Feast Day and Roller Coaster Toy (7QTs)

It's that time again!  It's Friday, Friday.... (you know you're singing that song in your head now).

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Happy Feast of the Assumption Day!! Otherwise known as "all-Catholics-get-ye-behinds-to-the-nearest-mass-day", or, in our household... "Cranky-cranky-SO-not-a-morning-person-makes-it-to-church-because-she-is-obligated -loves-feast-days".

And in case you missed it..."cranky-cranky" did not refer to this one...

Not ready to face the day

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See?  No crankiness here!

Ready to go with Puppy and Pooh in tow

The Hubs is usually gone when we wake up, but had the pleasure of waking this one up this morning.  Little Man made that scrunched up groggy face that kids make when you wake them before they're ready and laid his head on The Hubs' shoulder.  The Hubs pointed to his face, and said "this is what you look like in the morning".

Thanks, Dear.

At least he gets something from me.

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"Not-a-morning-person" rewarded herself with some caffeine.  It's a feast day after all!

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Don't you wish you could be this easily entertained?

This was at the chiropractor's office, and he kept looking over at the front desk to see if the ladies were paying attention to him.

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If you missed the story about the roller coaster toy and this gem...

Click here

...click on the picture to go read it...and the rest of my stimulating post from yesterday...eckhmm.

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My chiropractor's office has a play area for children and the ladies working at the front desk will keep an eye on them while you get treated.  How awesome is that?

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My (almost) two year old has discovered the hilarity of "pooting" (we call him "Pooter" for a reason), especially while on the changing table.  I try to not encourage this, but we all know that parenting is half "don't do that", a quarter "eh, what the heck", and a third "walk into the other room so that your child does not see you laugh at whatever behavior should not be encouraged".

Ignore the weeds, please.

What does the butterfly picture have to do with this?  Nothing!  Did you really expect me to post a picture of the above anecdote?

For more Quick Takes, visit Conversion Diary!

The Terrible Twos and Photobombing Like a Parent (PHFR)

Today's post should be entitled "Lots of pictures that have little to do with each other and lots of rambling without any real focus"... 

...but that would take up a lot of room.

We have been busy with visiting with family, visiting with friends (two get-togethers in one weekend! Love you Chelsea, Caroline, and Jonathan! (of which, of course, we failed to take any pictures)), bike riding, parish picnics, and keeping up with all of the things that we keep up with.

You'll have to excuse the lack of entertaining text.  You can just look at the pictures if you wish :)

{Pretty}

"Lay down!...Daddy...look clouds!"

Stopped to smell the flowers

{happy}

One of Matthan's favorite songs is "How He Loves" and he can pretty much sing the whole thing, as well as the Winnie the Pooh and Veggie Tale theme songs.  I'm working hard to get a recording of it...unsuccessful so far.

{brings Daddy his ukulele and capo}  "Sing song!"

Coloring at the parish picnic

Matthan selfie, photobombed by Mommy

{funny}

First time I've ever seen him do this!

He's been sticking his blanket over his head since he was a baby

Matthan selfie photobombed by Daddy

Matthan selfie photobombed by Mommy

Matthan selfie photobombed by Daddy

Matthan selfie photobombed by Mommy kisses

I saw Matthan stick his blanket over his head while I was driving and I guess he was trying to block out the sun.  When I got home, he was completely asleep under there.

{Real}

We are about to enter a new phase of parenting called "The Terrible Twos"... although I think Matthan decided a couple months ago that he was an over-achiever and would enter into it early.  There has certainly been new challenges, like the "NO!" phase, and the "I'm going to use a whiny voice all day long" phase, but, I can tell you, he is also, SO MUCH FUN.

Matthan is a very verbal child, but when he doesn't have the words to communicate, his actions speak volumes.  Do you remember those roller coaster wire toys with the sliding beads?  Matthan was playing with one at the chiropractor's office.  I had warned him that we'd be leaving in a few minutes to which he replied "NO!", which I ignored and went to finish at the front desk.  When I was done, I went to collect Matthan and told him it was time to go, to which he replied "NO!", shaking no with his whole body...

... and then in final protest, SMUSHED his face between the bendy wires of the roller coaster toy. (Kicking myself for not getting a picture!)

He looked something like this

I started laughing which attracted all of the ladies from the front desk to come over and see this toddler protest.

I pried his face from between the wires and held him as he cried on my shoulder because he didn't want to leave.

The rough life of an (almost) two year old.

Don't let this angelic face fool you ;)

Mixed in with the minimal rough moments is a lot of smiles and songs and so much cuteness.

When life gives you an (almost) 2-yr-old, sometimes you surrender and make a tent with the clean laundry

Happy Thursday!  Go see the ladies over at Like Mother, Like Daughter for more "Pretty, Happy, Funny, Real" themed posts.

Water, Water, and More Water (7 Quick Takes)

If you don't like a lot of pictures of cute smiles, this blog post is not for you.

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We found a park a while back that has a little man-made stream running through it and we've gone to play in it several times this summer.  It's just Matthan's size.  He loves to go through the water to the other side, up over the bridge, down and around the path, and then leans around the bush and yells "I see you, Mommy!", and then runs back up the path, back over the bridge and through the water to me.  Repeat 1,457,643 times.

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I have a hard time sleeping when there is light in my room, but I'm not a huge fan of the face masks I've tried.  I didn't want to cover the lights on our baby monitor completely.  It only took almost two years for my husband to suggest putting a sock over it.  Perfect solution and it kind of looks like Santa Clause.  Maybe?  Kind of?  I think so.

