Monday Already?

We had a great & busy weekend! Friday night T. and I managed to stay up late enough to watch an ENTIRE MOVIE which we haven't done in a long time (the movie was "Taken;" it was entertaining).

Saturday we went to the nearest city to visit a motorsports store so I could try on helmets and eventually complete my motorcycle-riding outfit. Little Man had never been to the motorcycle store. For the first 20 minutes he repeated on a constant loop, "Don't touch it, Mommy. Don't touch the mozormichaels!" Then I put him on a 4-wheeler, and once he realized the extreme coolness of sitting on the merchandise, he couldn't get enough.His reward for being patient while I tried on helmets was that he got to try on helmets.Afterwards we got a fast-food lunch and took a scenic drive home.

Saturday evening T. went to get his parents at the airport. They normally live overseas and were just arriving to this side of the country. Little Man and I had a birthday party to go to at a local pool. It was so fun! He was cautious at first but eventually would walk into the water as far as he could. He sat on the edge and jumped to me. He even went down the waterslide twice, until I ruined that for him. The first time he loved it, but the second time I didn't do a good job of catching him and he "swam" for about 5 seconds before I pulled him up. Hopefully someday he'll forget and go down the slide again.

He worked up an appetite and ate an entire second dinner after cake, then had a late bedtime of 9:45.

He was very pleased to have two new playmates when he woke up - T's parents Mimi and Grandpa. T's birthday is this week so we got a small group together to go to a family-style southern restaurant in our area for a birthday dinner. A few of us had gotten there early, and T., Grandpa, and Little Man were bringing up the rear. A few minutes before they arrived I got a call that said, "Little Man got carsick. Be ready for us." I got seriously carsick as a kid and wondered if he'd inherit that from me. Thank goodness B. had an extra outfit for her boys, because I was not prepared (note to self: put an extra outfit in the car).

Little Man looked completely miserable (and didn't smell too good) when they arrived, but we got him cleaned up. He told me, "I spit it. I make a big mess. My tummy feels better now." The meal was delicious and the day was beautiful.

T. wanted to make sure I told this story: Often Appalachian Trail hikers will eat at this restaurant on their way through the area. There was a foursome of hikers sitting on this great wraparound porch watching the boys play after we ate dinner. Little Man climbed up on the porch and let out quite the gas. T. said everyone just sat there for a minute, then LM announced, "I toot!" The hikers were entertained and let him know that it's not healthy to hold it in. They were also the second group recently to remark on his left-footedness and encourage me to get him in soccer.

Then we all departed. I put LM in his carseat and buckled him in, and as I pulled the door shut he spit-up AGAIN. Thank goodness this was just a little one, and T. speculates that it was probably just the smell of my car that did it. It was certainly insult to injury.

We all enjoyed playing outside this evening after getting home. I still don't know how to set my camera to get decent photos at dusk.
Pulling weeds with Mimi.

Don't Box Me In

Garden Update:

The ground cover (weeds) is taking a strong hold. We clearly have a "seeds in our compost pile" problem. Next year we will have to attack it. But the vegetables are doing well, also!
I'm 38 weeks pregnant today, so attention to the garden will fall off sharply soon. The front center section is potatoes. They are completely out-of-control. I'm hoping they'll stop growing once they're done blooming. The zucchini, squash, and cukes are always out-of-control, and we have some baby yellow squash which will probably be ready soon. Peppers, green beans, and tomatoes all seem healthy.

Hubby (that's Daddio to you) got me a gift today: a motorcycle jacket! Which you can see will fit better once I get rid of the huge bump.

Oh there's my pincushion, I was just looking for it tonight. Good thing we took a picture.

"Why is Michael Jordan on my jacket?" Apparently he owns a racing team. His number is 23 and his color is Carolina Blue. Naturally. It's a leather jacket with armor in it and it weighs approximately 87 lbs as far as I can tell. It's a good thing Daddio found me trying to take a picture of myself 'cause I can't really bend my elbows in it and I couldn't take it off by myself. Yes, I have street cred'. I got matching blue and black gloves, too.

Big Kid Shoes

Crocs were on-sale last week (50% your whole order if you ordered more than 1 pair) so we all got new Crocs. Yes, we pride ourselves on being 3 years behind an ugly-shoes trend.

Little Man needed new summer shoes, so I got him a pair of sandals. Apparently Crocs' sizing is completely different from other children's shoes, because they're way too big. But he loves them. He calls them "big kid shoes."

Still 2

Little Man is very, very two. He's like that poem about little girls: When he's good he's very very good, and when he's bad he's horrid. Last night he was horrid.

The daycare did warn me that they didn't take much of a nap yesterday. But we were seemingly on the road to a pretty good evening. Daddio was cooking dinner, Little Man and I were playing ball. Then he drop-kicked the ball, 3 times, in the house. So the ball went bye-bye. So he hit me. So he went to time-out. This is all pretty much par for the course.

But when I wouldn't give the ball back, he bit me. And I didn't see it coming so I yelled when it hurt. So T. threw him in time-out in his crib. A couple of time-outs later, he finally got his dinner eaten and he did tell me that he was sleepy. I took him up for a bath. Then he screamed when I turned the water off, then he stood up and wouldn't sit down. So it wound up being about a 2 minute bath. T. came upstairs to help in the bedtime routine, which became decidedly un-routine becuase LM would not lay down. So we left, and locked him in his room so he couldn't wreak havoc all over the upstairs (I checked "reverse the locks" off the to-do list in no time flat!). Between 8:00 and 9:00 we tried to tuck him in 4 times (and listen to him scream in between). 4th time's the charm, as they say.

Then we ate ice cream. We earned it.

Worse than Baby Powder

You may remember that two weeks ago Little Man dumped a whole container of baby powder all over his room. Today he topped himself.

Now that he's in a bed instead of a crib he has the freedom to not notify us when he wakes up in the morning or wakes up from a nap. You'll remember that a few days ago he ripped the screen in his window. This morning he pulled a sign off the window (one of those "Baby on Board" car signs which I figured was a good substitute for those stickers we're suppsed to have for firemen) and took it to my dad, who is visiting, and announced, "I rip it!"

At naptime today my dad and I were both sitting downstairs and we both started sniffing. I assumed T. had sprayed some deodorant upstairs. Until I heard the little voice. Then I knew where the smell was coming from. Little Man took my dad's toothbrush out of the bathroom, went into Dad's toiletries, and emptied a bottle of English Leather unto the toothbrush and carpet. I think he also brushed his teeth with it, because when I asked him if he got into Pop's stuff he smacked his lips unpleasantly.

Dad is staying in Little Man's new "green room", which I have now renamed the "English Leather" room. The whole house smells like it, but that room will never be the same.

Anyone have any tips for neutralizing odors? Like the odor of a bottle of cologne in a carpet? I already called in the Little Green Machine. Not convinced it made any difference. Baking Soda?

Flowers

I'm not traveling for work anymore, so I can blog EVERY DAY while I'm still observant to the world around me. Soon I will go into a sleep-deprived, baby-induced stupor and not leave the house for 6 weeks. But until then...

We were looking at old pictures the other day. Here's our front yard two years ago:
And here it is yesterday:I knew things had grown, but WOW.

And we have flowers - the Calla Lilies are my favorites. We planted none of them, so they must have been the favorites of the previous owners.
More asian lilies. Little Man helped me pull weeds out of the vegetable garden, too. He says, "Don't pull the big ones." There are a LOT of weeds this year because we've had so much rain. Soon I'm just going to call it "ground cover" or "erosion control" and embrace it.

And the real reason T. and I found that old picture of the house: we were looking at pictures of LM from his first few months. Actually T. just wanted to make fun of me for my medicated stupor.Hey Doc, no narcotics next time, okay? Whose baby is this anyway, and why am I holding it?

T. also found this gem. Babies can really sleep.

I saved it!

As I've mentioned before, we lost several Asian lilies to children and dogs this year. One of the more recent ones was already a couple of feet high with buds on it when it was snapped by a rampaging tiny dog.

My dad made a valiant effort to splint it (involving a wood stake, string, and masking tape) but I noticed it was slowly dying from the ground up, and the buds were still closed. So a few days ago I plucked it and brought it inside. Couldn't hurt.
Voila! The moral of this story is that we are all just fragile lilies, trampled by the fluffy dog that is life.... I got nothing. Except that I saved the flower.

