…we stop trying to outdo each other and work together?

“Yes! YES! They do have too much time on their hands!!”

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We had to break out a ladder.  Certainly you can understand why.

What goes up…

…must come down

I LOVE how he says “Yes!” toward the end!

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He still loves this, and so do I.  If you have a kid that is just all into this, may I point you toward the Haba marble accessories, they have all sorts of different and super cool pieces.

Caleb said, “Dis is so tall, it is even taller than de Awful Tower!”

Where is the Awful Tower you ask?  Why in France of course.  He took me into the hallway and had me pick him up to get the Awful Tower off the map and bring it in for a comparison.  It was indeed at least five times taller.

Oh and just an FYI, this picture of the Eiffel Tower came off my memory card titled IMG0001.  Do you know what that means?  It means I have taken 10,000 pictures with this camera.  Although an am surprised to say Nate beat me by over a year.  He took 10,000 photos in eight months.  I must say, I’m quite impressed.  And I thought I took a lot of pictures!

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Yep that’s right. He loves my iPod. I have an iPod touch, which is essentially the iPhone minus the phone and camera. I’ve been downloading lots of fun stuff for it, one of which was a koi pond.  Caleb absolutely adores it!  You can shake the iPod to feed the fish.  There are sound effects, the water splashes when the fish come up and get the food, lillypads that you can move around, and if you touch the water, it creates a ripple, and the fish swim away from you.  If you hold your finger completely still, creating no ripples, the fish will come up and nibble at your finger!

Good taste, but expensive.

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I’m going to venture to say we did our share of home learning today. Caleb had a blast getting this on the wall. This is another one of those things I’ve been watching for over a year. I saw it go on sale around Christmas last year, and I’ve been checking on it frequently ever since. Finally, I got impatient and emailed FAO Schwarz to see when and if it might go on sale again. By some ironic stroke of luck, a representative emailed me back the very next day to let me know that it was the sale of the week, and was indeed $75 off again. When I headed over to the website to order, it said it was out of stock! I was absolutely crushed, but I decided to give the store a try. They had plenty available and were happy to send it to me. I dream of going there. It seems like it would be so cool.

The pictures definitely don’t do this map justice, but it is in the hallway, so it is hard to photograph.  We were working our way across, so Asia and Australia were not completed yet.

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Every now and then, I like to give hubby a weekend project to keep him on his toes. Nah, I’m just kidding, but my little Saturday morning project turned into an enormous, time consuming, life sucking, entire weekend project. It all started out as a table for the aquaplay set to cut down on the mess. He was soaked and had to be bathed after playing the first night. I couldn’t see us having to give him a bath every time he played with it. So I suggested we use an old kitchen table in the storage building and cut the legs off. After getting a better visual of the size (which was much smaller than I remembered), we decided it needed a piece of plywood on top… Then that the plywood should be cut to the layout of the canal system. After hacking the legs off the old kitchen table, we decided it wasn’t really usable after all! So that will now be our outdoor art table for the super messy stuff (as well as a good place to do sensory play when we get into homeschooling).

Gotta love this guy, he’s so patient with my hairbrained ideas!

Oh well, at least he had help right? (See the shortened table with the legs laying underneath?!)

The handymen at work (I just realized, despite looking pretty lifelike, that is indeed a KIDS Craftsman saw in his hand! Just as an FYI!)

8000 screws later

Oh why must we overdo everything. It weighs approximately 9000 pounds, but at least it is functional

Here’s what I accomplished. Yay me. Luckily I had hubby to remind me of my ABC’s. No kidding…I was standing off to the side where I couldn’t see the letters on the opposite side of the box, basically where this picture was taken from (between the I and the O in the picture). I asked him what letter I was on, as I flipped through the remaining foam pieces. “L” he replied, “so you need M next.” Thanks dear.

