Monkey Back-a-set

Confetti Eggs

The beauty of being 2 is that people will actually come down to your level to let you crack a confetti egg on their head, instead of running away.

Me a Bunny, Go Hop Hop

Taking a break from all the hard work of toddlerhood

Boinga Boinga

Gotta Pink Egg

Toddler Trampoline WWF

I think I need a break

So, there was the unexpected death of another baby of another blogger over the weekend, and I'm just going to take the rest of the week off. I'm wearing purple today for Maddie. Because there's just not much else I can do from here. I didn't read the blogs of either of these women prior to the deaths of their children, but a lot of people did and it has rocked a lot of people. I cannot even pretend to imagine what it feels like to be on the other side of that situation. But between that, and being loaded down like a pack mule at work, it just seems that it's time for a break for me.

My original purpose in starting this blog was to let my family know what was up with us, and to give them a glimpse into our lives through pictures and words. I just don't have a lot of words right now. And the ones I do, I don't generally use on this site. So, I'm setting up auto posting for the next few days with just pictures - and if I'm not feeling up to it on Monday, I'll continue posting a picture or two a day until I do feel like it. And I know I will eventually feel like it again.

Egg Hunting is the New Normal

Over the past few days Landon participated in 4 Easter Egg hunts (that doesn't include the one from the previous weekend). So this morning when I finally got him ready for school as we walked towards the back door he said "Hunteen uggs?" "No, sweetie, we're done hunting eggs this year."

He was so tired last night that he fell asleep on the way home, at about 7:30 ish and didn't wake up until I went to wake him up this morning. I guess that's one way to get out of a bath.

Self Indulgence - Updated

Nothing I say really matters today. Yesterday I went on and on about pollen and its terribleness.



And then I read about a baby who is about a year younger than Landon who didn't make it.



And then this morning I read about a girl who has run away, she was angry and her mom gave her permission to run down the street to release some of it, just like she's done before and this time she just didn't come back. [The very moment I originally posted this, they found her.]



Anything I have to write just all seems so arrogant and self centered. My kid is healthy and alive and I can see him on the cameras at the day care, I know where he is.

Pollen Manifesto

Pollen and I have a rough relationship. We always have. I believe I must have been some kind of anti-pollen activist in a former life, because it seems that pollen has always had it in for me. Starting at birth. Apparently it wasn't until we moved out of the country to a small city that my mother realized my eyes were actually much bigger than she had originally thought.



And it wasn't until I was 11 or so when I had month long headaches that we actually had me tested and found that I was indeed allergic to a bazillion things including, but not limited to, pollen from every tree that ever existed within my eye sight. So my first actual line of defense was allergy shots, which worked for quite some time. And then I stopped taking them. I really don't know why, but we eventually just stopped.



And when I entered college I had a regimen by which I woke up every morning and took a generic Chlortrimaton. It was necessary if I wanted to, I don't know, breathe. I went to the Quack Shack one time for something like pink eye and got a doctor who actually was willing to look me in the eye, unlike another certain doctor. And had the following conversation:



"Are you pregnant?"



"No."



"Do you take any medication daily?"



"Birth Control and an anti-histamine."



"WHAT?!?!? YOU SHOULDN'T BE DOING THAT, YOU SHOULDN'T BE DRIVING WHILE TAKING ANTI-HISTAMINES, THEY PUT YOU IN A HAZE AND YOU DON'T EVEN REALLY SEE ANYTHING!!!"



"Oh, so are you volunteering to follow me around and resuscitate me when I finally fall over from not being able to breathe?"



"Well, um...er...there's a spectrum...and uh...you must be on the low end...and maybe it doesn't effect you that way."



"Thanks, can we talk about my eye now?"



So for the past 3 years I managed to have some kind of pregnancy/breastfeeding bubble surrounding my immune system which was awesome and I haven't taken an anti-histamine on a regular basis since we started trying to get pregnant [3 years ago].



And as of 2 months ago, when we finally gave up the last of the breastfeeding, my bubble has burst - pollen has again shown its ugly face. I have not been well for any length of time in 2 months. Coincidentally tree pollen is at extreme levels according to my weatherman of choice - which he cheerfully tells me every morning. This last bout has been the worst. I am re-starting my daily anti-histamine regimen in retaliation. I will not go down without a fight.



I'm tempted to blame Obama, since it started happening almost exactly when he was inaugurated, and I figured if Bush was responsible for Hurricane Katrina then why couldn't Obama be responsible for the extreme levels of tree pollen? It makes just about as much sense.

Just to be clear, he's not pooping, he's looking at turtles in the pond.

Yeah, this is later than my normal posts, but I've got the writer's block. So sue me.

I should have known something was up

Ok, so a few days ago I posted about the weird cloney cow dairy thing. And while THAT was a big joke put on by Ben & Jerry's. The fact that the FDA is allowing food (meat and dairy) from cloned animals is true. Oh, and they didn't bother adding any kind of restrictions that a company has to even tell you if that's what they're doing. Nice, huh? You may never know.

So apparently I fell for a big old April Fool's joke. Except not.

