October '09

I always attempt to compose these monthly posts as things come up throughout the month, and alas, I always find myself halfway through the following month trying to recall things that Alex was doing weeks and weeks before. Thus, I only have about a quarter of the info I wanted to share about last month...However, I do have quite a few pictures from October, not including any of the ones from the five Halloween events I've already blogged about. That's gotta count for something...

Favorite phrases:

"I need...please!!" This phrase has been both a blessing at a curse. A blessing because it generally replaces whining as his main means for getting something he wants. Hallelujah, praise the Lord. Although we need to work with him on the distinction between "needs" and "wants" because right now, everything is a necessity.
"[Murphy] is making noise!"
"Where's [Murphy] go? Oh there [he] is!"
"Murphy goes poop outside in the grass!"

Favorite food(s): butter (alone or on something, doesn't matter), chicken, panpakes (aka pancakes)

Things that we love about Alex:

How he adds an "S" to things that are already plural. For example, when he wants to color, he might ask, "Mom, where'd papers go?" or he'll ask me to "turn waters on", or my personal favorite, whenever he refers to people he doesn't know, he calls them "peoples". Like if we have friends over and they leave, he'll ask, "Mom, where'd peoples go?" or if he hears someone talking in the distance, he'll say, "Hear that?! Peoples are talkin'!"

When he mispronounces something and I correct him, he'll repeat what I say and affirm it with a "right", as if to say, "right, that's what I said." For example:

A: "Mommy, [Alex] do paterpillar puzzle!"
Me: "You want to do the caterpillar puzzle?"
A: "Yeah, the paterpillar puzzle, right."

When he doesn't want to do something that I ask him to do, he'll say it's "Mommy's turn!"

When I go in and get him in the morning, and he greets me with some random piece of information, like, "A horsey makes the sound, 'neeeeigggghhhhhh!!!!!!!'", as if he'd been thinking about it while he was lying in bed and couldn't wait to tell me.

We spent a lot of October outside, enjoying the fall weather. At MDO, they take nature walks around the church whenever the weather permits, and Alex has since become fascinated by acorns. An acorn sighting is comparable to an Elvis sighting as far as Alex is concerned.

On this particular afternoon, I had dropped my lens cover and it landed on what I thought was a caterpillar. I asked Alex to hand it to me and he about jumped out of his skin when he saw what was underneath. I about peed my pants from laughing at Alex's reaction, and once I had regained my composure, we took a closer look. Upon further inspection, what I thought was a caterpillar seemed to be some weird cocoon of some sort, green with "eyes" and a creepy spike on its hiney. I know little to nothing about bugs and such, but what I do know is that it didn't move when I poked at it with a stick, and the next day it had disappeared from the driveway. Looking at pictures of it still freaks me out.

Second only to acorns is frozen yogurt from iheartyogurt, which Alex insists must be eaten outside, regardless of the temperature.

On the not-so-nice days when we are stuck inside, we try to stay busy playing games or reading or doing puzzles.

In addition to vehicles and acorns, Alex was obsessed with pumpkins this month. To this day, if he spies a pumpkin out of the car window, he shrieks, "I see a pumpkin!!!!" then proceeds to ask - repeatedly - for "One more pumpkin, please!!" as if I can make pumpkins materialize out of thin air. Which obviously I can. Because I'm a mom and am equipped to perform such miracles. And I am just sick about the fact that we didn't make it to the Arboretum this year to see the pumpkins - in fact, we never made it to a single pumpkin patch and ended up buying Alex's pumpkin from the grocery store. Uggh, the shame...

Anyway, pumpkin carving was a total bust this year - Alex took one look at the slimy pumpkin guts and was all, "You want me to do what??". He then said, "Mommy's turn!" and moved just out of arm's reach but close enough that he could watch Mom butcher that poor piece of produce. It was a pretty pathetic effort, let me tell ya. I was this close to borrowing some of Mr. Potato Head parts to give my pumpkin a face, a thought which occurred to me after I had already disemboweled the stupid thing. Note to self: You don't enjoy carving pumpkins. Next year, that's Daddy's job. (Camo 'do-rag courtesy of Grammy and Poppa.)

