Big Basket O' Trucks

I think I've mentioned before that Tucker has a lot of trucks. I think I should rephrase that: Tucker has A LOT of trucks. Recently, they have all come to inhabit a basket that Henny and PaPa gave him. Apparently, the basket is just the right size to completely fill up with Matchbox cars, and yet not too deep to bury any of them. Of course, the trucks do migrate to other containers now and then--in fact, I just noticed that the blue bucket for blocks is what is holding them in the pictures.

Anyway. Tucker has taken to gathering all the Matchbox trucks into one container and toting them around with him. The basket must weigh at least 10 lbs when full, but I've caught him trying to lug it up the stairs (scares me to death!), and it comes outside with him, into bed, and sometimes in the car when I can't avoid it.

Tucker looks wherever he and the cars go for "roads" to drive them on. We went to a birthday party at a friend's house this weekend, and he took his basket of trucks and lined them up on the deep window sill "road." He finds roads on cracks, on patterns in rugs, and especially on ledges. The sandbox lip is one of his favorite roads. He one by one takes all the cars out of the basket and puts them in the sandbox, then one by one takes them out of the sandbox and moves them along the lip of the sandbox. It's very serious business (and it also takes a lot of time.) :)

The only drawback is that the car/basket combination becomes a car/basket/sand combination which is not so great when the next place he dumps them all out is your bed (ie this morning).

Interesting Volunteer Garden Specimen

I know this kind of looks like a carrot we buried upside down in the soil just for kicks (except for the fact that it's hollow in the center). In actuality, we don't go burying hollow carrots upside down in our garden for fun, and it turns out that our garden is host to a really weird type of fungus called the stinkhorn (or at least that's my best guess as to what it is).

Last year we noticed these pinkish orange fingers growing randomly here and there in our garden beds. They are kind of disturbing, and very noticeable--the kind of thing that makes you raise your eyebrows and ask if that kind of thing can really grow in nature. They get bigger than the one I've taken a picture of which is already at least three or four inches tall. So far this year, this seems to be our lone random pointing finger but there's still time.

Nice Belly

I am beginning to get a belly, but really I'm at the looking-fat-not-pregnant-stage. Tucker, on the other hand, is the one sporting the belly. He has developed an affection for stuffing all the duckies he can find (usually two or three) under his shirt and running around like that (he likes to feel their softness on his belly, or that's what he says!). I don't think he's imitating me yet... in fact, I don't think he's noticed that my belly is expanding, but it is strangely coincidental timing.

34 Tomato Plants in the Ground

Since we've been married, we've never quite had enough tomatoes. Usually tomatoes are the epitome of garden bumper crops, but they've been disappointing for us, especially the past two years since moving to our new house. Last year all the ones we planted from seed died and we had to replace them with ones from Lowe's which apparently all carried a tomato blight which in turn killed all the new plants before the fruit ripened.

This year will be different.

Austin got an early start and planted the seeds about 5 weeks ago, aiming to have respectable seedlings by beginning of May. Instead, these seeds decided to outdo themselves, and became monster tomato plants within a few weeks. They became so tall we had to put them in a cardboard box so that they wouldn't topple over before they could be safely planted and staked in the garden.

Our last frost here is about May 1st, so we really didn't want to set them out until then, but by the beginning of last week the tomato situation in our sunroom was getting ridiculous. Finally, this weekend, with no frosts on the long term weather forecast, Austin took the plunge and put them out.

He filled up a whole garden bed with them, and still has 6 plants reserved in case a few die. I thought he should plant the remaining 6 anyway; I mean, what's there to lose? He thinks I'm insane. 34 tomato plants should be an amazing amount of tomatoes if all goes well. You can see by the picture below it really is a lot of tomato plants.

And this is Austin protecting the plants tonight from an impending frost.

This is Tucker helping Austin water the tomato plants (yes, Tucker's trying to poke a screwdriver into the stream of water).

The Pacifier Fairy

The Pacifier Fairy visited Tucker this week. Tucker put all of the pacifiers that he still uses at naps and at nighttime in a basket on the porch, and the Pacifier Fairy whisked them away for the babies who need them, leaving big boy toys in their place.

