Rainy Days

With all this cold, wet weather we have been having, my son and I haven't been out of the house much. There have been lots of great things that have gone on, but I don't feel anything that would fill up a whole blog entry on "parenting adventures". This will just be a compilation of some of the things that we've been up to. Some of the ways I still have joys of parenting, without going anywhere or seeing anyone. They are the best times after all.

With his "blue blank" he's been asking me to tie it over his head. Then he walks around that way, even watches TV that way.

When the rain stopped, we went for a nice long walk to the post office. He collected some flowers and a rock. This adventure makes me sad though. We also walked to the doctor yesterday and he picked up a rock. I realized he has been doing that on every walk we go on. Just like when I was a young kid, he too is collecting them. Why do I feel bad? I have been tossing them out once we get back. He would have had a nice stash by now, thanks mom. From now on I will keep them, and when he is older I will say, "You started collecting rocks at 2!" Which is true, he just would have had a bigger collection. I'm happy he's taken to this earthly activity though. I am still into rocks myself, I just turned more to gems and crystals and now focus on their healing properties. Honestly, there are some plain rocks I found as a kid that I remember vividly, and are gone :( Some articles in nature jump out to you for a reason. They are meant to guide you. That's another subject however... I will stop there.

We aren't too good at eating fresh meat, so I admit, I do buy frozen junk. When I bought the box of Gordon's fish I thought it was just going to be real fish with an added garlic butter sauce on them. EW! To my surprise I found two squares of "grill marked fish". It was pretty nasty.








Last, my husband taught our son to yodel.




The trip to the post office must have given him something. He has a cold now. Rain again for a day. I hope he feels better tomorrow. He is amazing and cute and everyday he is more and more like I was as a child and that makes me happy!



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Museum Day

Another surprising day. We took our son to LACMA and he actually had a great time. I wasn't sure how he would do in a museum of art, trying to stay quiet and respectful. Yet, it was something I wanted him to get used to for future good behavior in such cultural experiences. We get into many Los Angeles museums for free thanks to the California EBT card.

He loved it there. He walked around pointing out blankets, dishes, houses, and many other things. I mainly followed him and let him do his own thing. We saw some large Persian rugs, some Korean artifacts, some Japanese art and got to paint our own water colors. His favorite was the Japanese house design as well as a cool warrior armor outfit inside of it. Or Samurai? I don't know, I didn't get to read much. He behaved wonderfully the whole time and hardly made a loud noise.

We went back to the "house on wheels" that is my van, and ate lunch. Then it was off to the tar pits. He was looking forward to the "animals" we kept telling him about and when we arrived he was greatly disappointed in the condition of these animals. I guess we forgot to mention they wouldn't have skin HA HA! He liked it though and threw a slight fit when we left.

A happy, fun day, and after only a little more than 3 hours, all three of us were exhausted. Luckily, we were able to sit in LA traffic for an hour on the 6 mile drive home.


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Fun with Friends and Fairies!

We had a long over due visit with my best friend today, and her two kids. Actually, all her nephews and her niece were there as well and it was a big fun house full of kids. 7 in total. Besides a couple whacks between the two toddlers (including mine) the day was pretty awesome. All the kids are very well behaved, so it was pleasant.

There were adventures, to say the least :) We had a fight over legos, a toilet "bather", a hidden pooper, a sword and light saber battle, a group "Yo Gabba Gabba" watching, a self proclaimed "fabulous" 10 year old, and a lot of PB&J. Oh yeah, and my son decided to be a "butt-fly" with some fancy fairy wings.


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Cleaning out the Closet

It has been done! YAY! The hubby finally cleaned out his closet like he said he would a couple weeks ago. I woke this morning to feel super ambitious about cleaning myself. I got up at 9 am and by 11 AM when the husband arrived home I had done the dishes, dusted the whole house, wiped down all surfaces, swept, vacuumed, washed down the chalk on the front porch, hung a wind chime, washed laundry, made the bed, and read all my emails.

Either the cleaning bug I had was contagious, or something was just in the air. When he arrived home from work he got right to pulling out his plastic closet drawers and going through all his things. I was surprised at this because he never touches those things. This of course means that if I were to throw them out, he would live on just fine without any of the items and possibly never even notice I had. But I respect him enough not to take it on my own to throw his stuff out. I hound him about it every now and then.

He emptied one of the two completely, as well as a few cupboards and drawers he has in the house. The empty plastic drawers will most likely end up being used for the new baby now. After a while, both my son and husband were extremely quiet and I thought perhaps they had fallen asleep in the bedroom while I was listing auctions on eBay. I walked around the corner to a wonderful surprise of a large pile of clothes sitting by the door. Could it be? Was he actually going through his closet??? What a dream come true. He hasn't gotten rid of so much stuff since we moved in here almost three years ago. I always tease him for having so much more material items then I do, and he literally never touches most of it. Today he finally pulled a "me".