If you’re smirking to yourself thinking, ‘what the heck is she gonna do with that hunk of wood in the winter?’ I’ve got that covered too! We painted the top green (and will paint the bottom structure and legs brown). When cold weather arrives and the Aquaplay can’t be left outside, I’ll take it off and paint a road system on the table with parking lots and buildings and stuff! I love doing stuff like that anyway.

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Told you, trademark look

I’m so cute, you almost wouldn’t have guessed that mom digitally (and physically) removed a HUGE booger from my nose after this picture was taken!

Awe, poor baby, mommy said no, now he must scowl.

And pout.

What was I upset about again, I can’t remember now.

I just like this one.

Check out his ‘boat’ in the lower right corner.  Like it?  You can find them here.  A cute alternative to Crocs.

Dumping cold water on his head

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We waited ALL day for the UPS man. Every time a cat walked by in the grass we ran to the door to see if he was here yet! It was a long wait! Look at the clock in the first picture, almost 6pm!!

He ripped wrapping paper to shreds and exclaimed, “It’s just what I wanted!!”

I managed to get him to look at me for seven tenths of a second with a smile. The rest of the time, he was oblivious to my presence.

I put a pair of wet underwear in the dirty clothes tonight. And not for the reason you’d think. He drenched himself from the waist down in a matter of minutes. But he did let me know when he needed to come in to go potty. I’m taking the plunge tonight and switching to underwear. We haven’t used a diaper in over a week. Can I just tell you how weird that feels? I suddenly feel like my little boy grew up in the last two weeks!

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This big bowl of ice (see instructions here) has been sitting in my freezer for about two weeks now. I completely forgot about it! I decided to pull it out this morning and get our excavating tools together. We mainly used salt and warm water with a few different brushes. And when I say salt, I mean like more salt that the Atlantic ocean. So if there was any ‘cost’ associated with this project, it would just be about 3/4 a container of salt! But two hours people. TWO HOURS my toddler played essentially by himself! Well worth a container of salt. We worked for about an hour digging out all of the treasures ‘buried’ in the ice, then he was content to dump water back and forth and stir it, etc for another good hour! I cleaned up all the junk that we had emptied out onto the deck during our cleaning process last weekend, put stuff in the storage building and the garbage. Finally, he had drenched himself in enough salt water that I felt he needed a bath!

I set this down and he came running over and plopped down to examine it

The salt could have been used a lot more sparingly had I had a shaker.  This was an empty spice container with LARGE holes in the top, so as you can see, it is really pouring out.

Almost to a treasure

We’ve acquired several now, I told you, that water has more salt than an ocean!

Water play never goes out of style

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I got this thing for Caleb last Christmas. At the time, he was somewhat less than pleased with it. Maybe a little scared even. He would keep telling me to put it away every time I got it out. Very cautious around it, etc. Anyway, he randomly got it out of his closet today, and got tickled at it, and could not stop laughing hysterically. Finally Mommy the monster said it was time to clean up because Caleb needed to take a nap, and so did the monster. Papa is coming to visit tonight, and we have to vacuum first, lest he have a heart attack. We wrapped the monster up for a nap on the couch, and you’d be amazed how much better “Let’s clean up!” is received from a goofy looking monster! So we cleaned up all the crap that is in the background of these pictures. Man I love how a wide open aperture creates a shallow depth of field, thus you guys know the clutter is there, but you can’t tell what it is!

Meet my monster (the pieces go on with velcro)

Throwing a schnoz in the air. P.S. And really, where would we be without light up shirts. I’m wondering if it is a good market for toddlers though, since the battery will likely give up and die. The shirt is movement activated, and since toddlers never stop moving…at least they grow out of clothes fast though. Because I sure am thankful for that. If you have a toddler you can imagine the drama that might follow this shirt no longer working.

This one cracks me up

He’s done! Do we get extra points for using ALL the pieces?

Still laughing at the monster puppet. Mommy is making him do silly tricks with one hand and taking pictures with the other.

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