Bathtime has become a ten-hour ordeal because I can never get A to get out willingly - I usually end up draining the water and letting him play until he freezes and wants to get his jammies on. However, he tends to ham it up while in the tub and I usually get some funny pictures.

His happy face...

...mad face...

...serious face...

...sad face...

...and the aforementioned "poker face", which originated when we were listening to Lady Gaga's "Poker Face" in the car and asked Alex to show us his poker face. His response:

I don't know what face this is...maybe his "Alex Attitude" face? That pretty much sums up this month, I think...

Trunk-r-Treat

Every year for Halloween, our church does Trunk-r-Treat, where church folks volunteer to dress up their vehicles (and themselves) and distribute candy to the church kids out of their trunks. They block off the street behind the church and have all kinds of other events: a petting zoo with a cow, goats, sheep, and a Shetland pony; a firetruck that the kids could sit in; a fire eater/spitter/juggler; a stilt walker with a broken arm (don't try this at home, kids); pony rides; other assorted games and entertainment.

These days, we are at the church 5 days out of 7 every week - MOPS on Monday mornings, Mother's Day Out on Tuesdays and Fridays, choir on Wednesday nights, and church on Sundays, so needless to say, we ran into lots of familiar faces. Here's Alex introducing his horse (aka "Horsie") to his friend, Firefighter Cooper, Dallas FD.

We also ran into Fairy Princess Charlotte, where Alex proceeded to demonstrate why cowboys always wear hats.

Alex's friend Jaron was there, too, doing his best Tigger impression.

Once he was done socializing, we made our way down to the petting zoo. It only made sense that the cowboy should start his day by checking on the cows.

Once he was satisfied that the cows were A-ok, we moved onto the fire truck. To say that Alex is "obsessed" with vehicles would be quite the understatement. This child spends 95% of his day talking about trains, excavators, dump trucks, fire trucks, airplanes - you name it. Well, to be fair, he could care less about a mini van or a station wagon or a VW bug. But anything else is pretty much fair game. He points out every Mack truck, school bus, digger, garbage truck, and motorcycle that he can spot out the car window, and I find myself doing the same because he gets so excited. So he was pretty stoked when he saw the fire truck and found out that he got to sit in it, if only for the four seconds it took me to take the picture.

From there, we moved on to the "treat" portion of Trunk-r-Treat, starting with what ended up being Alex's favorite treat of the day - an apple. Yes, an apple. He was more excited about that apple than any of the lollipops, candy bars, fruit snacks, or Tootsie Rolls that ended up in his bucket.

His next plan of action? To stop and shoot the breeze with the cute cowgirls, of course.

From there, A helped his fellow cowpokes hammer them nails into that there two-bah-four.

Then off to do a little fishin'.

And finally, la pièce de résistance - the pony rides. I mean, is there a more appropriate way for a cowboy to end his day than to ride off into the sunset? This would be Alex's very first time on a horse, and while he was very excited as we waited in line, we were anxious to see how he would react once he actually got up on one of those big hairy beasts.

Like any good cowboy, he was a natural. He looked a little surprised right when the horses started to move, but was grinning ear-to-ear within seconds.

Timothy walked alongside him, just close enough to catch him if the horse decided to bail but far enough that A was riding completely on his own.

He loved every second of the ride and totally lived up to his costume.

As expected, he was less than thrilled that we made him get off at the end of the ride. We told him that if he wanted to wait in line again, then he could have another ride. He agreed, so we got back in line, he munched on his apple to pass the time, and finally got back on his horse.

By this time, things were winding down and they were starting to move the horses into their trailers. So A gave his horse a nice pet goodbye, and we headed home.

We considered this to the Main Event this Halloween, so other than some Halloween festivities at Tim's office the following weekend, this pretty much ended Halloween for us this year. I think it's just going to get more exciting each year, although I'm already dreading the inevitably dreadful costume requests that A will start to throw at me once he realizes that he has a choice in such matters. Hopefully he'll never come to that realization...a mom can dream...

