Salad Tongs are Excellent Toys

Everett is at that age where his imagination is blossoming before our eyes. We can never tell what he'll come up with next. Some days he's "making" us pancakes (ie blue paper plate holders) and other days he's pretending to be a dinosaur (raaaaah!). He picked up this little gem a couple of weeks ago. I kept thinking he'd drop it, but no. He's taken to carrying around a pair of white, plastic salad tongs and a green and orange Silly Putty container, as seen here:

And what, you may ask, is he pretending they are? Why, Rocket and Big Jet, from Little Einsteins of course! As if I really had to spell that out for you. I mean, it's just soooo obvious, right?

In case you're wondering, the Silly Putty is Rocket and the salad tongs are Big Jet. And when I say he taken to carrying them around I mean EVERYWHERE. To the grocery store, to Target, in the car, in the stroller, to bed, in the bath. EVERYWHERE! It's actually kind of cute and really funny, until I look at him and realize, "My kid is carrying around salad tongs. That's really weird." And then I wonder if we should buy him some more stimulating and/or educational toys...?

He has us so well-trained that I even find myself constantly referring to the salad tongs and Silly Putty as Big Jet and Rocket. Oh! And in the world of Little Einsteins Big Jet is a big meanie who's constantly picking on Rocket and the other Little Einsteins. In fact, when I googled Big Jet I discovered via Wickipedia that Big Jet is the Little Einsteins' nemesis. Who knew four little musical smarty-pants and one Rocket could garner a nemesis, but it seems they have. Anyway, Everett is always having Big Jet pick on Rocket as in, "Big Jet's not happy with Rocket, Mommy" as he crashes salad tongs to Silly Putty. And so, in addition to referring between two LIVE children, "No Everett, don't jump on Juliana!", I've also been relegated to defusing fights between plastic salad tongs and Silly Putty. Welcome to motherhood!

In other Everett news, potty training is going really really well. He loves to go "all by myself". In fact, I was busy getting lunch ready yesterday and all of a sudden he came into the kitchen and announced, "I went poo poo all by myself". I went to check and yep, the boy had gone into the bathroom, did the whole routine and then pull his pants back up "all by himself".

Seriously, that little bum in big boy underwear is just too cute! (Note that Big Jet and Rocket are making their appearance in this photo as well. Never far behind, those two)

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Lydia and Paula came over yesterday, so we did a little impromtu photo shoot. These are mostly for Paw Paw's benefit since he's been wanting a picture of all three of the munchkins for his computer.

This was the first one and it cracks me up since not a one of them is smiling.

After that they kind of got the hang of smiling, or in Juliana's case, opening her mouth as wide as possible and simply sticking out her tongue.

All three of the kids have been a bit sickly this week, which explains why Lydia just really looks bored. Cute, but definitely bored. So then I moved on to taking some of E and J.
I love that due to Everett's mesquito bites on his forehead and Juliana's skinned upper lip (she fell on the deck. It looked painful.) accompanied with their glassy eyes, they're just oozing good health and vitality.

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In case any of you are wondering what bleach will do to dark brown pants, wonder no more! I can categorically tell you with 100% certainty that bleach on dark brown pants will come out a bright orangey/pink color. Please take my word for it and don't try this yourself at home. Especially on two-week old pants. Just don't do it.

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I read "Confessions of a Shopaholic" a few years ago and even though I didn't especially LOVE the book, I am over-the-moon excited that it's being made into a movie. Of course, it's not slated to come out in theaters until February 2009, but it's still exciting. Isla Fisher plays the lead and Hugh Dancy, one of my British boyfriends, plays her love interest. I scoured the Internet for pictures from the shoot and here are the best I could come up with:

Who here thinks I'll actually be able to convince Will to see this with me? Yeah, me neither!