Tucker is thrilled by the Matchbox dune buggy, the Mickey Mouse Pez dispenser, and the Winnie the Pooh and Barney videos the Pacifier fairy gave him. In fact, giving up the pacifier wasn't as bad as I thought. There have been no tantrums, and no tears. Tucker hasn't had any trouble going to sleep at night or getting back to sleep when he wakes up in the middle of the night. All in all, the Pacifier Fairy had a very successful visit... except for one thing.

Did the Pacifier Fairy tell my son it was time to stop napping?????????????

This is day 3 of no pacis and day 3 of no naps. Tucker was already having an issue of fighting his naps with his newly discovered freedom of being able to get out of bed. But I thought we had gotten over the hump with that and were back to 2+ hour naps every day. But the lack of a pacifier has reset the naptime equilibrium again, and Tucker has turned into an insane, hyper little guy at naptime. He yawned when I put him down today, and yawned after I put him down (again) midway through his nap after going potty... and in between he gathered every car he could find on his bed and sang the Wheels on the Bus song.

Dear Pacifier Fairy, can you bring ME a present? Please bring back naptime!!!

I'll spare you the picture...

...but Tucker really likes to be naked. In fact, his skills at getting his pants off and on are really increasing. So now at night, rather than just finding his diaper a few inches down, we typically find it around his toes along with his pajama bottoms. There have been several nights recently that I've had to climb onto his bed (around the bed rail), turn him over, put on a new diaper, get the old diaper off, and pull up his pants, all without him stirring an inch. Crazy.

Tucker is also very interested in being private about his bathroom functions. He closes the door and then there is usually a furious succession of activity before he emerges. I think he tries to pee, then empty the potty chair and wash it out with water and dump it back in the big toilet and flush it all in about 5 seconds, with his pants still around his ankles. I'm not sure how clean anything gets, but at least I have a reasonable assurance he is actually peeing.

This afternoon I asked Tucker if he wanted to take his sweater off as we were playing outside. He said that he was hot so I took the sweater off. Then he decided he wanted to take his shirt off too, and next thing I know I had a bare chested boy running around. I went around the corner to fill up the watering can, and by the time I was back, he was completely naked, standing there right next to our driveway. He was disappointed to learn that he had to put his pants back on, and ran around saying "I'm naked! I'm naked!"

Random pics

Cincinnati

This weekend Austin and I had our second getaway since Tucker was born, thanks to eager babysitting by Henny and PaPa (THANK YOU!). It was a bit out of the box, but we decided to take a road trip to Cincinnati to hear a lecture by Wendell Berry and Gene Logsdon, a couple authors that we really enjoy and admire.

It was a fun break in the routine, and we enjoyed Cincinnati, which is an accessible city with a lot to do. We also got to watch the Masters golf tournament on TV totally kiddo free, which was a delight as well.

Tucker, apparently, didn't ask about us at all, he was so thoroughly enjoying basking at the the center of both Henny and PaPa's attention (though he did get into his Little Tikes car one night and tell them he was driving it to Ohio).

Jail Break

Tucker has discovered that he can get out of bed and leave his room at will during naps and at night. Tucker thinks this is an exciting and stimulating discovery that requires a lot of exploration right now. Austin and I are hoping the novelty wears off quickly and in the meantime are spending a lot of time shaking our heads at each other in a combination of amusement and irritation.

We have established that there are two rules of naptime: 1) Be quiet and 2) Stay in your room. Obviously, these are very nuanced rules that need to be tested in depth. Tucker figured out the first day that if he needs to go to the potty, he gets to subvert those two rules. And so that first day he went potty every 5 minutes for about 5 times straight, squeezing out a tablespoon of pee each time. That did NOT work for me, who had to institute a third rule: Only one potty break during naptime.

He's up there now turning the monitor off and on, turning the lights on and off, shaking a noise maker, running vigorously to all corners of his room, and rolling cars all over the floor. But at least he's still in his room. Sounds like a good nap to me.

Manners

We are pushing "please" and "thank you" hard these days, but so far with success only after prompting. A typical conversation:

Tucker: I want XXXX.
Me: Ask nicely.
Tucker: Nicely.
Me: No, ask again, but do it nicely.
Tucker: Ask.
Me: I meant, ask your whole question again but say please at the end.
Tucker: Please.

