A eats applesauce.

The Great Escape

Apparently the life of luxury that Alex has been leading is simply not meeting his standards because Tuesday afternoon, he decided to run away.

I was doing laundry, and Alex's job when I'm doing laundry is to bang toys against the front door as loud as he can so that Murphy will bark as loud as he can which makes me want to bang my head into the wall as hard as I can.

I left the washer running and went to get dirty clothes to put into it. From the bedroom, I could hear that Alex had stopped banging and Murphy had stopped barking and assumed that the two of them would soon make their way into the bedroom. But then Alex resumed his banging and Murphy resumed his barking, and I went back into the hall so that I could tell them to stop. Only Alex wasn't in the hall.

The banging was coming from outside of the front door. Nonetheless, I kept looking around the apartment as if Alex was going to appear. Finally, I realized that Alex was the one banging on the door from the outside, that he had finally managed to open the door on his own, where he would have free range to roam the apartment complex on his own, at will. Luckily, this time, he decided not to stray far from home.

I opened the door and there he stood, looking up at me like, "It's about time you let me in". As soon as I let him back inside, he went right back to the door to attempt escape yet again. That time, I was able to capture it on film.



Fortunately, he can't reach the lock yet, so I have been able to keep him from running away for good. However, I am bound to forget to lock it one of these days. I'm thinking of writing our address on his back with a permanent marker in case he escapes, with hopes that whoever finds him will send him back to us.

approaching three decades

Yeah, so I turned twenty-nine last Wednesday, and thanks so much to everyone who sent birthday wishes or meant to. It was pretty low-key day, but a nice one. Timothy went out early and brought home donuts and Starbucks for breakfast, along with a sweet b-day card. Later, he sent a beautiful autumn-inspired flower arrangement to the apartment. I was kind of hoping for a singing gorilla or a Strip-O-Gram, but the flowers were nice, too.

The three of us met up for lunch at Pappadeaux, where I splurged on almond crusted snapper off of the dinner menu, Timothy had himself an oyster po'boy, and Alex ate about three helpings of ketchup before dumping the remaining cup onto the floor. The food was good, but let's just say I was ready for my birthday nap.

Wednesday happens to be the best night of the week for TV, so in lieu of going out, I opted to stay home and watch America's Next Top Model and Project Runway. I don't think birthdays get much better than that.

A dash of Eldo

We made a quick, impromptu trip down to Eldo last weekend to help Leah get a jump start on her wedding planning. We left Friday afternoon after Alex's nap, and instead of falling asleep in the car like a normal child, he stayed up well past his bedtime and was awake at nine-thirty when we got to Grammy and Poppa's. He slept fine and woke up later than usual. Grammy had quite the spread for breakfast so Leah and the Mamaws came over to eat and hang with A.

Grammy got out Timothy's old rocking chair and he knew right what to do with it.

Stand on it, of course. What else are you supposed to do with a chair?

Oh yeah, sitting in it works, too. I think Grammy is determined to turn Alex into a ball player so she'll have more games to watch. To that end, she got him a tee ball set so he can start practicing his swing.

While the girls worked on wedding stuff, Poppa kept A occupied outside. They pretended to drive the lawn mower, checked out the barn, and chased the chickens around...you know, boy stuff.

We got a lot done on Saturday as far as planning goes, including setting the official wedding date for January 17, 2009. And you are all invited. Yes, all of you. Just don't tell Leah you're coming or you'll ruin the surprise.

Later that night, we were instructed to crash a wedding and take notes. Which we did. Except that the bride works with Tim at TK and, oh yeah, we were invited. So I guess we weren't technically crashing. But we would have if Leah had asked us to.

We had planned to go to church Sunday morning, have lunch, then head back home. A was still under the weather, but he sucked it up and helped Grammy make everyone breakfast.

Poor, pitiful thing. After he got dressed, he just wanted to sit around and relax until everyone else was ready to go to church.

When I was ready, I sat down with him and we waited together.

The trip home was fairly uneventful and we made it back to Dallas in one piece. Since then, we've been kind of busy, hence the lackadaisical blogging efforts. More on that later.

My slimy, drippy ball of snot

I guess I have to attribute Alex's recent moodiness to massive snot backup in his brain because last week, the phlegm floods came a'-rollin'. Poor guy. He was pretty miserable which, of course, made me pretty miserable. I'm not used to him being so whiny and clingy and, at times, inconsolable. It's so heartbreaking to have no idea what's wrong with him and how to make him happy.

Pitiful, ain't he? At least it made him slow down a bit, and he was actually willing to sit in one spot and watch TV for more than a minute and a half. Not to encourage couch potato...ness, but more than a couple of minutes between chasing him from no-no's is a welcome break.

Of course, I'd rather him be healthy and hell-raising than sickly and still. So during the moments that he was feeling okay and decided to run me ragged, I just had to remember to be thankful that he had enough energy to cause trouble.

I did find a couple of things that always seemed to improve his spirits. A hot bath in the middle of the day became a common activity. He had a wicked nasty cough that made me cringe, and the bath seemed to loosen things up and give him a few minutes of relief.

And I have been letting him sleep with a pillow like a big boy to keep his head elevated, which he was really excited about. Although I can't imagine that he actually keeps his head on the pillow throughout the night, it seems to have done some good because he doesn't cough as much and he's not as snotty.

We've been getting extra hugs and cuddles, which is nice, but I'd rather he just feel better and start being himself again.

A day with the gucks

Because leaving the house will often improve Alex's mood, or at least postpone his recent crabbiness, I decided to take him to the park on Tuesday. This park is more of a big creek with some grass around it - no swings or slides or anything like that. But it has ducks and duck-like things that might actually be geese. But they quacked like ducks, which really interested Alex because that's his newest animal sound, i.e. the "guck" says "quack-quack".

My bright idea was to bring a soccer ball and let Alex run around with it and burn off some steam. What I didn't expect was for the thick, luscious grass to be so wet and squishy that A would have a hard time walking on it, let alone run on it while dribbling a soccer ball. He didn't really want to touch it, so when he fell down, he would attempt to get back up without putting his hands on the ground.

Eventually he pulled off his own shoes and I stripped off his jacket and rolled his already-soaked pantlegs up, and that seemed to help. After that, I pretty much let him do his thing while I chased him around with the camera.

We left and went home, although not without stopping at Jamba Juice for an Aloha Pineapple smoothie first.