I'm still here ...

I apologize for being so remiss in my posting of late. Things have been very hectic, and my brain is kind of on overload. But, the kid is still doing tons of hilarious and bizarre and ridiculous things. So I figure I need to get back to posting so I can share them all with you.

As many of you may know, McDonald's recently had Ice Age 3 toys in their Happy Meals. Allen got the squirrel with the nut with me, and then he got it again with Nana a couple days later. As soon as Nana got the Happy Meal, Allen began demanding the toy. So she give him the squirrel. In reply, Allen began yelling, "Give me the nut! Give me the nut!" Poor Nana had no idea what he was talking about, since she's never seen the Ice Age movies and had no idea that he had the toy at home already ... in any case, it made for an amusing story.

He rediscovered the squirrel and his nut this evening, and kept shooting the nut across the house (and down the stairs). The first few times, he would launch the nut, and then say, "I'm sorry," to the squirrel (for losing his nut, I suppose).

Here's a cute picture of him and the squirrel ...

We had just gotten home from the meeting, where Allen was a pretty good boy until the very end. He started screaming, "DON'T CHANGE MY DIAPAH!" Unfortunately, it was so stinky that Mommy didn't have much choice ...

Daddy had a talk tonight. He did a wonderful job. Allen and I listened (and timed) him while he practiced before the meeting. Each time Daddy would introduce a scripture (by saying "turn with me," or let's look at") Allen would say, "OK, OK." Very cute.

Not at all related, but still quite adorable, are the following pictures I discovered when uploading the pictures of Allen that I took tonight. Aubrey took these while I was at Market last week.

Here's my precious nephew Elijah sleeping against his MomMom.

And here he is awake, wearing the hat that his Mommy got at the Beaufort Water Festival.

A close-up of the hat she bought. She got one for Owen too. This great vendor was at the Craft Show embroidering custom-making hats for kiddos. How cool!

Aubrey is a budding photographer. She has the eye for great photos. And the talent for taking self-portraits (I do not have this talent. I can never hold the camera just right). I love this picture of her and Allen goofing around at our house!

They're definitely related!

So much more to share with you ... but since it's after midnight, I think I'll take a break to sleep, and finish up this weekend.

xoxo,

Peanuts, Stories

Allen has been eating peanuts today. I don't know why. He's a strange kid, and every once-in-a-while he breaks away from his tried-and-true snacks and asks for something random in the pantry. Today it was a tin of mixed nuts that only had peanuts in it.

In part, he enjoyed covering and uncovering the tin with the lid. It provided him with a great deal of entertainment. But he also ate a few.

At this point, you are probably thinking, "This is the most boring post Allegra has ever written." And you'd be right, except that it leads to possibly the funniest thing our child has ever said.

So, we are upstairs reading to him tonight (he got to read two stories before the "Bible Book" because he did a really good job changing his attitude about bedtime), and all of a sudden, he sits up straight, reaches down to his thigh/butt, and says,

"Uh-Oh.There's a peanut in my butt."

We don't know what prompted this statement, or what he felt in his diaper, but it was not a peanut. Nor was it poopy, like he then said it was. Perhaps it was a wrinkle in his diaper or his pajama pants; perhaps it was an itch. I don't care what it was because it was just freakin' hilarious!

Allen is really into telling us "stories." Basically it's a lot of gibberish with some familiar names, words, and phrases thrown in. Occasionally, we can actually decipher what he's attempting to tell us. It's fabulously entertaining because in addition to the inflections in his voice, he gestures ... a lot. We're hoping to get this on video for you shortly, but we seem to be getting the camera a few seconds too late so far.

To share some examples, today he and Daddy stopped to visit Mommy and Nana at the shop. Nana was pricing some items, and she asked Allen to help her. He did indeed help, and he was quite good about it, so the praise was heaped upon him. A few minutes later, he was sitting next to me playing with the phone, and he decided he wanted to call Papa. We did, and he told him that, "I hepped Nana!" Obviously he was very proud of himself.

And this evening during our bedtime ritual, he was in my arms gesturing "round an round an round" and telling me some really amazing story, and then clear as day he said, "Hovah lives in heaven" and pointed up. Sometimes, I am so proud of him my heart hurts.

He also has started telling family "yuv you." So sweet I want to cry.

On that note, I am tired, I don't feel well, and the power is flickering (bad weather here). So, yuv you, and I'll share more with you tomorrow!

xoxo,

Stay Back, Stinky, Groucho

So, I have like a skillion pictures from our Pennsylvania trip to post, but it's already almost midnight as I begin this post, so we're going to have to do it in several parts. I hope to post them all by early in the week.

Before I get started, I am sad to say that we did NOT win the chili cook-off (although, I do think that our chili was the best there). On a very positive note, we had a record night at Joli (for those of you who are curious, we did better than we did on Oktoberfest), doubling our month's sales in one evening! Woohooo!!!

But I digress ... Back to the true subject of this blog, my hilarious son Allen. Before I begin the recap of our Pennsylvania trip, I'd like to share two cute stories from this weekend ...

While we are still obsessed with Cars (and the collection has grown exponentially over the past few weeks), we are also branching out to Madagascar. I thank McDonald's for that, since their happy meal toys are the characters from the movie (promoting Madagascar II, of course). So last night at Nana's, Allen watched part of cars and the decided he wanted to watch "Agasca" (Madagascar). Papa, Nana, Big Dude (aka Uncle Mark), and Ashell (aka Aunt Michelle) all sat down with him to watch. At one point, Alex (the lion), tells Marty (the zebra) to "Stay Back!" Allen decides to pick this up. "Stay back!" he starts to say to each of us.

A few moments later, Nana decided Allen needed is diaper changed. She stands up, and he starts backing away (he has this thing with walking backwards lately -- it looks like he's trying to Moonwalk), and he says, "Stay back, Nana, stay back!" Fabulous, eh?

Tonight as I was getting Allen changed for bed, he informed me that he had to go potty. So we went and sat on the potty and read the "Potty Book." We read the whole thing (it's actually pretty long), and when it got to the part about putting a sticker on the chart, he wanted to pick a sticker out. So we said, OK, stand up so we can see what sticker to put on (he gets a smaller flower sticker for sitting, and a big sticker that says various things like "Hooray for Pee" if he goes). Lo and behold, he went peepee in the potty! Good job, Allen.

After we flushed the peepee and washed his hands and brushed his teeth, he says to us, "Poopy is stinky!" Ain't that the truth!

Now onto the first part of our family trip recap.

On Thursday, Daddy and Allen got haircut. Allen sat in the chair for the first time without freaking out. Sadly, I didn't have my camera with me then (it wasn't really a planned haircut), but we did get a couple shots that evening before meeting. Note that he was NOT happy that we were going to meeting because it meant that the cars had to stay home.

Stay tuned for additional installments of the Pennsylvania Trip recap. Goodnight kids!

XOXO,