::He's Like Bigfoot::

Anybody know what this is?
Yep, it's bigfoot hair I gathered off my rug.
NO. Just kidding.
It's a bag full of hair that I brushed off Sultan.

It's so much hair! And Kris had just brushed him not too long ago.
Here's a before and after:
before:

after:

Hah. I'm funny today I know. Obviously this is the same photo. But when I got done collecting all of that hair from him he looked exactly the same! Maybe his back looked a little bit glossier, but that was it.
If you took that much hair off me I'd be bald and then some!

He seems to be shedding more than usual right now. I'm not sure why, since it's actually seeming to cool down out here. Seems to me he should be building up his coat for the winter, but whatever!

Look at my poor carpet:

The vacuum and I are good friends these days.
And my poor jeans:

Hopefully I won't have to stay this hairy all day. We can't find the lint roller thing. Maybe I'll have to ask the vacuum for an extra favor.

Well, that's our Sultan for you. Anybody think I should just shave him?

PS. I forgot my funniest line. I was going to say that if I was Martha Stewart I'd just make a sweater out of all the discarded hair. But I forgot. And I'm not Martha Stewart. So I won't.
But don't worry Mom, we won't really shave him!!!!

.::Pizza Skills::.

Kris and I have been honing our pizza making skills for quite a long time. Some wonderful person gave us a pizza stone for our wedding, and it's probably been our favorite thing to cook ever since.
Kris is the one who's really good at it. He has a few tricks up his sleeve.

A couple of weeks ago I broke the pizza stone by accidentally putting it on a hot burner. It was scary and I was really sad.
Look how sad this is:

Can you see the lines of oil and deliciousness that had seeped into the middle of the stone. It had it's own delicious flavor that was transferred to all our pizzas.

But anyway, it was a sunk cost. So once I got over feeling really bad about it we went and bought a new stone. It's bigger, which is good because our family is a little bigger now than it was back in the day.

When we were in New York we went to this delicious pizza place under the Brooklyn bridge. They used fresh mozzarella and put the cheese under the sauce, which looked so weird. But oh it tasted SO good!
Kris thought we needed to try it. So we went all out and got some real pepperoni too, instead of that stuff in a bag at the grocery store.
And mmmmm, boy is it delicious. Ready to start drooling?

We made this one last week. It also has fresh basil on it from the plant our neighbor gave me. I'm trying to keep it alive. The fresh basil is really tasty.

Max is saying "But I didn't want mushrooms! I just wanted pepperoni on my pizza!"
It's a tough life, isn't it?

He tried to use his big eyes on me but it didn't work. He had to eat the mushrooms.

And he did. And somehow I kept him from dumping the whole pizza on the ground here.

We've been doing really well so far with cooking. We've eaten dinner at home almost every single night since we officially moved in. That's a really big deal for us because for about the last four years we were both way too busy to cook consistently. It was really a struggle.
So we're hoping we'll gain a little health and maybe a little extra cash flow if we can keep it up. It makes me feel good to finally have time to actually take care of my family.

Here's Max waiting for the pizza. He's got his friend the "robot flashlight" there on the table beside him. He's a goof.

We

love

the

beach.

("For ME?" "For you mommy")


We're going back tomorrow morning and we get to take Kris with us this time. Max deserves some fun after going to the doctor today for his 4 yr old visit and receiving FOUR shots. Two in each arm. He was really brave. Well, as brave as a 4 yr old can possibly be.
The beach will wash it all away. Yay.

::"Our" Children's Museum::

Max has been dying to go and visit the Providence Children's Museum ever since I let it slip to him that there was one in existence. So finally the other day we talked our friends into picking us up, and we went to check it out.

For some reason they give out free tickets to the museum at the library. Since we basically live right across the street from the library I went over and picked up free tickets for all of us.

It was pretty fun. It wasn't as nice as the Manhattan one though, and didn't come anywhere near the one in SLC. So far that one has been by far the best we've seen.
But he did have a lot of fun. And his three year old friend that we were with had a great time too.

For some reason the first exhibit you see is this huge hideous set of teeth (you probably can't see it, but the teeth have a little body with legs. Super weird). Max practiced his bass technique.

I find it a little creepy myself, but I guess this museum isn't all about me.


There was a big room filled with water stuff, faucets and floating things and currents and stuff, kind of standard kid's museum fare. Max liked it, but was ready to move on pretty quickly. His friend loved it and so we had to split up for a while. Max charged ahead to see what else there was. I could hardly keep up. As usual.