Texas State Fair '09

I can't believe I'm just now getting to this post because it feels like it's been an eternity since this happened...I suppose I should be getting used to that feeling by now...

Anyway, in late October, Bill, Vicki, Mamaw Meador, Chris, and Leah came to Dallas to go with us to the State Fair. Alex gets totally giddy when family is around, and this was no exception.

He was especially excited when Auntie L let him watch Thomas movies on her iPhone....

...and now I can't use my phone in front of him without him yelling, "Watch Thomas movie, please!!"

We went to lunch that morning and then stopped at iheartyogurt for dessert, where we always have to drag A away from the "drums" outside.

After naptime, we got ready for the fair. Parking at the fair is always a bit of a beast, made worse by the fact that there was also an OU v. Texas game going on at the fairgrounds this year, so we decided to park downtown and take the train to Fair Park. Aside from it being practical, we knew A would be psyched about getting to ride the train. And he was.

Alex volunteered to entertain us during the stops with his "funny faces".

We got to the fair and headed to the Kidway to find Alex-appropriate rides, and we decided to start with this hot air balloon ride (think teacups where the teacups have been replaced by hot air balloons). Grammy was the fearless volunteer who agreed to ride with him.

I was so sure that he would love the rides like he did at Six Flags, but I think maybe we should have warmed him up on something a little more tame because he was not feeling the hot air balloons. Their balloon wasn't even spinning and Alex was completely green around the gills. Case in point.

However, when he was done riding, he was super-excited and wanted to ride something else (when I asked him if he wanted to ride the balloons again, I got an adamant, "No thanks!").

So off we went to find something else. We ended up at the bumper cars, which I thought A would love. I mean, cars and bumping into things - if this ride didn't suit Alex perfectly, then nothing would. The minimum height was only 30 inches, so A was more than qualified, and they had a bunch of guys standing around to help out if any of the kids couldn't get their cars moving.

The first time someone bumped into A, he was all, "excuuuuuuuse you!!", but when he realized that the whole point was to bump into people, he was all about it. He kept his car moving a lot more than I thought he would, although he did need to be nudged a couple of times. I'm not sure who had a better time - Alex or those of us watching Alex (re: the background of the pictures above).

Next, we visited the petting zoo and A checked out the monster truck display with Grammy.

We took the train back home and hit the hay, another state fair under our belt.

Yeehaw

I was really hoping I could redeem myself after Alex's pitifully uncreative cowboy costume, but alas, this just wasn't the year. Don't get me wrong, after many late-night brainstorming sessions, Tim and I had developed several great concepts for potential costumes. It's just that they were all pretty labor-intensive, and I just plain ol' didn't have the time (or the energy) to execute them. I could describe to you just how great those costumes would have been had I taken the time to pull them together, but I think I will keep those ideas under lock and key in the event that I am a little more motivated next year.

In this case, the boring costume actually worked out to our advantage because they were having "Western Attire Day" at MDO. So, once again, we dressed A up in his cowboy gear, and I forced him to stand for a quick photoshoot before heading to the church.

His teachers and friends were pretty impressed by how authentic he looked. Yeehaw!

Cookies, hillbillies, and how to shoo a monster

Alex and I got invited to a Halloween Cookie Exchange a couple weeks ago by one of his classmates (or his classmate's mom, rather, who also happens to be in my small group at MOPS). I had never heard of such a thing, but I think it is, like, the funnest concept ever. You basically make (or buy, if baking's not your thing) a dozen Halloween-themed cookies, then everyone swaps goodies and you have a dozen new, fun treats to take home and eat.

For some reason, I thought it would be a good idea to bake sugar cookies onto wooden sticks, ice them, and use candy to make different monster faces on each one. Thing is, I am a decent cook but a terrible baker (I prefer to "wing it" as opposed to following directions), so the cookies were all different sizes and shapes and half of them fell off the sticks before I could ice them. Somehow I managed to salvage just enough to make a dozen.

