Kid-Speak Cuteness

Being a wordie, I am enjoying watching my children's language development. Here are some of the things that have tickled me lately:

• Q can't say the 'f' sound. I never noticed how many names he has to say that have that sound in them. My dad is F.A. = Essay. Griffin = Grissin. Sophie = Sosie. Quite charming!
• T has to wear a blue jumpsuit when he is crawling around inspecting the underside of big trucks. He came out to show it to us and Z asked, "Why does Daddy have to wear a bouncing suit again?"
• On the exodus to Wester, we played The Incredibles on the portable DVD player. Ever since, Q has been playing SooPiOhs! Translation? Super Heroes. After bath time, when the hooded towel comes out, he requests that I let him be super - which means running around starkers with a towel hanging off his head.
• Compared to Z, Q has always been a little reserved with strangers. He is starting to come into his own, though. Lately he has started calling out "Hi!" and "Hi, there!" from his safe position on the front porch or in his carseat.

I know there are so many more, but awesome mom that I am I can't remember them. Z's vocabulary rivals a third grader's any day and never fails to impress strangers. Whom she love to talk to... as long as I am within earshot. Sometimes I wish she wasn't quite so advanced! It is like talking to a 14-year-old instead of a 4-year-old!

(Belated) Weekend Wordles - Travel Edition

Join the fun at The Asylum, aka Last Shreds Of Sanity, to participate in Shan's Week~End Wordles. She has Mr. Linky up and running. For instructions on how to participate, go here.

Not Dead

Wow! It has been a while since I last posted! Nothing bad has happened at Casa de Critical Mass. I have just been sucked into a puzzling bloggy prob. You may remember a while back that I sponsored a blog-makeover giveaway over at Sassy Mamas. Cailin Yates of a 5 Kids, 2 Labs, 1 Lizard and a Hermit Crab was the lucky winner.

She has been a lot of fun to work with and I am really pleased with how the designs are coming along. Unfortunately, there is a learning curve associated with new endeavors - and I am learning on Caitlin! We both love the background I designed for her, but I can't seem to get it to show up right on her Mac. It looks fine on three different PCs with three different aspect ratios, but not on her Mac. I have finally followed the advice of Easy Custom Blogs: I changed up my template and switched to Photo Bucket. Hopefully that will solve the problem!

Now I am off to work on her button! I will catch up with the rest of our activities soon. I promise!

Weekend Wordles: Independence Day Edition

Join the fun at The Asylum, aka Last Shreds Of Sanity, to participate in Shan's Week~End Wordles. She has Mr. Linky up and running. For instructions on how to participate, go here.

Wow, Wow, Wester!

Being a cop, T is required to work on most major holidays. Summer beer drinking holidays in particular. His new job is mostly days, but I was disappointed to find that he had to work one of his rare night shifts tonight. Wester has a big July 4th festival that ends with an impressive fireworks display. Since it is so flat out here in west Texas, we figured that we could probably see it from our backyard.

Not so much.

However, our neighborhood more than made up for the lack of professional fireworks displays. We live in the middle of a development on the outskirts of town. To the east of us are the houses were the big money lives. Our awesome neighbors (what are the odds that we would get great neighbors two houses in a row!) invited us out to do fireworks with them around 8:30. We live outside the city limits, so this is totally legal. We watched the kids light off jumping jacks and sparklers and roman candles for a while. I was secretly bummed that I was going to miss the big show.

Just before dark, I learned just how different life can be here in Wester. The rich neighbors started setting off fireworks to rival any of the municipal shows we ever had in Small Town. They might not have been coordinated to music, but the fireworks went on and on. We finally cried uncle around 10:50 and came back in the house. I hosed off the kids and got them to bed in record time.

As I type this, there are still MAJOR booms going on all around us. Happy birthday, Uncle Sam!

Good Times

The title isn't even sarcastic! We had the. best. time. playing with the cousins today. We met up with Cousin P and her two munchies and Cousin N and her four came, too. It was awesome! The kids all played so nicely together. This is a miracle as Z and her cousin C are cut from the same cloth and are born to lead.

We went to one of those indoor bounce places. Will the wonders of this not-so-small town ever cease? It was a blast and on a Friday morning, not too busy. Then we all caravanned to Cousin P's house for lunch. Her house makes my house look like we don't like kids. My kiddos were in heaven with all of the cool new toys. In fact, the only outburst of the day came from Q. He seriously DID NOT WANT TO LEAVE. He went from his usual mellow self to screaming like I was stabbing him. He kept it up for at least half of the 15 mile drive home. Whee.

Cousin P has been so generous with inviting me into her circle of friends. She has me all set up to go to her playgroup and to come to a trunk show party. Fun! This is so much easier than when I moved to Small Town and didn't know a soul for months! Yay Wester!

Cousin N says she likes to to the Wester splash park, so hopefully we will be able to coordinate that soon. I just love having family so close by!

Word Stew

I don't have enough for/feel like writing a long post, so here is some bullet-y goodness (what kind of traffic is that weird phrase going to bring here?) for your reading enjoyment:

• That doctor that I was so smug about having for Z? On vacation. We ended up in the after hours pediatric clinic at the hospital. Turns out that it wasn't pink eye, but some kind of extra fun associated with a raging ear infection. Her ear was so infected that it came out her eye? Ack! Probably more like the same bacteria was messing with both areas. Good thing she loves taking medicine!
• After being in Wester for one day, I decided that the poms were going to die if I didn't get their fur cut down. I found a groomer and made an appointment. They asked if I wanted a lion cut as that was what they usually did to poms in the summer. T would have killed me if they came home with this ridiculous haircut, so I told them I was thinking more teddy bear and would bring them a picture. Three hours of internet research later, I decided to just go with a bath, brush out, and sanitary clip. It turns out that cutting their coats like that can damage their hair growth. Some never come back the same! Yikes! The funny thing when I picked them up - besides smelling like cheap hookers - was the sanitary clip. When I've had it done before, they just kind of trimmed a little under the tail. Not this time! Izzy and Griffin were both SHAVED from directly under their tails to their undersides. The long hair on their rear legs (feathering, I think?) was clipped down to look like pantaloons. Now their tiny little buttholes (that have never seen the light of day!) stare at you like a big red eyeball every time they walk away from you. Pretty. But very clean!
  
• Upon arrival in Wester my Tivo died. Tragedy! I called Tivo customer service and they told me that my hard drive was dead and to fork over my first born and a kidney to get it replaced. Or I could go to weaKnees and replace it a whole lot cheaper. Uh, I took option B. For less that a third of what Tivo wanted to charge me, I replaced the hard drive myself and tripled the number of hours I can record. Yay!
• I took Mom-in-law's giant golden retriever, Scout, to the groomer for a wash and brush out. They did a good job on the washing part, but he still had mats and tons of undercoat. But still, totally worth $20 not to have to try to hoist his 100 pound self into the tub and keep him there! I spent most of last night brushing (and brushing and brushing) him out. I collected enough fur to make a whole new dog. Or to spin into yarn and make a sweater. Now he is beee-yooo-ti-ful. He is so gorgeous people regularly ask us if they can take his picture. He might not be too smart, but at least he is pretty. (It's funny that our male dogs are the beauty queens in the family!)
• The in-laws are coming to visit tomorrow on their way to their summer place in Colorado. The house and yard look like a$$. Good thing they aren't all judgey-judgerson like some in-laws can be. I am just worried that they will want try to fix everything instead of playing with the kids and getting rested up for the long drive.