For those of you that have seen "The Grudge," you get the reference (the font is from the zombie movie "28 Days Later"). For anyone who hasn't this is just one damn creepy photo taken of our son earlier this evening.
(For the record, there was no Photoshop trickery done with this photo other than fiddling with the colors. His eyes truly are that huge adding to the frightening quality of the shot.)
We have a book that Colter enjoys called "Kiss Good Night." It tells the story of a little bear named Sam who goes through his nightly rituals with his Mommy; book, blanket, friends, milk. Sam's nightly rituals are basically the same as Colter's; book, bath, milk, friends.
After Mommy bear has read a book, tucked Sam in, gathered his friends and drank warm milk, she asks "Are you ready now Sam?" He replies, "oh no, I'm waiting." This goes on for a while until Mommy bear realizes Sam is waiting for his kiss good night. I love reading this book to Colter. Not because of the story but because Colter does certain things when I read certain lines in the book. When Sam says "oh no, I'm waiting" Colter will shake his head no and smile. When Mommy bear finally realizes Sam is waiting for his kiss good night she "bends way down, kissing Sam once, then twice, then twice more." This is where Mommy (me Mommy) melts into a million pieces. Colter will bow his head and push it toward my mouth waiting for his kiss good night. I could read this book a hundred times just to freeze this moment.
Mommy and Daddy are always saying “don’t touch the stove, hot, no touch.” But dearest Mother and Father there is a light switch on the stove that I must click on and off. I can’t help myself. And at night when I’m getting my jammies on and that darn Pooh light is calling my name at the end of the changing table I can’t help but look under the lamp shade and stare directly into the light. It facinates me. I try to grab the light but all I hear is “don’t touch the light, hot, no touch.” I beat Mommy to the punch last night and touched the light. Yeeeeeoooooow. What the heck just happened. Oh god, it hurts. I’m crying. Hold me. Why do my fingers hurt? Now I understand “no touch!” Evil lights. Oooooh, I love the cold water.
Mommy is happy to report all is well with Colter’s fingers.
Today was quite a day. Colter stabbed his wild rice meatball (yes, I said wild rice) by himself and put it in his mouth. You would have thought he just scored the winning goal of the Stanley Cup. Mommy and Daddy cheered and clapped and Colter looked at us like, “What? It’s only a meatball and I’ve been feeding myself with this thing for a while now.”
Colter had his 15 month appointment on Wednesday, October 5th. For the first time he freaked out when we walked into the clinic. He saw the receptionist and grabbed onto me and climbed me like a monkey going up a tree. He then proceeded to cry the entire time he was being weighed and measured. It was a very unusual day. Once the nurse left the room it was business as usual. Colter started moving the chairs and tried to open all of the locked drawers. After a few rounds of “this-itis,” someone knocked on the door. It was the Nurse Practitioner (cue the lights and harp music) ready to assess our screaming monkey. I swear, Colter must think this lady is an angel from above because everytime he gets to see her he’s mezmorized by her calming voice. He just stood there and stared at her. After a few moments of poking and prodding and checking for “bunnies” in his ears the development portion of the program was about to begin.
“Colter, can you see the light (he looks up at the lights on the ceiling and points) on my hand?”
“Colter, can you sit (he squats to the ground) on Mommys lap while I check your ears (touches his ears)?”
This is where we had to explain he’s too smart for his own good and knows that “light” is up, “sit” means down and can point to various body parts when asked. She then asked us what else he can do. We told her he knows “up” and “down” (squats and stands when we say “up, down”), runs to the bathroom door and pounds on it when asked, “ready for a bath?”, can undress himself with help, feed himself with a fork, stack blocks (canned goods, actually), can point to animals (“where’s the duck”) or objects (“where’s the little boy”)in a book when asked and put the puzzle pieces in the puzzle. Apparently we have a two year old but no one bothered to tell us.
It's finally happened. I'm MAMA!!!! For about 15 minutes last night, while I was trying to eat, naturally, Colter walked around me shouting "MA MA MA MA MA MA." I replied, "MAMA? Who's MAMA?" And he pointed right to me. My heart just melted. I'm officially MAMA! I'm going to cherish this day because I know there will come a day when he's 13 or so and use the same word to tell me he hates me. I know he won't mean it but I better be prepared. I can hear it now, "but why? God Mom, I hate you." Ahhh, cherish today.
