Golden Pig Tales

Bike ride along the river to see boats began the weekend. A couple of trips to the park continued the weekend.

I showed Ezra how to make bridges with his new train set and became the go-to person to fix the train when the bridges fell.

Saturday passed and night came. We slept and woke. Eza was eating a snack at his table in the kitchen during the morning. I stepped on a Matchbox car on the kitchen floor and said, ,,Fuck.”

Then Ezra said, ,,Fuck.” Then he said a bunch of other words that was beyond comprehension as I remembered that I need to say, ,,Fudge sickles.”

The rest of the day was calm sans Ezra’s face plant into some cement that scraped his nose and forehead. I didn’t say fuck and neither did Ezra, but I was thinking it. The scrape on nose later caused Ezra pain when the nectarine juice spread over his nose. He didn’t get stung my the plums juice from the many many plums he ate before dinner tonight.

The day ended with trains and books and no more speaking of the word Fuck.

Ezra attended his first ever da vinci days gathering this weekend. As Kalab said, this experience included the Daddies show on Friday night. It also included more music, ice cream, french fries, bouncy walks, mazes, balloons, walking, carrying, running, crying, almost losing a binky, an aborted trip to the wave science research center, bike-sculptures shaped like cats, slugs, tiki bars, and other weird things, a lot of fish art, and several trips to the new Corvallis transit bus that was on display at the entrance to da Vinci days. All this in just 2 days!

I think Ezra’s favorite part was where we sat on this new bus, and I sang many many different verses of “wheels on the bus”

When the car stops in front of the house, Ezra really doesn’t get excited about getting out of the car. He says “button button button”. His new interest is crawling into the front of the car and twisting all the knobs, pushing all the buttons, turning on lights and cranking up the AC fan. He likes to sit in the driver’s seat and say “ezra mama drive” and every time he asks for the keys like I’m going to give in and let him stick the keys into the ignition. Occasionally he honks the horn unintentionally and surprises himself along with whomever is passing by or hanging out in the ‘hood. Then he laughs at himself and says “beeeeep!” 

Ezra can identify a picture of a bumble bee, and I think maybe at daycare Ezra learned the song about squishing up a baby bumble bee. Lately, when Ezra sees a picture of a bee, or even a real bee, he says “Bee Bee Bum Bee Bee Bum” many times and holds his hands together like he’s bringing home the baby bumblebee so that I will sing the song for him. He thinks it’s a pretty funny song. I think it’s so cute hearing him say “bee bee bum bee bee bum” repeatedly : )

Ezra is right-handed. Everytime he calls out to, ,,Pintar,” he most often holds the drawing tool, the pen or crayon, in his right hand. Once in a while he will hold the drawing tool in his left hand but after what feels like frustration he will put the drawing tool in his right hand and pintar.

Ezra is talking when that binky is not sucked to his face. His talk is single words and gesticulation but it is talking, and the talking is making being a parent so much easier for he can tell us he wants applesauce and that there is a choo-choo passing past if we couldn’t hear the horn in the distance.

He is able to understand more than he can speak which makes parenting a whole lot easier because he can at least say yes or no if he wants a type of food or if he wants to perform some task like go outside or read a book or not eat something he doesn’t want. Of course, he is still trying to understand some words we speak as we are still trying to understand some of the words he speaks.

One of the words he continues to say is mow-tow-tow which is Ezra for Motorcycle, which is a new favorite motorized vehicle. And no matter how many times I say motorcycle after he says mow-tow-tow he still says mow-tow-tow, but that is okay because he is still young and learning and still at times has a binky sucked to his face making words difficult to practice.

Ezra is getting bigger! It seems like he is bigger today than yesterday. Kalab and I both seemed to think so, so it must be true. Pretty soon, Ezra will be 6 feet tall.

We had so much fun hanging out with Ezra this weekend! It makes me sad that it’s Sunday and we will be spending the day at work, rather than going to the park, reading books, playing with toys and walking along the streets to look for taxis, busses, u-hauls and motorcycles. That sounds like way more fun than work : (

Ezra also proved his spanish vocabulary is growing! He wants mas mango, mas sesame street, and mas play time. He’s so cute when he says it : )

I can’t believe one little kid could be this much fun!

This is not the picture from today, but I think this is generally a pretty accurate image of what Ezra’s hair looks like when he goes down any of those plastic slides that are ubiquitous on today’s playgrounds. Anyway, today we went over to the park with little J and her mom, and Ezra wanted to do nothing but go down the slide. Usually this means that I climb up to the top with him and either go down after him or go back down the stairs. There were several other kids about Ezra’s age, maybe a little older, at the park today who also wanted to go down the slide,  and they were climbing up all on their own. So of course, Ezra had to climb up the slide stairs all by himself. I was a little nervous and tried to hang on to him from beside the slide stairs…but it wasn’t really necessary because he climbed all the way up, all by himself! I think he had way more fun than usual coming down the slide. So much that he started getting all crazy and inventive about how he was going to go down the slide…head first, backwards, on his stomach, etc.  Hopefully Ezra will be content with this slide for a while, because the other slides at the park are I think just still too big, plus they have no real “stairs” so he’s always trying to walk up the slide itself…

It’s the weekend, which means more time with Ezra!!!!!!!! yay! I am excited to have Ezra around all day for two days! I only wish that I had been able to stay home with him today but unfortunately I had to be at work. Boo! I think we are going to try some fingerpainting with Ezra tomorrow. Hopefully we can keep his fingers on the paper and not let him dash about the house with painty fingers decorating all the furniture, rugs, and cats!Yay! 

Where’d it go? Where is it?

Kalab and I have been asking these questions with Ezra about various objects. It started a few days ago when Ezra put a piece of bread underneath a big salad scooper, and I said “Where’d the bread go”? Ezra lifted up the scooper, and I said “Yay! There’s the bread!” and laughed and clapped a little. Ezra put the scooper back over the bread. This time, Kalab said “Where is it? Where’s the bread?” and Ezra lifts up the scooper to again reveal the bread! Wow! Woah! This went on for quite a few minutes before Ezra got tired of it. The best part of the game is that after hiding something, Ezra lifts up his arms and has his hands up by his head to make sort of a shrug/I don’t know gesture. It’s really totally hilarious. So we’ve been promoting this game and Ezra has played along by hiding various items under various items. He will “hide” something for 10-20 minutes if you’d let him. Unfortunately for Ezra, mom and dad get bored of it before he really does. But he’s improving his hiding skills. In fact, he’s getting so good at it I think we might try to teach him the shell game next, so we can maybe make us a little money while we’re standing out on the street watching cars!

This afternoon I took Ezra outside to watch the rain. It was sort of sunny, and then all of a sudden it just started to pour. Little Ezra could not be satisfied to just stand on the covered porch and watch the rain - he had to go out into the front yard and down to the sidewalk to feel the rain on his head, splash in some puddles, and touch the wet cement. Seeing how much fun Ezra was having and hearing him laugh with the splish splash of the puddles made me smile, and I started having fun too. And then the sun came back out : )

Ezra pulled his own red wagon today after he rode in it. He began by pushing the red wagon with me steering, but then we showed him the handle and -v- showed him and helped him hold the handle until he moved her hand off the handle and pulled the red wagon.

-v- said Ezra pulling the red wagon was like seeing Shetland pony pulling a prairie wagon.

Ezra has created his own sign for milk! It is only used for “mama milk” - Ezra hasn’t yet developed a drinking relationship with cow’s milk and he currently only uses it to wash his hands or squirt on his high chair tray. The first time he did this was last week when Grandma O was here visiting. I had come home from work, and was sitting in the living room with Ezra, Grandma O, and Kalab.   Ezra walked over to the couch and grabbed a pillow - one that I have frequently used to prop him up while he is nursing. I thought maybe he was just going to flop down with it on the floor, but instead, he walked it over to where I was sitting, and practically threw it at me! Then he waved his arms in the way he does when he wants to be picked up. So I thought this was cute and decided that since he had figured out a way to ask me, I would let him nurse. This might have been a mistake. Now every time Ezra wants to nurse (which has been often the last few days because it’s been so hot and he is teething), he picks up a pillow and gives me the sign for milk. And if I refuse him, he gets sort of upset!

Ezra’s sign for “mama milk” is so great I wish I had it on video! Maybe Kalab can help with this.

I took Ezra outside tonight after dinner for a walk, one where I walked AND Ezra walked!

We didn’t go very far, but Ezra was so excited to be out for a walk, walking on his own! We walked from our street corner down the sidewalk and stopped for a moment to squat near the big lily plant, eat mulberries and look at some ants. Then we stood up and continued our walk past our house and our neighbor’s house. Then we walked down the neighbor’s driveway to tap the bumper of the neighbor’s shiny red truck. Then we walked back up the driveway, turned around, walked back to the truck, tapped the bumper again. Then we returned to the sidewalk and Ezra was moving so fast - he almost seemed close to running at times - waving his arms up above his head, wind in his hair, smiling and laughing with such great joy. It was enough to a tear to my eye of mostly joy, but a little sadness, at how quickly my son is growing up!! Then he turned the corner, looked back at me, and seemed to wave as if to say “try to keep up, mom!”

What’s more fun than splashing in the pool on a hot summer day? Ezra had a fun pool party with his baby friends A and O this weekend. The water babies splashed and laughed for hours!

Ezra has added a new smile to his repertoire of facial expressions. This new and different smile just showed up in the last couple of days, and seems to be reserved for things that make him really excited and happy (such as walking with the walker).  He scrunches up his nose a little, and squints his eyes, and smiles real big. It’s so cute! Hopefully I will be able to capture this expression on my camera, as it would take nearly 1000 words to describe how cute it is.