Bat Friend

Last week Linus made this bat at the library.  With its wings askew and eyes a bit wonky, it sure does look cute, doesn't it?  Linus liked running around the house with it to help it fly.  In other bat news, everyone should check out Bats at the Library.  The illustrations are charming and there is so much to discover on each page.  The story is about what happens one night when a librarian leaves a library window open. The bats excitedly go in to enjoy all that the library has to offer.  Adult guests in our house have loved it and it is great for reading aloud.

Linus is now in bed feeling very worn out from a day of playing and raking leaves, followed by trick-or-treating; and all without a nap. I, too, am worn out by all of the excitement. 

This week our newest neighbor was born.  I got to meet Grace this afternoon as her parents and grandmothers were taking her out for her first walk.  I got to hold her for a good amount of time as other neighbors joined us in their front yard.  What a tiny and sweet bit of perfection in this world.  I could barely part with her.  It was wonderful to experience this beautiful moment of neighbors gathering to excitedly surround the baby and her parents.  We all shared in the gloriousness of welcoming a new baby.

Cookie Blobs

I bought a pumpkin cookie cutter recently and thought we could decorate Halloween cookies with icing.  Several things didn't go as planned, but we accomplished my goal to have some fun with Linus.  For some reason the cookies spread out a lot and lost their pumpkin, leaf, or apple shape.  They all looked like blobs.  I'm not sure what the problem was since we used a recipe for cut outs.  Unless the extra sugar Linus put in while I was occupied with the plumber messed it up. I have some icing decorator tips, but no piping bags, so I cut a hole in the corner of a Ziploc bag and let Linus have at it.  The bag tore and the tip came out.  I tried to fix it with packing tape, but that didn't last long.  The decorating went fine without the tip in since Linus was having fun squeezing the frosting out everywhere.  Don't tell Matthew, but when Linus sucked some of the icing out of the bag I pretended I didn't see it.

Covered Up

This is what Linus is doing right this very minute:  sleeping under the ironing board.  My current quilt project is hanging over it. He wasn't tired at nap time so we kept playing.  All of our activities today finally caught up with him.  He crawled under the quilt top and kept asking me what I could hear.  Next thing I knew he was zonked out.

What did we do today that wore him out?  We brought laundry in off the line from yesterday afternoon, we washed another load and hung it out together (he says he is clothes pin boy and I am clothes woman), made two loaves of bread, played the Thomas matching game, Langley showed up with some replacement puzzles for the ones we left her and that her dog chewed up, we played with all of the new puzzles and played a rather large memory game, ate lunch, read stories, swept the house together, and listened to a cd.  Phew.  I'm tired too.

Spider Art

I helped Linus create a spider web this week.  He had discovered my little hole-punch in my desk and had fun punching holes in the paper in the recycle bag.  I gave him a paper plate and instructed him to punch holes around the rim.  I had to help him slide the plate in far enough, but he did pretty well at punching through the plate.  Then I gave him yarn that I knotted on one end and wrapped in a bit of tape on the other so that it would be easier for him to sew with it.  He criss crossed the plate and created a fine looking web.  I created a spider by spiraling up pipe cleaner (he chose white), and bending smaller pieces onto the body to create the legs. Linus applied the googly eyes.  After we took pictures of it, he decided the spider needed flies to eat. He then proceeded to glue every single one of his puff balls on it for the flies.  I don't have pictures of that because the lens cover on my camera refuses to open and I need to mail it in to be repaired. Grrrr.

Matthew took some comp time and came home early from work today.  He and Linus are off for a walk, which gave me a chance to blog a bit.

Pants

Linus put his pants on all by himself for the first time.  He told me he wanted to go get pants by himself and that he wouldn't be lonely because his animals would keep him company.  Then he came back with this pair of jeans and he sat down and put them on by himself. I didn't have the heart to tell him he needed a pair of undies because he was proud of being independent and he can't reach them in the top drawer of his dresser.  (I guess it is time to move them down lower.) He was so excited that he took them off and put them on again a few times.  

Potty training is going okay.  Not too long ago he went a few days with a lot of accidents, but he is back on track and today had no accidents.

Linus is doing a great job of using his manners at home.  He says thank you without being prompted and even asks to be excused from the table.  His little voice sounds so cute when he asks, "May I be excused?"

