Afternoon at the playground-Mama.

It's been a rough week here. Everyone is nursing a cold. School was on fall break for a whole week. And Juner has not been sleeping- due to a combination of the cold, teething, and a big brother that just wants to be close to his sister all the time.

Henry has developed a very nasty habit of waking June up as often as possible. So on top of the fact that we're all getting about 3 hours less sleep than normal, Henry sneaks into our room (where June naps in the afternoon) and shakes her pack and play until she screams. It's been trying on everyone. We've tried punishment (I actually watched an entire episode of Dragon Tales while Henry had to sit in the other room in time out. That was a punishment for both of us.) and bribery (he lost the chance to take his flashlight to bed last night). But I think maybe we hit the right note today when I promised Henry that we could go to the church playground if he let June sleep.


Henry took a short nap and then played quetly and got to watch some tv while June enjoyed a three and a half hour nap (that poor baby is zonked). Then we got to go the playground! The playground is actually irrelevant. The big draw is that the sand table was just refilled with sand and a ready supply of dump trucks!We buried five dump trucks before we ran out of sand to pile on top of them.

Poor June was confined to her stroller on account of our "Don't put June on the ground rule." We didn't want to ruin her supper by filling up on leaves and dirt. But we did decide to give the swing a chance.

June loved it. All I had to do was give her a push every couple of minutes and she stayed very happy.
I wish I would have taken the other camera so I could have gotten a video. It's amusing to see a little girl try to kick her legs, thrash her arms, and yell while keeping her tongue out.


When we got home, we had a mini thanksgiving dinner- turkey and sweet potatoes. June ate about 16 times as much as Henry did, which isn't saying much. Afterwards, she was still famished so she had to rumage under the table for scraps.

Why won't anyone feed this starving child? Can't you see she's wastng away? And reduced to scrounging discarded cheerios off the floor!

Mama's projects- Henry.

Mama's been trying to keep busy lately and has some new projects to show off.

She made this new rug out of t-shirts cut into strips. Mostly old shirts of papa's that she didn't like. That little speck of pink is from papa's show choir shirt from high school. Mama says it's getting more use as a rug than it did hidden in the back of a closet.

Mama also made some t-shirts for me and my buddy Huntley back in Wisconsin.

She heard that Hucky has an imaginary friend-me. That broke our hearts so much that we had to send Hucky a Henry shirt for his birthday.

And she was so pleased how that turned out that she made a Thomas shirt for me too.

She's also been working on a few more presents for little girls and one little boy back in the Midwest. But she doesn't want to ruin Christmas, so she'll have to show those off later.

In the meanwhile-Henry.

Okay, now we're ourselves again. Here's what we did today. We went to Starbucks to collect our free voting coffee (thanks, Starbucks). We even scored a free hot chocolate for me. I think the workers felt bad for me because we got cornered by a crazy old lady who told us John McCain was in bed with terrorists. We also thought about hitting up Krispy Kreme, Ben and Jerry's and Chick-Fil-A for free stuff (hey, it's patriotic), but restrained ourselves. Then we went to a toy store (that caffeine must have gone stright to Mama's head), where I decided that I desperately needed this huge ride-on firetruck, that was well beyond my budget. I behaved well in the store but threw a huge fit when we got home because mama said I had to put the firetruck on my Christmas list.

Later, mama was brave and got a big craft project out.

Graqndma Cooper found some ceramic ornaments for me to paint, so mama pulled out all of her old craft paint and we went to work.

I really enjoyed painting and painted each ornament at least 5 times. They started out yellow and ended up a deep blue. Hope that you're one of the lucky people to get one of these beauties.

Eventually I was persuaded to put away my paints and clean up.

Hopefully this t-shirt caught most of the paint drops.

While we painted June spent her time sliming the tupperware.

Look at that shirt. 8 months old and already full of attitude.

Our soapbox.

We're feeling particularly fired up tonight. We try not to get too serious or political, but it is election night, so we feel like we can do this just once. Then we promise to never mention it again.

We just want to say it- we're so tired of this election and we're glad it's over. We know that every election has negative campaigning and this year is no different. But to be honest, right now it looks like we'll either be electing a muslim terrorist or an old man who is actually in cahoots with Al-Qaeda. (Seriously, people have said both of these things to us.)

So, we're led to believe that with these two candidates, maybe the best thing would just be to keep W. in office. (Okay, that was a joke.)

Finally, we want to close our rant by saying we hope we never have to hear about Joe 6-Pack, Joe the Plumber, Hockey Moms, or anything Alaskan again.

At the park- Henry.

Yesterday, we headed out to a new park to meet some other families from an online mom's group we're members of.

The park was great. And the swings were very fun.

Even Junery loved them.

The best part of the park was that it was full of sand. I'm so glad we took my loader and dump truck.

Later, we headed down to the lake and fed some geese. These geese must be used to being fed, because they were very friendly and very big!

Later, we ran up and down hills.

Then we all took off back to the playground. We also got our first taste of a child who has never had rules. This kid was really a trip. He stole my dump truck and loader and insisted before he left that it belonged to him now. He also shook June and woke her up in her stroller and then took her nuk and threw it over the fence and down a hill- all while threatening to hit Juner. His mom shrugged it off because "boys are just like that." We're glad that in the 3 years since I've been around that this is the first kid like this that we've ever met (and hopefully the last). And we want to thank everyone with kids we know for not raising your kids with rules and structure. Because all of the boys (and girls) we know don't behave like that.

8 months-June.

You may have noticed that I recently turned 8 months old. Things are looking pretty good from where I sit.

I can now pull myself up to standing if the conditions are right. The bathtub ledge is the perfect height, but the tile floors are not very forgiving when I fall back down.

My favorite things are my red toys- the red block, the red spoon, the red foam N from the bathtub, and the red hammer. I also like crawling into the tupperware cabinet and throwing all of the tupperware out (after I lick it and wipe my runny nose all over it).One of my favorite activities is finding little bits of paper to stuff in my mouth as fast as I can. Mama says that I can find a dust bunny under a couch before it even knows it's there. For the same reason, I am no longer allowed to play on the ground outside anymore. Too many leaves and dirt.

Mama and papa are also debating whether I say hi (or "aaaaaaye.") They think it correlates with when someone enters a room, but aren't sure if they are just trying to find something where nothing is there.

Still just two teeth, although the drooling has really kicked up, so maybe something is going on. And I still weigh 18 pounds (according to mama's inaccurate calculations).

Last night mama and papa took us out to eat to celebrate my monthday. It was great, until I reached over and threw a whole plate of appetizers on the floor (all those glorious boneless wings!). Then I was banished to three feet away from the table to chew on my hand.

Cold season-Henry.

Both Junery and I have colds and runny noses. We're doing okay except that mama insists on spraying this stuff up our noses and she says it will make us feel better.

As you can see I don't like it very much.

Mama recorded me talking about our day so you could see how bad I sound.

What will June tolerate?- Henry

We've got a couple games we like to play in our house. "What will June eat?" (everything) and "What will June tolerate?" are two of our favorites. Since June eats everything and can put up with an awesome older brother, we've had to get creative. So mama decided that June was going to get a shower.

We tried the shower because I'm really afraid of showers and mama doesn't want two kids with a shower phobia. Plus mama really stunk from working out, so everybody benefits. June had a great time. She hung out in the shower for about 20 minutes until the hot water ran out and she got cold. She even crawled around and tried to play with the water in the drain.