Wednesday, October 28, 2009

On Monday it was a little brisk, but sunny and gorgeous for late October in Colorado, so we spent our afternoon outside doing this:

Today was a little (just a little!) bit chillier, but we still hauled ourselves outdoors, dressed to the nines. We were lucky enough to find an awesome snowsuit in Patrick's size at Goodwill, in red! His favorite color! He really liked 'em, and is excited to wear a hat whenever there's preciptation (or even a strong wind) to protect his head.

He figured out snowballs on his own, but didn't have to figure out not to throw them at me! I got to shovel the driveway in peace while he pelted our yard with mini snowballs.

Sunday, October 25, 2009

Fall is more fun with a yard!

With D-Day practically HOURS away (ok, 192 hours, which seems like a lot, but 8 days isn't really much at all) I know I should be cleaning my house because practically every room looks something like THIS:
We've been a little busy painting, which means piling, but until we're DONE I can't un-pile!

But when the weather is SO NICE for a change, how could we help but be outside doing something more like THIS?:

Relocating the sand pile to mom's leg.

Saturday, October 17, 2009

Journals, errrr...blogs

I've discovered that when my life gets busy my journals end up with lots of blank pages because I'm simply too busy to write about what's going on. Conversely, when I'm bored and have nothing to write about is when I write the most. However busy or bored I am, though, I DO make an effort to journal regularly (at least once a week, even at my busiest) not necessarily because the writing relaxes me or allows me to vent (it does both) but because I know how much I will LOVE going back and reading those entries later on! Reading to laugh, cry, commiserate, or whatever, it is so interesting to re-read! Well, the same goes for blogs. Fewer entries when I'm busy, but I make that effort so there's still plenty of stuff to go back and enjoy, which I've been doing lately since most of the blogs I follow also seem to be in a slow spot (meaning I might not have something new to read every single day, just most days) but I refuse to give up checking blogger twice a day anyway. I'm addicted. So I've been reading these old blogs, and it's really great to see what was going on! First, the pictures are fun because I don't keep up with pictures in my journal and I only print decent pictures to scrapbook, not the silly ones where Patrick was drooling all over himself or covered in cookie dough or something. Second, the blog is a lot more random than my journal (which is consistently a weekend update), so you never know what you'll get. Third, since I created the blog for our moms (and our siblings) to keep up with Patrick's day-to-day I have done a pretty good job of writing about him! That's something I don't do in my weekend update OR his baby book (groooooaaaan! sooooo.... faaaarrr.... behiiiiiind!). I just wanted to catch up on what he's doing (or not doing) these days, so basically that was a long-winded justification for this long-winded entry.

20 months is awesome! He's been in nursery for 2 months now at church and he is great the whole time, every time, even though it's right when lunch and naps should be. He's very compassionate with the other kids in nursery (so I'm told) and is very concerned when they cry. By the end of the 2 hours, when he is tired, he simply turns into the world's neediest snuggler, to which the nursery workers happily oblige. With 3 Sundays maximum left with Patrick taken care of and no new baby, I'm enjoying every precious second of it!

Singing has become his new favorite activity, and he has quite the repertoire... though he doesn't actually sing a single note. He doesn't even try for a meandering tune or some gibberish words, but he's great with actions so he signs along. This has led me to create actions for songs that had none, like "twinkle, twinkle" and "the ants go marching." It's pretty obvious why these songs don't have actions, and it's because they have BORING LYRICS that don't lend themselves to much action at all, but they're unfortunately some of his favorites. Songs with lots of actions, though, like the church song "popcorn popping," he can follow along with like a pro. I'm hoping to get a video of him signing along because I am VERY impressed at how well he can do all the motions!

He still takes one nap a day and is getting much better at taking it by himself without much struggle, but he hoards toys to keep him company since I'm not there. It's pretty standard to have one matchbox car in each hand and his three favorite stuffed animals encircled in his arms. This is fine and dandy unless he wakes up mid-nap in need of a napping buddy (hey, the tired pregnant lady is happy to oblige!) and I get some matchbox car stuck under me - ouch! Bedtime is like buttah - no struggles, no whining, no waking up, and he's even been toughing it out by himself when he wakes up coughing. What a stud!

He's turned into a bit of a picky eater and avoids vegetables like the plague. I've been trying to sneak veggies into our meals by dicing them up really small and mixing them in with, say, spaghetti sauce, but Patrick can take a man-sized bite, chew and swallow what you think was the whole thing, then spit out a perfectly preserved chunk of carrot. It's unreal! Fortunately, fruit remains high on his list of favorite foods, so I figure I haven't failed as a parent (yet).

