Spring Has Returned

Today was rainy and cool in the morning, then sunshiny and lovely this afternoon. Our apartment stayed cosy from all the heat it absorbed over the past week or so.

This morning the Boogie sat on my lap and said, "Sunday, Monday, Tuesday." I didn't even know she knew any of those. We tried to say the rest of the week but it sounded like "mumble-day, mumble-day, mumble-day." We'll work on that. We are also working on colors. She can identify orange and thinks every other color is green, though if we practice a few times she gets red correct. I'm trying to teach her the Spanish words for the colors as well, which means that I had to learn them. If you have a just-turned-two-year-old, stop reading right now and go get them to say "anaranjado." It's funny.

It's fascinating to me to hear the Boogie speaking in sentences. When did this happen? It's so cute. I love this age! She also recently started referring to herself in the third person and using her name in the possessive form.

Tonight the ladies from church met at Friendly's for dinner with one of us who is moving away soon. We had a nice time though it took forever for them to take our orders, and then we waited almost an hour to get our food. H-man came up to hang out with the Boogie and My Man, and then BIL1 came up with EK and DR. It must have been crazy around here! I'd better go help My Man with some clean-up ...

Boogie Birthday!

I never posted about the Boogie's birthday! I think she had a great day -- she woke up to balloons all over the apartment and a birthday banner on the wall. Every time she looked at it she would tell herself "happy birthday!" Throughout the day I gave her little gifts to open. That afternoon her Mom Mom and Pop Pop treated us to Chuck E. Cheese, then the rest of the family joined us afterward here at our place for cupcakes and ice cream. It was a really lovely day and I was very satisfied that she enjoyed it, which was, of course, my goal!

Opening gifts at Chuck E. Cheese

Not too sure about the toddler rides ...

... but loved the driving games.

She's a terrible driver.

See the slightly bewildered look on her face? That's pretty much how she looked the entire time we were there. :)

Family picture!

Singing happy birthday. She blew out the candles herself!

Small, toddler-sized cakes seemed appropriate for turning 2.

Yummy cu'cake!

More presents.

The H-man stayed for a while after everyone left. That sparkly confetti stuff was EVERYWHERE! This picture does not do it justice.

The last lonely cupcake.

Her birthday was Wednesday, and she spent Thursday through Saturday at 52. This is what happened on Sunday after church:

Exhaustion!

Boogie Hide'n'Seek

Hot Heat

It is here. This is April? What happened to spring? I mean, I luuuuuuv summertime. I like heat. But I like to gradually adjust to it. And I like my air conditioning to work. The interwebz says that it's 91 degrees outside. My thermostat maxes out at 90 ... and that's where the needle is hovering. I would have liked to discover faulty air conditioning when it was more like 80 degrees. At least the power hasn't gone out. That's what happened on the first hot day of last summer, when everyone in the borough decided it was time to turn on their window units (this is a town full of old buildings; few of them have central air.) At least we can still use our fan. And we can go to church tonight where it will be cooler. I hope.

Happy

I think that about sums it up.

Happy Birthday To Our Boogie

April 22, 2007

1 month old

2 months old

3 months old

4 months old

5 months old

6 months old

9 months old

April 22, 2008 -- 1st birthday

15 months old

18 months old

21 months old

2 years old!

"I'm TWO!"

And of course I don't want to forget the other special reason for celebrating this day:

Happy anniversary, my darling. Praise the Lord for three wonderful years; may we have at least ten times that many more!

In-Home Amusement Park

Why pay for rides when you have a Daddy?

Two Hundred ... Or Not

I wish I had something exciting to tell about in my two-hundredth post*, but I don't. Let's see what I can come up with:

• The Boogie peed in her potty again the other night. It was another accident, I think, but she was (amply) rewarded with a single M&M.
• It's raining again today. I'm glad it waited until the weekend was over.
• Rainy weather makes me sleepy.
• I just woke up from a 2-hour nap. Oops! I so rarely do that, though, that I'm not going to feel bad about it. The Boogie was asleep, too.
• I love naps.
• Tomorrow is supposed to be thundery and lightningy and showery but towards the end of the week it's supposed to be nice again ... just in time for our anniversary! Yay!
• I have been shopping at Aldi's and they have great prices on peppers.
• We are having Italian sausage with peppers for dinner tonight. This will be the fourth time in a week that we have eaten something with peppers in it.
• I need to resist good prices on peppers.

