Jackson O'Lantern

The other day (maybe about a week ago now) I went to Costco with my kids.  Since it's nearly September, of course they have had all their Halloween stuff out for a while.  While making our way to the fruit/produce area, we passed by a display of motion activated decorations.  Mara spotted this giant jack-o-lantern and for some reason fell in love with it.  She begged me to buy the jack-o-lantern!  

It's about 2 feet tall, a foot and a half wide, with a big, wicked grin and glaring eyes.  When it detects motion, the eyes, nose and mouth all light up and it emits an evil sounding cackle.  It's awesome!  So of course I agreed and we bought the jack-o-lantern.  Mara named him Jackson O'Lantern, Jack for short, and we brought him home with us.  

Upon our arrival home, we discovered that we didn't have the right size screwdriver to open the battery compartment, so the jack-o-lantern sat, useless, in our living room until Corky managed to open the compartment with a steak knife.  I bought C batteries at Target, popped them in, taped the compartment shut with packing tape and we tried him out.  

Mara sat on the floor and stared at him for the better part of fifteen minutes.  We started playing with him.  I had switched him to the "light-up" mode (meaning he just stays lit and doesn't cackle) and Mara wanted him to laugh.

"Laugh, Jack," she said.

Jack didn't do anything.

"Why isn't he laughing?"

"Well you didn't ask him nicely," I pointed out.

She tried again.  "Jack, can you please laugh?"

I surreptitiously changed him to "motion-activated mode" and his little sensor detected Mara moving in front of him and he burst into laughter.

Mara's eyes lit up just like Jack's.  "He laughed!" she cried.  "He listened!"

For the next half an hour we played like this.  She would politely ask Jack to laugh and I'd switch him to sensor mode and he'd laugh.  She would politely ask him to stop and I'd switch him to light up mode.  Sitting him on my leg, I could make him shake or nod his head in response to yes or no questions.  Mara told him jokes and I'd switch him to sensor mode and he'd crack up, to her delight.

Playing with Jack in this way has become a daily activity.  I came into the living room the other day and found Jack sitting in Orion's Bumbo chair (which he's outgrown) wearing a tiara on his stem!

On Saturday, we needed to go to Target.  Guess who piled in the car along with Mara, Orion and me?  Yep.  You guessed it.

On Sunday, we had a family photoshoot scheduled in the morning.  Guess who made several appearances in our photos?  Yep.  Right again.

(photo credit: Jesse Morris)

We looked so funny walking through the park, me with Orion in my arms, Mara walking Abby and Corky pushing a stroller with a huge, cackling pumpkin in it.  In August, no less.

And last night, when Mara decided her room was too dark and scary?  Jack was there to ease her fears and keep watch over her as she slept.

I'm so glad I spent $25 on that silly pumpkin.  It's the little things, I guess.

Busy August

August is more than half gone and I'm just now finding time to sit down and write a post.  

Okay, first of all, is anyone even reading this thing after all this time?? Crazy to think how long it's been since I started this blog.  I need to overhaul it in a bad way.  Maybe someday I'll get to it.  With all my abundance of time, right?

Here are some of the things that have been taking up time and mental energy this month:

-Studying for my CEUs 
-Helping with the purchase of another rental property for our management company 
-Getting renters into the new property AND one of our existing properties whose tenant vacated last month by way of craigslist and rent dot com
-Sleep training Orion (which is going GREAT by the way!)
-Mara's extracurricular activities which include swimming class and gymnastics
-Having company stay with us for a week at the beginning of the month

Orion turned 8 months old on the 1st.  I can't believe it! He's been busily cutting teeth all month and now has 5 teeth in/mostly in and a 6th that will pop through the gums any day now.  He is starting to come around to solid foods but still prefers the boob.  Some of the solids he does like are: spaghetti stars, puffs, peas, corn, macaroni & cheese, ground turkey, toast, cheese and raisins.  He's not a fan of yogurt.. I think he finds it sour.  He is a very happy, smiley baby and is very social.  He also learned to crawl this month which has kept us all very busy!  He is so loved.  Mara is his favorite person and he often looks at her with an expression of pure adoration.  Nobody can make him laugh like she can.  He thinks she's hilarious!

