Here are a few photos from our trip to the beautiful Rhododendron Gardens a couple months ago. Sorry. I seem to always forget I have a blog.























The last one is my favorite. :)

Paulisms

Hurry! I have to post an update on Paul before he turns two! (Which is this coming Monday.)

Paul's quite the little assistant. After helping aunt Reana cook dinner in the kitchen, he decided he'd also join her in the living room to help watch his cousin Lincoln. In passing, my mom commented on the cute scene, "Oh Paul, are you babysitting?" And when she came back a few minutes later, this is what she saw:

Paul took that babysitting comment very literally! (Yes, that's an apron he has on. He takes his cooking seriously too.)

Here are some more funny Paul moments:

Blair was watching the Heat play the Spurs in the NBA finals. When asked who would win, Paul said something like, "They turn their heaters on."

Paul will often give the order, "mommy, be funny". However, when spending time with Blair, Paul simply pleads, "daddy.... talk!"

How does my almost-two-year-old son play with his toy cars? I overheard this "dialogue" between a toy police car and a delivery truck: "Hi car! I got scratch on my wheel. Awww dear!... I kiss better.... *Muaaa! Oh, thanks!"

The William Tell Overture came on the classical radio station while driving with Paul in the morning. I heard a gasp from the car seat. "It's music!" then after a pause and a slow grin through his thumb-sucking pose, he said in a calm voice oozing with delight, "I like this, mommy."

While at my parent's house, Paul attempted to climb a chair taller than he and I discouraged him by telling him it was dangerous. Immediately he tried again and, again, I told him "no".  After a couple seconds of thought Paul ran into the other room calling "come here, mommy! come here!". I dutifully obeyed my toddler and without skipping a beat he ran into the previous room, quickly peaked around the corner to make sure I was still where he'd placed me, and proceeded to climb the chair.

Paul is an expert at verbal communication and pronunciation... as far as pre-two-year-olds go, anyway. He speaks in sentences up to seven or eight words long and we love asking him to pronounce big words like "internet", "republic", "accidental" etc. because he does an amazing job repeating them back quite accurately. Despite all this, though, Paul has a few words he stubbornly refuses to pronounce correctly. Here's a sampling of those words:

Oatmeal is "EE-oh"
Banana is "Ma-na"
Grandpa is "fafa" although it's beginning to morph into "brah-pa"
Reana is "Rhana"
I apologize for this next one, but please note the "r"...
Truck is "fruck"

He can say all these words correctly just fine, but he prefers his versions for now.

Some of his recent accomplishments include:
Counting to 10 consistently without any help. (With some help he can make it to 30.)
Singing the ABCs
Jumping
Drinking from a cup without purposefully spilling
Saying his full name
Brushing his own teeth (mommy still helps get what he's missed)


Above: Paul loves trying on mommy and daddy's shoes.

Above: Cousin Lincoln's first visit to our place without his mommy or daddy.

Locked out!

Here are the funny stories for the month.

While I was gone teaching last Tuesday, Blair did a lot of housecleaning with Paul at his side: dusting, laundry, vacuuming, etc. (Are you jealous? Yup. That's my man. But don't worry; that's not the funny part.)

Blair was out on the tiny balcony of our second-story apartment wiping and sweeping when...

*click* Paul had managed to lock the sliding glass door with his daddy still outside.

It wasn't intentional, of course. In fact Paul started to beg, "Daddy, come in!" after a few long minutes of futile pointing, explaining, and mock demonstration from Blair through the glass.

There is no possible way to climb down from our balcony without a rope or ladder, neither of which Blair had on hand. The front door was locked as well, so Blair really did feel that he was at the mercy of Paul's little hands.

After ten-ish minutes of this, Blair noticed a downstairs neighbor smoking on her back porch. He got her attention and explained the embarrassing situation asking if she could notify our office managers (who happen to be good friends of ours, haha) and get a key to help him out... er... in.

Thankfully, the office manager was home and all was set right. After Blair told me this story, I said, "well, I hope the apartment looked decent when the manager had to walk in." But of course it was. My fabulous husband had just thoroughly cleaned it. So, that's what makes this event alright in the end. At least everything looked nice as my husband was rescued from our 22 month old's new-found door locking skills. That knocked off 20% of the humiliation points from this incident.

Of course I have to include pictures in my blog post, so here's documentation of something else that only takes place while I'm gone:
Paul chose this "outfit" to wear to bed one night. After carefully hand-picking each article of his pajama ensemble he stood in front of the mirror, looked up and down and exclaimed "awesome!"
(Sorry the pictures are blurry.)

Happy Cinco De Mayo!

First Hair Cut

When my mom said Paul's hair reminded her of Nicholas Cage, I knew it was time to give Paul a hair cut.  So, we decided to do it for Family Home Evening on April 1st (no joke ;) and get his adorable dignity back once and for all. 

Here are some before pictures.

Paul didn't seem too happy about the sound of clippers at a distance, let alone on his head.  So we just sat him in his high chair in the middle of the kitchen and I clipped away with scissors.

I was afraid of that. I thought for certain that me using scissors to trim a wiggly 21-month-old's hair would = a very bad haircut.

