I have been on a picture taking frenzy. I think I’ve taken about 5GB worth in the last three days. Seriously. I love learning about photography through experimenting with new situations. The Fourth of July obviously presents a learning experience. Of course toddlers and slow shutter speeds do not mix very well, but I thought some of the pictures came out pretty cute.

First sparkler

Our own little mini fireworks show

Monkey see…

Monkey do!

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I know, just ignore the power lines.  We decided to go at the last second because the weather was questionable all evening.  Luckily, it was only about seven minutes away.  It was $5/car to get in, so we just pulled over outside the gates!  We turned around so we would be headed out in the right direction.  We got there, waited 20 minutes on them to start, watched the fireworks for 20 minutes, and were back home an hour after we left!  Can’t complain there, it was nice not to sit in traffic after going to something like that.  One point for the small town ;)

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…more photos to come, lots more…

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We went to the park one day last week (just getting around to posting these). Caleb had been begging to go, but it is so hot, so we got out there nice and early before it was miserable. Caleb played on the actual playset about half the time. All of the slides had big puddles of water at the bottom, and I didn’t have anything to wipe them off. He moved over the a big pile of dirt at the side of the playground and was content to make up his own play over there as long as we could stay. He never has really been that into playgrounds.

Peeved because I wasn’t complying with my assigned seating position, I was taking pictures instead.

Miffed because I made him get on this, thinking he would love it. Not so much.

The perfect slide in his mind, one that is made to climb up!

Lip poked out about who knows what

Not loving this big boy swing (first time)

Studying the sign language sign

“G”

Going for “E” which ended up being an “A” They are very similar, just the position of your thumb changes

Playing in the dirt with a stick rather than the huge playground equipment

Making another face, noticing a trend here?!

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Caleb and I are at my parents’ house in Virginia. My dad has the week off and was quite anxious to see Caleb, as was my mom. We decided sort of last minute yesterday that we would come up here for a short visit. Scott and I have been planning to take him to a local fireworks/4th celebration at a lake, so we are squeezing our trip in between.

We’re heading to their children’s museum here tomorrow, which from the website, looks pretty cool. We brought a tray of car cakes with us to decorate. I found a pretty big variety of red white and blue things to decorate them, so I hope they turn out well. We baked them last minute last night, and wouldn’t you know, since we were pushed for time, the recipe flopped. I don’t know what happened but they stuck to the pan. Several broke coming out. What a disappointment! Better now than his birthday though. I was so pushed for time then!

Anyway, more on yesterday’s library experience. When I got home, despite being not okay with it, I had this nagging feeling that maybe something wasn’t quite right with the guy. It was one of those situations where you really just don’t know. So Scott and I got to talking about it again and he asked for the library’s phone number. He called on his work phone, we were on our personal cell phones, so I could hear his part of the conversation. He just explained that we had a bit of an incident and wanted to find out if there was more to it or was this guy doing something he shouldn’t be doing. As it turns out, he is special needs. Like I said it was one of those times when you really can’t tell, just something seemed a bit quirky. Anyway, Scott told the librarian that he understood, it wasn’t a problem, but we just weren’t sure what was going on. The librarian said he was sweet as he could be, but he thought if a parent was getting separated from a child, that wasn’t good. Anyway, it was sort of a relief to have a better understanding, and I’m glad now that I was speechless when it occurred. It was just another reminder for me, not to be so quick in passing judgment. Not that you shouldn’t still be cautious (read Julie’s comment, sick), but you never know what someone’s situation may be.

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Today was library storytime day. I woke up late, started slow, and left late, but I made myself/us go. I’m glad we did, because we got a HUGE stack of books (perhaps even so many that I feel okay skipping next week! Ha!), and we even re-checked out On Top of Spaghetti.  To go along with the nationwide summer reading campaign, “Catch the Reading Bug,” we made butterflies today.  So there actually was no storytime, just a long hour of waiting for the three librarians to come around with the box of foamies to select the butterfly parts and put them together.  It was a cute project, which all of the kids loved, but of course it made for a rather chaotic and time consuming event.  There were probably 75+ people there today, we graduated to two rows of chairs around the edge of the room!  Since we had plenty of time on our hands, I began to look around me.

To my left there was a girl with strawberry blonde hair, her son looked exactly like her.  He was perched in her lap, and as she tried to talk to her neighbor, her son repeatedly headbutted the wind out of her.  Each time she corrected him, he snuggled and nuzzled up under her chin.  As soon as she began to talk again, the process started over.

Over to my right, I noted that the lady with four kids (from last week) had returned.  The newborn was sleeping peacefully in the stroller, despite all the noise.  Her older child was very attentive and still overall.  The two middle children were a handful again.  The older boy was whining and whimpering as they came in.  She finally got him settled and he and Caleb exchanged silences about the monster trucks on his shirt.  But the younger little girl seems to be having a most difficult time adjusting to no longer being the baby in the family.  She constantly demanded all of her mother’s attention with a wide assortment of antics, cuddles, whines, and cries.  She climbed on the table and jumped up and down repeatedly, threatened to jump off the table, threw herself all over the ground, cried over everything, and climbed right back on the table to jump some more.  The picture frame above the table was about to fall off the wall by the time they left.

I looked around the room at all of the faces, and we all seemed to have at least a one thing in common.  Everyone had this glazed look in their eyes, as if to say, “If only I had the energy, and I weren’t so tired, I might just be pulling my hair out right now.”  The few faces that didn’t say that were full of creases and wrinkles that said, “These aren’t mine, I just get to spoil them and then, thank goodness, I get to send them back home to their parents tonight!”  I kind of laughed to myself.  It is nice to know that no one is super mom every day.

We gathered up bag full of books and headed up the stairs to check them out.  I always remind Caleb on the way up the stairs that we use our whisper voice up there.  When we reached the top, he eyed a boy playing a computer game with a monster truck on it.  I noted the game to him and told him to come along as I went to get in line.  The line was no more than 15 feet away, and Caleb is often pokey and slow about these things.  I knew exactly where he was, and that he would be along momentarily.  By the time I reached the line area, and turned back around to check on him, there was a guy dragging him along backwards by the upper arm!!!  Caleb was starting to whimper because a person he did not know was pulling him by the arm.  I don’t think he had time to figure out what was going on, and I was so damn stunned, I didn’t either.  The guy said something like “I got him for ya,” and as he walked away, he said to himself “library child saver.”  I think I muttered ‘thanks’ or something like that, but I just felt like saying “excuse me?!”  The more I think about it, the madder I get!  When I told Scott, the first thing out of his mouth was “what time does the library close?”  I *think* the guy worked there, I’m not sure.  He started fiddling with the books on the shelf to go back out and be filed away, straightening them and such.  I know he probably had the best of intentions, but you do not drag someone else’s child.  And certainly not even giving the child a chance to turn around and walk forward, he had to walk backwards about 15 feet.  He was not being disruptive, and I knew exactly where he was and what he was doing.  I couldn’t have gotten five steps in front of him before the guy grabbed him by the arm!  Not cool.  If there is ever a next time, I will get my wits about me faster and let him and his boss know that it was not appropriate nor necessary.  Am I overreacting?  What would you have done?

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We checked off one thing on our summer to-do list already today. Item number ten was painting in the bathtub with homemade finger paints. I used the Wilton gel colors that can be found in the cake section at Walmart and barely dipped the tips of a fork in it. I used it very sparingly and cautiously in other words. Just don’t hold me accountable for your bathtub walls! I did use more cornstarch than it called for, but I also used a very watery soap. Make sure you use something that you know won’t cause a rash or skin irritation. I just mixed until I got a consistency that I thought was appropriate. It dripped a lot, and kind of washed itself as he went, since he splashed so much. But I didn’t even have to wipe down anything, I just rinsed the tub with the detachable shower head. He had so much fun with it, I may go get some containers from Walmart to make our own paints to keep in the bathroom. I’ll let you know if I make some sort of floating artist palette, the ice tray on the edge was a little precarious.

(Sorry if the colors in these pictures look off to anyone.  They look okay on my monitor which is calibrated fairly accurately, but they were edited heavily to reduce the lovely yellow-green glow of compact fluorescents.)

Starting to get a little wild and crazy

Hmmm, face paint

What should I do next?

HAHAHA, you don’t even want to know!! What’s that? You do want to know? Oh, well in that case…I’m painting my butt!

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