Why having a regular camera instead of a bazillion dollar camera worked out for me this time.

Saturday was my company's annual Easter Egg hunt for the kids. This is the first year we've actually made it there. So naturally I decided to try to sabotage the whole thing from the very beginning.


Last week I got sunburned so badly while sitting at a cookie booth that I became a leper by Thursday. So obviously, I totally forgot about sunblock for this little event when we left the house that morning.


We stopped at Target and couldn't find our regular sun babies stuff in the aerosol can [killing the environment too! Bonus!], but we found some other stuff that said it had the same attributes.



When we got to the Ranch, I changed his clothes and then didn't read the directions on the sunblock and sprayed him down with it. Head to toe. [Don't spray on face, spray on hand and rub on face.]


Not 5 minutes later he was complaining about his eyes and his entire face was beet red. My guess is that with his sensitive skin he had some kind of allergic reaction to it, I took him into the bathroom to try to wash it off his face [FAIL, it's waterproof, and you can only use so much hand soap on a toddler's face before you're just adding to the problem, since it will burn his eyes too]and fight loudly about whether or not I was trying to kill him with soap and water. (Clint said he was glad there weren't too many people walking by because it did sound like I was beating the crap out of him the way he was screaming.)


He still looked pretty bad, but it was fading, so we went on in to the party. First stop was the Merry Go Round, where he was the first one on and everyone else got on RIGHT AROUND him, therefore deserve to have their pictures on the internet. The thing is, the other half of the merry go round? Completely empty. If I had a better camera you would see he was still weird looking here.



They had this cute little boat thing, you had to be under 36 inches to ride. He loved it. Also still weird looking here too, but luckily my camera doesn't pick up on that...now if I can just teach it to not pick up on my muffin top and double chin, we'd be in business.




From there we went to check in and get a cookie and then it was time for the Egg Hunt. No candy, but plenty of little toys in the eggs. After all the eggs had been picked up, he was bouncing around his basket and dropped one and a little boy picked it up for him and put it back in his basket. Landon had no clue he'd even lost that egg, so he gave the kid a weird look for putting an egg in his basket.



And here's where we begin to make progress. He WANTED to sit on the Easter Bunny's lap and ACTUALLY sat on the Easter Bunny's lap. Awesome. Maybe he'll be ok with Santa this year. You honestly probably don't want to know what the tongue sticking out on the side of his mouth was about, but we gave him some Benedryl shortly after this shot.




From there things only got better. We went and stood by the moon bounce until he decided that, yes, he'd like to give that a try. When he first went in there were a bunch of kids inside and he sat right inside by the door for quite some time. He did eventually crawl to the other side when prompted by both me and Clinton peeking through the netting. Maybe he needs another 6 months or so to get his balance together enough to like the moon bounce.



Last time we had the opportunity to try out a petting zoo he freaked out, but this time was okay with the goats, and super excited about the bunnies!





And the last major attraction was a pony ride. We managed to get him on the stubborn donkey who needed someone pulling him AND pushing on him to get him to move. But he loved every second of it.


After visiting each of the attractions [actually we missed the obstacle course because it was off to itself kind of] we went back to the playground, where they have a little plane. Landon got on the plane and sat between two girls. Two girls were up front. Clinton and I were just beyond shocked at how social he was the entire day. It was awesome. I know I say awesome a lot, but there just aren't any better words for it.



From the plane thing we went to the sandbox where he was intent on making a castle and that's when we noticed how red he was getting. We argued back and forth about whether he should drink something [us] or not [him, clearly he was too busy to be drinking stuff]. At which point we decided to be the meanest parents in the world when we made him leave the sandbox in favor of not being sunburned, since he had no sunblock on anymore. We were just going to go in the building with the A/C to cool him down and drink some lemonade, but he had a fit about a cookie, so we knew it was time to make an exit. [FYI - that's not a sunburn on him, he just gets REALLY red when he gets hot.]




All in all, it was a good day and major progress was made on all fronts.

Monthly Newsletter #30

Dear Landon,

Today you turn 2 ½. 2 and a half. Are you sure you’re not 12 yet? You’ve been here for so long!

You have an endless fascination with families right now. And your imagination is great. A couple days ago you found a baby monkey in the kitchen and the mama and daddy monkeys were in the dining room, so you brought the parents in to be with the baby monkey so they could talk to him. About 5 minutes later you shared a cake you found in the dining room. You are sometimes a baby and sometimes a kitty and sometimes you are a monster getting me. You believe kitties belong outside, so when you found a kitty outside and I told you that we needed to go inside, you set the kitty down. All in your imagination. All awesome.

Somewhere a long the way you discovered magic. There’s a certain ball trick that is in the collection of toys at Grandma and Grandpa Logan’s house that you have always kind of liked. Last time we went down there, you decided that you not only would now require a cape, but also a hat, and a wand. When it came time to leave, you packed everything in your coffee can hat and brought it home with you. You have played with it every day since. You've kind of ditched the ball trick in favor of making things disappear. When you decided that the hat didn’t fit quite right, and I told you I could make you a hat out of paper, you agreed, and when I asked what color you wanted, you said white, and since your cape is white I decided not to bother with asking whether it should be a wizard hat or a top hat – I went with a top hat and you’ll thank me for that one later. I made the main part of the hat and asked if you wanted a brim. You did not. And now I can’t help but think you look a little Pope-like in your cape and hat.

