Shoe

See you soon, Peepaw and Meemaw!

Birdseed

Who needs toys when you can find other means of entertainment. 

A can full of birdseed.

. . . .And he conveniently had a cup in his hand.

 Perfect for scooping.

Sometimes it also feels nice to set the cup aside and just use your hands.

Perhaps it should be eaten? That's what the birds do . . . 

What? You don't want me to eat it? Why?

What do you call birdseed when you don't know what it is?

Wawa (water), of course!

I Love You, Cup

Some children latch onto blankets or stuffed animals as a "lovey." I myself had a baby blanket that I carried until I was about 6 or 7. It was white with satin on the edges. My mom gave me the remnants of said blanket a few years ago. It is now a dingy off white and it no longer in the shape of a rectangle. The satin on the edges was long ago worn away, leaving tattered edges. It was well loved.

Ian has a number of quilts and blankets given to him as baby gifts, as well as some stuffed animals. But nothing compares to his dearest love of all. Cups. Specifically, a set of stacking cups I got for him for Christmas. They are made with small draining holes in the bottom for fun in the bathtub.

He is obsessed with them. For the last few weeks he has one of the 7 nesting cups in his chubby little fist for most of his waking hours. He spies one first thing in the morning and declares, "CUP!!!!" He then toddles over to it, picks it up, and exclaims, "CUP!!!!" like it's been months since he last saw it and not just 12 hours. His enthusiasm is weirdly hilarious.

He takes them with him just about everywhere. In stores, he carries one with him while riding in the buggy, happily informing everyone he passes of his treasure. He takes one with him for car rides, and is not pleased to have to let go of it while I buckle him in to the car seat. During our evening stroll he hangs on to one, eagerly looking for a stranger to show off his awesome plastic. He has to have one (preferably two) while he is in the bath tub. He would like to take one to bed with him, but an experiment during nap time found that he will not sleep and instead rake it across the crib rails. So, there is a no cup in the crib rule.

You know, come to think of it there are a number of advantages to having a cup as a lovey:

• They can be gnawed on without creating a soggy mess.
• You can put snacks and other important stuff in them.
• They make noise when banged on hard surfaces.
• When you get tired of holding them (note this only happens when you are in a store, most commonly in line for check out), your momma can hear it when you throw it on the floor.
• It can be used as a scoop for water (never mind the holes in the bottom), sand, or dirt.
• It can be used to hold the free samples little old ladies give out at the grocery store (this is how we discovered Traders Joes macaroni and cheese).

Honestly, probably the biggest advantage of these cups coming in a set is that one can be kept in every key location - the car, the bathtub, the kitchen, the living room, the yard, the back porch, and the diaper bag. I believe he even left one at a friends house. Anyway, if one is lost there is always another that can be found quickly.

I'm wondering how long this will last. . . .

Good Morning

Bed head.

And He's Walking . . . .

He starting walking almost 2 weeks ago.  His first steps being from the edge of the couch five steps into J's arms. He looked so proud of himself. 

Then, he didn't even attempt it again for several days - go figure. However, in the last 3 or 4 days I think he's decided that walking is his preferred method of travel. 

So, without further ado, here are some videos. He looks three sheets to the wind, but I swear he's stone cold sober.

He's even learning to multitask and do some chores. Child labor.

Actually, in most cases I believe holding some form of housewares, such as a cup or a spoon, is critical for balance. Wait, where's the cat?

There's no turning back now!

Another Trip To The Park

My sister was in town last week and we got together at the park.

Ian was lucky enough to receive a well loved Red Ryder push wagon from his cousins. He new precisely what to do with it.

In addition, he also got another book to add to the library, The Napping House.

His cousin A pushed him on the swing.

He even gave her a hug afterwards.

Then on to the slide.

My sister lives out of state, so it's always a treat to get to see her. Thanks for the good time, sis!

Hail!

About 2 weeks ago we had this random thunderstorm appear out of nowhere and my oh my holy hail. I scrambled to bring the laundry I had drying out on the back porch. It was super dark outside and there was thunder and lightening. Ian paid me no attention as he was entranced with Yo Gabba Gabba streaming on Netflix. Have I mentioned how much he likes that show? All you have to do is mention it and he excitedly points at the TV and utters, Gabba! Gabba! Gabba! I must confess that I like it, too. It's sorta like Sesame Street combined with 1980s video game graphics. Check it out. It doesn't matter if you don't have kids. If you grew up in the 80's you will probably enjoy it. And score, it's educational!

I digress.

The storm screwed up our internet connection, so I turned it over to PBS for the little man. The National Weather Service was issuing a warning for Anderson County for hail. About that time it began to sound like the house was being fired on by machine guns. Ian could have cared less about this, by the way. 

Nickel sized hail came down for a few minutes, then stopped. I went out and picked up a piece. 

Then it started up again. Now the hail was quarter sized, and I was a little alarmed. I was worried shingles were going to start flying off the roof. 

Ian continued to watch cartoons, although I'm not sure he could hear it over all the noise.

I took this little video from behind the storm door. I wasn't about to go out there.

Then it started to do this.

I decided that perhaps I should stop videotaping this storm and take Ian to the bathroom for safety reasons. It looked way too tornado like out there.

Ian was not pleased about missing Super Why.

But then a few minutes later it was over and I went out on the front porch it smelled all nice and clean outside.

Then I looked in the back yard and saw all the twigs and small branches that had come down.

Including this one. Yikes! Later that evening J pulled it out of the ground and it was sunk down about 4 inches.

No Cabinet Is Safe

Another rather dark video taken indoors, but we're doing a little remodeling (more on that later), and have  temporarily lost a closet. Therefore our cabinets and other closets are a little extra full.

Ian found the cabinet with the rags in it. We re purpose our old clothes into reusable rags (perfect for wiping counters, cleaning bathrooms, dusting). It's another way to use less paper towels and save a penny or two.

Ian took great delight when he discovered the mound of rags in the cabinet.

I wonder when he'll figure out there's a box of tissues in his bedroom. . . .

What's Bloomin', Edition 21

Crepe Myrtle. Lagerstroemia spp.Oh, another one of my favorites. Wait, I have too many favorite plants. Sigh. We purchased our very first (well, two actually) Crepe myrtles from the UT Arboretum Spring plant sale back in 2008. They were wee little twigs about a foot tall, and to be honest I was silently suspicious that they were dead. However, a month after planting them they proved me wrong by rapidly growing. They are now probably close to 15 feet tall. And oh so pretty when they bloom. Since then we have gotten three other colors, most are little volunteers that came up at J's parents house. We have three different shades of pink and some white. The blooms sure are neat, but the bark on these shrubs are just as interesting as they shed year round.

Pincushion Flower. Scabiosa  Another Arboretum find. I really need to move this flower as it is getting drowned out by some other plants. I like the flower because it really does look like a pincushion that my grandmother had at her house. The butterflies really like them, too.

The spent blooms look neat as well.

Windmill Dahlia. I always look forward to this late summer flower making it's appearance. I've had really horrific luck ordering flowers out of catalogs, but this one has done well. It comes back every year, and each bloom lasts a long time.

On Learning How To Use Kitchen Utensils . . .

He really hasn't shown much interest in using kitchen utensils. He uses his hands to feed himself lunch and dinner. Breakfast is still oatmeal mixed with fruit, but we feed him that, and he doesn't try to grab the spoon.

However, his Mamaw made him some vanilla pudding this week. We added some vanilla wafers and bananas and gave him his very own bowl (that had a suction cup on the bottom), his very own spoon, and let him at it.

He was somewhat suspicious of the bowl initially.

But then after we gave him a bite, and he realized we weren't going to take the bowl away, he dug in.

Quite literally.

He did pretty good with the spoon.

But he just had to try it with his fingers, too.

Then decided to go back to the spoon.

This is the most awesome food ever!!!

Wait a minute - all gone?

Seconds, please?

Cicadas

After we put Ian to bed at around 8, we usually spend an hour or so in the yard. There are always weeds to be pulled, containers to water, shrubs to prune. It's a nice way to decompress.

A few days ago the cicadas were soooooo loud. It's one of my favorite summer time noises. At my parents house when I was growing up the cicadas sang so loud you couldn't talk to another person without raising your voice. It's also a sound that tends to make me sleepy, as we did not have air conditioning back then and the windows were always open, day and night. Nature's white noise machine.

This Spring I read James Agee's A Death in the Family. Oh my, what a book. I didn't even know we had it until Ian emptied one of the bookshelves. In the first chapter there is the following passage:

"The noise of the locust is dry, and it seems not to be rasped or vibrated but urged from him as if through a small orifice by a breath that can never give out. Also there is never one locust but an illusion of at least a thousand. The noise of each locust is pitched in some classic locust range out which none of them varies more than two full tones: and yet you seem to hear each locust discrete from all the rest, and there is a long, slow, pulse in their noise, like the scarcely defined arch of a long and high set bridge. They are all around in every tree, so that the noise seems to come from nowhere and everywhere at once, from the whole shell heaven, shivering in your flesh and teasing your eardrums, the boldest of all the sounds of the night. And yet it is habitual to summer nights, and is of the great order of noises, like the noises of the sea and of the blood her precocious grandchild, which you realize you are hearing only when you catch yourself listening."

I had to read this paragraph several times. It's perfect.

Cabin Fever

So the middle of the summer was miserably hot, followed by almost a week of solid rain. The back yard was a little too mushy to take Ian out. By last weekend it had finally dried up enough to let him enjoy the back yard.

He had zero interest in playing in the grass. He did offer to water some plants for me, but hen continually wanted to crawl up the steps to get on the back porch. Our back porch has a railing, but it is in no way child safe, the rail has large gaps that would be perfect for a little one to squeeze through. And because the porch is only raised up about 2 feet off the ground, it's enough to make me a little nervous about him slipping and falling. We discussed earlier this summer making the railing more child proof, but honestly he should be old enough next summer for it not to be an issue. For now, we just keep a close eye on him.

Right, so he kept crawling from the yard onto the porch, where he would scamper around and inspect the potted plants. We're also trying to teach him not to pull on the leaves, but rather to "pat pat" them gently.  He now vigorously "pats" (i.e. smacks with all his might) the plants, randomly snatching off a leave or two, which he then gleefully attempts to eat. Oh, how he loves this game. He doesn't really want to eat the plants anymore (or the grass for that matter), he wants you to tell him No! so he can try to do the whole scenario over again at a faster pace. It's the best game ever, and it usually marks the end of our outdoor playtime.

We had three pots sitting in the corner that had no plants in them (just potting soil), and after shooing him away from the pots several times I gave up and let him go at it. This resulted in 30 solid minutes of intense gardening on his behalf. As we all know, 30 minutes is an eternity in baby time.

He dug in them.

And transferred dirt from one pot to another.

He lost a shoe at some point.

He only tried to eat the dirt once before deciding that was a bad idea (yuck).

And he got gloriously filthy and had to have a bath a 10:30 am (which he also thought was awesome).

It was really nice to just sit on the porch and watch him. However, he got SO DIRTY. So, we have since emptied the pots and filled them with sand. So, instead of a sand box he now has a sand potted garden. Which he hasn't gotten to play in yet, but I promise to take some pictures and put them up. Sand is much easier to clean up than potting soil. Unless it is wet. Wet sand is like, well, wet sand.