Those (few) of you who are particularly detail-minded and who follow every last teensy-weensy change to this here blog may have noticed that I've been sloooowwwwly adding new photos to the albums over the past 24 hours or so, as time has allowed, in between a gazillion other things that I've been doing in the meantime (tree planting, cooking for last night's little dinner party with Lisa and Matt, meeting with the insurance agent to update our home owner's policy to accommodate all these additions, running errands, going to the gym, etc., etc. - not to mention hanging out with His Booness).
If you didn't notice, don't worry about it. It's not like I expect all of the Boo's adoring fans out there to be hanging on my every word, or anything. (sniffle)
In any case, there are a whole gaggle of new pics in Joshua's album and the Big Dig, both. Check 'em out - and be sure to go back a little bit into January for a few photos of Fireman Boo in action, which I found hidden on my Nikon's memory card from a little fashion shoot that the Boo-Momma and the Boo-Grandma apparently held when I wasn't paying attention. (Either of them individually is capable of taking a truly ridiculous number of photos as it is - the two of them together are a combination that should be, well, illegal. You may THINK I posted a silly number of very similar pictures of our son with his fire truck, but trust me, you should see how many I left on my hard disk...)
Not to make excuses or anything, but it's become something of a daunting task to sit down and update the photo albums on this here blog, in large part because, well, Grandma's in the house. If that doesn't seem to follow logically, consider: my mother is a pretty serious photographer, this is her only grandson we're talking about, and more often than not, while I'm out and about doing all the things that the grandparents' presence allows me to do, she's left all alone and unsupervised, with lots of time on her hands and a fresh, cute, not-camera-shy-at-all little baby just sitting there WAITING to be photographed. Worse, she was trained in the school of photography that, back in the bad old days of actual film (if you can remember that far back, before God invented the digital camera), theorized that you should take as many pictures as possible, bracketed all over the place in terms of speed and aperature and who knows what else, so that you couldn't possibly miss the shot or lose the moment because if nothing else you've taken 150 nearly identical photos of the same instant in time, and one or two of them pretty much HAVE to come out well, just as a mathematical probability. So wading through the memory cards that my mom occasionally hands me from her latest bout of photographing the baby is somewhat akin to sitting down and finally trying to fulfill that New Year's resolution to read War and Peace all the way through, really, you're going to do it this time.
Not that I'm complaining. She's gotten some really, truly amazing shots of our Boo - in fact, most of what you've been seeing on the site lately has been taken by her. It's just kind of, well, intimidating. So I tend to put it off, until Grandma Jo gives me a gentle (or not so gentle) little nudge to say in her oh-so-subtle way, WHERE THE #@&! ARE MY PICTURES?!?
Sigh.
So, with that little bit of whining out of the way, here's what else has been going on, while you've been patiently waiting for me to lasso myself to the computer long enough to post an update...
His Booness has absolutely, emphatically, utterly become enthralled with this whole "standing up" thing - to the point where he's taken to doing so when he wakes up in the middle of the night, so that Felicia walks in to find him standing up in his crib, holding onto the bars with one hand and the Boo-Elephant (his favorite and much-chewed-on stuffed comfort toy) with the other, wailing his baby head off for his momma. He's learned how to sit down again, after many painful experiments - you basically just let go and go "boom!" on your little baby behind, not so bad, really, as long as you don't land on something hard and unexpected with your little tooshie - but in the middle of the night, he chooses not to, because he'd really much rather yell until he gets his momma-time. (Yes, this is still going on, almost 11 months into this whole shindig. Both Momma and Baby COULD give this up any time they chose to do so, with just a few days of crying and complaining - on both parts - during the transition... but both choose not to, because they both kinda like their middle-of-the-night time together. Me, I've gotten to the point where I mostly sleep through it, kind of.)
He's become incredibly curious, exploring every single object he can get his hands on to see what it will do when banged, bitten, thrown, dropped, rolled, struck with another object, stuck inside a box, or otherwise manipulated in any way he can think of. He especially likes experimenting with gravity, dropping (or just throwing down) any object you give him - so much so that we've taken to calling him "Sir Isaac Booton." I'm sure it'll make him brilliant someday, but man, is it annoying in the meantime. More often than not, I'll come back from running errands in town, and discover that Joshua and the Grandparents (those three juvenile-and-semi-senile delinquents) between them have managed to empty every drawer in the kitchen and every toy bin in the house ALL OVER THE FLOOR, leaving a 3000-square-foot obstacle course for me to navigate as I haul in the day's groceries and mail. (Anyone who chooses to walk around the house barefoot these days, does so at their own peril.)
I've come to the conclusion, after much experimenting and considerable expense, that the experts (including my own dad) who claim that the simplest toys are the best toys are probably right. Number one, because His Droppishness tends to gravitate most avidly toward the dumbest-looking, most-boring-appearing toys over those that light up or make noise or otherwise make too much obvious effort to entertain him (and that cost a lot of money). And number two, because given that he's most likely going to go for the spatula over the Fisher Price Wonder-Dingy-That-Does-Everything-But-Cook-Him-Breakfast anyway, why waste the money? His favorite toy at the moment seems to be a little cookie-dough scoop that has a clicker-thingy that is meant to coax the dough out of the scoop - he just loves that clicking noise. But he's also very fond of a clear plastic cup, and it's great fun to take his sippy-cup and throw it on the floor, where it will leak out all over everything in a truly fascinating way.
