Walking Juliet...

Juliet has started walking a lot better so I thought I'd include some video. She's about 15 1/2 months so she's right on the money.

Maxine lost her 2nd tooth. She woke me up at 6:00 a.m. and said, "My tooth fell out!" I was like, "Sweet, go back to bed." Grandma Campbell made her a cute little pillow with a pocket to hold her tooth for the tooth fairy. Maxine's excited to try it out tonight. She's been sleeping with the empty pillow for days because she was certain her tooth was going to fall out at any moment.

And this last one is by request. Maxine wanted a big picture of her mouth with the missing tooth. I didn't want to post a picture of bloody gums but she insisted. So if you'd prefer to stop reading and not continue down to the last picture, feel free.

You could still turn back...

Last chance...

HELP!!! I CAN'T FIND JACK!!

My kids rarely wander from the house. I leave doors open all the time because the kids stay in our yard. It was such a nice day that I had left the front and back door open and Jack had been in and out for most of the morning. After a while, Jack decided to play with Juliet in my closet. I picked up Juliet and took her into the other bathroom to fix her hair. I was gone for maybe 4 minutes. The phone rings and it's my neighbor down the street, telling me I don't need to pick up her girl from the Kindergarten bus. I say, "okay" and then start wondering where Jack is. I look in my closet and he's not there. I run around the house saying, "Jack. Where are you buddy??" Both my front and back doors are still open. I look upstairs, downstairs, front yard, back yard and side yards. I call back my friend down the street and ask, "You haven't seen Jack have you??" -"Nope."

I'm starting to get nervous. I run through the house and start yelling, "Jack!" "Jack I need you to talk to Mommy!!" I look in my closet again and move the dresses, thinking he might be hiding. No luck. I jump in the Tahoe with Juliet and we start combing the neighborhood. I drive up and down the streets, asking neighbors along the way to keep their eyes open. I drive along the dirt roads, thinking he might have gotten curious about the big construction vehicles over by the new Wal-Mart. I drive down to the end of the construction and turn around. I call Merril, starting to get frantic, "I can't find Jack, I don't even know where to look!! I checked all over the house and the neighborhood!" Merril replies, "I'm coming home!! I'll be there soon!"

Friends and neighbors are looking by now. I drive down to the fire station, thinking he might be down there. I drive to another neighborhood and look around. No luck. I'm thinking to myself, if Jack's not around the neighborhood, then someone's taking him away from me. Taking him away to hurt him. I drove back to the house. I am screaming in the house, "JACK!! TALK TO MOMMY BUDDY!!!" I look in the dryer...I look in the oven..."JACK!!"...I start opening every cupboard in my bathroom. I look in my closet again and frantically move dresses and then look in the opposite corner. Curled up by Merril's shoes with his brown blanket around his head is Jack, sleeping. His brown blanket made him blend in with the carpet and he was so sleepy that my screaming didn't even wake him up. Waves of relief pour over me. I pick him up and start sobbing. Jack, still sleepy, opens his eyes and wipes the tears off my face, confused at why I'm so upset. I'm relieved! So relieved. He was lost to me for 25 minutes. That's a very long time to be thinking about what someone else could be doing with my son. I just cry and hold him, grateful that my little boy was never really lost at all. (It makes me cry again to write it all down.)

But to lighten the mood, the rest of the day was great and we had popcorn for an afternoon snack. And after you eat all the popcorn, the bowl makes a great chair.

Seriously, I can never be mad at this face.

I must be nuts...

My other friend Ang has inspired me to get all my Christmas stuff done early this year. (Thank you Angie! I feel more relaxed about Christmas than ever before!) I've already purchased a lot of my kids' presents and this month is dedicated to my parents and Merril's parents. Today, the kids and I decided to get a jump on the draw out names for Merril's side. We purchased all the cousin's gifts. Maxine was so caught up in the Christmas spirit that she even wrote out her Christmas list. After we got home, Maxine wanted to wrap them. Now buying gifts early seems sane but wrapping gifts in September seems a little loony. However, she could not be dissuaded. So this evening, I have 3 gifts ready a little early. Only 92 days 1 hour and 48 minutes early but who's counting? The only problem I can forsee is where in the world do I put them until Christmas?

Where's my dictionary???

My friend Ang is putting together a little Halloween party and before I attend, I'm expected to read selected poems and short stories by Edgar Allan Poe. (To add to the creepy Halloween feeling.) I'm really excited because first of all, I prefer classical literature to any other type of reading and secondly, I haven't read anything with the intent of discussing it since my American Literature class in college. (Yikes, how long ago was that??!)

