I have a short memory.

Short memories can be useful, on occasion. They say, for example, that women purposely forget how painful childbirth is so that they may actually decide to go through it more than once. I can attest to the truthfulness of that statement, as I distinctly recall having an "Oh, right. This is what agony feels like." moment during my labour with Seth. I seem to also have a short memory when it comes to being wronged by others...occasionally some moment from way back when in high school will come up in conversation and someone (usually my mom) will say "Remember when so and so did/said ______? You were SO upset.", and they answer is almost always no. I figure that's a really good thing, as we're supposed to forgive and forget. Clearly I've got that going for me. ;)

I also seem to have a short memory when it comes to eating at a restaurant with my small children. I haven't been feeling great the past couple of days, and my kitchen is a mess as my sink has been backed up (with what turned out to be long dark hair. HAIR. In the KITCHEN sink. I don't even know what to say to that one.). So when James got home I announced that I wanted to go out for dinner, and he obliged. Now, normally when we eat out it's fast food, preferably in the car where the kids have no choice but to remain strapped down, but for some reason tonight all common sense left my brain and I decided that we were going to eat at a REAL restaurant, with menus and real cutlery and everything!!

Here's the highlight reel:

-Seth CHUGS a large (almost adult size) glass of chocolate milk in literally less than 5 minutes. I ponder whether it's too late to cancel his dinner order. His food came like 2 minutes later, so yes.
-Seth reacts to me trying to feed him ravioli like I'm trying to poison him. We're talking flailing around in the high chair, howling and trying to throw anything within his reach to the floor for full dramatic effect.
-Seth decides he's too full for food, but still has plenty of room in there for crayons! Not unlike Smarties, red ones are his favorite.
-We take the ravioli away, but not before he has a chance to dip some of the crayons in the sauce, and then paint his colouring sheet with that.
-Since I finish my meal first, I offer to take Seth for a walk to burn off some energy. Cue Emmett meltdown. So now I'm trying to herd both of them around in the same direction while James finishes his meal and orders some previously-promised ice cream.
-Seth discovers if he takes a spoonful of ice cream, holds it in his mouth until it melts a bit and then leans his head back, he can make a melted ice cream volcano out of his mouth!! He is VERY please with his new discovery. Thankfully, Emmett was way to engrossed in actually eating his ice cream to notice or copycat.

Yeah, I think we're going to go back to solid diet of Wendy's, in the car. Just for the record, we DO correct the bad behavior when it happens, and the fact that Emmett sat nicely, ate his meal, said thank you to the waitress and was completely fine other than the "Mommy can't go somewhere without ME!!" upset gives me hope that someday going out to eat won't be a freaking circus.

Waning Summer

I love this time of year. It's getting cooler at night, school supplies are front and centre in all the stores, and every once in awhile you'll see a few yellowing leaves. Summer is on its way out, and it's time to get ready for fall! I'm not a huge fan of summer...I'm a big wuss about the heat, being out in the sun for even a couple of hours makes me all useless and sleepy, and the mosquitoes have been brutal this year. But there's something wonderful about the last couple of weeks of August - canning, pickling, buying new school clothes and supplies. I love this time of preparation.

Of course, I haven't done any canning or pickling this year...that would require me to have my crap together, which I don't. Maybe next year. Oh, I have big plans for next year...I'm going to do some container vegetable gardening, and hopefully I'll end up with something worth canning.

Emmett heads back to preschool in a couple of weeks, and I can't wait. Emmett/Seth cat fights are now happening with much more frequency...everyone is bored and cranky. It will be interesting to see what Em thinks of having afternoon class and taking the school bus from our new place. Hopefully he'll have the same teacher so something remains the same. Fingers crossed!

Random Cute Kid Stuff

I figured my facebook friends may be getting tired of my constantly kid-centric status updates, so I'm putting this here.

Seth has recently become a huge fan of "Blue's Clues"...Em loves the show so we watch it quite a bit. When Seth realizes that I'm putting on an episode, his face lights up and he says "Boo Coo!!!" while doing the "Blue's Clues" hand motion. Soooo stinkin' cute. I'm going to have to start hunting for some BC themed party decorations for a certain someone's 2nd birthday (yes, I'm already thinking about the kids' birthdays. Just ask my mother how party planning obsessed I was as a child...I haven't changed much!)

Emmett's latest obsession is Rhett and Link - a couple of guys who make up catchy songs about everything from velcro to Facebook. He especially loves this one, where they took the "Sham Wow" infomercial and made it into a song:

ShamWow Song

Now if you come to my house you can hear Em singing about how the sham wow "holds 20 times its weight in liquid" and that "the Germans always make good stuff", pretty much all day long. It's hard for him to sing the whole thing because he can't talk fast enough, but he sure tries! I usually sing along with him, which he looooves.

So there's my random kid cuteness for today. :)

Twenty-nine!!!

