The Smartest Little Boy Ever

I have been amazed lately at how many things Colin understands. It is starting to blow me away. It all started with the "let's go change your poopy" moment that I wrote about not too long ago. Now he knows "change your diaper" and goes right to his room. He knows "breakfast", "lunch" and "dinner". When I say any of those words, he shrieks with delight and takes off running for his high chair. It never ceases to be adorable. He also knows "snack time" and runs to his little table where I sit his snacks. This is obviously my child...he learned all food related things first. :-) He knows "nap nap time" and "night night time" and will go stand at the gate to go back to his room. If I ask where Mama's tummy is, he will walk up to me, raise my shirt, and poke me in the belly! Today we were all playing in the living room and I was looking around for his sippie cup. I said out loud, "Colin, where is your water?" and he took off for the kitchen and came back with his water!!!!!! I almost passed out. I have never asked him that before, but obviously he has been paying attention to what I call his sippie cup. When he brought me that cup, it really hit me that he understands a lot more than I had realized. Colin is a solid babbler...he makes a lot of noises and "talks" all the time, but it is all babble and I have not picked out any words besides Mama, Dada and "no", which I think is what he has decided to call Enzo. I can see that being able to say words has nothing at all to do with understanding them! He is like a sponge these days! He seems to soak up everything I say to him. He has started to sit in my lap constantly. He will walk over to me and side step over my lap to sit down. I love it so much! He also finally started to bring me his books to read to him. He has always ignored my attempts to read, so this change is especially wonderful! He always brings me one of two books, even though there are tons of them in his toy bin. "Ten Tiny Tickles" and his cloth Sesame Street book are the two favorites at the moment.

Hurricane Ike slammed through Texas today (I say this for history's sake...I realize everyone alive on the planet watched the last 24 hours of continuous news footage) and has done a lot of damage to our coast. We were lucky in Dallas and avoided the storm almost completely as it headed towards East Texas directly. My parents and sisters are without power tonight, but they are all just fine and are blessed to have no damage. Needless to say, with weather being a nightmare, we stayed indoors all day and watched the news while playing with Colin. As dinner time approached, we decided that we all needed to get out of the house and headed over to Jersey Mike's. We stopped at McDonald's for a special chicken nugget treat for the little man first. So picture the family at Jersey Mike's, sitting in our booth with Colin in a high chair at the foot of the table, eating nuggets and fries. They had music playing and Queen's song, "Another One Bites the Dust" comes on. Well, let's just say that Colin appreciates some Queen. This kid starts bouncing up and down exactly with the beat "dum dum dum...another one bites the dust...dum dum dum" . EXACTLY to the beat. Grinning from ear to ear. Pumping his arms, both hands holding french fries, laughing, dancing to Queen. It was right up there with the cutest all time Colin moments. Jer and I were rolling. I think I better get over to I-Tunes and start downloading. :-)

Peeking!

Dana tagged me for this meme, and this one is tough! The rules are as follows: you have to take pictures of the following things, just as they appear at the time of being tagged. No straightening, no cleaning! Then tag someone else (preferably more than one person).

Dana technically tagged me at 7:30am this morning when I read her blog. So all of the pictures were taken this morning at that time, even though I am just now putting the post together. I even broke down and took the self portrait at that time, too, with no shower or even my teeth brushed yet. LOVELY. I decided to play by the rules. :-)

1. The Fridge: Colin is in this picture because you cannot open the door without him trying to take everything at eye level out. This is a VERY good description of what it is like to go into our fridge. :-)

2. A Closet: This is my favorite closet in the house because this is where I keep all the Christmas stuff! This is also where all of my suits are stored since I certainly don't wear them at the moment!

3. The Kitchen Sink: I just had to take the picture at this angle...it just so happens that I had sippy cups for Colin and Mama drying this morning. HA!

4. A Bathroom: This is our small second bathroom. It is very hard to get a picture of it because of the size and layout, but lord knows it is in better shape than our master bath, so here ya go!

5. Favorite Shoes: This, good people, is a hard one for me. I love shoes. I have a LOT of shoes. It used to be my obsession before I had a baby. I am choosing these for the picture after much internal debate. I adore my red shoes. I love the toe and the color and the kitten heel...I LOVE THEM. I used to rock these shoes. I have not had the chance to wear them since I started staying home. I may need to start wearing them to the post office. :-) I have good shoes.

6. Favorite Room: I am choosing our bedroom for my favorite room. This room has become our own little sanctuary and I love it. Colin does not spend any real time in this room since it is gated off and it is the only room that is free of toddler things. The layout of our house means that in our bedroom we are the farthest away from Colin's room, so Jer and I always spend our entire evenings in our room after Colin goes to bed. We watch TV, Jer catches up on work if he needs to, I blog from the laptop and we just hang out without disturbing Colin. We both find it soothing and comfortable and it feels good to just exist with each other for a few hours just the two of us. I also make our bed in the mornings because with the rest of my house covered in baby chaos, it soothes my soul to have one neat place to retreat to. You can probably also see the baby monitor and a stack of magazines on my side of the bed. I love to spend the evenings reading. Right now, I am working on the "Cooking Light" and "Parenting" September issues. And yes, that is my fat cat Ferris Mewler.

7. Self Portrait: The funny thing about this? Despite the fact that I took this picture first thing in the morning with no shower and still in pj's while feeding Colin breakfast, I love it. I decided to include Colin and held the camera up to us. He thought it was so funny that I did that and started to laugh! So even though I look horrible, the flash is scary, and for some reason my sun damage is highlighted (ugh!), I love this! :-) This is what we look like every morning together as we share our breakfast. Me and my boy in our pj's having some Eggo's!

Now I tag Shannon, Melissa, and April! Get going, girls!! :-)

Home and Raising Boys

One of my very best friends, Melissa, wrote a blog entry tonight that got me thinking about my home town. She wrote about how much she missed it and how funny it is that she spent her youth wanting to leave and her adulthood wanting to go back. I have a lot of those feelings myself and while the option of returning to our home town is not possible for me, I do still think of it as "home". She reminded me of this and I have now been analyzing what it is, exactly, about where I grew up that seems more like a "hometown" than where I live now.

Of course, at first glance, the reason that T-town seems like the perfect hometown is because...well...it IS my hometown! I know that immediately makes me biased to it, but I think it goes further than spending my entire childhood there. My home sits alone without being attached to a big city. It is not the suburb of anything and it is the kind of small town that is big enough to have all the nice amenities you need, but small enough to still feel cozy. We live in the Dallas/Ft. Worth metroplex now and while we live in a wonderful top rated suburb, things here are not the same. Regardless of living in a town with a population of only 38,000, we are a quick drive from huge metropolis areas. We are surrounded by so much, that I know my son will not think of our suburb as his hometown. When people ask him where he is from, I think he will probably say "Ft. Worth". There is nothing wrong with being from a big city, but I think that it was a lot of fun to grow up surrounded by a kind of idealistic reality where you felt like you knew everyone. I think Colin will probably end up being far more sophisticated than I was. :-)

Also on my mind tonight is, shockingly, the MTV Video Music Awards. They aired last weekend and this idiot so-called comedian spent almost the entire show making fun of a very young pop group called "The Jonas Brothers" who wear "promise rings". The boys have apparently made it known that they wear these rings in an effort to show that they are saving themselves until marriage. The host of the show made a running joke about the boys and talked constantly about "joyous unprotected sex" and how "there is nothing wrong with a little sex every now and then" and just a whole bunch of stuff to that effect. This really got me thinking about how hard it is going to be to raise Colin. I was not allowed to watch MTV when I was growing up and it made me so mad. I, of course, watched at friends houses and everywhere else I could. I never could understand, but it has hit me like a ton of bricks since I became a mother myself. How can I teach Colin that having sex is a huge responsibility that should wait until he is older when the practice of waiting is ridiculed so steadily in pop culture? Let me tell you, that whole broadcast made being a "good boy" into being a loser. I hope that I can instill good values in my son and I am going to work hard to do so, but I can certainly see how hard it will be with all that I am up against in society today. I know that is the job of parents and I am up for the challenge. It sure would be a lot easier, however, if we had a little more help from "the village". It is funny...I was watching 90210 tonight, which is a teen show marketed to teens, and the whole thing is about sex and drugs. In fact, in the opening scene of the first show, a teenage girl was doing something very indecent, shall we say, to a guy in his car at school. It makes me laugh that my whole world is now filtered through my "mom vision". I cringed and thought, yet again, "How will I explain that to Colin?". I have my work cut out for me, that is for sure. However, we had lots of stuff like that on TV when I was growing up, albeit not quite so extreme, and my parents managed to turn me into a pretty good girl, if I do say so myself. So all is not lost!

Just call me Jennifer Weiner

I did it. I just now, as in two minutes ago, entered my first writing contest. It is an essay contest that I stumbled upon while reading one of my magazines and I decided to give it a go. The winner receives a cash prize and, better still, gets published in their magazine! Published! In a real-live-honest-to-goodness-purchase-it-on-the-newsstand magazine! This is a national magazine and I can't guess how many thousands on top of thousands of entries they must have gotten, so I don't think for two seconds that I have a snowballs chance in hell of winning, but I feel good just knowing that I gave it a shot! The winner won't be announced until the first week of January, so we have some time to kill now. :-)

Loving Some Oreos and Dallas Cowboys!

First of all, I cannot for the life of me figure out why Oreos are the messiest food on earth. These cookies surpass the mess of even mac and cheese. After dinner, I usually give Colin a cookie of some type as his special treat for the day. Nilla Wafers, Chocolate Chip, Fig Newtons...he does not make a mess with any of those varieties. But one single Oreo cookie...well, you see the aftermath. :-) He loves them so much, which seems right since they were my favorite when I was little, too. Heck, they are still fantastic!

Football season officially started today and I am THRILLED! We love some football in my house, especially my beloved Cowboys! They won the opener today and Colin and I had a good time watching the game. Jer was in training, so Colin and I watched together. I suppose Colin was doing more playing with his toys than watching, but the brainwashing has already begun. :-) I grew up watching the Dallas Cowboys with my Daddy and I am looking forward to spending many fall Sundays doing the same thing with Colin. The sounds of a football game filling up my living room remind me of cooler weather, sweatshirts, and family. I love it!!