Sunday, November 30, 2008

It ain't turkey

but I guess it will do.





Bring that spoon a little closer. Closer....closer....




Do you think Mama should have considered putting a bib on me or something??






Someone who can talk needs to remind my big brother to chew with his mouth closed.

Saturday, November 29, 2008

I rock, ya'll


Too bad the story's only half written. Maybe I'll write the next 50,000 words next November.

Wednesday, November 26, 2008

Before you say it

I know that I have fallen ridiculously behind with my blog posting. You'll have to forgive me--trying to write my self-assigned 50,000 words this month has pretty much zapped all of the free time that I usually reserve for adding cute pictures and uplifting stories to this site. (I'm at 41,752 for anyone who's wondering)

But the shame of my abandonment has gotten to me, so in order to appease the guilt monster until I can do a real post after Thanksgiving sometime, I am leaving you with this adorable picture of Chase and a short little story about it. Now this picture is an old one from Halloween day, but I thought the story was cute enough to share a month old picture. Enjoy.


There we were playing in the sandbox waiting for the darkness to come so that we could go trick or treating when Chase began making a round pile of sand on the box's ledge.

"It's cake cake," he said with a smile.

"Mmm, Mama loves cake, cake," I answered with a smile.

Chase began picking up pieces of wood chips and planting them upright into the sand blob cake.

"Candles," he said in answer to my questioning look.

"Oh, it's birthday cake. Even better," I said.

Then Chase began singing the happy birthday song--a skill that I am sure he picked up at school. He didn't know all of the words, but the melody was clear. I decided it was only right to help him out.

"Happy birthday dear Cha-ase. Happy birthday to you! Yea!" My singing was as usual slightly off key though he didn't appear to mind as he was too busy laughing and clapping.

Suddenly without warning, he plucked the wooden "candles" from the sand cake. Then, to my utter disgust, he grabbed the cake in a huge handful and dumped the entire mess into his mouth.

"Mmmm cake cake," he said as the sand oozed from his mouth.

"No more cake for you!" I answered as I scooped him up and pried the offending matter from his mouth.

"Bye cake, cake," his voice was filled with remorse at the loss of his sand confection.



And that will be all until after the holiday when I promise to have new stories and new pictures to share. Happy Thanksgiving you turkeys!

Friday, November 21, 2008

Where does he learn this stuff?

The scene:

A suburban family room. The midday light filters through the open blinds as a mother holds her baby girl Amaya in her lap while cooing at her. Beside her, her two year old son Chase-- plays with his trains. The mother continues making silly faces at Amaya.

Suddenly, a wet,spitting sound fills the air as from the girl's mouth a stream of partially digested formula shoots through the air.

Mother: Oh my!

Chase: Baby sploded!

Mother: Yes, yes she did.

Baby: hee hee

Sunday, November 16, 2008

I knew it all along

When noodle and I arrived home from Abrakadoodle on Friday morning, we found this waiting for us in the mudroom:



It would seem that a hose broke inside the (brand new) washing machine. So when I started a load of laundry before leaving for art like all good wifeys should, the water that was supposed to be in the drum washing clothes ended up all over the floor and in the walls instead. The drain in the laundry room that was supposed to catch any water should something like this happen was not properly caulked. Or to be more precise, it wasn't caulked at all. So all of the water just sat in the walls and on the floor, which meant that by the end of the day on Friday my mudroom ceiling looked like this:



And after the emergency flood people had finished with their defloodifying, I had a whole lot of these running nonstop day and night in my laundry room, mudroom and basement:



Which of course, did not contribute in any positive way to my mental stability. These events can only lead us to one, very obvious conclusion: laundry is bad for your health.

Friday, November 14, 2008

Cheering section requested

November is National Novel Writing Month or as those crazy enough to actually participate call it: NaNoWriMo. Basically, the object is to write a 50,000 word novel entirely in the month of November. Obviously, this novel won't be a good novel per se, but that's not really the point. The point is to free your mind to take a story wherever it wants to go-as long as it's 50,000 words of somewhere. It's essentially an exercise in silencing your inner voice that constantly reminds you that your writing isn't good enough, or interesting enough, or grammatically correct enough--much like this sentence. If you are interested in reading more about NaNoWriMo, you can find the official website here.

Silly me thought it might be fun to participate. So off I started on my own less than stellar novel on November 1st. And I was doing so well in the beginning getting well over my recommended daily 1666.66 word total. But then I got a migraine headache last Wednesday, and well migraines make it hard to look at a computer screen let alone type coherent sentences. Now, a week and two days later, I still have what my doctor calls a "lingering migraine" which apparently has no guaranteed cure although the good doctor did offer to give me a prescription for steroids if I decide that the pain of the headache is worth chancing the dreaded 'roid rage. (I think no)

So here I sit on November 14 with just under 10,000 words written--approximately 1/5 of the way to goal. I will get to 10,000 today or tomorrow, so in order to meet this ridiculous goal, I will need to average 2666.666 words per day which isn't beyond the realm of possibility given how wordy I can be. But, it will take sheer force of will and the threat of embarrassment before all should I not make it. Ok--in reality I'd be happy to reach 30,000 by the last day of November, but since I'm here at all, I might as well shoot for the moon and land in the stars or something like that.

