Don’t make me separate you two

B and L were out working in the yard this morning. They came in accompanied by the strong smell of gasoline. Logan’s arms, clothes and legs were pretty obviously gas coated. B’s response: we weren’t around any gasoline.

It’s cute in a puppy

The tylenol fades away like wine

That’s turned to turpentine

It’s 4 a.m. and he’s all cranked up…

OK so I took some creative license with that one…

L is currently enjoying his fifth or sixth fever in about twice as many weeks. Oh will I be glad when the teeth are in!

Oh well, at least this fever came AFTER date night. We went to go see a kind of a variety/cabaret show. Our neighbor was one of the choreographers of a dance set. Hers was the best and I’m not just saying that because she’s my neighbor. It was upbeat, fun and really well performed. It was probably a little more traditional than the others too. The first was a modern dance set done to East Indian music. It was probably the only other piece I really liked. That and a couple of the monologues. It was a good evening and special thanks to Rosetta for taking L in the middle of trying to get grades out for her class!

OK - some of his current endearing traits (of varying levels of endearing-ness):

L loves to go on the slides at the park. And Papa let him go down head first on his tummy so now he thinks that’s a spiffy way to get down off everything. Took a little retraining and a couple of pretty hard landings but now he remembers to go down everything feet first. Except the slide every little once in a while.

He loves to go up and down and up and down and up and down the stairs which is making me regret not having the steps to my deck made solid underneath. He is getting really good at negotiating the stairs though. On laundry day, if I don’t carry him down after chucking the dirties to the bottom of the stairs, he will let himself down the stairs. He then comes over and helps me load the washing machine. When we are all finished he takes me to show me the container of chicken feed and how he and Papa scoop up the feed and take it out to the chickens: Henny, Penny, Lucy and Louise. (Hey - it was either that or Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Louise…Actually I think Parsley makes a great name for a chicken. Hmmm…)

The other day we were at the park and he decided to show off for a little red-haired girl (great - Charlie Brown anyone?). He had been sliding head first, climbing off, crawling around to the stairs, climbing up five feet of stairs and sliding down again all on his own when he noticed this little red-haired girl. He decided to favor her with his famous Princess wave. While sliding. Face first. He skinned his forehead. Barely noticed it. Then he went and played catch with the red-head’s Dad. Yup. That’s my boy. Workin’ it already.

B actually got him to walk down half the hallway while holding his hand! He had a sippy cup and wanted to be carried. Usually he just does a modified scoot when he has things in his hands - sort of a one hand, one foot, one knee thing that is very inefficient. So B helped him stand and held one hand and moved a little away from him and L, being in such a fabulous mood because both his parents were standing there looking so excited, actually took a step. And then another. And another. Half way down the hall! Of course he walked sideways, leading with his right foot and kind of dragging the left after, but we think he is getting the idea.

We walked past the local daycare about a week ago and L decided he wanted to go in. They were playing out on the school playground and it is public property so in we went. He watched all the big kids (3 to 4 year olds) for a while and then crawled over to a trike and climbed on. We tried several until we found one that fit well and I pushed L around the playground for a while. Mm hm, he thinks wheels are THE way. To. Go. Skip that walking stuff. Too slow. We figure that is why he is still crawling. Though frankly I’m getting a little tired of the comments from other mother’s at the Community Center playroom. “You need to tell him he just needs to get up and walk like all the other kids!”

Yeah. Someone really said that. In the toddler room. I then got to hear how early all their kids started walking and how many of them skipped crawling - isn’t that great?!? I kinda wanted to tell them about the correlation between skipping crawling and dislexia but patiently held my tongue. Sigh. I’m such a martyr.

I’ve also gotten comments on the fact that I let my kid crawl on playground bark. And play on the big kid toys. Hey. If they want to make the little kid stuff that boring they need to expect some tots to want to play with the big toys. I put him at the top of the little kid slide and he crawled to the other end of the play-structure - up stairs, across swaying bridges, up more stairs - and let himself down the big slide. Head first. Yeah, that got some looks. I barely had time to make it to the bottom to catch him and then he was off across the bark to find the beggining of the structure again. I figure if the bark doesn’t bother him it doesn’t bother me.

