cookie time!

This morning, the boys and I decided to make cookies. Liam was very excited because he got to be the one to measure out all the ingredients.


Then Max got into the act to help stir the dry ingredients.


Once the dough was done, it was time to lick the beater. The first photo is for my grandpa, number two in the series "The Haves and Have-Nots."

one step forward, two steps back

Friday afternoon my mom and sister Avalon granted us the rare pleasure of a child-free afternoon! We used the time to work on the house, of course (tho I'm eagerly looking forward to the day when we can use a child-free afternoon, to, say, go on a date or something). Mike and my dad replaced the dangerous microwave cord with a brand-spankin'-new outlet (Thanks, Dad!) while I went upstairs to slap a layer of primer on Liam's room.
Regular readers may remember the many layers of wallpaper that were on one segment of Liam's ceiling. Well, we thought we had them pretty much sanded down and ready to be sealed in with the primer. Ha! Once I put the primer on, the wallpaper started coming down in strips:



So now we have to go back and figure out how to get all the wallpaper down before we can proceed with the ceiling and the room. Last night we spent hours after the boys went to bed spraying fabric softener on it and scraping. Damn you, Nancy Warren, whoever you are. And your evil sticky washable wallpaper too!

cable guy

It's been a long struggle getting actual channels on our TV out here. Monday morning, the dish guy came and said the trees were blocking the sattelite view, but the other dish company should have a clear view (apparently their satellites look the other way). Tuesday morning. New dish company, same result: either cut down the trees or get cable. So we swallowed our hatred of the cable giant, agreed to their exorbitant rates, and made an appointment. After a week of watching Elmo in Grouchland and Finding Nemo practically in a loop, Friday morning and the cable guy finally arrived. The boys were in a high state of excitement and were waiting for him at the front door:

The cable guy had to do a lot of work in the yard because apparently the hungry area squirrels chewed through the cable coming through the house and he had to replace it (they'll be back to bury it in a couple of weeks). Still flying high, the boys raced from the front door to the back door to follow the proceedings:



Of course, once the cable was finally in four hours later, they were all worn out and ready for a nap on the drive to Yami's house. Figures.

daycare disaster

So today we visited the boys' new daycare (yay!), and guess how Liam introduced himself to all his new friends and teachers? Whatever you're thinking, that probably isn't it, unless you were thinking that he managed to pull the fire alarm, causing the whole place to have to evacuate. Luckily they're not connected directly to the fire station, so no trucks arrived. Liam was pretty scared of the loud sound and started crying about it when he realized it was because he pulled the alarm. Also luckily for us, everyone at the daycare was really gracious about it, or else our first visit there would also have been our last. Sigh.

well, we're in...sort of

The move was, as Mike said below, hellish and exhausting. Four days later, it feels a little less like camping and a little more like home. We've unpacked a million boxes. Since their rooms aren't ready yet, the boys have been bunking in our room. We've got a pretty big room, but it gets small awfully fast when you try to shoehorn in our furniture plus Max's crib and Liam's bed. But we're making it work. I've spent the last few days calling daycares for the boys, and it seemed that every last daycare in town was full and had a waiting list. I was just about to give up when I got a call from one of the centers saying they have openings. Whew! We're going to visit tomorrow, so keep your fingers crossed that we all like it. Once the boys get settled into a routine, we'll be able to start getting more done on the house, and before too long it will be all the way like home.


Check out this giant stack of Fiestaware that I found over the course of the move. These are just the extra place settings (I have about 20 out in the cabinets already). I had no idea I had so many. It's easy to lose track since we just shoved them wherever they would fit at the apartment. Seeing them all together like this was a little bit of a surprise. But I love them, and it makes me happy to see the table set -- it always looks so cheerful with all the colors.

night falls on plymouth

i could do a big, dramatic, picture-heavy post about our hellish yet (sadly) commonplace and pedestrian move, but instead, i thought i'd do something quick and dirty and pretty and be done with it.

here's a pic of venus rising (setting?) at about 10 p.m. sure, i'm no ansel adams, but still neat, huh?

trouble loves me

Bored on a Thursday morning? Try climbing up onto the windowsill and standing behind the blinds to hide from your father. It's an activity that Liam highly recommends. Or at least he did before he got into trouble for climbing up there. Don't worry, the window was closed. We also have them set up so that they open from top-down to avoid falling accidents.



Also, I'm hoping that at least one keen-eyed regular reader of circus forticus will appreciate the use of Morrissey in the post title. (That's you, Val!) Points for anyone else who gets the song stuck in their head for the rest of the day after reading this.

it's time to put on makeup, it's time to light the lights...

Yes, it really is makeup. The little bugger got into my foundation, eyeshadow, and even mascara before Mike caught him. Will this bedevilment ever end??

max loves liam's hat

we're almost packed!

Our dining room has turned into box central:


And that's not counting what's in our basement storage unit, or the 18 trips we've made back and forth since we closed. Wait, are we forgetting something? Oh, yeah...

max loves to talk on his cell phone

part 14 of our ongoing series, "terrible toddlers"

Not ten minutes after his father told him not to put his head through the rails because it would get stuck .... Liam put his head through the rails and got stuck.


Luckily my dad came to the rescue, unscrewed the rail, and let the boy out. Note that Liam's shirt reads: "I tried to be good, but I got bored." Truer words were never splayed across the chest of an almost-three-year-old!

max-n-cheese

The mischief continues. At naptime today I went to play Max's sleep music (sort of a rhythmic throbbing that's supposed to mimic the womb sounds) only to find the CD in the player upside-down. So I flipped it over and tried to play it -- which is when I discovered that they had scratched and smudged it so badly that it wouldn't play at all! Also for some inexplicable reason Max decided that the best use of his lunch was as a shoe-filler. And even as I type this, Mike is dropping the f-bomb in the kitchen because Max bit him. I've tried everything to distract them from evil-doing. This morning we took Liam to the dentist, then spent more than an hour playing in the park, took a walk, went shopping to get a gift for the new baby upstairs (welcome, Talia!), but nothing can veer them from their mission.

get your warpaint on

so i took the boys to my parents' house in naperville on monday, both to let them hang out with their grandparents and to give holli a chance to work on her freelance project in peace. max and liam had a great time, playing outside in the yard and going for walks with grandpa.




what is it with these kids and brooms, anyway?

so i was helping my mom with dinner, and liam was supposed to be drawing in the den. after a few minutes, i realized that things were a little too quiet, and then i heard the sound of the desk drawer opening and closing. we went into the room to discover this:


yes, that's white-out (or to be more accurate, liquid paper). all over his face. sigh. he claimed he didn't eat any. i tried to scrub it off, but he squirmed and screamed, so he got to wear his warpaint until the next day. lucky boy.

seriously. not for a second!

Here are some highlights of my day at home with the boys:




And these are just the moments when I happened to have the camera. Sorry, readers, but I didn't capture Liam putting refrigerator magnets in the toaster or grabbing every sharp thing in the house.

And lest you think I'm just a bad parent, just wait until you hear about Liam's adventures with his father at Grandma's house on Monday...

can't leave him alone for a second!

gone goldfishin'

The boys were playing in the dining room, and I was at the desk working on a grocery list. My spidey sense was tingling. It had been quiet for a while -- too quiet. Suddenly, there was a burst of laughter from both of them. So I snuck around the corner with the camera, not sure what mayhem I would find, and came upon this scene:


Liam had found a bag of goldfish crackers and decided to help himself -- and his brother. But instead of just handing Max a goldfish and letting him eat it, he was tossing them up in the air and trying to get Max to catch them, like he was tossing doggie treats or something. And Max was loving it. They were both laughing hysterically and were bummed when I broke up the fun by putting the goldfish safely back in the kitchen.

too tired to go to bed

Max knew he was tired, but he didn't want to stop playing. So he just played until he was ready to drop. Luckily, Liam brought over a folded-up blanket for him to "drop" onto. Ah, naptime.

happy boys, happy mom

saturday in the park

Saturday morning while Mike was mowing the grass, the boys and I decided to explore our new neighborhood a bit. We walked over to nearby Webster Elementary to check out their playground. Of course, once he looked around for an instant, Liam decided nothing would do for him except climibing the highest, scariest monkey bars up to a slide.