Yesterday I bought gas ($3.15 a gallon) and while I pumped the gas I played peekaboo through two of the car windows. As we pulled away from the gas station he was still laughing and said, "Thank you for peeking at me."  Sure thing, kid; anytime.

Pumpkin Patch

Saturday we went out to the Gardens' site at Chatfield for Pumpkin Fest.  It was drizzly and cold so we didn't spend all that much time there.  Even so, it was fun to see Linus in his lion costume stumbling his way through the pumpkin patch.  Before we even arrived there he knew he wanted a little pumpkin.  He brought home a very cute one that I neglected to photograph because it started to rain.  When I saw the barrel trains I was pretty sure Linus would think a ride on one would be fun.  As the tractor pulled away with him, I couldn't believe he was doing this on his own.  How could he be big enough for this?!  As we watched the barrel train curve off out of view I told Matthew, "This is the first time we've let a complete stranger go off with our kid."  I think this is just one example of the baby steps I'll be taking until he goes off to preschool.

Autumn Walk

I brought the camera with me when we went for a walk recently.  Linus brought Floppy Dog with us.  We smelled flowers, watched squirrels, and ended up at the playground at the park.  When we started to head home Linus wanted me to put Floppy Dog down his shirt.  Something led me to believe that he wanted to carry him the way people carry babies in slings.  I used his long sleeve shirt to make a sling and that is how he carried Floppy Dog all the way home.  

Two new words in his vocabulary include "evaporated" and "xenophobic."  He was jabbering away and I was only partly listening and I heard him say "evaporated." At dinner I told Matthew about it and he asked Linus, "What evaporates?"  Linus answered, "Water."  Matthew asked, "When?"  Linus said, "At the garden."  When it comes to "xenophobic" I should clarify that although he said the word a few times today he doesn't really know what it means.  He has a book called C is for Curious: An ABC of Feelings.  For the letter x it has the word xenophobic and an illustration of some unidentifiable animals that kind of look like skinny dogs looking up at a UFO flying overhead. I just tell Linus that they are saying, "Who is that up there?" and I use a bit of a gruff voice.  I don't think a two-year-old needs to know what it really means.

Assistant Sander

One of my goals this summer was to refinish our porch swing.  I finally started it last week.  Linus liked sanding and was even good about going with the grain.  After a few minutes of focused work he started running around the yard, coming back to sand a bit, and then running around again.  I haven't gotten any farther than I got last week because it aggravated my carpal tunnel syndrome and it is still bothering me nearly a week later.  I guess I should send out an email to our friends and see if someone has a power sander I could borrow and learn how to use.  Or else we won't sand it anymore and just put some polyurethane on it and call it done.

Cute things Linus has said recently:

Matthew said, "It is already 11:15."  Linus said, "No, it's 14:19.  14:16." 

He sang these words:  

We ma way

Lion in the jungle

Lion in the jungle

Lion in the jungle

Lion in the zoo.

He was on my lap and we were cuddling and he looked at me and said, "Everyone in the world likes us."  World peace does exist in this tiny way.  What a beautiful idea.

What Do Ants Eat?

Linus left his peanut butter bread outside and he discovered it several hours later with tons of ants on it.  So now he has a better understanding of what ants will eat.

I hosted another Obama event Monday night.  It was a postcard-writing party.  Two of my neighbors attended and the other six folks signed up via the Obama website.  We wrote out 148 postcards encouraging undecided voters to choose Obama.  Some people brought store bought postcards to write out and others decorated their own.  

Linus did okay with all of the strangers in the house, but he did get quite keyed up.  He colored with markers, ate brownies, and prattled to me.

Two and a Half

In the last week or so I've noticed that Linus has jumped ahead again in his development, which corresponds with his turning two-and-a-half in less than a week.  It is hard to put into words the ways in which he is different, but I do perceive a difference.  The best way I can describe it is to say that he is all about narratives.  He creates them, describes them, and participates in them.  Witnessing them is amazing and magical.

I've been trying to write quotes down whenever I can, but there have been a number of days where I really just needed to video tape him from morning until night.  Here are some cute things he has said:

Linus - Kitties like restaurants.

Me - They do?  Why?

Linus - Because food is good there.

