We had an activity at our church yesterday. We had a great time, not least because it was the first day in several weeks with a heat index of less than 105. Edie had a great time because there was a hat involved:
She threw a frisbee back and forth, climbed up in a pioneer handcart, and and tripped several dozen times and skinned her knees pretty good. Marty, true to form, spent most of the time asleep. His babysitter was there, and she was kind enough to hold him for close to two hours. But what he lacked in church activity excitement, he made up in getting trapped in a big ol' box today:
He's not particularly savvy about looking innocent. He's even less savvy about remaining upright in the box; this picture is about five seconds after he fell over and took all of those boxes in the background with him.
Last week Marty surprised us all by standing on his own, then taking seven or eight steps before unceremoniously falling to the ground. Over the last week, he's started to figure things out, and even walks for short distances on his own without us having to drag him around everywhere. It's exciting!
He's generally happier about walking than he is here, I promise. Edie doesn't particularly care that Marty is walking except in that it takes attention away from her. If either Tamsen or I are holding Marty by the hand and walking him around, she'll immediately shout, "I want to walk too!" and run to grab our hands. My compromise is to let her take his other hand so the three of us can walk around the house together, except Edie doesn't really understand that Marty's top speed is about 0.001 mph, while she likes to run around at top speed pretty much everywhere. (She has a ridiculous number of bruises on her legs that I'm pretty sure are from crashing and tumbling into everything.) She still loves to play her board games. Here she is absolutely schooling me in Hi Ho! Cherry-O! this afternoon. Let it be known that she beat me twice, completely clearing her tree of cherries while I was left with my full complement of ten. Sometimes, it's a little discouraging having to compete against what is clearly a board game prodigy.
I promised my co-workers that I would pay them a visit sometime this week and bring the two kids. As today was Friday, I figured we'd better get up and go.
Edie spent a lot of time hiding behind me, plainly terrified of so many kind faces, but Marty was willing to be passed around for a while. One co-worker in particular was especially excited to carry him around. (She's the one who took all of these pictures.) She loves how big he his, and makes a point of calling him "Fat Martin" every chance he gets. Most of the pictures she took and sent me were of the fat rolls on his legs.
She had a great time parading him around until he started whimpering and making very sad little gestures toward me. It was hot, there were a lot of strange people around, and we were all hungry, so we headed home. We had a pretty uneventful day after that, although Marty really tore into his dinner with gusto, so we gave him a bath afterward. Edie, too, at her insistence. They had a great time in the tub, and Edie even helped to get Marty dressed afterward. She picked out this ensemble entirely on her own.
Yes, that's Marty standing entirely unsupported. He's made a lot of progress even just over the last few days.
I thought we might play in the water outside today, but Edie had a spectacular meltdown this morning when I asked her to wash her hands after sitting on the potty, so I thought maybe more water wouldn't be the best option. We decided to spend the day loafing in our living room, hoping the air would finally get the house cool. (It didn't, not really.) As long as I wasn't asking her to maintain her personal hygiene, Edie was pretty fun to hang out with today.
And that's not to say that Marty wasn't fun, of course. He's just a different sort of fun, in which he's climbing all over you and trying to grab things out of your hands constantly. Midway through the day, we got a couple of packages from my mom with leftover school supplies from work. We rummaged through the boxes and found books, Legos, and other fun things. Edie liked the books, but when she saw the color explosion markers, she had eyes for nothing else. We sat down at the table and got into them immediately.
As you can see, I wrote her name at the top. She's getting good at recognizing her name, as well as those of everyone else in the family. When I pointed to her name and asked her what it was, she said, "That's my Edie O.!" She then spent the next few minutes carefully coloring over every inch of it so it couldn't be seen. I'm sure it made sense to her. Marty observed the scene carefully from his high chair, but he didn't let any of it get in the way of enjoying his Goldfish.
I ordered myself a harmonica a few days ago, which coincidentally arrived the same time the packages did. I was sitting at the table feeding Marty some fish and browsing the internet for tips on how to get started with the harmonica, when Edie got my attention by saying, "Daddy, you aren't helping." I guess I should have been paying more attention to her markers. We'll probably actually do something tomorrow, assuming we're able to get over the hump of getting clean in the morning. Who knows?
I had some ideas for things we could do today, but I asked Edie if she was interested, and she said no to everything. (Marty doesn't get a vote.) So I asked her while she was sitting on the potty this morning what she did want to do. "I want to go to the store," she said. Well, I mean, sure. Why not? We ate our lunch, got everyone (me) dressed for the day, and headed up to Kentucky to go visit Target. I figured there were fun toys for the kids to look at, and it was 30 minutes away to boot, so that would give Marty extra nap time. He obliged, sleeping all the way there and all the way back. I figured I'd buy a little something to justify our walking around for an hour or so. We got there, and while both Edie and Marty loved looking at the toys, we had to get through the clothing section to get there.
This is a very stylish baby. Marty spent all of his time in his stroller, which came as a bit of a disappointment to him, since there were so many toys crying out to be shoved in his mouth.
Edie was better behaved in terms of chewing on merchandise, but she was very enthusiastic about trying everything out.
You can't see it, but this ball lit up when you bounced it. Edie enjoyed it, but would only bounce it once and then hand it back to me so I could put it back on the shelf. She loved identifying everything on the shelves, and then explaining them to Marty. Here she is saying, "Look, Marty! Goldfish!" just moments after I told her, "Look, Edie! Goldfish!"
She especially liked walking through the grocery section and identifying everything we saw. She got really excited when she saw the kind of bread Tamsen usually gets. "Look! Mama bread!"
We were prepared to buy a loaf of Mama bread and a package of red cookies, but I got up to the checkout counter and realized that I hadn't actually brought my wallet. Oops. We put everything back on the shelves and quietly slunk out of the store. Still, a reasonably fun day. I guess Edie knew what she was talking about.
After foolishly telling Edie about our library plans last night, we finally got everything together this morning and set off. They're resealing our street this week, and since our street also doesn't have any sidewalks, it was a challenge finding a path getting there. We soldiered through some deep grass and hills in the stroller before finally getting to level ground. I've only really been to our library a couple of times, so this trip was as much fun for me as it was for Edie and Marty. There are plenty of books, sure, but Edie was much less interested in those than she was in the wall of toys. She found a little house that she could walk in and play kitchen.
Marty found plenty to occupy himself, too, or at least plenty to chew on.
In fact, he made his way inside the little house and was very contentedly chewing on a couple of toy carrots. Edie even let him stick around and play while she was in there, which is a big deal for her, since she normally freaks out any time Marty is anywhere near her while she's playing.
We had a pretty good time, and Edie was very sad when we had to go home to eat lunch. We made our way home across the resurfaced street and through the hot sun and back to our hot house, since I'd forgotten to turn the air on.
Everyone was pretty worn out once we got home, so that must mean we had a pretty good time, right?
Tamsen's on vacation this whole week, so as proof that I am competently taking care of these children, I'm going to update every day this week. Please don't send the authorities to take the children away from me. I am trying, honest. This morning we got up, ate breakfast, got dressed, and headed out to the backyard to pick berries from our blackberry bushes. We filled up this cup in just a couple of minutes.
Edie was very interested in the berries so long as they were in the cup, but really did not like touching them, since the first one she grabbed from the bush was softer than we realized, so it squished in her hand. She's in a phase where she can't stand any sort of anything getting on her (even water), so berry juice in her hand didn't sit well with her. Fortunately, the grass was still wet, so I showed her how to wipe her hand clean, but unfortunately, since the grass was still wet, her shoes got wet, which caused a whole new set of problems. She was screaming at me to get her new shoes while I was crawling around the bush picking berries as quickly as I could. I wasn't quite the delightful family adventure I'd imagined it would be. Although, Marty didn't seem to mind being hauled around the backyard.
