Both kids are sleeping now and I should be
cleaning my house and finishing my to-do list before the
childcare lady comes tomorrow for my “Welcome to Childcare”
inspection… so… what am I doing… BLOGGING of course! Or
should I say PROCRASTINATING, of course. What’s wrong with me??
Oh well, enjoy the movies.

Eve: scooting,
banging, and drooling on my floor.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DS62juF-vVQ]

Lex and
Uncle B playing with a swing at the nearby Shaker
Village.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zBX4u9zsNoc]

Eve on
the baby swing at the playground. She does like
swinging!
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7X_eQGi2On0]

Eve
loves it when Lex pushes her in the swing. She laughs and
laughs. See how he tries to get her out then gives up and keeps
pushing, then says “Swing Eve swing!”
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z1uCZRnzJnA]

1. Lex got his first bee sting
   today. We were in the car, about to drive home, and he started
   screaming. We iced it and gave him an oatmeal bath. He’s
   sleeping now. What a harsh shock when you know nothing about
   bee stings. Books and toys make bees seem sweet and friendly,
   but that’s not always so!
2. Lex
   learned Patty Cake yesterday. I showed it to him a few times,
   but he wouldn’t do it with me. Shortly after that he started
   doing it by himself, but still won’t do it with anyone else. He
   claps his hands, make full-arm rolling motions, pats his hand,
   marks a B on his belly, then makes a grand gesture towards the
   oven. So funny.
3. Lex has become
   quite the singer. He entertains himself by pushing a button on
   his Leap Frop radio, which then plays a short, quick song. He
   sings along, but sings much slower, so the music stops long
   before he does. He does this a lot in the car.
4. Lex knows his alphabet (the song anyway) and
   knows his letters, but he has recently started lining his
   letters up in a random order across the fridge and saying “It’s
   the alphabet!” Then he’ll run his finger along the letters and
   sing the alphabet song. I explain the disconnect, but he hasn’t
   fully gotten it yet. So cool watching him
   learn.”

1. Eve has her first cold.
   She’s handling it like a trooper, but you can’t help but feel
   bad for her.
2. She loves to
   laugh! She laughs if you kiss her neck or her nose. She laughs
   if you tickle her. She laughs whenever Lex is in the room. She
   loves to laugh.
3. Eve has bug
   bites all over her head. We were outside Saturday and Sunday
   evening and the mosquitoes just ate her up.
4. Eve is getting so good at keeping everything
   down. Sometimes you can see her trying to keep it down. She
   works hard and is very often successful.

So, I have I told you all yet that I made a
decision?? Wahoo!! Daycare it is! I wrote up my policy
handbook, I have my 2nd and final “welcome to childcare” (ie.
inspection) visit on Wednesday and then I’m good to go! I met a
woman tonight who has been doing it for 12 years and she had
lots of great advise. She also said don’t bother advertising.
She said there is so much demand that you can get plenty of
business from word of mouth alone. She actually turned away 2
people this week and said she would send them my contact info.
So, we’ll see. I’m feeling more confident by the day and
(hopefully!) will love my new career.
(Here is a picture from Alan’s
phone)

Mom wrote

How about a picture of the huge
grin that must be on your
face?

and I would very much like
too, however we had a sad incident yesterday. I turned on the
camera and IT DOESN’T WORK! I get the data display (flash
setting, pic count, etc.) but no display. Just a black screen,
like the cover is on it, but it’s not. I checked. Many times! I
even took a picture to see if maybe that did anything, but I
just got a lovely picture of black. I’m so bummed. And,
ironically (or just annoyingly) the only camera store in the
phone book closed last week! So I don’t even know where to take
it for service. I just don’t have much faith in the handy tech
guys at Best Buy (not sure they deal with anything other than
computers anyway). Soo… we will work on acquiring a new
camera and in the meantime you’re all going to have to rely on
my excellent writing abilities. Or perhaps our low quality cell
phone cameras. The kids were extra cute today and I found
myself reaching for the camera many times. I’m not sure if
that’s unusual or if I was just conscious of it today because
the camera didn’t work.

We are actually
having bad luck with pictures lately. Due to a hard drive
failure (or something) we lost a bunch of our digital photos,
the most important being all photos from the last 6 months.
Luckily I have some of them on my Picasa site, like Eve’s
newborn pics, and lots of good pics are on the blog, but many
more are lost. *sniff*

After many long years, Alan’s patent has
been approved and issued! Yay!! He got a fancy document in the
mail from the USPTO yesterday with a seal and everything. The
patent is for a Mechanical-thermal solar power system. US
Patent number 7,281,381. Check it out!

Ha! Who needs naps?! He kept her up for awhile,
so I brought her down and put him in the crib where he
proceeded to entertain himself until a bit past 3pm. Meanwhile
baby and I took a rest on the couch. She slept, I read. She’s
too big to leave alone on the couch now (what with all that
rolling!), so we cuddled. It was rough ;) When 3pm came and
went and he was still wide awake I decided to get him up and
let her nap in the crib. So we made baby food, sweet potato
chips (didn’t turn out quite as I’d expected) and cut up the
cantaloupe. Lex LOVES cantaloupe and picked up 1/4 of the melon
and said “want to eat it like a watermelon.” Then Eve woke up
and we went outside to play with the new toy we bought at Home Depot
yesterday. (and while getting the link I
came across a $10 cash back offer. sweet!!) My leaf
woes may be over!! Then he ended up in bed at 6:30pm, cried for
about 5 minutes and fell asleep. She happily went to bed 1/2
hour later. Now I have to go finish making baby food and clean
the kitchen.

How quickly they go from sweet and
adorable to totally frustrating :( Particularly on days when I
really need to accomplish something while they sleep, such as
paying bills. He’s still up, no longer calm, jumping around,
climbing on stuff, NOT SLEEPING! Grrr…. I’m going to read my
past posts a few times to remind myself that just 10 minutes
ago he was sweet and adorable :)

I wish I could have a recorder going 24/7.
These kids are so wonderful. Now he is sitting in his bed
singing the “banana fanana fo fanana” song. What is that
called? I was singing in on the way home today and he asked for
it over and over. “Sing the mommy song. Sing the Eve song.” I
even did Tessa and Alan. Now he’s sitting up there singing “the
Alan song” over and over. I love him!