On a recent morning I awoke to find Linus standing next to me at the side of the bed. He put a pretend kitty next to me.  He said it was a white one.  Then he went into the kitchen to give Matthew a black one.  He said his own kitty was blue.  He looked after all three kitties through our breakfast, he had me put a seatbelt on them in the car, they held onto him and he held onto me while we crossed a street, they joined us in the hardware store, and they went grocery shopping with us.  For the trip home he had me buckle them in again and he unbuckled them when we arrived.  After that I heard no more about them.

After a successful trip to the potty he exclaimed, "I'm so proud of me!" and gave me a big hug.

I walked in the door from going solo on an errand. He ran to the door and said, "Welcome to you!"

He said a number of funny things about the bats in the house.  He told Matthew, "They mostly don't eat babies."  At one point he told me he was clapping because he wanted more bats to come up.  He was so into the bats and would say, "Let's see more bats!"

He was playing with his cars and asked, "What street is the grocery store on?"  I said, "Leetsdale."  He said, "Okay, Leetsdale," and went back to playing.

Matthew opened the window over the stove for me. Linus said, "That was very polite of you to help mama, Matthew."

After our drilling into him to listen to when his body needs to go to the bathroom, he applies that to a number of things.  For instance, "My body says feed me more applesauce."

He grabbed the box of tissues from the living room and as he headed off to his room he told me, "I'm taking the tissues to my animals to sneeze in."

He was driving his cars around outside and he said they had a membership and were going to the museum.  They were going to see  a dog statue and a cricket.

His latest thing is that any time he gets hurt in the slightest way, he wants a bandage.  He tells me, "The blood is moving through my body and coming right here," and he points to the sore spot.  I put a bandage on it and about two minutes later he takes the bandage off and says it is all better.

He said the coffee table was a tea table because I had a mug of tea on it.  He also said the bean bag I made for him was a rice bag.  (I stuffed it with rice.)

At breakfast one morning he grabbed the newspaper, opened it up and said, "I looked to see what's in the world."

He loves to pretend cook and has been trying some new pretend recipes.  He pretended to hand me basil and said, "Here's some basil.  It's good on muffins."  He has also made dill muffins.

Just a few days ago I witnessed him play fighting for the first time.  Two of his cars were fighting. I asked if perhaps they could talk it over instead of crashing into each other.  The only response I got was him making the cars crash into each other more.  I think this comes from his seeing two gorillas at the zoo not getting along.

Pictures:  eating a strawberry at the berry farm, squishing cubes of tofu through the garlic press (I let him do that because it looked like fun), and him passed out in the camping chair in the backyard.

Bats, Bats, Bats

This is the bat peeking over the top of the corner cabinet in the dining room.
Linus was laughing so hard at the shenanigans, his face turned pink.
Matthew used some of my quilt fabric to catch a couple of the bats.

Here is the bat that crawled out of the vent right in front of us.

The big news in our household is that we've been entertaining bat refugees.  We had work done on our chimney last Friday and the chimney guy ended up closing the exit for a colony of bats.  Starting that evening, we had bats flying around the dining and living rooms.  We gently and respectfully herded them out the front door.  By Sunday night, I was tired from canning all weekend and the bats weren't such a novelty any more. I just wanted to relax; but, we were on bat duty again.  Before it got dark Matthew and Linus put aluminum foil over the edges of the fireplace insert, the heating vents, and heat air intakes.  As dusk settled over us we sat in different parts of the room and waited silently.  Almost immediately we could hear a bat walking on metal.  Next think we knew, Linus and I saw a bat crawl out of the air intake we were watching.  That gave us some useful information to tell the bat expert.

To make a long, dramatic story much shorter and to the point, here is the summary:

*I called the Urban Wildlife Rescue who gave me advice over the phone.

*The chimney guy came back and took off everything on the top of the chimney so bats could get in and out freely.  Bat guy told me that they will all be gone to hibernate by the middle of October and then we can cover up the chimney again.

*We learned that bats here are larger than the ones in Wisconsin.  

*I think the bats were fortunate to have us to deal with because we advocated on their behalf and treated them as respectfully as we could.

*Linus knows a lot more about bats now and he even told the chimney guy, "Bats are nocturnal. Owls are nocturnal."  The chimney guy understood him completely and was very impressed.

*Linus told me he wants to be a chimney guy because he would drive a truck, have ladders, wear boots, and get to use tools.  This is the first time he told me he wanted to be someone.

