Fat Lip

Here is Big Ace with a big fat lip. He slipped and fell on the floor. I feel crappy about it, but he only cried for a mintue and is a-ok.

Odds and Ends

If I ever look up and don't see Asa right under foot, I know the first place to look. The dog beds. He loves them and just gets right in the middle and plays quietly. Today, though, the bed was occupied and neither wanted to give an inch.

Last Saturday was Pop-Pops birthday and we had a great day. This was taken at halftime of the Tech game. Barkely has gotten good at bracing for all sorts of things coming from Asa.
We took Asa to the sprayground and park the other day. This is a shot of the little guy on the big sidewalk.

Here is the sprayground. What's missing? Asa wouldn't go near it.

Feeding himself

We've been slowly introducing silverware at mealtime, and Asa isn't really interested other than throwing it on the floor. Until I gave him chocolate pudding. He quickly realized the value of the spoon as a means to a very tasty end:

Happy. Sad. Happy. Frustrated. No wait, happy.

Ahhh how quickly the moods of a toddler change. Below is a classic example of cry to laugh in 3.5 seconds:

Asa walking around

I got Asa one of those ball popper push things like we used to have. He was so funny, because he'd go out of his way to get it situated so he could pull it behind him. If I tried to get him to push it, he would get upset. Wonder what's going through that little head.

The Halloween that Never Was...

I had to run to the mall today to get something for Asa to wear for our pictures this week and came across the most fabulous Halloween costume ever. I bought it, rushed home and told Matt: I got Wee-Diddy's Halloween costume and he's gonna be--drrrrrrrrrrrrrrumrollllllllll--a Peacock!

Silence.

Needless to say, Matt was NONE too thrilled about it because he thinks Asa "looks like the grand marshall of the gay parade." Well, maybe he does, because the grand marshalls of the gay parades I've seen are always super-duper FABULOUS. Well, at least I got photos of him in it (he LOVES it by the way, and he strutted all over the house, well, like a peacock) but alas, I will be returning it and probably getting something ordinary like a spider or shark. Although, with this flexible return policy, I could get a whole array of super-fab photos. Hmmmmm.

Good Lord, the DRAMA!

Sorry about that dramatic post from Saturday night. It's kinda funny now. Right? Well, everybody is a-ok now...no fever for Asa, my ear feels tons better and Mattie is back with only a mild hangover, lots of stubble and a suitcase that smells like farts. (I would have predicted much worse smells having been in a room with five guys who drank beer for an entire weekend.) Only the transmission in the ol' Jeep didn't fare so well, but we'll have her back in order in no time. Thanks so much for everyone's calls, posts, e-mails and other sympathies. We really appreciated it.

Here is Asa feeling good in his new Spider Man shirt:

A long, long weekend.

WARNING: This is a long post. I mean super long. I suggest you don't even read it. Just wait for pictures with short quips under tham at a later date. This is really just theraputic, and to take up time waiting until Asa wakes up again crying. (which I'll get to later. In case you decide to trudge through this) So, back to the long weekend. It started off early--Thursday for us--as Matt left for his annual guys weekend. He flew to Pittsburgh to the Penn State/Notre Dame game. "Oh, did Matt go to *penn state*or*notre dame*?" you ask. No, he went to Texas Tech. But that's a whole other story and not really relevant to this posting which is about ME and MY weekend. And since I do the posting, I get to be selfish about the content. Anyway, by Thursday morning I had a pretty severe double ear infection and was none too thrilled about the weekend alone with Wee-Diddy, because I was unable to chew or really talk very well, and I felt like I wouldn't be much fun for him and I'd have the guilty feelings after asking him every hour "wanna go nite-nite yet?" Have any of you had ear infections as an adult? I mean one time the nurses forgot my pain meds after my c-section, which was horrible, and that was cake compared to this. This is bring you to your knees and cry kind of pain. And your ear stinks. Not that I can smell my own ear, but before they swelled shut,and were only slightly painful, I did stick a q-tip in there and my ear was full of stinky ick. I didn't take the "good stuff" from the dr, because I knew I'd be alone with the little guy and didn't want to be zombied out or unable to drive or whatever. Oh. Well, driving didn't end up being much of an issue.

Flash back to Thursday evening. I loaded everyone up and dropped Matt off at the ariport. (DFW, not Love Field, so it was far away.) Nothing unusual happened on the way there, but as I was passing through the toll booth on the way out, my car just died. In the line at the toll booth. As in "oh shit the car died and I'm inna big line and can't pull over and I have the baby" died. I managed to pay, and get another two miles along the highway shoulder going about 2 miles an hour. Then the car crackled a lot and smoke started coming out everywhere. I got to a gas station, and quickly unloaded Asa (because I was SURE it was going to blow up like on TV) and called Matt's brother who thankfully was still at work like 10 minutes away (a fortunate coincidence.) Uncle Mark rescued us and we arranged to have the car towed. I thought my left ear was gonna explode by this time, and poor Mark had to hear me complain all the way home. So we get home okay (after getting a banana for Ace at the gas station because I had no dinner for him and he was starting to get nasty) and I tough it out Friday (AND through Matt's phone call Saturday morning where he's telling me all about his friend's 108" flat screen TV and foosball table and how they stayed up till 6 a.m. drinkin' beer.) Yah, that's great hun. I was up till 6 a.m. too. With a warm compress on my freaking ear, convinced I really had an annuerism or brain tumor or an alien eating away my flesh and debating with my dog Hatcher if maybe I should go to the emergency room. By this piont I've weighed the odds of the "stomach bleeding" warning on the tylenol bottle, I decide I'd rather deal with a bleeding stomach than my ear, so I just take 3 even though I just took two Aleve an hour before. I finally doze off around 6, so I guess the ear pain subsided, but Ace woke up at 7:30. My face was still wet from the tears. No joke. But I was actually looking forward to the day (Saturday) because Matt's dad said he'd take Asa for a few hours so I could rest. That was going to be cool. I had my day planned, and I was going to "rest" watching OU-Miami, then Oregon-Michigan while flipping back and forth from A&M-Fresno State, and topping it off with Southern Miss on Pay Per View, then maybe ice cream and LSU-Va Tech. (No, Asa wouldn't be gone that long, but I figured it'd be okay for him to watch a little too. Since my ear hurt an all.) Ahhhh, couldn't wait. But I go get little guy out of bed and what...hmmm...you feel a little warm, baby boy. But it was just a little fever, like 99. New teeth I figure. A bit of Tylenol, breakfast and we're off. When I get him up from his nap though, he's got red cheeks and a 102 fever. Shit. I call mom. I call the doctor. I give him a cool bath. Everything seems okay, and I'm finally getting a grip on the reality of the day, when, as I'm redressing Ace, I catch Barkley just finishing up dragging ass across the new carpet followed by a horrible smell. So he just emptied that sack or whatever all over the carpet, I think. Great. I "spot shot" that and me and Ace throw in the towel and cozy up on the couch and watch some football together. Wiping up the remnants of my dog's anal gland definitely wasn't on my schedule for the day. Poor Asa. Poor mommy. Poor Michigan!

SOOO, here I am, 12:45 Saturday night because baby boy keeps waking up about every hour and a half and my dang ear still hurts too bad to sleep. As soon as I pick him up, he immediately zonks back out on my shoulder, but we just rock and rock anyway. My poor, poor angel.

Oh, so that leaves the car. You will be relieved to know that it should be under warranty, because it's a 2005 and only has 21,000 miles. Except it was "lost" for most of yesterday, so when the dealership finally got it around 3, it was, of course, too late to start on it. I haven't heard anything since, and I actually didn't even think about it till I started writing this, so I guess I better call on Monday. I asked Matt if the Jeep did in fact blow up could I please have the big Lexus SUV, but he said "no", even though I feel like I really deserve it after this weekend. He also said something about "importance of contributing to IRAs" and "college fund," "retirement," "cash flow," but my ear, you know. It's kind of hard to hear.

Hey, so this post isn't a total wash, here's a picture for you to look at. It's my dog Hatcher, who I talked to for the past two nights when I was delirous with pain, and he patiently listened with what I swear was real concern in his big brown eyes. Yes, Matt, I let him get in the bed with me too. Thanks, Hatcher, for being there. I love you.