It's really not about olives

So I had planned to blog about how my babes LOVE black olives. I bought a case of Lindsay black olives (the very best brand) at Costco...and there was some eye rolling from my husband who happens to loathe black olives, but I have successfully produced two offspring who love black olives just like their Mama. My little sister has this thing about being an olive lover or a non olive lover, and how we come from a family of 5 olive lovers to 1 non olive lover. The two olive lover kids that have been married, somehow have married two non olive lovers and this had brought down the ratio of olive lovers to non olive lovers. I am happy to report that I have fixed the ratio again to the proper balance in the force with my two happy olive loving babes.

So this is not about olives...really. It is actually about adding another horrible day to my list. I feel that I have these really out of control days where there are these crazy out of the ordinary things that happen...as I become heavy with child. It never fails! When I was pregnant with Fiona I had that horrid day when Iain split his eye open and we thought he had crushed his leg so he needed a radio graph and I spent some good time freaking out in the E.R. Then, also pregnant with Fiona, our water almost got shut off. So I was traipsing around town, with a heavy pregnant belly and an equally heavy not yet 2 year old trying to pay our water bill at the city offices. They were less than helpful.

Today, we started out with this great idea of a bike ride out to see Husband for lunch. My attempt to ween ourselves away from Husband after a week of stay-cation was going to give us an outing with a picnic. We read a pile of books before going, so that took away my bike time, so we piled in the car to leave and whirrrwhirrwhirrwhirr the car was dead. Lovely. Just lovely! How could this be? So a long day's worth of phone calls to AAA and waiting for the jump, refusing the $122 offer of a new battery put in right in the convenience of my own garage which seemed like a rip-off actually was!! I drove over to my new friends at Auto Zone and they told me that my battery is totally fine and not the dead, wasted cell that the stupid crooks at West Side Auto Pros claimed my lifeless battery was. I can say that WSAP are dirty filthy crooks because this is not the first time that they have tried to screw us over on car repairs. They are bad dogs for sure.

The most refreshing part of my below average day was the honesty and forthright truth from a decent person. Eric told me "I don't work on commission, and I would love to sell you all of the things that you would need, but you don't need this!" He had checked my battery twice and it gave a good report...twice. I love it when people don't try to talk me into something that I don't need!! It makes me trust them and respect them as well!! Plus, without selling me anything, I will become a customer. Easy as pie.

So this post, is not about the black olives, and still not about the faulty battery. Instead, it is about my little mischief maker. I could be blaming this dead battery on my own personal, and compact Curious George, but it is highly likely that when I caught him in the driver's seat, something could have been switched over and turned into a "parasitic drain" on the battery. Husband or I could have made a mistake as well...however, let me share the situations that George has been responsible for, which has caught us with that stupid "How the heck did that happen" look.

• The mild things like leaving food in "hiding" places around the house, are still mild, but everything has a start, and I would say that hiding a chunk of banana in my asparagus steamer for...how many days? We will never know. It was just that horrible smell that had to be tracked down by detective mom.
• It made no sense as to why I would be taking the first shower of the day, and I have some warm water starting out, and then the water continued to get colder and colder and ICE cold. What could have happened? Oh yeah, George flipped the switch on the hot water heater in the basement. So Husband had the task of lighting the pilot light after I rewashed a couple loads of dishes in the dishwasher and thawed out from my shower. And yes, I most likely had shampoo residue in my hair. This turning off the hot water heater has happened at least twice now, and maybe I have blocked out the third time.
• This summer, I reached into the ice dispenser to find a bunch of wet sticky ice. Very peculiar. I thought very little of it for a few hours, and then when I went to check again, I noticed that the ice cubes were stickier and wetter! Yes. He turned the freezer AND the refrigerator off.
• The crock pot dinner, that wasn't done by dinner had been shut off at some point during the day.
• The thermostat has been switched to OFF as well.
• Sometimes the dogs, and babes end up outside with no shoes or socks on, and they are all out in the front yard.
  

What I have realized is that I am really not as OCD as I could be or should be having this little ball of mischief living in my midst. "That's the kind that puts strychnine in the well!" I continue to ask the Lord for a host of angels to protect my little man and little woman from getting into trouble and hurting themselves. They are so clever and silent when they get into trouble...oh yes, I did change my pronoun from him to they. He has an accomplice now. We have found her on top of the table eating leftovers. It only takes a moment of "Where's Iain" or "Where's Fiona?" and they could be standing with both legs and feet submerged in the toilet or covered in face powder and broken eye shadow and tubes of lipstick that are smashed all over the cupboards and smeared on the floor and all over their bodies as well, looking as if they are covered in war paint and ready for battle.Our ratio was good.

It is about to become not so good.

Rather Blustery Day, Today

So we did have some very beautiful and perfect autumn days, and Praise God for those! The babes had a glorious time running around and enjoying the leaves that had been falling in our yard. Actually, the yard was carpeted with leaves! Iain is always amazing us with his memory of things, and as I got out the rake, he was talking to me all about leaf piles and jumping. Fiona was just a small nut last year, so this was her first experience with piles of leaves and she was timorous in her attempts to experience the full joy of jumping and rolling in leaves like her older brother. She tries desperately to be just like him, but the itchy, sticky, stinky leaves were too beneath her. Iain was quick to grab a broom to help out with the leaves, but the real chore was being saved for when Husband was home to offer the physical strength needed to complete the project. At points, the leaf raking seems futile with the cascade of leaves still dropping from the treetop.The flowering crab tree is called Prairie Fire.
We didn't know what that meant until we saw the leaves.

Today, I was happy to report almost a completely naked tree, so this should be our 2nd and last weekend to rake the yard. Oh wait! We will probably have another weekend, but it will be because of our neighbors and their poor work ethic. Husband is always cursing "Communists!" under his breath while we are raking huge Sycamore leaves, which hail from two houses North, and jamming their yard excrement into our purchased lawn bags. I grew up in a truly Communistic city, so the idea of bagging leaves seems ridiculous to me when we know that there are city leaf-sucker-uppers that just come and suck in all of the leaves each week for those who rake their leaves into nice piles along the curbside. I am sure the garbage fees are more money over there, but the convenience factor is almost worth it! Except for those people who don't have leaves to be raked; they would definitely feel that we are all Communists.Iain already takes good photosAnd he is peddling away! This is so cool to not have to be pushed by Mama anymore.

With the earlier nights setting in, we are using our Netflix account to its fullest advantage. Jake decided that he was bored to tears with my repertoire of films (I don't even know where I hear about some of these films, but the queue has been established months in advance when I go through and just click everything, AND THEN I am totally surprised to find something I wasn't expecting in the mail box. Part of our film education.) so he went through the queue and has updated to reflect his taste in movies. So every other one in the mail is something that Husband has ordered. *Rolls eyes* I am all about sharing and watching what he watches, but I can't stand some of these films!! We got Transformers II last weekend. *gag* I started watching with him, since I had been forced to watch the first Transformer movies, and made myself scarce when he was watching some huge boxed set of Transformer cartoons after Christmas last year. There were about six DVDs worth of episodes and it seemed as though he would never get done with watching those. So I patiently sat and started to watch this horrible film about mutating machines that are (apparently) part alien as well as part machine that can morph into different pieces of equipment on planet earth, but they are (of course) secretly trying to take over the world. *Knit, purl, knit, knit...* This time, there is some human that might have accidentally touched some sort of Kryptonite that is allowing him to...OK it was ridiculous. I give it a huge capital F with boogers on the side, and yes, I did not finish watching the film because it was erasing important brain cells that I need for the rest of my life.

Moving on! Husband really "owed" me a serious chic flick for the 40 minutes that I watched of Transformers, so it was a good idea that he told The Proposal to come in the mail next. The only bad thing about this form of revenge is that Husband, secretively or not, enjoys chick flicks!! It was a great little film, and the only part of it that is similar to our own story is that I was Husband's "boss" when we met. Sandra Bullock needs Ryan Reynolds to marry her so that she won't loose her fabulous editor job to be deported back to Canada. Husband knew the landscape of most of the film taking place in Sitka, Alaska, where he was taken on some of those seriously spoiling cruise trip vacations as a child. There were some parts in the film that were a bit of a stretch, but overall it was a good giggle of a film and worth the rent. I would give it a solid B.

