April 2006

04/29/06

Look at what we bought!  You can turn the impulse-buying, technology-geek, pop-culture loving, media-freaks into parents, but you can't squash the magic for long.  We also got a surround sound stereo set-up to go with this that isn't shown in the picture.  We now have it all set up and we've figured out how to trick our music-hating toddler.  We have muted Blue's Clues playing on the wide screen, but our new Bruce Springsteen CD, We Shall Overcome: The Seeger Sessions is blaring through the speakers.  Tommy doesn't know it's music and not TV.  Tricksy!  The fact that he has a cold and isn't napping because we want him in bed early tonight so we can eat chips & queso and watch a movie might have something to do with his acceptance of muted Blue's Clues.  I should maybe feel a bit guilty about putting our new toys ahead of Tommy's nap, but I'm not.  Oh, now he's hiding in the TV box.  Maybe we should take a drive and let him nap while we pick up fancy new earphones at Radio Shack.  Yes, I'm still obsessed enough about his sleep that we'll be using earphones tonight instead of the new speakers.

04/28/06

Tommy's cold isn't so very bad this time around.  He's certainly sick, but not completely miserable.  I did finally decide to ignore our pediatrician's anti-decongestant stance.  I'm tired of letting Tommy be miserable when I know there's something I can do to make him feel better.  He didn't nap again yesterday because he was too congested to fall asleep.  Watching zombie-Tommy snort, snuffle and cling all afternoon convinced me to buy some children's decongestant with pain reliever while I was out for an appointment.  I gave it to him at about 6:45 last night, right before his early bath.  Within 15 minutes he was breathing easier and his eyes were drooping.  He was fast asleep by 7:30 and only woke up once in the night for a drink of water.  He seems to feel a bit better today, and is sucking down decaf lemon tea with lots of fresh lemon juice and honey.  I'll probably give him some more medicine mid-day so that he'll nap.  There is a bright side to this illness though.  He sat on my lap, snuggled in a blanket, reading books for over an hour two different times yesterday.  Now that's what enjoyable parenting is all about.

04/27/06

We now why Tommy woke up so much the night before.  He has a cold.  He was also up for about 90 minutes in the middle of the night last night.  He kept waking up 10 minutes after I left him either disoriented, wanting me to come back, asking for a drink, or begging to go back to the hotel.  He eventually went back to sleep for the night at about 2 am and slept until 7:30 this morning.  I guess we're going to have a quiet day today.  He's playing happily, yet snottily, with his trains right now.

04/26/06

Tommy was up every two hours last night, for no discernable reason.  Therefore, today's post is brought to you by a randomly arranged assortment of paragraphs. 

Tommy loved our hotel room from the trip.  I think he especially liked having his own fold-out bed in the same room as our big bed.  I didn't have to get up in the night with him once while we were in the hotel.  I guess he was completely exhausted from all the fun and knew we were both right there whenever he partially woke up in the night.  He still hasn't stopped asking about our hotel.  He wants to go back.

When we first got to California, Tommy was pretty upset that we wouldn't be going home at the end of the day.  T his is the first trip that we really had to frequently explain what was going on to him.  David found just the right way to explain to him that our house and red car were still safe in Albuquerque.  "You helped me lock all the doors and close all the windows, remember?"  Tommy really latched onto the idea that the hotel room would be our home and that the blue rental car would be our car while on vacation.  He frequently exclaimed, "I love you hotel room.  I love you me bed.  This our hotel home.  My house safe and sound in Albuquerque."

My goals for the evenings were to let Tommy fall asleep whenever he was tired (forget the schedule!) and to not ever have a power-struggle over sleep.  Amazingly, it worked!  We gave him his bath and put him in his pajamas whenever it seemed reasonable to do so, but then read books and let him watch pay-per-view Chicken Little until he started really acting sleepy.  Then we turned off all the lights except a night light and went to bed.  We were both tired from traveling and not getting enough sleep at home, so going to bed at 8:30 California time wasn't a problem.  Then we just let him do whatever he wanted.  I told him he could sleep with us, or I would lie with him in his bed or he could be by himself.  He's old enough now to understand choices like that.  The first night, he wanted us to "get off my bed!" so we pretended to sleep in our bed while he roamed the mostly-dark hotel room.  He stood at the patio door for a while, watching the traffic lights, then he crawled into his bed and went to sleep.  If you had told me he was capable of this before the trip, I would not have believed you.  The other two nights, he reached that point of extreme drowsiness with me snuggling next to him, but then told me to go away so he could fall asleep.  He was asleep by 9:30 every night (10:30 ABQ time), and slept until about 7:30 (8:30 ABQ time) every morning.  I got to really sleep in for the first time since he was born!