I was out weeding yesterday and he was crawling around the driveway. The realtor across the street commented on my toughening up my kid. Yeah - I’d forgotten to put his pants on and he was crawling on the pavement in bare knees. I was hoping it would slow him down some. No such luck. HE kindly comented that both his kids were late walkers and now were phenomenal readers and how he’d heard about this correlation between walking and reading…

L’s favorite activity (besides feeding the chickens with Papa and smacking the cat with the telephone) is reading. We’ve had to hide some of his books because we have read them. So. Many. Times. He sits on the couch, points imperiously to the nearest book. Then the next and the next. Then his bottle. We settle in and he hands me his first choice. I read. If he decides he’s made a poor selection he closes the book and hands me another. He knows already if I skip pages. Sometimes he skips to his favorite parts. Then he wants me to read the book all over again. And again. And again. And again…

Ahh, sweet sleep. Only two hours of mid-night wakeful mommy-ness. Time to haul him back to bed. I will leave you with this though:

The Princess? Has become an Emperor.

Oh. And cow “moos” scare the jeebeez out of him.

Is it Fall Yet?

There is cat food all over the stairs.

The pump bottle of baby wipe solution has gone missing.

My son’s dresser drawers look like a small animal was looking for something it buried last summer.

I only left them alone for four hours…

(Please refer back to “Things motherhood has taught me about myself“)

Sigh.

I found the wipes solution bottle. It was downstairs on the excersaucer. Open. With solution still in it. Evidently my son managed to sneek it downstairs and play with it for an hour without somebody noticing.

We’re ba-ack

Sorry to have abandoned you all for so long. I feel as if I have been impossibly busy putting together an auction for AMIE with just about no assistance, volunteering at the PNA auction so I could learn how to run an auction, volunteering at the PNA Home Tour, trying to be a part of our own budding CHNA, etc.

I won’t bore you with the details but will share Saturday night’s baby cuteness.

Our regularly scheduled Second Saturday Supper had to relocate to the third Saturday this month due to the aforementioned auction. So Saturday night 20 or so people arrived, food in hand, for a delightful 85 degree night of food, conversation and baby passing on the back patio.

L was hungry and tired when the crowds arrived so I sat him down and started shoveling the food into him. He was so fascinated by the pair of teen boys playig guitars on the couch across from him that he ate two full jars of food, a rarity for our little light-weight.

C arrived and took over the baby feeding. He finished his jars, munched some crackers and hummus, crawled around under all the tables and generally had a great time, forgetting his earlier tiredness (is that a word?)

When the main meal was ready, L saw everyone gathering plates and dishing up. C tells me he then headed over to his highchair, grabbed his bib and handed it to her.

She put it on him and we got him all set up in his chair out on the patio. He sat with C, M and LG and proceeded to have a lovely conversation with lots of grins, laughs and waves. He ate a bowl of paella and some stuffed peppers. He danced to the music in his highchair. He leaned his head into M’s shoulder looking up at him and giggling. They taught him how to toast - clinking his sippy cup and taking a drink.

After dinner there was more baby passing and then finally an over-exhausted and very thirsty little boy was hauled rudely off to bed by Mama and wrapped in his special sleepy-time blankie. He fell asleep halfway through his bottle of water and lay, spread-eagled on his cot, out cold for the next 6 hours at which point he crawled over into our bed and passed out for another few hours.

(L just put his toast in the watering can.)

I’d like to call out special thanks to some amazingly wonderful friends we have. First to C for “oh, I don’t know, 2-3 hours of babysitting” becoming a full day first trip to the zoo (which Mama missed because she was too busy with that bleeping auction) and an evening of pillow forts so I could just keep working away. Next to H for saving my bacon and delivering my box of crucial auction supplies to me all the way out in BFI because I left them on the coffee table. And to E for letting me raid her closet since none of my “formal” attire particularly fits me anymore and her wardrobe is full of inteligently designed ethnic stuff.

Well - L has mastered the staircase and he is out on it and headed across the yard now to go play in the pond so I’ll leave y’all at that. Have a lovely day!

On vacation?

