We took a short wagon ride around the neighborhood tonight before dinner. In the ten minutes we were out, we had two interesting conversations with people we passed.
Conversation 1 (a man at the tennis courts):
Man (after Mr. Mister smiles and makes funny faces at him): I don't know what it is about me, but all kids just love me. They're always so happy to see me.
I didn't have the heart to tell him that Mr. Mister loves everyone he sees and that he made the same faces at the dog we just passed a minute ago.
Man: I have twins who are 2 and a half.
Me: Wow, they must keep you busy.
Man (laughing): No, I don't do anything. My wife, she takes care of everything. I just play with them.
Me (in my head): I'm not really sure what to say to that. At least he's honest. I decide that "Well, have a good night" might be a little less confrontational than telling him what I'm really thinking. Although his wife may have thanked me if I had told him the truth instead.
Conversation 2
Woman: Oh, he's cute. How old is he?
Me: 11 months.
Woman: My friend has one who is 17 months.
Me (in my head): I'm not really sure what to say to that. Possible answers: My sister has one who's 18 months? My friend has one who's 7? My neighbor has one who is a senior in high school? I decided on a generic response like, "They are cute, aren't they?" and left it at that.
Wednesday, July 30, 2008
Tuesday, July 29, 2008
Big Boy Skills
Mr. Mister has been learning many new things. Here are some shots of his new skills....
My mom taught him to crawl up the stairs one day while I was taking a nap! He loves it and can now get upstairs pretty quickly.
Now that he pulls himself up and walks from furniture to furniture, everything on the table tops is fair game. The remote control is one of his favorite treasures. I love that his eyes just peek over the edge.
Sunday, July 27, 2008
Older Women
These little girls came over to talk to Mr. Mister during the 4th of July parade. Look at him flirting already!
But they must have said something to make him mad. I love this picture!
Saturday, July 26, 2008
Pond Fest
On July 5th, we went to the annual Pond Fest celebration at my friend's parents' house. Her dad and brother plan all year for this and set off their own fireworks, which are easily a half hour long and rival many communities' fireworks shows. Mr. Mister was so busy entertaining everyone in the hours before the fireworks, that he slept through the whole thing!
Thursday, July 24, 2008
4th of July
I realize it's almost August, but I wanted to share these pictures from the 4th of July. A parade went right in front of our friends' apartment, so we had a fun cookout and then enjoyed Mr. Mister's first parade. (Even though he enjoyed crawling around in the grass more than he enjoyed watching the parade.) I was remembering the previous 4th of July when we did the same thing, but I was a little over a month from having Mr. Mister. A year has gone so fast.
Wednesday, July 23, 2008
Every baby has to have a messy spaghetti picture, right?
Vacation Pictures
Continuting on with the picture posting, here are some long overdue pictures from our vacation in North Carolina.
Monday, July 21, 2008
Nosey Neighbors
You know that stereotype of the old woman who knows what's going on with everyone in the neighborhood because she sits by her window watching everyone go about their lives? Well, our neighborhood is full of people like that. It's hard to get away with anything. Listen to what happened today....
Necessary background knowledge: We live in a townhouse in a neighborhood with strict (often over the top) HOA restrictions. Any change to the outside of the house must be approved by the architectural committee and the board. So here's the story.....
We are looking into replacing the windows in our house, so we had a guy from a local company come this morning to give us an estimate. Less than a half hour after he left, our phone rang. Here's the conversation:
Man: Hi, this is John, the head of the architectural committee. Are you looking into getting new windows?
Me: Yes (confused as to how he knows this, but thinking that my husband was on the ball and called him to ask what we needed to do to get the windows approved).
Man: Well, I'll drop by the application you need to fill out to get them approved.
I hung up and thanked my husband for being so quick to look into this. He was confused and informed me that he had not called anyone about the windows. Hmmm....I wonder how they knew? Then the thought crossed my mind... Could someone really have seen the service van parked in the parking lot (which is a good little walk from our front door), watched to see which house he went to, and then called John to let him know that we had a window man at our house? All in less than a half hour after he left? No way....it seemed too unbelievable to be true.
So John came to the door later this afternoon and gave us the paperwork. I asked him how he knew we were looking into new windows. "Someone told me," was his answer. "I have spies," he added with a chuckle.
Can you believe it?? What I want to know is how could our house have been robbed with no one seeing anything, but we can't even have a window installer come without it being the big news of the day?
Necessary background knowledge: We live in a townhouse in a neighborhood with strict (often over the top) HOA restrictions. Any change to the outside of the house must be approved by the architectural committee and the board. So here's the story.....
We are looking into replacing the windows in our house, so we had a guy from a local company come this morning to give us an estimate. Less than a half hour after he left, our phone rang. Here's the conversation:
Man: Hi, this is John, the head of the architectural committee. Are you looking into getting new windows?
