My Winter Weather Report

Here's the funny thing about New England weather that many people may not know: the winter storms get names just like hurricanes. We just had winter storm "Aaron" come through on Friday and it dumped about 5 inches of snow in a few hours. Now winter storm "Brooke" is pelting our area with...rain. Ugh. I've decided that there is little worse than topping a beautiful snow storm with rain. Now everything is just slushy and gray.
But Toby and BJ did get to play out in the snow yesterday. Toby had fun, despite the cold that seeped through every layer of clothing he had on.

My Sense of Humor

There are a few things that make me laugh out loud.
My son usually takes the cake with that one. Tonight, it's his stupid Elmo flashlight that is quite humorous. Or, more specifically, the fact that it's 9:42 and I've resorted to unscrewing the light bulb in his lamp in order for him to stay in bed and go to sleep. So he's turned on his Elmo flashlight in order to read his books. Every 30 seconds or so I hear "ha ha ha aha ha" in Elmo-voice, which means he's turned on his flashlight (it automatically turns off after 30 seconds).
It reminds me of the major emergency we had here a few weeks ago when Toby blew out a socket by sticking a penny in it. After the fire went out (yeah, there was a night light in the other socket and that burned up nicely) we had to replace the whole outlet. Four thirty in the afternoon (in the winter) is not a good time to have the electricity off in order to replace a light socket only to discover that the only flashlight you own is programmed to laugh like Elmo every time you need to turn it on. Not so funny at the time, but hilarious now.

LOL Cats (see link at right) is another thing that I found that makes me laugh out loud. Take silly pictures of cats and write out captions as if the cats were speaking. Just plain funny, whether you're a cat person or not. Check out the site any time you need a laugh. They also have a "totally looks like..." category where you can see how two random famous people totally look alike. It's hard to explain but well worth your time to get a good laugh in. And it's free!

My New Christmas Tradition (Santa Arrives by Tugboat)

Santa Claus arrives by Tugboat in Mystic on the Saturday after Thanksgiving. So we bundled up and met our cousins and families in downtown Mystic for the event. It was such a neat time to feel like we belonged to a community. Toby had a lot of fun playing with his cousin Elizabeth (they have a love-hate relationship). Norah just stayed snuggled up in the backpack and watched everyone. Toby thought the tugboat whistle was really loud. I don't even know if you can see Santa on the boat, but he's on the front waving. (And the story at our house is that Santa works for Jesus.)

My 50th Post

I was going to title this something like "My First Connecticut Snow" or something goofy, but then I saw that I've done 49 posts, so I thought that I'd just make this a combination of randomness and get away with a generic title.

We woke up to snow on the ground. Finally! It took long enough for snow to arrive. It all melted away in about 2 hours, but at least the barren trees looked pretty for our drive to church.
We tried out the Anglican church again. Completely disorganized. Toby and Norah seemed to be the only kids in the nursery, being staffed by 3 high schoolers who looked like they had just rolled out of bed 5 minutes ago. We didn't even sign them in or anything. We remembered from our last visit to this church that all the parents go get their kids for communion. So when I went back to pick up the kids it was still just Toby and Norah and the 3 workers. Toby was eating a snack so I had to wait while he finished. The high schoolers didn't say a thing other than "They were fine." When we were walking back to the sanctuary I noticed Toby was walking funny. I look down and his jeans are totally soaked! He had an accident (he said he hid behind a chair) and didn't tell anyone and they didn't notice. They even fed him a snack while he was soaking wet! We got him changed and sat through the rest of service. Afterwards he took me back to the room to show me where he hid to pee. There was a little wet spot on the carpet but there were no towels within a hundred yards of this room (how weird). So we just left and I can't bring myself to feel too badly about leaving a pee spot on their rug. There were 3 kids in there! How did they not notice my kid had an accident?

Yesterday morning Norah got up earlier than Toby so we were snuggling in the quiet. This breaks the silence: "Hello? Is anybody awake?" (Toby yelling from his bed). He yelled this about 5 times before I went in to see why he wasn't coming out. He was just laying in his bed -- he had leaked through his Pull-Up all over his sheets and he wanted someone to change them.
Potty training is such a special time....

