July 9, 2009: How hard is it to keep a 4 1/2 year old out of a trench in the street in front of your house? The answer: very hard. Short of locking Wyatt inside all week or holding his hand the entire time he was playing outside, there was no way we could keep him completely away from the construction that was being done on our street and driveway. Thursday, they poured the concrete for the driveway and curb while he was a preschool. I was so bummed he missed it and even more disappointed that it was mostly dry by the time he got home so we couldn’t carve our initials in the cement together. He still had fun climbing on the construction barricades and pretending to work on the driveway himself. If you look closely, you can see the red wrench he brought outside with him — one of many tools he took out — attached to the barricade behind him.

July 10, 2009: This is our dish cupboard. We have plates and bowls on the bottom shelf, mugs and cups on the next one up, big bowls and overflow bowls on the third shelf (which I can barely reach), tea cups and saucers and  miscellaneous junk on the 4th shelf and plastic toddler plates and bowls and stuff waaaaay up at the top. It might be time to get those down, now that I think of it.

July 11, 2009: While we were eating dinner, Zach’s dad called and told us to go outside and look at the sky. We all went out front and we saw a full semi-circle double rainbow! I couldn’t get the whole thing in the photo, but it was amazingly beautiful.  As the sun went down, the sky faded to a lovely fuschia color and the rainbow persisted. Neither Zach or I could remember having seen anything like it.

July 12, 2009: Another square foot garden project. Our tomatoes are starting to get big and needed something to climb so Zach spent the day building a trellis. One of our beds (the one you see here) is doing phenominally well. The other (to the left in the photo) is an utter failure. The plants aren’t dead yet, but they’re not growing either. We’re pretty sure the bed is getting too much sun, but the other is getting almost as much so it’s a bit of a mystery. Also, I harvested our first zucchini this week!

July 13, 2009: Finally! They finished our driveway. Wyatt was home for this one and when the road crew pulled up, he was so excited! He ran into the kitchen and said, “Mom! There’s a steam roller! And they’re speaking Spanish!”

July 14, 2009: I made salads for lunch. Mine had lettuce (of course), avocado, grilled chicken, goat cheese, raspberries, and spicy sweet pecans.

July 15, 2009: I kept Augie occupied by putting smallish toys in the compartments of the pet hospital, closing the doors and letting him pull them out. Check out that deep squat he’s doing there? Can you imagine doing that for more than a minute or so? He does this all the time.

June 18, 2009: The big rose bush in our back yard is in full bloom. This photo only shows a tiny smidge of the plant. It’s gorgeous and it makes me regret not taking better care of it.

June 19, 2009: We got a preview of what Augie will look like 40 years from now while goofing around with the fake mustache. Handsome!

June 20, 2009: We got TP’ed! Zach and I were watching Nurse Jackie when he noticed something white waving in front of the living room window. We went out to investigate and the front of our house had been decorated with toilet paper. We don’t have any trees at our house, so they put it on the bush, around the porch pillars and even around the stepping stones in the flower bed.

We couldn’t figure out why in the heck of the world we’d been targeted — after all, we are no longer 15. At first we thought it might have been kids targeting people at random, but a quick look up and down the block showed not a shred of toilet paper anywhere else. Then we racked our brains trying to think of any incidents where we’d angered some teenagers, but we came up blank. As we cleaned up the paper, we critiqued the work of the decorators — they got high points for wrapping the rocks with toilet paper, but over all we decided they’d done kind of a half-assed job.

After we’d collected it all, Zach went down the driveway to recycle the toilet paper and he stumbled upon three people dressed all in black with their backs pressed up against the side of the house. His first thought was that he was going to have to fight intruders to defend his family. Naturally that got his blood pumping, but it turned out that we’d caught the TP’ers in the act and they’d run down our driveway to hide when we came out. I heard hysterical giggles so I went back out to see what was going on and I discovered Zach talking to three very drunk women in their 30’s. It turns out that they worked with our next door neighbor and they’d meant to get his house instead of ours.

So that mystery was solved, but now we must ask why three 30 year old women are running around TP’ing their co-workers’ houses. Hmmmmmm….

June 21, 2009: Father’s day! We went over to the city to see the Samurai exhibit at the Asian Art museum. Zach and I agreed that it was OK, but we were a little disappointed in it. Wyatt was bored stiff. Afterwards, we went to T-Rex for dinner and one of the appetizers we had was — I kid you not — chicken fried bacon. As soon as the meal ended we reaffirmed our commitment to Weight Watchers.

June 22, 2009: Wyatt has been having fun with this big piece of cardboard all week. First he used it as a barrier to hide behind and he jumped out to scare us about a million times per day. Then he made it into a tunnel — first for his cars to go through, then he tried to lure Augie to crawl through. Augie was having none of it though. Next, he carefully drew a shower head on it, asked Zach to cut it out and then attached it to the top and pretended to take showers (you can see the cut-out there at the bottom). Finally, today, he asked me to cut armholes in it so he could make an Optimus Prime costume. After I cut the holes he decorated it with markers. There’s a reason the cardboard box is in the toy hall of fame.

June 23, 2009: It was in the 80’s, so I brewed a batch of sun tea on the front walk. Yes, our front walk is carpeted. Wanna make something of it? Huh? Huh?

June 24, 2009: As I write this, Zach is busting his boo-tay to get a new release of Laconica out the door. He spent most of the day pounding away and even ate his dinner at he desk. Good luck, my dear!

P.S. I installed a new comment widget on the blog yesterday. Please let me know if you have any trouble commenting as I’m not sure I have it working quite right yet. You can send me an email at daisy at wendolonia dot com. Thanks

Baby August  was born on August 31, 2008 at 2:21 a.m. He was 9 pounds, 12 ounces and 21 inches long.