Linus misses the bats.  He played a game earlier this week of pretending to catch bats. He'd run around the house with a quilt, pretend to drop the bat into a paper grocery bag, then had me open the front door and he'd let it go. Oh, he also had me pet these imaginary bats, which I only agreed to do if he understood they were pretend.  We've talked to him a number of times about not touching bats.

Brown Palace

We got to join Matthew in entertaining someone who was in town to speak for the lecture series at the Gardens.  We met up with him and his wife at the Brown Palace and went out to eat.  We made an attempt to dress up a bit.  I pulled out a button-down shirt that Linus hadn't worn before and he was excited to be like Matthew.  He was so pleased when I told him how handsome he looked.  He watched me get ready and when I put a necklace on he asked for a bracelet.  So he left the house with a turtle bracelet and my Carmex.  He told me I looked handsome.

The highlight of the night for Linus was the revolving door at the Brown Palace, which is a ritzy hotel downtown.  I admit that it was quite striking with its clean glass and shiny surfaces.  Linus went through it a number of times and figured out how to get it to turn on his own. His delight spread to the hotel staff and guests who watched him enjoy it so much.

Linus and the Ants

Grocery Shopping

I recently decided Linus was tall enough and had adequate self control to push his own kid-sized grocery cart at the store.  It went great!  He is careful to not run into people with the cart and asks before he puts something in it.  When the food is within his reach I ask him to pick out x many of it and he puts his counting skills to use.  When the food is too high for him to reach, I grab it and then ask whose cart it should go into.  He is very decisive and always knows immediately where it should go.  He also unloads all of his items onto the conveyor at the check out.  The staff have been amazed at his focus and maturity.  And his cuteness, too.  Fortunately, we shop at a smaller local natural foods store and they have the time and patience to let him unload his cart.

As you can see, on this day Linus brought Madeline to the store.  It was rainy and before we left he had me help him put on her raincoat.

Little People

This is the first plaything Linus has named. He named this Little People person Brandon.  Matthew and I were both struck with surprise when he referred to it with a name.  All of his other dolls or stuffed animals are called by what they are (Baby, Duck, Bear) or a name I've given them (Floppy Dog).  I got this vintage Little People bus with six vintage Little People off of eBay last summer.  They are only as vintage as I am really, as they are from the era of my childhood.

Linus likes imaginative play with the Little People, his plastic dinosaurs and animals, stuffed animals, cars, and dolls.  He drives the cars around a lot both in the house and on the patio. He has fun pretending to cook and cooking for real with me.  He is becoming interested in trains after getting a Thomas book from the library.  I also got him a Thomas memory/matching game at a thrift store and he memorized the names of all the characters after playing the game just a few times.  He likes to play the game with three boards and giving me one.  He'll pick up a card and instantly know whether it matches a spot on my board or one of his.  I still can't fathom how his brain processes all that information so quickly.

One thing Linus does not enjoy is the participatory part of story time at the library.  He listens when the librarian reads three stories, but has very little interest in the singing, finger play, dancing parts.  He no longer sings along with the ABC's and just watches everyone else do the actions to go along with songs.  For the umpteenth time, he has not danced the hokey pokey. Last Monday, after a three week break from story time, while I danced the hokey pokey with the group he sat on the floor and looked at a book.  I'm thinking about giving up on the story time, since we read all of the time at home and I don't need to do head, shoulders, knees and toes with a group of toddlers to enrich my life.  A friend suggested maybe he is beyond that and is bored. She suggested I sign him up for Lil' Kickers, a soccer program for toddlers.  That costs a pretty penny and the library is free.  

Berry Patch Farm

Langley and I took the kids berry picking yesterday.  Linus was good about putting his raspberries into the basket until he saw Chase eating all of hers. Then he started gobbling them up as fast as he could pick them. I managed to pick a pint before the kids lost interest and needed to go to the bathroom.  New to the farm this year is a potbellied pig named Bacon Bits. Linus liked petting her and a barn cat.  He wanted to pet a chicken, but I couldn't catch one.  I was able to catch a toad for the kids to see.  Linus was excited to hold it, but Chase was having none of that.  When we were done having our third drinks from the drinking fountain (so much more fun than drinking from the water bottle!), I tried getting the kids to head back around the barn to Langley.  When Chase wouldn't come, Linus took her hand and they walked back that way. Two-year-olds are so cute.

This morning Linus was asking about my raspberries. I told him I froze them to have in January when we are really missing fresh fruit. He wanted to eat them NOW.  I told him we'll go back to the farm next week for more.

