You take the good, you take the bad...

You take them both and there you have The Facts of Life.

So today was fun.

Started out with a trip to the Ft. Worth Zoo with our friends the Harpers. We did the primate house fairly early on because I wanted to see how the other gorillas were reacting to their fallen comrade (answer to that being not well). We swung over to see the chimps where Jenny and I had ourselves giggling with our running commentary while watching a big chimp (who we were calling Mama Chimp) trying to discipline the smaller chimp (Junior). Mama was chasing Junior all around their area and we figured he was in trouble for hiding the bananas and bratty chimp sister must have told on him again; Mama kept seemingly reprimanding Junior and actually pointing at him to come down from his tree branch to where she was. Junior of course did—because how do you argue with an angry Mama Chimp?—and we assumed he would go directly into timeout.

That’s when Jenny and I realized we had the sexes backwards. And I hope to God that it really wasn’t any kind of familial relationship at all because Big Chimp slammed Little Chimp into the ground and started having literal hot monkey sex right there. In front of the big window where we were standing. With our children. Jovie, in her sweetest little 3 year old voice, turns to Jenny and asks why the big one was hurting the little one.

We finally began to wonder if we were attending the zoo during mating season. We have seen with our own eyes that female zebras are kept very happy physically (Jenny noted that since zebras have a black member they must actually be black with white stripes, thereby ending that age-old debate) and elephants have penises that are bigger than Will. We got to see four lion cubs feeding at their mother (Jovie: “Mommy, that’s how Julia’s going to eat”) and several kudus going at it. When we made it to the penguin exhibit I figured finally we would see some nice, wholesome penguin frolicking, but they just kept shitting in front of us.

Circle of life, indeed.

Here we go

We've been tossing the idea back and forth for a while now: moving Will to a Big Boy Bed. I've wanted to hold off for as long as possible in an effort to maintain that one last shred of infancy (bottles are gone, as are the jokes about his lack of teeth); also because I kind of liked having him caged and not able to get out of bed once we stuck him in there. Kind of my own sort of security blanket.

We were able to postpone the inevitable for a while for several reasons, number one of which is Will never attempted to get out of his crib on his own. Surprising, I know, given his penchance for running away. The second of which is we didn't (think we) have access to a nice twin size mattress--we didn't want to buy one because the crib we bought way back when converts to a nice full size bed and I didn't want to have buy a twin now and then a full size later and then be stuck with a twin mattress that I would then have nothing to do with. (Damn, that's a LONG sentence). Because, if you've ever been to my house, you'd understand that the last thing we need is more large furniture.

Anyway, my MIL swept in and saved the day as she often does and volunteered a mattress my sister used to have. So Jason carted it home with him after Grampa Day today and we put it together during the evening. I've gotta say Will's room has never looked better. It's so clean. I mean I washed baseboards.

So finally, we started bedtime ritual as normal. Took a bath, drank some milk, crawled onto the countertops to steal M&Ms from the bowl I keep up there for rewards (NOTE: that's been changed) and whacked the ping pong ball around the kitchen a while.

7:50 Reading with Daddy

8:05 Reading with Mommy (please notice it's after 7pm so I become Mommy)

8:20 Mommy puts Will in bed. Will stands up and cries. We sing ABCs one more time with him doing his little sit-dancing in my arms.

8:25 Mommy puts Will back in bed while he cries and whines for blanket on. I'm really not sure what he means when he says this as he's completely covered from literal head to toe. Continuously rub his back to try to get him to sleep.

8:30 Try to leave with Will yelling at me to put his damn blanket on.

8:40 Glorious Daddy goes in to get him calm.

8:45 Glorious Daddy walks back out after having successfully gotten the crown prince to sleep.

So in summation, while Will has shunned Glorious Daddy all week long, he apparently loves him enough to feel comfortable and loved in return to drift off into sleepyland. Or GD bored him.

Now it's 9:20pm and we've yet to hear a peep. Wish us luck.

Abba & Papa Visit

Mom and Dad came up for a visit this weekend, and they've curried more favor by bringing the bestest gift ever. My son is on his way to becoming a Hell's Angel. It's not motorized and the horn is disappointing, but the turn signals have the best beat ever. Our house becomes Dance Party USA whenever Will goes to make a left.

We've started a routine at night where Will puts his cars to bed. Last night only the Cozy Coupe made it into the guest room whereas Motor Mayhem above was left to its own devices for the duration of the evening. This morning Will went directly into the guest room to get his car and proceeds to drive himself over to his motorcycle.

Anyway, we wound up having dinner with Carters Sr., Grandma & Grampa, Robinsons, Harpers and Dunbars (it's a normal occurence whenever people come into town); this was the first time we had a literal kids table:

Will, Kylie, Jovie discussing why exactly Donald wears neither pants nor shoes.

Will's enjoying some see-food and laughing at one of Aunt Bethany's ridiculously funny blog posts.

