Author Archives: metamegan

>The Elmo Song

>Jack is really into the Elmo song night now. (That’s right now in Jack speak.) My favorite part is “H, I, J, KAI, ELMO, P.” It seems like he randomly says, “Bird!” at the end of the video, but he is reading an alphabet book, and there is a bird in it. Note to self, tell Kai’s mom about Jack’s homage to him in the alphabet song.

P.S. That is Luke snorting in the background – not me.

P.P.S. Obligatory puppy photo:

>MetaMegan: Now With Puppies!

>
I just deleted my opening paragraph because it was all about how my life now revolves around potty training a puppy and a toddler. And I started out to make it sound really tragically hilarious. And then I realized two things:

1.) I am really lucky to have a 2 year old and a puppy. Could life be better than this?
2.) No one wants to hear that much about poop. Or maybe they do, but they should just go ahead and find another blog for that, please.

Yes, we spontaneously went out Saturday and got a puppy. It seems that way, to me at least. Because I only spent a year researching dog breeds, and I only refreshed the Humane Society web page 1,000,000 times. Then I said, “Please do not let me look at this site anymore today. PUPPIEEEEZZZZ!!!!” And Dave said, “Just put one on hold.” I did, and we picked up my darling girl the next day. Have you ever heard of anything so crazily spontaneous? It’s really not like me.

Unfortunately, I checked my spontaneity this afternoon at the pet store and did not buy Lucy this Valentine’s ensemble.

Prepare to hear more about Lucy as the days and months progress. Luke and Lucy and I start puppy training classes soon. That should be very interesting!

Here is Luke taking her for her first walk:

Details: Lucy was born 11/12/2009, so we’ll always have the issue of two birthday parties so close together. She is a cocker spaniel mix and she was given to a shelter in Kansas and then shipped to Boulder. Reason for surrender: Too many. Spay and neuter your pets, people!

She weighs 5 pounds right now, but since we don’t really know much about her background we don’t know how big she is going to get. I think – too big for the basket on my bicycle, so I will need a side car.

>Thanks

>Still easing into 2010 here. I know it’s probably sort of lame that I always wait until after my birthday to write thank you notes, so I just have to do it once a year. But how bad is it that I am going to have to include thanks from Jack’s birthday too? Pretty bad I guess.

Did I ever write about the time Luke had a complete meltdown because he didn’t write the letter “A” perfectly and it “looked like it’s pants were falling down”? I don’t know because the search function on this blog is not that great. I think it was at least 2 Valentine’s Days ago. We had a similar incident today because he spelled Science incorrectly during FTYNWT. (Family thank you note writing time.) He started to spell it phonetically, and then I wrote it out for him. (Meltdown number 1.) And I spelled it wrong. (sciene, if you must know.) So when I corrected him, we had meltdown number 2. I told him just to scratch it out, because I don’t like to end up with an uneven number of note cards and envelopes, so I wasn’t giving him another card. It’s one of the 1000 weird things about me. Of course, I later screwed up someone’s last name on an envelope so theoretically, it would have worked out OK. He didn’t want to scratch it out though, so it was straight to bath and bedtime.

I am just going to go on and on for a while about thank you notes and then all the blog readers who are expecting a thank you note will sort of remember this somewhat boring post and think they actually did get one.

Or, I could add another Jack anecdote…

Dave took care of making sure Luke got in the shower while I gave Jack a bath. Jack likes to randomly talk about things from the past that you think he would never remember. After the 100th mention of the same subject, it’s less amazing though.

This week, he has been talking a lot about the airplane ride he took the weekend before Christmas.

Example:
Me: Here’s a coupon for Einstein’s bagels.
Jack: I ate a bagel on the airplane.

Amazing, right?

In the tub today he put a washcloth across his lap and said, “Dis my airplane blanket. ‘Cept cleaner.” Then he took the loofah and said, “I buckle my seat belk.”

I’ll stop there. But Jack is very funny these days.

>Omar Little/Genghis Khan

>Photo from HBO.

I was thinking about taking a meta moment of silence to commemorate the last episode of The Wire, watched here last night at Casa De MetaMegan. But I think we can all agree that there have been many, many moments of blog silence since we started watching The Wire 3 months ago. It’s hard work getting through 5 seasons of a television show in just 3 months. Hard, but rewarding work. Sigh.

Back to blogging, working, getting to bed before midnight and maybe I’ll even get those thank you notes in the mail soon!