It feels a bit like a Three Stooges routine at this point, to me.

The Best Birthday Present Ever

...Was getting to see the first ultrasound of our baby today! I am at the end of my first trimester, and Baby Jamison gave me quite a show this afternoon, leaping and frolicking and generally being very squirmy. I told Tucker when I got home that I saw the baby jumping, but he didn't believe me and told me that babies can't jump. You can see from the picture that the baby already takes after Austin with its ramrod straight posture.

We asked Tucker on Easter if he wanted a baby brother or a baby sister. I explained that baby sisters probably would like to play dress up and dolls and brothers would like trucks, so of course Tucker said he wanted a baby brother. The key fact I left out was that Tucker would have to share his trucks if he had a brother... I think this would potentially (i.e. definitely) reverse his thoughts on the matter.

Tucker's real opinion, I'm afraid, is that he doesn't like the idea of a baby in the house. At our Bible Study, I occasionally have the gumption to hold my friend's baby who is now 5 months old... the first time Tucker saw me holding William, he had a fit and just completely dissolved. Ever since then he tells me before the Bible study and at other times during the week as he sees fit that "Mama not hold Henry's baby." In the nursery at church, Tucker tries to guard my lap and box the other kids out that might sit there. It sounds to me like learning to share Mama might be a little painful for all involved this fall!

Baby J is due on October 19th, which is an interesting choice of arrival dates given a wedding in Brooklyn, New York that I'm attending on October 10th. I think I will have to wear a muumuu and hide under a large boulder so that I don't accidentally make it into any of the wedding pictures... assuming, of course, that I don't go into labor in the middle of the ceremony. This is one case where I really wouldn't mind if the baby takes its time (I never thought I would say that after Tucker being 8 days late).

But in all seriousness, we are tremendously thankful for and blessed with this new life. I also am thankful for beginning to feel human again after a miserable first trimester--it remains bizarre to me that you can feel the most wretched during the part of pregnancy where the baby is smaller than the size of a walnut.

Happy Easter

We had a great Easter. Tucker really enjoyed hunting for eggs, and has been helping me upload the footage today with rapt attention. We had one of Tucker's little friends over for the egg hunt who was much more interested in playing with the tricycle than looking for eggs. It was probably for the best because Tucker was just about ready to hip check anyone who came between him and the eggs. The video really doesn't do the scene justice. After we found all the eggs, we hid them a couple more times so that the fun wouldn't be over so soon. In fact, Tucker would've liked to hide them all night but Easter dinner was calling (incidentally, even the promise of strawberries in the fruit salad wasn't enough to tear Tucker away from egg hunting, it was that much fun).

Like Father, Like Son

When we came home from working out on Saturday morning, Austin was mowing the lawn for the first time this season. Tucker immediately entered a lawn mowing frenzy and ran off to get the necessary equipment, which included finding both ear protection and a dust mask (the pollen is really bad right now) so that he could be exactly like his daddy. He proceeded to mow the hill with Austin, who admitted later he was trying to figure out a way to hand off the real 54" commercial mower to his son because Tucker is a much more enthusiastic lawn mower than Austin is.

Allergies in Virginia

My brother posted about trying to determine whether his new puppy could sleep in their room or not because of a slight dog allergy he has (http://hairballblog.tumblr.com/post/484760374/allergies). He was convinced the answer was no, because whenever he visits MY house, his allergies go wild. He's apparently been blaming them on my poor unsuspecting dog Ben. Now it turns out, Ben is cleared, and it's simply my housekeeping that is getting blamed.

Since my brother is not allowing comments on his blog, here is the REAL story: mold.

This issue has gotten bumped up to the top of our house to-do list over the past six months due to near constant misery on my part (it actually has been better recently, but still). After two years of work, Austin has gotten the drainage around the basement such that no water gets into it. Once this crucial first step was achieved, our basement efforts have gone into high gear. Austin enclosed all of the basement that has a dirt floor with a vapor barrier,and this weekend, he even ripped down all the insulation on the basement ceiling (30 huge trash bags full!). Unsurprisingly, the paper substrate on the fiberglass insulation that was pressed up against the first floor was all moldy. He also had to rip down a wall of untreated wood that someone built to partition the basement that had similar mold and rot problems. What were they thinking?

