Over the past week or so, Lex’s vocabulary
has gotten great. He started using multiple phonemes and
repeating, or trying to repeat, words we say. He says “house”
and “mouse” and “milk” and “socks” and “snack” (“nack” really),
but his new favorite word, and activity, is “books.” He says
the word perfectly and he’s become quite the avid reader. Well,
listener anyway, as he forces us to read hundreds of books a
day to him. “Baby Donald Goes to Playland” appears to be his
favorite and it’s an absolutely horrible Disney book. But he
loves it, so we read it about 20 times a day. Sometimes he’ll
bring me a book, say “book”, then drop it on the floor so he
can make the sign, then pick it back up and hand it to me :)
Very smart baby. And silly. Today he came up to me, book in
hand, and said “dogs.” I was confused and almost corrected him,
but then I noticed the book he had was “Doggies” by Sandra Boynton. My
favorite is “Hey! Wake Up!” also by Sandra
Boynton. On the page that says “Shout out loud, GOOD MORNING
SUN, HAPPY MORNING EVERYONE” I shout it out loud and Lex laughs
and laughs. He now expects it and as soon as we turn to the
page he whips his head around to look at me :)

Anyway, lots going on these days. We spent
about 5 hours in Home Depot yesterday trying to order cabinets.
It was pretty much a nightmare. We were too disorganzied (the
three of us and Alan’s parents) and didn’t quite know what we
wanted, I had a few false assumptions that I didn’t state
clearly so no one was able to correct, and our sales lady was
less than helpful. So it was long and annoying. But we do owe a
big thanks to Grandpa Don for being such a great babysitter! We
ended up with a quote for $8200 *choke* and went home to
regroup and put the baby to bed. After dinner and some online
research we saw the error in our ways. We were being quoted
full custom cabinetry and that’s not exactly what we had the
budget for. We ended up going back and buying about half of
what we need in prefab cabinets that you can buy right off the
shelf. Lower quality (yes, I’ll admit it), but more inline with
the wallet. So, by 10:00pm (we closed Home Depot!!) we finally
made some progress. Don’t worry, Grandpa was babysitting the
sleeping boy at home. We didn’t keep either of them up that
late! :)

Today we did some online
research at Consumer Reports and went to Sears with a list of
appliances we needed, hoping for a Labor Day sale. Turns out
they don’t have a Labor Day sale (well, they have a standard
sale that lasts for a few weeks, but nothing specific) and,
more importantly, they didn’t have anything we needed! Another
wasted trip! At least Lex had fun climbing on the treadmills,
riding the lawn mowers, and “helping” other customers with
their shopping.

So here we are,
shopping online. Why do we bother leaving the house anyway?
:)

On a bright note, we went to the
house yesterday to do measurements (another aggrivation at Home
Depot) and met the current owners (ok) and one of our
soon-to-be neighbors. He was very nice and has two Golden
Retrievers. Lex was in heaven. I told the guy that it would be
very hard to keep Lex out of his yard. He laughed and said his
boys are both grown and there are no grandkids yet, so he’d
love company from a friendly baby. The dogs even let Lex sit on
them! All will be good once the remodeling is done and we’re
living in our new house.