In other news, I am way behind on all the precious things Jack has been saying and doing. We went to see the Genghis Khan exhibit at the Denver Museum of Nature and Science the week after Christmas. There was a 60 second (or so) movie reenactment of the life of Genghis Khan, and Jack was very interested in the crying baby at the beginning. He watched it several (20) times. Days later, we were in the car amongst the museum ephemera and Jack recognized the hat we made at the end of the exhibit. He said,

“Baby crying, grew up: Genghis Khan.”
Laughter ensued.
“Baby crying, grew up Genghis Khaaaaaaaaaaaaaan.”
Laughter.
“Baby crying, grew up Genghis Khaaaaaaaaaaaaaan.”
Laughter.
“Baby crying, grew up Genghis Khaaaaaaaaaaaaaan.”
Sighing.
“Baby crying, grew up Genghis Khaaaaaaaaaaaaaan.”
Yes, he sure did Jack.
“Baby crying, grew up Jason Khaaaaaaan.”
No, Genghis.
“Jason Khaaaaaan.”
Genghis.
“Baby crying, grew up Genghis Faaaaaaaaaaaawwwn.”
Ugh.

We got home eventually, but it was the longest conversation I’ve ever had with a two year old about a 13th century warrior/statesmen.

Photo from wikipedia.

>Let Them Eat Cake

>I cannot rely on Gramma, a.k.a. technospaz to upload the video of my darling children learning the following behavior from their beloved Grandfather. Fortunately, I have been able to record it myself. And by “Fortunately” I mean, it was really easy because this sort of thing has been happening every night after dinner since my birthday.

In related news, the capes arrived from Aunt Beth the other day. I’ll have her do a guest blog post about that saga. But this picture made her respond with the following text: “My hatred now burns less brightly.”

But Jack wouldn’t wear the cape like a normal little boy. He put it around his neck with the cape in the front. “No. Like dis. Like a bib. Cake. Cake. Cake.”

>Hello 2010

>New Years Resolutions…
1.) Blog more often… (stop laughing)
2.) Backup blog and change format
3.) Fill in Jack’s baby book so I can delete that section on old milestones, and uh, for posterity
4.) A bunch of other stuff no one cares about like eating right and exercising and writing a book.

>Two Months Tighter

>Remember this? Well, last week, there was a note that Jack claimed his pants felt too tight, so they put him in some daycare “pants.”

From December2009 1

Yeah, these aren’t pants! And they were too small 2 months ago! Maybe his diaper is too tight? These “pants” have a big hole in the bottom too. I think I might patch it with a spare camouflage patch that I have. If Jack is going to keep getting sent home in floral leggings, at least I can boy them up a little.

>Blog Business

>True Confessions: One of the reasons I have been sort of lame about blogging is that I have over 1000 pictures on my camera, and it takes picassa 2000 years to see them all, and then the ones I want are sort of tiny and down really low behind a wall and I can’t see them. Wow, in the time it took to type that, I probably could have gone down to the mac, downloaded all the pics and then deleted them off the camera. And I really need to do that before Christmas anyway. Just this evening, Jack was being really cute at the dinner table, and I thought, a video of this would be so cute, and I would treasure it forever. Without a video, how will I remember his sweet 2 year old voice? How will I remember the tilt to his head, and the way he raises his eyebrows when he asks a question to which he already knows the answer? How will I capture the true joy in Luke’s laugh when Jack is cracking him up? But the camera, is alllll the way over therrrrrrre. And I’ll never get a chance to download the video…

Then I had the same thought right before bedtime when Jack was crawling around, pretending to be a dog. He was a very frisky, barking dog. His bark sounded exactly like this, “Bark! Bark!”

To Do:
Deal with camera
Fix Christmas music playlist (delete all songs from Disney classic.)
Catch up on a bazillion things I need to post

Also – I am toying with the idea of changing the layout here. So don’t be surprised if that happens. AND! I updated the list of books read for 2009. I am sort of in the middle of two, so maybe the list will grow by the end of the year. And I didn’t put comments on the books this year but I feel the need to give Her Fearful Symmetry 2 thumbs down.

>Like Father, Like Son

>Well – I’ve been in a frenzy lately, with no time to blog, and when I do thinking about blogging, I want to blog about all the cool things I have been making. But then, if Cindy, Anthony, Rose, or Hope read my blog, the surprise will be ruined! You know who doesn’t read my blog? Ruby. And that is her birthday present up there, above. It’s a journal. With my new “Good enough” policy, it took about 20 minutes to make, with supplies we had in the house. It could be better, if by better, I mean, awesome in my mind, but never existing in reality.

In addition to the gifts I can’t mention above, we made a bunch of cookies, but those deserve their own post. And the boys made wrapping paper. In fact, when I had Luke pick out the paper for Ruby’s book, he said, “YOU SAID we didn’t HAVE any WRAPPING PAPER!” (He may not have been as enthusiastic about the wrapping paper project as I was.) But I said, “This isn’t wrapping paper!!! This is my special book making paper!!!”

But the whole point of this post, is that I have to record something Luke said today.

Luke: Daddy and I are a lot alike. Because he doesn’t crash a lot. But when he does it’s… it’s… it’s huge.
Megan: Spectacular?
Luke: Daddy has huge crashes. And it takes me a long time to think of an idea. But when I do, it’s really good. See how we are similar?

Ideas for future posts:
Cookies
Wrapping Paper
United Airlines
Still need to get to:
Thanksgiving recipes