Comment Award Winner Part Dos

I searched for a local bookstore for the contest winner and when I found one, I sent the name to Aunt Beth for approval and she said it's the best bookstore in C-bus. I bought a gift certificate and sent the info to J.E.J. Happy shopping!

And on the subject of the 19th of July song, we came up with Jack's first song today.

First, let's revisit one of Luke's songs:

Me llamo Lucas
Yo soy un Kookus
Mucho gusto! Very much!

Frijole Negro
Es Mi Perro
Mucho Gusto, not so much!

And now onto Jack's:

Me llamo Juan Pablo
No Espanol yo hablo
Pero sonrio
Como Diablo

And yes, we had dinner at the Rio. Is it that obvious? These days, instead of drinking 3 margaritas and riding my bike into a parked car on the way home, I drink one margarita and compose bad spanglish songs about my children.

But! I still had my wits about me enough to realize that I had left the pacifier next to a tree by the creek hours before and I went back and I found it! I left it right here:

Party Time

I have a great Now and Then post but it will have to wait for tomorrow because the videos are taking forever to upload and I want to go to bed. So instead I am going to talk about a really fun party we attended on Friday.

The party was for a bunch of people who used to work together, (pre-layoffs and outsourcing) and that is great for me because I do my best networking with a beer in one hand and a baby on my hip. "Sure it's a 24x7 job, but don't you really need someone to work just until 3:00 pm? My customers love me, you know that!" And this wasn't just any beer, this was Michelob from the kegerator on the porch. The kegerator next to the cotton candy machine.

Oh, and did I mention the zip line that went across the pool?

We stayed until about 9:00 (late!) and Jack fell asleep at his normal time like a good boy.

OK, I'll be honest, this post is just to annoy my co-workers (one of whom is knitting a voodoo doll as I type) by flaunting my sleeping baby. Speaking my my co-workers, it's time for another get together with Baby Katie, aka Pinchy, because I get a lot more hits when I feature Jack's girlfriend. I mean because we have such a good time!

And I am sure I am jinxing the sleeping through the night thing that we have going on!

Sent To His Room For Demanding Broccoli

The boys are at Camp Grandparent this week, and loving it. Naps were taken, bikes ridden, puzzle completed, two playgrounds and a pool visited, and that was all on the first day. And perfect behavior can only lead to one thing: a dinner time meltdown. Dave grilled chicken for fajitas and I sauteed red and green peppers and onions, and also made pico de gallo. Yum. And a salad. Somehow Luke ended up at the head of the table and was getting served first. I had eaten most of my lunch today by 11 am, and I was hangry. Dave was explaining to Luke how we have a "no thank you bite policy" and he needed to take a bite of a vegetable before he could say no thank you, and please pick a vegetable, and Luke picked broccoli. Did we make any broccoli? No. Meanwhile I am just shoving food into Jack's mouth as fast as possible so that on the off chance some food gets to me, I'll have a brief interlude between squawks from my baby bird to inhale some morsels. Long story short, I sent Luke to his room for demanding to be served broccoli. Has any child in the history of these United States been sent to his or her room for demanding broccoli? Today, history was made.

After I had taken some bites, and needed to get up anyway for some reason, I made a quick detour to the room of the sobbing young man to try to calm him down. Usually in instances like these he makes up a story about hurt feelings or something, I console him and tell him he can come back to the table when he has calmed down. But I when I walked into his room he said, "I'll come back when I GET BROCCOLI!" Okaaaay, at least I don't have to feel like maybe it was unnecessary to send him to time out. So I said, "Well, if you want to influence what is served at the dinner table, you need to be more involved in the meal preparation. You know the rules, feel free to come back when you have calmed down. If we are still sitting at the table, you can join us." Sobbing ensued. But he pulled it together and rejoined us at the table a little later.

Oh, and the other day I said, "Do you want some ranch dressing for your broccoli?" The fact that he turned it down isn't surprising because he doesn't really like ranch, but it was a little odd that he said, "No, just broccoli, straight up!"

