Donald Byrum, Sr.

Donald Byrum, Sr.
January 6, 1938 - February 27, 2010

We love you and we'll miss you Pop-Pop

PF Changs

We went to dinner at PF Changs last night. We had gift cards from Christmas to use (thanks Nadean and Vester!). We tried to go a few weeks ago, but it was packed, so we ended up leaving and going somewhere else to eat. This time we were smart and made a reservation. We got there early, but we were still able to sit right down and we even got a table with a high chair (as opposed to a booth with a booster seat), so that was exciting (funny how your definition of 'exciting' changes when you have kids, haha).

Anyway, Peyton was so funny during dinner, that I just wanted to post so that I would remember the evening. Each table gets a set of sauces that you can mix up however you'd like to make the resulting sauce as hot or mild as you enjoy. I never use the sauce, so Kyle mixed it up nice and hot while we were waiting for our food. Peyton kept asking for some to try. We told him that it was really hot and that he wouldn't like it, but he insisted. So finally Kyle gave him a little taste of the sauce. It was hilarious to see Peyton's eyes get super big as he tasted the heat. He immediately grabbed for his drink. I guess that didn't work well enough to get rid of the heat because then he took his napkin and started to wipe his tongue off with it. It was so funny. We had to say we told him so!

Also while we were waiting for our food, a group with a baby in a carrier sat down at the table next to us. Peyton noticed the baby right away and said, "Hi baby!" Obviously, the baby didn't answer so he told me that he needed to say it louder and proceeded to YELL, "Hi baby!" Hopefully he'll love his little brother as much as he loves all other babies. Each time the baby wold cry during dinner, Peyton would alert us to that by saying, "The baby is sad. She's crying." I guess we won't need a baby monitor because we'll have Peyton!

Kyle and I ordered meals that included those little mini desserts. As Kyle doesn't eat dessert much (Weirdo!), he let Peyton choose the flavor that he wanted to eat. Being a smart boy, like his mommy, Peyton chose the chocolate cake. It took a good five minutes for the dessert to arrive at our table. This amount of time was unacceptable to Peyton. He asked, "Where is he?" (meaning the waiter) over and over. He even saw the waiter walk by one or two times to help another table. Peyton excitedly pointed and said, "There he is!" However, he didn't have the cake, so Peyton would get sad again. When the dessert finally arrived, he was so happy. He insisted on eating the cake with no help and ended up with chocolate everywhere - even on his nose!

After Peyton ate some of my soup, most of his own chicken entree, a lot of my rice, and the whole chocolate cake dessert, he ate his whole fortune cookie. I don't understand how is so thin, because the boy can eat! It was definitely an entertaining (an delicious!) dinner.

It's a...

BOY!

We went for another ultrasound on Friday for the anatomical survey of the baby. They examine and measure all of the baby's body parts to make sure that everything looks good. We're happy to report that the baby seems perfectly healthy! While the technician was looking around at the baby, we saw it's "fun parts" clear as day! Looks like Peyton will have a little brother. We are excited!

Here are two pictures from yesterday's appointment.

Valentine's Day

Sunday was Valentine's Day and I am lucky enough to have two very cute Valentines! Sundays are my sleep-in days, so I didn't get up until around 10:30. When I came downstairs, we exchanged gifts. Kyle and I said that we weren't going to get each other anything, but of course we got each other something anyway. I bought Kyle the very romantic gift of a 6-month subscription to a Beef Jerky of the Month Club. He'll get 1/2 pound of beef jerky delivered straight to the mailbox each month until July. What a lucky guy! Haha.

Kyle bought me a Flip! For those that don't know, it's a camcorder that is smaller than our digital camera. It shoots in HD and plugs right into the computer for easy uploading. I'm sure there will be lots of videos to come of Peyton and #2 (never could think of a cute nickname for him/her), so stay tuned!

And we got Peyton some candy and books. (Well the books have not arrived yet. I think there was a backup with the delivery since daycare was closed several days last week.) So, Peyton got some candy. He was happy with that though.

Kyle went to Taco Bell to get me lunch. I'm sure that doesn't sound very romantic, but it is my favorite fast food and I was sort of craving it, so for him to go out and get it for me was very nice. We didn't do much for the rest of the day. I enjoyed the last of my 9 days off from work. We did have dinner by candlelight - which Peyton tried to blow out every 5 seconds during dinner. But he was unsuccessful, so the candle did make it all the way through dinner.

Happy Valentine's Day. Kyle and Peyton - I love you!

Big Boy Bed and Power Outages

On Monday we took the front rail off of Peyton's crib to make it into a big boy bed. We decided to practice with him in the crib like this for a month or two and then we're going to buy him a new bedroom set with a "real" bed. The baby is going to get the crib, dresser, and changing table that is Peyton's now. We wanted to keep the transition from the crib to the bed a separate event from the baby coming, so we thought we should do it now. We were pretty worried about Peyton getting up and running around his room when we put him down for bed/nap, but he surprised us. He's done so well in the bed. He has not gotten out of it one time without calling for us to come get him first. Way to go Peyton!