 As Paul watched chunks of hair fall down around his face he said,

"It's raining!"




And here is the finished product.

 Although it is shorter than I wanted and a bit choppy looking, I think it turned out alright
.
Here's a random video of Paul. I'm testing out my video-adding skills since I haven't been able to for months. Enjoy! (hopefully)

Thanks for stopping by! Have a happy day!

Jobless

Okay. I said I'd provide a "juicy" post about us. Well, it's not exactly exciting or anything, but it's kind of a big deal to us.

Blair quit his job.

Are you wondering if he has another job lined up? Haha! Nope. We're in full-swing job-search mode. Am I worried? Am I stressed? For some odd reason, no, I'm not.

Maybe that odd reason has something to do with the fact that I finally have my husband back, literally and... emotionally...(?) That job was sucking all the life out of Blair as if it were a dementor slowly eating his soul. That may sound overly dramatic, but if you think of one's soul as one's personality/happiness, I feel that dementor analogy isn't too far from the truth. The more I heard about what he was dealing with, the more I would say to Blair, "you need to get out of there!". Three years is long enough to feel like you're heading off to hell every morning. I honestly do not know how he lasted that long.

Blair is always calm and composed on the outside and he would not write about his experience as dramatically as I am, but I know that underneath that handsome, cool, head he was feeling like this:

(I'm not sure, but I think that picture is supposed to be a man expressing frustration at work. However, as I looked at it longer, I wondered if it might be showing the ecstatic joy of a man who just quit the job he hated. Either way, it works for this post.)

Since quitting, Blair is happy, plays with Paul, plans, creates, and talks (well, as much as a Blair ever did, which isn't much). It's the Blair I know and love!

As far as a new job: we have some promising possibilities. Regardless, I'm just glad he's out of the doom-and-gloom smog and finally has the energy and clarity of mind to look for something new. Meanwhile, I'll be teaching more dance classes at the studio to keep us from eating into our savings too much.

If you hear of anyone needing a super talented and good-looking engineer, let us know!

More Paul - 21 months

Yep another blog post about Paul. Don't worry, we still exist too. In fact, I'm planning a really juicy blog post about Blair and me and what's going on in our lives very shortly. Until then, enjoy more pictures of our current obsession: Paul.

 Paul has really become good friends with his Teddy Bear as of late. He wants to eat, sleep, cuddle, talk and play with him. I even saw Paul "teaching" the bear how to climb on the armchair and turn on the lamp by using the bear's fluffy limb to turn the switch. If the bear falls down Paul will say, "Uh oh! Ochie!" kiss the bear on the head and say "All better!". He loves to just "ug" and "kiss" (or "mua!") the bear just because he loves it so much.

And here are some other random pictures for the blog.

This is what Paul does when we ask him to smile:


Another good "fend" of Paul's is his baby cousin "Ing-kuhn" (Lincoln). Paul talks about "bebe inkun" all the time. He loves to just be near him. Who wouldn't want to be close to that adorable little face?


This was Paul's first trip to the library, which he absolutely LOVED! You wouldn't know it from the pictures, but he was giggling with delight the whole time we were there. Just smile for the camera once please!




Thanks for stopping by!

Funny Happy Paul

In the car the other day Paul started counting,
"one...
two...
four...
five...
chicken..."
which put Blair and I into a fit of laughter.


Right now, one of Paul's favorite phrases is "ookit, Mommy ookit!" (look it). When I look, he's either dangling from something new he's learned to climb, figured out a new way to smash his hands together to form a sculpture of tangled fingers, or he's just pulling his ears away from his head and making a silly face. Yesterday, I heard that familiar "ookit, mommy, ookit!" and when I turned around he was being held and spun by Blair in the most graceful of poses with his back arched away from Blair, one arm beautifully curved over his head and the other curved at his side with the most balletic of fingers. He held that pose while spinning for a good two minutes, all the while saying "ookit, mommy, ookit!". "I see you, Paul" I was trying to say , but couldn't through all my laughter.


One day while in the kitchen Paul comes with his head hanging and saying "Ooooh nooooo, ooooh, Paul! Water! Oh no!" I instantly scoured every room in the apartment frantically trying to find what mischief Paul had gotten into. When I came into our master bathroom I saw he had opened the cupboard (which has a child lock), opened the mouthwash (I can hardly open those silly lids myself!) and poured the entire bottle (which was practically full) all over the bathroom floor. Some of our laundry still smells like that mouthwash after the clean-up.


I often hear Paul playing in his room saying things like, "Here you go, Mommy!" "Hello, dinosaurs!", "good morning, cars!" or singing a tuneless song to his toys or himself. He is almost constantly insanely happy! I absolutely love his contagiously joyful little personality!



Me: "Paul, do you want to go visit grandma and grandpa?"
Paul:"Um.... no. How about.... hmmm... "
Me: "Aunt Reana and uncle Shawn?"
Paul: "No... how about.... um.... Delilah!?"
Me: "The cat? Do you want to see Bowser too?"
Paul: excitedly "Yeah! Delilah! Bowser!"

Paul loves his grandparents, but for some reason the thought of seeing their pets is initially more exciting.