Touch of Nature

One of my favorite things about our home here is it’s little garden courtyard. It’s an outdoor space open above to the sky, yet enclosed on four sides, adjoining the dining room and a bedroom.

When we first moved in it had a broken slate covered fountain, a couple sad-looking potted plants and lots of rocks.

Adgie had a lot of fun helping me move rocks, fix the fountain and plant lots of tropical greenery.

Almost done, and it looks much better!

While Adgie and I were planting our little garden, we discovered some critters that had made their home there. I suspect that they originally came from a local plant nursery, hiding on past owner’s plant purchases. By their population size, they seem to be thriving in the almost predator-free safety of our courtyard.

To see them, though, you need to look closer.

Much closer.

Now can you see them?

They’re called Greenhouse Frogs, and at least twenty of these teeny tiny frogs live in our little “jungle”. Adgie and I think they’re adorable, but we also love them because they keep the insects in our garden at bay, and during the rainy season, the evening air is filled will their soft calls.

Adgie and I like to sit together looking through the glass, try and find them and watch them jump about. I wonder if they realize that they live in the froggy equivalent of “The Truman Show”?

“One touch of nature makes the whole world kin.”  ~William Shakespeare

Deep Conversations with a Three Year Old

A conversation my DH, Adgie and I had yesterday:

Adgie: “Daddy, I got an owie!”

DH: *inspects little scratch on Adgie’s leg* “Oh no, what happened?”

Michelle: “He scraped his leg against an strangely sharp screw head that was on the underside of the table.”

DH: *still inspecting Adgie’s scratch* “Oh no! You got scratched by a screw?”

Adgie: “Yeah Daddy, I got screwed!”

A Grand Day Out

The other morning, I had a severe case of cabin fever, and decided I had to get Adgie and I out of the house. Not just anywhere out of the house, but I had a particular itch to go swimming. You see, last summer all of Utah’s public swimming pools banned all “diaper-dependant folk” because of a “Crypto” outbreak. The ban was recently lifted, Utah’s pool water is “crypto” free, and when I have an opportunity to take advantage of a cheap, toddler-friendly activity, that does not involve being at home, I am all over it.

Adgie loves playing in water, so I was surprised when he said he didn’t want to go swimming. He’d rather watch TV, he said. So, I spent the next ten minutes trying to convince him to come swimming, during which he repeatedly claimed that he’d rather watch TV. This was frustrating because I KNOW that he’d have much more fun at the pool than watching the current show on TV (which happened to be the most boring preschool show ever, “Max and Ruby”.) Eventually, I give up on trying to convince him, simply scooped him and our swimming gear up, buckled him into the car, and start driving to the pool.

The closest, indoor, toddler-friendly pool I know of is 20 miles away, so for the half hour drive there, I hear Adgie wailing:
“No swimming! No swimming! No swimming!”Over and over and over again.

When we arrived at the pool, Adgie finally stopped crying. He recognized the building from last year, and like a mini Mr. Hyde to Dr. Jekyll, he suddenly became very happy and excited.

“Swimming! Swimming! Swimming!” He squealed.

I got him out of the car, and went to grab our swimming gear (our swim suits, towels and Adgie’s swim diaper.)

I couldn’t find any of it.

That was very odd, because I distinctly remembered taking the swimming gear out to the car. I checked every nook and cranny of my car several times and it was still nowhere to be found. Then I remembered the last place I saw it: in order to free up my hands so I could buckle Adgie in before we left, I had placed the pile of swimming stuff on top of the car.

Oh crap.

I hurriedly put Adgie back in the car and started driving back towards my house. This of course greatly upset him, as he had just barely decided that he did indeed want to go swimming.

“Swimming! Swimming! Swimming!” He cried the entire way back.

As I drove, I surveyed the road, looking for our stuff. Of course, I had no idea where it would actually be, or if I would be able to find it, but I figured it would have fallen off the car very close to where I had began the drive.

I am happy to announce that I did find all of our belongings, but not in the nice little pile in our apartment’s parking lot that I imagined. No, it was scattered about the middle of a busy highway. When I spotted it, I pulled over and had to watch out for fifty mile an hour traffic while I gathered up two towels, two swimming suits and a swim diaper. I ran back to our car, quickly brushed everything off, and started the 30 minute drive back to the swimming pool. I was going swimming today, dammit.

When we arrived at the swimming pool for the second time, I realized we only had one hour left to swim before I needed to be back to pick up DH (oh, the joys of sharing a car). I rushed in, we changed into our swimming suits and we climbed into the pool. As Adgie giggled and splashed around in the water, I sat back and enjoyed the warm, relaxing water. That’s about when I looked down at my swimsuit and noticed the large, black tire track going across my left boob.