Happy Monday, everyone. :)

*Post edited to say that I can add. When I pulled up my Blogger dashboard it said I had 199 posts which meant that this one was 200. But when I published it and looked at the archives on my page, they only added up to 198. Sure enough, there were two posts still in draft. Oops! Stay tuned for a real two-hundredth post.

Weekend Catch Up

What a nice weekend we've had! Friday was bee-you-tee-ful weather and the Boogie and I went for a nice long walk. That evening was a double baby sprinkle at our church. (FYI, a sprinkle is thrown instead of a shower when it is not the first baby for the expectant mother. It's for "sprinkling" her with things like diapers, etc., since she most likely already has the basic necessities.) It was a fun time with lots of good food, some fun games prepared by moi, and a great devotional given by SIL1. The mamas got some cute clothes, lots of diapers, and some sweet handmade gifts.

Saturday was even more lovely and we spent it cleaning windows! Yay for us! I love all the windows in this apartment but there surely are a lot of them to clean. Of course we couldn't only clean the windows -- the screens, blinds, and curtains had to be washed as well. We hauled those over to 52 where My Man pressure-washed the first two and I made use of the washer and dryer for the latter. (Another FYI: don't pressure-wash your blinds when they are laying flat on the driveway. They do not get as clean as one would think. Next time we'll have to rig something up to keep them off the ground.) We put all the screens up on the top of the windows instead of the bottom so that we can open them all the way and not worry about Boogies falling out of them. It's a long way down, you know! I just about finished off my bottle of Windex and am interested in making my own glass cleaner out of household products. I think I've read about using vinegar. Anyone have a recipe they love?

Of course all of those wide-open windows let in lots and lots of light and all that light showed lots and lots of dust on my furniture ... so I had to dust. I had to. I didn't want to, but I had to. Everything feels nice and clean now. When we were all finished with everything we went for another nice long walk which ended at 52 where the Boogie got to swing and slide. Pasta salad with olives, cheese, red/green/yellow peppers, cucumber, and pepperoni was the perfect dinner to "top off" our day. :)

Almost time to head to church again! Good fellowship, singing, and preaching!

More Birthday Presents!

My Mom made these for the Boogie! Aren't they cute? Isn't the apron the sweetest thing?

Thank you so much, Lela! The Boogie loves them and so do I! It's so special to have something you made for her.

Life Is Hard When You're Two

Last night we finally got to go to church. I was in the nursery with the Boogie and LCs EK, HE, and DR. They played very nicely together -- the Boogie was delighted to see her cousins. At one point, however, EK had a toy phone that the Boogie wanted. She had a melt-down when I told her she had to wait her turn. In the midst of her weeping EK brought the phone over and told the Boogie, "Here ya go!" The Boogie wept, " 'ank you," held the phone up to her ear and sobbed into it, "Hello? Yeah, I cwyin'!" and the loud wailing continued. It made me laugh.

Speaking of crying, she has started this annoying, "Weh, weh, weh, weh," when she cries about not getting her way or being reprimanded. There are real tears, but instead of regular open-the-mouth-and-cry she is making this obnoxious noise. It is very irritating. How do you explain to the 2-year-old that she needs to cry the regular way?

For the record, I did not come up with the peanut butter-honey-banana-bacon concoction. We saw it on a show that was highlighting this sandwich shop in NYC. If my memory serves me correctly (which it does from time to time), Elvis liked those sandwiches. Anyway, after we saw the show My Man has wanted to try them. I just want to clarify that to allay any suspicions of crazy-hormone-induced diets. As far as I know I am not pregnant ... but anything is possible. For proof, look at these pictures.

The Boogie is proof that when God wants us to have a baby we will have a baby, no matter what our personal plans are!

Peanut Butter, Banana, Honey, And ...

Spread four slices of bread with peanut butter (white would probably taste best but all we had was whole-grain.) Slice banana onto two pieces of bread.

Drizzle honey over the banana.

Top with crispy bacon.

Place the other piece of bread on top of the bacon and butter the side facing up.

Place sandwich on a griddle, butter side down, and butter the side facing up.