Twenty nine years ago today, my very scrawny (4lb 12oz), rather purple, and decidedly bald self entered mortality. Woo hoo! (Thanks for that mom, and sorry I was born before epidurals were readily available. You ARE the woman.) I've gone from "pushing 30" to "REALLY pushing 30", overnight. ;)

I remember years ago when a co-worker friend of mine turned 29, I thought that was sooo old and that I would probably feel as depressed as he was about the "big 3-0" being right around the corner. I was 23, I think...and you know what? You couldn't pay me to go back to 23! Sure, my stomach was still intact, I could go out whenever I wanted, and I even got to sleep in (I think I remember that...),but I am SO into the whole established, boring, responsible adult thing I've got going on now.

I think I'm going to thoroughly enjoy the last year of my twenties...life is busy but really good and I'm enjoying it.

Seth's First Conversation

James just told me about his first conversation with the Seth-meister, and it was so cute I had to share!

(First thing in the morning, James sees Seth's awake and goes into his room)

"Oh, you're up...hi!"
"Hi!"
"Do you want out of your crib?"
"Yeah"
(James picks him up)
"Wheee!"
"Do you want to go see Mommy?"
"No"
"Really?"
"Choo!" (as in "choo-choo")
"You want to play with your trains?"
"Yeah"

So he's up there playing with trains right now. What a little character!

Summer Updates

Wow, that was an incredibly lame title. Let's move on, shall we? ;)

As of tomorrow, we will have been in our house for a whole month! It's flown by, for the most part. Home ownership has been an interesting experience. When we moved in, we of course had a to do list of a million little projects that we wanted to tackle asap. However, we seriously underestimated how difficult it is to get anything done with a couple of ankle biters "helping" (ie putting drill bits in their mouth and running off with instructions). It's going to take a loooong time to get everything done that we need/want to do, but we're getting there (thanks to the help of friends and family!).

We had our first big "mishap" last week - our old, crappy dishwasher finally gave out and flooded the kitchen and down through the basement (and over our phone box, which then shorted out). While it was a bit of an ordeal, I now have an AWESOME new dishwasher (and after over 7 years of hand washing, I can't even tell you how psyched I am about it!).

As busy as we've been around the house, we've tried to get out and enjoy summer as much as we can. James' union had a family picnic at Fort Edmonton Park last week; we got free entrance to the park, tickets for the old timey midway, and a BBQ with bison burgers and ice cream - score!!
Then this weekend we hit Taste of Edmonton, where the kids practically tackled me for my coconut gelatto and baklava. Poor Seth tripped and scraped the right side of his face down a stone wall, leaving him with the unfortunate nickname of "Two Face" (I know, I know...we're bad people. ;)). A little more coconut gelatto and he was happy and running around again, even though he was still bleeding a bit - that kid is such a trooper!! 48 hours later and he's healing really well - it's amazing how fast kids heal.

We've also started attending our new ward - we really like it! I can't get over how many kids are in this ward - they have more Sunbeams than our last ward has in its entire primary! Em is still pretty unsure about attending his new primary by himself, so I've been tagging along, but he went to Sunbeams solo today and did well, which is encouraging. Sethy just turned 18 months and has attending nursery for the past 2 weeks. He never showed one bit of hesitation; he saw those toys and it was "Dad who?" I can't believe my baby is old enough for nursery (but I'm definitely not complaining!!).

Is it July yet?

June 2010 will probably go down as one of the cuh-raaaaziest months in history for the Johnson family - cleaning, packing, painting, cleaning, moving, unpacking, and more cleaning. Oh, and all of the lovely paperwork and running around that comes with buying your first place. A few things I've learned over the past few weeks:

-People are filthy, filthy creatures. Well, at least some of them are. My SIL Brittney took some "awesome" before shots of our place. Let's just say I discovered that the inside of my kitchen cupboards were an entirely different colour than I thought after I took to them with a magic eraser.

-Once you venture into home ownership, it is probably easiest to just sign your paycheques directly over to Home Depot. It's a good thing the kids are always up for a run to "Ho Depot" as Emmett calls it (snicker, snicker), because we've spent a lot of time there recently!

-Mormons really are the best movers on the planet. A bunch of people from the ward showed up on Saturday morning and swarmed our old place like a hoard of locusts, leaving nothing in their wake. All of our wordly belongings were out and loaded in the truck in 45 minutes!! The entire move was over in 3 hours...incredible.

-There's nothing quite like the feel of brand new carpet under your feet. Emmett actually told me the other day the was going up to his room to lay on "his carpet". ;)

-Being able to walk around your bedroom (versus shuffling and frequently banging up your shins on pointy furniture) is a wonderful thing!

-Seeing your old place all empty is a weird feeling. While I'm so happy to have moved to a place of our own with double the space, we have a lot of great memories from our little basement apartment. We moved there when Em was just a newborn, and that's where we brought Seth home from the hospital. There was something just a little bit sad about scrubbing scribbles off of those walls for the last time.

Tonight I'll be finishing up with the old place and handing the keys back - there's one chapter of our life over. Then it's on to a busy summer exploring our new neighborhood, completing a million little reno projects, and just getting down to the business of enjoying our new place!