Category Archives: Uncategorized

Happy Anniversary to Us.

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20 years today!  We had a nice day with Davey.  It was an odd day as Davey and I didn't get up until 9:15am.   I had trouble falling asleep last night, and then Davey woke up at 5:30.  His feet were itching.  He said, "I need lotion.  I need lotion."  So we put some anti-itch hydrocortisone stuff on there and then some Eucerin.  We applied Eucerin a couple of times.  So he went back to sleep in bed with us.  He woke up briefly a couple of times, and each time he did, he scooted me closer and closer to the edge.  Finally I switched to David's side since he was up, and we both slept.  

We went to Andy's for breakfast.  The weather was incredible this morning.  Such an odd day.  It stormed this morning and afterwards it felt like Colorado in the fall for a little while.  It was incredible.   It was starting to warm up, but David went for a run and Davey and I went to Ouachita and to see Ms. Claire.  (We finally bought the knitting needle canister thing that he loves to play with so much.  It has a cat painted on the top.)  He loves putting things into it.  As a matter of fact, tonight he had a cupcake.  Like a true son of David, he was primarily interested in the icing.  He took the rest of the cut up cupcake and put it into the canister before I knew what was happening.  

We played this afternoon. Davey and I took a piece of butcher paper and put these little circle stickers all over it.  Just circles that you might use to tag things in a garage sale.  It looks cool. We put it up on his wall. He loves for us to hang things on his wall.    He also painted with watercolors for the first time today.  He did great with that as well.  No nap was going to happen since he slept so late this morning.  That was the first time he'd ever slept in like that.  

We went to TaMolly's for dinner.  It was ok – Davey ate well and that's always very nice.

I think this time 20 years ago we were at a wax museum in Branson. 🙂  The wax museum was lame, but we didnt' mind.

Bedtime

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Sometimes it is not so easy to get Davey to bed.  Tonight was one of these nights.  If you miss that perfect window, then it's that much harder.  I am not sure there was a window tonight, but if so, we missed it.  

I think he is asleep now.  Right before I laid him back down he said, "bubble gum, bubble gum".  At first I said, "you don't chew bubble gum." But then I remembered that we always sing "yum yum yummmm, bubble gum gummm" – a song we made up when he was an infant to help him take Tylenol.  So I said "medicine?"  He said that yes he needed some medicine.  I asked him what hurt, and he showed me his arm.  I asked if he bumped it, and he said, "yes I bumped my arm."  No sign of injury up to this point. He gets funny ideas.  Maybe his mouth hurt or something?  Not sure.  

Then he dropped his two pacifiers.  Two seconds later he is wailing, "I miss them!!! I miss my tas!!!" (Ta – is what he calls his pacifier. – as in Ta Da – which is what I used to say when I'd pick his pacifiers up from under the crib.)  He is SO dramatic.  I have to say that he gets that from David!

He is saying so many sentences.  He kept saying, "I need more butter" tonight at dinner.  We had breakfast for dinner which included blueberry muffins.  We cut up a muffin for him, but he just liked licking off the butter.  eww. 

He and David also love to draw together.  Tonight David asked him to draw a tree.  He drew a very long line, put another beside it, and then he kind of did a scrunchy thing at the top.  Very tree-like. 

Ok those are a few little stories that I don't want to forget. 

David’s Mustang

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David went home a week ago or so to get the Mustang.  His mom picked him up here (she’d been in Texarkana) and he rode home with her.

The Mustang has been at Johnny’s house since we left Tennessee.  (He has a great storage building.)  He’d been starting it up and driving it for David, but a few months ago it quit starting.  David figured out that it needed a new regulator (I think) and then also a new battery.  Once he got those things replaced, it fired right up.
He drove it home with no a/c.  (It needs to be fixed.)  It was a hot drive, but I think he enjoyed it.  He took the smaller roads through Mena home, so it made for a fun drive.
Davey and I stayed home.  We had a nice time.  It was weird sleeping here without David, but Koko was at the foot of the bed watching over me!
Davey was excited to see David get home.  He kept calling the Mustang “Nanny’s car”.  David showed him where all the little horses are on the car, and he walks around it sometimes to point them out.  He always remembers where they are.  Seems like there are 4 or 5 of them.

