the Boy and the pig

There once was a boy. He had many friends of the stuffing-filled type. One of these friends was a small, red-bandana-ed pig named Alfred. The Boy and the pig got along splendidly.

One morning, the Boy determined that the pig was hungry. Knowing pigs do not care for rice cakes, the Boy searched for an appropriate pig food. He discovered a large bottle of Bar Keepers Friend underneath Daaa and Momom's bed. He decided this would most certainly do. Yes, most certainly.

The Boy carefully balanced the pig on his tiny pink haunches on the edge of the bed. He then used both hands to heft the heavy bottle of household cleaner up to Alfred's snout, tipped it up, and started feeding him. To ensure an authentic feeding experience, the Boy diligently made many lip smacking and slurping noises on behalf of his porcine friend.

The Boy's parents saw this outrageously cute play unfold and pretty much declared the Boy the best, most hilarious, sweetest child alive.

The End.

Basically.

*No Bar Keepers Friend was actually consumed or even opened by any party*

*No stuffed pigs were harmed by the imaginative ingestion of Bar Keepers Friend*

*If you write Bar Keepers Friend too many times, it starts to look like a tasty ice cream flavor*

Daaa beats the system

Sharayah has documented many of the ways in which Lucas is developing his own little personality and preferences. Occasionally this means crying for no apparent reason (or for a seemingly irrational reason, if we guess correctly what he's upset about). It reminds me of this list that I read before he was born. That list really gives a peek into the mind of a toddler (although I don't think he's cried for any of those particular reasons yet). Mostly, though, he is just learning how to play and explore his world on his own. It's been really fun. He is such a sweet little guy. He loves to transfer things from one place to another (often the "another" is a person, and if they put down anything that he gave them in a given round of transfers, he stops his transferring to pick it up and give it to them again [or pushes them to pick it back up on their own] and then resumes transferring without missing a beat). He loves "reading" probably more than any other activity. Many times throughout the day he will suddenly run off to another room, stop, and shout "Daaaaaaa!  Dadaaa!" until I come find him. It's the best (although it makes me a little sad that when I'm at work he will pound on the door that leads to the garage and shout "Daaa!" in the futile hope that I will come rushing in to find him). That's pretty much how he always calls for me: loudly shouting "Daaaa!" In contrast, when he wants Sharayah he says "Momom" (yes, he ends his "mama" with another "m") in the sweetest, calmest voice you can imagine.

We are getting a passport for Lucas for an upcoming trip. Did you know babies need passports? The requirements for the picture are not easy for a toddler. Mostly the hard part is that he needs to sit still, look straight into the camera, and not have any expression on his face. Lucas was actually really cooperative, and also demonstrated to us once again that, while he is a man of few words (at least, few real ones), he probably understands pretty much everything we say to him. Sharayah told him to go stand with his back to the wall and look at her for the picture, which he did promptly without hesitation. We have never told him to do anything like that before, so I don't know where he picks these things up. He kept looking away or looking down, so I told him to look up and he looked at the ceiling. I guess I should be more specific.

Passport photos are stupidly expensive to have made, but they are really just 2 inch square pictures with the head filling a certain portion of the picture. No place will print that without calling it a passport photo and charging a lot (think $15 for a single print), but you can get a 4 inch square picture for less than 25 cents. So we just made a 2 by 2 grid of the 2 inch picture that we actually wanted to print. So we got four times the picture for less than 1/60 of the price. It turns out Lucas is pretty cute even just standing there with no expression on his face.

So this is what it would be like to have quadruplets staring at you...

It also turns out that we misread the requirements on what size the face should be within the picture, so we ended up having to pay to get another picture remade at the post office anyway. So much for beating the system.

Right now it's spring break at MBU, and I've loved having the week off to spend all day with my little family. There are only 5 more weeks (and finals, and grading...) left before summer vacation. I am very excited to have a few months in a row to stay home almost every day and watch my little guy get bigger. Not to mention going on the grand adventures that require baby passports. Being Daaaa is pretty great.