What I need from you is encouragement, and if I don't make it to 50,000 you can promise to make me eat gilfite fish or something equally disgusting. Should I not even make it to 30,000, then you must promise to humiliate me pubically--well more than I already humiliate myself. Oh and if you have any good ideas for a plot or story arc, those would be appreciated, too. Heh. I can just picture you taking bets on the likelihood of my success now...



PS--This rather short post was 441 words


PPS--I can SO do this. Right??

Monday, November 10, 2008

Crazy is as Crazy does

You've heard the legends of the mysterious sock eating dryer I'm sure, but do you know the one about the Mama who drove herself insane trying to get her clean laundry folded? No? Well, then you've probably never stood in front of the dryer trying to fold the still warm laundry and place it neatly in the basket while an impish 2 year old stands next to you repeatedly shaking a bottle of fabric softener as he recites "mah soup"--which you're pretty sure translates to "my soap"--over and over. And that little terror was probably also not feverishly working to get the cap off of his "soup" while you silently pray that you can somehow get all of the clothes folded before that thick, blue gunk comes flying out all over that freshly laundered pile. And just as you were about to fold the last remnants, that little turkey probably didn't reach up and start pressing buttons on the washing machine sending your towels through the hand wash cycle before you could get his grubbly little paws off of the enticing machine. And I'm quite certain you've never broken out your mean teacher voice to tell the gremlin, "No, we don't touch the buttons until Mama says so," and then had to watch the little guy throw himself face down so pathetically at your feet and stay there so long that you began to feel guilty. And you've probably never been just about to forgive the little devil when he suddenly shot up off of the floor and pulled the whole basket of clean clothes onto the floor. And if it is the case that you've missed out on all of the above experiences, then you have probably never had to listen to your own maniacal laughter upon hearing the phrase "clean and folded laundry" while you attempt to convince yourself that a certain degree of insanity is not only acceptable, but is in fact necessary for survival either.

Wednesday, November 05, 2008

Door-to-door monster salesman

Are you surprised that when it came time to dress in his costume on Halloween night, Chase wanted nothing to do with the blue furry outfit? We got Amaya dressed, and Chase down to his diaper and then we could get no further. So we left Chase inside running around without pants while we took pictures outside.

Of course, the little rugrat wanted to come outside where the action was, so Andy would open the door and proceed with the following conversation.

Dad: Do you want to come outside?
Chase: Okay!
Dad: You have to put on your costume first.
Chase: Okay!

So in Andy would go to dress the little turkey. But then this would happen...

Chase: No, monster.
Dad: Do you want to go outside?
Chase: Okay!
Dad: Then we have to put on your costume.
Chase: No tume.
Dad: Do you want to go Trick or Treating?
Chase: No tricktreat.
Dad: Ok, well we'll be outside then.

This little show repeated itself about 3 times before Drew was actually able to fandango the kid into the costume. But then the little gremlin wanted nothing to do with pictures. Here is trying to squirm his way out of my arms.



And here he is thinking he can run away.



Finally, with the bribe of promised candy, he sat still next to Daddy long enough for Mama to get a couple of shots. He wasn't happy about it though.

He very much enjoyed Trick or Treating though. I ended up taking him to only about ten houses, but I am sure the kid would have been up for canvassing the entire neighborhood if I would have been willing to allow that much candy into my house. He got a real kick out of ringing the doorbell and saying trick or treat. The little guy took it as an invitation into their homes when anyone opened the door, so I spent a good portion of the time chasing him across strangers' foyers. This behavior will need to stop, because while it's kinda cute in a two year old, I don't think people will look favorably upon it when he's 13.

Sunday, November 02, 2008

Feeling Crabby


Amaya had her own baby-sized playdate on Halloween with her friend Sophi. These two have been friends since they were both in utero as they listened to their Mamas huffing and puffing through thrice weekly training sessions. Well, one Mama was huffing and puffing. Anyway, you can see from the picture below that it is much easier to get 2 babies to look at a camera than it is to get 4 babies all focused on one person. So, sorry Amaya, but it looks like you're only allowed to have one friend--at least when it comes to Halloween pictures.




Chase monster and friends


We had our annual "force the kids into their costumes and take pictures while they scream" get together last Thursday. This year was not as bad as the past two years as on the whole the littles went into their costumes without too much of a fuss. The only snag in that was that Chase wasn't interested in keeping his hood up, so he basically looked like he was wearing blue pajamas, but when you have a two year old you get what you get in the apparel realm. The real obstacle this year was trying to get the four of them to stay still long enough to get a good picture. I'm still hoping one of the other Mama's will send me a better picture because this one is the best of the four in their disguises that I got, and it isn't what you could call great.



Of course, getting them all to look at the camera has always been a challenge as we can see in Exhibit B from last year's celebration.



And then there is Exhibit C: their very first Halloween extravaganza. The little guys couldn't even sit up on their own that year, so I'm not sure how we expected them to all smile pretty for the camera. The asian cowboy was so disgusted with the whole production that he withdrew himself from any further participation in the following years' attempts.



Although on rare occasions, you can actually get everyone's face in the same shot without any tears. These are the moments the Mamas live for.