Notes from the crib

One of the fun things you can do with blogs is called tagging. It's kind of like sending a chain letter, but more entertaining.

I've been tagged by our friend CWH. I'm supposed to pick up the nearest book, turn to page 123, find the fifth sentence, and then type out the next three sentences into my blog. Then I'm supposed to tag five more people.

Grad school burned me out of reading and, with a couple exceptions, I haven't read a book over 123 pages in a long time. My current literary interests lie in books that George can't destroy or eat. The nearest book is The Nose Book by Al Perkins.

Turning to a random page (since there aren't 123 pages in the book), we find...

"A nose is good for making holes....in trees"

Deep thoughts, indeed. I'm choosing to not specifically tag anyone, but feel free to consider yourself tagged if you'd like to play along.

In George news, we had a very full day today. We went to visit some friends after work and ended up spending all day with them. George even took a nap while we were visiting - he's never done that before as he's usually too excited with whatever we are doing to even think about sleep. Then this evening we went out for dinner with some other friends (coincidentally, relatives of CWH). George was pretty wiggly at dinner, but that was to be expected after his full day of excitement. He ran round and round outside the restaurant exploring the landscaping before settling down at the table to devour a basket of chips.

What could be more fun to play with than trains? Maybe shoes? Well, then it's a really happy day today because George got to play with trains AND shoes. I found him actually standing in my shoes, but by the time I got the camera he had climbed out, picked one up and was bringing it to me to show off. He was really trying to tell me a story, too, but all he could get out was "Shoe......Shoe........Shoe......" He'd scrunch up his face in between each utterance like he was trying to find just the right words to convey his thoughts.

This evening he helped me take all the shoes from the living room and throw them over the gate (since that's where shoes belong). Then he went into his room, took his Robeez from the floor and threw them into his shoe basket. Such the good helper!

For a treat after grocery shopping, I let George ride on the coin-operated carousel. I put in the 50 cents not realizing that it would start spinning immediately. I had to quickly plop George onto a horse while it was rotating around. George was quite unsure of this contraption and clung to my arms and wouldn't let go. I had to be quite the contortionist to support him until he felt secure enough to hold on to the horsey himself. As the ride ended, I quickly pulled out my phone to snap a picture of the momentous occasion. Once the ride stopped, he immediately climbed off the horse, climbed down from the merry-go-round and then signed "more" to ride it again. I told him that we'd have to wait to ride it another day.

As we were in the checkout earlier, I had picked out a freebie balloon weighted with a sucker to occupy George during the tedious checking out process. Well, neither one of us was holding on to the balloon when we exited the store, and the fierce cold-front wind blew it up out of the cart and out into the parking lot. Because it was weighed down with the sucker, it didn't float off into the sky but rather bounced along down the length of the strip-center. One nice motorist in the parking lot actually tried to mow down the balloon with her car as it bobbed in front of her, in the hopes of catching it for the little boy! I just shot her a thank you wave and shrugged my shoulders as George and I sang "bye-bye" to the balloon. He wasn't upset at all about losing it, he was probably still on a carousel-riding high.

A little post-lunch baby wipe fun....

George loves all his toys, but he's especially fond of cars right now. Today at church we took a bag full of cars hoping that he'd play with them in the pew and not be too disruptive. Instead he pushed them on the ground, under the pew in front of us and I had to go pull him out from underneath the legs of a (thankfully) understanding church elder. He pitched quite a fit during the service, and he and I ended up spending most of the church hour outside enjoying the nice weather and the open space in which to run.

George is fascinated with shoes. We have to keep them on the other side of the gates out of reach, to keep him from playing with or chewing on them. When Grandma A. and Grandpa M. were visiting, they didn't know the shoe rule. So George would pick up their footwear and carrying it around the house. He became fond of picking up Grandma A's shoes and bringing them to her saying "shoo". We weren't sure if he was correctly naming the footwear ("Look at the shoe, Grandma!") or trying to tell her that it was time to go home ("Take your footwear and shoo, Woman!") When Grandma A. was taking a nap one day, George picked up her shoes and carried them to the hallway gate, lifting them over his head to throw them to the other side. I guess he thinks that's where shoes belong, since that's where we always keep ours.

George helped me make cookies today and we both ended up covered in ingredients. In changing his clothes into clean ones, I decided to see if he fit into a pair of 12 month jeans that I purchased for him months ago. He's still too tiny for them; he ended up walking right out of his pants.

