17 Months

It's hot y'all.  Really hot.  So hot that Mayhem is pointing to a bucket and saying, "Wah!" for water because it was 150* and he probably thought he was going to steam to death like I did when we took these pictures.

"Wah!" I said!

I'm probably going to get the Internet police sicced on me for this, but I can't help it-- he's so cute I'll risk it.  

(That's a BumGenius diaper, not a disposable swimmy by the way.)

My stepmom wanted him to play in her sprinkler so we stripped him down and manually passed him through the spray a few times until he got the hang of it.

I think he liked it!

Seventeen month old baby boys are crazy!  He took the water bubble out of my stepmom's flower pot, sucked the water out of it like a straw, and spit the dirt (mud by then) down the front of his shirt.

He still really likes eating and if you're using your fingers to give him a bite be careful!  We started calling him a little shark after apparently too much Shark Week on Discovery Channel and because of his "hahmpf!" sound effects.

He doesn't say "Mama" very often, but when he does it's because he's really really hungry.  It's dramatic.  Maaamaaaa!  Maaamaaaaa!  Like a sad sheep dying of starvation.

If he runs out of water or milk in his cup he'll shake it from side to side in your face like, "Helloooooo!  I'm empty here!"

He says bye or bye-bye to every one and everything.  Everything!  Even the salt when I put it back in the cabinet and shut the door.

He likes helping me in the kitchen so much it's crazy.  I can't even wash my hands at the kitchen sink without him dragging a chair over to see if I need help.

Speaking of dragging chairs: He climbed on top of the dining room table and threw about three glass jars that were waiting to be packed into the floor.  Nothing is safe!

He is super interested in trucks.  Dump trucks, log trucks, garbage trucks, utility trucks, pick up trucks.  Tractors, too.  And you should have seen him the first time he saw a school bus!

Birds are still an obsession.  He talks about birds in his sleep, when he first wakes up in the morning, any time he's near a window he can see outside, when he sees trees.  When he's walking around outside he throws his head so far back you think he'll fall over backwards and points up at the sky.  "Burrrr!"

He's started shaking his head no when he doesn't want something and once he said, "No, no, no!" in imitation of me reading it in a book one night.

We made a semi-big deal about his feet stinking when we took off his sweaty sandals one day, so now he pulls his feet up to sniff his toes and wrinkles his nose when we take any of his shoes off.

And now... 

Something else I'll probably get in trouble for...  

Yesterday was my dad's 50th birthday.  We had him a little surprise party and he really was surprised.  It was lots of fun for us, too!

He likes to stay off the grid, so if you know him DO NOT tell him you saw this picture of him on the Internet.

"The Time Has Come!"

...the walrus said.


I think I've put it off as long as I can and now that Boots' has let the cat out of the bag on Facebook it's probably time to say something.


We're selling our house.


We hope.


We're working with a really nice family (that we've known of and actually had in mind since we first talked about selling over a year ago) and doing the "pass the paperwork" dance in hopes that our home becomes their home.  Things are going well, but it's one of those things that you're hesitant to talk about until it's set in stone just in case something doesn't work out like you think it might.  Or that's just me.  The thought of being all, "Hey! We're moving!" and then we don't is kinda pllllbbbbtttttt!  I don't like eating crow, but hey! that's what this blog is all about, right?


So here we are...  Nothing is set in stone, we have no idea where we are going to live although we do have a general direction in mind, whether we're going to rent or buy...  Everything is up in the air.  Sometimes uncertainty makes me a little crazy, but I keep telling myself that we are not going to be homeless (ok, we may be homeless, but I know of at least two places we can sleep!) and that this is the next adventure for us.  Because I am excited.  The thought of having a new (to us) house to work on really makes my dreamer kick it into overtime. 


I'm sad too.  We love our neighbors and have made lots of friends at our church so it is going to be hard to leave them and have to get adjusted to a new place with new people all over again.


But I'm excited!  I already said that?


So maybe this is (it probably is) the reason for my silence lately.  I'm sure that as things start happening a little faster I'll probably have more thoughts (and photos) to share.  I want to take "last pictures" of our house so we'll have a nice way of remembering it.

Have You Got Something to Say?

Summer is over.

That's all I'm hearing lately- the ads for back-to-school supplies and every thing every where my eyeballs look are screaming it at me.

It makes me sort of sad almost.  Didn't summer just start?  Didn't it just get hot and now we're thinking about fall jackets?  Are all the seasons merging together?

I'm feeling behind and I am dragging my feet and hanging on with all my might.  I've tried to enjoy the summer slowly and have taken a break from writing to... What have I been doing exactly?  Collecting ideas by living in the moment?

Why am I up in arms about the changing of the seasons?

These weather thoughts are clanging and banging around all the other things in my head and it's just making no sense to me right now.  Let me just bluhhhhh all over your screen for a minute...
 

I read two blog posts this week: (how to have (not really a) crisis, but slowly) and (FOMO: it’s a real thing) and both of them were like reading my own thoughts in someone else's words.  

Several times before (here and here, I'm seeing a pattern: this usually happens when I run out of stuff to write about) I've thought hard about my own narcissism and my blip on the radar that is the Internet.

Sometimes I feel like the Internet has ruined us all and in order for me to be the best wife and the best mother I can be by being fully present 100% of the time I should just go all hermit and completely unplugged like my Daddy- three channels, no cable tv, no Internet, cell phone for real emergencies only, and real life real-time relationships instead of the art-imitating-life relationships we try to grow through social media.  I'd probably be bored for about two days before I fell head-long into the "real" world that I think often about.

Then I think about how nomadically spread out and busy we all are, how we're all just trying to do the best we can (or are we? another time!), how we live and love through our screens these days because that's just the way it is now, and how the Internet has connected us all and made the world a beautiful place that we can share together.

I'm swinging from extremes.  I feel like if I have nothing to say then I should just sit down and shut up forever, amen.  This will probably (hopefully) pass soon.  If it doesn't then I don't know what I'll do.  Lack of inspiration and writer's block really bums me out.

Maybe I should just take a serious break and completely unplug for about a week and see how I feel on the other side.  Would silence invigorate and clarify or bolster me on?