Game On

Dear Aunt Maria,

I saw your walking video, and I raise you THIS VIDEO of me walking.  Sure, it's lots of clips of me walking six steps and then falling down.  So you might have me beat on distance.  But can you walk holding a shoe?  Giggling at a dog?  Holding a car?  Can you walk to a cat door and play with it?  Yeah.  That's what I thought.  Game on, Aunt Maria.  Bring it.

Love,
Erin

Erin and Aunt Maria have been having a bit of a friendly "let's see who can walk first" competition, ever since Aunt Maria was first in the hospital.  I, personally, am DELIGHTED that Maria won fair and square (don't tell Erin) because 1)  it's awesome for Maria to be mobile again and 2)  having a walking baby in the house is, quite frankly, hazardous.

The good thing about having zero plans for Thanksgiving weekend is that when the whole family is sick it's no big deal.  Baby puking all day Thursday?  Guess we'll watch TV all day.  Mama sleeping all day and not feeling well?  Guess we'll have Thanksgiving dinner another day.  John lost a day in doing house projects because he was taking care of everyone else on Thursday.  But otherwise, it was pretty decent timing to have a sick family.  We're having Thanksgiving dinner on Saturday.  Dexter is most excited about the ice cream that we bought to go on top of the apple pie.  He won't eat the pie.  But yes, please, he will eat some ice cream.

We are all, thankfully, feeling much better.  Erin is still touch-and-go as far as puking, and she's not really eating, but she is much much better.

Weekend Warriors

Last Monday I was walking with Erin on my back, enjoying the last of the summer-like days before the weather turned Massena-Arctic-Circle-like.  And I was thinking about the weekend, when John was going to be in Las Vegas.  And I was thinking "Wonder what I can do while John is gone?"  And I texted my sister to see if she wanted to come down to do something cool, like tear wallpaper off the kitchen wall or something.  Because coming to our house is nothing but a good time.

Surprisingly, she turned me down.  But Mom and Dad are suckers, so THEY came down.  And we ended up not tearing wallpaper off the kitchen, but rather re-doing the powder room.  Which meant we tore wallpaper off the walls, replaced the light fixture, painted, cut some bead board for one wall, replaced outlets and switches and toilet parts and other random things.  And John got home at 6:30 or so on Sunday.  And we knew he was going to be home then.  And you know how those Home Makeover shows always have a huge flurry of activity at the end, and they call in all the neighbors to help because they still have all this stuff to get done, and very little time to do it?  Yeah.  That was TOTALLY not us.  We looked at what we had done, looked at what we still wanted to do, and said "Meh.  It's not gonna be done.  SURPRISE!"

As an aside, one should not tell a four-year-old that something is a surprise and that he should not tell Daddy about it.  Because that is EXACTLY the very first thing he will tell Daddy when Daddy calls from Las Vegas.

Powder room before.  A friend once described it as "peeing while sitting inside a basket."

My Friday helper.  He loved using the Tiger tooth thing.  We called it a "Toother."  So he'd be toothering, and rolling water on the wall and he'd look over to me and cheer me on as I was scraping wallpaper off the wall, "Good wallpapering, Mama!"

Un-wallpapered bathroom, with Grandpa working on some spackle.  Un-wallpapering is a terrible terrible job.  An email to my sister went something like this: "Who's the $*!%&#! who invented wallpaper?  I'm gonna shoot him dead."

Bathroom as of today.  Still needs some spackling and another coat of paint.  And then the bead board will go up on the bottom of this wall.  So it'll be the TG weekend project.  But we needed something to do anyway - the wind yesterday blew away all our leaves, and that's what we were going to do this weekend.

New light fixture above the sink.  Have a new towel rack and tp holder, as well, to go up when the paint is done.

Thanks for helping, Grandma and Grandpa!  Without you John would have simply come home to an unwallpapered bathroom, with nothing else done.

Erin Walking With Lion

Please to be watching our newest video, created by our resident videographer, Dexter.  Warning - it might make you slightly sea sick...

Also, Erin walked about 5 or 6 steps, totally on her own, TWICE this morning.  Life's about to get crazy here...

Erin Walking With Lion (click for video)

Lions, Trees, Stairs, and Leaves

It's been a nice week here.  Something seems to have clicked with Dexter, and he's been chipper and polite and generally pleasant to hang out with all week.  Except after watching videos on his IPad.  Which we have since disallowed, because grumpy = no fun.  Erin has been testing the limits of her standing skills and will, if she finds herself in the middle of the floor with nothing to hold on to, take three or four steps before falling back to the ground.  She's currently got a cold and cannot breathe through her nose, which means she's not been sleeping very well.  But she's still fun to hang out with.

We had really nice weather one day this week so I raked up our paltry supply of leaves in to a tiny pile for Dex to jump in to.  Our maple trees JUST turned this week, and the pear trees haven't really turned yet, and I dunno what happened to the oak tree leaves.  Today we had lots more leaves and John raked and blew and sucked up a bunch of them.  We played in them a little bit, but it was way warmer a few days ago.

Wednesday for swimming the sun was BRIGHT.  Not a damn cloud in the sky.  And the sun shines in the window differently now that the time has changed.  Yet another reason for me to shake my fist and growl at the time change thing.  All that combined meant that Dexter did not swim.  Erin swam.  She had a lovely time for an hour, swimming in the deep end and walking in the shallow end and playing with the fountains.  But Dex?  Nah.  So we decided maybe it was time for a little intervention.  The whole family went to the pool at 9AM today, armed with M&M's.  And I don't know if it was all the million other kids, or that there was just a skim of clouds that made the sun spots not quite so bright.  Whatever the reason, Dexter was fantastic.  No M&M's needed.  He swam all over the pool.  Underwater.  Directly under the sun spots.  It was fun, and I was proud of him.  I think we're planning on going again in the morning if the sun is shining bright.