Destructo-Boy

This morning I heard knocking around the time I usually go get Little Man. It wasn't knocking at the outside of our door I realized, it was knocking on the inside of his door. In his attempt to get out of his room, he locked the door. After a few minutes I got him to unlock it so I could go in, and I mentally added "reverse the locks" to our To-Do list.

Then I went to look out his window at the birds, which is what he does every morning. I noticed a little hole in the screen. Many of our screens have small holes in them, most of which were patched at one point, but the patches wear off. Oh no no. This is a 12-inch rip. "I rip it!" announced Destructo-Boy.

ARGH.

Shopping Entertainment

Today after work & school I took Little Man to the grocery store with me. It was a pretty long trip as the cupboard was bare, and he was a never ending source of entertainment. He talks constantly, but here are a few of the highlights.

At one point I said something about the store being too big (they recently expanded and are still renovating). About 10 minutes later I said, "This store is confusing to me." Little Man said, "This store too big. It's confusing Little Man. It's confusing bananas."

Later a man started talking to him.
Man: Hey Buddy, how you doin'?
Little Man: I go shopping.
Man: I see that, are you buying anything special?
LM: I'm eating pretzel fish.
It's true, he was. I don't know why this amused me so much. Maybe because he didn't hesitate at all or use me as a safety blanket, he just had a chat.

More evidence that he's a genius: They had balloons at the cash registers, and he was naming all the balloons he saw. Fishie, Alligator, Lion. Then he saw a shark balloon and he called it a "dinosaur fish." I think that's a pretty good way of describing a shark, if you don't know what it's called.

Since he was so good at the store he got lemonade as a treat when we got home. As soon as we got in the house he started jumping up and down, yelling, "Memonade! Memonade! Memonade!"

And he has a new music favorite. T. made a blues station on Pandora (it's like an online radio station where you can put in artists you like, and they'll play similar artists). It's a lot of old blues, which gets a head-bob from Little Man, but then "Bad Moon Rising" came on and he could not contain himself. He jumped and danced and spun the whole song.

Big Boy Bed Update

Little Man spent both weekend naps nights in his Big Boy Bed, with no objections. The only problem is that he gets up in the morning and we don't know it. Yesterday morning he took the three lower train pictures off his wall (they're still off the wall because he did it again at naptime yesterday) and this morning got up and looked out the window at the birds. If all he does is look at birds in the morning I'll count us as very lucky!

Strangely enough, he puts his Puppy in his crib every morning when he gets up. I guess he's ready for the Big Boy Bed, but Puppy can't quite handle it himself.

We've also realized that if T. puts him to bed it goes smoothly, but if I put him to bed there is screaming and carrying-on. But I like putting him to bed, so lately T. and I have put him to bed together and it works out well.

Safety First

He loved wearing the helmet and "mittens" until he tried to take the helmet off himself and it started to tip his whole body backwards, head first.

Little Man in a big, big bed. (I'll post proper pictures of the room eventually, but here's a sneak peek of the GREEN)
Tonight was a beautiful summer night, and we had a church picnic. Our church does GOOD picnics. They have the State Fair chicken recipe, which they grill over these huge fire pits. And church people are excellent at pot-luck food.

One source of picnic entertainment for everyone was Little Man. I had the smarts to bring a ball for him to kick. While we were standing in line for the food he stood between the two food lines and kicked the ball. Eventually he realized that he could kick the ball at anyone, and they'd kick it back. So it was a big soccer game between LM and the hundreds of people waiting in line for chicken. He pretty much ran and kicked for the 3 hours we were there, occasionally stopping for watermelon and corn. All night we had people commenting on his future as a soccer player.

Big Boy Bed

We're transitioning Little Man to his big boy bed, and not a moment too soon. If you ask about it, he still says, "No, I wanna sleep in my crib."

It's naptime now and he's in the big boy bed. We were hearing some thumping so T. went up to see what's going on up there. T. said he walked into the room and Little Man was bent over with his head all the way in the trash can.

This is going to be fun.

