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.

To the park we go.

I'm never complaining about wintertime again. We basically went right from winter (with a few lovely days in the lower 70s) straight to Kinda On The Warm Side, temps near or in the 80s and sun beating down... Blech.


Last night some storms came through, and today was nice and cool-ish again, perfect park weather in my opinion. So after I got off of work, we took Peter down to the park near our house.

There is a DQ on the route back home, how fortuitous. Doots had a cup of vanilla, then we headed home for the night. Good start to the weekend.

Weekly Update 04.11.10

He looks like he just won a ton o' cash at the race tracks, right? But no. Instead he found two dollars in his father's wallet and was so incredibly jazzed, we couldn't help but let him carry on for awhile.

Later he tried to reach some of his beautiful babies to see if they maybe wanted to go out for an ice cream, but no one answered his calls. Bummer. And PS hello! You mom is RIGHT HERE and she is more than happy for an ice cream date. Sheesh, 10 months into this motherhood thing and I'm already too uncool for a mom/son date.

You know that awesome, relax-y feeling you get on a Sunday evening when the baby's in bed, dinner has been enjoyed and the kitchen is shiny spotless, and the last load of laundry is finished and folded, the bags are packed for tomorrow, and your house is clean and quiet and cozy-dark and you can just sit down and breathe, and enjoy a glass of wine, and maybe write a blog post? Yeah. I'm there. Sadly at 9:30pm, but hey, I'll take it. Anyhoo. This week in summary:

Busy as usual (never a bad thing). I've been taking my antibiotics and hey, whadda ya know - I feel about 8 thousand times better. Funny how that works.

I also spent one evening filling in our future engagements in our shared Google Calendar and tried my best not to cry. This little family is busy every weekend until May 22nd, then busy again until August something. Eeps. How did two very hermit-like individuals get themselves into this kind of mess?? Aw hell, and I have a baby birthday to plan on top of things.

Fun times ahead!

In weekend news, I will just type out some random snippets because otherwise I'm not sure how to collect all my wayward thoughts on an eventful-yet-homey-weekend-o'-stuff:

Friday Scott and I went out on a real life date, it was lovely! Many many thanks to my dear brother Paul, who pretended to be excited to make a 30-minute drive each way to sit in our house and stare at the wall for 3.5 hours while our child snoozed and we ran amok downtown. But hey man - I fed him, like, leftovers. Not just any leftovers! A lovely tuna and marinara with capers and lemon over rotini kind of leftovers. And we also forced him to eat (like in a, "man you have to eat this! No really, eat it!!" kind of way) the last surviving slice of key lime pie that was floating around in the fridge. So, uh. Yeah. We probably still owe him Big Time.

Anyhoo though! We had a nice long evening of sashimi and drinks at the Yokohama sushi bar, and then lingered over a nightcap at Free State. Then just to ensure we were Responsible Adults Who Drive Sober, we decided to blow some time at Borders. Just like the old days when we lived near downtown! Only: now our Borders closes at 10pm, so we basically walked in the door and heard the "Borders is now closing, please bring your purchases to the nearest counter.." message. Oh, yay. I mean, lame, right? They used to stay open until like midnight. So instead we tromped around downtown a bit before heading back home.

You ever have one of those moments where you think you are just sooooo smart, like "hey why install the baby drawer locks when we have a yard stick the baby can't get into them that way, har har har"? Yeah. We had one of those moments. And clearly we should have less of them.

Saturday we had a first birthday party for a dear friend's son. Cowboy themed, oh yeah! Julie and I were pregnant at the same time, our kids are a mere 8 weeks apart, so we bonded over "so-yeah-this-weird...-thing?-happened-and-yo-man-what-IS-that-all-about-pregnancy-is-bizarre!!!" moments. A lot. Plus we both happened to have towheaded baby boys with bright blue eyes and fair skin and when they were really small they could have been twins. You know, like the kind of twins where one twin looks 2 months older than the other.

Anyway.

The party was like a training session for where we'll be in a few short months - wow, almost a year. How did this happen already? Feels like I was just trying to figure out how to do this darn swaddling thing, now I'm researching potty chairs. Future mommies take note: it really truly does go by in the blink of an eye. So enjoy every little moment.

Also, Julie: rad party. Clearly I have a lot to live up to :)

Let's see. Other than that we did a lot of spring-and-summerizing. Scott was a dream and went around and sprayed and sealed and did all sorts of fun things to ensure that the buggies and hot blasts of air don't sneak into the house this summer. He also mowed and did some upkeep in the yard and oh my gosh, I just realized that now with the baby upkeep in the yard will be about a thousand times more complicated. Peter and I decided to spend some quality time together by shopping. And shopping. And shopping. We stopped for a quick lunch at Culvers, where our boy may or may not have shared a Cheeseburger Butterburger Value Meal with his mother. And man, but he inhaled the meat, would squawk angrily for more in-between bites. They must have some quality beef in their burgers (or so I tell myself).