Is he talking? No, not really. He says mama and dada (boring), but these words can mean other words when combined with various sounds or actions. For example, "mama brrrrrm brrrrrrm" means "mom's car," and "dada" often means the color red because Joe's car is red and Patrick is infatuated with it. He says "hot" for fire trucks, fire extinguishers, the fireplace (you get the idea) or anything that appears to be creating smoke, like exhaust from cars on a cold day. "Brrrrrr" means cold, and he sometimes gets it mixed up with "hot," which is funny. "Wa-wa" means fish because fish live in water. "Duck" means - you guessed it! - a duck. "Mine" means a seagull, though (thanks, Finding Nemo!). "Ba-bye" means bath time, a bedtime ritual he refuses to skip, no matter how late it is. He finally pronounces "bye" instead of "die" when people leave - it was a little sad that he wished everyone to their deaths when they left! That's about it for vocabulary, though - he knows how to get what he wants using signs and sounds. Fortunately, his life is still pretty simple; it'll get tough if he's not using words and he wants his grilled cheese sandwich to have TWO slices of cheese instead of one. He'd better learn the word "two!"

Finally, he loves hiding things and pretending to look for them, which is very funny as it's an exact pantomime of how I pretend to look for them. Slowly pick up a blanket, look under it, and say "nooooooo....." and then check the next spot, say "noooooo..." Patrick always makes sure to check underneath me. Makes me laugh every time!

I know both our moms (and some siblings) will be here soon for some longer help-out-the-crazy-tired-new-mom visits, so this was as much for my benefit as it was theirs. Now I can procrastinate writing in his baby book a little longer because hey! I wrote it down somewhere! Speaking of crazy tired, it's 11:00, time to get off blogger!

Happy early Halloween!

Two weeks early, to be exact, but that's when our ward's party was, so we got in the spirit and dressed up and had a GREAT time! Patrick was a fireman - a costume I thought he would be THRILLED about and not want to take off, since he is very much in love with his (ok, Joe's childhood) fire truck and has super-sonic hearing when it comes to sirens, proclaiming them all to be "hot!" - as in, fires are hot, so obviously a fire truck is a hot truck. I was mistaken, though, and he hated the hat, tolerated the coat, but was in LOVE with the little dalmation that came with the costume (not pictured - I was afraid we'd lose it!).

Noooo, not the stupid hat again!


Well, maybe we can tolerate it for ONE picture - but then it's gone!Perhaps the costume sank in on the way to the party, though; we had to pull over for two fire trucks to pass us and I excitedly explained that those were fire trucks and he was a fire man, and then he started pointing to his costume like he was getting the gist. Ohhh, happy day when connections are made! As for me, I was a pregnant pause. GET IT???
Patrick and all the kids under about 3 years old had a blast playing with hula-hoops. I remember hula-hoops being fun, sure, but this kept them entertained for a solid HOUR! Was there some sort of toddler catnip in them?? And can I buy some of that toddler'nip?
Discussing the musical selection with the DJ. If it were up to Patrick I think we would have heard a lot less Thriller and a lot more Itsy-Bitsy Spider.
Say goodnight! It's WAAAAY past bedtime!

Thursday, October 15, 2009

Did I miss boxing day?

...because Patrick woke up Wednesday morning looking like he'd taken on Rocky Balboa for a few rounds during his sleep! Both eyes were really swollen in the morning, and when the swelling went down it looked like big bruises all around his eyes! Turned out to just be a side effect of a nasty cold, which he seems to have already recovered from (THAT was quick!) but it was really weird when he didn't look like our own child all morning, then looked like our well-beaten child all afternoon.

Monday, October 12, 2009

Now, comments on the hunting...

As long as I've known Joe I've known he was into guns - hard to miss the giant green gun cabinet he had in his room! Since he shot competitively in high school this hobby was impressive to me rather than a turn-off. BIG turn-off when guys are "into" things that, in reality, they don't know much about; if he'd had a gun cabinet full of guns he wasn't properly trained to handle or shoot I would definitely have written him off as a REDNECK (which, deep down, he kinda is anyway. But moving on). He's taken me shooting at a shooting range a few times, which is really fun! I'm no Calamity Jane, but I'm not a bad shot, if I do say so myself. Since we keep handguns in the house (hidden and completely inaccessible to Patrick, of course), Joe always wants me to be comfortable and practiced with them, so we shoot the handguns when we go camping - a nice way to keep from getting too rusty, plus it's fun. I've urged him since we were dating to go hunting because it's a great way to use what he already has (guns and talent with guns), we live where there's access to good hunting spots, and he really needs to get some hobbies. Me, I love to read and bake and scrapbook and paint the house and blog... Joe gets pretty bored after a day or two when I'm not around. If I AM around, though, sometimes I just want to do MY thing and him to do HIS! Until recently, though, he hasn't had much of a "thing" to do, so my things like scrapbooking get put off until he wants to watch a movie that I have zero interest in (Scarface? No, thanks!) and can get out of watching. I have to laugh that his interest in hunting has taken off so SUDDENLY, though - one day last month he went out and bought all the hunting licences he could get - deer, elk, small game (rabbits), ducks and geese, fishing - you name it, he got it! Where he hasn't gone once since I've known him, now he's gone twice in one month, with another trip planned for next weekend, as I am hugely pregnant. I'm not worried about going into labor early or anything, I'm happy he's going, I hope he brings home a nice elk, but something tells me this is just as much about him wanting to get those last few gasps of freedom before the new baby comes as it is about going hunting. And THAT'S what I think is funny!

