The Petting Zoo

I mentioned in an earlier post that we took Payton to the Olympic Game Farm petting zoo a couple weekends ago. Here are two cute videos of Payton's reaction. I thought he'd go wild over the goats or the llama but he mostly wanted to chase the chickens :P

The first video shows the different kinds of animals we saw. The baby buffalo was super sweet.

The second video displays Payton's amazing Rooster impression. What a talented young man! :)

Where are you getting all this hardware?

This video cracks me up for some reason. It says a lot about how things are around our house.
1. I try anything and everything to entertain Payton (for example, banging a butter knife on the dishes before they go into the dishwasher).
2. Payton will always find a way to do the one thing he's not supposed to do (bang the butter knife on the cabinets, stick a screw in his ear).
3. I generally laugh while I'm trying to steer him in the right direction (for example, I just follow him with the video camera while he waves the butter knife at Ryan).
4. Ryan is the enforcer (Ryan takes away the butter knife and the screw Payton is putting in his ear, and exclaims: where are you getting all this hardware?).
5. I continue to laugh. :P

Long overdue

It's been awhile since I have taken the time to sit down and write about what's going on in our lives. But now that I am between projects and technically a stay-at-home-mom, I get the luxury of some downtime while Payton naps. Not saying that staying home full time is easy, but this is definitely a perk!

This morning we went to First Teacher at the community school where all the kids got a free book if they came in costume. Since i didn't think Payton would be able to move in his Spider costume, he went as James Dean. His hair didn't turn out quite like I'd pictured but we did the best we could without spending a dime. Can you see the resemblance? Ha ha. The costumes were hilarious: we had yoda, an oompa loompa, a turtle, a hawaiian dancer...Payton always has a lot of fun there and we took home a plastic bath book which I think is a genius idea!

Speaking of baths, Payton and I went swimming at SARC yesterday. I got a 6-month membership there so we had something to do on the rainy days. Payton loves to splash around in the water but his brain seems to be about 2 years ahead of what he's capable of. He was fine in his floaty for about 5 minutes. But then he wanted to get out and swim. 'Payton, you don't know how to swim yet.' So I took him out and held his arms and we glided around the pool. That was fine for about 5 minutes. But then he wanted to know what the people were doing in the 'big pool.' 'See them? They're swimming laps.' Well, he wanted to swim laps too! So, yeah, we lasted for about 20 minutes. We'll try for 25 minutes next time.

Last weekend we took Payton to the Petting Zoo at the Olympic Game Farm. It was a hoot! They had a baby bison and a llama as well as a ton of chickens, peacocks, goats, and lambs. Payton pretty much said 'hiya' to all of them but he was mostly interested in the chickens. Go figure! Here are some pics of our day:

And, thanks to my recent obsession with Garage Sales, Payton is now the proud owner of his own kitchen! I guess I suspected he'd sort of like it, but this guy wakes up every morning and scrambles

to his kitchen. He loves it! It's brown and green so I told Ryan it was the 'boy version' of the kitchen. Well, they DID have a pink kitchen too so I guess it's not that far off from the truth. What I like about it is that I don't let Payton leave his room until he 'cleans up the kitchen.' And he does! He loves to help but I have to check the garbage every day because he likes to 'put things away' in the garbage can. We're working on that.

Payton and Winston are the best of friends, and getting closer every day. Here are some pics of a typical day outside. Payton loves the idea of 'walking' Winston with the leash. Winston doesn't love it :P

Have a great weekend!

Dancin' machine

It's no secret that Payton loves to dance. Ryan turned on some hideous show with a bunch of has-beens singing their old tunes and of course, Payton loved it. I am starting to question his taste in music (Uncle Jim approves though!). Here's a video of Ryan and son dancing away, or rather bouncing, but you get the idea. Payton is trying to graduate himself from the high-chair to the big-boy chair :P

Peanut helping with the peanuts

As I mentioned in my last post, Payton has become quite the little helper. We were working in the garage and I was getting stuff together for a dump run, which included taking all the styrofoam peanuts out of boxes and putting them in garbage bags. Payton, of course, HAD to help. Here you can see why it took us so long.....(and you can also see how he likes to listen to things by cupping his hand by his hear. he does it all the time!)

That is not a brown shirt!

If you think Payton is wearing a brown shirt underneath his plaid one in these pics, you are incorrect! That *was* a white onesie, but Payton took a big gulp of my coffee which I left open (stupid me!) and there you have it...a brown, latte-colored shirt! As you can see, he was very pleased with himself. Luckily this happened AFTER church!

Payton is Mr. friendly these days! He pretty tries to kiss everyone he encounters, so I have to make sure he's only kissing the people I approve of :P He loves to point at the planes and birds in the sky, and is very into helping me right now (i hope that doesn't change!). For example, he likes to throw things away. When I went to throw something in the garbage yesterday, I found his two white socks in there. And he likes to shred the toilet paper and then throw the bits in the toilet and flush it. Shutting the doors doesn't prevent him from going anywhere now since he knows how to open doors. And he absolutely loves to open and close the garage door and play with car keys. I don't know if he's going to be an engineer or a race car driver, we'll see!