All that Chicken Little watching gave Tommy a new phrase.  He frequently asked, "Need closure Mommy?" over the weekend.  I don't know what he thinks "closure" is, but he was insistent that we needed it.

At one point last week David rhetorically asked Tommy, "How did you get to be so cute?"  Tommy replied, "I cute because I a little boy!"

Speaking of cute, Tommy found a plush frog in the airport that he decided he really must have.  Contrary to what David might say, I don't actually buy him every toy he asks for.  I just really didn't want to listen to him beg for this frog during the entire 2.5 hour plane ride.  He got the frog.  He's still quite enamored of it, so it wasn't a totally wasteful purchase.  He kept telling us "He so cute!  He little baby frog."  Now that we're home, Tommy's worried that the frog misses his mommy and daddy frogs.  I finally told him that we could be the frog's family.  I would be his mommy, David would be his daddy and Tommy could be his brother.  Tommy loved that idea.  He tells his frog, "Be happy cute little frog.  Brother Tommy frog is right here."

04/25/06

We're home!  I'm just going to touch on the highlights of the trip and post pictures today.  If I try to be comprehensive, I won't get anything else done today.

The trip was a huge success.  We all had fun.  I wasn't stressed out.  There was no misery this time.  I can't figure out a good way to express how great this is.  I had begun to believe that I would never be able to enjoy traveling again.  I think 40% of the success can be contributed to Tommy's new maturity.  Two is so much easier (for us) than younger than 2.  He was capable of so much more this time around.  The other 60% of the success can be contributed to my new maturity.  I've mellowed.  I guess attitude really does count for something.  Anyway, I'll write more about exactly why this trip was so much better than the six previous trips tomorrow.  For now I'll just say that it went really, really well.  We all had fun and we all got plenty of sleep and we can't wait to take Tommy on more trips to new and interesting places.

And now, pictures and the basic events!

We arrived in Oakland mid-morning Friday and were checked into the Fremont Residence Inn by noon.  After lunch we drove down to San Jose, and took Tommy to the children's science museum.  It's about equivalent in size to the one here in Albuquerque, but much more crowded.  They did have a nice baby/toddler room that Tommy enjoyed.  We saved the water play area for last.  This was Tommy's favorite part, and he got completely soaked despite the protective rain coat.  We hadn't brought along a change of clothes, but it's wasn't that big of a deal (See!  I was relaxed!)  He ended up riding back to the hotel in just a dry diaper with David's coat draped over him.  He slept the whole drive anyway, so he didn't seem to mind being naked (not that he ever does mind).

Saturday was the day of the wedding.  We met the Sinars family for breakfast and then took Tommy and Claudia to a local park for the morning.  Cindy and baby Duncan and I sat and talked the whole time while David, Dan, Tommy and Claudia played.  After lunch we got ready for the wedding, and Tommy was very impressed when he saw me in make up and a skirt.  He kept holding me still so he could study my face.  He eventually declared "You like princess Mommy.  Pretty like princess."  Made my day!  The wedding was at the Thomas Fogarty Winery, about an hour away in the Santa Cruz Mountains.  We left an hour early so that Tommy could have a two hour nap in the car if he needed it.  He did.  The wedding was a great mix of Christian's German and Ming's Chinese heritages, and the setting was lovely.  They even built a sand castle together as part of the ceremony (they met while building sand castles).  Unfortunately, I don't have any pictures of the happy couple.  We were too busy keeping Tommy quiet and entertained during the ceremony, and we never got a chance to talk with them as they were busy with pictures and speeches and stuff.  I'm sure we'd have gotten a chance to talk and take pictures together if we could have stayed through the cake-cutting and dancing part, but Tommy was ready to give up and leave by then.  He had lots of fun running around the grounds, and didn't sit still more than about 30 minutes of the five hours we were there.  As usual, he was overwhelmed by the loud crowd when the indoors, sit-down dinner part started so he didn't stay inside for long.  He coped by hiding under the table for a while, but we eventually had to take turns with him outside.  That boy does not like crowds...just like me.  It was a bit breezy and chilly there so we kept his jacket on the whole time he was outside.  It took me weeks of shopping and multiple purchases to find a nice shirt for him to wear and no one even saw it.  Oh well.   