Next steps: wash the basement ceilings with a bleach mixture to kill the mold on the underside of the floor, install foam insulation along the basement walls (which mold can't attach to), and install a dehumidifier.

And the final step: my brother to stop publicly maligning my housekeeping. :)

Hello, Nalu

For those of you who really like pictures of cute puppies, I highly recommend my brother's new blog, chronicling life with their new golden retriever. Nalu is just about 9 weeks old and absolutely adorable, of course. Plus, Mike and Kat are really good photographers, so it adds to the enjoyment immensely.

Nalu's Hairball Blog:
http://hairballblog.tumblr.com/

Florida again

Tucker and I are enjoying another trip to visit my mom in Florida, but this time with good weather (well, except today). The beach is A LOT nicer at 80 degrees and sunny than at 50 degrees, cloudy and really windy. This time we're having a quiet trip with not a lot more than swimming and playing in the sand... much less ambitious than Disney World last time, but Tucker doesn't seem to be suffering too badly. Actually, he is convinced that Mickey Mouse lives at GoGo's house, and that Goldfish (the snack) grow in her cupboards.

Quote of the Day

"Where's that other guy?"
-Tucker, asking where Austin was during breakfast today

Happy Birthday, Emery!

Our first niece, Emery Campbell Doescher made her debut into the world this Sunday, the 21st. Congratulations Matt and Liz!!!!

Tucker has spent some time over the past few days looking at Emery's pictures, absorbing the fact that Aunt Liz has a baby, and also looking at his own baby pictures. For the first time, I think he's figured out that he used to be a baby as well.
http://motoringforth.blogspot.com/2010/03/emery-campbell-doescher.html

A day at the park

Tucker and his friend Amelia had a good time at the park the other day. Here are some pics courtesy of my friend Lena.

Blazer time

Henny sent Tucker an Easter blazer that he looked extremely dapper in this Sunday at church. (I know, it's not Easter yet, but what's a boy to do when he has a new navy blazer and a new tie?)

Tucker at Two and a Half

My friend Alison just did a thoughtful post about her son at 2 and a half, and it made me think about Tucker reaching that milestone as well (this past Thursday!).

First of all, I just want to say that Tucker at two and a half is very different than Tucker at two. His language has exploded in the past six months, and he usually can tell me what he's trying to say. His imagination is also exploding, so what he wants to say may have less and less bearing on reality. At two, language was a vehicle to get the food he wanted. Now it is a vehicle to tell me that his bus is flying to the moon, but is running out of gas, that he's hosing me down with water from his kitchen sink because I'm on fire, and so much more. With his increasing abilities, he has a lot of increasing opinions... about everything, really. I have learned a lot about consistency over the last several months out of sheer desperation; Tucker is amazingly methodical at testing just exactly how far he can go with anything and everything and get away with it. And yet, of course, to everyone else besides Austin and I, Tucker is perpetually a joyful and obedient little boy with a constant smile.

We're starting to learn about social niceties like "please" and "thank you," about sharing, and taking turns. He really likes the idea of taking turns with the radio in my car... as long as it's always Tucker's turn. His social sense is also developing and he pays more attention to other kids wherever he goes. His favorite is running amock in a little playroom with kids of every size after church.

He is a champion sleeper still, usually going to bed at 7 pm (maybe 7:30) and getting up at about 7 am (maybe 6:30 am). He also takes at least a two hour nap, and often three hours or more several times a week. I don't see his nap disappearing anytime soon.

He is very much a "big boy" these days, having given up his crib in January with no trepidation--he truly loves his bed and has not wavered at all on those feelings. Also, amusingly, he hasn't figured out that he can get out of his bed whenever he wants to--or maybe he loves his bed so much he just never wants to voluntarily get out of it on his own. He has been potty trained during the day and at naps since late January as well, though he needs reminders to go pee. Life is very busy, and it can be hard sometimes for Tucker to be willing to stop the action for a potty break. He is refusing to wear one piece sleepers to bed anymore--he wants real pajamas now, which would be a lot cuter if he couldn't occasionally wiggle his diaper off in them in the middle of the night in his sleep (with the expected disastrous results).