Another point of view on broccoli.


Photo credit.

Don't Call Me, I'll Call You

Seriously. My phone is broken.

Now I am trying to get all my cute pictures and videos off before it's too late.

Ask Me About My Fat Free Zucchini Bread

The temperature in our house dropped below 80 today to a cool 78 and you know what that means! I can turn on the oven! The candy jar at work hasn't been refilled in weeks and the vending machine is trying to force me to make healthier choices. I am boycotting the grocery story near our house, so my sweet tooth is ready to bite someone's head off. So as soon as we got home from our Wednesday picnic dinner I started a whirlwind of baking. Or, I at least attempted to make two things. First I made granola, which turned out very well. While the granola was cooking, I whipped up some zucchini bread. The granola calls for 4 teaspoons of canola oil, but I was worried that I wouldn't have enough for the zucchini bread, which called for half a cup. So I used olive oil. Then I figured I would have enough canola for the zucchini bread, and if not, I could substitute olive oil, but I prefer not to in that case.

Things got a little hairy while I was mixing the zucchini bread; Dave put Jack down on the floor, he got mad about it and threw himself down and yelled; I could see that the roof of his mouth was entirely white, and I freaked out. "Is he foaming at the mouth? Rabies? Is this a tragedy of biblical proportions? ChokingonhisownvomitOMGJimmyHendrix?" I even briefly thought, "Is the roof of your mouth white? Maybe he's fine! Does anyone know what color the roof of your mouth is?!" But he just had about an 8.5 x 11 sheet of paper wadded up in there.

Later, when I was looking in the oven, I knew something was wrong. Did I over mix the eggs? Was it because I forgot to mix in the walnuts, and just sprinkled them on top? Did I use wheat bran instead of wheat germ?

Then I remembered. The oil. I looked at the measuring cup, which was not oily. I looked in the cabinet at the oil. Still looked like it had just about half a cup in it. So I guess I never added that precious, precious oil.

It's actually quite delicious. Must be the moistest zucchini on the planet. I'll have to report tomorrow on whether my fat free zucchini bread is still edible. And no, I am not some crazy health nut that eats zucchini bread instead of candy and cookies. I just don't have any chocolate in the house.

One More Post About Camping

I never finished my camping post, but I didn't need to because it was summed up so well here. But I did want to share one funny story. The first night of camping, Jack was on day 5 of sleeping all the way or mostly through the night. I was a little worried about setbacks, but our sleeping arrangements worked out perfectly to keep the stretch going. Luke slept upstairs and the rest of us slept downstairs, but Dave slept in between Jack and I, which prevented me from sleep feeding him. I am sure I would have assumed that Jack was hungry when he started crying at 3 am, when in fact he was just cold. Dave and Jack just snuggled up and we all went back to sleep. But why was he cold? Well, I guess at some point earlier in the night he was hot, so he took off his pajamas. He woke up dressed like this:


And this is how I found his pjs in the morning:



I have a Baby Houdini on my hands.

Everyone slept so well that Luke even had a sleep over on Saturday night:







Good morning everyone!

Meta MetaMegan (Comment Winner Announced!)

My mom has recommended the book Marley and Me but I have refused to read it. It sounds like it might be too sentimental for me, and also, if anyone was going to write about Life and Love with the World's Worst Dog - God knows it should have been me.

Fast forward to 2008, and once I started this blog I decided I would write a book. Specifically I said, "Once I have been blogging for a year, I am going to write a book." I told Dave it would be somewhat remotely related to my blog and he said, "Why would anyone buy your book, when they can read your blog for free?" Good question. Maybe some people don't have laptops, and might want to read my bon mots before falling asleep, or on the beach? Ok, probably not.

I started thinking about my book some more while reading a recent issue of ReadyMade about self-publishing. But, what to write? Can I make a whole book out of incidents like running into the baby's room at 5 am to silently shove a pacifier in his mouth in order to get another hour of sleep, and instead banging an already injured knee on a rocking chair, screaming in pain, falling to the ground to hide from baby and writhe around until the throbbing subsides, and thinking, hey, I'll see if I can find the pacifier while I'm down here?

