So many words

Mats has always been a talker, but he really wasn't into words until maybe three weeks ago. He pulled out "boo" for balloon back at his first birthday (because he was obsessed with the balloons we had up around the house), and would do mommy and daddy, but other than that it was mostly just emphatic babbling. While we were in Steamboat Springs on vacation a few weeks ago, though, something just clicked with him, and he's been adding words with regularity. He discovered "hot" and "up" that week, and hot is still one of his favorite go to words.

Parenting magazine just rained on my parade - they have an article online that says that by 16 months, girls have an average of 50 words and boys an average of 30. If that's true, Mats is apparently way behind average on verbal skills, but I'm okay with that. Hmm, although WebMD says that at 18 months, kids may say 10 words. Clearly there's a spectrum. Either way, I'm still super proud of the words my sweet 17 month old does have:

1. Dada (always with gusto)
2. Mama
3. Balloon
4. Ball
5. (sign for) All done
6. (sign for) More
7. Hot
8. Up
9. Shoe
10. Cheese
11. (sign for) Help (which is only distinguished from "More" by context)
12. Please (also does the sign)
13. No No (with a shaking head)
14. Nose

The cutest thing Matson's learned to do recently, in addition to pointing to his nose and crinkling it up while saying, "Nose" (seriously, adorable) is kissing! I'll ask him for a kiss, and if he's in the mood, he'll run over, pucker up his lips, and kiss me straight on the lips. So endearing. If he's not in the mood he'll just ignore me.
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We got to enjoy a vacation in Florida with the little tyke last week! Scott's middle sister got married on the beach in Pensacola, so we flew down for the festivities and tacked on a few extra beach days. We had an amazing time playing in the waves, laying on the sand, making sand castles for Matzilla to smash with a fierce growl, and hanging out with family. Highlights of the week included several night swims, jumping into the ocean with our clothes on post-wedding (the bride and groom led the charge!), collecting seashells, taking a long moonlit walk on the beach with my sweet husband, catching mini sand crabs, watching Mats dance at his aunt and uncle's wedding and subsequently having everyone at the wedding dancing "The Matson".

And now, I can't believe that it's suddenly September, all of our summer vacations are over, school's back in session, and the days are getting shorter. Does this mean that summer is over?

Toddler in the Air

If you've ever met Matson, you know that he is a busy little 14 month old. Busy busy busy. If he ever sits still, it's usually because he has a hammer or stick in his hand that he wants to whack with (ie, hammer for his ball run), or dirt he wants to play in. He much prefers grand scale exploration to sitting and attending to a small task. Thus, the idea of flying with him to Phoenix this last weekend to visit Scott's parents was intimidating. (The idea of flying with him by myself in a few weeks to help my parents pack up their house is even more intimidating!) But, we survived! And I'm so thankful for my sweet husband who did most of the baby wrangling while I fished snacks and toys out of the bag.

My tips for those of you flying with a walker who doesn't like to sit still:

• Take a car seat! Our flight to Phoenix wasn't full, so they let us take it on ... amazing. That flight was over naptime, and he slept almost the whole way.
• Lots of finger food snacks. Blueberries, peas, grapes, and animal crackers were all big hits.
• Bring a fun new food. We picked up a bag of freeze dried mango at Target (no sugar added, but it's super sweet and has an easy puffy texture since it's freeze dried) that Matson loved.
• For the week before the trip, anytime Mats would pick up a toy at home and bring it to me to play with him, I'd set it aside for the plane. Things your toddler likes to sit and poke are perfect - for us, the best were a mesh squishy ball (like http://amzn.to/KZtuo5), a touch and feel book (http://amzn.to/Ksfea9), and a clean bulb syringe because he likes to feel the air rush on his face when you squeeze it.
• Go walking in the aisles when you can, even if your kid seems happy in your lap at that point! The seatbelts sign will come on soon enough - save the snacks and toys for then.
• We let him splash in a little water cup, which was messy and it kind of looked like I'd wet my pants, but it made him happy for a good 5 minutes.
• We tried a video, but he's never been into them at home, and within the first 30 seconds it became clear that he thought my phone was a better chewtoy than entertainment device.
• Dress baby as simply as possible. The little shorts rompers were great for plane/airport diaper changing - no extra layers to contend with.
• Resign yourself to the fact that your kid will probably have a public meltdown at some point. They turned off the air on our descent back to Denver, so between being past bedtime with no afternoon nap, a hot plane, and ear pressure, Mats had a frantic and very loud 15 minutes refusing all consolation. He was fine as soon as we got off of the plane, but I did have basically everyone on the plane staring at me. It happens, and we survived.

