3GS Baby!

Jon got one of the new iPhones last week and, because I've been a good girl and have been using the First Gen for the past two years, I decided to get one too. ;-)

One of the main reasons I decided to snatch one up was for the video camera (and improved digital camera) - since I almost always have my phone with me, but don't always carry around one of our two cameras. So, tonight on our front porch, hanging out in our brand new chairs before swim class, I decided to test out the video myself. It's a little long but I left most of it in so that you could hear Logan say a few words (altho, he's more interested in his juice than chatting with Mommy). *sigh*



You can see hear a couple of times the sound is super muffled. It took me a few minutes to realize I was covering up the mic when moving the camera around. But other than that, I really like the functionality! I can't wait to start using it more often! Logan also really enjoyed watching himself immediately on the playback, pointing to his sippy cup and informing me it was "juice" over and over again. ;-)

(Funny, the quality looks a lot better on my iMac than it does on YouTube. Still, not bad for a phone.)

Hot Summer Nights

I guess it's due to the ridiculously hot weather we're now dealing with, but I got in the mood to (finally) dress up our front porch. What better with, than a couple of cool festive red Adirondack chairs to relax in. I figure they'll come in handy on these hot summer nights where all we want to do is sip our iced tea while Logan runs around kicking balls on the front lawn. I know, I'm getting old. :)


We had another busy busy weekend. But, before I blog about that, I remembered a few pics I recently took with my iPhone that I had forgotten to post about. Specifically, a couple of Logan's cousin Luke (and Renee and Logan) while out to dinner on Father's Day. What cutie pies!


And then a few more from last Tuesday night's pizza outing with Robert (and Jenn) after a fun swim class. It hadn't dawned on Jenn nor I what fun a few old-school arcades would be, but we should have known. Lights! Buttons! Balls! Cars! Duh.


Saturday morning Logan and I both got much needed haircuts. We then spent the rest of the day relaxing - well, sort of. I got some chores done while Logan napped, and Jon went up to the city to get some work done. That's our definition of "relaxing" these days.

That afternoon, I dropped Logan off with my parents and then took the train up to the city to meet with Jon and several friends. Eric (one of Jon's best friends) is in town visiting so it was a good excuse for everyone to get together.

While we were out catching up with friends, Logan spent time exploring my parents' neighborhood. They went to my old elementary school (the school has since shut down but the playgrounds are still there) to play. The twisty adventurous slide was the best, I hear. After that, they took a walk to a nearby business complex which has some nice landscaped grounds full of fun things, like plants, bugs and creeks, to explore. Logan happened upon a flock of ducks that were VERY exciting. All in all, a really nice night out (and all the exploring tuckered our little guy out!)

This morning we picked him up and went over to the Jodoins' house to visit. We had grand plans of hopping in the pool, but no one had the energy to get farther than the living room couches. ;-) It's probably just as well, it hit about 100 degrees around noon time and the boys were already pretty tired. They played with cars and balls galore and I had the pleasure of reading Robert his Potty Time with Elmo book because he insisted "Auntie Bree" read it rather than his Mommy. Sorry Jenn! ;-) I figure it's good practice for when Logan starts potty training.

We quickly left as Logan started to have a meltdown. Thankfully, he fell asleep in the car ride home. I took the long way home to give him a few more minutes of snoozing time - but when transferring him from the car to the crib, he woke up. Usually, he'll snuggle up to his blankets and fall right back to sleep. Not this time. :( It turned into a battle of wills. He screamed and hollered and cried. I finally went in with a bottle and we rocked and he downed his bottle and rested his head on my chest. He was very sleepy, but didn't want to fall asleep. I finally put him back in his crib to lay down and he spent the next 30 minutes or so just playing in his crib, never falling asleep. *sigh* When Jon got home (he had been out running errands), he tried the same (rocking, holding, calming Logan down). Logan pointed to his crib saying "night night", Jon laid him down, and he proceeded to roll around playing in his crib again.

He finally won - never actually taking a nap (argh!) - so we packed everyone up to head to his friend Max's first birthday party. We had a great time visiting with friends (many old eBay coworkers of Jon's) but after a couple of hours we had to split since Logan was starting another one of his infamous meltdowns. By the time we got home, he had calmed down enough to eat a little bit of dinner before bedtime. The poor guy had a pretty crazy busy (and hot!) weekend, so I didn't blame him for demanding his crib the minute we were done changing him into his pj's for the night.

Vampire Fangs

Tonight, during one of Logan's rare frequent moods on the changing table, where he was screaming his head off as if I was actually hurting him (thank God I have such a good relationship with our neighbors because otherwise I'm sure they would wonder about how we're treating our poor child), I noticed his two upper vampire fangs canines totally poking through.

And I'm not kidding when I say that Logan was screaming bloody murder at me, so ANGRY that I had the gall to change his poopy diaper in the middle of an intense game we like to call "Dumping blocks and Legos all over the floor". Exhausted end-of-a-long-work-week mom that I am, all I could do was stare down at his open screaming mouth, unaffected by the piercing noise coming out of it, and instead say:

Wow! Would you look at that?! Your canines finally came in!!

AWESOME!


I'm all about seeing the silver lining in things these days.

The End of an Era

In sad sad shocking news, the King of Pop, Michael Jackson, died today. :( Personal and eccentric life choices aside, he was a wonderful entertainer, amazing dancer and a profoundly creative successful musician/singer. I was so enamored by Jackson when I was just a little girl that I often tried to perfect the "moon walk" and made my mom buy me a necklace with, you guessed it, a rhinestone-studded glove (unfortunately, I don't think I kept that little gem of my 80's past).

Even though we'll now never get to see him perform in person, Logan has already, and will continue to, groove and get down to MJ's funky music with me. We love his music, his style, his rhythms and beat - he most certainly will not be forgotten.

Shit.

Logan and I got home tonight to a house smelling of shit. I thought oh great, one of the cats didn't cover up their poop again! Ugh! But, as I turned the corner to let Lola out of her crate, I saw the splatter of shit across the floor of our den.

And then another splatter closer to the sliding glass door.

And then another.

OMFG it was awful.

I quickly let Odin out (he was looking sheepishly guilty!) and then had Lola go out the front door and around the house to the back (so she wouldn't run into the puddles and track it all over the house in 15 seconds flat). I then ran back inside just in time to catch Logan walking thru the piles of soupy shit.

His shoes were suctioning to the floor and he couldn't figure out why.

STOP!

I hoisted him up as fast as I could, stripped his shoes off, carried him to the master bathroom (where I had to PEE like nobody's business) and locked us in the room. My mind was racing. How the hell was I going to clean up this house while keeping a very fast and mobile toddler out of that shit?

The big jacuzzi tub in our bathroom was calling my name. And Logan was already throwing his toys in as if to say, I'm ready Mom! Let's take a bath!

So I stripped him down, filled the tub and then did the unthinkable.... I left my kid to play in the tub on his own while I raced around the house gathering cleaning supplies and assessing the damage.

To my horror, Logan's room was also hit. And because he has a rug in there, it was really bad. :( My guess is, Odin had his first diarrhea attack in Logan's room (where he likes to hang out and sleep during the day). When he realized it, he ran to the den to try and get outside but since we keep them locked in the house during the day, he couldn't get out. So, he had a few more accidents near the door. Just ONE MORE REASON to get that friggin' doggy door project DONE!! Argh. Don't even get me started.

I thought I could probably handle the cleanup on my own if it had just been the den, but with Logan's room also a mess, I needed some help before I had a major meltdown.

I called Jon and told him to come home ASAP. I knew this was a big "ask" since he actually had some late night work to do in the data center and coming home now meant he'd have to be back up to the city bright and early tomorrow morning to finish the work. But he could hear the urgency in my voice and dropped everything immediately. He was still an hour away, but I knew I wouldn't be done by then anyway.

I spent the next hour checking in on Logan and singing to him from the other room - me on the floor, hands and knees, scrubbing away, while he blissfully unaware and totally having the time of his life in his tub.

That is, until suddenly he started yelling for me: "Mama! Mama! Out! Out!"

That's strange. My son never volunteers to be taken out of the bathtub. What gives?

I come in and he's standing in the tub, reaching out to me to be picked up, and pointing back down to the tub.

The little shit had taken a shit!

Nice. Just what I needed. MORE SHIT.

I tell you, it was at this point that my eyes were threatening to well up with tears.

I drained the tub, cleaned the poop up, hosed him and his toys down, and refilled the bathtub so he could continue playing. I was hoping he'd stay in long enough until Jon got home to help and watch him while I continued to clean up Odin's mess(es).

Luckily - it worked. I had the den cleaned up and was still working on the rug in Logan's room when Jon finally pulled up an hour later. Jon scrubbed Logan down and dressed him while I tried vacuuming the rug with our shop vac. It didn't work so well - so I decided we needed to rent a steam cleaner. And, I needed to get out of the house before I went ballistic and strangled our pets. None of us had eaten dinner yet either - and it was hitting Logan's bed time (approx. 8pm)

So, off to Fresh Choice (for some healthy greens spoiled with ranch dressing. mwahahaha) for a quick bite to eat and then Longs Drugs to rent a steam cleaner!

We were home by about 9:30pm and Logan was exhausted. Frankly, we all were (and my back! KILLING me softly.)

We couldn't put Logan to sleep in his room. The house had aired out pretty well, but we wanted to spray the carpet with some stain treatment we bought at the store before using the steam cleaner tomorrow - and we weren't really crazy about leaving our kid in the room overnight inhaling all those fun cleaning fumes. So, he's now conked out in his travel tent in our bedroom, and we'll just spend another night on our futon out in the living room (because, didn't I tell you? one of the cats or Lola, we're not sure, had an accident on our bed over the weekend and I've been airing out the mattress to dry after treating it as well!).

I'm pretty sure we won't be getting any new pets for a loooooong time.

Martha Stewart Would be Proud

Yesterday evening Jon and I went to a surprise birthday party for a friend of ours. We dropped Logan off at my parents so that we could stay out late for the night. It was a harder drop off than usual - we had to wake him up from his nap in order to drop him off in time, which already had him out of sorts, and then we literally dropped him off and said good bye in a matter of a few minutes. He caught on as we were leaving and was VERY upset. :( It was really hard for me to go; I could tell he was going to have a rough time getting over it (and I was right). :(

After the birthday party, we caught a late night showing of Angels and Demons. I liked it okay (although it was a little fast paced and some of the plot lines were hard to follow), but Jon wasn't impressed. He's been reading the book and I guess a lot of the character development and key story lines were left out. Oh well, we still had a nice time out. :)

This morning, I picked up some crazy donuts at the new local Psycho Donuts shop. I got several so we could sample them all. Left to Right: Butterfinger, Peanut Nutter Butter, Cookie Monster (with Oreo cookies), plain Glazed, "Apricotology" (Apricot Critter) and Massive Head Trauma (Raspberry Jelly Filled). They were sooooo super sweet that we had tummy aches after a few bites. It was fun to try but we agreed we'll be sticking to our regular ol' Stan's or Manley's donut shops from now on. ;-)


We spent the day running errands before Jon's brother Curtis, Renee and Luke, stopped by for a visit (on their way through town to Monterey). Logan was still down for a nap during the first part of their visit, but the two boys got to goof around and play together some before dinner. This was the best pic of the two boys together that I could snag all night! *sigh*



For Father's Day this year I made not one, but TWO! (ah-ah-ah...), craft projects for Jon. For a person who never does art and crafty things, this is a big deal.

First, I started with the photo cube - I had a couple of small snafus in getting the pictures to adhere nicely to the block, but otherwise I think it turned out rather well. Jon can flip the cube around based on how he's feeling for the day, and show off his cute kid to the guys at work. :)



Then, because I was feeling ambitious, and because my coworker Amanda got this idea into my stinkin' head (thanks Amanda!) I decided to make those cheezy matching Dad/Son t-shirts.

Yes, I really did. With cheezy taglines too (Logan's says "My Big Hero" and Jon's says "My Little Hero").


But, aren't they adorable?!?! :)

Hope everyone had a fun filled Father's Day weekend!

Happy Father's Day!

What two good looking Dads! Out to dinner with Jon's brother Curtis, Renee and Logan's cute cousin Luke. :) Hope everyone's Father's Day is going great!