Me: Yes (confused as to how he knows this, but thinking that my husband was on the ball and called him to ask what we needed to do to get the windows approved).
Man: Well, I'll drop by the application you need to fill out to get them approved.
I hung up and thanked my husband for being so quick to look into this. He was confused and informed me that he had not called anyone about the windows. Hmmm....I wonder how they knew? Then the thought crossed my mind... Could someone really have seen the service van parked in the parking lot (which is a good little walk from our front door), watched to see which house he went to, and then called John to let him know that we had a window man at our house? All in less than a half hour after he left? No way....it seemed too unbelievable to be true.
So John came to the door later this afternoon and gave us the paperwork. I asked him how he knew we were looking into new windows. "Someone told me," was his answer. "I have spies," he added with a chuckle.
Can you believe it?? What I want to know is how could our house have been robbed with no one seeing anything, but we can't even have a window installer come without it being the big news of the day?
On The Road
I have a lot of pictures I've been meaning to post on my blog, but instead of posting them all at once, I'm going to spread them out and do some each day. So get excited to see a lot of pictures throughout the next week.
The first couple days of pictures will be from our vacation to NC all the way back in June. To start, here is a snapshot of our trip going there (click here if you missed the story about our long journey!)
This first one is of our picnic lunch. You'd never guess that we were sitting outside of a gas station! At this point we were still in good spirits, but only half way to our destination.
Here is Mr. Mister's reaction to being in the carseat when he was ready to get out and move around. This made for some loud screaming and some long rest stops.
Here I am changing Mr. Mister's diaper outside a Wendy's after we stopped for dinner. As the darkness of night time settled in, we were still 3 hours away from the beach.
We didn't take pictures of our arrival at midnight. But I'm sure you can picture us exhausted, full of fast food, and ready to crash. Good thing the vacation was better than the trip there!
Sunday, July 20, 2008
Anniversary Surprise
Tomorrow is my parents' 35th wedding anniversary so my sisters and I organized for my brother to fly in from Colorado this weekend to surprise them. Since his wife and kids are in Hungry visiting her family, it was easy for him to make the quick trip. We told my mom and dad that we wanted make them an anniversary dinner on Friday night. My sisters and their husbands got their early to begin cooking and we brought my brother with us around the time we were supposed to eat. Daddy, Mr. Mister and I walked in, said happy anniversary and closed the door behind us. After a couple seconds, my brother walked in and said "Happy Anniversary!" The look on their faces was priceless. My mom almost dropped my nephew who she was holding and immediately started crying. If you know my parents, you know that nothing makes them happier than having their whole family together. So needless to say, they were both shocked and happy beyond words that he was there. He could only stay until Sunday morning, but it was a wonderful weekend and such a blessing to all be together.
Tuesday, July 15, 2008
Swimming
We were notified late last night that our electricity would be out all day today, so we packed up this morning and spent the day at my parents' house, where we could enjoy the AC, swim, and where Daddy could have power for his computer as he worked (he's officially self employed now!). During a quick jump in the pool after lunch, Mr. Mister was sitting on the step, splashing like he loves to do. All of a sudden, he lunged forward and slipped right out of my hands. I grabbed him quickly, but not before he dove completely under water. He came up blinking his eyes in confusion, but didn't scream or seem to be too afraid. I think he may have actually liked it, because tonight in the bathtub, he kept putting his face in the water, laughing as he came up.
At one point last weekend when we were swimming, I was in the pool and Daddy was sitting with Mr. Mister on the side. When I swam up to them, Mr. Mister reached out, put his hand on my face, and pushed. I played along, falling back into the water, which he thought was hilarious. He loved pushing me in the pool, which he did over and over. It was fun to watch him be so entertained!
At one point last weekend when we were swimming, I was in the pool and Daddy was sitting with Mr. Mister on the side. When I swam up to them, Mr. Mister reached out, put his hand on my face, and pushed. I played along, falling back into the water, which he thought was hilarious. He loved pushing me in the pool, which he did over and over. It was fun to watch him be so entertained!
Thursday, July 10, 2008
A Little Tinkle
Last night, Daddy let Mr. Mister crawl around without his diaper on. I told him that if Mr. Mister had an accident, he'd have to clean it up. He argued that it is good for babies to air out sometimes, which I agree with. But babies are loose cannons...you never know when they'll just let it go. Not more than a minute after that conversation, let it go he did. As Daddy cleaned the carpet, I thought back to when Mr. Mister was a newborn and being peed on was a regular occurrence (like in this blog post). Ah, the good old days.