Is it over?

I promise to put pictures up soon. Honest. I just usually post from my laptop now and I don't have any Will pics downloaded here. Forgive me.

Anyway, here's how today went down:

7:02am: As am finishing getting dressed for an office day, I go to put on my wedding rings (I don't wear them to bed: am too fat and my fingers apparently swell at night). Look down and realize only 1 of the 4 is present and accounted for. And it's not one of the shiny ones. Have a mild freakout that nos. 1-3 might have taken a swan dive down the festering hole that is my sink drain and prepare myself to fish them out.

7:04am: Do not see sparkly rings. Plain ring sits where it should be, all well-behaved and waiting for it's recognition as "the good ring".

7:05am: Realize I'm late getting Will up and this will cause my whole day to implode. Well, that and the fact that MY WEDDING RINGS ARE GONE!

8:10am: Drop Will off at day-care where he screams at me to hold him and don't go. Must listen to him frantically cry for a Grampa Day.

9:00am-1:28pm: Business as usual at work.

1:29pm: Comment to pregnant lady at front desk on how great she looks today, albeit in a hushed tone while she's on the phone. However, we make eye contact as I tell her "You look faaaabulous!" (said in all seriousness because honestly? She looked great) on my way to the restroom.*

1:32pm: Return to front desk as now Pregnant Lady is off phone and I want to go over in how many ways she looks wonderful. She begins laughing and says "I thought you said I looked fat". I think I actually guffawed.

1:38pm: Check registry for a wedding gift. Navigate away from page when I see couple has registered for a $1100 set of pots. Curse myself for getting married young before I had better taste.

1:40pm: Thinking of weddings makes me remember I've lost my wedding rings and get teary.

1:41-4:58pm: Business as usual.

4:59-6:00pm: Coworker in NY calls to discuss a project I'm working on using a software I'm unfamiliar with. She thinks the end of the day is the most convenient time to disuss this. As we run into a problem she doesn't know how to fix, she consults with another coworker. I wonder why so many of my department people on the East Coast are still in the office at 7pm.

7:15pm: Finally fess up to Jason that I've misplaced my rings. Frantic search begins where we tear our bathroom apart: drain plugs pulled, drawers emptied, trash gone through. He makes me go through my morning routine.

7:26pm: I HAVE THE SMARTEST, MOST WONDERFUL HUSBAND EVER! Somehow Rings 1-3 have hitched a ride on my hot roller hair clip (shut up) and have been holed up there ever since. Wonder when my hair clip became such a stud to demand that much bling.

7:30pm: Finally have time to realize my house is a wreck because Jason's spent all day putting up a chair rail in the front hallway and dining room. Ignore the wreckness to focus only on how I have the smartest, most wonderful husband ever.

8:15pm: Will poops in the bathroom! Unfortunately, not in the potty chair. Specifically, next to the potty chair. In the bathtub, while bathing. Gah! As we've not successfully pooped outside of diapers yet, this is the first time in recent months I'm seeing poop not smushed together by his cute little butt. Am astounded that this man-sized poop came out of him. Jason gets demoted from most wonderful husband ever status because he insists that I be on poop-removal duty.

Duty. Heh.
*This part actually happened last week but I don't think the story made the rounds. I'm including it today. Everything else is 100% true.

Happy?

I've had several complaints about my previous picture. In apology, I present the fabulous Mr. Fitzwilliam Darcy. However I still believe he and Elizabeth would have kicked some serious zombie ass.

Jason and I have been contemplating switching Will over to a "big boy" bed; we'll be the last in our group of friends to do so, even with Will being 6-9 months older than his friends. A big part in the delay is just sheer laziness on our part (this excuse also goes towards the lack of potty-training efforts) and the other is the fact this will effectively end his baby stage. I don't know if I can say good-bye to it. We're still going back and forth on the second child issue and, if we decide that Will's it for us, I really don't want to speed anything along. But that's a different post altogether.

ANYWAY...

We chickened out on taking the crib apart. Or rather, I didn't buy the correct bed rail. Jason was trying to convince me that Will would be fine without anything to prevent him from rolling off the bed and that he (Jason) in fact rolled out of bed several times in his childhood and nothing happened to him. Cue eye rolling on my part. Then we started looking online at the correct rails and, noticing how expensive they are, Jason told me he could easily make one. That frightens me. Don't get me wrong, I love how flipping handy he's become around the house in the past few weeks, but don't I get to be a bit anal about this type of thing?

So we'll probably spend at least part of tomorrow going twin-mattress shopping for Tiny and I'll spend naptime searching for new bedding. Whoo hoo!

Yeah, we're THAT boring.

Gift ideas

"And because the thought of Elizabeth Bennet striking down hordes of zombies with a Katana sword struck me as awesome" -Seth Grahame-Smith (co-author)

I have to say that I love that it's purchase cohort is Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog.