The Silent Characters

Thanks to the new camera, I can actually show you the rest of our family.
Anyone who comes to our house meets Donut.

Heck, he even lets E pet him. Sometimes.

If you provide food or are male, then Marco Polo will generally snuggle up to you (and yes, age is catching up to his eyesight).

But almost no one sees Smoke. On mornings when Smoke is slow to hide, E asks "what is that?" as the shadow runs by.

2.5 years

E turns two and a half today. Of course, for months if you asked how old he was, he would say "three... ANDAHALF". He rejects the existence of two, (one, three, fourfivesix, nine, ten, no?) so... this whole post is anathema.



So is sitting, for that matter. That's pretty typical, unless he's reading a book, cuddling before bed, or mesmerized by Elmo, he's running, kicking, jumping, throwing, singing (Baabaa black sheep, minus the line about the dame, is a current favorite). (Heh, that last picture takes me back.)

He is so very very two. He threw a fit last night because I had the wrong kind of noodles, then ate them all (typical - he eats pretty well, although he is losing his former sense of adventure - but he will still share hot green chili with me). Life is on a thin edge between mania and tragedy these days. The mania can be pretty darn fun, and he's pretty sweet in between. When I finally pointed out to him that the point of all this was to get a shot of his face, suddenly:


(Heh. I love this goofball.)


Of course, like everything else right now, it only lasts so long.

He's a different animal every day, or several a day. Currently, he's a roly poly after something caught on a cartoon, even though he will admit to having no clue what a roly poly is. But he's right, he is one. And a dinosaur, and a lion, and my teddy bear. His imagination is pretty fun to watch.

And the traditional end to the whole photo session:

But with a twist...
E's vocabulary is not small -we just finished the language project study and he had a few hundred of the words on their list - no idea how many total, although he added one in this photo session. "Actually", he says, and runs back to the pile behind the chair....

...and gives me exactly what I asked for. He is thinking, always. It's hilarious, fun, sometimes terrifying to watch. Just like everything else with our little man.

The rest of the weekend that didn't end

I've already mentioned that our weekend of two (now three) weekends ago was pretty packed. Before I went to bed on Saturday, I started on project #2 for the weekend.

This side yard is vastly improved if you just look at the sunset instead.

But if you change your focus, you'll note: a lot of river rock.

Also: a faucet right next to a fence that makes it useless to the backyard.

I suggested adding a faucet for the back side yard. Ray wasn't as into that as you might have thought, so I managed to convince him there was another way.

When Ray was out buying faucets, he also picked up some wood, some mulch, and $20 worth of abused bedding plants (that being what one gets at a big box store, particularly halfway through the summer). I spent Saturday night clearing out most of the river rock between rainstorms, and Ray pulled the fence on Sunday while I cleared the rest, rototilled, and added some actual soil. One looong day later:


Ohh, look, more river rock! Lots more river rock.

Anybody want to haul out some river rock?

The plants in the foreground of last picture are actually raspberries that we pulled out of the old house in October. Fantastically, they survived the move and are now fighting out the mint for supremacy of the side yard (along with a lot of weeds... so very many weeds.. and some moss). The plants in the background are peas - my first successful ones, mainly because our neighbor overwaters and keeps our peas happy. And the plants in the background are the "professional landscaping" we've been mocking - two spyria, two junipers, an ash, and -hah!- more river rock.

Eventually we want to have a nice path coming from the front yard through the gate and then along the side yard. Fortunately, we didn't start on that, since I was expecting Ray to set the gate up very differently from what he did and the path would have been a bit odd with a fence in the middle of it. Regardless, that last bit of river rock in the front is headed out soon if I have any say. Particularly if I can get someone else to shovel it.

I'm also hoping to terrace out this whole slope for gardens - if you look at the drop off from the back patio, you'll see that it's a bit much for playing ball-associated games (unless you like balls in your peapatch), and this being Colorado, the north side of the yard seems to be our best bet for "sun-loving" plants (none of which seem to love 15 hours a day of high-altitude sun in the least). That, however, is a bit more of a project, to say the least. It wasn't happening this weekend.

For the record, I ran away from home and went kayaking the next weekend. Ray and E hung out with our friend Jimmy and did very little in the way of house-related work. It's all about balance around here.

Somebody...

****




...GOT A NEW CAMERA!!!

And now you know what a Friday night looks like pre-bedtime around here.
I'd say more but I need to go play with my toy. Have a good weekend.

****Okay, I do have to note that Ray always laughs at E posing for the camera as "the Senator". But look where he gets it from. I will be playing with my camera, these two will be kissing babies or something.

Fire TRUCKS (bounce house)

While Ray finished the sink, E and I headed to an open house.

At the fire station.

E is in love with fire trucks. He liked the robotic dog. He wasn't so fond of the crowds and certainly did not want to actually get IN a truck, what are you, crazy?

But he did get in something else that he has previously been wary of.


No, not toddler jail.

Note the flailing limbs in the background of the next two shots.



A bajillion points if you guessed.....

...a bounce house!

Not only did he go in, he loved it. There was a line and each kid only got to go in for a couple of minutes. E asked for a second turn not long after coming out the first time.


Extra points for E because, unlike many of the kids there, he came out without argument. When we were leaving on older kid was crying because he'd had to come out of the bounce house, saying "I didn't have any fun"... E looked at me, puzzled, and said "I had fun!"  Every once in a while, it's all win.

Of course, this just gets us through Saturday of two weekends ago. The weekend wasn't over yet. But that is a whole OTHER post....

I already mentioned that we had a full weekend two weekends ago. Here is the first of three posts to explain that comment a bit further.

Ray and I both got the bug to start making some improvements on the house. Thanks to Heather's visit several months ago, I have had a sink in the garage awaiting a new faucet to vastly improve our kitchen (we both hated the enamel-covered aluminum super-deep double sink we had). Although E considered the sink in the garage great fun, a cast-iron sink is a bit of a tripping hazard. And it works better in the horizontal, plumbed state. Ray had finally had enough and decided that we were going to stop waiting for the perfect faucet and just get a good, workable one.

Thus, Saturday morning looked like this:


(Amazingly, Ray was managing to detach the plumbing while his wife sniggered and kept shooting in the background.)



One last time.


Yay, sock mitten dusting!

Amazingly, I don't have an "after" shot for you all. Partially because I'll never get this posted if I wait for one (I keep forgetting until late at night when the light in the kitchen is poor) and partially because E and I left to go do something else and left Ray alone to get the sink done. But that is a whole OTHER post....

So.. keep checking back, I'll get some before and after shots on this.....soon.

TUNNEL

This is technically warning for Cheryl, who has kindly offered to help with planning our landscaping. We just made it more difficult.

When our daycare changed their buildings around they no longer had room for the huge wood and plastic play structure they used to have. After months of seeing the plastic bits sitting in a side yard I finally had to ask - did they have plans for those?
They didn't. They just wanted them gone.
(Not shown: the Civic and Mazda with tunnels on top (and the climbing one sticking out the back of the Mazda) driving back to the house. Wish I'd gotten that picture!)
Fortunately E doesn't know this is work, so he got all the accumulated mud off for us (sorry about the white balance, he didn't actually go albino with happiness).
E was so happy that helping was hazardous.
Sorry, hon, should I remove that child from your head or just sit back here laughing and snapping pictures? 
TUNNEL!

I'm not sure where these will end up. My original plan to line them up in the side yard is temporarily foiled because E scoots out too fast to have a river rock landing pad. One is hiding under a tree next to the slide in the corner of our yard (where it does blend in better) and the others are in the side yard for now (the back yard, that is - Dad was concerned for the neighbors' sake, but we'll find other ways to torment them). Some parts may one day become part of a really fun bed - the ends are made to take 2x4's, so there are a lot of possibilities (hamster trail to the balcony?). Who knows. But for now E is having fun and we were able to haul one into the front yard last weekend and get a lot done while E played. However, that is a whole OTHER post....

First day of preschool

A formality, of sorts, since he's just changing rooms in the same building. But a milestone, nonetheless.

Best celebrated with a fireman tattoo and a plastic shark, of course.

Mommy's Boat, Eamon's Boat

Cheryl recently came to help me figure out how to design my yard (since the advertised "professional landscaping" must have been done, as Ray notes, by a professional CPA, not a professional landscaper). She asked whether we wanted to keep the kayaks out in the yard, and my answer was "For now, yes". Here's why:
What's in Mommy's Boat?
Mommy sit in mommy's boat. I sit in my boat.
(LOW. RIDE. ER.)
I sit in my boat.
Oh, what's in there?
I'm in the boat!
I'm walking on the boat!
SLIDE!
For most realistic effects, repeat italicized portions repeatedly in happy tone of voice.
Not pictured: stacking rocks on boat, stacking rocks in boat, hiding things under boat, bouncing balls on boat, bouncing balls in boat....