On Sunday we drove down to Monterey and met David's cousins Michael and Catherine.  We had a great day!  This was one of the parts of the vacation that was so surprising to me.  I didn't worry about Tommy's schedule or nap, but instead we did whatever seemed fun while adjusting for Tommy's mood and exhaustion level as we went along.  I was impressed by how much fun Tommy and I could pack into the day when I didn't let myself worry about stuff.  We didn't bring a stroller, yet he managed to do five hours of tourist stuff and stayed in a relatively calm mood.  We started out by visiting the huge Monterey Aquarium.  Unfortunately they were having a special event that day, and one of the docents told us it was their busiest day of the year.  It was REALLY crowded.  We probably only saw half of it, but what we did see was great.  Tommy always loves fish and sea creatures, so he managed to ignore the crowds better than usual.  His favorite parts were a tidal/wave display outdoors, the octopus tanks, a random tank of camouflaged deep see creatures, the penguins, and the giant shark tank (dark and quiet).  After a couple hours at the aquarium, we had a wonderful lunch at an Italian/seafood restaurant.  Tommy ate five large meatballs and drank a bunch of lemonade.  David took Tommy down to the beach while the rest of us finished eating.  Of course, David let Tommy go into the water, which was the highlight of Tommy's day.  I had remembered to bring a change of clothing this day...but I left it in the car.  So I spent $50 on clothes and a towel in a nearby tourist shop.  Tommy was so happy to get out of his wet clothes and into the cozy fleece leisure suit I bought him.  Then we did a bit of shopping and went back to the Aquarium gift shop.  Tommy made out like a bandit because I don't make good decisions when tired and surrounded by huge crowds.  He ended up with a hermit crab puppet, a scallop puppet, a long rubber snake (his choice), an otter squeaker toy, a huge shark poster, and a book about sharks.  He also got to help me put salt water taffy into our shopping basket, so we ended up with 2 lbs of taffy.  As we got ready to leave, he got some gifts from Mike and Catherine.  He ate all the jelly beans that came with the plush bunny they gave him and promptly fell asleep clutching the bunny.  We took a longer, scenic route back to the hotel, and he slept the whole way.

So, tomorrow I'll write about our evenings at the hotel.  Tommy's starting to say "all done computer Mommy!" over and over so I'd better wrap up and post this.  

04/20/06 - later

Tommy and I lost each other in the huge clothing department of Sears this morning.  With the help of some shoppers and sales clerks, I found him after about ten minutes.  He was too short for us to easily see among the racks of clothes, but he eventually went to an open aisle and started calling for me.  Tommy's take on it all was, "I scared you Mommy.  Sorry about that.  You found me!"  I couldn't have said it better myself.

04/20/06

The first thing Tommy asked for when he woke up this morning was his "tchab."  I had no idea what he was talking about, and neither did David.  We looked from room to room, hoping he would spot it on his own.  Tommy remained calm in the face of his parents' confusion, but he did start asking louder and more frequently with lots of very pitiful cries of "please!"  Then he started elaborating. It was a "small tchab."  It was a toy.  Finally he said it had "big claws."  I finally figured out he was asking for a crab.  We have two possible "toys" that match that description, the live hermit crabs in the saltwater fish tank and a large crab puppet.  Tommy was insistent that neither of these were the right crab.  I was stumped.  He's been watching a BBC documentary about ocean life lately and there's a segment about baby crabs on it.  I asked him if he wanted to watch it.  No!  Eventually he said "aquarium with Uncle Terry."  Ah ha.  He was thinking of a crab we don't actually own.  He saw one when we were at the aquarium gift store with Uncle Terry a month ago.  While there, he had searched out one of each of his favorite sea creatures, including a crab, and lined them up on a ledge.  Uncle Terry bought him the beloved starfish duo, but we left the rest there.  That boy has a good memory.  I don't think we'll have time to go out to the aquarium today, so hopefully I can get him to forget about it.