The icing and face-making went fine, and I set them in the fridge so the icing could set. My grand vision was to embed the sticks into floral foam in the bottom of a plastic cauldron, then cover the foam with tissue paper and wrap the whole thing in cellophane. What I discovered is that icing melts and softens within the first three-and-a-half seconds of being out of the fridge, so everytime I tried to place the sticks in the foam, my hand would bump into the cookies or the cookies would bump into each other and the icing would smear all over my perfect monster faces. To make matter worse, the plastic cauldron wasn't heavy enough to support the weight of the cookies, so if the distribution was off by the tiniest bit, the whole contraption would fall over and all the cookies would collapse on top of each other. Needless to say, I was incensed, and after about a half hour of fighting with those stupid cookies and those stupid sticks and that stupid icing, I gave up and laid them all flat in a pan, thus completely negating the whole point of baking the darn sticks in.

The good news is, the monster faces turned out really cute, although you'll have to take my word for it because I didn't get a single picture. Taking pictures was last on my list, after ripping my hair out and hurling cookies across the room. Oh well, two out of three ain't bad...

After that whole ordeal, I had to wake A up from his nap and get him dressed for the party. Both moms and kids were asked to wear costumes, and while it would have been easiest to dress up as a cowgirl to coordinate with Alex's cowboy getup, I decided that the two of us should be hillbillies/rednecks/country bumpkins instead. I had pigtails and overalls and was this close to wearing a tube top underneath, but decided against it because I didn't really want to meet a bunch of new people with my flabby white gut hanging out. What can I say, I gots high standards.

Not high enough to leave my fake hillbilly teeth* at home, however. So I with my hillbilly teeth, overalls, and pigtails, and Alex with his overalls, tattoo, and camouflage Crocs (yes, even I will allow Crocs to be worn out of the house on an occasion that involves DRESSING UP LIKE A HILLBILLY), grabbed our failed monsters-on-a-stick cookies and headed to the party. It was super fun and I enjoyed mingling with the kids and their moms, although Alex was rarely to be seen more than three feet away from the Thomas & Friends train table. Go figure.

Somehow I managed to wrangle him away long enough to get some group pictures with him and the rest of the kids.

I mean, my kid even makes hillbilly look good.

I wish I had gotten a picture of myself with those hideous teeth in, or perhaps one with the hillbilly boy and his mama, but it just didn't happen. We did come away with a trayful of delicious and fun Halloween treats, though. It really was a great party and a great idea. I'm thinking I might steal the idea and have a Christmas cookie exchange of my own...

Aside from the train table, one of Alex's favorite things from that day were my hillbilly teeth. He was totally freaked out by the teeth when I first put them in (see asterisk below) and would run away from me saying, "No-no, Mommy! No teeth!!" But then I started dancing around in my overalls, talkin' real country-like and singing the tune to Dueling Banjos, and he became obsessed with those stupid teeth. If I took them out, he'd pick them up and try to stuff them back into my mouth, saying, "More teeth, Mommy!"

His other favorite thing was his tattoo. The tattoo came with a kid's meal A got at a local Mexican restaurant, and from the minute I slapped that thing on his arm, he was OBSESSED. He kept looking at it and talking about it and so, instead of taking it off right away, I avoided scrubbing that area for about a week or so. Everytime he'd wear a long sleeved shirt, he'd say, "Oh no!! Where'd tattoo go!!??", and when it eventually started to wear off, he'd say, "Oh no, tattoo's going away!!" I finally scrubbed it off, promising that we'd get him a new one. In fact, Tim and I told him that we'd let him get full sleeves on both arms, as long as he never shows them to Grammy...