The one remnant of babyhood left in Tucker's life is his pacifier, which he is still very attached to for sleeping. He is good about leaving them in his bed, but has no interest in letting the Pacifier Fairy come and exchange them for a big boy present so she can give the pacifiers to the babies who need them. The Pacifier Fairy hasn't decided how long she'll wait for him to be willing before she comes anyway!

Tucker continues to be very focused and methodical. He lines up his trucks and cars with precision, often in big lines that caravan across whole rooms. Another passion continues to be the Wheels on the Bus videos, which Tucker talks about constantly.

Yes, that is Tucker using power tools

I guess more than the wheels on the bus go round and round.

18 lbs of Grapefruit

I bought an 18 lb bag of grapefruit two weeks ago from the grocery store. It's one of those interesting sale buys that tantalize you with the price but have questionable practicality. I mean, it was a REALLY good deal--but who eats 18 lbs of grapefruit when you're not on the grapefruit diet? Anyway, it's only taken the two of us (Tucker is apparently not in a grapefruit mood) two weeks, and we are back to looking at an empty fruit drawer with only two grapefruit left.

I try to stay away from bragging on this blog, but I do think that rate of grapefruit consumption is pretty impressive, personally.

A few snapshots of life:

7 am today. Tucker began the day by trying to teach Austin how to properly wag his duck's tail (ie tag). I've been instructed in the art of properly rubbing the tag between two fingers before, but Austin was new to the discipline. Of course, neither of our techniques pass muster with Tucker. Tucker is an attentive teacher, giving Austin at least 10" of breathing space as he yelled out Soviet-style commands "Wag the tail! No! Wag the tail!"

Church coffee hour today. Tucker goes through two cups of juice, three slices of banana bread, two boxes of raisins, three or four (large) helpings of goldfish and a good sized cookie... and still wants more. At least this was better nutritionally than several weeks ago when the coffee hour hostess put the Girl Scout cookies ON the table in front of Tucker and it was only when he had subvertly grabbed his fifth cookie that I figured out what was going on.

A few days ago outside. Austin was finishing up his workout while Tucker looked on. Austin was barefoot; Tucker was not. Austin was doing some sort of vertical leaps for his workout, and Tucker was trying to imitate him but couldn't figure out how to make his feet leave the ground to jump. He urgently tried to take his shoes off, convinced it was the shoes that were weighing his feet down, preventing him from successfully getting airborne.

Twins

Austin and Tucker happened to wear the same thing today, independently of one another. Tucker and I were thrilled, Austin not so much... apparently he doesn't like the idea of matching father-son outfits. Hmmmmm.

Bye bye winter!!!!

It's pouring today, but I'll excuse the weather because of the sheer fact that it's WARM, and the rain is washing away those last little piles of snow... I hope. Austin and Ben are still in mourning for the winter, while I am exuberant about the possibility of Spring.

On our walks this week, Ben made it a point to roll, dig, and eat snow from every little patch of snow he could find.

Austin still is going on the AccuWeather chat forums wondering if a March storm could come our way. Apparently, the snow geeks on the forums are still discussing epic April storms from years past. But there's no activity on the weather models that give anyone any hope... and Austin finally admitted last week that the snow is over for the year.

It's been so cold and snowy here that we have not had any rain since December until yesterday. We had above average precipitation, of course, but none of it in the form of rain. It's oddly comforting to hear the missing rain on our metal roof at night, and thankfully not too much seems to have leaked through our roof... yet. :)

Spoons, videos and keys...

...are the new playthings of the week.

First, keys. Tucker really likes keys right now. He wants keys of his own when we go for rides in the car. He NEEDS keys when he plays outside with his car, or inside with his ride on truck, too. He deftly runs and gets the stool from the bathroom and can reach our key rack, so no key is safe from him at this point though we are really trying to limit him to one set of totally extra play keys and another keychain that is relatively superfluous as well. It works sometimes... when we're watching him like a hawk. :) And what does he do with these keys? Well, they always end up stuck in some lock somewhere, as shown on the pictures. It could be the door to Austin's spray truck, or my car, or Austin's truck, or the front door... but eventually they find a home.