In other news, I've purchased three different pairs of khaki pants for Tommy to wear to the wedding.  None of them fit.  I guess he's wearing jeans.  I have one pair of jeans that fit him so I hope he can keep them clean for the duration.  I'd hate to have him in sweat pants by the end of the reception.  He's kind of between sizes now.  It seems he does this every spring.  He still has a 2T waist, but because he's still in diapers he needs a 3T rise.  His pant leg length is in between 2T and 3T.  Luckily it's almost time for shorts every day here, so he's just going to keep wearing sweat pants for the next few weeks.  His 2T short-sleeved shirts left over from last summer are a bit short, but we have a few 3T short-sleeved shirts that Uncle Benny and Aunt Erin gave him.  I really need to buy summer clothes for him. 

Anyway, I'll be back Monday so no more posts until Tuesday! 

04/19/06

We're going to California for a friend's wedding this weekend.  (For all our college friends out there, Christian's getting married!)  This will be Tommy's 7th airplane trip.  I'm actually feeling quite optimistic about it this time, even though large portions of every other trip were miserable.  He's really grown up a lot since that our last trip in November.  I've mellowed a bit too.  I think I'm going to try to just let him sleep when he's tired enough to fall asleep on his own.  Now, this strategy has never worked in the past because if I don't get him to sleep just when he's starting to get tired then he goes into super-hyper-sleep-fighting-overdrive.  Once that happens we're doomed to 2-3 hours of struggle.  I'm just not going to do the struggle this time.  If he doesn't sleep then we'll just let him play or read books or watch TV.  If that means he doesn't go to sleep until midnight, then we'll just sleep in the next morning.  Think I'll be able to maintain this laissez-faire attitude?  Me neither.  Wish us luck! 

Anyway, Tommy's still not napping more than one day out of four.  He's also started to get really bored with TV.  This was part of my master plan.  Let him watch TV whenever he asks because eventually he'll figure out that playing with me is much more exciting.  It's working.  I just didn't expect it to happen so early.  This means I'm having to actively parent for 12 hours at a time.  The horrors!  The end result is that I have less time to write things for this blog.  If I don't write tomorrow, then you won't hear from me until next Tuesday after our trip.

(Hopefully you all know this was written tongue in cheek.) 

04/17/06

Tommy's Easter adventures started on Saturday.  We went out to dinner that night, and while at Red Robin Tommy saw a small, plush Spiderman doll in a pinball machine prize display.  Unfortunately, Daddy didn't manage to win it.  In a spirit of holiday excess we told Tommy we'd go to the toy store and buy him a Spiderman.  When we got to Toys R Us, the first thing Tommy saw was their display of outdoor playhouses.  He fell in love, deeply in love, I tell you.  Scratch the Spiderman, we're getting a playhouse!  We told him the Easter Bunny would bring him a house in the morning, so he happily left the store talking all about his new house and the Easter Bunny.  Actually, that's a bit of a fib.  He pitched a mini-fit when he discovered that we hadn't bought a Spiderman, but got over it when we reminded him about his house.

Bedtime progressed as usual, but Tommy was still really excited about the Easter Bunny and his house.  He kept going on and on about it.  "Easter Bunny bring me house.  In the morning, sun come up and I wake up.  Daddy and Tommy build house.  I help!  Need hammer bang, bang, bang.  Need screwdriver, turn round, round round.  Need wrench.  House has door and roof and windows and sink and table and doorbell, ding-dong.  Morning now?  No, sleep first.  Easter Bunny bring candy and presents and eggs too."  I was hoping he'd calm down and go to sleep.  Um, no.  By about 8:20 he was crying because he was hungry.  I wasn't too surprised about that because he had been too excited about Spiderman to eat much dinner.  We gave him a bagel (which he inhaled in less than 5 minutes) and read some more books and tried putting him to bed again.

Our plan was to dye eggs after Tommy went to bed Saturday night.  We thought it might be too messy to let him help, and we'd hoped the colored eggs would make a nice surprise in the morning.  Since we were in the kitchen, I didn't hear Tommy open his door (as he often does on nights when he's fighting sleep).  He padded out into the kitchen at about 8:40.  "What doing Mommy?  What doing Daddy?  Oh my!  Eggs!  Me help?"  Still in an indulgent holiday spirit, we let him help us finish dying the eggs.  He was very careful and really enjoyed it, so I'm glad he ended up getting to help.  After all that he was still really wound up.  He didn't end up falling asleep until almost 10.  That's very late for our little guy.

