Weekly Update 04.18.10

Doots would like to know: would you like your salmon with a Bearnaise sauce? Or perhaps a Hollandaise? Because he could whip up either equally well, your preference.





Anyhoo.

Happy 'nother week to everybody! I could write and write and write, but instead I will use bullet points. Just to be different for once. Behold, the Bulleted List of Week in Review:

• It got kinda hot. I got kinda bummed. But! Then! It rained and cooled back to normal for this time of year, so no more complaining from me.

• I still have not read my book club book for this month, I may be a wee bit in danger of not finishing. I still have hope, though. Tomorrow, I try to track down a copy of that darn novel...

• I got a bunch of first-birthday-party stuff done: Scott pretty much finished the invite design, we just have to have it printed and start addressing. Guest list is pretty much settled. The park shelter is paid for and reserved for the day. Also some DIY is finished or mostly finished up: I made four 4-yard pennant/flag banners to hang, for about $7 in supplies I made about $60 worth of banners. Sweet. I almost finished with the cupcake toppers, and am about half-way done with favor tags. And am using old glass bottles for flower vases, they are all decoupaged and be-ribboned and stuffed full of that green stuff to add flower stems... Next step is to get a cupcake and baby-cake baker set up. And my goodness, but this first birthday planning is like planning a mini-wedding.

• We went downtown for a nice long walk this weekend. We poked around in a few stores, where Peter worked on his "charming the beautiful ladies" routine. I think he's got it down pat, from the responses from his fellow downtown walkers and store owners and shoppers. I found this sweet hat for him at one of the Jayhawk stores downtown.
  

• Stopped at Sylas and Maddy's for some ice cream before heading back home. And they had Blue Moon, be still my Northern-girl heart. Peter and I shared a scoop.

• He also begged some Peanut-butter Freak off of his dad.
  

• Checked out a rummage sale on Saturday morning, and hit up the Farmer's Market. Bought some yummeh-yummeh oyster mushrooms at said Farmer's Market. Totally going back and buying more next week.

• I bought some goodies for my front-porch container gardens at Sunrise, just a start to see where we stand. Only, it is still kinda cold in the evenings, so I still pack them up and bring them in at night. Thought it would be best to maybe wait to plant them until next weekend maybe.
  

• And how's the baby? Well, he started screaming this week, mixing it into his baby babble repertoire. Yay. Daycare loves it about as much as we do. I try to ignore him for the most part...

• He has a new obsession with putting things away. I will open a random drawer, only to discover that he replaced the towels with his cars, for example.

• Also, I am sad to announce: he's gotten a little bit... independent. Opinionated. Straight up mad if you take away something he was clearly enjoying (like, oh, when he's pounding on the laptop. Or trying to eat a popcorn kernel he found under the couch. Or attempting to scale the kitchen drawers). Yeeeah. Nowhere near tantrums yet, thankfully. It's his chubby little baby thighs that get slapped by his chubby little hands when he's mad, along with what I imagine is some foul baby language from the sound of things.

• And he makes this... face? I can't explain it really, and he'll do it at random moments when he's thinking really hard. He kinda scrunches his lips into his nose and breathes loudly through his nose.... Yeah here's a shot to prove it:
  

• No, really. Here's another one.
  

• What's he doing, other than weird faces and such? Well, he's crazy for cereal. In the mornings he has his morning bottle and we get dressed/ready for the day, then head downstairs. He goes to his mat and waits patiently, playing while I get his breakfast ready. And if it happens to be a cereal day? And I get that cup out and shake the cereal box? He. Loses. His. Mind. OMG. His arms flap and his face gets contorted and he gets all screamy. It's like a teenage girl seeing Justin Bieber in the flesh.
  

• He really takes his morning cereal seriously. And his firetruck pajamas are a bit too big. I put them on him anyway (obviously).
  

• We also got a bunch of yard work done this weekend, by the way. Yay, yardwork! You forget how daunting that task is until you get started.

• Okay random note: I love Lawrence. Downtown we came across this dude. Not asking for spare change, not making a political message, not assaulting my eardrums with his "art". No, he's just giving out free hugs.
  

• What happens when a klutz has a baby who inherits the klutz gene? A lot of boo-boos, that's what. This weekend alone, the child has accumulated the following: another black eye. A small bruise on his forehead. A bruise on his cheek. Two huge, red, gaping mosquito welts on his side (that he inherited from his mommy too, a wicked reaction to mosquito bites). Multiple bangs to the back of the head while trying to stand in precarious places. And the coup de grace: out of the corner of my eye, I saw him taking a backwards trust fall INTO THE DIRECTION OF THE SHARP, SHARP COFFEE TABLE. So, still out of the corner of my eye, I reach out to grab him. Only, I end up jamming my fingernail into his eye. Yes, INTO his eye, which on top of things only propelled him into the coffee table even harder. So he has a nice set of broken blood vessels in his eye to boot. You can kinda see them in the corner of his left eye in the pic below, they got a bit more prominent after that. I was waiting for his eyeball to deflate or something. Mommy of the year, that's me.
  

• How about some ravioli-eating pictures! I mean, I know it's kinda overdone and all, everybody has that spaghetti or ravioli chaos shot of their kids. But this isn't that boring, is it?
  

• Er. Or maybe it is? Well what if we added a baby sipping out of a teeny Starbucks cup?
  

• Not even when he dumps the remainder in his lap and simultaneously does the "Ta Da!" at the end?
  

• Oh, okay then. No more ravioli pictures.

• One last thing on the kid! His hair is getting longer and I don't think we can fight the curl much longer. C'est la vie. Hopefully he ends up being one of those kids with angelic curls, not crazy curls.
  

• Also it has been, like, unbearably hot in our kitchen. ALREADY. And it's only April! I already had a game plan for meals for the week, but decided about mid-week that dude: heating up a kitchen in the evenings when it is already 79 F when I start, is just not the way to go. So: I hit the grill. For the first time, like, ever. In my life, like ever. And I decided, of all things, to take a oven-roasted chicken recipe and switch it to the grill. But! It was great! All went well, no one caught on fire or even got a burn (Peter watched me from the safety of the swing set), and the chicken turned out fabulously. In my humble opinion. It's grilling for me from here on out.
  
  

Peace out homies. See you next week.