LOLcatz parade!

Summer Family Time, Disaster!



One of Brent's new favorite things lately has been riding on the back of Will's bike. They enjoy it so much that yesterday Will sent me to the store to buy myself a bike so we could all ride together. I don't know much about bikes, and when I got home with my pretty new Crayon blue street bike with the white wheel wells and pinstriping and wide comfy padded seat, he commented while he installed Gigi's childseat, "You should have bought a mountain bike. The hills are really tough."

Fast forward 30 minutes or so and all four of us were out and ready to ride! I found out real quick -- about two laps around the block -- he was completely right, and chugging up the hills without an 18-speed bike was kicking my butt. I said, "Let's stop circling and go down to the pond and back so at least we get a fun ride out of it before I collapse. I can walk the bike back if I have to." I disastrously forgot that the hills just get steeper in that direction, and that street bicycles don't have great brakes.

Fast forward about 2 minutes and Gigi and I were buried in a tangle of thorny vines at the foot of the hill on Faylin, right where it meets Applegate at a nice, sharp, 90 degree turn. Ouch. :(

To be a little more detailed, Gigi was in her child seat, resting on a bed of thorns and crying, and I was under the bike with the top half of my body hanging over the lip of a miniature cliff (not a dangerous fall, but a very steep incline curving down about 3 feet to a different level of ground, so still a drop), my weight held up by my left hand mashed down on a bunch of thorns and by what felt like a thorny vine wrapped around my neck. I tried to reach for Gigi but discovered that if I moved my left hand I would slide down the cliff and if I tried to scoot myself away from the cliff the vine around my neck bit into my skin. And Gigi cried on.

Will got there pretty quickly and struggled for a couple of minutes with trying to get my bike and Gigi upright again while holding up his own bike, because Brent is too heavy an off-balancer for the kickstand to work. He did his best, but his bike and Brent both fell over into the fortunately softer grass next to the street a couple of times. Meanwhile, I was yanking with my right hand at the vine I'd found behind my head, tangled in my hair. After enough yanks to really get some burning pain around my neck, I realized the vine was actually caught up in my necklace and I was sawing at my own skin with the (very strong) gold chain. I got that untangled, finally, and got poor Will to give me a hand up so I could get my left hand out of the nest of thorns and help with the bikes and, by this point, both crying children.

I trudged the three blocks home pushing Gigi on the bike, limping on a badly bruised left hip, and like Gigi, covered from my face to my feet in angry red welts and scratches and dripping blood from various thorn punctures, with Will and Brent eying me sympathetically. Will couldn't offer me his bike so he could push because I can't reach the ground from his bike seat, but he did bathe Gigi while I took a shower, and then he drove to the CVS for some Neosporin.

Today, Gigi and I both look like we got tossed into a barrel full of angry cats and I'm avoiding my usual Monday trip to my father's apartment so that I don't have to hear the lecture about being careful with my baby. At least scratches heal pretty quickly and the puffy bruising on my hip is easy to hide.

I don't think Gigi and I will be joining Will and Brent on their evening rides again!

Where's Brent??




That's not him!




Wait, what's this?




Oh, there he is!

Pictures AND a Thousand Words! (Well, maybe a couple hundred.)

So, Gigi and I are still decompressing from the June 11-15 trip to Estes Park, Colorado. The weather was amazing, though it did rain on us a few times this year. (Lightning in the Rocky Mountains is scary, y'all.) Gigi ran a lowgrade fever for a couple of days upon first getting back home -- airline plague? -- but is back to her ole self now. Brent seemed to miss us, was adorably happy to see us back, but his ole self is changing daily.



He is making some verbal/reasoning skill leaps as of late that just fascinate me. And make me giggle, too. Here are two from yesterday: First was the Mommy-can't-find-her-cellphone-AGAIN situation which had me wandering around pouting with the house phone in my hand, straining my ears for that muffled little ringtone. When I finally did find it, Brent's face lit up. "You did it! You not sadding, Mama? You happy?" (which is to say, he's starting to attempt verb conjugation, not without some blunders.)

And probably less monumental but much more entertaining was a classic cause-and-effect lesson he received thanks to Tyler, the gassiest beagle in the world.

"Mama, what that smell?! Where's the poop?"
"That's just Tyler. He farted."
"Farted?"
"He made a noise of the butt." (I didn't coin that phrase; Brent did.)
"Noise of the butt smell like poop?!"
"Yep."
Commence 3 yr old running in circles squealing, "Pbbt, EWW!! Pbbt, EWW!" punctuating with shrieking giggles.

Meanwhile, Gigi gets stronger and more mobile everyday. She can cruise, stand unsupported, and has been taking steps now and again, though they are still followed at this point by falls. (Isn't this picture pretty?? I miss Ana's camera.)



They're so cute when they play together.



I haven't really had any more time to knit lately, but I am stubborn, and squeeze in a few stitches whenever I can. I finished ONE sock! The second is already a few inches in, but I got exhausted with trying to keep up with the slip stitch cable pattern when my focus is so constantly pulled in 3 different directions, so the pair of socks will be fraternal twins, rather than identical. In other words, mindless 2x2 ribbing for me! As I mentioned to some friends, the second sock will always be jealous of her older sister's beautiful patterning, but will feel secretly smug that she is much less full of errors.



And I snuck in a new tattoo a week ago. (Don't tell Dad.)

Imported Friends

I've been hangin' with my Rav homies this week. Like mail order brides, they come to me! In the last few weeks, I've gotten to meet Ashley/ashpags, Hanna/mzell, and Sarah/sareeswfla. (On the odd chance you are not a Ravelry-person, those links aren't gonna work for you. Sorry.)

Here's me with Sarah and Hanna on Sunday 6/7, and of course Gigi, at Chez Zee. We were the Ladies Who Lunched. Then we invaded Gauge for a couple of hours.



I can't seem to steal the photo of me and Ashley in a format that works on my computer, so here's the Flickr link for now.

Brent's 1st movie: a bust. (+ "I'm there.")



So, we took Brent to the Tinseltown in Pflugerville for the 6:40 showing of Disney Pixar's UP. He is absolutely in love with the preview; has every word of it memorized and can even act it out. The theater was nearly empty and more than half the people there had small children with them. I figured it was a Can't Lose situation. Well, Brent thought "the humongous TV" was "too loud!", got very upset, and wouldn't be calmed down. Will took him home before the previews had even ended. I stayed and watched with Ana and Gigi. I cried 3 times, Gigi pooped all over herself and me, but it was a good movie and I enjoyed it. I think Brent just won't be going to see movies until he's quite a bit older.

A cute story: Have you seen those "I'm there" State Farm TV commercials? There's one with a woman draped backwards over an exercise ball (like this:



except she has her arms dangling loosely over her head.) Well, the other day, Brent climbed up on Will in his computer chair, draped himself like that over Will's shoulder with his legs over the back of the chair and his head and arms on Will's chest, and said, "Daddy? I'm there."

A Productive Day of Websurfing

Actually, a Rav/Twi-buddy of mine (MzEll) brought all this fun stuff to my attention. :D THANKS, babe!

I found (and placed a frantic Amazon order for) this fabulous book:



mostly because of this squee-worth lil pink sweater:



Innit CUTE? Gigi will look stunning in it. Stunning, I tell you.

Also, a JEWEL of a blog-find for moms with creative little minds in their homes: The Crafty Crow. Simple, fun, genius crafts ideas for children. (She even does fun giveaways. I'm entering the one for the "Crobots: 20 amigurumi robots to make" book. Squee!) Go check it out. Seriously, some cute stuff there.