Amateur Hour

We had a barbecue on Sunday, and set up our backyard with a little pool and sand table to entertain the under-8 set.  Charlie got to try out the pool for the first time - he had a total blast!

This commercial is too cute.

Do they make carpet that is the color of crushed Cheerios?  The next time we buy carpet, I’m going to bring a handful of Cheerio crumbs with me to the store and say, “This is what we want.” 

Charlie has developed a fear of the vacuum cleaner.  He doesn’t like the noise, and whenever I turn it on, he immediately starts to cry and wants to be held.  He is over 26 pounds, and I am not strong enough or coordinated enough to vacuum and hold him at the same time.  I’m thinking that I may have better luck trying to camoflage the mess on the carpet rather than cleaning it up.

was a wealth of amateur moments.  The other day I cut up half a banana for Charlie to eat with his breakfast.  Charlie recently added “nana” (banana) to his repertoire of words.  He loooves bananas, and after he finished what was on his plate, he asked for more.  I handed him the other half of the banana without cutting it up, just to see what he’d do with it, figuring he’d manage it okay.  I turned around, and seconds later, there’s Charlie with his cheeks puffed out like a chipmunk, stuffed so full of banana that he couldn’t even close his mouth all the way.  He had shoved all of it in there at once and could barely chew.  I would have taken a picture if I wasn’t so busy making sure that he didn’t choke on the mass of banana mush in his mouth. 

Charlie had another brush with disaster this week while we were planting some flowers in the front yard.  I put some liquid fertilizer in a pitcher and added water, to give my flowers a boost.  Charlie got hold of the pitcher and tried to drink it.  I caught him, but not before he poured a bunch on his shirt.  Sheesh.  He did manage to eat some dirt while I wasn’t looking.

I wonder if Charlie’s guardian angel ever gets ticked off that he has to work overtime because I’m so clueless.   

I got to ride in Joe’s jet today (an F-15E.) Today was “spouse taxi day.” Its against the rules to take us up to fly, so they do a high-speed taxi instead. We got to sit in the jet, learn a little bit about how it works, and make the radio calls to the tower (which I’m told is pretty funny to the seasoned aircrew and air traffic controllers.) Then, we taxied to the runway and sped up (fired up the afterburners and everything), stopping just short of takeoff. It was fun! We took lots of pictures:

Charlie and mommy in the squadron bar:

Ready for the mission (sorry I can’t tell you what it was - it was classified!)

Walking out to the jet:

Here, the pilot is saying, “You can touch this, but not that…or that…and definitely not that…”

Maybe if I hold onto these pictures and show them to Charlie when he gets bigger, he will think that I was, at some point in my life, cool. 

So Charlie loves his car.  Well, its more of a love/hate relationship.  He plays with it every day.  He has figured out how to get into the car by himself, but he can only go in reverse.  He’ll climb in, scoot backwards until he runs into something, and cry until I either reposition him so that he can scoot backwards some more, or help him get out (because he hasn’t figured out how to do that yet either.)  Lather, rinse, repeat. 

Its hard to be little.

Are you kidding me?  Whose bright idea was this? 

I noticed this intersection across the street from the school where Charlie takes his Kindermusik class. Ridiculous, and yet somehow I can’t say that I’m surprised, given where we live. 

Its small, but it gets great gas mileage! Charlie is totally in love with it. When we brought it home, he was so excited he tried to climb into the picture on the box. We took it out of the box, and upon seeing that the wheels were not on it yet, he said, “Uh-oh!” As soon as the wheels were on, but before we were finished putting it together, Charlie was pushing it around the room making a “vroom” noise. Its his favorite thing to play with right now, although he can’t get in or out of it by himself yet…unless you count sliding to the floor as the car rolls away from him and he pops out from under it…

I have been meaning to begin a series of posts about where we live, because it is a source of endless amusement (and exasperation) for me. I must be prescient. The other day, Joe heard something on the radio that motivated me to get started. Apparently, the 25th Anniversary Edition of the Places Rated Almanac ranked the 379 “Most Livable” places in the United States. Our town made the list: #379. Dead. Last. The rankings were based on 9 factors: housing, education, economy, culture, recreation, transportation, health care, climate, and crime. You would think that this would put me in a bad mood, but to be honest it made my day. I felt validated.  More on this later…