One of your friends got sent home from school with pink-eye the other day and the teacher told me that they thought you had it too. I wish they would have called me earlier in the day and I could have taken you to the Dr. that day, but they waited until I picked you up at 6 – you know, AFTER the doctors all go home for the night. Anyway, I took you in the next morning and we discussed your latest long lasting but not severe cough that I hadn’t bothered with and the decision was not regular contagious pink-eye, but sinus infection backing up and shooting out of your eyes – although still the diagnosis on your bill said conjunctivitis. In hindsight I’m kind of glad it worked out that way, you were miserable and cranky, and if I had just ignored your teacher and sent you to school anyway, you wouldn’t have made it very long. But with just three doses of antibiotics in your system, you were ready to go to school the next day. Well, kind of. I mean, we were back to your regular disdain for leaving the house instead of the monstrous one that shows up when you don’t feel well.

Speaking of which – you are becoming a homebody. When we go anywhere, inevitably about 30 minutes to an hour after we get there, you start whining about wanting to go home. You hardly ever seem to actually have anything in mind once we get there, but you want to go home none the less. Just to be there.

Your love of music is still pervasive. We were watching TV a while back and the Wii Music commercial came on. You have played the Wii music game before; you were pretty good at the trumpet. But you were super excited about the prospect of drums. So I pulled out the drum you got from Grandma and Grandpa Wood and let you have at it. It may or may not have been fairly early on a Sunday morning, and your father may or may not have been sound asleep when I did it. And I may or may not have known that at the time. And I may or may not have some slight passive aggressive tendencies. I just want to sleep in every once in a while, and if I can’t sleep in, NO ONE can sleep in. You’ve been banging on that drum ever since. Your father wants me to admit that it was a bad idea to bring it out. I admit nothing – I’ll put it back up the day he gets up with you at 5:30 or 6 am on a Saturday morning and lets me sleep until 8 or 9. In other words, enjoy playing the drum kid, it’s here to stay.

Love,

Mama

Unintended time capsule

A while back I mentioned the recipes I had been typing up from the boxes of a couple of deceased family members.

I know that a recipe box is never intended to be a time capsule, but it's interesting, what I learned just by reading through and typing up recipes. Some I knew, some I didn't, but there are things people said and used that I don't know if someone just a few years younger than me would know about. I know I was googling a few of them.

Spry - a brand of vegetable shortening like Crisco - no longer made.

Sweet milk - milk straight from the cow, before removing the butter fat - closest available grocery store item is whole milk.

Tender quick - this is something used to cure meats - like salami.

Salad oil - your oil of choice, vegetable, canola, etc.

Moderate oven, fast oven, slow oven - 350°, 400°, 300°

Gas refrigerator - I had no idea these were even made, and am kind of confused as to why the gas part matters.

Some terms I knew; soda = baking soda, ice box = refrigerator, but I wonder how a generation beyond us might not know, or what things we currently use that they will not get. Given the current trend, newpaper clippings may go by the wayside, replaced by computer printouts.

But beyond any of that, my favorite time capsule style item was this sheet, which came from a box of Glad garbage bags:

Wordless Wednesday

Test for email blogging

Please ignore this post, I am just testing out a feature I just discovered.

Camera Man

I was trying to take some pictures of the loot I sent to Becky for Amelia. When SOMEONE noticed some letters.

"Hey, what letter that?"

"That's an A"

"A ovah heah too."

And then he took my camera.

And took a picture of my boobs.

Which reminds me of my first camera and the picture I took of my first grade teacher. I got a great picture of her from the neck down.

Beware

When Clint's friends have babies, I let him pick out the fabric from which I make stuff.

You are liable to end up with skulls.





Even if it's a girl.

I did try to girly it up a bit with the heart stitching. And they are awfully cute girl skulls with heart eyes and bows in their...non hair.

Landon calls them head bones if it makes it less creepy to you.

UPDATE: I tried my Girl Scout Cookie experiment yesterday. Beacuse the Oreo recipe called for the bag that's a little over a lb to 1 block of cream cheese, I ratioed it by weight and it turned out ok. 1 sleeve of thin mints to 2 oz of cream cheese. And 1 sleeve of peanut butter sandwiches to 2 oz of cream cheese. Each sleeve makes about 12 balls. The thin mints ones weren't as great as I thought they were going to be, the peanut butter ones turned out pretty good, pretty much just like peanut butter balls. If I didn't have access to the GS cookies, I'd have used Nutter Butter and they would have been just as good I think.

And they danced

A few weeks ago, my cousin was in town and so we all descended apon my grandmother's apartment.

Landon and Zoey decided that dancing in Great-Grandma's kitchen was probably the best thing ever, secondly only to jumping in and out of the kitchen.