The catch behind all of this, is that his brothers friend has a big screen TV he wants to sell, and my husband wants it desperately. We currently have a too large, too heavy entertainment center that we cannot seem to get rid of, even for free. So his plan is to send it to Salvation Army and replace it with the big screen. We would have to get a couple shelving units for storage, but I trust IKEA will have whatever we need. My husband knows how frustrated I get with having way to much in our way too small space. We live in a 450 sq ft one bedroom duplex. All three of us, soon to be four. I like to get rid of anything I can to make room for our more important things like beds, couches, clothes etc.

For the first time, possibly ever, all his clothes fit in his closet and dresser. No more stuffing, no more playing tetris to make his clothes fit together. Thank you so much! I am so happy.


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Aquarium of the Pacific

We had a nice trip out today with my in-laws. It was the first trip ever to the Aquarium of the Pacific in Long Beach, CA for my Husband, our son, and myself. We enjoyed ourselves. All of us did.

Our son, of course, was a very explorative 2 year old. He loved the "Sea Spiders" (crabs) best. He also swore that the otters were sea monkeys. Not sure why, since we had sea monkeys and they certainly weren't anything like an otter haha.

We touched some starfish ("darkish"), sea anemones, sea cucumbers (I wonder why so much as sea in it's name, we know that's where they are from.....) sting rays, and a few other creatures. We fed some colorful birds, watched some large boats, looked at all the exhibits, and my son drove a toy boat as well.

The trip was free for our son, and there were 5 adults. It just happened to work out that buying a membership for two (a couple membership the way they sell it) saved us some money. So we did that for us and we can now go back whenever we like for the next year. We are in Los Angeles, so it isn't too far away and I think it will be great to go back a few times this next year so our son can learn more and more about sea life. I do suggest everyone who gets the chance should go once in their life. Or whichever aquarium is close to you. They are fun and educational.

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How to Break a Vacuum

Christmas is fun. You get to decorate the house, making it all festive. You get to bake cookies, buy gifts, wrap presents, and best of all, buy a lovely pine tree. I think the Christmas/Yule tree is among my favorite of all the decor because it smells divine and looks wonderful. Hanging up our special collection of ornaments (which we are still working to build up) and adding something edible to it. This year was particularly fun because our son was able to enjoy the process just a little bit more than his two previous holiday seasons. Each morning he would bring me a candy cane from the tree and ask to eat it.

The worst part of the whole thing I'd have to say is the dry brittle tree that must somehow be removed from the house after all the fun has left. My husband wanted to wait until after the New Year to bring all of Christmas down. However, I am a super neat freak, and after putting away the clutter and the gifts we all received, the only thing left to do to make me feel complete, was to remove the decorations. Well, it turned out we were both free and willing New Year's eve afternoon and we set about boxing it all up. We live in a small apartment and have not had much money anyway the last few years that we have been here, so we still fit everything into one fancy green and red box. That part was easy. It was the tree that we struggled with.

As mentioned in previous posts, this was our first large tree. Also as mentioned in previous posts, my Husband seems to do everything the hard way. That meant instead of going around the small couch and out the front door with the tree, he went across the living room, through the kitchen and out the back door. Well, he tried to go out the back door. I had to remind him if he went bottom first the tree would then fold up and fit through. Of course, all of this left a ginormous pine needle mess to be cleaned. It was all funny, and I was laughing. (Thinking back now I just get annoyed because I always enjoy moments in life so much I forget to take pictures that would greatly aid my blogs and articles. Oh well, that's not a very good thing to complain about. Enjoy life!)

So, there we were, surrounded by a mess. I pulled out our handy dandy little 2+ year old Shark vacuum from Macy's which cost us $75 when we moved in. I started to suck all the pine needles up, but it didn't take long before the vacuum was spitting them back out. Can't blame it much, they were sharp and dry, I too would have spit them out if forced to eat them. I emptied the clog and repeated this process about three times before I ended up doing something else that just clogged it up way worse. That was the end of that. The thing wasn't designed to handle much of anything. It had also been performing far worse than ever before as of lately. We borrowed my brother in laws vacuum and took care of the mess. But we were left without a vacuum of our own.

Never fear, Target is here. I saw in the weekly ad, a vacuum similar to our old broken one for only $39. This one was a Dirt Devil though and it was also about all the money we had at the time. So we set off to buy a new vacuum. Naturally, with sales like that, Target was out of them. They had one for $9 more next to it and it was slightly bigger in size, very similar to my brother in laws and also a Dirt Devil. We both knew the extra $9 would give us a much better quality and much longer lasting vacuum for the next years to come when we have two little ones making messes. So we got it. I took it home, set it up and went to work. Oh man! I wish I would have bought it sooner. It is amazing and sucked up so much fine sand and dirt the other had been missing. It was sad actually, the whole thing was half full by the time I was done and the carpet didn't even look dirty when I started. I am in love with this new vacuum and it just happens to fit in the spot I had for our smaller vacuum. We have clean floors, and it SHOULD last through another Christmas tree :)


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