January 2007

Swinging Into The New Year

The next town over has a really nice park and this cool swing. We think it's a swing for handicapped kids, but it also works well for Andrew who is almost outgrowing the baby swing and is no where near co-ordinated enough to stayed seated in a normal swing. You just latch him in and give him a couple good pushes and he's off and flying. Although he did get a little spooked when he was swinging so high that he starteed to lift his little rear end out of the seat. But with the padded pants and padded jacked on, he was safe. We finished out the day at the park by a walk through the woods. There is a nice path, but paths are not meant for the Kazak Man, we had to go off-roading through the woods and stomp through the leaves and find every mud bog there was. This was fine until he got tired halfway into the trek and wanted to ride on my shoulders all the way back to the car....leaving muddy shoe prints all over the front of me.

More ArtWork

Andrew brought home this little gem during 'Transportation Month' at DayCare. It appears as though the one plane is flying through some sort of bizzarre snow squall/tornado/cloud, and the other plane is either about to enter the foul weather, or it lost altitude and dropped from the sky. Either way, I don't want to be in either plane. This one did not get much 'refrigerator' time. Hopefully next month's artwork will bring as many confused looks.

After a nice big breakfast of oatmeal and vitmains, and some Organic dried fruit things, Andrew likes to catch up with the world by reading the Merchandiser newspaper from Berks county. He is now ready to start his shopping for cow tongue and pig stomach, and knows where the week's bingo games will be held. It takes him a good 5 minutes to tear apart the newpaper and distribute it all across the kitchen floor. If we don't pick it up quick enough, the cats get confused and think they have an enormous litter box courtesy of Andrew. Hmmmm, who has trained who?

Compu-Toddler

If we leave the door to the computer room open he'll sneak in and hop up in an empty chair. This time Daddy was the victim. One day I left my computer unlocked and when I returned he had hit some weird keystroke sequence and my mouse would wander aimlessly with the occassional display of a funky round icon with an eyebrow, and he disabled all the tool bars and icons in Internet Explorer. Do you have any idea just how powerless you are without a mouse, toolbars or icons? You might was well just change the Windows language to Russian. If you look closely at the 'artwork' on the wall, you will understand why Andrew has night terrors on occassion.

First America Wedding

The end of the month my nephew got married, and it was Andrew's first wedding experience. Unfortunately there was no Polka or Chicken Dance so he did not get to partake in the total America Wedding Experience, but he did just fine with Cel-e-brate Good Times. This was also the first time he stayed at a hotel....in America. He made quick work of the hotel ammenities and with 35 seconds of being in the hotel room had grabbed the pen and notepad. I was a bit nervous about the pen since I had not packed my Mr. Clean Magic Eraser for a weekend get-a-way in Delaware. The room was pretty kid safe, so I let him wander aimlessly and not one drop of pen hit the wall all weekend, unlike the crayon incident at home.

At the church he was quite entertained for the first half hour that we sat in the pews waiting for the wedding to start. He was entertained by the assorted family members that sat down and talked while the pre-wedding music played. He was even so comfortable around the newfound extended family that he let some sacreligous farts loose, giving new meaning to the word pew in reference to a church. I am now immune to the aromas from the netherworld, but Cousin Patti was sure he had delivered a load to be remembered. One quick look down the back alley revealed nothing, so we stayed and chatted until the bride walked down the aisle. At that point he decided to share with the other wedding well wishers that he knew how to use his 'outside voice' in a small church at inappropriate times. Needless to say, we did not make it past "Dearly Beloved we are gathered here today....". We spent the majority of my nephew's nuptuals in the lobby watching through the glass wall. In good family form, the wedding lasted 10 - 15 minutes.

The new tradition these days (how old do I sound?) is not to throw rice, or to even release ballons, but to give all of the family and friends little bottles of bubbles to blow at the bride and groom as they exit the church. So we all gathered outside, lining the sidewalk in chilly weather, ready to blow, and we ended up on the down wind side, a good thing given his fart-tacular display inside. Just as the bride and groom were about to come outside a hush came over the crowd and I hear my Aunt say with a smile "Oh if Grandmom Novak would see those bare legs". Apparently Andrew's pants had inched up as he fidgeted in his stroller. So it's not only Kazak woman that think all children's skin surfaces should be covered! Andrew was quickly distracted as hundreds of bubbles blew his way and I pulled his pant legs down. His wedding dinner was everyone's dream: Chicken Fingers and Fries. I'm surprised he had much room for that after cleaning out the Appetizer Table of all of the strawberries. He still wanted more berries so I had to resort to chopping up small cherry tomoatoes so they looked like strawberries. The texture slowed him down a bit but he woofed them down, and then the table had to divert his attention by blowing bubbles.

After the wedding I stayed up too late talking to family in our room, and 'tried' to sleep-in the next morning. Andrew on the other hand, had gone to sleep 6 hours before me and saw no need to sleep past 7am. Luckily he found a 2 inch piece of string in the crib which kept him entertained for about 30 minutes. After that excitement wrapped up I tried offering him a stacking cup to amuse himself, but he was having none of that, he wanted to get moving. Unfortunately I needed to get a shower and he was too energetic to be contained in a crib so I did what any other creative mother would do: I scoured the hotel room and found the ideal object to safely keep a child entertained for the length of a shower: a box of tissues and a roll of toilet paper. Not only was he enterained, but he is now trained to 'decorate' the neighborhood the night before Halloween when he is a teenager.

The family spent the rest of the morning teaching him the fine family traditions of milking every last minute out of the 'complimentary' breakfast and cleaning them out of every last container of yogurt. If I had not already taken my luggage to the car I am sure all of the bananas and plastic spoons would have returned home as a momento of the weekend. By noon he was buckled in, no more bare skin, and ready for the journey home. Check out his stylish hat, you can tell by the look on his face that he does not think it is as cute as I do. It comes with matching spiny backed mittens too. Admit it, you want one too.

First America Hair Cut At Home

After I got home from the wedding and saw the pictures I realized his hair was getting a little long and he started to look like some of the girls in his daycare class. Deciding to take matters into my own hands, I kept looking for opportunities to cut his hair. One of the guys at work cuts his kid's hair while he eats Raisins, but Andrew would not play along with that. So one night in the tub after I washed his hair, he was busy playing with the Sesame Street Ship in the tub so I combed out his hair, got out my mother's old sewing scissors (as if I will ever sew) and started chopping away. Unfortunately Andrew was sitting sideways so I could only see one side well, and I blindly cut the other side. Let's just say that a blind man with the shakes would have done better. Some areas were left long, others were darn near bald. And somehow I managed to give him a bowl cut without ever bringing a bowl near the tub. Poor little fella, it's a good thing all of his kiddie vitamins make his hair grow fast....and that it's winter and he can wear a hat to hide Mommy's Mistake. At least he no longer looks like a girl, and we've cut a couple minutes out of his morning routine by eliminating the need to comb his hair. Check out the pictures, he went from Mop Top Beatle to Buzz Cut Sting in under a week.

See ya next month.