Oh well. What mattered was that we were finally swimming, and neither of us could be happier about it.

Oh! Christmas tree!

Growing up, decorating for Christmas is something my parents take very seriously. In the front yard, they cover the whole roof, all of the windows and every last tree, bush or shrub, with lights. There is at least one tree, that has blinking lights synchronized to a selection of loud electronic Christmas carols (to our neighbor’s chagrin). The lawn has a herd of lit mechanical reindeer (that the aforementioned neighbors have been know to rearrange in various naughty positions when no one’s looking.) Inside the house, there are wreaths, lights, mistletoe, snowmen, santas, nativities, and stockings. They even have 3 Christmas trees, yes THREE. My Mom couldn’t decide between two styles of ornaments AND she couldn’t bear to get rid of her grandmother’s vintage tree. So she has three different trees, now. The “main” Christmas tree is over 9 feet tall and underneath it is where my mom sets up her ceramic Christmas village that is encircled by a festive train. Every year my Mom collects new buildings, trees, figurines and other things to add to her village. It has gotten so big, that that this year it has officially been declared a “Christmas metropolitan area”.

With so many decorations, putting them up each year became an increasingly tedious process, and I became increasingly grinch-like with each successive holiday season. But now that I have my own family, I’m starting to warm up to the idea of Christmas decorations again. I mean, how can you resist the excited squeals of a two year old when you do something as simple as plugging in a string of lights?

I was especially excited for this year, because, at 2 1/2, Adgie is even more aware and excited about the world around him. As I set up our fake treea few days ago, he giggled with delight. His eyes were filled with wonder as I opened up our box filled with glistening round glass ornaments. When I was done unwrapping most of them, I got up to quickly use the bathroom. Adgie had been in a very calm mood, and had listened to me when I asked him not to touch the ornaments. But when I came out of the bathroom, I saw him standing in the box of ornaments, furiously stomping on them like a grape-stomper in a barrel of grapes.

After I threw away the broken remains of the ornaments, I went to the store in search of cheap, non-glass ornaments. I came home with a stack of pretty paper. I had decided to make little paper, origami ornaments, instead. Though it would be a little tedious, there wouldn’t be glass shards everywhere, should Adgie have a surge of destructiveness come upon him again.

About an hour of cutting and folding, I had a small collection of paper ornaments done. I placed them on the tree, and stood back to see to see how they looked so far.

I think Christmas ornaments may be for Adgie, what a red cape is for an angry bull, because as soon as he saw the origami on the tree, he ran up and grabbed the ornaments he could reach, and began crumpling them and ripping them to pieces. *sigh*
While Adgie served his longer than usual time-out sentence, I wondered whether our tree may only have lights on it this year unless I could think of a cheap, unbreakable alternative for ornaments. I rummaged through our closet for ideas and came across a big bag of colorful plastic balls. You know, the ones you might find in a ball pit at Chuck E. Cheese? They went with an inflatable ball pit that Adgie got for his birthday one year, but it had been punctured by a rowdy cousin, so I had all of these unbreakable plastic balls without a home…

You Named Me What?!

The other day I happened past a sale at an outlet store. They had a bunch of assorted stuff in bins that had various embroidered names on them (from special orders that didn’t go through for whatever reason). I decided to rummage through the bins to see if they happened to have anything with my son’s name embroidered on it. As I went through it, I came across a little pink backpack with name “Aryan” embroidered on it.  What were her parents thinking? (Hopefully that little Aryan had a more fortunate last name than this little Aryan.)

What are some of the worst baby names you’ve come across?

I Gave Birth to a Monkey?

I have one child, an adorable son who is 2. Like most moms, I love that little boy more than I have words to express, and I also think he is the cutest kid I’ve ever seen. Everyone else seems to think he’s pretty cute, too, and I’ve been told on numerous occasions that my little sweetheart resembles one of the cutest cartoon characters out there, Curious George. It started around the time that the animated movie came out. A friend pointed it out, and then a cousin. The comparisons multiplied weekly. While I thought Curious George was cute, it was a little odd for me to think that he looked so much like a cartoon monkey.

One particular afternoon I was waiting in a line somewhere. A mother was in front of me with a little boy who was probably 3 or 4. The little boy looked back at me and my son and got a big smile on his face.

“Mom!” he said, while pointing at my son. “Look! Curious George is behind us!”



Do you see a resemblance?

After that, I finally decided to embrace my son’s monkey-ness. Oh well, at least Curious George is cute.

Here’s a picture of him on Halloween last year…