He was up by 5:30 the next morning, all excited about his Easter Bunny presents.  I kept him occupied with his Easter Basket until about 6:45 when I gave up and let him wake David.  They were outside putting the house together by 7:15.  Tommy had so much fun putting the house together.  He spent almost the whole day outside in his house.  He did come in for a nice long nap around noon so at least he wasn't cranky from his short night.  It was really nice to have him so totally absorbed with his house since we were puttering around cooking Easter dinner most of the afternoon.  Our friends Eric and Karen came over for Easter dinner and it really was a lovely afternoon and evening. 

Tommy's Easter basket was heavy on dinosaurs, relatively light on candy.

The house!  Note that his hammer is in the correct loop on his carpenter jeans.

  A randomly excellent picture, even if I do say so myself.

Egg hunting.  Somehow I didn't end up with any pictures of Eric and Karen.  Sorry guys.

04/16/06

Happy Easter!  I have lots to write about, so check back tomorrow.

The Easter Bunny brought Tommy a big mud puddle.

04/14/06 - later

It could have been worse.

Tommy could have eaten the small tube of white paint he managed to open while I was in the shower.

He could have rubbed the paint into the carpet or furniture instead of onto half his face and his palm.

He could have run around touching things instead of running in to tell me "Oh no!  My hand all dirty.  This lotion feel crazy!"

He could still be a half-painted white face clown instead of a vigorously scrubbed little boy.

He could have been allergic to something in the paint, but the redness on his face, neck and hand has faded.

I'm so lucky.

My brother painted himself with green food coloring and cold cream (Hulk!) on Easter Sunday more than 20 years ago.

It must be genetic.

04/14/06

David and I were at the computer yesterday when we heard some banging and splashing from the kitchen.  David called out, "What are you doing Tommy?"  Tommy replied, "Make a big mess!"  At least he's honest.

04/13/06

I think Tommy's giving up his nap.  He's only taken one nap out of four days this week.  It seems strange that he would go from a 2 hour minimum nap to no nap at all.  Stupid daylight savings time.  He's really pretty tired at the end of a no-nap day (and cranky, and easily upset and accident-prone).  I just can't figure out how to get him to sleep when he's so very, very not sleepy at nap time.  Maybe I'll try a shorter nap later in the afternoon.  Before the time change he was in a really well established pattern of nighttime sleep from 8-6 and naptime from 12-2.  I usually had to wake him up at 2, but if I did then he would go to sleep without a struggle six hours later.  The number of awake hours (2 stretches of 6 hours each) seemed to make more of a difference for him than the number of hours slept.  Now it's all messed up.  We had gradually moved him to the new time before we changed the clocks, but it didn't stick.  First he was resisting sleep at bedtime until about 9 and sleeping in until after 6:30.  He was napping just fine from about 12:30-2:30.  I tried waking him up at 6:15 the first couple of mornings this week in hopes that he'd shift his bedtime back to 8 or 8:30.  It worked the first night, but he's only napped once since then.  To make up for the missed naps he's been sleeping from 7:30-6:30 at night.  Maybe he just needs 11 hours of sleep a day now instead of 12 and is going to get it all at night.  That will be OK I guess.  I bet he doesn't give up the nap completely though.  He's probably going to go through one of those annoying (to me) transition periods where I won't know what to expect from day to day. Sometimes he'll get all his sleep at night and sometimes he'll nap really easily.  I hate not knowing what to expect.  It makes me a little crazy.

04/12/06

Which one is my thumb again?  All this ice cream and sun has befuddled me.

I did it!  Aaaaye!

04/11/06

Sometimes my mommy dresses me all cute and stuff.  It's hardly the tough guy image I'd like to project.

04/10/06

Evidence of the oddness of toddlers...

I bought a new little CD player for the kitchen on Sunday.  The big boom box we had in there was a present for my 20th birthday, and is finally starting to break.  After we unpacked it, we wanted to put in a CD to see how it sounded.  As usual, Tommy wasn't too happy about that.  He doesn't like for us to listen to music, remember?  He wasn't calming down even when we let him pick the CD, but finally relented when we suggested "Uncle Benny's CD."  This is a mix-CD Ben burned for me while I was pregnant.  I don't know what Tommy expected, but he got all excited about it until the music actually started.  Then he FREAKED OUT.  In between his sobs I could just make out the phrases "want" "Uncle Benny" and "not music."  I guess he thought the CD was a recording of Uncle Benny instead of music.  I finally suggested we call Ben, thinking that might calm him.  It did.  Tommy took a big shuddering breath, broke into a gigantic smile and ran to get the phone.  Luckily, Ben was home and Tommy talked to him for quite a while.  I had to prompt him on things to say since he's still kind of new to this whole phone thing.  The fact that Tommy wanted to hear Ben's voice seemed to make Ben really happy.  We miss you Uncle Benny and Aunt Erin!

