Sorry About the Delay! Back in Business.

So sorry for the lapse between posts. Kids are just, well, so time consuming! So much has happened that must be addressed:

FIRST HAIRCUT! I love it when they're too little to have a say. Daddy performed the first haircut to match his: Mohawk!! Totally the hit at daycare. He's so badass.

 He loved the clippers! Not a wet eye in the place.

Now, I'm not exactly sure where he learned this trick (Grandma? Grandpa? I'm not pointing fingers...) but I like to call it "Mommy didn't rinse the dishes before they went in here. Mmmm I'm still hungry." Enough said.

And this - a personal favorite. I visited Amy and her sister Abby over New Years and this is what happens when you let a boy toddler (unaccustomed to girl's toys) free in a very girly room:

No clothes and a fairy wand. That's SO going in the baby book.

I have to say, some of the highlights of my trip south to visit Amy and Abby include: 1.) First thing Saturday morning, Jan 1st, locking my only set of keys in my running car. Thank God for Amy's quick thinking and superior knowledge of Pop-A-Lock. I'm just impressed I hadn't put Colt in there yet. That could have been bad (although he said they do it for free if your kid is inside. FYI) 2.) Colt's first (and still only) identification of someone by their proper name: Abby, his new girlfriend. You'll wait for him, won't you Abby? ;) 3.) Chilling out. Seriously. For the first time in a long time. I didn't even get out of my pajamas until 9am. I call it ADHD on vacation!

And, below is a pic of our field (AKA pond) during the last heavy rain. Gotta love NW Washington in the winter!

Who are the cutest two boys in the world? Colt's going to be the best reader ever if Taylor keeps this up! As you can see, Taylor is reading him one of his favorites: Seasame Street's Nighty Night. He can identify Elmo, but calls him "Bell-Bo." Too cute.

Are We Asleep Yet?

I'm just going to say that for the last year we've been pretty fortunate with the whole sleeping baby thing. From the day he turned five months old he's slept about 11 hours every night. Straight. Uninterupted. 10 or 11 hours of glorious, silent sleep.

Until last week.

While we were on vacation and didn't really care about having to function during the day, my tendancy was to let it slide. The 2:00 am bottles and cuddling on the couch didn't really effect the following day because we were, afterall, on vacation. But now I'm back to work and have to actually focus, function and interact. (I've also taken up showering again for the benefit of my coworkers. FYI.) So, either Colt has grown accustomed to the midnight delights, he's teething again, or he's sick. We've eliminated a potential ear infection (which I thought might be the problem) and I'm unwilling to accept that he might actually like seeing me in the middle of the night, so teething? Maybe.

Either way I'm on to him.

Last night's bedtime: Dinner, bath, playtime, 1.875mL of infant Motrin, bottle and bedtime! And, how did it go you ask? Lovely!!!

11 hours of glorious sleep. (And 10 for me after the disasterous night before last.)

So, just when I think I'm on to something here, I realize the baby monitor was shut off last night - so who's really to say he didn't spend 1/2 the night awake anyway?

Anyway. I feel well rested. Which is good, right?

Blah Blah. Back to Work.

And so comes the end of our glorious, fun-filled, all-things-accomplished two week holiday vacation. I can't say my attitude here at work has been even close to tolerable this week. And, really? How could it? Todd and I have been on vacation since mid-December. And just when I was settling in to the retired lifestyle, here I am again at work. Ugh.

It took a little over a week for me to settle down. My self diagnosed adult onset ADD coupled with my somewhat irritating need to organize my tasks on a daily list really was not conducive to a layed back vacation.

We started out with a bang. The Friday afternoon before the "official" vacation Todd layed 200 feet of landscaping fabric and had a dump truck full of gravel delivered to complete a driveway to the barn for the concrete truck scheduled to arrive first thing Monday morning to pour a slab in the barn.

So, aside from the driveway installation, concrete form building, concrete pouring, limb chainsawing, the building of the hot water heater cover, various hose repair, the completion of a 3 rail fence between our property and the road and various menial tasks, we managed to slip in some relaxation time!

I finally chilled out the Wednesday before I had to go back to work and have been pretty angry at the world this entire week for even having to be back here. 

Oh well, so is life. I did spend $10 on Mega Millions tickets this go 'round in hopes of never having to come back, but I think we all know how that worked out. Another 30 years and I'm outta this place. But, until then, I'm switching to the Washington State Lotto - fewer people ya know.

Toddlers: It's All About Finding Strange Things in Strange Places.

At first it was pretty cute. Picking up things, wandering off with them and stashing them for later. The attention span and short term memory skills of a toddler definitely leave a lot to be desired because 10 seconds after Colt puts something somewhere that information is completely gone. Gone until I, the unsuspecting mother, happen upon it some time later.

Take, for instance, this morning. In a desperate attempt to make it to work on time (which I didn't...) I was frantically searching for my shoes. Colt thinks my shoes (well, all shoes really) are amazing. "Shoe" is one of the words he recognizes and can actually pick them up and say, "Shooo". Totally cute. Only not really when you're running around frantically searching for your own footwear. And where were they you ask? Right where he left them! In the bottom cupboard next to the Rice Crispies. Why didn't I think to look there first?

...and the plastic bumper for the shower door? It was missing for a fairly long time when I found it just night before last wedged into one of the jets in the tub.

...my favorite plastic coated wire whisk? In the toilet.

...my toothbrush head? On the stairs up to the kitchen.

...my hairbrush? In my closet.

...his favorite bath time toy, Mr. Ducky? Under our bed.

and the list goes on and on. For many more months I'm sure.

When It Snows It's Chicken All They Way!

Snow - how wonderful! Right? Right. That's exactly what I was thinking on the drive home from work (which I almost didn't make...) in my incredibly low, over-powered, rear-wheel drive vehicle. There was fun to be had despite me not driving for a week straight...

So, we forgot all of Colt's winter gear at daycare the Friday that it snowed. That made playing in the snow pretty difficult until Taylor suggested putting his Halloween costume on him. It worked perfectly! The puffy chicken costume with fleece pants and a built in hood was awesome!

 Just chillin'...

Things were going pretty good until the "Great Face Plant of 2010". That pretty much ended the snow fun.



So cute!! Seriously.