We went this afternoon to tag a tree and to play at the farm a bit.  It's been a fun day.  I am tired.

Here's a video of Erin climbing the stairs.  All you have to do is ask "Do you want to go upstairs?" and she drops everything and books it for the steps.

Here's a video of Erin walking behind her lion walker.  She finally figured it out yesterday.  You still have to stand her up behind it, or she will just crawl and push it in front of her.

And here a few billion pictures

I love this one...

He loves hiding all the way under the leaves, then growling like a dinosaur and leaping out to scare you.

Way too tall this year...

How about this one?  Daddy says.  Nah, too small, says Dex.

I promise she liked it back there.

Dex tags our tree

King of the straw bales

Perhaps we're doing too much gymnastics...

You can see John's heart attack plain as day, as Dex dances on the top of the bales.

Pretty sunsets this week

Yes and No

We had a nice few days with Aunt Jeanne last week, and the weather was perfect for playing outside.  So that's what we did:

Here's a link to a bunch of pictures of the kids playing in the driveway on Friday afternoon with Aunt Jeanne:

Biking With Spiders

On Friday Aunt Jeanne helped us take Erin in for one year old pictures - she and Dex watched (and Dex rode the tractor) while Erin mostly kept her shit together for pictures.  Til the end, when we wanted to try pictures with her brother.  And.... no.  That wasn't gonna happen.  I went the cheap, cheap, cheapity cheap route and paid $13 for a photo package with one pose.  Here's what we came home with:

On Saturday after Aunt Jeanne left us (and Daddy was gone to Massena for the weekend) the kids and I went to soccer and the playground.  Then to a different playground for the afternoon, where Dex slid down the slide 87 million times and Erin slowly but surely stalked a dog, sneaking up to pet it quickly before it could run away.  And calling it "hiiii."

And finally, we videotaped Erin at dinner on Sunday evening (or maybe it was Saturday, I can't remember).  This is a pretty common meal time occurrence, and watching the video makes Dexter giggle uncontrollably.

Here's the link to watch the video.

We're happy that Daddy is home again, we all hate the goddamn time change, and we're excited that Aunt Maria is getting sprung from the hospital on Wednesday to go live in Massena til she'l better enough to live on her own again.  The view's gonna be way better from her room in Massena than it is from her hospital bed.

Also, that spider is currently living on the top of my liquor cabinet...

Trick or Treat!

Dex was VERY excited for Halloween tonight.  We did a minute-by-minute countdown til 6PM, and then we rushed through the front yard and rang Mr. Pat's doorbell at promptly 6PM.  They were totally unprepared for Thomas and Mickey Mouse, on time and excited.  We went to at least 10 houses, maybe more.  Our awesome neighbors gave Dex a HUGE Kit Kat bar, which he tried to give back saying "No, it's too big."  Whose kid IS this, anyway?  He had lots of fun, and Erin was entertained.  She said "hi" to all the dogs we passed while walking down the road.  Aunt Jeanne helped hand out candy and came trick or treating with us.  And it was WARM - like 65 degrees.  So we just hung out on the front porch and handed out candy there.  Fun night!

I wondered where Erin got that pumpkin.  And then I saw these pictures...

Thomas was VERY excited to go

He had 2 glow sticks and a flashlight around his neck, and was holding another glow stick.  We were well lit.

Post-trick-or-treating candy pilfering.  Dex ditched his costume in favor of his Pentagon jersey.

Aunt Jeanne had the brilliant idea of putting the Open sign in the window.

Going Green for Halloween

Yesterday (the day before Halloween) it was cloudy.  And rainy.  And I woke up and looked out the window and said "Thank you, Mother Nature."  Which is probably the same thing Dexter's swim teacher said.  Bless her heart, she looks outside every Wednesday to see if the sun is shining.  And celebrates when it's not.  Her husband thinks she's crazy.

Sun spots.  Damn those wiggly sun spots that reflect off the pool water and on to the wall and the ceiling, thus rendering my sensitive little boy utterly useless during his swim lesson.  Go in the deep end?  No way in hell, Ms Dana.  The sun spots might get me.  Go down the slide?  No thanks.  I might land in a sun spot.

But yesterday was cloudy.  No sun spots at all.  It was an awesome awesome day for a green band swim test.  Dex had to tread water for 1 minute and swim the length of the pool to get his green band (which means now he can swim anywhere in the pool, by himself, and he can go down the slide whenever he wants to).  And he did it, no problem at all.  So easy!  When there's no sun spots.

So now Dex is wearing his green wrist band.  Still, today.  I'm so proud of him.  He's awesome.

That pumpkin behind him is what he and Daddy carved yesterday morning.  We did three pumpkins, actually.  And Dex drew the faces for the two face pumpkins all by himself.  He almost carved them all by himself, too, but John freaked out a bit when Dex plunged a steak knife in to his pumpkin...

On Tuesday we went Trunk or Treating with the MOMS Club.  I didn't decorate our trunk, so I plopped Erin in there.  Instant decoration!  Here she is pilfering the candy bowl.

I found a Thomas costume for Dex this year, and it is PERFECT.  Slides easily over his head.  Looks cool.  People like it and say "Hey, look, it's Thomas!"  And that makes him smile.  For the first time ever he is excited about wearing a costume to go trick or treating.  It's pretty cool.  I think we're gonna need umbrellas tonight, but on Tuesday night the weather was perfect.

(He chose to use his plastic pumpkin, Grandpa, so we used your bag for decoration)

After about 5 cars Dex declared himself done, removed his costume, and ate some candy.  He swears he's going to go to 86 houses tonight.  My guess is it will be more like 8.

HAPPY HALLOWEEN!