At 4:45 this morning, Tommy came barreling out of his room, crying and saying "Where me apple!"  He was still half asleep, but could not be convinced that it wasn't time to eat apples.  So I carried him into the kitchen and got an apple out of the fruit bowl for him.  He hugged it.  He said "Love you apple."  He took a big bite.  Then I sat down with him in the rocking chair, and he immediately started nodding off.  He'd occasionally jerk himself awake to take a bite of his apple, but he was ready to lie down again in about five minutes.  I tried to take the apple away when I put him into bed.  It didn't work.  So I let him sleep with his apple.  Hey, I don't mind sticky apple sheets as long as he's not up for the day before 5 am.

Tommy does The Fonzie, complete with "Aaaaye!"  Sometimes he forgets and uses his index fingers, but he usually gets it right.

04/07/06

The new dinosaur.

 So Tommy's no-nap day turned into a pretty unhappy evening.  He was still pretty mellow when David got home, but we could tell he was tired.  He happily sat down for dinner since we were eating some of his favorite things - meatloaf with extra veggies in the mix, corn and broccoli.  He was fine for about four bites, but then he saw a new toy at the other end of the table.  We'd bought a birthday present for one of his friends that morning, and I'd put it on the table when we came home.  That was a mistake.  He wanted to open it.  When he's well rested he understands that birthday presents are toys for other people and not for him.  He helped pick it out and was excited to give it to his friend.  After being awake for 11 hours he was not so understanding.  He completely lost it.  We know he's past the point of rationality when he runs into David's closet, pulls the door shut, and sobs and screams himself hoarse.  This doesn't happen very often, but it did last night. 

I finally got him to calm down by showing him his older, less-cool version of the same toy.  He eventually agreed to sit at the table and play with it, only occasionally pausing to take a shaky, shuddering breath and wiping snot on his sleeve.  Since we don't believe in punishing kids for being over-tired, and also don't believe in making mealtimes or food a power struggle, we started giving him bites of his dinner.  After a couple of bites while playing he calmed down and really started eating.  He ate everything on his really full plate in about five minutes.  Then he ran over to his tall stool at the kitchen counter and ate all the rest of the corn out of the serving bowl.  I guess he was hungry too.

After dinner we played for about 15 minutes before Brendan came to pick David up for volleyball.  It's been about 4 months since the fall season ended and David's been home almost every evening since then.  I guess Tommy's forgotten that there are some evenings when we do his bath and bedtime routine without David.  He said goodbye calmly, but caught sight of David and Brendan through his bedroom window.  Daddy was driving away!  Resume screaming and sobbing.  "My Daddy!  Come home Daddy!  No volleyball!  Ahhh!"  He never really got over David being gone that evening.  Every step in the routine reminded him that David wasn't there.  He eventually replaced the crying with quiet whimpers of "My Daddy" but he was still pretty upset.  By that point I was almost as exhausted as Tommy so we did everything early and quickly.  He was asleep by 7:30, but only after I promised him David would tiptoe in AFTER he fell asleep and kiss him good night.  Poor little guy.  

04/06/06

I bought Tommy another new dinosaur toy today.  I'm such a sucker.  It's a T-Rex that chomps and roars when you pull a lever on its belly.  Tommy thinks it super cool.  He was nodding off nicely at his regular nap time today when he remembered it.  By the time I brought it to him he was all wound up and ready to play again.  No nap for Tommy.  Oh well.  He's in a pretty good mood and now I know he'll go to sleep easily and early tonight.  Tonight is David's first volleyball game of the spring season, so I'm glad that bedtime will be easy.  Since he's pretty tired he's spent most of the afternoon watching his Dinotopia DVD...three times in a row.  Yeah.  I'm a wonderful and inspired parent today.  Actually, we spent more than an hour hiding and finding plastic Easter eggs this morning, and most of the time that Dinotopia has been playing Tommy was using his T-Rex to attack his zoo animals and pillage the Little People buildings.  So it hasn't been a totally static brain-mushing afternoon. 