Photo courtesy Grandpa M. who decided to try out the dSLR

George has graduated to the big people tub. He's so active that we crossed over into over-protective parental mode and bought bath bumpers for his tub. They are inflatable and suction-cup to the tub to give a little extra protection for when he falls over against the sides. He seemed a little confused with all the extra space. I think we'll get him some bubble bath next time we are out, and maybe a couple more bath toys. I'm sure he and DH would enjoy some wind up boats.

And here's a shot of him the last time he was in the duckie tub - there's hardly any room for the little guy in there.

I've been busy completing a big transcription project, so I'm behind in blogging. I did just add about four entries, but you'll have to scroll back to find them. I'm anal about keeping the entries dated the day they occurred. :)

Grandma A. and Grandpa M. are here visiting for Grandpa M.'s birthday. They had to come to the state for a work meeting, so they came a little early to visit George. Grandpa M. requested a chocolate cake with white frosting, so I experimented with new recipes from my Christmas cookbook. George helped blow out the candles and got to stick his fingers in the frosting.

I sold an old cell phone on Craigslist this week for the exact same price as the Wii game Guitar Hero III. Guess what DH got for Valentine's Day? He's been enjoying playing the game and even personalized his guitar face plate with Transformers stencils that he made himself.

George must have been feeling a little lonely while DH played guitar, as he crawled up behind DH and laid down at his feet. He wasn't too lonely though, he had dragged over his inflatable lion to cuddle up with, too.

Since he's dressed the part, George decided to fully immerse himself in the train conductor role. Note, he's standing IN the train.

For today's morning entertainment, George and I went to a casting call for a diaper advertisement. The event was held in a hotel meeting room. We went in to the room (which was up an amazing number of steps - odd planning since most of the participants were in strollers). I filled out a form with our names, ages, contact information, and stats (height and weight for me; height, weight, hair color, eye color, age, shirt size, shoe size, pant size, diaper size, talents such as sitting, standing, walking, or talking, and nap times for George). The casting call was for mother/child pairs for a diaper print campaign. We were given a sheet of paper with our participant number, George's age, and my name on it and told to stand in front of a white backdrop. I held up the paper and a photographer took a few pictures of us and that was it. The photos are then sent to the casting agency to decide who to pick for the actual photo shoot.

I'll be very, very surprised if we are chosen. First off, it's for a mother/child pair and while George is absolutely adorable and they'd be silly to not choose him, I'm not media material. Secondly, George channeled his inner diva for the photo shoot. Since it is a diaper advertisement, George had to be photographed in just his diaper. Luckily, DH dressed him in a disposable instead of a cloth diaper today. We really wouldn't have stood a chance if George wasn't modeling the correct brand. George really wasn't all that enthused with me stripping him down to his briefs. Once I got him changed, he was better and toddled around the room until they were ready for us. Well, during that toddling time, George found a toy car to play with. He was making car noises and pushing/carrying that car all around, just as content as can be. When we were called to pose, we discovered that the toy car was actually the photographer's prop. She wanted the car back so that she could hold it out and have George look at it (thus looking at the camera). First off, George wasn't keen on giving up the car. Secondly, he really didn't like being "taunted" with the car that he'd just had in his hot little hands. So he pitched a fit. He didn't want to look at the camera, he didn't want me holding him, he didn't want any part of the photo shoot at all. And an uncooperative baby at a 60 second casting call doesn't really bode well for getting selected for what would be a several hour photo shoot. It didn't help that all his wiggling was stressing me out, so I kept getting reprimanded by the photographer for not smiling when she would snap a picture, since I was preoccupied with getting George to stop wiggling and look at the camera.

As we were leaving, we looked back on the mother/daughter pair being photographed after us. The daughter (about 2.5 years old) was balanced on the mother's hip and both mother and daughter had their heads tilted together with loving smiles on their faces. You could almost see the angelic halos above their heads. Quite the contrast from us.

One of my friends asked me to make cupcakes for her son's second birthday party. He loves vehicles and his birthday is Valentine's day, so I made some red train cupcakes for him (the trains are edible candies). Unfortunately, we had a cupcake smooshing incident before they were delivered so I had to make a few more in order to ensure that there would be enough to go around. The second batch turned into little cars, so the birthday boy had an assortment of cupcake vehicles for his celebration.