Wednesday, July 9, 2008
Vacation
We've been home from vacation for a week and a half now, but I'm just getting around to blogging. Our trip to the Outer Banks was great. Mr. Mister loved the ocean and once we got him to stop eating the sand, we had fun playing at the beach. There were more than thirty people there from my mother-in-law's family, most of whom had not yet met Mr. Mister. He was entertaining as always and Grandma and Grandpa loved having a whole week with him.
The only downside to the trip was that it took almost 22 hours to get there (it's supposed to take 12 1/2). We tried leaving at 2am, thinking that we would drive a lot while Mr. Mister slept since he has a limited tolerance for the car seat while he's awake. That backfired when Daddy started falling asleep after driving for 45 minutes. I took over but felt like it took every ounce of energy I had (which wasn't much) to keep the car going straight. So after making it a whole hour and a half from home, we had to stop and get a hotel room! Thankfully we found a cheapo room for $35. We slept for 4 hours until Mr. Mister woke us up. By the time we got on the road at 9am, we had been away from home for 7 hours but had only driven an hour and a half. What a start to the trip. It continued with hour long stops for Mr. Mister to have a break from the car seat, bumper to bumper traffic through Richmond, VA, and hunting down a Wendy's that was 2 miles off the exit, as all restaurants seem to be along the Virginia highways. Thankfully we had our trusty GPS this whole time and we arrived safely, albeit exhausted, at 11:30pm that night, exactly 21 1/2 hours after leaving home.
We didn't go anywhere the rest of the trip besides walking to the beach. On the way home, we stopped overnight halfway at a Young Life camp in Virginia called Rockbridge, where a lot of our friends are volunteering for this month. It was so fun to see them and so refreshing to be in that environment that we ended up staying the whole weekend. We drove home Monday morning, refreshed and thankful to only have half the drive ahead of us.
One more funny story from the ride home....I had to go to the bathroom very badly but we were only 45 minutes from home and Mr. Mister and Daddy were both sound asleep, so I was trying to avoid stopping. But I couldn't make it any longer so I pulled off the highway at the next exit. I quickly noticed that none of the cars on the exit ramp were moving. Out of all the exits I could have chosen, I picked one where there had just been an accident at the end of the ramp and no one could go anywhere! In desperation, I put the car in park, ran up the grassy hill off the exit, and into a LaRosa's restaurant. The employees had all been gathered at the window watching the accident and saw me sprinting up the hill with a pained look on my face. They laughed when I asked for the restroom and kindly pointed me to the back of the store.
Needless to say, we were glad to get home and have no plans for a road trip anytime soon!
The only downside to the trip was that it took almost 22 hours to get there (it's supposed to take 12 1/2). We tried leaving at 2am, thinking that we would drive a lot while Mr. Mister slept since he has a limited tolerance for the car seat while he's awake. That backfired when Daddy started falling asleep after driving for 45 minutes. I took over but felt like it took every ounce of energy I had (which wasn't much) to keep the car going straight. So after making it a whole hour and a half from home, we had to stop and get a hotel room! Thankfully we found a cheapo room for $35. We slept for 4 hours until Mr. Mister woke us up. By the time we got on the road at 9am, we had been away from home for 7 hours but had only driven an hour and a half. What a start to the trip. It continued with hour long stops for Mr. Mister to have a break from the car seat, bumper to bumper traffic through Richmond, VA, and hunting down a Wendy's that was 2 miles off the exit, as all restaurants seem to be along the Virginia highways. Thankfully we had our trusty GPS this whole time and we arrived safely, albeit exhausted, at 11:30pm that night, exactly 21 1/2 hours after leaving home.
We didn't go anywhere the rest of the trip besides walking to the beach. On the way home, we stopped overnight halfway at a Young Life camp in Virginia called Rockbridge, where a lot of our friends are volunteering for this month. It was so fun to see them and so refreshing to be in that environment that we ended up staying the whole weekend. We drove home Monday morning, refreshed and thankful to only have half the drive ahead of us.
One more funny story from the ride home....I had to go to the bathroom very badly but we were only 45 minutes from home and Mr. Mister and Daddy were both sound asleep, so I was trying to avoid stopping. But I couldn't make it any longer so I pulled off the highway at the next exit. I quickly noticed that none of the cars on the exit ramp were moving. Out of all the exits I could have chosen, I picked one where there had just been an accident at the end of the ramp and no one could go anywhere! In desperation, I put the car in park, ran up the grassy hill off the exit, and into a LaRosa's restaurant. The employees had all been gathered at the window watching the accident and saw me sprinting up the hill with a pained look on my face. They laughed when I asked for the restroom and kindly pointed me to the back of the store.
Needless to say, we were glad to get home and have no plans for a road trip anytime soon!
Wednesday, July 2, 2008
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