Yes, we make giganto babies in my family!

Things are going pretty well so far. Augie is a great eater and he caught on much more quickly to nursing than Wyatt did. We’ve all been adjusting to being a family of four. Wyatt is having a little bit of a hard time, but over all he seems pretty happy to be a big brother. I think he would just prefer that Augie didn’t take so much of Mom and Dad’s attention.

My maternity leave began today.

I suppose if you want to get technical, it officially began on Saturday, the first day after my last day of work. But Saturday felt like a regular Saturday and it took a weekday to make me realize I’m really and truly off work for awhile. When you add in that Wyatt is on his preschool vacation and that Zach is working his booty off trying to rack up contract hours, I got a real taste of what life would be like if I was a full-time stay-at-home mom.

So here’s how it went:

8:00 am: We all got up at the same time which was odd, because usually one of us gets up with Wyatt and the other sleeps a little longer.

8:15 am: Zach fixes Wyatt a bun and some fruit for breakfast, then makes eggs and toast for us while I drink tea, read the comics and do a sudoku.

8:55 am: I read my email and realize that on a normal day, I would be rushing out the door right now to get to work only a little bit late.

9:00 – 10:20 am: Various play and getting ready for the day activities.

10:20 – 10:30 am: Drive to the park for playgroup. Wyatt shouts at me the whole time, telling me that I’m going the wrong way and that he won’t get to play with Little Rachel because I’m going to get us lost and everyone will go home before we even get there. I’ve got the GPS and I’m pretty confident that I’m going to the right place, but the three-year-old in the back seat actually manages to shake my confidence in my typically great sense of direction. I also try to ignore him repeatedly telling me, “I am right and you are wrong.” but I fail and start to argue with him. Sigh.

10:30 am: When we arrive at the playground, we are the first ones there. Wyatt says “I told you we are at the wrong park!” several times but is soon distracted by the slide.  Soon afterward, the other parents start arriving and I am vindicated.  I chat with the other parents about sleep, leaving the house with a newborn, sleep, weight loss and more sleep while the kids play. I feel my focus shifting from my stressful web development job to parenting and greatly enjoy it.

12:30 pm: Leave the park and head to Costco. On Zach’s advice, I buy Wyatt a slice of pizza and a lemonade when we first arrive and he happily sits in the cart eating his lunch and trying various samples as we do our shopping. I buy an insane amount of stuff in preparation for the impending arrival of a newborn, including diapers and wipes for the new baby. One more thing to cross off my pre-baby to-do list.

2:00 pm: Back at home, Zach laughs out loud at the amount of stuff I bought, but I assure him that you really need a 60-pack of taquitos when you have a tiny baby in the house (easy to eat one-handed and we can send them in Wyatt’s lunch).

2:30 pm: Zach and Wyatt build a blanket fort while I sit on the couch with my feet up and give advice on how best to ensure the structural integrity of their house.

3:00 – 4:00 pm: Wyatt and I participate in various relaxational activities while Zach does more programming.

4:00 pm: Wyatt and I decide we want to have a nap and lay down on the bed with a pile of books to read. Despite several attempts by Wyatt to steal my pillow (“Mama! You have to share!”), I manage to hang on to it, but neither of us fall asleep. Still, we enjoy reading about Frances and her adventures.

5:00 pm: Wyatt and I make banana bread, then do puzzles and have a blueberry snack at the kitchen table.

6:00 pm: I clean off the top of my dresser, my nesting activity of the day. Because you really need to have a clean dresser when you have a new baby in the house.

6:30 – 8:00 pm: Zach and Wyatt go to the gym. I finish cleaning off my dresser, start this blog post and make dinner.

8:00 pm: We all eat dinner. Wyatt is super good at the table, but we’re running late for bed time.

8:30 – 9:30 pm: Clean the kitchen and start the dishwasher. Bath, jammies, tooth brushing, “hot tea” and stories.

10:00 pm: Wyatt is finally asleep. Time for Generation Kill and a foot rub from my dearest.

All in all a good day. I think I could use a few more of these before the baby comes, though.

My latest craft project was to make a bunch of swaddling blankets for the new baby. When Wyatt was teeny-tiny, the only way he would sleep was if he was being held, and even then he never slept more than three hours at a time.  I’m all for attachment parenting and co-sleeping, but sitting up in bed all night holding a baby is not exactly conducive to getting a good night’s sleep. Swaddling saved me from going insane. The very first time I swaddled Wyatt properly, he slept for five hours straight in his co-sleeper which meant that I slept for five hours straight lying down in bed. When I woke up, I thought I’d died and gone to heaven. It was the most sleep I’d had in a month. I was so energized, I felt like I could run a marathon.

Hmmmm…OK…maybe not a marathon.

I felt like I could walk around the block.

Anyway, I wanted to be sure we had a good supply of swaddling blankets for the new baby, so the other day I went over to the new fabric store by our house and I bought three 42 inch squares of flannel. I know I could have just washed the fabric and used the blankets without doing anything to them, but I wanted a finished edge to keep the cloth from fraying.

I didn’t do anything complicated at all to finish up the edges. I just finger folded each edge over by a quarter of an inch and stitched along all four sides. Then I folded each edge over again and did another pass over them with the sewing machine. Easy peasy.

We walked over to the store with the wagon to get a few groceries, but Wyatt started acting a little bored almost even before we left our front yard.

To distract him, I handed him my point and shoot and asked him if he could take pictures of things as we walked along. His first assignment? Take a picture of something blue:

Take a picture of something red:

Take a picture of something purple:

Take a picture of some garbage:

I did not instruct him to take a picture of my booty, but that’s one of the hazards of handing your child a camera when you’re pulling him in the wagon. Of course, a normal person wouldn’t have posted this picture on the internet….