Mara has had a very busy, active summer.  She's been doing swimming classes twice a week since June and has overcome any fear of the water she may have had very nicely.  She loves to jump off the side of the pool, cannonball style, splashing water all over her poor teacher.  She has another week of classes before the session ends.  She's also been doing gymnastics all summer long, once per week, and loves her coach.  I really hope she sticks with it as she's very strong for her age and is well suited for gymnastics.  She's also been going to my friend Paige's house 2-3 times a week (as has Orion) for daycare and playing with Paige's 2 kids and any other kids who may be over there to play.  I practically have to drag her away every day.  We have done the splash park numerous times, many park trips, bike rides and scooter sessions.  She's also played a lot with the little boy across the street.  She comes home dirty, exhausted and all bruised and scratched from playing in the yard or in the woods or the park with the older kids (teenagers, don't worry!).  She goes to bed happy every night.  She will trade swimming class for soccer and add a weekly ballet class in September, in addition to starting at her new preschool, which she is very excited about!

This year is Mara's "big birthday" year.  I saw this idea on another family's blog and really love it: the kids get big birthday parties every 4 years (so ages 4, 8, 12 and 16).  "Big" means they get to invite a bunch of kids and can pick a venue or something, get presents and basically just go nuts.  Mara thinks she wants to have her party at Out Of This World Pizza.  She talks about it all the time and asks how many sleeps until her birthday.  

The main reasons we are doing this are 1) because both kids birthdays are so close to the holidays it kind of becomes present overload, 2) parties are expensive and 3) I don't need 20+ new toys coming into the house every year.  It would be beyond difficult to get rid of that many toys yearly in order to keep equilibrium (you know kids form attachments to everything under the sun... "No! This is my special dust bunny! It's my pet! It lives under my bed and I will feed it and name it Bob!"  You get the idea..) and to be honest that's just not something I want to try to manage on top of everything else.  

On the off years (1, 2, 3, 5, 6 and so on) they still get celebrated but we just do a small family shindig and they get one good-sized present that all the family chips in for.  For example, last year, Mara got a big bin with a bunch of dress up costumes in it.  Corky and I bought her the bin and everyone else bought dress up stuff to go in it.  They get to pick what restaurant we go to for dinner (or what they want me to make.. last year Mara asked for mac n' cheese and corn on the cob, which was not the easiest to come by in November) and I make a special birthday cake.  First birthdays are a little different because it's the big ONE, plus it'll be Orion's golden birthday, but still not a huge party.

In my spare time (such as it is), I've been studying for my CEUs, going running when I can find the energy and spending time with my bestie who just had a baby this past week.  In other news, I have a consultation appointment on September 15th with the tattoo artist who did my Jax tattoo to design two small tattoos in honor of my kids.  So I'm pretty excited for that.

Overall just keeping busy over here.  I can't believe the summer is almost over... I'll miss the long, warm evenings and lack of schedule and structure.. but school and learning and schedules aren't all bad I suppose. :)

Plugging Along

It's August.  What? I flipped the page over on the calendar yesterday and could hardly believe it.  Between Corky's new job as a real estate agent (in addition to his house-flipping and our property management businesses), my daycare lady having sick kids one week and being out of town the next, me subbing a TON of Zumba classes and having company arriving to stay for a week, we have had the busiest few weeks we've had in a while!

Despite being busy, I've managed to get some stuff done around the house and study almost every night. Corky and I even found time to watch an entire movie! (Okay, it took us two nights to do it but we did it!)  

I'm so behind on picture dumps that I don't even know where to begin.  So I'll just post a few and call it good. :)

For my birthday I asked for a Roomba and cinnamon rolls (instead of a cake).  We went to dinner at Red Robin and my mom made cinnamon rolls from scratch.  I love the Roomba!  Abby, on the other hand, isn't so sure.  First she tried to kill it, then she followed it all around the house.  Then, when she realized it posed no danger, she went upstairs and sulked in the hallway.  Lol!

Speaking of birthdays, Mara decided that July 31st is Elsa's birthday!  We were headed to the store anyway so we picked up some stuff to make a birthday cake with blue icing.  Elsa had a lovely little party complete with cake, streamers and all her BFFs (Anna, Belle, Moana and Snow White were all in attendance, in addition to Mara, my mom, Orion and me.  I did take a picture with all of them but for some reason it won't load.)  Even Orion enjoyed the cake!  Happy Birthday Elsa!

Little Man is growing like a potted plant.  He's still not the hugest fan of solids but he seems to like chicken noodle baby food.  He gets it all over himself but that's part of the fun, right??

Mmm... cauliflower fried rice!

A little collage I made of Mara and Rusty, her #1 stuffie.

And this, just because it's true: