Wrappin' The Shower Presents

"Okay. I got the toys, the tape and the wrapping paper. Let's get to work!"



"Hmmmmm. If I put this on here, like this. And then, this one......"



"Hey! What's this thing? DUDE! It would have been REALLY nice to have had one of THESE when I got those two bottom teeth, ya know. I'll guess I'll just add that to my, 'Things I Should've Had But Didn't Because Mommy Is A Newb' list."



"ANNNNNNNNNNNYYYYYYYWAAAAAAAAAAAYYYYYYYYYYSSSSSS. I can put this toy, that I DIDN'T HAVE, on top, like this. We should be all set. Okay, MaMa, get to wrappin'. Careful with that tape dispenser, it's tough on the gums."

CAUTION!!!

Baybee K.T. here.

I just wanted to warn everyone that books are evil.

They bite.

No. Really. They do.

So, be carefull, okay?

Hime here.
This board book drama has become a daily occurence at our house.
K.T. will be sitting on the floor quietly flipping through her book.
When she decides that she's done, she'll shut the book and forget that the fingers of her right hand are still inside of it.
She'll then use her left hand to push off on the book to try get up to a standing position.
This, in turn, squashes her fingers in the book.
Instead of taking her left hand off of the book and removing her fingers, she just squats there and cries until I rush over to save her.
Books are not evil. K.T. is just a clutz.

The Company, uh, Picnic?

This past weekend we went to the "Company Picnic".

I've never been to a picnic that had a couple thousand people in attendance.

Here is a taste of what they had available for entertainment: climbing walls, hayrides, pony rides, a dozen volleyball courts, a huge food village, a dozen Jolly Green Giant sized red wagons filled with any type of soda/water you would possibly want, about 20 different kinds of inflatable amusements (a.k.a. bounce houses or jumpin' bubbles), a fenced in toddler area, two stages for music/shows, a casino, an arcade, a puzzle challenge, life size chess/checker boards, a petting zoo and a mechanical bull.

The thing was so big that they handed you a MAP when you walked in the gate.

Besides pointing and laughing at the petting zoo animals, Katie wasn't really old enough to do much more. But, mannnnnn, next year we are gonna have a blast. It was, like, kid central in there.

Other than that, I was at the book store yesterday and bought into the whole Harry Potter marketing machine.

I picked up some Bernie Bots Every Flavor Beans.

I know. I know. They're just Jelly Belly Beans in new packaging. Yes. I know that. But, they had some intriguing flavors listed on the back such as: Booger, Vomit, Earwax and the like.

My curiousity got the best of me. I wanted to see if they would really put disgusting flavors in the box.

I shoulda just walked by the display and not looked back.

The first bean that I popped in my mouth happened to be Black Pepper. And, much to my surprise and disgust, it tasted just like Black Pepper. It was horrible. My tongue burned with the pepper taste. I decided to go for another bean hoping that I would get a nicer flavor.

I ended up with Soap. Although, it did have a soap-like taste to it, I can tell you that it was much better than the pepper lingering on my tongue.

I got brave a couple of hours later and decided to go for another.

What a mistake.

I got Earthworm.

Hairy Huzbend
and the
Terminal Tome

Huzbend received his copy of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows yesterday at about 10:30 am.

By 1:30pm today, he had finished it.

I'm not kidding.

It took him about 7 hours to read the entire thing. That's an average of 100 pages an hour.

He is now a keeper of "The Secret".

Everytime I look at him I can see in his eyes that he really wants to tell me what happened.

Well, now it's my turn to say goodbye to Harry. I'm excited to read the final book, but also a little sad that we'll have no more wizardly adventures to look forward to. Sigh.

I can tell you one thing. It'll take me closer to 7 weeks to finish a book that big. Not 7 hours.

Some Things

THING #1:
Yesterday was my women's only ride with the cycling club. It was raining off and on all day. I thought that they might cancel, so I checked my email. Nothing.

So, I drove to the meet up spot and noone was there. They must have cancelled and I just didn't see the notice.

Sigh. Since I was already there, I went a little tiny ride by myself.

I-90 crosses over Lake Washington into Seattle. On the bridge over the lake is a bike path. I'm not kiddin' you. There are trails all over the freakin' place here. They go everywhere. Huzbend said it was a cool ride, so I went for it.

To the right of me was a guy water skiing and to the left of me (behind concrete barriers) were cars driving past at 60 to 70 mph.