Iain and Fiona have been frequently asking to watch Olivia "the pig show." Olivia is an adorable pig that walks on her back legs and has a younger brother named Iain. Everything in the two little episodes we have is so mild and appropriate, however, my little Iain has started to pick up on little things in "shows." My heart was shattered when he asked for a kiss goodnight the other night, and proceeded to say, "YUCK!" and wipe his hand across his face. Where would he have picked this up? Then I remembered that when the Grandma pig comes for a visit, she kisses Iain and he decides he is too old for kisses so says, "Yuck!" after the kiss and wipes his snout. *sigh* It happened again today when tucking down for a nap.

Did I forget to mention, that we like to fish in our yard?

Husband and my ears perked the other morning during Sesame Street when we heard a little nutrition segment about eating your carrots, and broccoli, and this list of vegetables, when all of a sudden we heard "You gotta eat your TOFU!" WHAAAAA?!!! We freaked out simultaneously, and rushed in to turn off the boob tube. We had just turned it on, not two minutes before the tofu propaganda, so there was great confusion amongst the small fry and so we danced about eating chicken embryos, dead cows, and dead chickens, fish, shrimp, fish...you get the idea...but followed up with "TOFU IS POISON!" OH yeah! We felt empowered trying to undo the garbage on public television, and we are trying to ween the TV more each day and stick to a movie. They seem to love anything with pigs, so it was Charlotte's Web that they chose yesterday, and even though there is a plethora of immense words and extensive vocabulary in that film, we have the vegetarian pig who is desperately afraid of becoming morning bacon.
On a completely unrelated note, but again using this space to document, Husband was on a walk with the babes the other night while I was being converted into a cosmetic genius. The moon became hidden behind some clouds and Iain exclaimed, "HEY! A moon go?" Husband had to tell him that it was behind some clouds and would come out again, but I could only picture this perfectly crisp and quiet autumn evening, with the babes all tucked into the stroller and all of a sudden "HEY! A moon go?" like, Hey! who hit the lights?

They are double-teaming me

I used to love fall. The weather telling me it was time to switch to a light sweater, and then slowly suggesting a hat has never bothered me. Watching the leaves fall like confetti from the tops of the trees, flashing the vibrant hues of autumn used to be my favorite time of year. I also used to love rainy fall days. The chill in the air and the wet pavement, littered with puddles has always reminded me to say "It's a Scotland day" and I could be whisked away to wonderful memories of touring the British countryside with my mother and sister.Now "I have kids." (I have always hated it when people have used that excuse with me in the past, pre-baby, and now I cringe everytime I say it or think it. Because it is actually true!) We are going crazy over here, cooped up in our house! My opinion of the rain is that it has robbed my children (and me) of some beautiful fall days to be enjoyed outside in our yard, playing in piles of leaves or collecting the prettiest leaves we can find. How on earth can I take them outside when it rained, literally, all day?! We got close to 3" of rain all in one day, and the grass seems like it would slide right off of the dirt if we even thought to walk on it. The dogs don't even want to go outside, so unfortunately, I have crazy canines in my house as well. Grrr! I do think the dogs have officially received their cue to begin hibernation, which unfortunately leaves them as unsuspecting prey for the aforementioned cloistered children to tug on ears, tails and skin. I have never heard these beasts growl so much at the other little beasts: those with two legs.Fiona thinks it is much more fun to color on her body or to suck on markers or crayons.

In my former life, a nice cup of tea would hit the spot, and here are more complaints because I can't seem to eat or drink anything hot anymore! I have become conditioned to eating hot foot in the cooled off state and cold food in the warmed up state. I am completely pathetic! Just the other day, I caught myself intentionally letting some cream cheese warm up to a more palatable temperature, and this morning the babes were telling me to sit down and eat my eggs with them...but I kept trying to find other things to put away or grab before I could sit down because I knew that my eggs were entirely too hot to completely enjoy them. Husband reminded me of some ice cream that he had scooped for me the other night, and I snapped at him with "Can't I just do anything in my own time!" masking the fact that the ice cream was entirely too frozen at the point of him reminding me to "dig in!"

I feel as though I hit a new low last night by trying to entertain the children while Husband was working the late shift. I + F had been throwing toys like cars and dominoes all over the play area. I had just spent the last two evenings, desperately trying to get my desk (a.k.a. command central, computer station, and the portal for grandparent communication) cleaned off and under control. I found interesting things that served absolutely no purpose, so I pitched lots of things and reorganized the rest. The low part, was after not having had a shower in several days, being surprised by a scheduled visit with a friend in my not bathed state, having changed pee accidents and poop accidents, having cleaned the kitchen window that was covered with food and dog drool, and still waiting to have my Husband come to rescue me from our children sucking the life right out of me, I reached into the garbage can and pulled out an envelope filled with temporary tattoos. "Oooo Iain, look at this! A frog! a parrot! Look Fiona! Do you want to wear a tattoo? How about a toucan for you and oooo a lady bug!"This little adventure in temporary tattoos bought me almost an extra 30 minutes before I declared martial law and "IT'S TIME FOR BED!!! NOOOOOWWWWW!" My son was sent bed with a yellow frog on his leg and a parrot the full length of his forearm and this parrot actually had a red mustache on his beak in lieu of the fact that this parrot was from a Captain Morgan Rum ad campaign of some kind. My daughter went to bed with a sparkly Toucan Sam on her hand and a very cute little lady bug on her foot. She didn't want to wear her slippers to bed because she couldn't look down at her ladybug.

The rest of my autumn is going to be long, and the winter even longer. I could usually get an hour or so to clean the kitchen and get myself out of my pajamas during a morning show or movie, but with the potty standoff, Husband has decreed absolutely not a minute of TV until that little man of ours drops something into the potty. There has got to be someone we can pay to potty train him/them.I caught Iain licking up Romano cheese off or my desk chair. One of his favorite pastimes is to dump things in shakers out! I have lost 2 bottles of chili powder, 1 huge bottle of garlic powder, but never has he dumped cheese out so that he could lick it up. This was after a night of him refusing to eat the meal we had, so he helped himself into the refrigerator and took the cheese shaker out of the door to have his own, personalized dinner.

Professional Football

For a girl, I guess I like football. I am not a die hard anybody fan. I don't own any jerseys of any players, I have never worn a face tattoo or painted my body in team colors. I enjoy the game for the game's sake. I like to look at strategy, I enjoy the amazing passes, the crushing hits, and the surge of the fans during those intense moments on the gridiron. I have watched my younger brothers play six years of high school football, and the two years that they overlapped were great with two football games back to back on Friday nights. When the older one moved on to college football, our weekends were absolutely consumed with football: leaving work early to get the H.S. game, and then packing up to drive to Ames for college football. When I was at ISU I did have a season ticket my last two fall semesters, and before that I would try to get in free at half time.

This past weekend I learned, that my love for football does have its limits! I don't care for professional football. It doesn't trip my trigger. I can watch it with Husband on a lazy Sunday or Monday night, while I am knitting. I don't typically roll my eyes when Husband is terribly excited to turn on the Green Bay Packers, and I do get a good football fix when there are those amazing runs and exciting points during the game. OK let me just get to my list of things that bug me about attending a professional football game:

• The price for the ticket (even though we were taken to the Chiefs game as a smoozy effort by Husband's ad agency) is disgusting!! $90 for an average football game is just totally ridiculous.
• It is exciting to follow your school and showing that school spirit during athletics is what gives us all a well rounded education. There is no school, college, or university behind a professional football team.
• The fans...well...I just felt as though we were scraping the barrel! Now I realize that not everyone attending a college football game has attended college, and I DO REALIZE that I am being EXTREMELY ELITIST here...but the grammar, the smoking, the drinking, the fashion statements of these Chiefs fans...I was just terribly disappointed. I know that I am having a double standard here, but seeing a bunch of drunk students is not as disturbing to me as seeing a bunch of drunk old men. Yes, I have seen drunk men and drunk women at college football games as well, but I am just comparing my own percentages here. I did my fair share of drinking during football games while I was in college but there does come a time when it is is time to GROW UP and be a bit more respectable. I probably just sound like a stuffy mother already.
• I missed the marching band!! The blaring redneck music was no substitute for the wonderful fight songs that a good marching band can just belt out. As much as we all make fun of the marching band nerds....
• The half time show...was 100+ women from Jazzercise. Yeah. I was not impressed!!
• The cheerleaders? Umm I should rephrase and call them erotic dancing, scantily clad women. I don't typically get uptight about cleavage and the way other women are dressed. It is their business, plus Husband thinks I'm hot and I am just fine with his feelings. Since we were in row 13, these hussies were pretty hard to ignore. I was probably more distracted than Husband was, but the hair tossing, the pelvic thrusts...there was nothing cheering about it!! They each had three outfit changes, and they came out with less and less clothing each time. Well, at least they kept on their thigh high, white patent boots on. We wouldn't want anyone to see their calves, but by outfit #3 that was boy cut "underwear" most of the hair flipping, breast implanted females should have been more worried about the cellulite that was visible from row 13.
• In addition to the "cheerleaders" there was a "sexy" cowgirl that rode out on a real horsey before the game and after each touchdown. Thankfully we didn't see her very often, since the Chiefs only scored twice while we were there.
• Back to the alcohol, I like that there is no alcohol served inside of a college football game. There is something more "football" more "sports" like when walking through the concourse there aren't bars about every 5 feet. Margaritas here, beer there, there...and there, and hard liquor over there. How can people afford to even drink at these events? A nasty looking bottle of beer was $7.75.
• Concession stands are typically very expensive, and the professional arena is no exception. Arrowhead stadium was the only place I have ever seen popcorn and pop cost more than at a movie theater.Husband, with, beer. Not purchased by him, or at the game.
  

So here I am, thinking, how do these fans do it? How do they afford the ticket, the food, all of the paraphernalia including the jerseys, the tailgating gear, the parking fee or the stadium parking pass? do some of the fans actually drive farther than we did and then rent a hotel room the night before? I couldn't do it. I couldn't afford it!! What do these people do that they can afford to go to a professional game, buy all of the crap and do it 8-10 times a year! Or are there more games than that? I sincerely hope that these "fans" are still putting food on the table, shoes on their feet, and they had all better be able to afford health insurance! What kind of country can complain about universal health care and the state of the economy, when they will take a Saturday to spend at a professional sports event, going broke to line the pockets of a bunch of old men. Would they have they get the same amount of pleasure playing in a park with their buddies? or do they have to have all of the glitz, glamor and money in order to feel worthy?

The only name I recognized on the field was Eli Manning. That was kind of cool, watching a really good quarterback play, but...he didn't connect that well with his receivers. I don't know. I wasn't impressed! I guess I am a tough customer. I would rather sit on the grass, freezing my butt off at the Little Rose Bowl in West Branch, Iowa, watching the young Bears I have never met play the big rival of the West Liberty Comets for $6 instead of leaving Des Moines at 6:30 in the morning after a hellish night spent at my in-laws, risking my life in a vehicle with a bad driver at the wheel, to sit and watch a slow moving professional football game. #10= Eli Manning

The best part of the day was the 9:30am stop at L.C.'s BBQ in K.C. By far the very best ribs I have ever consumed. I truly enjoyed this Fred Flinstone tailgate.

I am ready for this Bret Farve to be done playing football. It seems as though he is ready also...only sometimes, but seriously! Over the weekend, I decided that I am not impressed by these "old" men playing football. I realize they are making serious bank, and they could care less about ruining their bodies and all of that. Those high school and college boys play their hearts out, for the love of the game. They don't need disgusting paychecks. They are faster, more intense and technically they should be paid when they are in college! The real task is going to class everyday, and then going to practice every day. Beating up your body and then trying to get your brain to perform on a chemistry test. The true talent is with the college boys.

