kansas love
July 29, 2007, 3:18 pm
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We just returned from a wonderful ten days in Kansas. Highlights include swing dancing with Aunt Tina, watering flowers with Na-Na, painting faces with Grandpa Hottman, having tea parties with Grandma Hottman, looking for fireflies, fishing with Pa-Pa David, being tickled by soon-to-be Uncle Scott, running through the sprinkler with cousin Lauren, eating fried chicken with Grandpa Schremmer and Grandma Rosie, singing songs with Aunt Lori, telling never-ending stories with great detail, eating pizza and popsicles with Aunt Pam and cousins David and Shelby, peeing in every toilet in town, being shy with Uncle Stan, sitting on Uncle Steve's leg, comparing mosquito bites, reading the Three Little Pigs over and over again, posing for cousin Megan's camera, swimming in lots of pools, giggling with Burke and Finley, getting tan with Mommy, spending the night outside with Daddy on a blow-up mattress, catching butterflies with Callie, and making silly faces during our very serious question-and-answer session following a screening of CHALK in Mommy's hometown.
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My dad kept stealing Huck's nose and eating it. This morning Troy tried to do the same thing but Huck wouldn't let him. He said, "I put glue on my nose." Sometimes family can teach you survival skills.[ 7 comments ] ( 55 views )
friends big and small
July 16, 2007, 2:03 pm
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From left to right, top to bottom: Jaydon, Jacob, Miles, Sophia, John, Shana, Quincy, Allie, Michael, Kadin, Parker and Jacob again.[ 4 comments ] ( 29 views )
tighty whities
July 11, 2007, 12:27 pm
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That's right, Huck is wearing Hanes underwear sometimes and is becoming quite the pee-pee-in-the-potty expert. Except for this morning when he wet his pants twice. Then he purposely spilled his purple smoothie onto our white couch. Oh, and Max peed on our bedroom rug. But other than that, our apartment is really clean.
It's hard to get mad at a little fellow who looks at you like this. Too bad Max doesn't have the same charms.
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[ 4 comments ] ( 34 views )big
July 5, 2007, 9:06 pm
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Huck and I were on a local news program last weekend honoring the woman who is responsible for Dolphin Park, and for a few seconds the camera catches us talking with Jeanlee about the wonderful place where we can be found most summer afternoons. Huck looks like a 200 pound monster in my skinny little arms, as if there’s no physical way I could possibly have the strength to hold him for more than two seconds. With a gasp I realized that my baby has become a big boy.
He certainly has a big boy imagination. If you listen to him as he plays you’ll realize we've got lots of snow in our living room that he plows up everyday with his orange Tonka truck so that it will become spring. You’ll also notice that our apartment is full of apples hanging in the air for the caterpillars to eat before they become butterflies. When you hear his loud monotone voice say, “God bless us everyone” over and over again into a hat or a piece of paper, you will quickly figure out that he's speaking into a microphone. Watch as Huck smears alfredo sauce all over his face and arms and you’ll understand that actually it’s Ranch dressing which is actually lotion. When he reaches into his pockets you’ll see that he keeps an invisible wallet in there full of invisible money. And if you’re ready for dinner go to Dolphin Park because he’s always making taco salad or spaghetti in the sandbox.
Like a grown man he likes to reminisce about the old days. For a while now he’s been saying things like, “When I was a baby Abbie used to hold me.” Just recently he began saying things like, “When I was a kid I used to play with Legos,” and in between every two words he stops and tries to hold back the chuckles, all the while shaking his head back and forth as if he can hardly believe how silly and childish he used to be.
And unfortunately he’s becoming something of a dirty old man. While in junior high my best friend Jennifer and I took turns cleaning a nursing home one day a week as a sort of nightmarish part-time job. My strongest memory from this time is of a former drill sergeant who regularly took off all his clothes and shuffled towards me while I was cleaning his sink, muttering something inaudible and, I’m sure, awful. I would then run out of the room shrieking until an attendant arrived and put his pants back on. 24 years later I have my very own dirty old man. Huck is slowly getting potty trained and this means he often wears clothes without a diaper, which means he has easy access to his beloved body parts. The other morning he pulled out his little member and got a VERY dirty look on his face, slowly walking towards us and chuckling, muttering something awfully audible. Troy began stammering and stuttering, telling Huck that this behavior made people uncomfortable (I’ll say!) and that he should really do that sort of thing in private. Like in the bathroom. By himself. So the next morning Huck very sweetly told us, “I am going to the bathroom to stick my penis out.” And sure enough he went into our dark little bathroom and just kind of stood there for a few seconds doing his thing.
Just about the time I think he’s ready to get his own apartment he starts a very toddler-like game of peekaboo and I relax a little, knowing we’ve got a long way to go.
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[ 7 comments ] ( 64 views )too much fun
July 3, 2007, 2:12 pm
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Last weekend we got onto a big bus and rode all the way to Allentown, Pennsylvania where we spent the day at Dorney Park with Betty, Amanda and Rosa (along with several thousand other people). Huck rode the Snoopy Bus, the baseball swings, the chuckwagon ferris wheel and the train, played at the kiddie water park, jumped in the bouncy castle, saw a show starring Linus, Lucy and Charlie Brown singing a song from The Sound of Music, ate an ice cream cone and then got back on the fun bus for our trip home which included a few rounds of Bingo, some Sprite, a cookie and finally some sleep. (And as you can see from the fourth picture below, Troy enjoyed a kiddie ride with Amanda, looking like a very special adult indeed.)
A few days before our Dorney Park adventure I overheard him saying to himself: I will meet Snoopy and I will say to him, "How are you?" and he will say, "Good."
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After a bunch of sleep we got up Monday morning and joined Brian, Tiffany, Kadin and his grandparents Glenda and Mike for a day at the Bronx Zoo. Huck kept asking for bingo on the city bus. At the zoo he rode a ladybug on the bug carousel, saw butterflies up close in the butterfly garden, watched gorillas hang out together (while a bunny rabbit hopped around them and made me nervous), rode a sky rail, played with prairie dogs, fed a sheep, almost touched a peacock, sang happy birthday to some fish and got very close to a python.
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He wrote a little song that goes something like this: "Stay home ... I want to stay home ... stay stay stay home ..."
[ 4 comments ] ( 44 views )