Freaky deaky.

I happened to check my email this morning. The "RIDE CANCELLED" email was sent out at about three in the afternoon, but it didn't hit my inbox until one frickin' AM.

THING #2:
In case you didn't know, the Tour De France is back in full swing. It's another good race with a lot of contenders. Check it out if you get the chance.

Now that I actually ride a bike every once and while, I have determined that the professional riders are superhuman.

No. Scratch that.

Make it IN-human.

Let me put it this way: They can maintain a steady pace for over an hour while climbing one of the steepest mountain passes in the Alps. They even have energy left over to attack each other with short bursts of speed while going uphill.

Meanwhile, I get out of breath going up my driveway.

THING #3:
Dean Martin has the sexiest singing voice ever.

I was listening to one of his songs as I was stuck in traffic on the way to my cancelled ride yesterday.

Man, can that guy croon.

THING #4:
You can learn a lot about a person from the songs on their IPod.

For example, here are some notable selections from my song list:

Dean Martin "Ain't That A Kick In The Head"
Marilyn Manson "The Beautiful People"
Starland Vocal Band "Afternoon Delight"
Monty Python "Always Look On The Bright Side of Life"
Tina Turner "You Better Be Good to Me"
Disney's "Main Street Electrical Parade"
Nine Inch Nails "Head Like A Hole"
Meco "Star Wars Theme/Cantina Band (Disco Mix)"
Weird Al Yankovic "Dare To Be Stupid"
The Captain and Tennille "Love Will Keep Us Together"
Right Said Fred "I'm Too Sexy"

Ahhhhhhhhh. That just about sums me up.

There's really nothing else you need to know.

Happy Birthday, Huzbend.

Happy birthday to yoooooooooou,
Happy birthday to yoooooooooou,
You look like a monkey,
And you smell like one tooooooo.

Tee-hee.
: )
Love ya!

ELEVEN

MOO!

Hellllllllllllllllllllllllo devoted fans!

I'm a whole eleven months old and I'm lovin' it.

There's so much stuff that I can do now, I can't even remember it all. So, ya gotta bear with me. I think what I'm gonna do is split it up by discipline. It might help organize my thoughts.

Wait a second. Let me get my pen so I can jot all this down.

Huh? What? What's that you're saying? Paper? Who needs paper? That is so environmentally unfriendly. I'll just use the table. Trust me. It's allllll gooooooood.

Okay, let's see.

STANDING & WALKING:

I got this cool activity table in the past month. It plays all sorts of tunes and recites ABC's and stuff. It rocks. My favorite thing about it is that I can dance to the music. I love to get my groove on.

I'm standing up on my own. I don't need to use anything to pull up with. It's only gonna be a matter of time before I master this walking thing. Trust me when I say, I'm totally workin' on it. Full time. I use just about anything I can get my hands on to practice. I push laundry baskets, I push toy boxes, I use my walker, I use the coffee table, I even use Mommy to walk me around. I can't wait 'till I can walk. Ohhhhhhh, is there gonna be trouble around here and it's gonna start with a capital K!

Here are some examples of my standing prowess:

And now, ladies and gentlemen, for my next trick I will pull a rabbit out of this bowl!!! ILUVPEANUTBUTTERSANDWICHES!!!!!

Here's an impression for you. See if you can figure this one out.

"They drew first blood. Not me."


Oh yeah, I like to try to climb on things. I've climbed the stairs a couple of times already. Goin' up is easy. Goin' down, uh, well, I haven't really figured that one out yet. Mommy and Daddy don't seem to be amused. Notice in the following pic the ingenious device they have used to block off the stairs. Now, if I just climb onto this bin maybe I can pull myself over the bench......

EATING:

I like eating. I love to feed myself. I've tried all sorts of new stuff in the past month. One of my favorites is grapes. My favorite thing to do is to shove about twenty peices of grape into my mouth and suck out all the good stuff. Then I gum the grape peels for hours afterwards. MMMMMMMM, grapes.

Is there something on my cheek? Come on. You can tell me.


So far, there isn't much that I don't like in the solids department. But, there is one thing that I KNOW that I don't like. WATERMELON. Bleck.



TALKING:

It's hard to demonstrate talking with pictures. Mommy and Daddy seem to think that I have three words: "MaMa", "DaDa" & "GiGee" (Mickey). You see, I have LOTS of other words. They just can't understand a word of what I'm saying. They really need to brush up on their babyeeze. Jeez.