Husbands

Had the following conversation with T. yesterday (sorry T., but it's funny)

T: John (the boss) is trying to set up golf with some lawyers in July on the 23rd or 24th. So when is the latest you could be induced or whatever?

Me: They can't induce me because I had a c-section last time. They'll just schedule a repeat c-section for 10 or 11 days after my due date.

T: When is your due date?

Me: July 10

T: Crap.

Local Harvest 1

In keeping with our "stuff growing" theme around here, I meant to tell you about the local harvest my friend B. and I are participating in. Community Supported Agriculture is where you buy "shares" of local produce, and receive in-season food from local farmers. Many of them also require that you, the shareholder, put in a certain amount of time on the farm. These are becoming increasingly popular (one might say "trendy") in our area.

Most people do vegetable shares, and although a wider variety of vegetables might be nice, I know that by the end of July I'll be overwhelmed with the vegetables in our garden. Instead, B. and I decided to share a fruit share. I meant to show you photos of what we got every week and tell you what I made with it, but I'm already 6 days behind.

Harvest 1 was cherries. Apparently we almost didn't have a Harvest 1 because of the crazy amounts of rain we got recently. But they managed to get us some cherries. And boy am I glad we're sharing a share with B., 'cause it was a LOT of cherries! We ate about half of them straight up (Little Man liked them but I cut him off when he chewed and swallowed a pit) and last night I made cherry tarts with the remainder. Super-simple: slightly thawed puff pastry, pitted and halved cherries, sugar, lemon juice. Bake at 415 for 15-20 minutes. But since I was too busy eating, I neglected to take a picture.

Here are some leftovers!This week's harvest is also cherries, and they tell us they're more plentiful and better quality due to the recent sunshine. They provided a recipe for fresh cherry bars, which I may have to try this week.

On the home-front, our garden is growing very well. We lost one tomato plant (the taste-test award winner, of course), and one tomato plant is keeping me guessing, but one (the one that's good for tomato pastes and sauces) is growing like gangbusters. I think I'm even pruning it correctly. I pulled about 15 squash plants this weekend that came up all over the place. Everything else is doing well. Beans, peppers, cukes, squash/ zucchini. The potato plants are beautiful.

We have approximately 3 asian lilies that were not killed by children or dogs thus far. Here's one (I took a picture under the assumption that it will get hit by a soccer ball very soon):
Last week our Irises and Knockout Rose were both at their peak, but I took no pictures so you'll have to take my word for it. Oops.

This weekend Little Man and I broke out the swimming pool for the first time. I wasn't sure how he'd feel about it, but it didn't take him long to warm up to it.And if you need me on a weekend for the next month, this is where I'll be.

Powder Fresh

When I went in to get Little Man up this morning, he'd made a mess.

Wow. His diaper-changing accessories are now in the closet. We've dealt with him pulling all the wipes out of the box before, but it took this to teach us to keep everything out of his reach. All I can smell is baby powder.

Unrelated, the other day when we walked into daycare there was a ride-on toy sitting in the foyer for $5. It needed a couple of screws but my mom fixed it yesterday and now it's ready for action.
It doesn't move quite as easily as his red bike, so he keeps saying, "Oh, it's turkey." That's "tricky" for those of you who don't speak 2.

Cell Phone Pic

This morning LM wanted me to take his picture with my cell phone. He moves way too much, and I couldn't get him to stand still so I asked him to hug Daisy hoping that'd keep him still.

Doesn't Daisy look uncomfortable with this arrangement?

Conversations with Little Man

T. called me this morning to tell me a few of Little Man's funnies before he forgot them. I'm tell you before I forget them.

T. went in to get Little Man up this morning. Little Man told him, "Daddy, I need more sleep." Ah, a boy after my own heart. T. asked if he wanted to sleep in his big-boy bed, and Little Man said, "No, I want to sleep in my crib."

Then T. was diapering him for school, and LM said, "Baby Powder on my hiney." T. didn't know we had baby powder, and asked LM where it was. "Right there!" He was right of course, it was right there.

Another thing that cracks me up is that he's gone from saying "Yeah" to saying "Yes." Except he says "Yesssss". I think he would be in Slytherin.