He has imposed two rules on our household, which he enforces quite strictly: 1) no two blocks shall ever be left standing atop one another for any longer than babily possible, and 2) no object shall be left on any horizontal surface that he is capable of reaching, but instead said object shall be swept as quickly as possible onto the floor, where it can be more readily chewed, thrown, banged, bitten, and otherwise experimented with. This is just the way it is, and there's no use fighting it. And if you happen to have left your coffee mug or soda can on the coffee table, it's your own damn fault, thankyouverymuch.
Oh - and let's not forget Rule #3: given a choice between baby toys and dog toys, go for the dog toys, every time. (Which raises the question of why we're still bothering to sterilize his bottles...) Gimli is wearing a very long-suffering expression these days.
Meanwhile, in the midst of all this baby-inspired chaos and exploration, the exterior chaos that we've been living through with the remodel is drawing to a foreseeable close, at last. The deck is basically done - it just needs to be sealed, and a few remaining screw holes still need to be plugged - the outdoor room is ready for plaster and tile and countertops to be installed, the roof is finished, and the new office is just waiting for the floor to acclimate enough that the flooring guy can come back and sand and finish it (it takes a month or so, otherwise it'll just expand and/or contract later on and develop cracks in the finish, which is exactly what's happened in the nursery). Most importantly... the hot tub is up and running, and has power and water in it and everything! So Felicia and I were in it more often than is really decent over this past weekend, when the grandparents were off in Jacksonville spending a few days seeing some part of Oregon other than the inside of our house. We discovered that a spa is a truly wonderful thing, and is indeed very relaxing and romantic and all that... but also that there's only so much time you can spend in it before you start going kind of, well, comatose, and become fried like a lobster. So our first "Spa Date" proved to be considerably shorter than expected.
Ah well.
The grandparents' minivan - which, you may recall, they had shipped out here via Canada Rail, ages ago - finally arrived, after a mere five or six weeks in transit, most of which was apparently spent sitting in a rail yard in Vancouver, collecting dirt and grime while waiting to go through US Customs. It still works, and was no worse for wear other than being very dirty and kind of reluctant to start up after so long sitting on its butt doing nothing... so the grandparents promptly (last Friday) took off for a little weekend getaway to Jacksonville, which proved to be a very relaxing concept for all involved. They got to do some wine tasting and country driving and hanging out together, and we... well, we did a lot of napping, and visited with David and Patrick in the park in Ashland with the baby, and took a couple long walks, and hung out in the hot tub. I think we all felt much refreshed.
Grandma Kay, meanwhile, has been getting pumped. Apparently Jan (our housekeeper/babysitter/adoptive grandma) took note of the fact that my mom seemed to have little to do but sit around the house watching the baby and playing Mah Jong on her computer ad nauseum, and took pity on her - and in typical Jan fashion, decided to kick her into action with a little tough love, by inviting her to go to Curves with her and get some exercise. After much hesitation and some little battling with the forces of inertia, Mom took her up on the offer, and ever since she's been going to pump iron with the girls at Curves several times a week. It's made a huge difference - not so much in that she's suddenly started to bear a strong resemblance to Governor Ahhnold, but more in the level of energy that she has, and that she's just seeming to have a lot more spark and verve and liveliness. (Go Mom!)
And finally, I've been basically racing around like a madman, trying to do a gazillion things in these last few weeks while I have ready access to grandparently help. I shanghai'd my dad into helping me build a shed on top of King Tut's tomb, at long last - we made good progress for a few days, and got three of the four walls framed and installed, before they took off on their weekend away and we got rained out from then on. I've been doing little jobs on the remodel to save a few bucks here and there and put in some "sweat equity" - so, for instance, I've been running around plugging the screw holes with little purpleheart and ipe plugs, sticking them in the holes with glue and then coming back later on and using a chisel to shave them off at deck level. (Sure, you can tell which ones I did and which the regular crew did, because mine look like they were chewed on by a rabid beaver - but it's a learning experience, so who's counting?) I've continued my Johnnie Appleseed tendencies as the baby trees I ordered last fall have dribbled in - just yesterday, I planted three quaking aspens, two saucer magnolias, two Japanese maples, and one red maple, none of them longer than my forearm. (They might be as tall as Joshua by the time his grandchildren inherit the house, but again, it's a learning experience, so who's counting?) And I keep dragging myself to the gym, trying to get my knee - and the leg to which it belongs - back into action, still from that major surgery I had more than a year ago now.
Speaking of which, I got clearance from the orthopedic surgeon to do just about anything with my knee that I feel like doing - well, as long as it's not soccer, or skiing, or basketball, or football, or... you get the idea. But I can play "light racquetball" (whatever that means) and "light tennis" (ditto) and go hiking and go snowshoeing and ride my bike and do a bunch of other stuff that was off-limits until now - which feels something like being released from the county jail, or at least being let off house arrest. Not that I have much time to do any of that stuff, but hey, I appreciate the thought.
So, folks, there's your update. And right on schedule, His Booness is waking up and calling for his poppa - no doubt standing up in his crib to do so. So with that as my cue, I shall exit, stage left.
Sounds like Boo and I are on the same path in the illness dept. I still haven't been able to shake this thing, and have to go back to the doctor again today. UGH. Glad to see that he likes the wagon that G'ma gave him...she was so geeked to get that thing! Congrats to mom on the job offer! WOO HOO! Who knows? Maybe SHE'LL be the one to open a gym?!
Posted by: Christine | Friday, March 03, 2006 at 06:17 AM