July 2008

July 2008

No other picture captures the personalities of the boys like this one. Mellow James and Spazful Andrew. It’s no wonder James tries to climb out of the tub. You can imagine what night times are like now that they share a room again.

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Draft

The great Draft Act of 2008 has been enacted. We now have monthly Toy Drafts were we empty the toy basket (yes, we have stuck to the 1 toy basket rule 2 years later) once a month and go to the reserve cabinet to draft a new round of toys. This month’s lucky draftees were the Backyardigan’s guitar (courtesy of Schanna), John Deere tractor (once again, Schanna) and assorted Matchbox cars from the Car’s movie. For teh record, Matchbox cars are waaay nicer than hot Wheels. The draft is working well and we plan continue the monthly draft wher ethe boys do the drafting. The only draft dodgers we have are some really annoying battery operated toys that we shipped off to Canada. One item which made the draft of stuffed animals for the bed was Lufty, the trinket the stewardess gave me while Andrew was screaming his way to the US back in 2006. James has taken a keen liking to Lufty and tried to eat the landing gear, but Daddy sewed him up in mommy's absence. Yes readers, Rob did SEW! When James cries, Andrew fetches Lufty for hm to try to calm him and says 'It's ok James, here's Lufty". It's times like that, that even ou tthe beating they give each other.

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Songs

Andrew likes to end his day with a warm bath, story time, then butchering of our childhood classics. He may butcher them, but they are cute. He has chosen to change the words to "Old McDonald Had a Farm” to “Old McFarmy had a ” saving both time and effort by combining 2 lines into 1. But if he saves time with one song, he has to even out the time somewhere. He has stretched “The Wheels On The Bus” to having no less than 40 verses, which brings us to our Top Ten List and clearly a crowded bus.

Top Ten things On The Bus

10. The Goat on the bus goes Baa baa baaa.

9. The jacket on the bus goes zip, zip zip

8. The jeans on the bus go on and off, on and off, on and off . Hmmm, me thinks high school will be a challenge.

7. The king on the bus goes I Rule You

6. The elephant on the bus goes “bbbbbruuuuugh”

5. The van on the bus goes zoom, zoom, zoom

4. The butt on the bus goes fart, fart, fart

3. The cake on the bus goes “eat me now”

2.The toilet on the bus goes flush, flush, flush

1. The giraffe on the bus goes “ “, “ “, “ “ . That last one confused him, but he went with it.

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Birthday

Andrew had this 3rd birthday, and we celebrated in typical Taylor style: a cake from the food store frozen section, and guests we ran into at the supermarket that morning. Here is Andrew displaying the 3 Stages Of Embarrassment when people sing to you: Denial, Trepidation then Acceptance.

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Words

Andrew is talking a lot more and it’s odd to have ‘conversations’ with him at the dinner table. They typically revolve around the cars from the movie Cars and what Doc, Sheriff, Lightning and Wingo think. But every once in a while he lays a new phrase on us. Lately it has been when we ask him to do something he says ‘ok, sure”. And now he likes his bagel toasted in the morning “like Daddy cooks it”. When he has left over food to asks to “save it for dew-morrow”, as if the crumbs of a bagel will hold over night. Andrew confuses some phrases; one day at nap time he "liberated" all of the pages of Llama Red Pajama from the confines of the book. Momma LLama was not happy and Andrew said "that's ok mommy. you're sorry". So now the book has about $15 worth of tape piecing back the Frankenstein book. Along with the good words, are a few more choice words which he obviously is picking up from the daycare kids, or PBS after-hours.

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Art

Another month and another set of art work to confirm the notion that there are no popular Kazakh or Guatemalan artist icons across the age of time. We have the mystical paper plate neon flying saucer, Rare one-eyed paper lunch bag owl, sun that sort of looks like a stick man, and cow with odd rhombus spots that looks like he had too much whacky weed out in the field.

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The Happy Star Flag (apparently the USA has only 1 really happy state now) and the ever creative fireworks display. I thought that one was really creative on the part of the daycare teachers.

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But my favorite this month was an art revelation I had. Upon first looking at this one I thought James drew a butt with his hand prints on the cheeks. Then Rob was quick to point out it is a butterfly, or as I shall ever think of it now, a Butt-erfly.

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Cars

Before we had kids we thought movie-tie-in products were a bunch of crap. Now that we are the proud owners of 2 Sheriffs (Radiator Spring and Dirt Track) and no less than 4 Lightning McQueen’s ( race car, Radiator Spring, Radiator Springs cruising and Cactus) and about a half dozen other car characters, I can say that we are now believers….and we are the ones who got sucked into the aisle at toys R Us to buy them because, after all, they are cool.

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.Potty

I am glad to report that our first potty trained child has been achieved, with the exception of sleep times. We will now stop filling the land fills with our massive diaper load which made up 90% of the weekly trash. On a low note, Andrew now knows what corn on the cob looks like coming out—he was fascinated.

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.And for Megan M., here is the action shot of Daddy cutting up the raw chicken wings for Andrew's birthday BBQ. Safety first.....note the Lysol wipes.

Rock On
For our Audio portion of the blog, we feature the jazz ramblings of Andrew on the harmonica. Sadly, he plays better than I do.