Prepositions Matter

Since our flooring project is still in progress, tonight we ate at a Mexican place--quesadillas for the boys--when Auden was making an especially boisterous request for more soda. Our convo went like this:
"You have to eat that piece of your quesadilla before you can have another sip."
Auden takes one bite and reaches for the soda.
"No, this whole piece has to be eaten. You have to put it in your belly."
You know what he does...He lifts up his shirt, places the piece of the quesadilla on his belly, smiles, and makes for the soda again.
We are laughing too hard to keep the soda away from him.

Not yet two, going on...

Auden has always been a funny kid. When Logan is whining or crying about something, Auden mocks him by puckering up his face and making this funny high-pitched "wha, wha." He likes to rub anything gooey in his hair. He'll have blank paper in front of him but prefers to draw all over himself. Funny stuff.

But these days, he's showing some spunk.

Tonight we had pizza because we couldn't use our kitchen since Eric is tiling the floor. So, of course I want a Pepsi with my pizza, but I gave the kids water because I don't want them all hopped up on caffeine and I had just caught them sneaking Swedish Fish that were meant for Auden's birthday party. By the time I had finished dinner, I still hadn't drunk all of my soda, and I was picking up, shuttling things into the kitchen, when I came back to the table to see Auden stretched over the table, craning his neck to sip my soda after I had told him he couldn't have it. So, I gave him a time out. As I'm sitting him in the corner, he reaches up to hug me: "I wuv you, momma. I wuv you, momma." I managed to keep a straight face, but the laugh was still breaking in my voice.

Eric was putting him to bed tonight, and he walked out of his room four or five times. Annoyed, Eric was pretty stern with him. Auden's face crumpled; he started to cry. Then he whimpered "Fine!" and went to bed.

Morning!

Auden has officially moved up in the world of bed ownership. We've converted his crib into a toddler bed. It's amazing we've held on to the pieces all this time, since we never used the convertible aspect of the crib with Logan. He went directly to a twin bed to make way for baby brother. We were inspired to convert (the crib, that is) last week after Auden opened his own door, walked out, and said, "Morning!"

I'm sure he could have stayed in the crib for a while longer, but having just talked to my neighbor, whose granddaughter had recently broken her arm after attempting to crawl out of her crib and is now sporting a nifty elbow-to-shoulder cast, I was a little paranoid. But converting the bed just wasn't enough furniture change--I also shuffled around the arrangement of his dresser and chair, since he was using the chair to climb up on his dresser, where I used to store the chest balm and petroleum jelly, which he has been known to smear liberally into his hair. I feel like my life revolves around concocting plans to circumvent injuries or yuckiness. By the way, if you ever need to remove petroleum jelly from anyone's hair, don't wash the hair, but rub baking soda into it, then brush it out. Thanks, Internet, for that pearl of wisdom.

It's been a strange and sweltering summer...Auden's become a parrot, repeating everything back to you...Yes, even the things you don't want him to repeat. I kept hearing "God darn it!" repeated back to me several times this morning on the way to taking Logan to preschool. I'm really thankful that's all that came out of my mouth after the morning we had.

Oh yeah, so Logan's just started preschool. How crazy is that?! And he's discussing the news with us. In terms of difficult "milestone conversations," I think talking to him about the birds and the bees will pale in comparison with talking to him about a mass shooting. "But why did he do it?" "Well, that's really what we'd all like to understand and probably never will." I was worried about upsetting him with the news of what happened in Colorado--actually, he summarized the news story we had heard earlier that evening while listening to NPR in the car. But once he knew he wasn't going to get a good answer about why this guy did this horrible thing, he just kind of dropped it. I guess I wish that were my reaction, too.

A Trip to Remember

Well, summer is nearly to that point where it goes into hyper-speed. We've just returned from our family vacation, and I think it's time for another rambling post to record all of those wonderful and (more frequently) humiliating moments.

Eric and I took a weekend trip to New York at the beginning of the month and had a great time. We saw Philip Seymour Hoffman play Willy Loman in Death of a Salesman--he was fantastic, as was the rest of the cast. And we had a long night out at the W hotel with Alex, Eric's friend from college.

When we got back we had some time to work in our garden, play with the neighborhood kids, and pack up for our next trip, the Hill family vacation. We spent a couple nights with my family on the way to Gatlinburg, where we stayed in a huge three-story vacation house in the Smoky Mountains. Some highlights were the hikes we went on. We saw three different waterfalls; Auden splashed around naked in a freezing stream; we saw tons of salamanders, even three different varieties of them. Logan rode his first go-cart solo in Pigeon Forge. He was a surprisingly cautious driver, even when the ride attendant tried to mix things up by racing him. Auden's two-year molars are coming in, so he's been rather moody and hasn't slept well; fortunately, we had a king-size bed where all four of us slept for a couple of nights.

