A Baby becomes a toddler...2006
Well, back to my time-line driven (or not so driven, sometimes) blog. Before I got sidetracked with being sick, and two of my kids being sick, I had taken you all through the beginning of 2006, with my hubby fresh out of the hospital and my Aunt Chris and cousin Tabatha having left, and Adrian returning home from her hard-partying New Year’s Eve weekend.
So 2006 got underway, and even after the holidays, and a round of hospitalization, and relatives in the house, things just seem to stay hopping busy in our family. January alone contains 5 family birthdays: my mom, my dad, Adrian, me and Aunt Nell. February has Valentines Day (Alex’s very first chocolate, and a coloring book about dump trucks), as well as Alex’s very first steps, taken at my mother’s house on Valentine’s Day; March brought the birthdays of my step-son and his wife, my boss, Tabatha, and two dear friends, as well as remembering Angelia’s birthday again. April brought not only warmer weather, but also the celebration of my sister-in-law’s birthday, and May is just jammed with Mother’s Day, Pete’s birthday, and our wedding anniversary on Memorial Day weekend. (I got a kitten for Mother’s Day that year, a stub-tailed, covered in soot, totally chilled out 10 week old kitten, named Lucky Luciano, or Luck-Luck for short). We celebrated our anniversary, not by taking in a movie, or a romantic dinner for two, or even chocolates and champagne, but with a wonderful trip to Cedar Key with our little boy! Alex went into the ocean for the very first time! And he loved it! Now, for those who know, the beach at Cedar Key is not much of an ocean, but it is the Gulf of Mexico, and that was where my baby took his very first dip! We played at the playground, built sandcastles, ate the picnic lunch we packed, went back in the water for more fun, and tucked the baby in a stroller for a leisurely walk around the waterfront at Cedar Key! What a wonderful day we had. The only fly in the ointment being me, of course: I was so worried about my baby getting sunburned, I chased him everywhere he went squirting sunblock on him every chance I got. In my paranoia, however, I forgot to put any on myself, and went home with a pain whopping sunburn on my back and shoulders. It took days to get over it, and made it very difficult to sleep.
Having a true toddler in the house now made life begin to get very interesting: he could now get on and off of beds and couches, turn door knobs, reach the cordless phone and push buttons. That resulted in some interesting outgoing answering machine messages several times that year. Alex would reach up and push RECORD NOW and there we’d be, one big happy family: talking, chatting, laughing (ah, who am I kidding, this is me we’re talking about: sobbing, shrieking, hollering) and not realizing that we were being recorded until the next time one of us called the other at the house and HEARD the sobbing, shrieking and hollering, instead of my usual, “Hi, you’ve reached...blah, blah, blah”).
Alex was hooked on Baby Einstein by now. Loved it...good thing, because we bought all the DVDs. The only thing he did not like about Baby Einstein, however, was one scene in the animals movie of the sea otters, rolling around and squirming. He hated that scene, hated it with a passion. The other scene he hated was the lawn mower cutting the grass scene in one of the movies. I think it was the noise, not so much the scene he hated. The sound of the lawnmower really made him scream!
He also developed an odd attachment to mommy cleaning the house. He loved to help me load the washer and dryer. He loved the feather duster and even took it outside on several occasions to help me by “dusting” the dirt in the back yard. His oddest house cleaning fetish, however, had to be the toilet bowl cleaner. I use those Clorox scrubbing wand cleaners, you know, you attach a scrubby pad to the end of the wand, use them once to clean the bowl, and then throw them away. Well, he loved that toilet bowl cleaning wand. One Saturday morning, I was cleaning the house before leaving to run errands and he grabbed that cleaner and would NOT, for dear life or bribery or anything, let it go. Daddy was gone on his own errands, and I had to get to the bank before it closed. I begged, pleaded, threatened, and that child went into a screaming, hiccupping, sobbing breakdown when I tried to pry that toilet wand from his hands. Time was rushing past, so.....it was off to the bank we went. Alex held it with him, high above his head, all the way to the bank, and then, again, another freak fit when I tried to get him to leave it in the car while we went inside the bank. It was no use. At least, I will say, that the scrubby part, the nasty, dirty toilet part, had been previously discarded. But that boy insisted on carrying that wand part inside the bank with him. Me carrying him, him carrying his wand, high above his head, and using it to point things out every now and again, like some kind of crazy Olympic torch runner. What a sight!
So, we proceeded into summer with our little family intact and enjoying every minute of the craziness. Pete and I have always loved summer and all summertime activities. I was enjoying summer of 2006 a lot better, too, since I had worked by butt off to lose about 30 pounds during the winter and spring. So we were ready to charge, full steam ahead into come-what-may!
Stay tuned!
So 2006 got underway, and even after the holidays, and a round of hospitalization, and relatives in the house, things just seem to stay hopping busy in our family. January alone contains 5 family birthdays: my mom, my dad, Adrian, me and Aunt Nell. February has Valentines Day (Alex’s very first chocolate, and a coloring book about dump trucks), as well as Alex’s very first steps, taken at my mother’s house on Valentine’s Day; March brought the birthdays of my step-son and his wife, my boss, Tabatha, and two dear friends, as well as remembering Angelia’s birthday again. April brought not only warmer weather, but also the celebration of my sister-in-law’s birthday, and May is just jammed with Mother’s Day, Pete’s birthday, and our wedding anniversary on Memorial Day weekend. (I got a kitten for Mother’s Day that year, a stub-tailed, covered in soot, totally chilled out 10 week old kitten, named Lucky Luciano, or Luck-Luck for short). We celebrated our anniversary, not by taking in a movie, or a romantic dinner for two, or even chocolates and champagne, but with a wonderful trip to Cedar Key with our little boy! Alex went into the ocean for the very first time! And he loved it! Now, for those who know, the beach at Cedar Key is not much of an ocean, but it is the Gulf of Mexico, and that was where my baby took his very first dip! We played at the playground, built sandcastles, ate the picnic lunch we packed, went back in the water for more fun, and tucked the baby in a stroller for a leisurely walk around the waterfront at Cedar Key! What a wonderful day we had. The only fly in the ointment being me, of course: I was so worried about my baby getting sunburned, I chased him everywhere he went squirting sunblock on him every chance I got. In my paranoia, however, I forgot to put any on myself, and went home with a pain whopping sunburn on my back and shoulders. It took days to get over it, and made it very difficult to sleep.
Having a true toddler in the house now made life begin to get very interesting: he could now get on and off of beds and couches, turn door knobs, reach the cordless phone and push buttons. That resulted in some interesting outgoing answering machine messages several times that year. Alex would reach up and push RECORD NOW and there we’d be, one big happy family: talking, chatting, laughing (ah, who am I kidding, this is me we’re talking about: sobbing, shrieking, hollering) and not realizing that we were being recorded until the next time one of us called the other at the house and HEARD the sobbing, shrieking and hollering, instead of my usual, “Hi, you’ve reached...blah, blah, blah”).
Alex was hooked on Baby Einstein by now. Loved it...good thing, because we bought all the DVDs. The only thing he did not like about Baby Einstein, however, was one scene in the animals movie of the sea otters, rolling around and squirming. He hated that scene, hated it with a passion. The other scene he hated was the lawn mower cutting the grass scene in one of the movies. I think it was the noise, not so much the scene he hated. The sound of the lawnmower really made him scream!
He also developed an odd attachment to mommy cleaning the house. He loved to help me load the washer and dryer. He loved the feather duster and even took it outside on several occasions to help me by “dusting” the dirt in the back yard. His oddest house cleaning fetish, however, had to be the toilet bowl cleaner. I use those Clorox scrubbing wand cleaners, you know, you attach a scrubby pad to the end of the wand, use them once to clean the bowl, and then throw them away. Well, he loved that toilet bowl cleaning wand. One Saturday morning, I was cleaning the house before leaving to run errands and he grabbed that cleaner and would NOT, for dear life or bribery or anything, let it go. Daddy was gone on his own errands, and I had to get to the bank before it closed. I begged, pleaded, threatened, and that child went into a screaming, hiccupping, sobbing breakdown when I tried to pry that toilet wand from his hands. Time was rushing past, so.....it was off to the bank we went. Alex held it with him, high above his head, all the way to the bank, and then, again, another freak fit when I tried to get him to leave it in the car while we went inside the bank. It was no use. At least, I will say, that the scrubby part, the nasty, dirty toilet part, had been previously discarded. But that boy insisted on carrying that wand part inside the bank with him. Me carrying him, him carrying his wand, high above his head, and using it to point things out every now and again, like some kind of crazy Olympic torch runner. What a sight!
So, we proceeded into summer with our little family intact and enjoying every minute of the craziness. Pete and I have always loved summer and all summertime activities. I was enjoying summer of 2006 a lot better, too, since I had worked by butt off to lose about 30 pounds during the winter and spring. So we were ready to charge, full steam ahead into come-what-may!
Stay tuned!
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