from the kids say the darnest thing file

Whew! That's so stinky I could smell it from yesterday.

-Ellis to me as I was changing Maddox's diaper

and speaking of tiny nerds...

Ellis watched Star Wars for the first time today. Trey opted to start with Episode IV, which is really the only sensible choice I suppose. I thought Ellis would be a bit more excited about it since there's been building peer pressure to become familiar with Luke et al. We tried to help him understand the plot but I was still worried he was confused until the following exchange:

Me: Okay, Han and Luke are almost to Princess Leia's home planet now.

Ellis: No, Mom, Alderaan just got destroyed.

The bigger revelation is that I think we might need to get his ears checked (again) since he thinks major elements of the movie are Dark Vadar, droits, Obi-benobi, and the Dark Star. Hmmm....well, maybe after 50 to 60 more viewings he'll get the kinks worked out.

tiny nerds

We're trudging through March and I'm trying to get a video of Maddox's experiments in backwards walking, which is ADORABLE. But another of his new developments is opening doors (only the lever kind, but still), which is terrifying like that part in Jurassic Park. There's no safe place anymore!

Meanwhile, Ellis has been participating in a book discussion club at his school. It used to be held during school hours, but was shifted to a book store last weekend. The store owner was so impressed that 4 and 5 year olds were able to sit quietly talking about a book for 30 minutes, she posted their picture up on the store's website (view full screen to see the full photo).

maddox is one-and we are free of the pressure to write a post every month

Birthday cake in pictures:

First Grandma made a cake with Blue on it in honor of our Bluesy.

Ellis handled candle blowing support and instruction.

And followed with a birthday kiss.

Finally a taste of cake.

Pause for the media.

Now eating in earnest.

And, in a spontaneous event that bodes poorly for his 21st birthday, he basically chugged the rest of the piece.

And now just the fork to scrape up the rest of the icing. Something about his expression here really reminds me of Grandpa Mike.

So the kid is one and I am not kidding about being relieved of the pressure to do these monthly posts. I can't believe we are managing to do it for a second child, but we are. He is doing great. At his 1 year physical he was 86th percentile in weight, 96th in height and 99th in head circumference. He is quite strapping and very strong and the doctor said that she likes to see the big ones a little behind in weight as compared to height and it is consistent with how strong he is.

It is a bit of a cliche, but he is entirely different than Ellis in almost every way. While Ellis is very muscley and dense now and was a pudge at one year old, Blues is muscley now. Ellis also had extremely clear food preferences, strongly favoring berries and meat. Blues has a more wide open palate and day to day it is hard to predict what he will want. His enjoyment of meat has increased greatly, particularly beef. Big paw fulls of shredded pot roast were probably his favorite meat thus far. Blues also likes a lot of odd things. Sweet pickles are a favorite and even black and kalamata olives have been consumed with relish. Sweet potatoes actually put him into a semi-wild state that frightens us.

While awake, Blues insists on being vertical almost all of the time since he has learned to walk. Combined with his strength, this resulted in him overpowering the doctor at his physical and we had to hold him down. His balance is improving everyday. He does the stairs like a champ, coming down in a barely controlled free fall, feet first.

He isn't talking much, but he is making a lot sounds and almost singing. His use of sign language is limited to "more" and "milk" but he does them intentionally and gets his point across. His dancing is awesome, but getting a video is almost impossible as he loves coming after the camera more than he loves dancing. Another elusive video is Blues playing with Scout. While Scout is leery of Ellis, she is much more accommodating of Blues, who pets her nicely and uses her as a walker from time to time.

As far as play, he loves being up in the learning tower where he can see what is going on up on the counters while we cook. He loves stacking objects and he also loves his shape sorters and musical instruments. He loves pouncing on me when Ellis gets me down wrestling and clearly can't wait to be able to wrestle with Ellis.

He is still very snuggly, and I think it can be fairly said that he likes his daddy more at this age than Ellis did.

His tiny will is evident and stubborn. One more way he takes after his mother and her people...I can't wait to see it expressed in words.

Spring for a day

In an effort to appear like a real Vermonter for my 2036 run for Governor as a member of the New Bull Moose Party, we tapped our maple trees today for making syrup or maybe some fermented products.

Ellis really likes the idea of tapping the trees and his memory of what he learned at his school trip last year is completely astounding. That said, he wasn't much help, being more like a foremen, hollering at me about what to do next as I tried to get the trees tapped.

Here he is heading off to scout the next tree while I am still tapping the previous.

Here we are hammering in one of the taps. Our local farm store had taps, buckets and lids, $10 for a set. We did only three trees, wanting to see which way the spring leans. In a good year some trees will give up 20 gallons, which I find astounding, but other years 5 gallons is a lot. One coworker did report that the year he collected sap for syrup, going out to empty the buckets was a several-times-a-day ordeal and he never did it again as it just was a pain in the butt. We did get 2. 5 gallon buckets which should prevent this, but even so, it takes close to 40 gallons of sap to make on gallon of syrup.

Only a few hours after the taps were inserted, sap was flowing in two our of three trees. Tasting the raw sap, I had to wonder how anyone ever detected that there was sugar in there at all. Lots of people were hustling to get their taps in, as this warm weekend was supposed to be the start of the season. Apparently the best seasons are rainy, with nights below freezing and days with highs around 40. Unfortunately, tomorrow night it will get cold again and we will get a foot or more of snow. This could bring the snow up to the bottom of our buckets, but we should be able to stick with it until the next thaw.

is in AND out like a lamb too much to hope for?

As usual, February seemed looong around here, despite its few days. It brought bad moods, crap weather, professional disappointment, and a return of Trey's sinus infection. But, everything will be okay now that it's March, right?

One bright spot in February was a visit from my mom. Ellis had a week's break from school so it was an especially good time to have another adult around. She played with the kids and visited ECHO aquarium with us. Here she is giving Ellis a lesson in ironing, (apparently something he's never seen me do before--oops!) while making him a Cars blanket and helping with some art projects. Who would have thought Ellis would look more enthusiastic about ironing than building a model car?

Grandma's main activity, however, was attempting to push the rope that is any household project around here. You may remember we started redecorating in the kitchen back in (yikes!) October. While we managed to get the walls, but not the trim, painted and some new switch plates up, no further progress had been made. So we have no curtains, no decorations on the wall, and the same 80's (70's?) lighting fixtures. Mom had sent me two prints for my birthday and so she framed those and Trey hung them up. She also helped me pick out a new light fixture and used some fancy faux-finish spray paint to get rid of the brushed aluminum look. The spray paint was pretty amazing by the way; you could never tell. This demands a picture, of course:

Next we are off to visit Ganno in Baltimore. Well, Trey is going for a scientific conference and we are hitching a ride.