abstract art

Wanna know what happens when an orange crayon ends up in the dryer with your son's cotton sheets? Call me. We'll talk about it.

Baby Charlee

We drove down to Eldo the weekend after baby Charlee was born so we could meet our new niece and Alex could meet his first cousin. And we met her, and she is just the tiniest, most beautiful little thing ever. See for yourself.

As most people with a two-year-old do when holding a newborn baby, I thought, "I can't believe Alex was ever this small". Then I realized that Alex never was that small!

Speaking of Alex...he loves babies as a general rule, so that, combined with the fact that for weeks we had been talking up our visit to "see Baby Charlee", Alex was pretty psyched to meet his tiny cousin. He wanted to feel her face and touch her eyes and pet her hair - all in a sweet, loving way. Given his track record, I was a little worried he'd have a Lenny moment and smoosh her little head between his big ol' paws, but we managed to keep his need to squeeze under control.

Man, those two are gonna have a ball someday. He really was super sweet with her and wanted so badly to pick her up by the head and carry her around the house. We told him she'd have to be at least a month old before we'd let him do that.

That last pic cracks me up every time. The look on Alex's face when Charlee starts to fuss is priceless. We're trying to prepare him for the fact that babies cry all the time because, despite his brutish nature, he is super sensitive and gets really upset when other people cry. At school, he will hug kids who are crying (nevermind that he probably punched them first), and if I cry (I'm pregnant, hormonal, exhausted, and have a two-year-old that drives me to insanity from time to time - it's gonna happen), he LOSES IT. It's about the most pitiful thing I have ever seen in my entire life, and of course seeing him upset like that only makes me cry more, which in turn makes him cry more, until eventually we are both rocking and blubbering like two rocking, blubbering crybabies. Anyway, I digress. Point is, Alex is in for a lot more tears, so he better learn to suck it up, like a.s.a.p.

Oh, and you may remember (not that one could forget) the "Team Alex" shirts that adorned the mob of family members waiting at the hospital for Alex to be born, and now here Cousin Alex is, wearing his very own "Team Charlee" shirt (while Wii-ing, of course).

When he wasn't wearing his Team Charlee shirt, he was cooking eggs in his underwear.

And let me leave you with this lovely picture of Baby Charlee and her Mommy and Daddy, who are doing great adapting to their new little one. They don't look one bit sleep-deprived, do they?

B

So I need to backtrack a little because before the snow came to Dallas, Mom did. She flew down back in January, and for nearly two weeks, she cooked, cleaned, moved furniture, painted, and Alex-sitted. I was a big, lazy oaf while she was here, but she insisted that I take it easy and let her pick up the slack, and I always do what my mom tells me to.

We had a ton of fun and I wish I had a ton of pictures to show for it, but I kept thinking, "She'll be here for two weeks, I've got plenty of time to take pictures later". Well, those two weeks just flew by, and I had barely even picked up my camera by the time she left.

I did pick it up when Mom and A were stuffing their faces with pizza. I know Mom is so happy I did.

Alex showing B how to use her camera.

One of our Christmas presents from Mom and Dad was a membership to the Museum of Nature & Science which Alex LOVES, so we decided to take him one day while she was here. Probably his favorite thing in the whole museum was also the first thing we looked at - this big contraption with a series of gears that guide ping pong balls through a metal track. He's pretty obsessed with anything that resembles a Rube Goldberg invention, so this exhibit was right up his alley. He spent a lot of time explaining to B how it worked and demonstrating how the balls moved around.

He really liked playing with the "magic" floating balls, too. He probably would have spent a lot more time there, but technically, the exhibits in that wing were for "older" kids and the table was a little too tall for Alex to reach the balls himself. Luckily B was around to offer him a boost.

Then onto the bubbles...

And the pregnant lady exhibit...

The firetruck slide...

And a bunch of other stuff...

And then he discovered the sandbox. He hasn't spent a ton of time playing in the sand since we don't have a sandbox at home, and none of the parks we frequent have them either. But after we saw how excited he was about it, we bought a couple bags of play sand from Lowe's and filled his water table up with it - that's hours of fun right there, folks! Best seven bucks I ever spent!

We ended the morning with lunch at the Museum Cafe. Alex inhaled his organic PB&J, which means he must have been ravenous because the PB tasted...well...organic. Like dirt, to be specific. Not that I have anything against organic foods - they are great on the whole - but every once in the while, they just miss the mark. And this was one of those whiles. Bleecchhh. Not that Alex seemed to care. Case in point:

That morning was definitely one of the highlights of Mom's time here. She had to go home - too soon, of course - and we really missed our Mom, our B, our cook, maid, nanny, furniture-mover, painter, decorator, and personal assistant. Come back soon, Ma! I've got lots more work for you to do!