Golly, What a Day

Thursday, April 2nd started out as any normal day, that is until Thing 1 didn't ask me to tie his princess skirt with his blankies (affectionately named yellow and blue) the minute we finished breakfast. In fact, he didn't ask me to tie his princess skirt at all that day. Rather, during his morning dose of cartoons, he became rather intrigued with the garb of the Backyardigan Cave People and wanted to spend the morning wearing an animal skin and a bone necklace, just like Uniqua. Perhaps 'twas a subconscious foreshadowing of events to happen later this day.Being the promoter of imagination that I am, I tied yellow as so, and found him an old string of beads to pose as his bone necklace. Feeling ever so manly, Thing 1 showed me his muscles.

Meanwhile, amidst all the cave person hallabuloo, Thing 2 was enjoying tummy time on her play mat...or so I thought..."Tadaah!"

Apparently, Thing 2 wanted to get in on all of the firsting action. She rolled from her tummy to her back! Trying to one-up her big bro, she didn't stop there. Reaching for her dangling toy, she actually grabbed it instead of her delightful little toes by mistake.
Still, the toes remain a very definitive step in the grabbing process, mind you.Once she got the hang of this, though, Thing 2 seemed content to just keep on hangin' on...and on...and on...She'll never let go, Jack. Doesn't she look so pleased with her accomplishment?
We are proud of you too, Princess P.

Later in the day we headed with friends for Things 1 and 2's first trip to the ZOO.

There, we had the ever so important argument on how to pronounce Elephant...(I'm not sure who gave in first, but I'm pretty sure they they agreed to disagree.)

...became entranced by Gorillas......so entranced, in fact, that we could not, for one second, peel our little eyes away from the beasts while banging our own gorilla-like chests for a photo-op.


We also got to sing to Mr. Crocodile...
Can't Catch Me!

Hold hands, and more hands...then fall down...and stay there.

We giggled on a camel saw... monkey bums????

and--Oh Look!A Big Horn!! That's why we come up here.

Thing 2 had a delightful first day at the zoo as well.She was particularly fascinated by the inside of her eyelids.

A day of firsts is definitely what we had, for it was also the first day we met our new landlords at 341 Parkside, as well as the first night Thing 2 decided it was also time to start waking up 3-5 times a night (hence the lag in our blogging). I believe we have since nipped that last first in the bud. For all of our sakes, let's hope.

Marketing 101

I walk by this house everyday, and apparently they are selling. I guess that since the market is so hot in Buffalo right now you don't need to get much exposure to sell your home. Just throw something together in Print Shop, tape it to the window, and wait next to the phone....hmmmm.


They must not have received many calls cause a few days later I found this...
I'm still trying to figure out what this sign means. Maybe they need a second mortgage or something...I can't seem to think of any other reasons why someone would buy something they already owned.

The worst part is that the sign appears to be professionally made. Oh well. At least it's in a nice area. Here is the neighbor's house:

And across the street:
And a few houses down to the corner:
I'm telling you...we live in the struggle. At least it's adding to our street-cred.

And I forgot to post this after we got back from our nice, warm, spring break trip to Utah.
I was so mad at the snow. I decided to protest by throwing it away! Not very efficient, I know, but at least I got my frustration out. It's just too bad that it melted before the garbage man came!

Katchup

We couldn't put it off any longer. Elder has officially become a New Yorker. Even though th plate looks much better than the orange Utah plate, I feel like such a sellout! Sorry, Elder.

Here are a couple pics of thing 2. She has decided that she no longer likes to sleep through the night (I knew it was too good to be true) and has been keeping us up a lot lately. This is partly to blame for the lack of posting. She is still such a sweetie though. Even though she is so extremely tired she smiles every time we make eye contact with her. She is a happy baby. I use to tell people that I didn't know if I'd ever be able to love another child as much as I loved Max, but thankfully there is an answer for that! The sweet child you fall in love with becomes a crazy person at precisely the same time you have another sweet child. I remember being so anxious for Max to grow up and do something besides nothing! That's probably why it took him a little longer than normal to start walking! This time around I am enjoying the immobile stage much much more. And for just that reason, Thing 2 will probably start walking next month!








