conversations with invisible pigs and sheep

my teeth are gone. Jim lost both his bottom front teeth tonight, with a little help from me. I just got back from driving all over south jersey trying to find some $1 coins to put under his pillow.

The beginning of this week was BUSY, culminating yesterday in Jim’s preschool graduation in the morning and a group outing to the Phillies game in the evening.

I don’t have any good photos of Jim’s graduation itself. I was running the video camera, and I should have brought the telephoto for my digital camera, but I can’t manage both, especially since I lost one of my lens covers.

Colin’s First Phillies Game:
This was taken in the 8th inning — he slept the 2nd to the 4th innings, woke up and was happy until he got in the car to go home. And then WAILED the entire car ride home (while Jim slept).

And then, something else:
The drawstring handbags I made for Jim’s teachers.

I LOVE the color combination of the one on the left — the brown is leftover linen from the skirt I made (and actually wore to graduation), but I should have interfaced it. I lined it with fleece instead. But the stripes were awesome. The bright one is better constructed, because of it’s all home decor weight fabric. I just prefer (for myself) the look of the plain fabric with the one pattern, rather than the mix of patterns.

was busy for all of us. Dad was either working, preparing for working, or recovering after working for so much.

The boy and I went to see his girlfriend and her mom on Saturday and we had such a good time. It was so cute to see them interact (finally), share toys, and run around. It was nice to hang out and watch the babies, I mean toddlers.

Sunday was probably not the best in the boy’s book. After discovering wet socks and feet with his wonderful soft leather shoes, I decided to bite the bullet and get “real” shoes. They are outregeously expensive — but, since the boy’s feet are officially “extra-wide”, we’re stuck. No $15 Target shoes for us.

Anyway, whether he was tired, or freaked out from the strangeness of the over-cologned, Ethan-Zahn-haired foreign salesman/shopowner, the boy did not like the shoes (although the shop guy kept telling the boy that he should not complain because he was apparently getting the most-sought after toddler shoe around, in a hard-to-find size, no less. I’m amazed that this reasoning didn’t work on the boy. HA!)

So he wouldn’t put his feet on the floor. Stumbled and fell. Stumbled again. Poor guy. But we kept them on, through the rest of our shopping, and then home. Where he stepped on my bare foot. OK, I want him to have the nice soft shoes back. I let him stumble around more, and then gave him a break. The rest of the day was just an exercise in keeping the boy happy until bedtime.

Progress! Last night, the boy walked across the living room. He just needed a destination — the front door. I put on his jacket (we went out to the mall), started walking him out of the kitchen, and then let go of his hands, fully expecting him to make a pit stop at the chair. But he walked all the way to the door.

And, two new words — Shoe (zhu) and Sock (zock). He knows what these items are, and he will say them when promted.

The boy’s 8th tooth came in sometime between Sunday and Monday morning. I though I saw it at breakfast, and Dad confirmed it during the day. This one’s been a long time coming — its mate appeared like three months ago.

We figure that walking will commence now that his head is balanced.

A new pic is up, from last Sunday.

the boy just went down four steps backwards! yay!

he then decided that he needed to go back UPstairs, but it’s a start

some of the boy’s latest tricks:

The boy ate his first “real” meal last night — the same thing dad and mom had. Granted, dad planned the menu around the boy, but he had fish sticks, hash browns, and peas. We didn’t get any pics of that, but we got the camera out for his other big eating accomplishment — feeding himself with a spoon. This started at lunch — he fed himself oatmeal.

Pics are up.