Liam's daredevil streak continued as he climbed up that thing on the right while Max was happily going down the kiddy slide over and over again. Of course, once he got to the top, Liam couldn't figure out how to get back down and started crying!



The playground has all sorts of cool features. There are the requisite slides and swings (tho no baby swing for Max), and there's a wobbly board to walk across, some modern version of the tin cans tied with string that acts as a cross-playground phone, and this neat upright xylophone:



Finally, here's Max through one of the ladders up to a swing. I like how he's out of focus, but the background is perfectly clear. I guess that's what happens when you set your camera to auto.

liam models for tq

the graduate

Today my brother, J, graduated from high school. So our family trooped across the street from my parents' house to the school and took our places in the gym. The boys had just woken up from their naps when we got there, so Max was understandably uncertain about these strange proceedings.



Liam, on the other hand, got really excited that there were so many things to clap for.



Eventually, the boys got to be too much way up in the bleachers, so we had to haul them down and walk the halls of the school for a while. After a while Mike took them outside, so I was free to wander around taking pictures. Some weird quirk of the camera made most of them come out so dark as to be unusable, but look what I got: A proud father-son moment!

i didn't have a ... clue

Yesterday afternoon Max had a fever, so I went and got the boys early from daycare and brought them home. They came home during what would normally be their naptime, so they were both a little groggy. Liam suggested that we all curl up on the couch and watch some television. Normally, they watch an episode of Sesame Street in the morning and that's about it for TV -- and Max doesn't even watch most of the time. But yesterday afternoon something strange happened: Liam asked for Diego by name. So I found it in the guide and turned to the appropriate channel and didn't realize until afterward that it was 2:29 and Diego ended at 3:00. I apologized to Liam.

"It's okay, Mom," he replied. (His new thing is to call us Mom and Dad because apparently the -y ending is too babyish now.) "Blue's Clues is on next."

Wait, what?!?! Not only does he know what Blue's Clues is (we've never watched it together), but he knows the afternoon children's TV schedule too? I guess he's growing up without me.

Max and I weren't particularly interested in Blue or his Clues, so we decided to pack up some boxes while Liam made himself right at home on the living room floor, telling me what every character's name is and playing along with the game part of the show:



P.S. Max seemed fine this morning and went back for his last day of daycare today, in case you were wondering. That's right, it's their last day of daycare. We're going to miss you, Susie and Lupe!

oasis

Take a look at our wild little bed around the big tree. It's kind of overgrown, but I like how everything is just jumbled in there. We'll probably clean it up a little bit (maybe next summer, given the rate we're going inside) but overall, this is how it'll be:

what now?

After seven mostly great years (Mobil marred the perfect record!), my last day at work was Friday. Today, I'm at loose ends, waiting for my freelance assignment to come. After weeks of non-stop running around, packing, interstate driving, painting, scraping, and taking care of the boys, I've suddenly got too much time to think. It's a weird feeling. Anyway. On Thursday, my co-workers, led by good friend Val, threw me a going-away party. It was a nice way to say good-bye to people who have been my friends and colleagues for so long. I'm already missing them, and the job -- but I'm so excited for what's to come.

box house

After years of loyal service, my mom traded in her beloved Bernina for the super-special, extra-features, comes-with-free-gifts 75th anniversary Bernina. For anyone who doesn't know, this isn't just a sewing machine. Or it is, kind of the same way that the Bible is just a book. Yeah, it's like that.

Anyway, my parents saved the giant boxes that Bernina came in, and cut windows and doors in them to make play houses for the boys. Nothing like a little good, old-fashioned fun!