Another One Joins the Game

A couple of years ago, I started playing a game with Q-ster on outings where I’d find something on the ground that was in the direction in which I wanted us to travel. For instance, a maintenance hole cover or a sign painted on the asphalt. I’d encourage him to run over and step on it, which was an improvement over arguing over the trajectory of every footstep on our path.

When he became older and amenable to bribes, it wasn’t necessary to plot our course so intensely, but the game returned this weekend, as I was trying to direct Buster on our stroll. He’s a little too young to really get it, but he saw his brother and me put our feet on a decorative grate and he did his best to participate too.


The photo idea is from the ever crafty LJC, who suggests placing your feet in photos of ground landmarks, to make them more interesting.

Dropping the Coolness Factor by a Thousand Levels

Q-ster, upon catching a brief glimpse of some street-swaggering hip hop dancers on YouTube doing a crotch-grabbing, pelvis-shaking move:

“Why are they doing the potty dance? Do they need to go potty?”

The Fourth Sweetest Word

Is Mama!

(The first three being “I love you,” that is.)

We had a word explosion today. In addition to the longtime “uh-oh” and recent “ge-ge” (big brother), Buster added, “ma-ma” and “nah-nah” (banana) today. I’m pretty sure we also got a “ba-ba” (daddy) and “bao-bao” (hug) too.

We Hit the Jackpot

Some friends who are expecting their first baby are stopping by this weekend to visit and pick up some of the gear that Buster has outgrown. I’m always a little surprised at how happy people are to get our old baby things, but tonight the tables were turned and I was reminded why. Timing is everything.

We ran a dance rehearsal to prepare for our friends’ wedding, and along with having a lovely mini reunion with friends, we were the recipients of the motherlode of hand-me-down books that were no longer wanted by another dancer’s teenaged sons.

If the first picture wasn’t clear enough, let’s look at some of them more closely.

Q-ster is going to be jumping up and down when he sees these! SwingDaddy and I have decided it would be wise to ration the Star Wars hoard and reveal them one per week.

It's Been That Kind of Day

or week or month.

I slept through a meeting today. To be fair, it was a 9pm meeting with a team overseas, so it wasn't during the regular workday, but still. I fell asleep while putting Q-ster to bed and completely missed the call.

Work is really nutty for both SwingDaddy and me right now. I was supposed to deliver a massive project presentation two days before BlogHer, and it’s now been moved to the following week. I’m glad to have a few extra days to work on it, but now it’ll be hanging over me through BlogHer.

Just need to get through the next couple of weeks of work and personal commitments and hope that we get rest time in August.

In other news, we’ve had the pleasure of a brief visit from SwingDaddy’s sister, RuggerMom. She captured this image of Q-ster hanging from a tree in our front yard, a grand total of one foot off the ground, but we’ll consider it tree climbing for his sake.

Q-ster’s been fascinated with trees since a conversation I had with him last weekend while I was consoling him from some small injury. He asked if I’d ever been hurt as a child, and I said that once I fell out of a tree I was climbing. I explained that I had the wind knocked out of me, but the part that must have stuck with him was . . . hey, you can climb trees! Way to go, Mommy.

Brilliant Childcare Planning

I heard on the radio last week: The hot place to have date night is IKEA. You drop off the kids in the supervised Smaland play area, head to the restaurant and eat Swedish food while relaxing with your spouse. Maybe you’ll even find a nice lamp or sofa to take home too.

What a brilliant idea! This is on par with the moms who join a gym so that they can take a shower in peace while their toddlers play in the gym child care room. Clever, clever thinking.

Check out this silly song by Jonathan Coulton, titled IKEA in the Funny Songs category.

Long ago in days of yore
It all began with a god named Thor
There were Vikings and boats
And some plans for a furniture store

Stompy Stomp

I took Buster for a stroll over the weekend and he had a good time stomping around at his own pace.

He’s not quite tall enough for this fountain, so I had to pick him up to let him splash. No pictures of that, obviously.

He did a good job of picking up every single leaf within a mile radius and carefully placing it in my hand. There were so many that I started putting the leaves down on the other side of my chair, but unfortunately, he wandered around to that side and picked them all up again, one by one, and handed them back to me.

~
Saw this headline: July is the Perfect Time to Start Crafting for Christmas. My head hurts just to read that. Maybe another year, or another lifetime.