Please, for the love of God and my sanity, stop touching...
the hot stove touching and licking the garbage can lid the dishwasher dial the dvd's the cd's anything of Daddy's any and all remote controls unraveling and eating the toilet paper
I would appreciate your cooperation in this matter.
Where the hell are the rest of your teeth?!? You barely had one in April, and you still only have those same cute little four front teeth and two bottoms. You holdin' out on us? Let's see some more chiclets! It's already autumn!
Now that you’ve accomplished walking, running and climbing and added “bat (bath)” to your repertoire, it’s time to conquer the fork. I’ve been giving you the fork to play with while you’re eating for some time now. You love the fact that I’ll say “stab,” then playfully stab the fruit or stabable object and hand you the fork to put said object in mouth. You’re actually quite good at aiming for your mouth. You still have both eyes after all.
Last night was a turning point for you. You actually wanted to stab the fruit yourself and put it in your mouth! Unfortunately the fruit was a bit slippery and hard to stab, thus the frustration set in. Don’t worry little man, we’ll try again.
Favorite foods this week: Peas, peas, peas Raisins, raisins, rasins
New skills: Putting the puzzle pieces in and screaming at the decibel of an airplane Putting shapes into the shape sorter
(The picture on the left was stolen from USA Today. The Bay St. Louis area was where the largest recorded surge hit at 22 feet. The cursor I inserted just to the right is where Mom's house is. You can find the entire map here at USA Today. Click map to make it bigger.)
Katrina, that bitch...at least, that's how Mom refers to her. Mom and Jim's house sits near a bay on the Gulf Coast of Mississippi. They bought it in April of 2005, looking for someplace to stay for half of the year. We visited her in April by flying into New Orleans, which is about 60 miles west of where Mom lives. She's in a little division called Diamond Head right off of I-10, just across from the bay where Katrina hit shore. The town of Bay St. Louis is said to be 100% gone. Not too far from Mom, a few miles. They're in Bismarck right now taking their time headed south. Not much to hurry home to, much less a home.
Mom's preference right now is to get back, find nothing but the concrete slab on the ground, have the insurance pay off the mortgage and turn around and start somewhere else. Of course, no matter where you go, you run into the chance of something like this happening again. Florida? Too many old people and more hurrincanes. Arizona? There's already one giant meteor crater there, who's to say another one won't strike? The pacific northwest? Volcanoes. How about Montana? Earthquakes here and here (Google Satellite map of Hebgen Lake Earthquake).
Here's what the house used to look like:
Bay St. Louis is behind the house, across I-10 and only a mile or two away. With all the reports of the surge hitting up to five miles inland, don't think there'll be much left whenever they're allowed back in.
Oh yeah, they were just down there the 14th through the 20th getting some new furniture for the bedroom. Great timing for the looters...
I'm trying as hard as I can not to make those one of those maudlin pet obits that women in the suburbs seem to love to write so much, especially ones who never had any family of their own and you just know that they'll be found on the couch amidst piles of cat filth...
I had to take Hershey to the vet today. He left us just short of 16 years. One way to think of how long he was with Jennfier and I is that she got him just before she joined me in Sidney, Montana in March of 1990. That means Hershey's been from Minneapolis, to Sidney, Bismarck, Bozeman and back to Minneapolis again. I took this picture of Hershey this morning. I tried to get him and Colter together, but it was no go. His kidneys were failing him and he never really got used to his new playmate, Colter. He started to take it out on Colter a little lately and took to not just peeing in his room, but on his books, shoes and a few other things that were left accidentally laying about. Already weird not having him here.
You’re just over thirteen months old now and I’m probably a bad mother for not keeping up your baby book. I think the last entry was somewhere in the month of June. Truth be told, I’m too darn tired. You’re constantly going from the minute you get up (6:00 a.m.!) until the minute you go to bed (8:00 p.m.). You’re running, climbing, exploring everything.