The next toy of the week is the cases to all of Tucker's videos. Tucker is an organizer. He loves to put things in order, collect things, look at them, line them up, put them together, etc. He has a set of Wheels on the Bus videos in a cardboard case with lots of paper inserts that has become more fun than his matchbox cars this week. All the DVDs have been long since rescued to safe places by us, but that doesn't stop the fun. In the spirit of plenty, he has also added to his hoard many of the cases of various VHS and other DVDs that he has... Thomas the train, Barney, I Dig Dirt. Yesterday, he carried the whole bundle with him into the car and held it the whole time he was in the car (wanting to pick it up every time we got back in the car). Last night he slept with them, and informed me at 2 am that one of the bus video cases had slid down underneath the bed and I should get it for him (for some reason, I was more concerned about him coughing, and not the missing bus video)... of course, he woke up talking about the missing bus video again. (That kiddo has a one track mind!)

Lastly, spoons. Well, actually, Tucker goes for all utensils, but he needs more than one to tackle any meal. He can reach the silverware drawer and he pulls out all the "fun" utensils he can find and runs and sticks them into whatever he's eating. He is also very specific about telling us whose utensil it is (ie "Henny's spoon").

Repetition

Tucker gets into these ruts where he repeats the same phrase over and over again. His patience is short, so if he wants dinner it may be "Tucker eat food. Tucker eat food. Tucker eat food. Tucker eat food," the whole time the microwave is warming something up for him. Or it may be trying to change my mind about something like "Tucker get apple juice. Tucker get apple juice. Tucker get apple juice. Tucker get apple juice." (Even though I've already answered and said, "No apple juice now.)

Obviously that's a case of not liking my answer. But sometimes he repeats something just out of wanting to hear himself talk "What is this?" (Raisin.) "What is this? What is this? What is this? ..." I mean, the boy is holding up a food he already knows and asking what it is just for the sake of talking. It can get maddening.

I haven't figured out the right consequence for this behavior yet. I ask him to say things ONCE. I don't do what he wants me to do if he's being a broken record. I make him get down from the table if he's being aggessively annoying during a meal. But I do want to encourage talking, and am glad he's enjoying making conversation... but can't it just be varied conversation??????

Just a question

Do any other two year-olds think that dry unflavored oatmeal is a good snack food and get it out of the pantry to eat several times a day????

Just wondering.

More doggy indiscretions

For some obscure reason, I'm very tired tonight. Oh wait, I know why: I spent a good portion of last night up with a dog with severe gastrointestinal distress.

It amazes me that Ben has made to age 10 with the complete lack of sense he exhibits around what he puts in his stomach (I was tempted to say "complete lack of sense around food" but really, the problem is mostly non-food items that end up in his stomach).

The story: Our washing machine was particularly thorough yesterday and in the middle of its spinning cycle the container of doggy supplements that Ben takes for his arthritis that was on top of it fell down onto the floor. Somehow in the process the top of the container got knocked off.

Did I notice? Nope. Did Ben notice? Yep.

I had the sense to investigate his disappearance and halted his binge through the doggy supplement container, but only after he had made it halfway through. That's right: less than 60 of the 120 bits of goodness were left, and it had only been opened a few days ago. Keep in mind the max serving a day for a dog his weight is about 5.

He did fine for a few hours until he started to drink a lot of water. Not a huge surprise because the supplements definitely smell salty (they're more like little doggy cookies than pills), and we had already experienced the playdoh effect first hand (in which he begs for water, we have to ration it every 15 minutes or so to prevent him drinking himself to death, and he pees all night long).

But then, when we were going to bed, he started needing to go outside to be sick and do his business. Urgently. A lot. At this point I googled if it was possible to overdose on those tablets, and one vet said it wasn't, because the animal just pees out the excess. Another vet said you should get them to throw up and then give them activated charcoal to absorb and toxins.

Well, the throwing up part had already been taken care of very thoroughly be Mother Nature so I did the activated charcoal bit (soaked in a little applesauce apparently makes them very pleasing to the doggy palate). Not sure it really mattered, as everything came up again within the hour.

Ben and I had lovely quality time on the couch last night, dozing in between letting him out every 20 minutes or so and getting him more water until the worst had passed. Ah, what good times... and I hope they won't ever be repeated. Please, Ben?