A crappy day (literally)

I had not planned on writing about this particular event, but after several of my friends mentioned that I needed to blog the story, I succumbed to peer pressure and am now blogging about it. A couple of days last week I would go get Lucas from his nap and find him without his shorts or diaper. An important thing to note here is that Lucas usually has a bowel movement during his nap and needs to be change after he wakes up.......Do you see a potential problem with him having no pants or diaper? The first time (yes, the first time, he did it twice in a row), was not so bad. I was impressed at how well I kept my composure as I cleaned up poop and in a calm manner explained to Lucas that we do not take off our diaper and throw it overboard. The second time or the following day, did not go as well. I decided to take a nap towards the end of Lucas nap, I thought I would sleep about twenty minutes, until Lucas woke up. I woke to Lucas crying about an hour later, with about ten minutes till we needed to pick up Craig. I went upstairs to grab Lucas and get him in the car. Only to find my child covered in poop! Unfortunately it was a little more mushie than the previous day. It was everywhere; on the floor, the handrails of the crib, the crib mattress cover was caked in it, it was on Lucas feet, and his hands were covered in it. I wanted to scream, and it was very difficult to maintain my composure and I probably did let out a few sighs of frustration with the little stinker, who was laughing as I cleaned up the mess, which included scrubbing the floor, cleaning the handrail, putting the sheets in oxi-clean (I love you Oxi-clean, you were heaven sent!). I ended up putting Lucas in the tub and then into his PJ's, all the while Craig is calling wondering where I am. Amazingly enough I was able to get everything, including Lucas cleaned up and in the car in just over twenty minutes. (No worries this story has a happy ending!) On the way home from picking Craig up at work, I explained to him what had happened, Craig had had a bummer day also, so I decided it was an ice cream day, we went home had dinner and went to the Dairy for a sundae. Yummy! A day like this needed to end with ice-cream!

Our Little Monkey

Saturday Lucas was entertaining himself as I was trying to tidy up the house. He eventually wandered up stairs, I could hear him wandering around, and then several minutes went by and I heard nothing. This is almost always a red flag that Lucas has gotten into something that he shouldn't be in. I quickly head up the stairs and to my surprise I find Lucas sitting on the changing table with a pile of wet wipes sitting beside him. Now at first you would think that I would be upset about the wipes, however, my first thoughts is how did he get up there? My child climbed the changing table, probably to get to the wipes. I am not mad about the wipes just relieved he is okay and the changing table didn't topple over when he climb it. Little stinker.

Craig also discovered yesterday that he can now open and shut doors, which is unfortunate, because now he has access to every part of the house, meaning the office and bathrooms. I don't want to even think about the havoc he could cause in those areas of the house. Why can't Lucas new skills involve using the restroom, cleaning up, and listening.

Goodbye Goldilocks

Lucas had his very *first* haircut last night. I put a caveat on that because technically there was an instance in the past that involved Lucas, his hair, scissors and a broken-hearted mom, but that was more of a "Mullet-Prevention" trim. Last night was a full-blown haircut, involving hand-fulls of Lucas' golden locks falling to the ground (to be promptly picked up by Lucas and displayed proudly). When all was said and done, Lucas' hair was about 4-5 times shorter than it was only minutes before.

I think he looks pretty good. He suddenly looks more like a little boy and has lost another of the few remaining "baby-like" elements.

Flowers

Now that summer-like weather is here, we actually have something growing in front of our house. Actually, it has been growing for quite a while, but the flowers are finally blooming. We never had irises this tall back in Utah, but then they probably didn't get watered nearly as often as these ones do.

Katie and her crazy ideas....

Every once and while Katie gets these ridiculous ideas (usually from the internet) that Lucas and I just have to put up with. Tuesday brought around another one of these ideas.

I came home from work and Katie announced to me that I needed to start up the grill, and get it heating while she got the pizza dough. PIZZA!! ON THE GRILL!!! ARE YOU CRAZY???

It actually ended up being really good, and is something that we'll probably do again in the near future. Thank goodness for Katie and her ridiculous ideas.

Memorial Day

In case you hadn't heard, Boalburg, Pennsylvania is regarded as the birthplace of Memorial Day (at least 2 dozen others towns also make this claim, but hey, we live in Boalsburg, so let's just go with it). With that in mind, the Boalsburg Memorial Day activities are certainly the biggest event occurring in Central Pennsylvania, if not the entire state. Literally thousands of people descend on our quaint little town for the weekend to enjoy the parade, street vendors, military re-enactments, period dress and other festivities.

We have been unable to attend these activities thus far, due to Katie and Lucas being gone last year and Lucas being born the year before, so we were looking forward to see what all the hustle and bustle was about.

Lucas had a great time, especially at the parade. In lots of bigger cities, the tradition of throwing candy has been banned due to unfortunate accidents, but that tradition lives strong in Centre County! Lucas made off like a bandit. Every fire truck (of which there must have been ~40), antique car, political hopefully, guy on a Harley wearing an American flag shirt, etc. was throwing candy. Tootsie Roll must have made a small fortune off of the sheer amount of candy purchases for the parade.

The actual Memorial Day activities were enjoyable, but very hot. We wandered among the street vendors, watched a civil war re-enactment complete with a live cannon ~50ft from our heads (we were not prepared for how loud that thing was going to be), bought an Amish made pretzel, and wandered around the corvettes at the car show. I think we all suffered a little heat stroke after wandering around downtown for a couple hours, because when we got home we all crashed on the couch unable to move. Lucas didn't even make it home before he was asleep, well in advance of his normal nap time.

Like everything about this town, the activities were quaint. Boalsburg is a very nice place to live.

(I've also included a little game with today's pictures. It's the "One of the pictures is not like the others, One of the pictures just doesn't belong" game. See if you can figure out which one.)

Lucas turns two!

For two days last week we celebrated Lucas' birthday. On Monday we had a party for him and his friend, Cooper, who had a birthday the day before him. The theme was "balls" (don't act so surprised). Lucas is still obsessed with balls. Cooper's mother and grandma made the cutest cakes decorate to look like balls. I did the same with cupcakes. Needless to say we had plenty of cake.

Lucas had tons of fun. It was fun to watch him when he blew out his candles, though it was more of a "drool out the candles", but it worked (we made sure to not serve that part of the cake). He ate his cupcake and some of another, that was left unattended. He had no problem opening up presents.

We have been trying to teach him to say he is "two". We have had minor success with this. Sometimes he says it, sometimes he doesn't. I don't think he understands the birthday concept, yet. I would tell him it was his birthday and he would repeat me and say "birthday", but I don't think he associated it with him, maybe next year.

For his actual birthday we had blueberry pancakes, went swimming, and ate lunch at the Subway in Walmart. About four weeks ago, we were running errands around lunch time, so we had Subway in the Walmart. He hasn't said anything about it even though we have been to Walmart several times since, but the other day when Craig was with him and they went to Walmart he started to point and say, "Lunch, Lunch". Later when we went to Walmart again, he commented about it and wanted to have "Lunch." So for his birthday we decided to have lunch at the Subway. We walked into Walmart, thinking he would walk up to the Subway and say "lunch", but he didn't. He just kept walking, so Craig and I said, "Lucas, lunch". That caught his attention, he got excited and ran back into the Subway!

We also had dinner full of Lucas' favorite things: beans. Pinto and black beans (in a casserole), and green beans on the side. Lucas loved it, and ate all of the beans on his plate! We sang to him again and had more cake and ice-cream and opened more presents. Lucas had a great birthday!