Anyhow, I know lots of people disagree with owning guns, shooting guns, or shooting guns at poor, defenseless (delicious) animals, but I'm just not one of those people. I'm proud of Joe and how well he handles and maintains his firearms, and I'm proud that he'll teach our kids how to be safe and responsible with them as well. Instead of teaching firearm "abstinence," I think it's important to teach safety and respect for all firearms - hunting rifles and handguns alike. Now THAT'S hot!

Duck, duck, duck, duck...

... but no goose. They're not in season where Joe was hunting this weekend. Along with a friend, he was invited to a primo spot to go duck hunting on Saturday (in the SNOW) so he just couldn't pass it up. Good thing he didn't, he brought home quite the spoils! 6 ducks of 3 different varieties - a wood duck, 2 teals, and 3 mallards. I was worried last time when he came home that he would have whole ducks and that I would be really freaked out by the sight of them, but he had already dealt with them and just brought home the breast meat. Not this time! Whole, surprisingly beautiful, ducks! They did NOT to freak me out (I actually forced Joe to take these photos, he didn't ask me to), nor did they freak Patrick out, as Joe had feared. He enjoyed petting them, making them kiss (he makes everything kiss, he wasn't being morbid), and even carrying them around the kitchen before we plucked them (ok, that was kinda morbid, but he saw dad do it so why not?). Joe and I plucked them and then Joe cut up the breast meat for us, which I will be making into dinner one delicious way or another tonight.
Next week he's going elk hunting, so hopefully we'll have more proud photos to come!

The house - updates

Why does it seem like it's hugely pregnant woman who are the most likely to be overhauling their houses? Nesting, perhaps? In my case, a foreclosure in need of serious TLC before the new baby comes, which just happened to be purchased during the last few hugely pregnant months? Yep, that sounds about right! Here's what we've been up to:

- Installing a garage door opener. YAAAAAY! You have no idea what this meant to me as my car was parked snugly in the garage while it snowed unseasonably early outside (and on Joe's car. He's so nice to let the pregnant lady have parking honors, even though he leaves first every morning!)

- Painting Patrick's room a nice light blue. No more nasty tangerine/peach combo! Still finishing up with the ceiling, don't mind the blue tape or the mess. Or Patrick, buried under those covers.
- Paiting the master bedroom/newborn nook in a neutral creamy tan, with an accent wall, just painted today! We're very thrilled to not be living in a plum/cadet blue combo anymore. I scraped the popcorn celings two weeks ago, then we textured last Thursday, painted last Friday, and are trying to finish up today (or at least SOON) so we can move out of our guest room and back into our own bed. Again, don't mind the tape or the complete lack of anything else in the photo - we still need to put the room back together.

- Un-gardening. After the first freeze all the veggies were fine but the plants were goners, so we harvested what we could and took everything else out of the ground. Now we've got big plans for next year's garden based on what we liked (anaheim peppers and cucumbers) and didn't like (hot-hot-HOT cascabella peppers!)
- Planting trees - a maple in the front for a little shade and privacy in the years to come, and a pear tree in the back for yummy snacks in the future. At the moment they just look kinda scraggley since they're so small, but they (like us) have big dreams, I'm sure.

- Our future project: installing a furnace. We've been living without one so far, which was fine and dandy 'til the snow reared its ugly white head, so since then we've been living with a space-heater and lots of sweatpants and heavy covers on our beds. If we have company over, we tell them to wear mittens. The furnace will get here this Thursday, so there's the next thing to look forward to: HEAT!

Joe keeps laughing at me because I am so hell-bent on getting these fairly large projects done RIGHT NOW and with my fairly large belly to boot, but I've got tons of help with painting with a friend (thanks, Valerie!) and babysitting while I paint solo (thanks, Jeanette!) and it's the last few weeks of decent weather, so I say GO FOR IT! 3 weeks 'til blast-off (November 2nd is my official due date) so let's see what else we can tackle before life tackles me back :)

Sunday, October 4, 2009

5-cent prints

In case anyone missed it in this week's ad, King Soopers on 120th and Colorado is celebrating their re-opening and you can get 4x6 photos printed for only 5 cents apiece! No limit! Until the 27th of October! Now THAT is reason enough to get your butt in gear and finally dig through your camera's memory card. Which I am doing.... now. Bye!