Living in a World of Chaos

Today's first picture is in honor of the cucumber sandwich I had for lunch. It's the English blood in me that craves those suckers. And if you haven't seen the movie How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days (where this picture comes from), you must! It's so funny!


As previously mentioned, our lives have been crazy and frustrating lately. I won't go into many details, but one of the main issues is we have to move. Finding housing in our little town right now has been one of the toughest challenges in my life. We've been looking for MONTHS, and still have nothing. Countless houses have seemed to be the perfect fit, and then don't work out for one reason or another.

I've been muddling through, living in limbo, taking pictures I haven't posted anywhere (sorry Mom!) So here's a sort of recap of the more fun things that have been happening around here.

Pirate Baby is now 19 months old! When he was 18 months, I did another set of pictures with Rodney the Rhino.

Caught mid-sneeze. One day he will probably hate me for posting this picture, but it was too funny not to include.

I love this one. I would kill to know what was going on in Pirate Baby's head right then.


Most of the pictures I took that day ended up like this. He just couldn't keep his hands off Rodney!



4th of July, Pirate Baby got his first mohawk.

He hated the process of having it done. It took a lot of gel and water and combing, and then hairspray. He squirmed and squawked, but when it was done and he saw himself in the mirror, he was thrilled!


I can't get over how stinkin' cute this kid is!



Surfer Pirate has Pirate Baby hooked on candy now. ...sigh...

(no pictures of this because they all have Surfer Pirate in them.)



There have also been a lot of canned pastas eaten in our house lately - something I personally can't stand, but Surfer Pirate loves them. The kids seem to like them as well.

(Pirate Munchkin has admitted to me that the canned meats are disgusting, but she tolerates them because she likes the pasta.)

She was enjoying some straight out of the can (gag!) as a snack in front of the tv one day. Pirate Baby decided he needed some, so he climbed up on the couch and sat next to her.

She was kind enough to share. She's a GREAT big sister!

Lots of bonding over food happens at our house.


The other thing these two have been up to is building a "fort" on the couch. All the cushions come off the couch and onto the floor in front of it. Then the whole couch gets lined in soft blankets. They spend HOURS climbing around on it. (I keep meaning to take pictures.) Pirate Baby likes to attack the blankets and bite them. He also really likes to SPLAT his face into the pillows and blankets. Pirate Munchkin says she wants to sleep overnight on the couch like that sometime soon.



Miracle of miracles, Miss Dampier actually allowed Major Stede to sleep in her bed! Very temporarily. It lasted maybe 15 minutes. I knew I had to grab a picture because it will probably never happen again. (Notice all the toys and things scattered around them. Pirate Baby enjoys... um... "decorating" the house.)



Snuggles are a constant thing in our family.


We went to the park a few days ago with a friend who has twins just younger than Pirate Baby. The kids had a great time playing on the playground, and all the babies enjoyed digging in the wood chips.

I love his little feet.


Notice how red his knees are. He knows how to walk. He just doesn't want to. Call it fear of falling down, call it just plain stubborn. Whatever it is, he's content to crawl, and he's darn good at it! I'm sure once he figures out that he would be able to RUN if he would walk, crawling will be a thing of the past.

Pirate Munchkin starts school next week. 3rd Grade! I hope she loves it. That was my favorite grade in elementary school - mostly because I had an amazing teacher who I loved dearly. One of her friends is having a sleep-over tonight as sort of a final bash before the new school year. Poor kiddo had a headache and a fever last night. The headache was still there this morning, and her biggest fear was that she wouldn't feel well enough to go tonight. Some headache medicine fixed that. After she'd been over there a couple hours, the fever and headache were back. She called to see if she could take some medicine at their house and stay the night anyway! This child will NOT let a little headache stop her from a good time! I so love her.

Surfer Pirate started back at the farm for harvest season, so with Pirate Munchkin at her sleepover, it was very quiet here tonight. Pirate Baby was playing with his stroller, so I asked him if he wanted to get in it. He nodded his head and said "Yeahyeahyeah."* As soon as he was in, he started pulling the seatbelt straps over his shoulders. "Did you want to go for a walk?" "Yeahyeahyeah." So off we went. He had a LOVELY time pointing and talking about everything he saw. We stopped to pet the neighbor's dog and cat. We stopped to touch flowers and leaves and berries and enjoyed a nice pond complete with waterfall. We looked at birds and anything else that caught his attention. He was most intrigued by a model car that hangs above a doorway on a building here in town. He loves anything with wheels on it, and I'm sure seeing it hanging in the air was extra interesting.

*His "Yeahyeahyeah." is one of my very favorite things right now. He gets this really happy look on his face, opens his mouth wide and nods his head in an exaggerated way while he says it. It reminds me so much of Muttley from the old Laugh Olympics cartoons. Here's a clip of Muttley so you can see what I mean - he does it at 1:04 in this clip.

Pirate Baby talks a lot. Most of his words can only be distinguished by the first couple letters, but he's getting there. He loves to say "Dah!" repeatedly when petting the dogs. When I get him up in the morning or after his nap, we play a little game. He points at different things in his room and I name them for him. The one he's best at is "Duh!" for his stuffed duck. He also likes to say "Steh!" for stairs as we go down them every day. But he is also gathering phrases and learning appropriate times to use them - storing them in his brain for when it's time. One evening, a food show was on, and he was fascinated by whatever they were making - STARING fixated at the screen. When the show went to commercial, he said "Dang it!" A couple days ago, he heard Surfer Pirate come home. He went crawling as fast as he could across the house, right up to his daddy. He handed him a puzzle piece from one of his animal puzzles. Surfer Pirate said what a nice piece it was and tried to hand it back. Pirate Baby said "Go ahead" and crawled away! As much as he talks to me, it's NOTHING to how much he likes to talk to his dad. At the end of the day, he loves to sit on his daddy's lap and babble on and on about his day. We have no idea what he's saying, but it's apparently very important stuff!

One of his greatest accomplishments now is that he is tall enough to climb into almost all of the chairs in the house. His favorite is to climb into his daddy's big recliner when Surfer Pirate goes outside for a cigarette. He's right there waiting - usually holding the remote control or Surfer Pirate's cell phone - when he gets back. Little stinker.

Most of the day, the tv isn't on. At night when we're gathered as a family, there are two things that are guaranteed to grab his attention. #1 - the theme song from Big Bang Theory. He's loved that theme song for probably a year now. #2 - this Fiat commercial. I don't know if it's the music he likes or the cars jumping in the water. Either way, he loves it.



I think that's about it for what we've been up to. I picked up butter and cream cheese at the grocery store today. Harvest season means fall, and fall means cinnamon rolls! I'll be taking pictures and sharing my recipe when I make them. Beware! These are LOADED with butter, and they're addictive.