They had a big exhibit that was supposed to educate the kids about different periods in RI history, and the immigrants and all that. Max didn't quite get the point of it, but he did like driving the pretend boat.

And being the cashier in the super old little store.

But of course, he can't hold still for too long in a place like this. What if he missed something?

I think it was ingenious that they had a little area filled with fake rocks and Tonka trucks. That was a winner with Max and his friend. Probably if that'd been all there was at the museum the boys would've all been happy.

Another cool thing was this little road smushing machine. What are those called? Steam rollers maybe? Anyway there were little boys crawling all over this thing like ants. It was a big hit.

Can anybody tell me what the man of a thousand faces is thinking here?

Another exhibit was all about bones. Max thought he'd check out some x-rays. But of course the light didn't work.

They did have Kris's collarbone on display, which I thought was pretty cool.

They had a cool skeleton riding a bike. His bike was attached to a bike on the outside for the kids to ride. When Max pedaled the skeleton pedaled with him so we could see the way the bones all worked together. Max just couldn't figure out why the guy didn't have any skin. I don't think the bone articulations did much for him. But he was psyched there was a bike to ride.

He must've thought it was pretty cool because he stayed there longer than like 3 seconds.


My friend and I eventually got tired of chasing the kids through the museum, so we made them go outside into the garden. It seemed like a great idea until the three year old climbed up into the little fountain and got soaked. Then he climbed into a tunnel and got covered with dirt. So fun!
But they did have this really cool thing out there that was like a whole bunch of trash cans and different things that the kids could play with drumsticks. I think it was a really good idea, and it kept them busy for a little while.

I think this is one of the only pictures where I was able to get Max and his friend in the same shot. They're two very busy little dudes.


All in all it was fun. I'm sure we'll go back. I'm glad we got to go with my friend Bonnie though, it made it all so much more fun and less boring for me.
Max liked it a lot, but he was bummed there weren't a whole bunch of little cars like in the SLC museum. Oh well. There're reasons why they call it Zion I guess...

.::Big Haircut(s)::.

Pre:


Post:


We have a barbershop one door down from our house. It's a father son place and they've been there for 30 years. Kris needed a haircut, and Max was starting be blinded by his bangs, so Saturday morning we thought we'd give the barber(s) a try. Max was done by the dad and Kris was done by the son. The dad is probably like 80 and the son is probably around 60.

They give old school barber type haircuts, obviously!!
It was fun, they were super nice and Max was SO good. They used the clippers on him, and the vacumn and he hardly even flinched. He got a tootsie pop afterwards too, which made everything worth it.

Actually, the haircuts look good when they're not combed in quite such an extreme way. If I could've gotten a picture today or yesterday of the two boys I would've. They both look cute.

Kris looks super cranky in the first picture because the brake sensor switch or something like that decided to wear out in our only car. Which means it wouldn't shift out of park. He ordered the new part on thursday night--overnight, but of course turns out it wasn't going to be delivered until monday (today). We wanted to go have fun on saturday, but were stuck home. No beach. Bummer.
But luckily we live within walking distance of lots of stuff. So we still had a fun day. We walked a whole bunch around our area and got some lunch and did a little grocery shopping at a local market (not really local to us, but local to the area).

We got the part for the car today and Kris fixed the problem in about 10 minutes. It was amazing. It's nice to have something small and fixable go wrong once in a while. Hopefully I don't speak too soon!

::He's A Reader::

My boy is a reader!
He started to read a little bit just about when we left Kansas City.
We got some little reading books for him (which are much harder to find than they should be, by the way) and started working on it in April I guess.
He was making good progress. My mom made an adorable book using Blurb which really inspired him to read. He learned a ton of words working on that book. I think it really laid the foundation he's using now.
When we were in UT I borrowed the set of readers my mom used to teach us to read. While in UT I read through the first one with him. He did great.
His preschool teacher recommended that I get a little set of books called "Bob books" from the bookstore. It's a little box with about 12 or so tiny books that each have a short simple story. They build on each other, so with every book the child becomes a little more comfortable with longer words or different letter sounds.
Anyway, the whole point of this is that he finally read through the whole set.
I'm happy!