And then inspiration came. Marley. And. Me. I could write a collection of essays about my babies and my dog! Are you kidding me?! Babies and Dogs! Seriously, I dare you to think of a better combination! And I could write a bunch of essays about things from the past, and intersperse the 2 or 3 hilarious blog posts that I have already written. AND I had the best idea for the commenter prize! Since I plan to self-publish my book on lulu.com, I could give away a gift certificate to lulu.com as a prize. Then the winner could hold onto it for a couple years until my book is ready, or buy something now. Sadly, lulu.com does not actually sell gift certificates.

Since the Boulder Bookstore gift certificate idea was sort a lame prize for anyone other than Dave and Carolyn, I decided to pick a winner and then get them a gift certificate to an independent bookstore in their town. So, I put the comments on pieces of paper and had Luke pick one out of a hat. Wouldn't you know the one winner that I can't identify won the prize!

Anonymous said...
Megan -
We're starting to doubt the Megan Mary Mary story. Ann? Marie? Rita? Alicia?
We've enjoyed the blog thus far.

Who could it be? So we picked a backup winner, which is Jane Ellen Jane. Then Luke kept picking names because he really wanted his dad to win. Ellie, you came in third, and Dave was fourth. So if we can figure out who anonymous is soon, they can win. Otherwise, the prize goes to Jane Ellen Jane.

On the Move

Jack is almost crawling - it isn't pretty but he is on the move. The problem with capturing it on video is that if you notice your baby doing some amazing crawling, and it's right before bedtime, and you run to get the camera, and then try to get him to crawl again, you end up with this:



I have three videos like that.

But we didn't give up! Luke and I kept Jack up long enough, and waved the forbidden remote over and over, and he finally realized I would put him to bed once he pushed himself across the floor on his face. Note the diaper wedgie.

Happy 19th of July!

Twenty some years ago today, the day was hot and boring in the small town in Ohio where I grew up. We weren't at the pool, and I was out of ideas. Or maybe I didn't even try to come up with anything. I just did what any kid would do in that situation, I said, "Mom, I'm bored. What can I do?"

My mom said:

Climb a tree!
Ride your bike!
Read a book!
Write a song!

So I took a little notebook and a little pen and I sat down in the grass on the south side of the house, near the rabbit ears and I wrote the following song:

A, B, C!
1, 2, 3!
19th of July

Most people don't remember the second verse:

Megan
Beth
John

I showed the song to my mom, who shared it with my dad. And the 19th of July was officially born. For the next 10 or 15 years, I had to endure, on a yearly basis, such taunting as, "Hey! Megan! It's the 19th of July! Let's all sing the song!" It was miserable.

And then one year I spent the summer away at college, and came home for a weekend, coincidentally on the 19th of July. There was a giant banner across the dining room, "Happy 19th of July, Megan!" And I thought, "If you can't beat them, join them!"

So it started with just Happy 19th of July wishes, and the occasional card. And Dave wasn't on board with celebrating this made up holiday of mine until I started serving cake. Once I got a balloon from my friend Laura, who was also the first person to wish me well today. Oh, and I have to give credit to Ellie, who put a 19th of July reminder on our mommy board calendar at least 2 years ago!

The gifts come mostly from myself though.

Having a birthday on the nation's holiday hangover day means you have to sometimes make your own special days!

So comment away and wish me well and win a prize! Details to follow!

OK, I came up with a prize that isn't totally lame. I'll put all comments into a hat and have Luke choose one on Monday evening. Any comments on any post from now until then will be entered into the contest. Good luck!