The silver lining was spending the day with Husband, even though...you know...the hellish night at the in-laws didn't put me in the best frame of mind. Oh yeah, and the all day headache spawned by the hellish night at the in-laws in a nasty bed, spurned by the horrible and dangerous 85 miles per hour driving going down to K.C. and then coming back set me up for a complete meltdown once we hit our own driveway 12 hours later. It is true that I need to keep my mouth shut during football games, and I should not discuss coaching strategy or plays during the college bowl season so that my football knowledge can just be all silent and folded up in my head until the day comes when my little Iain will want to play football and his mother will scream her head off in the stands while Fiona flips around the grass cheering her brother on with ribbons in her ponytail and a skirt that covers her bottom.

60th post!

OK, so I have posted 60 times. wow. My main purpose with Planet Little Joseph is to somehow have a bit of a recorded dialogue for our life, and currently the blog is standing in the place of the baby books. There is so much going on all of the time!

I get an F for the wedding weekend, as far as recording photos of this momentous event. All of the little projects that I particularly did on my own, or contributed to, were up for a moment and gone in another moment. I am so glad that I have plans to use the "calligraphy" later on, because at one point during the evening I felt this was an extremely insignificant detail that required many man hours at my house. Oh well! It was an experience for sure! But again, I did not take one photo! It was all that I could do to carry a diaper bag and have a child screaming, or in my arms all while wanting to wear my very fun and dangerous, shiny, and strappy stilettos at the reception. I am actually debating about selling them in our garage sale on Saturday. Do the words maternity dress and stiletto shoes even belong in the same sentence?

Of course it will be weeks before we even see and of the professional photos that were taken, and I do hope to catch glimpses of my handsome Husband, and darling babies all in their wedding finery. My little brother Zach did take a video of the wedding ceremony that still needs to be previewed, so there are the glimpses that we will see, and unfortunately the crying and uncooperative Joseph ring bearer and Joseph flower girl that will be encapsulated in video format for all eternity. When Fiona gets married, we can use her video as ammo that a flower girl should really be about 7 in order to walk the aisle, otherwise it is just torture for the mother of the flower girl and or ring bearer.

So they got married with a HITCH! It was an all day ordeal that was so exciting and greatly anticipated and we are all so relieved that it is over and done. As momentous as a wedding ceremony and wedding feast are in a person's life, there has got to be a way that the planning could be a bit less stressful. But there are always different circumstances and different angles and backgrounds that everyone is coming from. There is the merging of two foreign countries!

I missed the toast by my father in law, and according to my family, he referenced our wedding as well as me as his daughter in law. And there I...wasn't! I wasn't even in the room for the toast, but instead I was changing a dirty diaper on my little flower girl. I heard nothing. In fact, I entered the room as my FIL was passing the mic over to Husband so I missed it all. Husband gave a very funny, anecdotal recount of all of the crazy advice we received when we were getting married: When you argue, bake a cake and get in bed; always argue in the nude; a recipe for honeymoon salad-lettuce alone, no dressing. His next bit was a toast from the Elizabethan time period about a newly married woman who asks her physician when the best time of day to have sex. He responds by saying the morning is good, but the night is more sweet. So the bride deduces that they will "do it each morn for health, and each night for pleasure." The crowd laughed quite hardily, but Husband could never end with just one thing poetic, he had to throw in, "And the last bit of advice is from BJs own alma mater, Iowa State's fight song: Hit it hard, every yard, for ISU." It was quite a toast.My parents displayed their ballroom dancing prowess during the dinner hour. The dinner conversation on my half of the table was trying to keep Fiona fed the little bumble bee cupcakes since she was famished and waiting for dinner, and trying to figure out how each song could be danced. Overall, I missed the first toast, I missed the cake cutting, I didn't even see the wedding cake, and again, I have no photos to prove the wedding even happened. Even though, I wouldn't trade my babies for anything, it is very difficult to take them to a completely adult event. And since they were two out of six children at the wedding, they stuck out like a sore thumb!

After my darling babies were whisked away by Nanu and Mana (the new name for Grandma, coined by Iain himself) Jake and I spent the rest of the evening, field compliments about our current egg sitting, dancing a few dances, and sitting out in the bar watching the Iowa Hawks come back for a victory against Penn State. The whole day and evening made Husband very happy, but the wedding was an even bigger blur than my own wedding blur. I pray that I am not sinking in to my own "dark years" as my mother refers to the 5-7 year period of time from when #3 was born until #4 was 5 years old. Hopefully the blog will help.

Monday Dialogue

Iain and I have started having these adorable little conversations! I love them! Fiona is stepping right up and making even more and more sense as well. No longer do I feel that I am floating around in the grunting and screaming world, but rather, these vibrant minds are connecting what they observe in their world, mix in some of their baby perceptions, and ta da! We have some language! Jake and I are still acting interpreters, and I do feel that my grade has risen from an F in toddler translation up to a B-. If my brother was a reader of PLJ he would be wondering what page of Bunyan we have conquered...where did I put that?

After Iain realized there was a van sitting in our driveway, he became very curious and wanted to know what it was for.
Iain: Mama? A truck.
Mama: Yes, that is a van.
Iain: Ohhhh...a van! A go?
Mama: No, we aren't going to go in it. The van is for Poppa and Uncle BJ to take to the football game.
Iain: A game?
Mama: Yes.
Iain: A...hot dog? A corn?
Mama: Yeah, they might eat hot dogs and popcorn.
Iain: A...Sabie?
Mama: Aunt Sable is staying at her house to watch her dogs, so she isn't going.

Iain: Daddy! A doing?
Jake cleaning out the fish tank
Iain: Daddy! A DOING???
Jake: I'm giving the fish tank a bath.
Iain: Whoa! Fish a bath! A funny!!

Iain: Mama a shirt! *crying*
Mama: I know, that shirt was wet, so we need to get you a new one.
Iain: A FROG shirt!!!!
Mama: I've got the frog shirt.
Iain: Yeah! Libbit! Libbit!

Both Iain and Fiona have decided that they like knowing where everyone is and what their state of being is. Both are very eager to tell us that the other one is sleeping, or AWAKE if the case may be. Iain will tell us that Fiona wants out of a place, if he wants her to get out, even if she does not want to get out. He assures us that it is Fiona who really wants "out." They have both learned how to communicate with the dogs. Iain calls "Bruda" and "Cezar" and proceeds to scream "NO" and "BAD" when the dogs are interfering with something in child's play or stealing food from the babes.With our new swing set and the obsession with swinging, Auntie Doodie taught Iain some new swing vocabulary. It isn't about being "high" anymore, "unnerdogs" are all of the rage now. Fiona's latest obsession is diamonds. How on earth can an 18 month old already say "dImon" and then ask to wear Mama's diamond, unless there is something in the genetic code of that little girl! She is slowly learning her gem identification, and it will be limited, since compared to the world of fine jewelry, I have a limited selection of precious gems. We will have to send both babes off to the "jewelry" store to "work" with Poppa at some point and he can show them all of the pretties. When we pick Jake up from work at night, and the babes see the lights go off, Iain quickly says, "Night night a jewelry" and then he tells me quickly, "Mama, a jewelry a sleeping."With BJ and Sabie's wedding coming up this weekend, we had a little dress rehearsal to make sure the ensembles fit appropriately. We got on the dress and the socks and the perfect little shoes, along with the little tuxedo and saddle shoes. The two of them were quite a site to behold! I wanted to snap some photos, but they wouldn't hold still together. I asked them to hold hands, and then they took off walking together into the driveway. They were having a blast in their fancy duds, and Fiona had a full blown fit when it was time to take of her dress. She loves the "frow frow" flower on the sash, and I am a bit afraid that she will rip it off at some point. Hopefully we can have other distractions for her the day that she walks the aisle. We still need to procure a little bow tie for our little man.

Unleash the Photos!

Husband finally found the cord for the camera! *sigh* "Were you storing the camera cord in the desk drawer?" Well, either I was storing it there, or one of my little helpers stashed it there.Photos from the Iowa State Fair 2009

The big news around our house is the POTTY! I feel so degreatatated confessing that Husband and I would be excited about potty talk with the babes, but they are BOTH going for it, simultaneously! Fiona just asked to go one day, most likely after listening to us begging Iain to go and sit on the potty. It was terribly exciting to spend some of my birthday money on some new underwear that is gender specific for each of them. The selection for Fiona was annoying. My choices were Minnie Mouse, Tinkerbell and fairies, or Dora the Explorer. Hmmm. She knows none of these characters, plus the smallest size was 2T and my little babe is still in 18mo. clothes. The choices for Iain were endless! Bob the Builder, Thomas the Train, Lightning McQueen from Cars, but I settled on the Pixar pack which got us a two Lightning undies and then a Nemo, a Wall-e, the Incredibles and two Buzz Lightyear.

The Cliffy Swing Set-uncle Josh sweating like a butcher! It became even darker that night...

I was so excited to get home and present each one of them with their new potty incentive of character underwear that is so thin and streamlined, compared to the bulky cloth diapers we have been in since the beginning of the summer. Fiona got hers first and she oooed, and then Iain got his and immediately recognized "Lightning!" Fiona dropper her package, and went to Iain and also exclaimed, "Lightning!" I was a bit sad that Fiona did not recognize any of the fairies on her underwear, but why on earth should she?! We don't watch girlie cartoons or films around here. I realize I am starting to sound like an equal rights, feminist Mama here, but I have become much more sensitive to the fact that by default, Fiona is primarily exposed to cars, trucks, trains, oh and Chitty-Chitty-Bang-Bang.No shirts today? Someone gets an idea...and the other one follow suit.

She gets just as excited when we hear the garbage truck or a firetruck go by and stops everything to say, "Truck! Truck!" She plays cars with Iain as her baby dolls lie in a heap, longing for holding and pretend nourishment. Instead, their sticky polyester outfits are collecting dust and dog hair. Even at a trip to the library, she bypassed the girlie films I pointed out to her and was oogling over Thomas the Train with Iain and the all male Veggie Tales (oooo...I remember seeing another mom blogger complaining about the lack of female vegetables many months ago, and I thought, "You have way too much time on your hands to worry about the gender of the VeggieTales!")This has to be a case of who comes out first, sets the stage. I remember my brothers complaining about the "puffy dresses" films that my sister and I would always rent from the library, and how totally bored they claimed to be. They took tap lessons and wore leotards-only one year!-under their M. C. Hammer pants, and they know most of the words if not all of them to all of the musical show tunes that I know by heart. Both of them played soccer and football and are extremely macho, so my hopes of Fiona claiming her femininity is not lost. She loves wearing dresses, and she has recently become obsessed with her shoes. Since we are past the pulling on Mama's jewelry, I have been wearing more necklaces, and she notices my jewelry as well, saying "neck" when she wants to wear my necklace. The bracelet we got her when she was born, to match Mama's, not fits her and she is pretty taken in with it, until she rips it off. Phew! She will be fiiiiiiiine.8th annual theatre weekend to Spring Green/Dodgeville

During the last week, the babes have started changing their names for us. It used to be Mama and Poppa for us, and with Iain's latest Caillou craze, he now calls Jake "Daddy." I finally figured it out after he was watching and I heard Caillou talking about his Daddy. Fiona has switched from calling me Mama to just barking, "MOM!" I can handle the switches since they are coming up with their own names for us. As long as they never call me "Ma" I will be just fine. I hate hearing "Ma!" especially in older kids and even worse with adults calling their mother "Ma." To get our attention in the most ignored situations, Iain especially, will call Jake or me "Honey!" Fiona copies him and starts saying "Honey!" as well. We have figured out that Honey is used when they really need us and they know that we both answer to Honey when Jake calls me Honey or I call him Honey. We start cracking up when we hear our little 2 year old yelling "HONEY!" in the backyard and we just know that all of our nosy neighbors can hear our dialogue.