Not without a little coercion, let me tell you. I've found that the best way to get him to read to me is to make it a condition of doing something he wants. Like playing on the computer or watching a movie or having a cookie or something like that.
If I do that I can get him to read. It's not something he does often just for fun.
But hopefully that will change down the road.
And I've been rewarding him sometimes when he finishes a book or a reader with a toy or something else he's interested in. I think that's ok. It keeps him going.
That's the only reason why I work--so I can get the $ which is the reward at the end of it! Hopefully someday the reading will be it's own reward.

A couple of nights ago he read most of Hop on Pop to Kris and really did great.
I'd like to take complete credit for the reading, but I think his teacher at school last year probably deserves most of it. They went through every single letter in the alphabet and learned how they work phonetically. He had such a strong basis to start with it was almost impossible for him not to be super good at sounding things out.

I'm really excited at the world of possibilities that open up to him with reading! It's still one of my favorite activities, so I'm thrilled to see him get started.

::Mr. Bubbles::

Just a couple weeks ago was the first time Max allowed me to add bubble bath to his bath water. He's weird like that. I did it for him once a long time ago and for some reason he didn't like it. But I talked him into trying the bubbles again the other day and they were a big hit. He's had quite a few bubble baths in the last couple of weeks.
Anyway, yesterday we were just about out of bubble bath, so I told him that when we went out to run errands in the evening we'd get some more. Well of course I totally forgot.
So this morning when he wanted a bath there was just a tiny bit of bubble stuff left in the bottle. He was pretty disappointed when I told him we forgot to get new stuff.

So we walked down the street this afternoon to get a new bottle at CVS. Of course at CVS a bottle of Mr. Bubble is about twice what it is at Walmart. But some things are just important, so we bought it.

We got home and I asked Max to take the bottle into the bathroom and put it away. I went to get the dog some water. As I was doing that I heard something, but I couldn't quite figure out what it was. I finally realized that it was the bathtub, of course! Max was running himself another bath!
I rushed in there but by the time I got there he'd already emptied at least half the bottle of Mr. Bubble out onto the bottom of the tub. Arrrgh.
So I had him get in and he had the bubbliest bath ever.



Please disregard the peanut butter sandwich that's all over his face. That's why he needed another bath I guess.
And I don't know what's with the big dark circles under his eyes. He has a little cold right now, so that could be it...or maybe it's because he's been going to bed late and getting up at 6 or 6:30AM...I'm not sure.

The bubbles piled up quite a few inches above the edge of the tub.
When I was little that was my dream bath. If only I'd been smart enough to get to the Mr. Bubble before one of my parents!

Here's the bathtub guard, on duty. Sultan isn't enjoying the heat today I don't think. He's sleeping in front of the fan a lot. But he took a break from that to keep an eye on the bathtub boy.

Now I know that I need to keep the bubble bath up high. We learn new things every day, right?
Oh well it makes him happy, and sometimes that's all that matters. And a cool bath is never a bad idea on a very warm day.

.::More Beach::.

OK, so we're not trying to make anybody feel bad, but we went to the beach last week. A different beach, and as Max requested there was no seaweed--well at least a normal amount.
It was right at the end of the heat wave we had, and unfortunately we picked the wrong day to go. It was very cloudy and kind of cool.
Because of that at least we had most of the beach to ourselves.
It was just Melissa, Grant, Max and I this time. We stopped for lunch at a little shack by the beach. It was pretty yummy.

They have really weird hotdog buns here.


Kris and I got Max a little sponge bob boogie board so he could learn to do it. He thought he knew how right off the bat. He would run along the sand, throw the board down and dive onto it. Not in the water. It was pretty funny.

Melissa tried to show him how to do it.

He was pretty confused at first.

But finally got in sort of the right position.

I don't think he realized the water was going to come and jump on him. It was pretty cold.
I love his face in this one! Close up:

He was a lot more prepared the next time. He's laughing because he thinks he "did it!!!!" That's what he kept saying. He was very proud of himself.


As I have probably said before, he's really brave in the water. He doesn't let much phase him. He worked on the boogie boarding for a while longer even though the water was getting colder and colder and a cool wind was beginning to blow!




And of course he got a few more jumps in before it started raining on us. Brr that was cold.


We drove over to a little town called Watch Hill which is very close. It's a cute place. We had some ice cream and Max got to ride on the Flying Horse Carousel. It's supposed to be the oldest one in the country right now.

Supposedly it was built around 1876. The horses don't go up and down or anything, they basically just hang and swing out a little when the thing goes around. It was pretty cute. He loved it of course.

It was a fun day. I feel like we're really getting to take advantage of the fun of summer out here so far. Thanks Melissa for driving us all around and showing us everything!