This is completely random and has nothing to do with anything, but I thought Peyton was so cute trying to eat a taco the other night for dinner. He has great technique for his first time!

With this crazy snow storm that we had all week, our power went out two separate times. On Saturday, it went out at 5:30 am and didn't come back on until 5:00 pm, so we had almost 12 hours without power. It was so cold in the house! Luckily we have a gas fireplace and Kyle was able to get it started to provide us with at least a little heat. Peyton was sad that he couldn't watch tv and I tried to explain to him that the lights and televisions were broken, but he just didn't understand. I was mostly concerned with what we were going to eat all day! But again, we are lucky that our stove is gas, so we were able to use a lighter to light it and we could cook just fine. When Peyton took a nap, Kyle and I played cards on the floor by the fire. I felt like an old person! The lights came back on just as it started getting dark.

Yesterday the power went out again. It went out around 12:30 pm and didn't come back on until 7:00 pm. We taught Peyton how to play Go Fish. We played Peyton and I against Kyle. Peyton was pretty good at it, except that he'd yell out each card he picked up when he had to go fish. That made it pretty easy for Kyle to know which cards we had in our hand. But, Peyton and I won both games that we played against Kyle. Peyton was fascinated with us shuffling the cards. He wanted to do it so bad!

This time it obviously got dark before the power came back on. I was trying to cook dinner, which included cutting up chicken and onions, in the dark. It wasn't too fun. After dinner, we played hide and seek in the dark with Peyton. It is really hard when you can't see anything, haha. Peyton wanted me to read him a book, but the light of the fireplace wasn't helping anything, so Kyle shined a flashlight on the pages so that I could read. Finally the power came back on, and Peyton yelled, "It's fixed! Sesame Street?" He spent the rest of the evening catching up on the tv he missed all day.

We've had a nice week at home together. My work actually has the audacity to be open tomorrow, but I'm not going to go. The roads in our neighborhood are still bad and it's dumb to pay a whole week's tuition at daycare for Peyton to go one day. I like 9 day weekends!

Big Snow

Weathermen were predicting a huge snow for Friday and Saturday. We heard all kinds of reports; one even said 50 inches. We thankfully did not get 50 inches, but we did measure about 25 inches on our driveway. I think the official reports said that Severn got 33 inches.

The snow started around 11:00 Friday morning. Luckily, I was finished with work around 1:00 and was able to get home before the snow got too bad. Kyle also left work early and picked Peyton up from daycare. We got Peyton all bundled up to go outside to play in the snow around dinnertime so that he could enjoy it before it got too deep. There was maybe 4-6 inches out there at that time.

Here's Peyton before he went outside.

Kyle went outside with Peyton and I stayed inside and cooked dinner. They had a snowball fight and tried to build a snowman, but were unsuccessful with that. Kyle said the snow wouldn't pack into a big ball.

Our power went out at 5:30 Saturday morning. It was so cold in our house! Luckily we have a gas fireplace and Kyle was able to get it started. That provided a little warmth, but it was only about 50-55 degrees in the house. Peyton wanted to eat oatmeal for breakfast and it was so hard to explain to him that I couldn't cook it for him! He understood that the tv's and lights were 'broken' and didn't seem phased by the power outage. When Peyton took a nap, Kyle and I were like two old people huddled by the fire playing gin rummy. Eventually, I gave up and went to take a nap. At least it was warm under the blankets.

The power decided to come back on around 5:00 pm, so it was out for almost 12 hours. I definitely did a happy dance when I heard the heater kick on! It took hours before the house warmed up though. But at least we could turn the lights on!

Kyle ventured out to begin shoveling after the power came back on. He took this picture from our garage. It's kind of hard to tell how high the snow is from the picture.

After Kyle got a path shoveled out, we took Peyton out to use as a comparison to the height of the snow. There was over 2 feet of snow on our driveway.

Kyle finished shoveling on Sunday. It took him a good 5-6 hours to get the driveway done. The snowplow finally went down our street around 10:00 Sunday night. Kyle and I were both off from work on Monday. We enjoyed another quiet day home with Peyton. The weathermen are predicting another 12-18 inches of snow on Tuesday into Wednesday. Great.

Shootin' Dice

Kyle hosted a poker night at our house on Saturday evening. When he was getting everything set up, he took out the dice and started shooting them on the floor. He taught Peyton how to roll them too. I went to get the camera to take some pictures and when I got back, I saw that the stakes had gotten pretty high... There was $60 on the ground! Of course, Kyle was just playing around, but it was pretty funny anyway.

You can see the dice in Peyton's hand here.

And here the dice are in mid-throw.

I told Peyton that he is allowed to shoot dice now, but that he has to wait until he is 3 years old to play poker. Hehe.

Terps Game

I got my dad tickets to the Terps versus North Carolina State basketball game for Christmas. I told him that he could take anyone he wanted with the second ticket, but he chose me! Yay! The game was on Saturday. For the occasion, Peyton dressed in his Terps gear too. Aren't we cute?!

Kyle was hosting a poker night at our house the same evening, so Peyton spent the night with my mom. I took him up to my parents' house around 4:00. Then my dad and I headed down to College Park. The drive was good until the ramp from I-95 onto Route 1, where we sat for a good 40 minutes. That ramp is always backed up on football game days, but we didn't think it would be so bad for a basketball game. I guess we were wrong. When we finally arrived on campus, we found the free parking lot and parked. Then we had to wait for a shuttle bus to drive us over to the Comcast Center, as it would have been a really long walk. The bus was packed, so we had to stand. I tried to play the pregnant card so that someone would give me their seat, but it didn't really work.

We got over to the Comcast Center around 5:30, 30 minutes before the game was scheduled to start. We found our seats and then went to grab some dinner. We had hot dogs on water soaked buns. Gross. Anyway, here's my dad and I before the game.

I felt sort of old being at the game. I've been out of school for 4 years already, but nothing that the students do has changed. We got back to our seats just in time for the starting line-up introductions. All of the students bring in newspaper and wave them around while the other team is being introduced. After each player's and coach's name, the students yell "SUCKS!"

Next, the lights go down, the cheerleaders shake their pom-poms, and Testudo dances around. Then the Maryland players are introduced. Saturday's starting lineup was Landon Milbourne, Jordan Williams, Eric Hayes, Sean Mosley, and Greivis Vasquez.

After introductions, the players formed this intense huddle. It was Gary Williams' 1000th game as head coach at Maryland.

After the Maryland players are introduced, the students sing that, "Dah-dah-dah-dah-dah-dah-dah-Hey!" song. (You'd know it if you heard it...) The students add some words though to make it their own -- "Dah-dah-dah-dah-dah-dah-dah-Hey-YOU SUCK!!" The band has not been allowed to play that song at sporting events since 2003 because of the way the students, ahem, deface the song. But that doesn't stop them from singing it anyway! At the football games, they sing it after every touchdown.

Here is the view from our seats. They weren't too bad, but I'll have to admit that the student section seats are much, much better. Duh.

The teams got ready for the opening tip-off. The Terps are in yellow and NC State is in red. I am not a fan of the yellow uniforms, although the Terps usually play well when they wear them.

The game was great. The Terps played really well. They ended up winning by 24 points, 88-64! I was sort of nervous that they might lose because earlier in the week, NC State beat Duke. Duke is #7 and NC State was picked to be last in the ACC, so that was a pretty big upset. But they were no match for the Terps!

After the game we had to wait for the shuttle bus to take us back to the parking lot. We waited for what seemed like forever before the bus pulled up. It was also pretty chilly that night. We were pretty far back in line, but I insisted to my dad that we WOULD get on the first bus to arrive. And we just barely did; only two people got on after us before it was full. We had to stand again. Doesn't anyone have any respect for pregnant girls these days? Haha.

I had a really good time at the game. Thanks for taking me, dad!

Caps/Redwings Game

I got Kyle tickets to the Capitals versus Redwings hockey game for Christmas. The game was last night. My mom picked Peyton up from daycare so that we could get to the game on time. We left our house around 4:45. We drove down to the Metro station in Greenbelt and took the train down into Washington DC. There is a stop right at the Verizon Center, where the Caps play, so it is much more convenient to ride the Metro than to drive. Here we are on the train.

We got into DC around 5:45, so we had a little over an hour before the game started. We walked a block or so to find some dinner. We decided to eat at California Tortilla. It was delicious. It was crazy packed in there though, so we were crammed at a table with strangers. Everyone had the same idea to eat there as us, I guess.

After dinner, we headed back over to the Verizon Center. Here were are in our seats before the game.

Here's a picture of center ice.

Our seats were right on the red line. We were all the way up top, about 5 rows down from the very last row. I thought the seats were really good though because we had a good view of the whole ice.

Here's the Redwings' starting lineup.

This is Slapshot, the Caps mascot.

Here are the Redwings as soon as they entered the ice.

Here is the first face-off of the game.

The score was 0-0 after the first period. The Redwings had about 20 shots in the first period, but the Caps didn't even get their first shot off until 15 minutes into the game. The Redwings scored first in the second period, but the Caps answered with a goal of their own, so the score was 1-1 after the second period. The Redwings scored first in the third period too. The Caps scored a goal a few minutes later to even the score at 2-2. Less than 1 minute later, the Caps scored again, to make it 3-2, which would end up being the final score. The Redwings took so many more shots than the Caps, but Jose Theodore (the Caps' goalie) was on fire. He was named their Star of the Game.

It was crazy loud in there after the Caps tied the score at 2 and then even louder when they took the lead. The atmosphere was very exciting to me since I didn't really care who won. Kyle, however, was sad that the Wings lost.

We got home around 11:00. It was a fun night, even if I was tired this morning.

Winter Gala

Last Friday Peyton's daycare had a "Winter Gala." It was a little show with each of the classes performing a song. The program opened with all of the classes helping the toddler class sing their song, which was "Jingle Bells." Here's a picture of that number.

Peyton did a really good job singing. We taught him Jingle Bells before Christmas anyway, so he already knew it before they started learning it at daycare. He also did a great job jingling his bells. Even after the song was over, Peyton kept on jingling!

Peyton's class, the 2's, was next. They sang "5 Little Snowmen." It was to the tune of "5 Little Monkeys Jumping on the Bed." It went like this...

Five little snowmen riding on a sled
One fell off and bumped his head
Frosty called the doctor and the doctor said,
"No more snowmen riding on a sled" ....

Here are two pictures of his class. Some of his friends did not show up for the show. The little boy in the yellow is Levi. He is Peyton's BFF. They get so excited when they see each other in the morning when I drop Peyton off. They usually run to each other and hug. It's cute. Anyway, Peyton's class did a good job, but Peyton definitely stole the show. He sang the loudest and did all of the hand motions. He even danced at the end of the song. Some of the other kids just stood there frozen. And one screamed and cried the whole time. When the song was over, Peyton clapped like crazy. I guess he thought he did a great job too!

The 3's and 4's classes each sang a song next. Finally, the older kids did a play about Frosty the Snowman. The whole program only lasted about 20, but it was cute.

I took video of the program on the video camera, but I can't upload it to the computer. I thought our camera had that capability, but it actually doesn't. Bummer. I wish everyone could see how cute Peyton was. He is seriously the cutest kid in the whole daycare center. (But I'm not biased or anything...)

Paging Dr. Peyton

Santa brought Peyton a doctor's kit for Christmas, and boy, does he love it! I just wanted to include some pictures of him playing with it, because he's so cute!

Most times, Peyton is the doctor and mommy or daddy is the patient. Peyton will get his kit and then tell you, "Lay down!" This time, Kyle got to be examined.

Peyton checks Kyle's heartbeat

And his reflexes
And decides that Kyle isn't healthy, so he needs a shot

Mom's birthday

Monday was Mom's birthday, so we headed up to my parents' house to celebrate. I stopped on the way between work and daycare and bought a "50" balloon for my mom. When Peyton got in the car, he said, "Oooh! I love it balloon!" (Sidenote: He always puts "it" in sentences like that, for example - "I love it cookies.") He wanted to hold the balloon and play with the balloon. I had to explain to him so many times that it was for Grandmom's birthday. When we got to her house, Peyton wanted to carry the balloon inside to give it to her so that he could play with it. Finally he (sort of) gave Grandmom the balloon and although it took lots of tries, I got this picture.

The birthday cake was sitting out on the table when we arrived. Peyton was really excited about the cake. He is the one that organized everyone into the dining room so that we could sing happy birthday. From this picture, you'd think it was Peyton's birthday - he was so excited!

Peyton loves to sing 'Happy Birthday' and Grandmom even let him help her blow out the candles, so he was in heaven.

Next, my mom opened her gifts. We got her a super cool blinking 50 pin (which you can see in the bottom picture) and a gift card. Jeremy also got her a gift card (and a greeting card too, which he never, ever buys!). Dad got her the little boy charm with Peyton's birthstone to add to her bracelet with mine and Jeremy's charms. (In July, she'll need another charm!!)

We enjoyed some cake and ice cream, and then headed home to put Peyton to bed.

Happy birthday, Mom!

One More Christmas

On Saturday, we got together with Dave, Kate, and Noah to have Christmas with them. Peyton was excited to see Noah, as usual. The boys even wore semi-matching clothes, haha.

We hooked Noah up with two outfits and the Songs and Smiles Sillytown (or something like that!) He was most fascinated with the wrapping paper.

The Borowski's gave Peyton some GeoTrax with a remote control train. Peyton loves it because there are extra tracks to make his set bigger, and the remote control train means that he doesn't have to crawl around pushing the train by hand.

After the gift opening, we had pizza for dinner. I love it when cooked food just arrives at my door piping hot and ready to eat. We played with the boys and chatted for a while after dinner. Then, Noah had to leave so that he could get home and to bed.

This was our last celebration of Christmas for this year. We had a really nice holiday overall and Peyton got a lot of stuff!