We'll see what I come up with after flying solo with the little man next month!

 

happy first day of fall!

happy first day of fall, friends!  no, it's not technically the first day of fall, and yes it did hit a high of 87* today ... but it IS the first day of september, which begins fall in my book.

i think that overall fall is my favorite season.  you have the pretty colors on the trees, the mornings and evenings start to cool off, so you can wear sweaters with your jeans and flip flops, and i think the nerd in me is still linked to the school calendar and just feels so many possibilities at the beginning of a new school year.  and, even though i unfortunately don't really like football in practice, i love the idea of it and the social aspects of it, and football comes with fall.

this weekend, scott and i are off to a cabin in the mountains, and i'm so looking forward to it.  it's the same cabin at the base of mt. elbert that we stayed in for a long weekend last summer and i have high hopes for a refreshing and relaxing weekend.  in case you forget the details, this cabin is surrounded by aspens to the extent that their quaking is all you can see out the windows, a creek runs right behind the cabin with a private fire pit on the creek, and hummingbirds flock the feeders in droves.  sounds lovely, right?  our plans include hiking along the twin lakes and possibly renting a canoe or paddleboat, but that will depend on pricing - i found one place's prices listed online, and it was $60 for two hours!  we'll also do a daytrip up to aspen along the independence pass to see the maroon bells.  there's no tv in the cabin, which is unbelievably relaxing, but we are planning to bring a laptop and the last two "lord of the rings" dvds from the library - we watched the first movie again a few weeks ago and it was SO GOOD!

anyway, one more day of work for me, then we're off for a four day weekend of sleeping in and sunshine!

refi, baby!

yellowstone was last week, and it was so fun!  i went in with basically no idea what to expect, and was very pleasantly surprised.  we stayed at a camp site right next to the grand canyon of the yellowstone, so lots of tall pine trees and waterfalls and rivers in the area.  hands down our favorite area of the park.  we did a day over in geyser country - old faithful and all that - and it was neat, but not a very comfortable place to be, if that makes sense.  a) the geysers smell like sulfur, which is gross, b) watching the ground randomly jetting out steam and hot water and seeing mud "boiling" is cool until you think about why it's happening, at which point you remember that you're on top of a gigantic volcano.  there are some truly breathtaking places up there, though!  and, i saw a bear for the first time in my life!  actually, five of them.  one set of mama grizzly and her two babies just off the road, one grizzly from a really far distance, and one black bear (which allegedly had another one with it, but i only saw one at a time) on a nearish hillside.  also, lots of elk including a massive bull elk, some deer, tons of pronghorn antelope, and herds of bison.  i highly recommend a visit to yellowstone - they have great roads with amazing sights very accessible to the road, plenty of good day hiking trails with

the highlight of this week so far is that we just locked in to refinance our house!  when we closed on our house at 5.875% two years ago, we thought that was amazing and were so excited to get such a great rate.  a coworker refinanced earlier this summer and said she's saving a fair bit of money, so i started looking up rates through our current mortgage company and bankrate.com - i was slightly overwhelmed with the multitude of info, though, so we e-mailed the mortgage broker we'd used when we bought the house, and he just locked us in at 4.375%!  all in all, it should save us about $260/month since we will hopefully not have to pay mortgage insurance anymore - wow, right?!  even paying closing costs out of pocket, we should officially be saving money within the year.

overview

ooh la la, a non-bargain-hunting post!  as i find the boundaries provided by numbering things comforting, i'll do list form (also to keep my verbose narrative in check):