04/05/06

At the park yesterday, Tommy begged an oatmeal raisin cookie off a friendly grandmother while my back was turned.  He was so excited about it.  I guess he'd never had one before, which is strange since they're one of my favorite cookies.  To get him to stop bugging the lady for more cookies, I mentioned that we could make some at home.  He forgot about it the rest of the morning, but the first thing out of his mouth when he woke up from his nap was "make cookies now?"  So we made cookies together for the first time.  He helps me cook a lot, but for some reason we've never made cookies.  It's possible I haven't made cookies at all since he was old enough to help, because it's hard to find high-altitude recipes, and I'm still not very good at instinctively adjusting recipes.  Anyway, there was a high altitude adjustment on the Quaker Oats canister so I was golden.  Tommy had me move his big two-step stool over and helped with every single thing.  He held the lid with the recipe on it and pretend to read it, repeating each ingredient as I said it out loud.  "Brown sugar AND white sugar.  Now cinnamon!"  He helped me dump each cupful and spoonful into the bowl.  He helped stir.  "Mix it! (This was accompanied by hand motions and a contrasting hip wiggle.)  He helped put the balls of dough on the pan, moving them around and counting them.  "Cookie dough in the pan.  Roll, roll, roll.  Eleven, twelve! Now cook it."  When David got home Tommy immediately wanted to tell him all about the cookies.  He remembered most of the steps when David asked what he did.  I was pretty impressed.  When David called his parents a few hours later, Tommy wanted to tell Grandma all about the cookies.  He almost never talks on the phone, but he kept going on and on and wanted to talk multiple times.  "Make cookies Grandma!  In the kitchen.  Put in pan.  Cookies!"  I guess it's obvious that he really enjoyed making cookies.  We'll have to do it again soon.  It's a good thing I had a small lunch yesterday since I used 6 of my 24 daily Weight Watcher points on cookies.

04/04/06

When I gave Tommy his bowl of cereal for breakfast this morning, he said "Good cooking Mommy!  I proud of you."  Thanks Tommy.

I just realized that I haven't posted a picture of David's freshwater fish tank in a long time.  I think he'd just started trying to grow live plants in it the last time I took a picture.  Here's what the tank looks like now.  He propped the bog wood log up against the side of the tank.  That's what all the plants on the left are growing on.

04/03/06

Happy birthday Grandpa Wayne (aka Dad)!

We had a nice weekend.  It was one of those perfect weather weekends we have here in the spring.  It was probably 70-75 degrees, just windy enough to be cool and comfortable, extremely bright and sunny in a way that you only get at our elevation (5500 feet).  We spent a lot of time outside and took Tommy to two different parks.  We even flew a kite, but Tommy was only interested in it for about 15 minutes.  Very nice.

Tommy got an Easter gift from our neighbors on Friday.  It was a new sand bucket wrapped up like an Easter basket with some toys and candy in it.  One of the toys was a squishy rubber dragon.  He's slept with it ever since he got it.  On Saturday morning, as soon as he woke up he ran up to my bed frantically asking for his bucket.  Once I dragged myself out of bed, I helped him find it.  He looked inside and asked me "where candy in it?"  I'd put the candy on the counter.  I gave him some jelly beans and then decided to get out our Easter decorations.  He was so excited.  He didn't remember any of them from last year, so to him it was like I went out into the garage and came back with this giant box full of treasures.  I explained about the Easter bunny and told him that he would put more toys, candy and eggs in his bucket on Easter.  I must have done a bad job of explaining because he decided the Easter bunny was going to sneak in during the night and take his precious bucket.  He finally calmed down and figured it all out.  Now he's all excited for the Easter bunny to bring him candy.  Since hard boiled eggs are one of his absolute favorite foods, he's going to love that part too.  We'll probably dye eggs multiple times between now and Easter.  In the first picture above, he has his Easter bunny ears on and is hopping around like the Easter bunny.  "I Easter bunny!  Cute little bunny.  Put candy and eggs in me bucket.  Hop, hop, hop."  I guess we're going to have to refill his bucket when the current candy stash is gone.  Oh, and on Saturday morning he gave me one of his jelly beans and said "Trick or treat!  No, no, no.  Happy Easter!" 

After a long walk home from the park, Tommy relaxed in front of the TV with the stick and "pinecorn" he picked up.

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