He could sit in that stroller forever, I think. Edie was the same way. I parked him there for a little bit while I blew bubbles for Edie.
Edie absolutely adores bubbles, and I made the mistake of telling her last night that we would play with bubbles today. I don't think she talked about anything else until we finally got them out, which was a solid 16 hours. Here's a quick video of her popping them.
Marty couldn't possibly care less about the bubbles, but we put him in the porch swing and pushed him around for a bit, which he really liked. I would have stayed out for longer, but Tennessee in July, y'know? Five minutes was plenty.
We came in to cool off for a bit, and thankfully, Marty went to sleep before long. Edie knows that once Marty goes to sleep, though, she's allowed to play Candy Land and Hi Ho Cherry-o, since he won't be around to try to eat the pieces. Edie got her copy of Candy Land about three weeks ago, and I would imagine we've played at least once every day since then. Considering the game is determined by nothing but sheer chance, she wins way more than I would expect (viz., always).
I told Edie that we should play with our Play-Doh at one point, but quickly realized I had no idea where it was. Tamsen was traveling all day out of range of cell reception, so we just had to tear apart the house. Luckily, she called around 6:30, so we had a bit of time to play before bed.
Marty isn't allowed to play with Play-Doh, but he seemed content enough to chew on necklaces.
We had fun today! Now I just need to think of ways to fill five more days and I'm all set.
Weird things happen around our house all the time, but sometimes I forget to write them down anywhere.
Weird things, like Marty walking around the living room and spontaneously deciding he would step out of his pants. You can see them on the ground right behind them.
Weird things like Edie sobbing this morning because I cut her sandwich into two pieces, not four, followed by her grabbing a placemat off of the table and proudly announcing that she was wiping her tears. (She did this seven times during breakfast. That poor placemat.)
This is Edie just after her bath last night. I had just given Marty a bath and had planned on relaxing for a bit before their bedtime (giving a kid a bath is exhausting), but she insisted that she have one, too. After the bath, we took two or three dozen selfies. I would have waited until my hair was dry before taking pictures, but, I mean, you do you, little girl.
I had both Monday and Tuesday off for the holiday weekend, so we spent some time as a family together today doing errands. Running around town with two little kids in tow may not sound like your idea of fun, and I completely agree, but Marty is pretty docile as long as he isn't hungry, and Edie genuinely enjoys being buckled up and pushed around in a cart. In fact, she usually doesn't want to get in the car and go anywhere unless I tell her we're going to a store, whether it's the grocery store, the burger store (getting fast food), the lollipop store (getting a haircut), you name it.
So we headed down to the grocery store, which here requires you to put in a quarter before it releases a cart to you. We realized as we were getting close that we weren't sure if we had a quarter, which was a problem because Edie was in the backseat singing "I'm going to the grocery store, I'm going to the grocery store" over and over. Fortunately, we didn't have to disappoint her.
The carts at the store are double wide, so we got to take this adorable shot:
Marty seemed to enjoy being pushed around, too, and Edie was having a great time pointing things out to him. ("Look, Marty! Cereal!") At one point, she told me that she saw ice cream on the shelf, which confused me until I realized it was a box of ice cream cones. So we bought them and brought them home to have ice cream cones after dinner. It wasn't until we gave one to Edie that we realized she'd never had one before. It was, well, not as bad as it could have been.
You may notice that we finally got her hair cut, since it was entirely covering her eyes. I took her to the "lollipop store," and she was really excited right up until she sat in the chair and realized she was getting a haircut. She sat still and did a great job, though, which was a pleasant surprise. And she looks real nice, too! At least, I think so!
Marty is still a grabby little boy. He spent a good twenty minutes grabbing at the steam coming out of Tamsen's humidifier the other night and having a ball doing so. He likes to grab Edie's toys, which isn't a problem unless she sees him, which makes her scream to everyone that will listen, "Marty's sharing my toys!" He's a good boy, and we like him, except for all of the times that he screams at us. (We still like him then, but he's not a good boy when he's screaming.)