The doorbell rang this evening and I opened the door to discovered a fabulous surprise! Apparently George has been doing some Internet shopping when I wasn't looking - we received a box of chocolates with the following message:

George is no fool though, in addition to the box of chocolates he included a little treat for himself - a small chocolate koala bear. (Special thanks to Grandpa M. for loaning his credit card to George for this shopping spree.)

Since we're not a household that lets good chocolate languish, we decided George should get to enjoy his treat after dinner. Of course, we had to document his first encounter with chocolate.

First bite of chocolate:

(

He's starting to look a little drugged. Note the chocolate smears on his face and his socks.

You want to take my candy away?!

The damage:

He wasn't really sure what that treat was, but he knew it was tasty. He managed to eat an ear, and leave his dental imprint. Surprisingly, he didn't put up much of a fuss when I took the candy away. Probably because I swept in, grabbed him, put the chocolate back in the box, and carted him off to the bath all in the span of 30 seconds. He loves bath time so much that he forgot all about the candy. He was pretty wired afterwards though, he ran all through the house for an hour before finally crashing for the night.

We spied the Oscar Meyer weinermobile parked on the side of the road today, so we had to pull off and go check it out. Unfortunately no one was around, so I had a difficult time getting a picture with both George and the giant hot dog vehicle in the frame. I was afraid he'd run off into the street just as a car would appear, so I held him in one arm and pulled back the other arm as far as it would go while aiming my camera phone hoping that I'd get a shot with both George and the weinermobile in it. George was most fascinated by the wheels, as usual.

George had an eventful day today. It started off by having his first ever police encounter. As DH left the neighborhood to bring George to work today, he saw that a trooper was following him. All of a sudden the lights went on and DH was instructed to pull over. The officer slowly approached the vehicle and asked DH who that was in the back seat. DH replied, "Why, this is George." The police officer then told DH that there had been a child abducted in the metro area and the getaway car matched DH's car description, but that DH and George were clearly not the suspect/child in question. So he was told to have a good day and off they drove to come meet me. I had heard about the Amber Alert for the missing five year old, and they were looking for a car similar to DH's (same make but different model), it happened not far from a co-worker's house. I hope they find the child, and I'm glad they are stopping vehicles and making checks.

After we did the George switcheroo, he and I went to a park and met up with some of our friends for a couple hours of playtime. He had so much fun climbing on the playscape, digging in the rocks, and chasing squirrels. The other little boy in our group is almost three, and he brought along a backpack full of cars to share. George spent over half an hour playing with those cars, driving them around in the playground pebbles and making car noises. A little bit later, after the kids had moved on to other fun the little boy gathered up all his cars and went wandering around trying to find a place to hide them. He finally settled on zipping them up into his backpack and I heard him exclaim as he pulled the zipper tight "Now George can't find them!" It was too funny!

After we tired of the park we all went to a local hamburger joint for lunch. We arrived near lunch time and it was an adventure finding space for four mommies and six kids, but we managed to squeeze in. George had part of my burger, a grilled cheese sandwich, some of my spicy fries, and an entire bowl of fruit, plus a bite of cookie. He's a good eater, if it's food that he likes. I've found offering food on utensils often increases the chance that he'll eat it - he loves forks and spoons.

I took yet another sick day today, but I think I've finally kicked this bug that I caught. This afternoon George and I spent time playing with my camera and then we made our first outing in four days to go clothes shopping. We ended up finding a wonderful sale on monkey clothes and George was even tolerant enough to try them on for me. He had great fun in the dressing room - I'd put a piece of clothing on him and then he'd run over to the dressing room mirror and pound on it. Then he'd come back, pick up a hanger off the floor, swing it at me, and giggle. I ended up getting the clothes in size 18-24 months which makes me a little sad. My baby is growing up. The clothes are baggy but wearable now, and they should fit him again this fall. The particular store we went to does seem to run small, we also bought him a pair of jeans at another store and those were size 6-9 months. Quite a size range for my little guy.

Here are some pictures from our afternoon. You can see that George has mastered climbing onto the furniture. He also helped me with laundry today - he grabbed some pants out of the laundry basket and ran around the house with them for quite awhile. I don't quite get the fun in that, but he sure found it entertaining.