Mine mine mine, all mine

touch a truck...or two...or three

On Saturday, we went downtown to the Saturday Market, which this time was featuring a Touch-A-Truck display. Touch-A-Truck is just what it sounds like - a bunch of trucks that kids can touch, sit on, climb on, lick...you know, whatever those crazy kids wanna do.

Drew, like most boys his age, is fascinated by big trucks. If it's large and yellow and has big tires, it's a "dig-dirt" and it's the most wonderful thing he's ever seen. His friend Alex is so obsessed that he actually knows all their proper names, like excavator and backhoe and such. If it's large and it's yellow and has big tires AND it has flashing lights, well, color Drew died and gone to heaven.

So, obviously, he was a big fan of Touch-A-Truck.

Here he is standing in the bucket of what I think is an excavator. Alex's dad told me what it was, but I've since forgotten the subtle difference between the excavator and the backhoe.

Here he is "driving" the excavator. He sat up there and sang that infernal "I dig dirt" song about 50 times, not caring in the least about the line of antsy children waiting behind him.

Drew and his friend Brandon explored the fire truck together, stopping every so often to hug each other and then run away laughing.

And then Drew and Brandon hopped in the police car together, where the nice police officer let them sound the siren, over and over and over again. I hope he was getting paid lots of  overtime to sit and listen to a bunch of preschoolers wail that siren non-stop.

I asked Drew what a police car does, and he said, "Catches the bad guys!"

After watching our children fondle all the trucks, Alex and Brandon and Drew all went to Sticky Fingers for lunch. (Of course, I and their parents accompanied them.)  I ordered Drew a hot dog and mac-n-cheese, of which he ate approximately 1.5 bites of the pasta and nibbled at a corner of the hot dog bun. I swear I don't know how that boy is staying alive.

And, apropos of absolutely nothing, I've decided to include some pictures I took when we got home, so you can all see how pretty my flowers are. Look - I can plant stuff in the ground and it actually grows! Of course, before I bought them I perused the Better Homes & Gardens website to find plants that were classified as "drought-resistant", which really should read, "They'll live even if you are neglectful and lazy and never water them."

Saturday afternoon, my copy of the last Harry Potter book arrived. I'm halfway through it so far (it's hard to read when you have an almost-three-year-old constantly demanding your attention and obviously not understanding the importance of finding out whether Snape is really evil or not) and I brought it to work with me so I should make some good headway on it during my lunch break.

Simon does NOT say

Yesterday after work, I went to pick up Drew at his daycare, as usual. This time, he was deeply involved in a game of "Simon Says", led by his teacher Miss Jessica. You remember the game - Simon Says stand up, Simon Says sit down, Simon Says touch your nose...

Anyway, he was so enamored of this game that he didn't really want to leave, and continued to tell me most of the way home that he wanted to "Simon Says" again. OK, OK, I told him, we can play it when we get home.

So later that evening, after dinner, we were playing trucks and trains in the living room. I needed to put his pajamas on him, so I told him to stand up.

He shook his head 'no' and continued to putt-putt about the floor with his trucks.

"Drew," I said patiently. "Stand up and let's get your PJs on."

"No," he said shortly.

Light bulb! "Drew!" I exclaimed. "Simon Says stand up!" (I'm thinking hey, this will be a great way to get Drew to do what I want! Two magic words and mwa hahaha! He's all mine!)

My plans for toddler domination were foiled, though, when Drew tossed aside his truck, pointed one small chubby finger at me and said, angrily, "NO Mama! Miss JESSICA say Simon Says."

"I'm not allowed to say Simon Says?"

"No, Mama. Miss JESSICA say Simon Says. Miss JESSICA!"

OK, I get it. No Simon Says for Mama.

monday blah

What a great weekend! And now it's Monday. Five long, long days to get through.

OK, Friday night I got to have a Mom's Night Out with some of the women from my mom's meetup group. We gorged ourselves on Indian food (I had lamb saag and garlic naan) and then went to see the new Harry Potter movie. Then we went out after the movie to Krispy Kreme for coffee, so we could dissect which crucial bits from the book were left out of the movie.

It was my first Mom's night out in a long time, and it was decadent.

Saturday morning we went on a tour of the Happy Cow Creamery, where we got to see lots of cows, all of whom did, in fact, look quite pleased, if not outright thrilled, probably because none of them were being turned into burgers.

Drew's favorite part was the taste testing. The milk is not pasteurized or homogenized or whatever other -ized processes they do to milk to make it tasteless and watery. Rather, this organic milk is creamy and thick and tastes rather like a milkshake. Obviously, we had to buy a jug of it to take home, and they also had fresh blackberries and this amazingly delicious cheese called Buffalo Wing cheese so of course we had to buy some of that, too.

Sunday we just took it easy - it was pouring rain, so we went to McDonald's for dinner and so Drew could run off some energy on the indoor slides. Then we went to visit my friend Ginger and her boys, who are 3 and 5. At one point, I was talking to her oldest child and inadvertently called him "Darling", at which point Drew jumped to his feet, pointed at me and said, "No Mama! I darling!"

pestilence

I have ants.

Large, black, eerily fast ants.

In my house.

Now generally when we get ants, they're the pinprick-sized ants that form neat, orderly lines from the outside to whatever it is in my house that has attracted their attention - usually where Drew spilled juice under a chair or behind a couch where I couldn't see it. These ants are easy to deal with. I clean up the juice, follow the line to their nest and destroy them mercilessly.

My current ants, however, are another story entirely. These ants, which are about the size of my thumbnail, are directionless and, dare I say, somewhat scatterbrained? They don't form orderly lines. They scamper about, willy-nilly, in all directions. They seem to have no purpose for being in my house, other than to annoy me.

I can't tell from whence they are coming, nor can I surmise, based on their activity, what they're after inside my house.

After smushing about the 10th one underfoot yesterday, I found myself standing in the middle of my dining room and yelling, "What do you WANT from me!? Just TELL me! I'll give it to you, whatever it is, and then you can GO!"

My mood was not improved when Drew caught on to the "game" and, every 10 minutes or so, hollered, "Uh-oh Mama! 'Nother ant!" About two times out of five, there was actually an ant. The other three times it was a dustball or a leaf or something non-creepy-crawly.

He redeemed himself, though, when I found myself sprawled on my bed upstairs (where, mercifully, it was still bug-free) muttering curses about the ants and he patted me gently on the arm and said, "Mama. I go down and get dose ants. I get dem."

My brave, brave warrior.

More swimming pics

Weekend before last, we took Drew to the Discovery Island water park in Simpsonville, which, if I may be so bold as to say, is about one-quarter of the size it needs to be. Either that, or Greenville County needs about four more water parks of the same size.

Nevertheless, I like the park because it has a zero-depth pool area specifically for babies and toddlers who can't swim on their own yet. My friend Kelly got some good pictures of her son, Alex, and Drew playing together:

Their favorite game involved doing pratfalls on their bums, which looked as if it would hurt, but I guess the swimmy diapers provided enough padding, because they kept doing it over and over.

I'm very excited this week because I get to have a Mom's Night Out on Friday. My mom is coming up to watch Drew and I'm going out with some girlfriends to eat Indian food and see the new Harry Potter movie. And then the last Harry Potter book comes out next weekend! Maybe my mom will watch Drew again so I can read the book all the way through in one sitting...