Oops, We Went There Again

The funniest thing happened today at Chuck E Cheese, or as Luke would say, "Chuckie Cheese." (We cannot agree over the pronunciation, or the fact that I can read and he can't.) I realize that the fact that Luke and I like to go to Chuck E Cheese puts into question my well known status as a Boulder hippie/elitist snob, but I am not going to defend myself. I'll just say we don't eat there. (Except when we do.) So Chuck E Cheese has some sort of elaborate system involving coded hand stamps for making sure you don't leave without your child, or with extra children, but despite my many (3) trips there, I have yet to figure it out. The first time I wouldn't let them stamp Luke's hand because he hates hand stamps. I guess they let it slide since it was 9am and we were the only people there. The next time, we had loving grandparents with us and I left to go to Costco, so how effective can the stamps be?

Before I get to the hand stamp debacle, let me just say this: Chuck E Cheese is not baby friendly. I was staring at the door, thinking, "How am I going to get this stroller in there?" and saying, "Luke, do you think you can get the door?" and Luke was struggling with the door when a big grandma looking person came out. Thank goodness! But I guess she was in a hurry because instead of holding the door for us she let it hit Luke in the head. She wasn't an employee so that really has nothing to do with Chuck E Cheese not being baby friendly, but let's just say it's hard to feed strained organic green beans to a baby in a room full of flashing lights and crazy noises. OK, I am all over the place here. Let's get back to the hand stamp. Once we finally got through the door we had this conversation:

CEC Employee: Would you like a sticker for the baby?
Me: No thanks, he isn't really in to stickers.
CEC Employee: (Says nothing as she leans toward the stroller with giant metal hand stamper.)
Me: Whoa, wait, is that necessary?
CEC Employee: I ASKED if you wanted a STICKER!
Me: (Confused) OK, I guess we'll take a sticker.
CEC Employee: (Big Sigh. Eye roll. Stamps sticker and gives it to me.)

Luke and I got stamped without incident, and I managed to keep track of the sticker until we left and was therefore allowed to take Jack home.

Then on the way to the car, after our visible only to black light secret codes had been read, Luke said, "Wouldn't it be weird if Daddy got a new black light and when we got home we could show him our hands and he would see the stamp and know the number was 65?"

Yes, it would be weird if Daddy was shopping for black lights while we were at Chuck E Cheese.

Now and Then

Today I worked from home and Jack was a rock star, taking naps, playing, essentially making everything easy. However, he is also working on perfecting the art of sliding off my lap. He just can't quite crawl or run away. So today I let him slide off my lap and end up under my desk, in front of box full of train parts. He was sort of standing, sort of being supported by my knees. It reminded me of baby Luke, and how he used to be able to casually walk under the dining room table without ducking, or hitting his head. I have vivid memories of those days, and every once in a while when I see Luke standing next to the table I think about him as a baby and I remember when... Anyway, Dave came in and said, "Cute. We should get the camera so later we can say, "Remember when he used to be able to stand under the desk" like we do with Luke and the dining room table."

So here is Luke, not standing, probably quite a bit older than Jack is now, but under the table:

And here is Jack today, starring in one of many of my future memories:

Eurovan Camping Ettiquette 101

Always, always take off your shoes before you get in the van - otherwise the van could get dirty.

Silver Medal Dutch Oven Peach Cobbler

We came in second place in the dessert contest, which considering the competition, is something to be proud of. We lost to gingersnaps topped with homemade ice cream - all made at the camp site. Other entries were a delicious apple crisp, chocolate fondue, dirt cake, and slices of watermelon. Only when camping with Boulderites do you meet children who vote for watermelon in a dessert contest with the above choices. Of course, I am married to someone who regularly requests a birthday watermelon.

So many funny pictures and stories to share, but for now, I'll just share the peach cobbler recipe for anyone who may be camping soon!

We took this recipe from epicurious and this cooking method from Byron's Dutch Oven page and combined them to make this:

Silver Medal Dutch Oven Peach Cobbler
Preheat the charcoal.