The best part about classical literature is the way people used to talk. I love the difficult, classic language because it makes the story richer. That being said, I started reading "The Masque of the Red Death" and started wondering, "Where's my dictionary??" I had no idea what sagacious, untenanted, or what mummer meant. But with a handful of definitions under my belt, I was seeing irony and foreshadowing and all sorts of fun literary stuff. Thanks Ang! I can't wait!!

I try to garden because the prophet said to plant a garden. For me, I believe it's a lesson in humility. But my surprise favorite from the garden this year have been carrots. My backyard is hot in the afternoon so many of my veggies struggle. Carrots, on the other hand, grow under ground and I believe this is the secret to their success. Kept away from the hot afternoon sun, they grow happily in a blanket of soil. Onions also do well in my garden by the same theory. So tonight for dinner, I having something that requires carrots and onions. (The menu is yet to be determined.)

Carrots have also been rather comical because carrots require really great soil. Mine is okay. The result can be some rather interesting-looking carrots. About a month ago, I pulled up a carrot that grew down about 2 inches and then performed a 90 degree angle and continuted to grow for about another 6 inches. Today's joke carrot reminds me of a pair of orange sweat pants on a rather pear-shaped woman.

The bright side of my garden is the affect it's had on my kids. They love to eat veggies they've pulled up from the garden. Jack loves to pick cherry tomatoes and eat them. So for all the failures my garden produces, I'll probably plant one next year too.

Peek a boo...

Juliet pulls the funniest faces. When she's really interested in something (usually sparkly or shiny), her eyes will widen, she'll raise her eyebrows and her mouth forms an "O" shape. The other day, she wanted to be up on Maxine's top bunk bed and was playing peek a boo with me.


Here she is hiding from me:

And here she is peeking out, about to say boo!
She cracks me up. To change the subject, Maxine said something funny the other day while she was preparing to brush her teeth. She had out the toothpaste and her brush and said, "I have to use a pea-size amount, I'm under 6 you know." You sure are babe.

Do you ever feel dumb??

By accident, I tend to dress the same as my kids. As an example, I'll get Juliet dressed in denim shorts and a red shirt. Later, still liking the pairing on a subconscious level, I'll choose demin shorts and a red shirt for myself as well. Then I walk out and pick up Juliet and realize we're wearing the exact same thing. I feel silly, but not silly enough to change.


So today, I watched Merril get dressed and walk around and thought, "He looks good today." So a half hour later, I picked out clothes and thought, "This looks good!" So I walked out and realized that I'd subconsciously picked out the exact same thing as Merril. I feel like a dork. :)

Nail polish...

In an attempt to get Maxine to stop biting her nails, we painted her fingernails with some glittery nail polish. I thought Juliet was about to jump out of her skin when she saw that glitter comes in a little bottle and can be applied to objects. So I ended up painting Juliet's big toes and she kept sputtering, "Ooooooo!" She seems to be quite the girl. And since everyone was doing it, Jack had to have his big toes painted as well.

And I have ants. Ick. Ick. Ick. I can't figure out where they're coming from because they walk along the carpet and then dive under it. So I pulled up the carpet and vacuumed as many crumbs and ants as I could. I also bought some ant bait and enjoyed watching them eat it, wriggle around and finally die. I despise ants. Cockroaches and mice will at least run away from me, recognizing that I am the superior species. Ants march on, oblivious. It's aggravating. I'm amazed it's taken 3 years for them to infiltrate my house, seeing as Jack spills so much Cinnamon Toast Crunch on the floor every morning I could feed armies of ants with the sugary mess. Wonderfully, lots of them are dead already.

Budding walker...

My kids have never been known for their early walking ability. That's been fine by me because they learn to walk eventually, around 15-17 months. Lately, Juliet likes to stand up in the middle of the room and the other day I actually got her to take a small step, and I mean very small. It'll take another month to accomplish what I'd consider walking. She's 14 1/2 months so she'll be right on the mark for my kids. My little sister has a son who's 10 months and he'll take off across the living room. That's fine because I've heard that late walkers are really smart. (Obviously, this rumor was conjured by a parent of late walkers.) Another statistic links late walking to cautious children. That one could be true. Whatever, I think they're just lazy. She can, however, say, "Hi Jack", "Here it is." and "Thank you." So for all the mothers out there who have kids running around by this age, here's Juliet taking her first of many steps. (You'll have to look close or you might miss it!) :)

My husband, the hero...