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It’s all fun and games until…

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A "Chase" update:  we have limited Chase.  Actually I have given it up altogether unless we are on nice grassy flat ground like at Ouachita.  David still plays a limited amount.  Davey took a tumble into the edge of the bed and could have (but didn't) really hurt himself.  So we do still play, but it is a more calm safe version of "Chase!"

More this and that

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I have learned that I live in a town which is often referred to as “Arkadoo”  or “the Delph”.  Not sure what I think about that.  The Delph just doesn’t seem right as it makes me think of ancient Greece or something. (Although I guess that is actually Delphi.)

 

Took Davey to play at Ouachita yesterday and today.  Yesterday he was so upset to leave that he cried “Ouachita, Ouachita, Ouachita”  in a most despairing voice.

 

So it was pretty nice weather out today – especially after a nice storm earlier in the day.  It was still humid though.  (And the earlier part of the day involved Tom Watson losing in the playoff of the British Open (he shouldn’t have had to go to the playoff – as he said “if only he’d hit a 9 iron” and David’s sadness over the fact that it’s not looking good for Lance Armstrong.)  But I seriously digress.)

 

So anyway, he had fun playing at Ouachita.  He stomped in the wet grass (post rain puddles).  He ate Nilla wafers which he has for some reason started putting the entire thing in his mouth.  We’d dropped David off on Feaster Trail and he did his run to end up where we were so then he played with us for awhile.

 

There are chimes at Ouachita every hour.  They play the Westminster chimes and then the clock chimes for each hour.  It is really loud.  As soon as Davey hears it, he runs straight to one of us and buries his head so that the sound will not hurt his ears.  He stays there very still, and I hold my hands over his ears, until the very last dong has sounded.

 

I need to get some pictures off my camera.  Davey was very busy playing in the carport.  He sweeps, he draws with his chalk (on just about everything but the sidewalk), he digs, he moves gravel around – very busy and focused!

 

Chase!

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Davey has a new game that he loves:  Chase!  We have a long hall in our house and he loves to chase us up and down it, into the kitchen around the living/dining room and back down the hall to our bedroom.  Over and over.  It's amazing how long he can last – that little guy.  He likes when we stop mid-chase and raise up our arms and yell some scary sound and then run some more.  He laughs and laughs and gets so excited.  And says Chase?  Again?  Again?  He has such an excited happy look that it's hard to resist, so we go again.  Finally we have to stop because we are tired and that little guy's heart is just pounding.

Chase!

Homeade bread, Peach Jam and Pizza!

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I have been making some great stuff that I just had to record for posterity.  Plus I like to think of titles that just don’t seem to go together. 🙂

Last night I made this honey wheat bread recipe.  It was on the back of the Gold Medal hole wheat flour package.  It made two loves, and I was not sure my kitchenaid was going to survive kneading that much dough, but it persevered.  It turned out really good.  I need to put one of the loaves in the freezer to keep it fresh, although I don’t know that loaf number one is going to last too long.   For breakfast, I had it with some peach jam that I made.  WOW.  I felt like I was back at Oma’s house having fresh baked bread and jelly with her.

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Then the other day, I made some really good homeade pizza.  It has to be good because we eat a lot of pizza and spaghetti around here these days.  Our little seemingly Italian kid loves both things.  So I now have a great recipe for pizza dough thanks to my old friend Melanie.  What was fun was that I topped the pizza with tomatoes and basil from my tiny container garden.  (I left part of it plain cheese for the little boy.)

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Delicious!

“Waterfall”, “Oh Man!”, and the “Itsy Bitsy Spider”

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Today we decided to go to Lake Catherine State Park.  We are beginning to explore Arkansas.  There is a great list of 150 inexpensive or free, I forget, things to do in Arkansas on their tourism website. So we are starting with some of the things that are close to home.

 

It started thundering and lightning like crazy when we left, and then there came a huge downpour.  We kept thinking well we will exit and try it again tomorrow, but then as we’d approach the exit, the rain would taper off and we would keep going.  Then it would start coming down in buckets again, and we’d be wishing we’d stopped.  Eventually though, we made it and the weather was just cloudy.  It had cooled off a bunch too – high 70s.  However, it was really really humid.

 

We’d planned to hike to a waterfall and then have a cookout.  The Arkansas website describes it as a “10 foot waterfall which drops into a blue pool”.  It was a 1/2 mile hike to the waterfall.  After some debate (as to whether it would begin storming again) we departed.

 

Gosh it was humid.  We let Davey walk at first.  However, staying on the trail didn’t mean much and keeping a steady pace meant even less as he bent over to pick up rocks and check out sticks.  Finally we picked him up.

 

I think the highlight of the walk may have been the swinging bridge.  It made me very nervous until I realized that there was only about a 3 foot drop below the bridge, and you could easily just bypass the bridge if you wanted to by crossing parallel to the bridge in the small gully below.  So then I was just a little nervous.

 

The waterfall itself was not spectacular.  I would have described it as 4 foot of water trickling down into a greenish-brown small pool.  Greenish-brown is a generous description.  I think Brownish-green would actually be more apt.  Davey liked it though, and we did too actually.  It was a really pretty hike, but we were so hot and sweaty by the time we got back (I will post evidence of this shortly) that we decided we would roast hot dogs and marshmallows another time.  We went to a Tex-Mex place in Malvern instead.  Although Davey was tired and decided to be rather “incorrigible” in there.  We ate quickly and left! (At the end, one of us ate, while the other walked him around.  He was so tired.)
So here is David after the walk:

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See we were hot but happy!

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I make my way carefully across the bridge with Davey.

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We made up a new game with Davey that had him in hiccups (which I always feel terrible when he gets the hiccups.  Seems like you get them so much easier when you are little.  Maybe you laugh more.  I hope not!)  I always say, “Davey do you want me to sing a song?”  He will say yes, but he will often stop me right after I stop because it is not the song he wants to hear at that moment.  Today though, he’d start saying “no, no, no, no” right away, and I’d yell, “OH MANNNNNNNNN!”  Oh he thought that was funny, and he’d say, “Try again!”  We did this many times.  After awhile he’d switch and say “Daddy try again”, then it would be back to “Mommy try again”.  He loved our dramatic “Oh Mannsss”  when we failed to deliver a song to which he wanted to listen.

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I have been singing Itsy Bitsy Spider to him quite abit, and tonight he started singing it too.  He can do the first two lines pretty well, and it was so sweet to hear him singing the song.  It’s the first song he has actually really started to sing to us.  He hums and sings a word here and there, but this is the first song.

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Oh yes, and how could I forget?  A picture of the waterfall which inspired the trip!

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I do it!

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Davey has been getting better and better at feeding himself.  For the past couple of days, he has had a renewed interest in eating yogurt.  Last night, I was just going to give it to him for ease of eating and clean-up, but he announced, “I do it!”  And he did.  He is getting so good at feeding himself.  After he finished his yogurt, he said he wanted applesauce, and so he ate that as well.

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Stickers

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Davey has gone sticker nuts.  Sticker crazy.  He is a sticker loon.  He is kookoo (not spelled right, but I like it that way) for stickers.

We discovered them last weekend.  Nice Aunt Liz got him a sticker book.  And we were off.  Since then we have bought several more sticker books.  Two nights ago, he woke up at 1am crying “stickers, stickers, stickers”.  I guess he was dreaming about them.  (Last night he woke up at 1am crying “waterpark, waterpark, waterpark”.  This waking up briefly around 1am has kind of been a thing for the last week.)

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