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In case you missed my post about us taking Matthan to the beach for the first time, click on the picture below to go see more pics.

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I can't help myself.  Every now and then I get a hankering for the 'ole WaHo.  The Hubs doesn't care for it, but every now and then I can convince him to accompany me to get some waffles.  One Saturday morning, I decided I needed waffles and hash browns.  Now you must understand that I don't usually keep juice in the house (really because I'll drink way too much of it).  I treat it like a treat...

Decided he was in fact a fan of the hat after grumpily accepting one from the nice older gentleman.

... and when Little Man gets it... it's oh... soooo...good.

Have you ever seen a more intense face of satisfaction?

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Speaking of Little Man, I try to find jobs for him around the kitchen.  He stacks cans.

He just did this one day when I left the pantry door open and it has become a daily habit.  He is really good about putting them back in the pantry when asked, so now his new job is helping me put away food in the pantry after grocery shopping.

I asked him to smile.

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We met with my friend Bridget and her son Bo at the mall fountain the other day.  The water was. so. cold.  The boys played in it anyway, and I did not get out dry.  It has very strong streams of water... that change patterns.  During one pattern, all of the streams are hitting the center of the circle and it hurts a bit if they hit you.  Well...

...Matthan had run into the center of the circle and sure enough the pattern changed nailing him with full force of all the streams, and I had to rescue my dear panic-stricken boy from the deluge.

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A drastic change has occurred as of recent.  Inspired by my five year old niece who recently donated her hair...

... I decided if I was going to cut my hair, I might as well do something good with it.  It's the second time I've contributed to Locks of Love, but it's still pretty weird to see that much hair come from me.

Happy Friday everyone!

For more Quick Takes, visit Conversion Diary!

Summer Travel and Family Fun

Today, I'm doing a double link-up!  Because my brain is on summer vacation still (despite all of the schools around us beginning this week) and can't come up with my own ideas.  I'm linking up with the ladies at Like Mother, Like Daughter for "Pretty Happy Funny Real" and Cari at Clan Donaldson for "Theme Thursday" (the theme is "Panic").

~ Griffin ~

Actually labeling the "pretty" and the "happy" etc seems moot because there has been a lot of it going on around here.  Well, not exactly around here, because we haven't been around here for a lot of the previous two weeks.  Three Mondays ago (I'm way behind on blogging), Little Man and I packed ourselves up (I packed, he ran around like a crazy person) and headed on down south of Atlanta to my sister and her family.  Do not let these limited pictures fool you.  It was not this calm.  There was craziness, and laughter, and feeding the Little Man with imaginary food while playing "mommy and babies".

Cousins

Can't resist the kisses

~ Savannah ~

After telling The Hubs that it was really quite ridiculous that we made it through all of last summer without going to the beach (it's appalling, really), I insisted we take the Little Man to the beach.  With relatives very close to the beach, I think it must be some kind of sin that he had not set foot on a beach yet.  Matthan is a pretty chill kid but I have noticed that he adjusts quicker to new situations if I prep him for it.  So before we embarked on our trip to Savannah and the beach, I YouTube-d "ocean" and had him watch a video of the ocean while he was eating his lunch.  He liked watching "ocean".

Mommy, Matthan, cousin Ava in the real ocean

He did great!  He had his freak out moments and clung to me but after a while would go to Grandma and Daddy too.  He had so much fun.  His cousins dug him a little pool in the sand that he just loved.  He also did not have an aversion to the ice-cream that we got afterwards either :).

Eating cookies on the beach

I know, I know, beach pictures don't exactly scream "Panic", this weeks theme for Theme Thursday, but I'm doing you a favor by sparing you from pictures.  See...while we were visiting ye 'ole beautiful Savannah, I was in the kitchen with my husband's family.  I bent over to pick up something off of the floor ... (ok!! It was a chocolate chip from my cookie!  5 second rule so not worth it this time!)...

... and WHACK!!!

While I had bent over for glutton-ess reclaiming of the fallen chocolate chip, someone had opened the freezer door, and upon standing, my head and the corner of the door had a painful, aggressive meeting without my permission.  I immediately crumbled into a heap of pain on the floor trying to figure out if I was going to black out (which I figure now is not something you think if you black you, you just black out? I don't know).  I asked for an ice pack and when I pulled it away, there was blood dripping down the ice pack (aren't you glad I spared you the pictures?).  I was panicking about the idea of having to get stitches while my husband had gotten me into a chair and handed me a bowl because my body had made a couple attempts to dislodge it's lunch contents.  I asked him why he was getting a wet cloth for to which he replied "you have blood all down your face".  Commence more attempts at lunch dislodgment.  After removal of my bloody sweater and the blood from my face, my husband got me to a chair, determined I did not need stitches, and took care of me for the rest of the day... which was kind of nice... but not worth the head injury.  I'm ok now... I think.

~ Visit from Grandpa ~

Before I even had our suitcases unpacked from visiting Savannah, Grandpa Jim came to visit us.  We had good intentions to head to the pool, but cool, cloudy weather had other plans.  We did make it to the park for about 30 mins before it got stormy.  The next day we were able to make it to another park and walk the two mile path around the lake.  

Grandpa Jim and Matthan

Now go check out more posts at Like Mother, Like Daughter and Clan Donaldson for "Theme.