Norah has her 9 month check-up on Tuesday. Hopefully her pediatrician will be able to give me some guidance as to why she's not sleeping through the night anymore. Yesterday Norah started cruising--she pulled up to the coffee table and caught sight of Toby's slice of bread. She then walked all the way around the table to grab the bread and stuff it in her mouth. So maybe she's not sleeping well because she's not getting enough to eat or because she's growing and moving all the time during the day.

My Leaf-Raking Apprentice

Toby has been a fun addition to my leaf raking responsibilities this year. In a year or two I'll hand the whole job over to him. I'll tell him that he started raking leaves at the tender age of 4 months. He was around for moral support than actual labor back then, but over the years he's gotten more helpful. Now he's interested in raking the leaves into bigger and bigger piles so he can jump into them. I keep telling him that a half an acre of leaves makes a big pile, but he's just focused on his one pile that he rakes, jumps into, scatters, and re-rakes. Meanwhile I move on to other piles until my arms want to fall off. And I haven't even gotten around to where most of the leaves are yet. Here's to an exciting weekend of bagging leaves. And a random blurb on leaf raking in general:

Here's one blogger's opinion on leaf raking:
"Simply put, there is no reason to rake leaves unless you are collecting them to use in a compost pile or as a mulch underneath trees and shrubs or around perennials. This should be heralded as great news because it saves you an unbelievable amount of work. No more raking means no more blisters, sprained backs, wet knees from bagging and wasted hours of shear boredom when you could be doing fun things." (Jeff Lowenfels from the Anchorage Daily News--just from a random hyperlink I followed earlier)
He goes on to state that what you should do with leaves (and what I'll expect Toby and BJ to do next year) is run over them with the lawn mower and turn them into mulch. Great idea, except that now all the leaves have fallen and we have to get a new belt for the lawn mower, so I'm stuck with this task for at least another year. But I think the truth of the matter is that people still rake leaves on their own (instead of mulching them with the mower or hiring someone to do it) in order to have something to complain about (or something to add to the list of things to complain about). It's also a conversation starter, although a rather weak one, of course, because it doesn't go anywhere other than "Yeah, raking leaves sucks."

So here's to old-fashioned whining and more fun times with Toby tomorrow in the yard. We'll rake leaves, jump in piles, and hope that it doesn't rain before we can finish.

My Long Days

The days when Toby skips his nap are the longest. Not only because I don't get the quiet time I need but also because he's grumpy and tired the next day, too. On Sunday we went to a birthday party for a six-year-old. It was for the older brother of Toby's little friend that we met at the library. The mom, Belinda, told me that she invited his whole kindergarten class and only two kids were coming. So we went to give the kid some guests for his birthday party. We pull into the driveway and realize this woman went all out--and her kid was only turning 6. There was a (heated) tent with a cotton candy machine and a popcorn machine, a pirate theme with a pirate ship cake and treasure boxes for all the kids, and a bounce house! Toby was in playland heaven. I ended up freezing because it was all outside and I didn't bring a jacket. (side note: it's taking me a while to learn that, unlike Colorado, when it's sunny here it's not necessarily warm) I went expecting to see maybe three kids and a quiet little birthday party. Instead I spent and hour and a half dreading the day that I have to reciprocate on the invitation for this family to come to our house for a party. But I'm glad Toby had fun.
On Monday Toby went to his gym class instead of taking a nap, which just equalled a disastrous breakdown until Daddy came home and took him to see his first big movie: Madagascar 2, which he loved. He came home dancing and went to bed like an angel.
So here we are after two days without naps. You can bet he's going to get one today! We might stay in our PJ's for most of the day. Toby ends up making a fort of some kind with the laundry basket to watch his favorite PBS shows. Here's a picture (he looks pretty tired):

My Kids in Stages

Here's a picture of Toby, just one week shy of 8 months, when he pulled himself up to stand using a toy that BJ's grandmother bought for him. And a picture of Norah, 10 days before she turns 9 months, doing the same thing with the same toy. It's funny to me that they are doing the same things but almost a month apart. And how Toby was going through these stages at the Chaplin house and Norah is also experiencing these things here in CT.