Grill to your preferred level of toastiness.

Transfer to a plate, cut in half, and enjoy!

I've never had one of these sandwiches before so I was a little bit sceptical but ended up being pleasantly surprised. My Man wasn't too impressed but I thought it was a fun combo. I could taste each ingredient though nothing was overpowering. I do think it would be better with white bread. The whole-grain was one texture too many. And probably the next time I make it I won't grill it.

The Boogie finally seems to be back to normal after her bout with the squirmy germs. Even though she wasn't truly sick for very long, for several days she was just kind of "off." She hasn't had much of an appetite, either. Mealtimes have been a bit of a struggle. It was kind of hard to tell if she wasn't interested in eating or if she wasn't interested in eating what we wanted her to eat. Finally yesterday I observed that she had no trouble chowing down on food that she liked, so at dinner time we insisted that she eat what we gave her. She sat in her chair for over two hours, whining, crying, holding food in her mouth for long periods of time without chewing, etc. But she ate it! I think we're on the road back to normal Boogie dining habits.

Yesterday morning I opened the Boogie's closet to look for something and got distracted and forgot to close the door. A little bit later I went back in her room and noticed that the closet was open (completely forgetting that I had opened it myself; mommy brain, anyone?) She followed me into her room and I asked her, "Did you open this door?" I truly didn't think she could have since it's a regular door with a knob; I puzzled over it for a few moments until I realized, duh, I had opened it myself. I closed it and continued with what I was doing. A minute later I turned around as she was opening it! It probably wouldn't have even occurred to her to try if I hadn't asked her. Since I keep ALL of my cleaning supplies on the floor of our hall closet (because it's the only place she couldn't get into) I went right to Target and bought door knob covers. I'm thankful that I saw her opening the door the first time. It scares me to think that she could have gotten into my cleaning supplies without my knowing it.

It's a sunny day at last! Seems like we've had days of rain. This weekend is supposed to get up into the upper sixties and low seventies! Very, very nice. :)

A Boogie Way To Start Your Day

The Boogie came up to me just now and patted my leg. "Hello, honey!" I said. "Hello," she replied around the binky in her mouth, "maya he'p you?" (Binkies, which are normally restricted to bed/nap time, have been fair game at any and all times lately due to the germ infestation. It seems that binkies make little tummies feel better.)

Last night we ran some errands, mostly just to get out of the apartment. When we drove past McDonalds the Boogie called from the back seat, "I wanna french fry!" I can't even remember the last time I went through the McDonald's drive-thru for french fries. How in the world did she remember? Later as we were stopped at a traffic light by Dunkin' Donuts she looked out her window at the sign and said, "Hello, coffee." Again, can't remember the last time we went there, and we certainly didn't buy her any coffee!

No Escape

I should have known better than to think I would avoid those germs. They were surrounding me on all sides. I guess there really was no escape. They made their attack early Saturday morning and I spent most of the day on the couch. Thankfully I didn't experience too much of the gastrointestinal effects, if you know what I mean. I was mostly "just" queasy and kinda sorta felt like I'd been hit by a truck. By Sunday we all felt pretty well for the most part but decided to stay home from church anyway because it had been less than 24 hours since I was sick; also the Boogie was still producing some nasty diapers. There was no way we wanted to chance passing anything on to anyone else. We "attended" morning and evening services at Lehigh Valley Baptist Church via their live video stream which was pretty cool. Our preference is to actually attend church in person but that was an acceptable alternative for a sick Sunday at home! I felt so badly that My Man's three-day weekend was spoiled but I'm thankful that if we HAD to get sick it was then because he didn't have to go to work not feeling well, and he was around to help out when I wasn't well.

My Man started his 40-hour work week today. We stayed in bed until 5:45! On a weekday! Shocking! It was actually really nice. We were able to spend a little more time together in prayer and Bible reading before he left, and the sun was coming up for his commute. When he got to work he texted me that there were other cars on the road during his drive. :) I guess at 4:30 a.m. you just don't see that many other drivers.

I forgot to post these Boogie pics the other day. She was carrying around her baby doll and being all lovey, so I rigged up a little sling for her out of a scarf. She carried the doll around for a long time, patting it and cooing at it. When My Man came home she whispered to him, "Shhh, Daddy, baby s'eepin'."