OUT AND ABOUT:

I like animals. They make me laugh. I love dogs and I love ducks. Woof, Woof. Quack, Quack. All that jazz.

Here's one of my new pals. Meet Sal the Alpaca. Say "Hola", Sal!

I think he wanted to eat my hat. I'm not quite sure.

The weather has been nice lately, so Mommy and I have been hitting the playgrounds. I got to try going down a slide and swinging (with Mommy's help, of course). I have grown to enjoy both immensely. I think I had a wedgie in this picture.

But, despite all the outdoor activity. I STILL don't like grass.


CHAOS:

Is my middle name. Daddy says it's "Danger", but I have to disagree. My potential for disaster grows with every day. I'm so proud of myself. I can really freak Mommy out. Sometimes, she's speechless. I mean check this next picture out.

I pushed the high chair across the room, knocked over the garbage can, dropped my hat AND managed to get my head stuck in between the chair and the wall. OMG, am I awesome or what?!?!?!

Here's a nice little video for you all to enjoy. It shows a little bit of some of the skills I've picked up over the last month. I've got some talking, some standing, some dancing, some walking, me drinking from Daddy's Camelbak and other nonsense.

Well, that about wraps it up for me for this month. I know that I might have forgotten to write about a lot of what I learned this month, but you get the idea. I pick up new stuff everyday. It's hard work being so rambunctious. I really gotta concentrate.

XXXOOO love ya all!

I don't like this game

It's close to 95 degrees today. That's kinda unheard of for this part of the country. Usually it's somewhere in the 80's during the summer.

I forgot what real heat felt like, but I do remember that I DON'T LIKE IT. I shouldn't complain too much. There's no humidity. It's a dry heat. Still makes you sweat though.

Katie's havin' a rough time of it too. Her excema is back. She broke out all over. Poor girl.

My job these past couple of days has been to keep her as cool as possible.

Yesterday, we hit the library for Storytime.

Today, we headed to a local beach to watch a free kids concert. We got a nice shady spot under a tree. The breeze was nice.

This afternoon we headed to the University to participate in a Speech & Learning study. They had no air conditioning in their building. Katie was supposed to sit in a sound proof booth and listen to two different Chinese sounds. One sound was just a TINY bit different. It was almost inperceptable. When they played that different sound, they would make a electronic toy light up to make her turn her head. I'm pretty sure she got the game, but she began to squirm and cry after about 5 minutes. So, they stopped. Oh well. They didn't want to upset her, so they sent us home.

On the way home, we stopped at an indoor AIR CONDITIONED playground. We were the only ones there. I figured the place would've been swamped. Hmph. Katie had a ball. She climbed into a plastic tree house, climbed up and down a toddler slide, had a baby doll go for a ride on a sit-&-spin, threw balls around the room, pushed ride-on toys around, and tried to eat a peice of plastic bread.

She exhausted herself and now we're back home in the heat. She's downstairs in our cooler lower level napping in her car seat.

Tonight, I'm going on a women's only group ride with a local bike team. The last time I went, I ended up riding all by myself because, um, I suck. I wasn't fast enough to ride with the lead group and I wasn't slow enough to ride with the pokey people. So, I ended up in the middle all by myself.

It also doesn't help that it takes me about a half an hour to get my foot back into my clip-in pedal when I have to stop. It makes it hard to keep up the pace when you're looking down trying to get your foot to "click" for five friggin minutes. Jeez. It's downright embarrassing. I can just hear people thinking, "What an F-in newb."

Ding Dong! The Wand is dead.

Which old Wand? The EPCOT Wand!

Ding Dong! The EPCOT Wand is deeeeeaaaaaaad.

Wake up, sleepy head.

Rub your eyes, get out of bed.

Wake up! The EPCOT Wand is deeeeeaaaaad.

Now, if they would only do something about that damn Sorcerer's Hat in The Studios.

Sigh.

Well, since I'm up.....

I figured I might as well do something constructive.

It's just about 11pm. Everytime I have laid down to try and catch some Z's, Katie wakes up and cries.

I figure if I just stay up, she'll sleep. I know. Twisted logic. A Vulcan, I am not.

I guess this is what two nights of not-so-normal sleep does to a 10.5 month old.

