma and great-grandma in town for the event. The highlight was definitely the cupcakes, or more like the chocolate frosting and M&Ms decorating the cupcakes. Here's a great shot of Jaydon and the birthday boy enjoying the cupcakes (i think this was their 2nd one). We tried to get all the kids together for a group shot, this was the best we got, too many kids and too much sugar. And by the way if you haven't experienced a 1 yr olds birthday party about 30 mins after everyone has had their fill of cupcakes here's a few seconds of video to give you taste of the fun...

Daddy couldn't resist playing with the kerchiefs decorating the party. For Will it was a cape but Jaydon is way too cool for that kind of nonsense.

Elisa's Baby Shower

Our good friends down the street have decided to hop on the band wagon and join the going trend in the compound. We had a cute little baby shower for Elisa and enjoyed the excuse to hang out, eat cake and catch-up with each other. She's having a little girl and has tentatively decided to name her Sara. Elisa is Italian (father) and Finish (mother) and her husband is Spanish so they wanted a cross-cultural name that would satisfy everyone. We can't wait to welcome another baby to the Al-Malki family.

Baby Cartoons

Well September flew by, after getting back from our trip and getting Jaydon back into a regular sleeping pattern he started the routine of bringing home the daycare germs. Unfortunately, it turned into a lower respiratory tract infection so Jaydon's been a bit cooped up in the house. He missed his friends Clarissa's 1st b-day party and now says "Go doctor, chest owie" on a regular basis. He's on the mend now but part of the routine was giving him medicine through a nebulizer.This meant introducing, or maybe I should say, making it a regular routine to sit for 15-20 minutes up to 3 times a day to watch his baby cartoons. He took an instant liking to Cookie Monster and this is now his new favorite song.

He's also got his Baby Einstein videos memorized now and we discovered in the bonus features a twinkle little star song that Jaydon really enjoys - he even tries to do the sign language along with it (too cute).

After a week away from school Jaydon got all dressed up in new clothes (including fancy new white shoes) and even got another neat school bag. This one is covered in his favorite things - tractors and has his name on it. I ordered these for his friends turning 1 in the compound and couldn't resist getting it for Jaydon too.

Geneva

Ramadan is over and Eid holiday was here. It was a great opportunity to escape Doha and enjoy some nice weather and scenery. We chose Geneva because it was a direct flight, and we had a lake and beautiful mountains right out our back door. Jaydon immediately discovered the fun of feeding, but mostly chasing, all the bird life around the lake. He also got excited when he saw some other kids playing in the park. They were all speaking french but he did his best to tag along for as long as he could and they didn't seem to mind. We found a swan that was interested in what Jaydon had to feed the ducks with so it came right up to him. Jaydon decided that is was a mingo (as in flamingo) and the rest of the trip called all the swans mingo. This one got a little close for comfort and actually hissed at us so we were sure to keep our distance from these magnificent birds in the future. The first morning we got up and headed out to find some pastries and enjoy the cool crisp morning air. We had a very difficult time finding anything open and after walking around for about an hour realized that most shops were still closed long after they're advertised opening times. We were baffled and pretty sure that Geneva wasn't shut-down for Eid. Turns out it was a bank holiday so we walked around the quite city and enjoy the twilight zone experience of being in a closed city and found some old cannons to play with. That afternoon we visited the Natural History Museum which was a perfect place for Jaydon. He had just as much fun looking at the bird life outside of the Museum as he did in it. He also got to show off how smart he is with knowing all his animals and the place was full of kids his age. He loved the big elephant and thought the penguins were very neat. I think this is the first time he realized just how big most of these animals are. He's used to seeing them as pictures in story books or in the National Geographic. The next day we went to some of the parks and nice flower gardens, always taking time to smell (and sometime eat) the roses. We also got tickets for a short tour around the lake. Jaydon is pretty good at smiling if you ask him to show you his teeth. I'll have to work on some other technique to get daddy to look at the camera. We found most of Geneva's restaurants to be pretty high class and not particular kid friendly. Because of that we ate a lot of meals at our hotel where we were guaranteed to have a high chair or had dinner picnic style out by the lake.Jaydon immediately took a liking to hotdogs, the bread was a bit much for him but was great to keep around for bird feeding. This ended up being a pretty funny incident for Steve and I but not so much for Jaydon. The statute man was flirting with Jaydon and winking at him which he thought was neat. Then Steve dropped some francs in his cup and the statue reached out to shake Steve's hand, Jaydon's eyes got humongous not sure what to think about it...but when the statue reached out to pinch Jaydon check, that's when he decided that he did not like statues reaching out to get him. He started screaming, Steve and I started laughing and the poor statue man lost all his composure trying to apologize for making Jaydon cry. Everyone around turned to stare but probably put 2 and 2 together pretty quick... moving statue + crying baby hmmm. Steve was exploring the features of our new camera and took some interesting shots. A few more shots from the lake including a great view of the Alps.

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.