1. we officially have our camping reservation for yellowstone in august!  plus, i spent the morning reading my frommer's yellowstone guide, and i'm getting steadily more excited.  there's just so much to see and do, i'm starting to wish we'd planned more than three to three and a half days there.  our campground is near the grand canyon of the yellowstone, and near the upper and lower falls, which are two of the things that i'd most hoped to see.  it's going to be challenging to balance getting out and hiking and experiencing the nature of the park with driving and wanting to see everything because it's all so cool and beautiful.
2. whoops, went onto facebook to find a link and got totally distracted!  our friends zach and casey, who were our first friends in denver, are moving to africa to work with friends at the recreation project.  their website explains it better, but basically uganda has tons of kids (and adults) really emotionally scarred from the history of war in their country and from being forced into fighting, so they're building a ropes course and sports rec leagues as a sort of recreational therapy, to help the kids channel their aggression and competition and passion into constructive things, and help build leadership.  we went to a fundraising bowling night last night to see them before they leave.  (we haven't seen them as a couple in ages, and casey and i haven't hung out since we both left our first apartment complex, but scott and zach still play poker, watch football, and do the occasional sports team together.)
3. in celebration of being alone in the office today, i had a diet coke with lunch (which i just finished drinking now, four hours later - i'm a slow drinker), and i've totally got the post-caffeine jitters.  i hate that feeling.
4. scott and i pulled our first weeds of the season yesterday.  we do have some more to do, but thankfully it's way less bad than last year - i'm hoping that if we start early, we can keep it under control and not have a thistle forest in our sideyard by mid-june.  we're also planning to call our tree trimmer who also does general landscaping work to get a bid on taking out some dead aspens and pulling out one of our dead-bush-and-dirty-river-rock areas so that we can start making our yard look pretty.  (it desparately needs new weed barrier and bushes, and we're debating whether to clean up the river rock or switch it out with mulch - either the traditional wood stuff or the rubber stuff.)  we're undecided how much to do ourselves vs hiring someone else to do ... it's just so much easier to write a check to someone else, but also obviously more costly.  also, we're excited to start re-planting trees this year!
5. tonight is my last night of tutoring gerardo.  (actually, not tutoring - it's the end of year celebration/dinner.)  he's ending 5th grade, which means that next year he starts middle school.  whiz kids is thinking of opening up a middle school tutoring site in the area since there are so many 5th graders moving up, but i'm not sure if he'll continue with it next year.  we shall see - it could be my last night with him ever, or i could get three more years!  (when i asked him about it last week, he said that he wants to not do it so that i can stay with the elementary school kids and tutor his little brother, who'll be in first grade next year.  how sweet is that??)

sportsfan

i am sleepy today ... we went to the suns v. nuggets game last night, and while the original tip off time had been 7:00, it got pushed back to 8:30 so that they could televise it.  8:30 start time meant that we didn't get home til almost midnight.  thus, now sleepy.  it was a good game, though - suns won 109-97!  and we got to meet the guy that goo is dating, which was very fun.

an insurance adjustor is coming out next tuesday to look at the roof.  when he called, he offered that we could have our contractor out for the appointment also if we wanted ... not entirely sure what to do with that.  on the one hand, it seems like it could be helpful to have a guy who's knowledgable and sort of "on our side" at the appointment; on the other, he's the only roof guy we've spoken to, and while we really liked him, i don't want to feel completely committed to using him if we need to price compare.  we need to decide soon, though, so that we can get it on the roof guy's calendar if we do decide to have him at the appointment.  (and the roof guy did offer that if the first adjusting appointment doesn't get the result we want, that we could request a second adjustor to come out and have him there also.)

we're hanging out with some friends to watch the superbowl this sunday, and since dips are apparently the official food of football, i'm making both queso and spinach/artichoke dip to bring to the game.  the spinach artichoke dip because i had bought frozen spinach to make some like three weeks ago, never got around to it, so it's been sitting in my fridge and i want it gone.  the queso, because i like queso and have a handy small crock pot just perfect for making queso, so why not?  not to mention, i found this super tasty looking queso recipe - velveeta and rotel, yes, but also cream cheese, cheddar, chorizo, and black olives.  oh my!  (although actually, i decided to make queso a week ago and just found the recipe five minutes ago when i subscribed to the pioneer woman's tasty kitchen blog so that i can enter her cooking gear contests again.)

on another unrelated note, depending on the cost of this whole roof situation, i have a tentative brilliant idea for a long weekend getaway with scott later in the spring.  thus far it's a surprise (the destination, not that i'm thinking of planning a trip - i would feel super guilty spending that much money without getting at least a general consent from him), but i did tell scott that it would involve plane tickets, and that it's not to chicago.  i'm trying not to get my hopes too far up, because if we have to pay a lot out of pocket for the roof i think i'll have to dash the idea for now ... but it's definitely simmering in the back of my mind.