Let's jump back to Tuesday evening, shall we?

~Cue Flashback sound effect reminiscent of Wayne & Garth~

Huzbend: "Transformers comes out today. It's playing at the Drive-In. Do you wanna go see it?"

Me: "Um. Sure."

We went through Katie's normal bedtime routine. But, instead of putting her in the crib we plopped her into the car seat and off we went. The hope was that she would fall asleep on the ride over. No go.

She eventually succumbed to the sleepiness about 20 minutes into the movie. Notwithstanding a few ultra-loud explosions and Optimus Prime's booming voice, she slept through the entire thing!

This is gonna sound sooooo fan-girlish, but it was everything that I ever wanted Transformers to be. When I was little, I drew Transformers. I watched the cartoon Transformers. I wrote stories about the Transformers. I pretended I WAS a Transformer. I loved the Transformers.

The movie kicked major ass. I would have paid the $8.50 admission for the 2 second scene showing Starscream transform from robot to jet. In case you didn't know, Starscream is the shiznit.

Holy Nerd-dom, Batman.

I hadn't been to a Drive-In in forever. The last time I went, my family went to see Harry And The Henderson's. I remember it because we kept looking out the back window of the station wagon. The screen behind us was playing The Terminator. Ooooooo. Rated R movie. Oooooooo.

It's still the same experience. Just as cool, I mean. The picture on the huge screen was amazingly clear. The sound that came through the radio was awesome. I guess it helped that there were, like, 200 other cars all playing the same thing. I'd definitely do it again. As long as Katie decided to cooperate.

She ended up waking up before the second movie could start. The Drive-In plays double features. So, we decided we had seen what we wanted to see and decided to head home. We got back and put Katie in her crib at about 1am. She was not a happy camper and it took me about 30 minutes to get her settled down. Oh well. I got to see a CURRENT MOVIE. The first one I have seen since before she was born. Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh. It was SOOOOOO worth it.

**Well, it's 11:30 and there hasn't been a peep from the other room. I'm gonna try and lay down again. If you don't hear from me for a while.....DUDES. You are so NOT gonna believe this! As I was typing that she started making noise. Is she psychic? Is that even how you spell psychic? Dammit, I'm tired.**

Yesterday was the 4th. I wanted to check out the local parade so we headed downtown. It was okay as far as local parades go. There were plenty of scouts, firetrucks and old cars. Katie wasn't too fond of the sirens. They also had Revolutionary soldiers shooting their muskets. She didn't like that much either. Oh well. We left before the "Pirates" came. These "Pirates" shot a cannon every 5 minutes. Damn thing was loud as hell. We booked outta there before it could explode next to Katie. Man, she woulda freaked.

The rest of the day was spent lounging around the house.

Class C fireworks happen to be legal where we live and so, with dusk approaching, the explosions began. Needless to say, Katie was not happy with the whines, concussions and sparkles occuring right outside her window. She began to wail.

I took her downstairs to the couch and she quickly fell asleep on my lap. It was all good because I was able to watch one of our big city's fireworks shows on TV (there's more than one show for some reason). Another cool thing about being West Coast is that you can watch ALL the major fireworks shows. They had New York, Boston and D.C. on too.

The neighborhood fireworks quieted down at about midnight. I put Katie in her crib and I was able to get to sleep at about 12:30. I was shocked. I thought that it was gonna be an all night thing. And you know what? The next morning, the lady across the street went out with a broom and swept up all her shells from the night before. Nice.

**I haven't heard a peep from Katie. I think I'll give it 10 more minutes. Why not make it midnight?**

Today was spent at a local zoo. Not as large as the big city zoo, this one seemed to be a good size for Katie. It was like a baby zoo. I learned a lot too.

Lemurs are matriarchal.

A Cougar can take down prey 10 times its body weight; by ITSELF. They can also run at 40 mph and jump 20 ft. straight up into the air. No joke.

Wallabies can get pregnant WHILE they are pregnant. Yeah. How about that? Mrs. Wallabie gets preggers with Baby #1. Baby #1 begins to grow. In the meatime, she has sex and Baby #2 is formed. Baby #2 (who's just a ball of cells) stalls it's development until Baby #1 is out of pouch. As soon as Baby #1 is out, Baby #2 begins to grow. Wow, huh?

**Alright. It's midnight. I'm hittin' the hay. Wish me luck.**

**Tired Mommy......OUT.**