It was fun to see that our kids and Jackie's Isabel are starting to play together really well. When we asked Logan what his favorite part of the trip was, he said, "Playing with Isabel."

We just hadn't had enough vacation yet, though, so we saddled up and headed to Cavern City, KY, to see Mammoth Caves. Boy, was that a mammoth surprise. We went on a two-hour evening tour. It was an easy walk, but Auden was in a full-on screech mode and Logan was whining about being tired and his belly hurting. Eric and I carried the boys the whole way, and we held our breaths and tried to appease screeching Auden with suckers when the tour guide, who really liked to hear himself talk, gave his spiel about the history of the caverns. We hung back at the back of the group with the back-up tour guide and asked if we could turn around. Things really weren't working out. Besides, the head tour guide had said Giant's coffin was the last place we could turn back. "No," said the back-up guide. "We're a little more than halfway through. Sorry." Great.

On we went, trudging our children along down a dark, damp stairway when Logan starts to complain that he thinks he feels sick. Great. We're in a cave, for chrissake. But at the foot of the staircase were rows of benches, a more formal location for the chatty tour guide to do his thing. Everyone was seated, waiting for him to begin, and here's Logan, feeling sick. Back-up tour guide raced with Eric to a trash can, which was tantalizingly close, just past the stage area. But, alas, they were too late. With about 20 feet to go, Logan threw up right in front of our seated tour group. There's nothing like hearing your kid's vomit splatter on a cave floor, then an awkward silence, then hearing chatty tour guide at a complete loss for words finally say, "Well, that was...Uh, let's just move along to the next site."

I've been toying around with six-word memoirs lately. I have a new one to add to my collection: My kid befouled a national park.

Logan felt great after the whole getting sick in fantastic fashion, and we made it out of there alive. The next day we stayed in a really nice cabin in Shawnee National Park in Southern Illinois. We swam in the lake there and went for a nice hike, again lugging both children along. Saw a turtle and two lizards skittering around. We were supposed to stay a second night and then stop back at my folks' but what with Logan's belly still in an uproar and Auden and us tired and cranky, we decided to head for home a little early.

The boys were great on the car ride back. They even stayed awake to see their kitties and could hardly settle down for sleep. Our garden exploded and the weeds had started to claim more territory, just as they do when we leave for vacation every year. What with it being so dry, though, we were thankful our neighbors had watered for us so that we didn't come back to crispy plants. In fact, I pulled a quarter of a gallon bag's worth of sugar snap peas (our first harvest of those this year--the rabbits have always eaten them to the ground every year before) and a couple meals worth of green beans, as well as some broccoli. Logan even ate the peas, and Auden was eating them as fast as I could pick them. "Nummy Nummy!" he said, shaking his head with a smile. I love summer.

Talkin' Auden

Auden is in that fun parroting stage, where he can repeat back just about anything you throw at him. It's fun, but sometimes causes some confusion because when you ask him a question, he spits back a version of what you asked him, which is not very helpful at all in ascertaining what he wants. He's excellent at saying "sorry," but then again he has had lots of practice with that word. Being a rough kid, he tends to jump on your gut when you're relaxing in a reclined position or he smashed his head into your face when he's trying to snuggle up. Any time you say "Ow!" he immediately follows up your exclamation of pain with "dahwy," Audenese for "sorry."

He's also taken over Logan's old trike and pushes it along with ease. He even pushed the pedals a bit by himself yesterday. It's amazing how fast he's growing.

Zombie Island

For some reason, the flags were flying again at a local park today. Memorial Day was the last time we saw them, and with that came the discussion about remembering soldiers who died serving our country, describing what happens in war and explaining it's a terrible thing. So of course Logan now associates the flag only with soldiers dying. "Well, yes, we fly the flags to honor soldiers who died, but the flag also stands for our country and the good things our country represents, like being free to do and say what we want without getting in trouble for it...usually."
The conversation then spiraled to where we live--our city, then our state, then our country, then the world, and I asked him, "Do you remember any other countries or continents in our world?"
He replied, "I know Zombie Island."

Ahhh, summer break is tantalizingly close...Today the boys and our neighbor's little girl spent some time playing in the sprinkler. What a blissfully simple time...the squealing, the laughter...

After they dried off, we helped daddy in the garden. Weeding, setting up our irrigation hoses. The boys played in the sandbox only moments until Auden launched a few handfuls of sand into big brother's face. So, he was relegated to the yard. Of course, he wandered into the garden to sit between one of the rows of plants. The next time I looked up to see what he was into, I saw he was eating clods of dirt just as happily as though they were chocolate cookies. Now I have to look up the likelihood of his contracting a tapeworm or something of that ilk.