6 large peaches, cut into thin wedges
1/4 cup brown sugar
1 tablespoon fresh lemon juice

For biscuit topping
1 cup all-purpose flour
1/2 cup brown sugar
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
3/4 stick cold unsalted butter, cut into small pieces
1/4 cup water

Mix the dry ingredients in a ziplock bag - slice pieces of butter in and squish it around. Add the water and squish it around some more. Slice the peaches, squeeze half a lemon onto the pile of peaches. Coat the inside of the dutch over with some butter. Toss in the peaches, and brown sugar and stir. Take a spoon and glob the dough on top. Cover.

Bake with 10-12 briquettes bottom and 18-20 briquettes top, and turn the lid a quarter way around every 10 minutes or so until the top is browned and it looks done.

So good. Enjoy, but don't expect to beat someone in a cooking contest when that someone serves chocolate fondue as a dessert appetizer!

Camping Competition

We'll be camping this weekend with some competitive people. The two contests we are going to enter are the dessert making contest and the most delicious alcoholic beverage contest. Hopefully the mountain biking will be the least competitive thing I do all weekend. For the drink contest, we'll be entering the drink of the summer. And as for the dessert, well, that is top secret for now.

Incidentally, people have been arriving on the Pear of Panties post through various means, including googling "camping panties" and "white panties for 5 year olds". The people looking for information about children's underwear should really look elsewhere.

And in case you are wondering, I changed the pink background to white because I was always annoyed when the pink appeared a second after the rest of the page.

Nature V. Nurture

Dave and I were discussing Nature vs. Nurture at dinner last night (probably in regards to our awesome parenting and how much it impacts our perfect children.) But with your biological children, does it matter what comes from your genes and what comes from your environment and actions? What's the diff? Who cares? And if something is not a genetic trait, but a learned behavior, does that mean it can be unlearned? Or relearned for the better?

I guess what I mean is, can people change?

The reason I ask is that Luke could not find his shoes this morning and it upset the delicate balance that allows us to get out of the house somewhere within an hour of on time without screaming, crying, or shaking our fists at the gods. Meetings were almost missed, bottles were forgotten, tears were shed. Luke's shoes were right by the front door. I have to feel a little sorry for the kid because he seems to have my tendency to lose things, combined with Dave's inability to look for and find things. Is the inability to look for and find things a genetic trait? Possibly on the y chromosome? Do I lose things because I need to scale back from ubertasking to mere multitasking?

This week I had to borrow Dave’s keys, mine were later found in a breast pump compartment. I went to physical therapy for my knee and couldn’t find my insurance card. I was sure it was on my desk, but it turned out to be in my wallet after all. It is time for a change. I don’t care if my very mitochondrial DNA insists that I lose things, I am going to try to keep track, and I am going to try to help Luke do the same. Wish me luck!

Nap time

Bean was very unhappy when Luke was born. He let us know this by pooping on the floor of Luke's room. Gradually, and begrudingly he grew to tolerate his new brother. But that was the extent of it. Maybe Bean is just beyond caring, but he seems happier with his new brother Jack.

It almost seems like Bean misses Jack when Jack is taking a nap.


Bean just wants to be close to Jack, so he snuggles with Jacks toys.



Or maybe poor Bean is just finding a way to deal with the fact that Jack's toys now cover the entire 6x8 rug that represents the only area in Bean's part of the house that isn't hard wood. Poor Bean.

Milestone Miscellaneous

Since I am sure no one wants to hear the milk and bottle disaster from this morning, I am just going to skip over it. Have you ever smelled milk and thought maybe it's bad, but I should taste it just to be sure? Isn't that dumb?

