Fun Games

My dad taught the boy a new fun game. It is very simple to play. You run and yell, "Ahh!" then you either flop onto the floor or run into a wall. Lots of fun for children of all ages and Baba loves this fun game.

So tonight I was bringing laundry into my bedroom and Baba raced passed me yelling, "Ahhhh!" My husband followed close behind and said, "Excuse me, hon. Ahhh!"

Christmas Follow Up

When Baba was born, one of my father's friends sent us several dress outfits in various sizes. You see, he also has a son (a son who is my age and a good friend of mine) and they remembered how hard it is to find nice, dressy clothes for a little boys. Think about it. There are racks and racks of cute dresses and such for little girls, but the little boys clothes are usually limited to a rack, maybe two.

Anyway, long story short, he sent us an adorable suit outfit that is 24 month size (fitting into this at almost 22 months was borderline). Sadly, I don't think it will fit too much longer. There is nothing cuter than a little boy is a suit. He is going to be so adorable at little Ditty's wedding next summer!

And, we took a very nice, very us, family portrait. Christmas day was crazy! We got up - Santa had left a massive train set that takes up my entire living room - went to my parents house for brunch with my grandparents, went to Zippy's family's house, came back to my parents house. I went for a run while Zippy went to the hospital to visit his grandfather who claims he is three quarters of the way in the grave (this is an upgrade (or downgrade, depending on how you look at it) before he only had his foot or an arm in the grave, depending on the day), and had a nice, quiet evening watching Mythbusters. We have also decided that this summer at the cabin we are bringing plenty of diet Coke and Mentos.

Spam

So....even spammers take the holidays off, but rest assured they are back at work - I had 28 new emails in my inbox. I'm not counting the 10,000 in my bulk mail folder.

Wasting Time

I heart Lego Star Wars II. Totally addicted. Every spare second I am playing Xbox. Yeah, that's good for my carpal tunnels.

But, I did turn down an offer for three months of free cable so I've got that going for me. At least I won't be wasting my time watching TV.

Is it really wasting time, if I am enjoying myself enormously?

Puke-a-hontus

My child has puked once a day for the past four days. Is that normal? Should I be concerned? He feels fine until he blows chunks, cries because vomiting scares the crap out of him (I also hate vomiting), and then feels fine five to ten minutes after the episode, generally as soon as we calm him down. So my house smells like vomit, my car smells like vomit (we were on our way to visit my parents today when he thought it would be fun to puke in the car. It wasn't much fun), and I think my hands smell like vomit even though I know they don't because I've washed them a million times ("Out, damn spot, out!").

Merry Christmas. Maybe tomorrow he'll skip his routine stomach pyrotechnics.

PS. My Cleveland sista had her baby and he is adorable (and tiny!).

2 Christmases down, 2 to go!

I am on Christmas overload.

On Saturday we had pretend Christmas with my family (I blame my blogging absense since then on the fact I got Lego Star Wars II for my game boy) and another pretend Christmas on Sunday with my mom's family (my mom's brother and sister, their family, grandma and grandpa, and my favoritest great uncle in the world!). My grandpa is worse than a kid. He had all of his presents open before Baba did. My grandma yells at him every year because he can never wait his turn.

2 Christmases left to go. One Christmas Eve with just my neat little family - myself, Zippy, Baba, and Mister Wili. And Christmas day which I'm just counting as one Christmas because if I think of having to see if Santa came (which he will), going to my parents, going to Zippy's parents, and then going to Zippy's grandpa's house where 8 million of Zippy's relatives will be talking loudly as the three Christmases they actually are, I probably won't be able to get out of bed again until after the holidays.

Happy Birthday to Me!

Today I received from Miss ZennieZou the best birthday present ever!!! A few weeks ago we were talking about getting an imaginary cat for Zennie's daughter and I mentioned if I had an imaginary cat I would name it Sigmund. Zennie made my dream of owning an imaginary kitten named Sigmund come true!

ZennieZou made me an imaginary cat kit, complete with facilities, bed, and food. I even got an adoption certificate, with a chocolate gold seal and two gift cards, which Zennie wrote (in permanent marker) "My name is ZarahZou and I own an imaginary cat!" I love it! Thank you ZennieZou, you are the best friend a girl could have. And a big thanks to my husband who bought me purple flowers (I hope my imaginary cat doesn't eat my flowers).

A Very Merry Pretend Christmas to You!

Today is pretend Christmas! We are celebrating with my family today because Ditty and Poonch II will be in Indiana with Poonch II's family for the real Christmas.

Because it is pretend Christmas we can pretend to dress up. I'm wearing jeans and a sweatshirt but pretending I'm wearing an evening gown and looking smashing.

Highlights (and Lowlights) of my First Business Trip

Highlight: Asking if we were renting a sports car and then my boss saying we were renting four sports cars and we were racing.
Lowlight: Seeing our actual rental (a car that was a heck of a lot nicer than mine) and being told that even if we did rent sport cars I couldn't drive because I am not 25 (yet).
Highlight: Ordering appetizers, entree, dessert, and drinks because the company was picking up the tab.
Lowlight: Eating a ton of food and feeling sick every night.
Highlight: Realizing that my boss and her boss are really great people.
Lowlight: Realizing that my current position is going to be kind of boring and I am totally overqualified.
Highlight: Working out on my business trip (double, no triple extra credit for this. Every mile I ran in Jersey is like 3 Minnesota miles).
Lowlight: Sitting in the Philly airport for five hours because of fog delays.
Highlight: Taking off and getting above the fog. Philly looked magical - the skyscrapers rose above the fog. You could only see the tops of the buildings. The fog was glowing from the lights underneath.
Lowlight: Turbulance. Lots and lots of turbulance.
Highlight: Stopping at Wawa's and getting a Wawa water.
Double highlight: My boss telling me that I could write down that I worked 32 hours while we were in Jersey (in reality I probably actually worked 4 or 5 hours. Maybe).
Lowlight: The toilet in my hotel room ran constantly.
Highlight: Picking out what treasures to bring to ZennieZou, my treat.
Highlight: Waving to the Vorhees, New Jersey 6 times.
Highlight: Coming home to a clean house (not a test, but Zippy is definetly a keeper).
Highlight: Zippy keeping Baba up last night so I could see him before he went to bed.
Highlight: Getting a $10 food voucher for sitting in the last row of the airplane.
Highlight: Getting paid for working 41 hours this week when I didn't even work close to that.
Lowlight: There is a chance I may have to go to Jersey again in January.
Highlight: Working on my Jersey accent (ohmygawd!).
Highlight: Getting home!!!!!

Bye-bye Cars!

Tomorrow morning (and by morning I mean AM, very AM) I leave for Jersey. This is the second time I've been two Jersey this year. Imagine, I went for almost 25 years without going to Jersey and then twice in one year.

I have a feeling that my house is going to be a disaster when I return, but I know my boys will be busy. I busted a garage sale treasure out of the closet on Sunday morning and the boys haven't stopped playing with it since.

It is several plastic puzzle pieces with tracks cut into it. You put the puzzle together in different ways, thus making different tracks for the various cars to follow. There is a new track designed every time I come down the steps. Zippy is the engineer and Baba claps his hands with delight and tries to get 'ili to look at his cars. Now when we go upstairs or leave the house we have to say bye-bye to the cars, wili, the cows, the Christmas tree, the trains, and the TV. The leaving process is expanding.

I wonder if I'll be able to leave in the morning without saying bye-bye to all Baba's toys.

The Great Choo-Choo Boat Debate

Baba knows the difference between a choo-choo and a boat. On our way down the steps in the morning he points to the sail boat picture on the wall and says "boat!" and when we see his toy trains he joyously proclaims, "choo-choo!"

But every night in his bath he forgets. He points to the smoke stack on his boat and says, "choo-choo." We then explain to him that it has a smoke stack like a choo-choo, but it is a boat. He looks at us and says, "boat." We congratulate him on being the smartest baby in our house.

He says "boat" for a while, until he is certain we are complacant. He then gets a devilish look in his eyes and gleefully says, "choo-choo," while pointing to the smoke stack. You see, he'll pretend it is a boat for our benefit, but he really knows that what we call a boat is some sort of deformed choo-choo. Besides, if it really was a boat, it wouldn't make choo-choo noises as he pushed it around the bathtub, now would it?

2, 10, 11

Eyes, fingers, tombs.

Man, I love the Addams family.

I ordered the Addams family double feature from Wally World the Friday after Thanksgiving and it finally came yesterday (which probably has something to do with the dumb way they ship - first they UPS it from Arkansas to Carol Streams, IL then they throw it in the mail). We watched Addams Family tonight.

Dare I hope that Addams Family Values night will come soon?

Now That's Good Eating

I've often mentioned how much Baba eats. He has always been a big fan of eating anything and everything. When I was breast-feeding he usually ate every hour, every two hours if I was lucky. Yeah. That was a long seven months. When we started him on solid foods, he loved rice cereal so much, we were going through 2 to 3 boxes a week. And that stuff ain't cheap! So we switched him to toast. He would gum two pieces of toast for breakfast every morning. And then be ready for a snack a few hours later.

Now for breakfast he has 10 to 15 mini pancakes or a waffle, depending on what is in the freezer. Then he has a bowl of cereal and a glass of cranberry juice. He usually asks for "mere" on the way out the door, so I make a piece of toast or another waffle to go.

When he gets to daycare, he either has another breakfast or a snack. All of his reports for meal/snack time say "ate well." Once, he didn't eat well so our daycare lady took his temperature because he thought he was sick.

His palate has matured in his old age, the only things he doesn't like are raw onions (eww!) and grapefruit. That's it. Everything else you put in front of him he'll eat with gusto and then ask for more (mere).

The only problem we have now, besides the fact that he out eats me on a regular basis, is his constant desire to share whatever he is eating with Wili, his cows, his tractors, and anything else that happens to be around. Let me tell you there is nothing tastier than food that has been chewed on, put on the floor for the cat, rejected by the cat, picked up, and offered to you for a taste. Yummy.
But, I guess I can't really complain. He is sharing.

No! No! No!

No pictures until blogger resolves some issue that involves some letters and a server -- pretty much the explaination of how I could fix it on my own was gibberish, so no pictures it is. Hopefully this gets resolved sooner than later. No pictures and no beer make Homer go something something. Crazy? Don't mind if I do!

Anyway. Someone small, ornery, and cute has officially replaced "uh-oh" with "no" as his favorite word. I believe the twos are upon us. Right on time, too, only 4 months early. He has been pretending he is a tyranical toddler for a while, taking the attitude for a spin, giving us a sample of the year to come. But I believe the attitude is here to stay.

Among his new favorite hobbies: telling the cat what to do and what not to do. No more can Wili curl up on the lady bug pillow for a peaceful nap. Baba, sensing Wili has stepped a furry toe over the line, comes running and picks up the pillow, throwing the cat on the floor. Which earns him a minute in time out. He uses the minute to continue to say, "No, no, no" to Wili.

And the fits! He has been an expert fit thrower for sometime, but seeing as how he has now had almost two years of practice, the fits keep getting better and better. Not that I'm not having fun with that. I certainly get a kick out of sitting in front of the fridge, blocking his never ending quest for "mere chuice." More, pronounced "mere", is still one of his favorite words and he is addicted to cranberry juice or "chuice" as he likes to call it. Maybe his foray into the twos is due partly to his mass consumption of sour cranberry juice. Yeah, I'll deny that he is almost two and blame the behavior, not on his point in his development but on the cranberry juice. I always knew cranberries were evil.

Bah Humbug!

One of the reasons why I hate the holiday season is we are so busy! I hate being busy every weekend - I like a little time just to chill and relax and not do anything, including be sociable.

That being said, in December, we have two weekends we don't have plans - this weekend and next weekend. This weekend we are going bowling with Zippy's co-workers tomorrow morning, going to my parents to decorate their tree, going to a movie in the afternoon sans Baba, and meeting ZennieZou and ZickyZou for dinner (which I am super super excited about - I would gladly skip the rest of the crap). Somewhere in there I need to fit in a stop at Rainbow to buy more cereal (speaking of Rainbow, I bought 2 gallons of milk, 2 bags of scallops, and a can of turkey noodle soup that I thought was condensed chicken broth for 13 cents today. Yeah, I'm good), two stops at Walgreens (limit one coupon per customer? Ha! You just stop at two different Walgreenseseses), and a stop at Cub Foods.

Next weekend, I am going to Argosy to drop off my books to sell back (I will totally be rich!) and then heading up to Duluth to celebrate my birthday.

At least I don't have any plans for the next two weekends. :-)