*SIDE NOTE: As I am a complete moron, I thought it would be a good idea to take Alex to the "Halloween store", one of those seasonal setups in a nearby strip mall stocked with every Halloween-related product one could imagine, so I could pick up my hillbilly teeth. I thought, this will be fun! Alex will love to look at all of the fun costumes! Like the bloody skeleton holding a severed human head! Oooh, or the mask with the bloody eyeballs and gnarled fangs and spikes sticking out of its head! Or, even better, the life-sized demon baby that hisses at you when you walk by! SO FUN...as long as your idea of fun is your toddler waking you up in the middle of the night to tell you things like, "Scary baby at the door!!" or "Monster knock on window!". Ever since that fateful trip, everything "scares him", and he has often used "being scared" as an excuse to stall at bedtime or naptime. His old standby is, "Monsters scare me!", and in order to get rid of the monsters, he requires that I go to his door and say, "Monsters, go away!!, and perform a wave-like hand gesture that must be done in a very specific way (because otherwise, according to Alex, it simply isn't effective at shooing monsters).

Binns Boo Bash '09

I thought September was a hectic month until October hit me like a ton of bricks. Between plane trips and Halloween parties and church functions and houseguests, we have been going non-stop since the first of the month, and things don't seem to be letting up anytime soon.

I have umpteen posts to catch up on, but I'm gonna try to keep things in order and start with our first Halloween party of the season, the Binns' Annual Boo Bash. We almost missed it because A had some bizarre mystery virus earlier that week, but luckily, he had been fever-free for days and seemed healthy and in good spirits by the time the party rolled around. Having been out-of-town the previous weekend, combined with the fact that the party was pretty early in the month (the 10th), I hadn't gotten around to designing a fabulous costume for A, so we just went with an old standby that only required some rummaging through closets and the dress-up box.

Disappointing, I know. But with 4 more Halloween events to follow, it is still possible to redeem myself...

He does make a cute cowboy, though, and he really enjoyed dressing up like one. I assume they have talked about cowboys at school because when I told him that's what he was going to be, he said "Yeehawww" and told me he needed a rope because, duh Mom, no cowboy outfit is complete without a rope.

In case you're wondering, yes, that is the same hat Alex wore on his first birthday, size XS, hence the reason head looks so huge. He doesn't have a giant head, he just has a little hat.

Off to the party we went, and as usual, Alex made a beeline straight for the train stuff. When does this train-obsession phase end, exactly?

Of course, he wasn't the only boy there going through the obsessed-with-trains phase. I was a little afraid Alex would try to hip-check anyone who tried to get in his way of the horn or the steering wheel (not that he is a bully, per se, but the boy is serious about his trains), but he played really well with the other kids.

Ain't my boy just the purdiest thing y'all ever done seen?

The trains weren't the only attraction at this bash. They had a "haunted house" with a fog machine and a "ghost" rigged up on the inside, basically a robotic arm with a head and red eyes that was draped in a white sheet, and it was motion-sensored so that it would move around when the kids came near it. The first thing Alex said when he saw it was, "robot!" I guess that white sheet wasn't foolin' him.

They also had two moon bounces and pinatas and a swingset and a clown who painted faces and made balloon animals.

A was really into the tire swing, particularly spinning around in circles on the tire swing, and being the good mother that I am, I obliged him and spun him around as he yelled, "Faster! Faster!" And when I got him going at a good 600RPMS, I heard Tim gasp and looked down to see that Alex's eyes were rolling around in his head like he was having some sort of a seizure. I stopped the swing and his eyes just kept on a-rollin'. Tim and I totally panicked and thought Alex was about to pass out, but within seconds, his eyes slowed down and he smiled and said something like, "I'm dizzy!" He wanted to spin again, but I put the kibosh on the spinning, at least for that day.

Towards the end of the party, we attempted to gather the kids for a group picture. Candid kid pictures are about the funniest thing ever. Here are a few examples of how that experience went down.

What isn't pictured is how Alex kept grabbing the witch hat of the little girl in front of him and smushing it down on her head so that his face was free from obstructions when his picture was being taken. It was one of those situations where I felt bad for the little girl but couldn't stop laughing because, well, it was funny.

It was another great year at the Binns Boo Bash! Can't wait 'til next Halloween!

All Aboard Slideshow

I got the rest of the train pics uploaded to Flickr, so here is the whole event, slideshow style.