By the way, Chase is super tall. She is wearing a size 4t and is only a month or so older than Linus.  Her mama is tall, too.

Sweet Tea

One afternoon last week we had tea time.  I made us raspberry leaf tea and we enjoyed it at Linus' little table.  He was more interested in pouring in lots of milk and honey and stirring it than he was in drinking it.  I've always put the milk and honey in for him in the kitchen, but this time decided to bring out the creamer, which he calls the milk dish.  All of the little tea spoons we inherited are getting some use.  Tea time is something very pleasant for us to share together.

Miscellaneous cute stories:

*We were lying on the bed together facing each other and he said, "We're both cute."

*I had him try on his winter coat from last year and he said, "This seems perfect on me."  A few days later he told Matthew, "That jacket is perfect on you."

*Sunday we went to a party to celebrate one of Matthew's colleagues getting tenure.  I met a lot of people there.  Back at home Linus started shaking hands with his stuffed animals and saying, "Nice to meet you."  

*At the library yesterday he selected a kids cookbook with no prompting from me. When I was done getting dressed this morning he told me he'd made pretend muffins using a recipe from the cookbook and would I like some.

Jam Surprise Muffins

Linus asked for us to bake.  He requested gingerbread cookies, which to him means any kind of cookie made with cookie cutters.  I suggested scones, which he readily agreed to, but we didn't have sour cream.  I quickly chose a recipe for Jam Surprise Muffins.  He didn't completely understand what the surprise was until he got to eat one.  After we mixed the batter, I put some in each muffin spot and he put in a dollop of raspberry jam.  He kept wanting to eat jam straight from the jar. Then I put more batter on top and we baked them.  We made both little and normal size ones.  When he bit into one of the little ones he exclaimed, "I found the jam!"  And I said, "Yes, that is the surprise!"

When we returned from the park yesterday afternoon he was rubbing his nose and crying, which led me to believe he was coming down with Matthew's cold.  He insisted I snuggle with him on the couch, which I did while Matthew made grilled cheese sandwiches for dinner.  Next thing I knew, Linus was throwing up all over me.  Fortunately, most of the vomit was on me and very little got on the couch. I called for Matthew and while he was helping us out of our icky clothes and comforting Linus, the sandwiches became rather overdone.  And of course as soon as Linus was done crying, he asked for food.  

I feel like mother nature flipped over into fall the second we got out of the Labor Day weekend.  I'm loving most of it.  Matthew came home with a cold Tuesday, so the virus season has begun.  It has been cool at night and we've been closing up most of the windows.  We've been able to wear pants and long sleeves.  It has been cool enough for me to work in the garage at getting the last of the move finished off.  Except for the virus thing, I am reveling in this perfect weather.  I love to be able to wear long sleeves and snuggle under a cozy with Linus on the couch.  Summer days will sneak in again here and there, but we are definitely shifting gears.

Cotton Candy

We went to the zoo at the end of the day on Labor Day.  We got to ooh and ah over the new baby giraffe. It is just two weeks old and super cute.  Then Linus wet his pants while riding on Matthew's shoulders.  Oops!  Matthew changed Linus' clothes and then we went on to see the camels and bison.  (Linus now knows that another name for camel is dromedary.)  He wanted a treat and he got interested in cotton candy, which he has never had before.  He chose yellow.  He still has quite a bit of it left even now.  He didn't eat any yesterday and only took a few bites of it today.  

Saturday Linus and Matthew got to ride in an ice cream truck.  We decided we wanted to spend the exorbitant amount of money to buy ice cream because we hadn't taken advantage of the ice cream truck at all this summer.  They had to chase it down because it goes down our street so fast.  I had the money and was back at the house.  The driver had Linus and Matthew hop in and then he reversed back down our street.  

How Do You Measure Up?

Linus helped Matthew make a scarecrow this weekend.  It is a project for the corn maze the Gardens does each fall at the Chatfield site.  They shopped together for the supplies and when they got home Linus was excited to show me the boards they bought.  He said, "Look mama, wood!"

Linus had fun learning how to use the tape measure and proceeded to measure anything he could.  When he measured my foot I asked him how long it was.  He said, "Two feet."  When he measured his own head he said, "It's a good size." 

Linus' current look when he smiles for the camera includes him squinting his eyes.