Taste Test

I was sitting on the couch relaxing, while watching "1000 Ways To Die". My son was wandering around with his new pumpkin flashlight, watching all the colors change. He came over and started to play with me like he had been doing all night. The thing is, he kept shining the light in my eyes and I had had enough of that. When I turned around to see him shoving the light into his eye socket I told him that was it for flashlight time.

I took the two pieces apart to reveal the 9volt battery inside making it light up. I thought about what I would always do as a child and placed it on my tongue to reminisce. My son watched me and wanted to try this, so I dabbed it on his tongue really quick. I told him to stick out his tongue and then I did it. He liked it too much though haha! I took it away and put everything out of reach.

Minutes later my son walks up to me (without a diaper on, which I was aware of) and he sticks out his finger while demonstrating to me that he wanted me to stick out my tongue and taste his finger. I don't know if I should thank the pregnancy for the super keen sense of smell, or if it was something anyone would have smelled. However, when the stench of pure butthole wafted up through my nose I quickly backed away, said, "THAT'S BEEN IN YOUR BUTT!", led him to a bath, and promptly decided never to play the "taste" game with him again.


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Waiting for the Doctor

Of all the places we have had to wait around with our son, I'll have to vote on the doctor's office being one of the best because they have "toys" in the room. We usually blow up a glove for him and that lasts for up to half an hour of playtime. Yesterday, we were able to get a little more time out of it by stuffing that balloon into his clothes. He loved it.

The best part of the whole trip was that he didn't have to get any shots. Yay for that! I only wish it didn't cost $11 to park there.






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The Calabasas Pumpkin Festival

On October the 18th we visited the Calabasas Pumpkin Festival for the second year in a row. I have to admit this year was more fun with our son being 2, but overall, even though it is free I think it is just too far away for us living in Los Angeles. There is another one that sounds to be the same which is just over the hill in Sherman Oaks. Next year we will try that one and see if it compares.

Still, we had fun. It's free to get in, and free to park. But they make up for it with everything else inside ha ha! They have inflatables like rock climbing, jumpers, obstacle courses etc. They have a train ride, large slide, box car racing, paint your own pumpkin, paint a tile (courtesy of Home Depot), and face painting. Each of those rides or activities is $3 each. Well, the rides had lines that were just too long for that price. The crafts we thought were good for our son though. He painted a 50 cent tile, then went over and painted a small $1 pumpkin. My estimations of course, each activity was $3 a piece. When you get into the habit of making so many of your own crafts and fun, as well as bargain shopping, it just becomes hard to spend so much on something like that. Knowing very well we could have gone home and done the exact same things for about $2 total. But, I know how exciting it is for a child to participate in activities when you attend an event, so we indulged him.

My son and I shared a fresh lemonade while my husband got a smoothie. We played at the park a little, touched some reptiles, and let our son play the free toddler carnival games set up at the booths for businesses. He got a nice collection of tattoos, stickers, candy, and small toys. From the booths I collected a free t-shirt from a great new mom website momslikeme.com, as well as a free re-usable bag from them. I got another reusable bag from another company, and entered quite a few contests.

The festival also hosts live entertainment and towards the end of the day they had a Journey tribute band. I was game, so we sat there for a while listening. They were pretty good. Our son enjoyed them a lot. He danced and wandered through the people in front of the stage. We got him on video.

As far as it was to go, we had a good time, and seeing him smile makes it all worth it. Really we made out well too we spent only $18 total while there. Not too bad.

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Where are the Pumpkin Tools?

Well, last year in order to be more organized with our storage boxes, or decoration boxes rather, I picked up one of the discount large orange bins from Target to store our Halloween supplies in. This year as we take the box out, I find there are no pumpkin tools in it. Hmmm..... where could I have put those???

So, about a week ago we happened to be in the garage and I looked in the orange bin to double check what was in it. It felt like Halloween was still so far away, so I didn't take anything out of it. At least, I don't think I did. After spending too much time in my life forgetting to do things, I got myself into the habit of doing right when I think. Often, I feel I have forgotten something, only to find I am actually a step ahead of myself and already prepared. I feel like when I looked in the orange bin that I might have done that exact thing. Maybe I took out the tools knowing we'd be getting pumpkins in the next week. Maybe I placed them somewhere convenient in the house for easy access. But if I did, for the life of me, I cannot remember where.

We took the box out today, inside the witch's hat is one scoop. But we have a whole mess of good quality tools. We just got pumpkins and we want to carve them. But we need the tools. We still have a little time, I don't even know what I will carve mine into. I want to use a drill on mine this year. I know where the drill is. Our son will probably just paint his, like he did at the Calabasas Pumpkin Festival last week. We have to go back into the garage and look in our other boxes to find out where my brain decided was good place for the tools, a place that seemed better than the Halloween box. Stay tuned.


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POOP! ... on the walls

Well, it happened while I was updating this blog actually. I was sitting here, with my superhuman pregnancy sense of smell, when I started to sniff the scent of poop. I turned around and asked my son if he had done it, to which he replied, "No." This is common, so I set out to finish the blog, and then change him.

I'm not sure when it happened. Maybe I waited too long. Quite often, he is naked when at home and then he uses the potty. We had been out that day however, so he was still in a diaper. I grabbed the wipe and walked over to the living room to grab him and clean him up. That was when I realized the strength of the smell had really improved. Throughout all this, my husband was asleep on the couch. Don't ask me why (I'm blaming the pregnancy for this strange thought) but the first thing through my head was a question of whether the smell was coming from my husbands pants instead of my son's. It cracks me up to even think about that going through my head, HA! Why would it? I think maybe just because the smell was so strong.

Anyway, I had been headed in the direction of my son. Walking through our dark living room (which I will explain in a minute) I found him running up to me with brown hands. UGH! He was thrilled to have found something to "paint" with and proceeded to show me the "artwork" on the wall next to him. "Oh no! Baby, that's poop!" was all I could think of to say. It shocked the hell out of him, he seemed to not have any clue what it was he was painting with. He responded to me with, "IT'S POOP!?!?" accompanied by a look or horror on his face.

Well, as one can imagine, the reason for this mishap, was a slightly loose stool. After assessing the situation I stuck him right in the shower. Of course, I was in such a hurry to get him cleaned I kinda forgot to let the water warm up and the cold shower traumatized him. He began screaming and crying, even after the water became a pleasant temperature. I got him all washed up quickly and took him out, dressed him, calmed him down, and put him to bed. That went well since it was bedtime, he went right to sleep after his little adventure/ordeal. But he still hates showers for now. Oops!

Naturally, I then went to clean up. The hardest part of the cleanup was looking for poop on the floor, in the dark. The reason I had to do all this in the dark, would be because our lamp decided to die. How did it die you ask? It fell over when the stand decided to detach from the base. Once it lost its support, it had nowhere to go but down. That of course, shattered the plastic shade. All of this happened while my son and husband were watching TV together on the couch the prior day. It just happened out of nowhere. This lamp was from Target. Don't get me wrong, I love my Target! But, the lamp in the bedroom is 8 years old, from Ikea, has been through three moves, and is still going strong. Target lamp was 2 years old and it has been in this living room the whole time.

In conclusion, I cleaned up all the poop, I traumatized my son, I love Mr. Clean magic erasers, and all of this happened while my husband slept on the couch. Just another typical day of being a mom right?

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The Wubbzy Party

Late update, but our son turned 2 last month so we gave him a Wubbzy party. Wubbzy is of course, his all-time favorite character/show. The hype in the weeks preceding the party got him very excited, and day of the party we had one very adorable little boy with a large smile on his face. We all had fun.
He really enjoyed all the Wubbzy decorations we had to offer him. I had a great time making the supplies also. I enjoy crafts very much and I spent a lot of time on my sons party. I made a kickety kick ball pinata, hand drew Wubbzy faces on the table cloths, *reused* last years birthday party supplies that were left over, bought a few Wubbzy licensed materials, wrapped up fun books as party prizes, drew Wubbzy faces on the party favor bags which included a hand/computer made Wubbzy and Friends coloring book (courtesy of Nickjr.com printouts), and perhaps a few more things I currently cannot remember.

The kids played a generic pin the tail on the donkey game which we had left over from his last birthday party. They all made "birdy bird feeders", and then there was the pinata which was about 7 layers of paper mache and made it through all the "big kids" who were there which went up to age 28. :) Actually, it did break up, but ultimately it was the string that broke not the pinata.

Oh yeah, the cake. I made a Wubbzy cake for my son. My friend also surprised me, and him, with a similar wubbzy cake. It was cool to have two cakes for the 40 people who were there. Each cake looked a little different as well. I also made the marshmallow lasagna from the nickjr.com website. I messed it up but it was still a hit, so yay!

Perhaps the highlight of the event was the t-shirt we put on our son. I bought a $1 t-shirt from Big Lots and printed out some words on iron on transfer paper. What did those words say? "My Mommy's Pregnant!" We had just found out and figured since both families would be together, why not tell them all at once and in a fun way? Watching the reactions was fun. Some people took quite a while to look at his shirt. Most were happy. Our son didn't know what message he was relaying, but it was a fun time, and great to look back on. More details about this pregnancy to come later in the blog. I wanted the shirt to say "Mom's Knocked Up" But my husband felt it was too much for his family. He was right. With all the fun ways to announce a pregnancy on a shirt, the reason we chose the one we did was when thinking about each and every one of our family members, we needed to sen the message in a direct way that could not be mistaken, with out being too harsh (like I comment I wanted lol). It worked.

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Birdy Bird Feeders

Really easy activity to do for a Wubbzy party, or renamed, great for any party. Chances are all of these supplies can be found at your local dollar store.

You will need:
Enough peanut butter for about 1/4 per kid
1 empty toilet paper roll for each kid
1 small sheet of wax paper per kid
1 length of about 15 inches twine or yarn per kid
1 safe plastic knife or spoon per kid
1 bag of bird seed
a few small plates (try the plates from your party)
a sharpie

Prep:
1. Cut out the lengths of twine/yarn.
2. Pull out the wax paper about as long as the toilet paper roll and tear
3. Collect toilet paper rolls
4. Fold up wax paper and stuff it, and string, into the toilet paper roll.

This makes your Birdy Bird Feeder "kit" for each kid.


Directions:
1. Grab a few plates and fill them with a layer of bird seed.
2. Open the containers of peanut butter and stick plastic knives in them.
3. Call the kids over and announce that it's time to make their birdy bird feeders.
4. Explain or demonstrate to the children that they are to create bird feeders by separating their "kits", spreading peanut butter on the outside of the toilet paper rolls rather thick, roll the peanut butter covered rolls in the birdseed, thread their string through the toilet paper rolls and tie a knot to hang them when they get home. Wrap each roll in the supplied wax paper, and tuck in the edges.
5. Write each child's name on the wax paper so they don't forget which is theirs.


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Cold on the Buns

We started getting our son to use his little black potty about 4 months ago now. He does great while running around naked. He will always use the potty for number one and number two. He has been this way pretty much the whole time. (It took about one week to get him to use the potty).

We have tried teaching him to use the training pants, to pull them down, to take off his diapers, to inform us of his bodies needs. All of it isn't really working though so he needs to have a naked bottom half in order to use the potty. I haven't learned yet if it is because he isn't cognitively ready to learn this skill, or if he is just lazy. He just turned 2, so I am not worried he isn;t fully trained yet.

Either way, when we are home, going naked isn't a problem so he does. I try to keep a shirt on him all the time. This morning he realized that during fall mornings, hard surfaces around the house are a bit colder than they have been in the prior months of his nakey time. Luckily, he took after me with his innovative thinking.

When chairs are cold, and you want to eat cereal, sit on your blankie.

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Man Wonder #2

Some men just do not pay attention to directions, even when told multiple times during the trip where to turn.

When they are expecting the woman to tell them where to turn.... do not expect them to turn on the street you've mentioned 46 times already.


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Self Portraits

When toddlers get a hold of your camera, you might find some really fun pictures. This I learned from my niece. I believe she was 4 when she got a hold of my sisters camera, and she took some of the funniest pictures of herself, her brother, her toys, and other things around the house. From this I learned, Let Them Play with the Camera. And I am thankful.

My son was bored at his grandma's house and went rummaging through the diaper bag. There he found my camera, took it out of the case, turned it on, and proceeded to take pictures of himself, the house, his feet, and his grandma. Unfortunately, most came out blurry... but some were very nice.

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Just Like Daddy

It amazes me every time I see another strange thing my son acquired genetically from either me or my husband.

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Man Wonder #1

Why is it that when I do dishes they go into the same place, every single time. Which means my husband GETS his dishes from the same place, every single time. Yet, when he decides to do the dishes himself, he puts them back in random places. Places that do not make sense, or where they may not even fit??


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