See now: Paulo is not the only one forced to eat our tuna marinara and lemon caper pasta leftovers.

This weekend while grocery shopping the Starbucks lady was walking around giving samples of an iced green tea, and we took one and Peter was Super Excited to share it. I think the teeny sample cup made for easy baby sipping (and totally resembles a shot glass, which is also slighty funny to see a baby hit it). So he enjoyed the beverage. Then he insisted on eating the ice. And then! He played with the cup, pretending to drink out of it the rest of our time in the store (he would also make an over-exaggerated slurping noise, oh the humanity you're killing me kid). So god help me, but I couldn't throw that stupid cup away. I took it home and washed it and he now uses it at meals, happy as a clam to drink like the Big People.

It kinda makes me sad. But it also kinda cracks me up, because he now is obsessed with cups and will play with them all the live long day, pretending to mix drinks and feed them to you or drink them himself. Future bartender-in-training.

He looks like a drunk frat boy here, right? Or maybe that's just me.

Weekly Update 4.05.10

Hai.


I am tired and still sick (oh, guess what! A wicked sinus infection, yeah. Maybe I should have went to the doctor weeks ago instead of letting it linger into what will soon be remembered as The Month Long Headache of Suck). So, it will be mostly pictures this week. I am sure you are super upset (not really).


So - the weather, it went from chilly and gross to really really really nice. We took advantage and spent some time outside as much as we possibly could.

Okay a quick side note: this shirt in the picture below was a split-second grab on my way to check out at Old Navy a few months ago, it was on clearance for like 97 cents. And it is one of my favorite Mr. Doots shirts.

Swinging.

We love swinging.

The new swing set looks nice in the yard, eh? Now we need to start working on spring-i-fying our yard...

Cupcakes are best enjoyed outside.

Um, if you missed the secret posted the first time - Peter actually has pretty curly hair. We just brush it out a lot (while wet most certainly) to keep those curls under control.

So on Good Friday Scott was off work, I was off work, and Peter didn't have daycare. No pictures, but we spent the day shopping. Got a bunch of presents for summer birthdays and weddings, I finally got a pair of sunglasses, and we had a long lunch at Free State. It was lovely.

Then Saturday we headed to the 'Burg for Easter. Peter and Miss Mahni got re-acquainted (didn't take long).

My brother was goofing with my camera and I showed him where I felt the Pain of Sinus Infectionism.

Doots doots and Doot's Dad.

He learned to make that "pfffffft" car noise that little boys make when they play with toy cars? I think his cousin Dylan taught him. So we have been enjoying the spitty, noisy sounds ever since.

Hey - I may have grown up with a bunch of women, but I can still figure out how to play with cars, okay?

Later Saturday evening I spied the Easter Bunnies filling baskets. Uh, yeah. Us "kids" still get baskets. Needless to say there is a lot of candy at our house right now.

Scott stole my camera and took a picture of his beer.

Then it was Easter! Peter was rockin' it Mad Men 1960-style and wore a romper. Even pulled it off while sitting on the floor, helping Muzzy and grandpa make Easter brunch. He has mad cooking skillz.

Easter Basket Time.

The boys devouring their candy.

Doots changed into something more comfortable, then "played" with Tinnie. And by "played", I mean "played hard to get"...

For dessert we made cupcakes! Actually my dad baked them. I helped to decorate.

The crown pork roast!

Later we had some Peep-role-play fun. Tinnie gave it a shot first.

I promised her I wouldn't put this picture on Facebook. And for the record: I didn't.



Then she saw the video with Peter and the Duckie Tub, and she went to wish him sweet dreams during naptime.

Later Peter tried out the Peep costume. He was not as excited as Tinnie.

And that was about it for the weekend - we visited Nikki and Rick and momma Bev before heading back to Lawrence, where we hit a standstill on Hwy 10. There was an accident that put things back a bit. Got home, then off to bed for everyone.

And yeah, then today. We had some morning thunderstorms, then a sunny (and kinda humid) afternoon. Peter went for a ride in the coupe but kinda zonked out about halfway through. How in the world sleeping in such a position is comfortable to small children is beyond me.

So there you go, in a nutshell. I'm off to do some lines of antibiotics, then to bed with me. Have a good week my dears, hope that you all had a lovely Easter...