Here are a few pics of Thing 1. The weather has been pretty nice, so it's been great to come out of our cave and see the sun!


We watched the movie August Rush the other night and thought it was great. It is so nice to watch movies that make you feel good when you're done watching them rather than "It was good, BUT." I thought the music was really interesting and the story was pretty decent too. I must admit that I am easily amused, but I guess if I were a harsh critic I'd say the story line seemed long in some places and extremely rushed and underdeveloped in other places. But it still had me involved, entertained and feeling good through most of the show. Look to the bottom of our playlist for August's Rhapsody and it will give you a sample of some of the great music in the show. If anyone knows of any other good movies like this, please recommend.

Oh, and 1 more thing. Abby is going to kill me for posting this, but if anyone is wondering where Max got his lazy eye...It wasn't me!

Let's Go Buffalo!!!

A little while back I posted this article written by Edward Glaeser who is an urban economist at Harvard. I guess a lot of people around here were a little upset with what he wrote, so he is coming to Buffalo this Friday from 2:00 until (I think) 4:00 to have a forum. I believe that he will be speaking about resurrecting Buffalo and will then have a Q&A that should be pretty good. I'm excited about this, but I realize that it doesn't have anything too do with teeth so many of my fellow soldiers might not want to go. However, if any of you would like to venture into the world of economics I would love to have some company. It costs 10 bucks (for students--30 otherwise) and I think that includes food. It should be pretty good. So if anyone wants to go, give me a call.

She Makes The Rockin World Go Round!

Perry's results from the official weigh in:

75th percentile in weight

75th percentile in head

and......................................

10th percentile in height!!!
She's officially a "Fat Bottomed Girl!"

Sorry that we've been slacking. More to come tomorrow...with pictures!

Might as Well Be a Four Letter Word

This evening as I was getting Max's shoes on to go spend our tax return (ya baby!) on a much needed double stroller, he asked me why we needed to get shoes on when we went bye bye. I told him that we put shoes on so we can protect our feet from germs and things that might hurt them (glass, nails, etc) that are laying on the ground. He thought about that answer and then said, "Why? Why do we need to protect them from that stuff?" I told him that germs and cuts on our feet can make us very very sick and that's not good. He paused to think about this answer and then said,"Why?" My heart sank. OH NO, I thought, What if we've entered the never-ending "why" questions nonsense? What will I do? I don't remember exactly what I said, but apparently I sufficed his curiosity because that was the end of that conversation.
We went about the rest of the night without another "why question" cycle and I was beginning to think I was in the clear. Oh, but no...
As I put Max down for bed he asked me if he could have quiet shoes in bed with him to sleep (Quiet shoes are my shoes that he is allowed to wear because they don't make too much noise on our wood floors). I told him no. He asked me why. I told him that shoes aren't for bedtime. He asked me why. I told him because they have germies on the bottoms of them. He asked me why. I tensed a little and then said,"Because we walk around outside and on dirty floors with our shoes on and that's where the germies come from." He asked me why, but it was more like, "But whhhyyyy?"

Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!

After several more back and fourths, I defused the conversation. "I don't know, honey, you'll have to ask Heavenly Father because He knows everything."
"Oh," He said.
It worked! Yay!
"And Jesus?" he continued.
"Yup. And Jesus. Goodnight buddy."
"Goodnight Mommy," as I shut the door.

The Man Upstairs must be urging more patience upon me...or Max just really really wants to know about germies. If that is the case he is going to have to ask Gramma Mesha as she is the one who made up such words as coldy, all-gonny, and germies. It just leaves me asking with pleading eyes heavenward, "WHY?"