I apologize to anyone who's come over to my house and said, "Do you smell gas??" My range/oven is natural gas and that thing has leaked forever. It's a very small leak in the back and I usually would only notice on hot afternoons. So we've tried a number of things to get it fixed. When I first noticed, the house was still under warrenty and the home builder sent a gas plumber over to fix it. After a while, the gas leak returned. By then, the warrenty had lapsed and Merril thought he could fix it by replacing a hose. That didn't work either. So I called the gas company to help diagnose the problem, thinking it was a valve in the bottom of the oven. (By the way, if you have a gas leak, they send out a technician for free to help track it down! Groovy, eh??) The guy said it wasn't the valve but it was still leaking by the hose connections. So I go and buy another hose and Merril puts it on again. Still no luck. (Keep in mind these events take place over the course of a few years.) Merril, not to be dismayed by something he can't fix, tells me he's going to the hardware store to get another new hose and all new fittings. The end result?? I can finally walk around in my kitchen without a whiff of that rotten eggs/natural gas smell!! Merril said, "Well that only took 3 years." Thanks babe!!

Millions of peaches, peaches for me...

Earlier this week, I found a farm near my house selling fresh peaches from the orchard for $.75/lb. We had to go pick them but ended up getting them for .50/lb. because the gal was so nice. So I've spent a few days bottling peaches. To my surprise, Maxine was a big help. She'd bring me the peaches, I'd boil them and transfer them to the ice bath and then she'd slip the skins off. She probably cut my workload by 1/3. So here we are with the finished product: 2 quarts and 7 pints of beautiful, yummy peaches.
Maxine also wrote the date on the lids.

Yummmmmmmm...

A lot of my jars are mismatched because I bought them used in Enterprise. An old lady had died and her kids were cleaning out her basement. Shelves and shelves of bottled food, most of which had gone bad, lined her entire basement. I think I got them for a nickle a piece. The only bummer was emptying the bottles and cleaning them out. I was pregnant at the time and I gagged over the sink while I emptied bottle after bottle of rotten tomatoes. The upside was the price and some of the jars are really vintage with fun impressions on the side. I have a bunch of Atlas mason jars and others just say 'mason' with a big stars on the side.

And Juliet LOVES shoes. These are some of Maxine's old shoes and if they ever fall off, she has a fit.


And the other day, Merril uttered some of the sexiest words a man can whisper to his wife: "I got a babysitter for Friday at 7:00." Yeah! So we rode motorcycles into town for dinner. Then I wanted to just ride around for a while so we rode out to the resevoir and stopped on a side road. Since we were far from town, the stars were fantastic. We were looking up for a while, until my neck was tired so I decided to lay on the road. Merril got my motorcycle jacket and laid it under our heads. So we laid there and stargazed for probably a half hour. We saw 2 shooting stars and then rode home. It was a great little date. It reminded me of the days before we had loads of kids sleeping at home.

Ice cream truck and 26 miles of dirt road...

I didn't think I had anything to blog but started flipping through the pictures on my camera and found some cute ones I'd forgotten about.

First off, an ice cream truck came to our neighborhood. Since it's not a common occurance, we purchased a fudgesicle for Jack and a Creamsicle for Maxine. Both thought it was awesome that a guy drives around in a truck (Okay, it was a van) full of ice cream.

Jack is the best for candids, Maxine on the other hand will ALWAYS pose.

Jack was a huge mess towards the end.
Messy but happy.
Juliet loves the camera but often pulls a cheeser smile. If I wait for an extra second, she'll stop squinting but keep the smile. The result: The perfect face every time.


And while we were waiting the other day, I caught this one of Juliet. We were in the woods, waiting for Merril to finish hiking.

Then we needed to drive back into town. Merril thought he knew of a shortcut on a dirt road. So I blindly turned and followed his advice, thinking it would be faster. After about 15 minutes on the dirt road, I said, "You know what? When I passed the fork in the road the first time, the sign said this dirt road was 6 miles or 26 miles." Merril replies, "It can't be 26 miles. We'll be there soon." (1 hour and 30 minutes later, finally hitting pavement again.) "I think it was 26 miles." :) The drive wasn't a complete waste because there was some really cool and beautiful scenery. However, we were all hungry and tired of being jiggled around on a bumpy dirt road by the end.

Testing, testing...is this thing on?

Last week was SEP testing week at school. (And if someone knows what SEP stands for, I'd love to be enlightened.) Maxine was tested for her reading skills and reads well for her age. The 1st grade teacher at her school has a small class this year and invited the Kindergarteners who can read into her class for reading hour. This morning marks Maxine's first time going to the 1st grade reading hour and she was very excited. I was slightly worried about her being bored in Kindergarten but this should challenging. And she'll still be able to do all the fun things the Kindergarteners do. The best of both worlds. (This is Maxine getting off the bus on the first day of school but I never got a chance to post it before now.)
And can you believe it's September??? It was almost cold outside this morning. I went Christmas shopping over the weekend! Hee hee. I'm trying to get a head start. I couldn't believe all the Halloween stuff that was out already. I'm getting excited to wear a sweater again but that means that lake season is drawing to a close. *sigh*