In other news, I wanted to post this picture because it's what inspired me to write all about Jack's new milestones. But I forgot to include the picture, and the fact that he had his first bath in the real tub. Yea! And you can almost see his two new teeth here, which I also forgot to include in the milestone announcement. Speaking of milestones, we are rapidly approaching my 100th post. V. exciting. Also, it's almost the 19th of July, which I haven't quite turned into a holiday where people send me gifts, but I always get good wishes on that day. More on that later. So I was thinking of having a joint 19th of July, 100th post celebration, where I encourage people to post a comment and then I randomly pick a winner and send them a prize. The prize is to be determined, but I welcome suggestions. One very talented, funny, and famous blogger recently gave away 5 wii+wii sports to random commenters and she got 42000 comments. Nintendo hasn't offered me anything yet, so my prize would probably be something lying around the house that I don't want anymore. Or something I could send through the internets without having to do anything more strenuous than get my credit card out of my wallet. Assuming I can find my wallet and that my credit card is in there. Hopefully no one in my family will include in their comment that it takes me months to get to the post office. I only wish I had bought some kitschy trinkets in Hot Springs. Stay tuned and plan to comment on the 19th of July!

B is for Bowling

Most people already know this, but just to get everyone up to speed, I am sort of type A, and I used to be obsessed with my GPA. When I was in school, that is. I don't care about it now, obviously. Or maybe not so obviously since that is what I am writing about. But back to high school. I am not going to put any dates on in, but I can guarantee this: when I was a junior in high school, and our gym class was held at the local bowling alley, Rob Base was definitely playing on the radio. (Parenting Aside: We went through a long phase of counting to 3 to give Luke a chance to follow orders without getting a time out. Once I couldn't stop myself from following "1, 2, 3" with "get loose now." Luke cried and said, "' 'Cept I don't want to get loose." ANYWAY, I was not very good at bowling. And by "was" I mean, "as recently as two months ago, I took Luke bowling and got the bumpers for both of us, and he beat me." In high school I was even worse. In order to get an A in bowling you had to bowl 100. It quickly became apparent that I would not be bowling 100. What to do? Was I to get a B for the first time since grades were invented? A B? In bowling? Well, there were easy two options for getting an A. The first would be to cheat and give myself a score of 100. Aside from the moral and ethical dilemma of debasing myself by cheating at bowling, there is a slight problem that I have with arithmetic. Geometry? No problem! Algebra? Calculus? I love you! Arithmetic? Hmm, not so much. I am not sure that I had both the understanding of how to keep score and the ability to make the numbers add up to something resembling 101. In retrospect, it is entirely possible that I was bowling A caliber frames, but not adding up the score correctly. But based on my scores at forced, work-related team functions over the years, that's probably not the case. But I digress, I would never cheat, especially not at bowling. That left me with option 2: Bowl during my free time and bring in my score sheet for extra credit. Almost as bad as cheating, was having to bowl a terrible game in my free time and then turn the results in for extra credit. I have done many extra credit, brown nosing projects over the years, (I wrote a paper on the catalytic converter before I switched majors from engineering to the more employable field of botany) but I couldn't make myself be a big enough geek. Sure, my friends would have been happy to go bowling with me! Sure, I told my parents I was bowling half the time anyway! (Hi Mom and Dad!). But I had to draw the line somewhere. I had to take a stand and plan to enter my senior year without a 4.0 in order to relieve to pressure and survive. I didn't cheat, I didn't do extra credit, I got a B and it was the healthiest thing I could have done.The point of this story is that in my first two games of wii bowling, I bowled a 144 and a 177, beating everyone. Because I am awesome at wii bowling. Or everyone else is really bad. But probably because I am awesome. I stole the picture from here.

Superfun

We had a great three day weekend, with two totally jam-packed days, and one day of chillaxing. Friday we went to the Jamestown Fourth of July celebration, which had the best parade featuring a kazoo band and effigies of Cheney, Bush and Rice. Then there were fun activities at the town park. I learned that the park was once under consideration to be declared a superfund site because it's a foot of dirt over a bunch of mine tailings. After learning this I found Jack eating grass. I pulled all the grass out of his mouth and then did a quick finger swipe and pulled out a half tablespoon of mud. So, in my mind I am replacing superfund with superfun. Dave also biked a zillion miles, we all biked to the fireworks, we worked on the yard, biked to the park, biked to the pool, had dinner with the neighbors, and I shopped for fabric and started working on a skirt. The weather was perfect because it rained a little today which made for guilt free wii playing in the basement. Luke wanted to go to a museum, so I finally got organized enough to at least go to NCAR, but we got there after it closed. Even though it was raining a little, I still wanted to "hike" so I pushed/dragged the kids on the "hike." I use "hike" in "quotes", because if I can push the 6 year old graco stroller the whole way, it isn't really hiking. (If I didn't have such an enormous compact car, I would have had to leave the stroller in the parking lot because I could NOT fold it back up.) With the clouds, the late afternoon light, and the mountains, the views were really spectacular. The camera was in the car, though. Sorry. Luke got into it after a while, but it started like this:

Luke: I either want to go home or to that museum with the giant black ant. (Buttery Fly Pavillion.)
Me: No, let's just hike.
Luke: Well, I -
Me: Look, we are here, I want to hike, so we are hiking and no one is complaining.
Luke: Mommy, that's not really true, because I am complaining.

Independance Day

Happy Belated Fourth of July! In honor of the anniversary of our nation's declaration of independence, I am going to update the Jack Milestone list with all the big steps he has taken to declare his own independence. Included on the list: Army crawling! Pulling to Standing! Sheer madness.

Wednesday Casual Picnic at the Park

We usually picnic on Wednesdays, and today is Wednesday. As usual, I tried to make things as complicated as possible. Hazel Miller was playing at the Bands on the Bricks, and I needed tomatoes for dinner tomorrow, so I figured, "Why not go to the farmers market, get some tomatoes, have a picnic and then watch a band?" And "why not take the kids there on the bus, and have Dave meet us there?" I packed the stroller, the diaper bag, a bag for the tomatoes, the sling, (so I could carry Jack while getting on the bus with Luke and the stroller and the diaper bag), and then I decided there was no way I could carry a picnic too. It's actually a small miracle that I was able to realize my limitations so clearly. Anywho, I drove to the daycare and we took the bus downtown. Dave met us there, I bought tomatoes, the best cherries ever, and a basil plant to replace my latest disappeared zucchini plant. I have officially given up on zucchini. You win, rodent! (Shaking fist at rodent!) Then we ate dinner, and listened to two songs before we headed home. Dave and Luke biked home and Jack and I took the bus. At first it was all I could do to distract Jack from playing with the wheels of the stroller. Then he noticed the leaves of the basil plant. Then it was all I could do to distract him from the leaves of the basil plant. Now, Jack was in the sling on my hip, and I was sort of holding the bag with the basil plant, and sort of holding the stroller. So it was a difficult balancing act to distract Jack from one with the other, just in time to keep him from eating either. Then he realized, "Hey, I can reach both of these!"

Speaking of how I like to make things complicated, I have friends who have the cutest picture of their soon to be 8 year old, when he was 6 months old. It was a naked baby on his tummy, on some sort of rug or something. Cute. So I thought, hey, Jack just had a bath, he is the cutest thing ever, I'm on vacation at a hotel, where a naked baby photo is less risky from a pee perspective, why not try to see what kind of adorable photo I can take?



Let's just say I haven't purchased a frame yet.

And now, to get that image out of your mind, here is Jack in his slip 'n slide debut:



Oh, and I sort of forgot to get off the bus at the daycare and rode it all the way home instead. So I guess I'll pick up the car tomorrow.

Happy Birthday Dave!

We had fun celebrating Dave's birthday this past weekend. We could see some runs at Eldora and Dave said, "That's Corona." To which Luke replied, "Oh, I can see Mule Shoe. It looks steep from here." I don't know why, but I found it to be very impressive that he could not only remember the name of the run, but identify it in the summer. Don't worry Luke, it will be covered in snow again soon!
(Mule Shoe is on the left)


Luke and Jack and I hung out

while Dave did some fishing. Dave got sort of wet,

maybe I should have gotten him chest waders for his birthday instead of a wii?


On the other hand, I suggested to Luke that I would be willing to play wii baseball with him after he was finished eating his asparagus, and for the first time ever, he ate his asparagus. Chest waders don't have super powers like that!