You used to say “car car” like there was no tomorrow but now everything is (while pointing) “this” and “dat.” You want to know what everything is. You’ll pull up your shirt and find your belly button and then run to mama and pull up my shirt and shove your little finger in my belly button and say, “dat.”
You don’t quite understand the word “no” yet. Actually, I think you understand but you think that “no” means “this must be something really good if I can’t have it,” like ripping the nightlight out of the wall (my little moth), trying to take garbage out of the garbage can, shoving farm animals into the VCR and pulling dirty steak knives out of the dishwasher. * I’d like three wishes now…#1 make me an octopus, #2 put eyes in the back of my head, #3 turn me into Super Nanny; that woman is a genius * You earned your first official time-out; one minute for touching the hot stove door repeatedly. Never mind you would touch the stove, be told “no,” laugh and then wait until the very second we reach out to move you, you’d run away. How old are you? Is this normal?
Some of your favorite things: Monkey Eeyore Little People Farm Peas String cheese Wheat crackers Water (won’t touch juice)
Yesterday we took a trip to the Doctor. You’ve kept us up the last three nights in a row and you’re a nice shade of yellow. I was thinking the crying could be teething but upon further review with Diane at work, maybe it’s an ear infection. I’m officially a bad mother. I didn’t even think of an ear infection. You’re not tugging at your ear and it only happens in the MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT. Don’t you know I’m already running on fumes at work? The yellow, I have no explanation. The only thing I can think of is it’s something to do with your liver and that scares me to death.
The diagnosis:
I’m officially an idiot.
You’re yellow because you eat too many yellow vegetables, mainly squash and carrots. I thought vegetables were a good thing. I guess we’ll just stick to the peas and green beans for now. No more squash/corn/chicken or peas/carrots or squash baby food for you little Mr. Now what are we supposed to feed you?
I asked about the temper tantrums; screaming, throwing yourself on the ground and chewing the carpet – normal.
Colter's a little boy, that's for certain. One the one hand, he did wait until his first birthday to get his first major scrape: a header into the patio door bottom edge.
The fourth of July conjures many happy memories for most of us, one of my favorites is the time between my junior and senior years in high school when my friend Bob Townsend and I were lighting bottle rockets off on a Missouri River sandbar by his house. The family's German Sheppard was chasing them and bringing them back. Yes, bringing them back before they exploded. No matter how hard we tried, she would manage to get ahold of at least two out of five rockets and we'd see them explode in Heide's mouth along with a mouthful of sand. *POOF!* was all we could hear. The first five or six times, we figured she'd give up, but no. That day Bob tossed a bottle rocket into the air that landed about 15 feet away from us...pointing up the sand hill. Bob wasn't fast enough to duck. But then again, Bob was never the fastest, if you know what I mean. The bottle rocket flew up the sand hill and smacked Bob right in the eye. I ducked. I got to go on vacation with my mom and dad (Bob was supposed to go with us) to Idaho and go whitewater rafting for the second time, and Bob got to go to the emergency room.
Not a happy memory if you think about from Bob's point of view. Ah hell, here's Colter trying to stuff his mouth full of as much watermelon as he can. Kinda like Heide and the bottlerockets and sand.
I thought maybe I should post an actual picture of Colter from his first birthday. His treat that night was a carrot cake cupcake that the "What to Expect..." book assured us he would like. Turns out he didn't. Or maybe he just didn't like the cream cheese frosting, judging by the wince on his face when he tasted it. At least he had a good time destroying it on his plate.
Here's a very good picture of my nephew, Dawson. This is from the Memorial Day weekend trip we took to Bismarck. Dawson, like his father, Kevin, likes a good smoked meat from Famous Dave's, but it looks like Dawson just discovered he has no idea how to order, since he's only a year old and thus, can't read.
Colter has officially been walking the earth for one whole year, now. He's actually been walking for about 3 1/2 months. We've had to totally refigure the living room since we couldn't block him into a small area where he could be loose. Now he's loose in the entire apartment! This has resulted in many new phrases being heard around the place such as, "Gah! Don't touch that! No no no no no! Put that down! Don't eat that! What are you eating? Get that out of your mouth!" and of course, "you're home, it's your turn to run after him."
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