Golden Pig Tales

Uf - more fun was had this weekend than any weekend in the history of the world!

OK, maybe not, but we had a great time with Ezra and our friends and family hanging out during the morning and on through the BBQ on Saturday afternoon. So many people to play with!  Today was a nice mellow Sunday with a little bike ride and some time at the park. Ezra is two!   But now we have to go back to work, which won’t be as fun as either Saturday or Sunday. Boo!

Ezra’s birthday was awesome!  We had fun at the park after eating the birthday doughnut Then we opened some presents (super awesome monster truck from Grampa O and a great train set from dad)! Then we went to Oaks Park and rode the train, saw some boats, ate fair food, rode the carousel, went to dinner, came home, ate cake and ice cream, played with the great new presents, had a huuuuuuuuuge poop, and then read a new book and went to bed. What a great great birthday! And tomorrow will be full of more fun, friends, and food. yay! 

I’ve been taking Ezra to swim lessons since Monday of last week. He’s enjoying being in the water - especially last week when it was soooooo unusually hot. But I don’t think he’s really into swimming lessons themselves. For starters, he hasn’t learned the first lesson - how to put your face in the water and blow bubbles. I think he may have some latent memory of the womb and how he used to inhale/swallow amniotic fluid like a fish in a pond, because every time he sticks his face in the water he either drinks or inhales.  He likes to splash and play with some of the toys, and he likes the part where we sing “Motor boat motorboat go so slow, motorboat motorboat go so fast, motorboat motorboat kick up the gas!” Except at that last part, after we have all gone around in a circle faster and faster, we’re supposed to put our faces near the water and blow bubbles and Ezra of course is either drinking or sputtering and the teachers are looking at me funny. But that’s OK. Ezra doesn’t really like to do what they want anyway, he’d much rather play his own games and sing his own songs and splash me with water. I think his last straw with the lessons was  the toy incident of last week where he stomped out of the pool in protest of being told he had to give up a toy.   Maybe he’s already got a problem with authority figures?

Ezra is going to be 2 in two weeks! I’ve started talking with him about his birthday, and how Gramma O is going to come visit, and he’s going to have some cake. I think he kind of just equates birthdays with cake, rather than aging. Maybe we should all just look at birthdays that way. Anyway, he seems excited because he also knows that when Gramma O comes back again, we will go to the amusement park! He sees the amusement park every day we go to playcare, and I can tell he is just dying to find out what this place is all about. Hopefully the birthday will live up to his expectations, whatever those might be.

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”

We got new garage doors finished today, so now we can actually put stuff in the garage. I told Ezra that we were getting new garage doors so we could put stuff in the garage. Stuff like our bikes.

We went on a ride this evening and went to the park. We played on all the equipment and ran around in the grass, and then we continued to ride a little more. As we approached the garage, Ezra asked “bikes garage?” and I said “Yes!” So we opened up the doors and put the bikes inside, with Ezra’s helpful assistance. Then we closed the doors and said bye bye to the bikes and the garage. Hopefully when we go back to the garage tomorrow to get the bikes to go on another ride, they will not be covered in cobwebs or gnawed on by rats, as I really don’t know what might happen in that garage.

I bought Ezra an adidas track suit the other day at costco. It’s super stylin’ but we decided tonight that it gives Ezra a bit of a ‘tude. He got out of the car when we got home, and proceeded to throw a rock at the car. He threw something at me in the house. He got all snappy about his food. Maybe we can blame the track suit, or maybe he’s just testing boundaries and being a nearly two year old.

PS - I was impressed that Ezra slept through all the fireworks madness on Saturday night. I think it helped that it was super hot that day, and so we had all the fans on in his room creating a nice dull white noise that maybe drowned out the firework commotion.  Too bad none of that helped daddy sleep through the noise!

Ezra likes to pretend to drive things. He likes to sit in the driver seat of the car. He likes to steer the wheels on the playground equipment that look like steering wheels. Yesterday, we let Ezra ride one of those motorized things they have in malls. We were at the Fubonn shopping center, wasting time inside the air conditioning since it was super hot outside. We let Ezra sit on the mechanized bulldozer and the airplane. We got change, and Ezra got to pilot the airplane. He had such a good time he didn’t want it to stop, but 50 cents doesn’t get you very far these days.

Sometimes I have to use my stern mother voice and tell Ezra that he shouldn’t do things, such as throw bowls from the table to the floor during dinner.  Or throw blocks at me. Or sit on the car. This reprimand tends to make Ezra upset. If he doesn’t start crying because of it, he will look at me with pleading little eyes, and reach out to stroke my arm or back or whatever he can reach, and say “nice, mama, nice!” I guess he feels like I’m not being nice at the time I’m telling him he can’t do things in a serious voice. Even though it’s kind of cute, I must suppress the urge to smile when he does this, so he knows I am being serious. 

I have this animal matching memory game on my ipod that Ezra likes to play. There are maybe 25 different animals that show up on the board, and each makes a noise appropriate to that animal, more or less. Most of them sound right, although the koala makes a noise that seems much more aggressive than I would think a cute little koala would make. But then again, I’ve never heard a koala do anything but eat and sniff at my hand. Anyway, at first, Ezra really liked to see the monkey show up on the game board and it was fun to make monkey noises with him. The last couple of days he picked out a new favorite: the walrus. The walrus makes a noise like an abominable snowman. I’m hopeful that Ezra will move on to a new animal, because I don’t really like this walrus. Perhaps it just reminds me of that stupid song. 

Ezra likes to try new things, and will eat a lot of things, but he really is kind of a picky eater. He doesn’t really like meat. He doesn’t really like things that are mixed up, like rice and beans and vegetables. he generally prefers to have things all separate, and prefers that all those things be fruit. or maybe cheese, and sometimes eggs, and sometimes even cheese eggs. but mostly fruit. I think Ezra will be excited about the coming bounty of fruits in our yard. today he finally cleaned off the fruits from the honeyberry bush. 

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 is staying up really late lately. He wants to go to the park or for a walk after dinner, which means we’re outside until at least 8. Then there’s the bath, and run around and getting the right pajamas on…before you know it its 9:15 and he’s not asleep yet, even though he’s really really tired. Uf.

Today involved some cleaning and running around inside the house and then some playing, walking, and running around the neighborhood outside the house, then nap, BBQ and then a big night-time transition!   (Ezra was super special awesome at the BBQ and everyone loved him, but not more than I did.)  We got home from the BBQ past his normal-ish bedtime, and it took a while before he was willing to consider going to bed. After lying in his crib for a few minutes, he stood up and said something like “ezra fire engine” which made me think he wanted to sleep in his fire engine bed. So I asked if that’s what he wanted to do, and he said yes. So we moved Ezra, his doggie, his pillow, his blanket, and his water over to the fire engine bed. And he got all situated like he was going to sleep, and seemed sort of asleep when we left the room. I’m totally paranoid and hoping he doesn’t wake up in the middle of the night,  figure out how to open the door to his bedroom, and run rampant around the house or get outside.  eeek! Ezra’s in his big boy bed! If he’s going to sleep there regularly, I have to remember to switch the mattress so he’s not sleeping too long on that yucky chemical filled vinyl one that came with the bed. 

Ezra’s binky broke today…there was a hole in it. I told him that because it was broken he couldn’t use it anymore and it needed to go in the trash. It took a few minutes of explaining this, and a few minutes of sucking on the broken binky, but eventually he accepted that the binky was broken and he agreed to put it in the trash. I was super surprised to see him toss it in the garbage can. After the fact, he was a little upset about it, and we needed to find an alternate binky for bed time. I’m hoping that maybe maybe maybe we can convince him that now his binky is just for bed time and no other time because that’s the only binky he has left. Incidentally, this last binky is the longest lived binky. I think it’s the one we got at the hospital. 

It was really really rainy this afternoon and evening, which prevented us from going outside for some fun times at the park or on the bike+trailer. So Ezra decided to lead me and dad around the living/dining room in another crazy game of Run Around. I am not sure if there’s an objective to this game, or a way to win. But I do know that if someone falls during RunAround, they get tickled!