Abstract Concepts

My boy is kind of a genius.  It's really an amazing thing to watch him learn and make connections.  Lately, he has been obsessed with colors and asking "cuh-lore?" about anything he sees.  Yesterday, I realized he's actually absorbing some of it.  It was windy and rainy, so the bay was muddy looking and I commented as we drove by, "oh, our lake is brown today."   Normally, Everett would respond by saying "lake!" because he recognizes that word.  Well, yesterday, he responded, "cuh-lore!"  With big eyes, I said, "yes, you are right.  Brown is a color."  Another fun instance yesterday: Everett's favorite place to go out to eat is the Black Cat coffee shop (they have a fun little kid area with toys and books).  Whenever we go down the street it is on, he says "black cat black cat!"  Well, we had dinner with "kuh-muh" and "kuh-pa" yesterday and Everett spotted furby, the black and white fuzzball of a cat.  Instead of squealing, "kitty!" he said, "black cat!"  Brian asked if he really understood that Furby was a black cat and I said that I assumed so.  He repeated it several times after that too.  Like I said, genius.

In other news, we have a leaking window.  You might say, "now Beth, I thought you had gorgeous, brand new Pella windows throughout your house and that's one of the reasons you decided to buy it?" and you, my friend, would be right.  However, there are four teeny tiny windows up in our ginormous, uninsulated attic and one of them has some issues.  So there is water on an inner wall of our attic.  This preoccupies every thought in husband's head and he has been watching youtube videos, researching ladders, and buying a new window since last night (well, and working and making himself doctor and optometrist appointments....what can I say?   I have to make appointments for two and a half other people, I can't handle him too!)  So yeah.  We're going to have an interesting weekend of trying to install a new window that is a different size from the current one (it was in stock now, and not in two weeks).

Trees and Toddler Beds

 As you may notice, I am not doing any garage posts because Brian was going to do them.  I'm sure he'll get on that right away.  I will, however, give you the tree update.  We have a very large silver maple in our front yard that was starting to make us a little uneasy with how much it was overhanging the house and a three-trunked white birch in the back that was directly in the way of our garage plans.  After many phone calls, discussions, and debates, we decided on a company to do it (because they were a whole lot cheaper than the other guy we liked) and they came out today and trimmed up our trees.  Both Brian and I nearly had a heart attack as he was trimming the maple because we kept seeing these big, beautiful limbs falling to the ground.  It does look very nice now though and we'll get used to it.  I didn't take any before shots of the maple, but here are two from when we were looking at buying the house:

and here's some afters:

And the birch I did take before AND afters.  Before:

After:

I know the birch is a little odd looking, but we had to have him take quite a few limbs off that would otherwise hang over the garage and take out an entire trunk that was totally dead and diseased on top.

In other news of the day, I switched Everett's crib over to the toddler bed set up.  As soon as I took down the front panel, he hopped in and snuggled with his blankets and pillow.  That confirmed to me that he was ready for the switch.  I put him up for a nap and checked on him a bit later to find this:

Hooray!  Here's hoping tonight goes just as well.  In other Everett news, he now has two canines on top, if fiercely independent, throws some outstanding temper tantrums, says quite a few words, gives kisses, and is in the process of weaning!  He's now down to nursing only when he wakes up in the morning and we have no plans to stop that unless it starts hurting from lack of milk.  He's such a big boy!!!

Bathrooms and Bedhead

First things first, our little downstairs bathroom currently only has half a ceiling. We noticed a wet spot today, then Brian noticed it was actively dripping, then he touched it and his finger went through. Right. So now we have discovered that our toilet had a slow leak, exacerbated by the handle getting stuck the other day and now we have some work to do. To put a positive spin on it, I will now be replacing the blue toilet and possibly the really icky linoleum this weekend.

In other (not really news) news, Everett now gets the cutest bedhead hair! After his morning nap today, it was so messy and everywhere, I just had to kiss his head and his cheeks!!! I'll try to get a picture sometime soon.

6 Month Shots

Yesterday, I had to take Ever to get his 6 month shots all by myself. He didn't even notice the first shot (very thin needle), but the second - oh boy! He did NOT like that. And of course, they then had to go and stick him again in the other leg. Poor baby.... I only cried a little bit... He tried smiling at the nurses in between wails when they gave him a rattle. Well, I got him into his carseat and sat with him for a few minutes, situating his rattles, blanket, and nuk, and decided we'd go to Target since it would be a longer drive and he could fall asleep. He promptly fell asleep as we drove away and slept to Target, through me getting him out of his carseat and into the sling, through our Target wandering, back out to the car, out of the sling, opened his eyes briefly to say "Where the heck am I!?!" but fell back to sleep with his nuk as I buckled him in, all the way home and onto our bed while I did diaper laundry, and FINALLY woke up after 2.5 hours! Poor boy gets so sleepy after shots. He also slept through our anniversary dinner on the booth bench at the restaurant (very nice of him) and slept ALL NIGHT last night - from about 9-6:30! He's now napping again! and has been down for over 2 hours. I can also see the very tip of his first tooth coming through, so that probably doesn't help matters any.

Ev's loving the addition of yogurt (organic, whole milk, plain yogurt, of course) to his meals and gobbles them up like there's no tomorrow. I also bought him a new plastic bib yesterday because he likes sucking on the cloth ones and they are quickly being demolished.

Packing is a beast. We're doing a couple of boxes a night so far and have all the pictures off the wall and dressers mostly cleared off. We pick up the U-Haul in 8 days - eep!!! We finally got an approval letter from the bank this week and are getting homeowner's insurance today, and then we will hopefully be done with all the stupid tasks...now that interest rates have jumped, of course, but what can you do? Anyways....I better go see if Ev's still breathing in there and maybe he'll be kind enough to wake up soon so we can get to work already!

Ikea is exciting

At least, that seems to be Everett's opinion. Since there were some thesis issues on Monday, we found ourselves with a little extra time to stop at the behemoth blue box of beauty in Chicago and stroll through the displays. Ever was in the bjorn with Bri and was doing all right for a while, but really was just exhausted from so much traveling and really wanted to go back to sleep after lunch. To show us how all the bright colors were overwhelming to his little senses, Everett decided to yell. Loudly. At everyone in the store. I really think he scared some people. A couple of times, I tried to muffle the sound a little, but I decided a yelling baby with mama's hand over his mouth probably looked worse than just a plain ol' yelling baby. So he yelled. And people would sort of jump and turn, see that he wasn't upset, just yelling, and then they would smile. As we were walking through the restaurant area, we also got a cute baby comment from two older women enjoying lunch. I was holding Everett and walking by them and as we passed, one said to the other, "Well that's a Gerber baby if I've ever seen one!" Another comment from yesterday - a friend came over and was playing with Everett and said, "you look exactly like your daddy now!" Yeah yeah yeah, I know....not a piece of my genetic material went to that kid....oh well! He's the happiest, funniest, cuddliest baby ever and I wouldn't change him one bit. He is going to love the giant circle in our new house and I'm sure will be crawling, toddling, then running in circles though the living room, dining room, kitchen, and foyer all day long. :)