I have all these posts itching to come out of my fingers but I’m too busy reading all your blogs. I have like 500 posts in my reader and I. Have. To. Read. Every. One. Of. Them. I just can’t skip. I’m not programmed that way. I might miss some crucial part of the story! Oh. And I’ve been trying to pull together a fundraiser for that organization over there at the top of the sidebar. I promise I’ll try to get in some decent posts after May 10 (the fundraiser). Maybe on Mother’s day. Yeah. That’s it. I’ll tell everyone to leave me alone so I can just post already. Maybe by then I’ll figure out how to type in the shower. It’s where all my ideas come to me. Sadly I only get one a week these days…Yeah, that smell? It’s me.

Channeling his inner frat boy

I found my son trying to pop the top off a beer bottle … with his teeth. After that he rooted through the contents of his father’s stinky karate bag while grunting.

I’m worried.

MIL vs. Mom - or why I married my husband

We told his mom that we planned to cloth diaper.

She bought us a year of diaper service.

We told my mom we planned to co-sleep.

She bought us a crib.

Guess where I store the clean laundry when I don’t have time to fold it…

L’s Laws

It’s hard to stay grumpy when someone is blowing raspberries on your tummy. Try.

When in doubt…it’s an airplane.

Wave. It puts people off their guard.

When things hurt, eat a frozen banana.

Three sheets to the wind

I keep feeling guilty about not giving L cups to practice with. I mean he’s got his sippy cups and we try to use them during the day but they really are just glorified bottles.

So today I gave him the only kid size glass I’ve got. My old sorority shot glass.

He took some tentative sips. Coughed. Sputtered. Grinned. Reached for the glass again. You’d have thought I’d given him his first whiskey.

The second shot-full he slammed. One gulp. Grinned. Asked for more.

By the third shot he must have been getting tipsy. He sloshed it. Giggled. Upended the glass all over his tray. Giggled some more. Dipped his toast in the glass.

I cut him off.

Husband for sale, cheap

Ok, so I have to go back a little on this one.

Two weeks ago as my husband was starting spring break I asked him to watch L sometime during his break so I could fix the bathroom sink. He replied that it was on his list of things to do that week so I scratched it off mine. Yee haw! I love to get out of doing the plumbing.

Fast forward to last night.

My husband asks what he can do for the few hours he will be home in the morning before abandoning me leaving me to get ready for a 16 person dinner party by myself while taking care of L. I ask him to take care of the child while I get a jump start on the cleaning and to vacuum, something he can easily do with L on his back. All the while I am thinking: I’m going to fix that stupid sink first thing in the morning because of course my husband never got to it, just like he never cleaned out the microwave after spilling fish all over the inside.

I come out of the bedroom this morning, pick my crying child up in the hallway outside my bedroom and walk to the kitchen where my husband is eating breakfast. He holds up the p-trap to the sink. He says it looks clean, he can’t figure out why the sink won’t drain. Because of course, everyone know there is only one reason a sink won’t drain. I tell him there is probably hair wrapped around the plug column and wonder how “please vacuum” got interpreted as “tear apart my sink”.

As he heads back to the bathroom he calls over his shoulder that he probably won’t have time to vacuum before he leaves. He unclogs the sink, puts it back together, puts our son down for a nap and goes into the bathroom to get ready.

“Uh-oh.”

I head back to see what is up. The sink is leaking, he can’t figure out why, he tightened everything down and will I please try to fix it today because he has got to leave. Sure, no problem. I’ll just add it to my list…

He then makes himself some lunch, calls his friend to say he is running late to meet her at the cafe (yes the man has to eat two lunches - hollow leg syndrome), sits for a while on the computer, and finally leaves.

I walk into the bathroom and laying on the floor next to the sink is the rubber gasket that goes between the pipes. Think that has anything to do with the leak?

I love the man. Really, I do. Just some days I wish he’d been born a woman.

*The post script:

B spent his spring break demolishing the basement and installing our lovely new flooring with C and thus did not get to the sink. He offered to take L with him today so I could work unencumbered (as did my mother) but as L has been a little sick and a lot cranky I felt that it would be better if he did not spend his day outside in a stadium with 30,000 other people.