Snow bunny or artist? You decide!

Charlie Jo was helping me excavate the bin we use to store our winter accessories (like mittens and hats) and she pulled out Corey's old (and I do mean OLD) ski goggles that he hadn't worn in a good decade.  In my quest to put my children in as many goofy situations as possible (AND take pictures of it so they can curse me later), I couldn't pass up a chance to document this discovery.  She thought it was hilarious and wore the goggles happily for a few minutes before abandoning them for some other more interesting item.

Second random shot -- a Charlie Jo original.  For some reason, she is usually not interested in drawing anything but scribbles.  She is always demanding that I draw something or other for her (perhaps indicating she has a future in arts patronage?) instead of attempting to draw it herself.  When I found her drawing this little dude the other day, I was both tickled and surprised.  She evaded answering any questions about the artistic process or end product, but she did seem pleased that I hung him on the fridge.

All aboard!

We needed an outing on Saturday morning because Corey planned to work all day at the office.  I asked the kids if they wanted to go see a steam engine and they tried to climb in the Big Red Van before I could even get them dressed.  We sped up the road to Nashville's Centennial Park to see this big guy:

Both kids had to wear their engineer hats that Grandpa Spike got them.

Peter kept offering the train little handfuls of rocks and saying "here go, choo choo!"  He also said "all 'BOARD!" about 400 times.

This thing is seriously massive.  It was part of the Nashville, Chattanooga & St. Louis Railway.

"Here go, choo choo!"

There's also a plane from the Tennessee Air Guard on display.  Peter also loves to say "PAIN!!" (translation: "plane") a lot, so this was a big treat for him to see.  Charlotte wanted to know why it was on a big stick.

Alas, the plane didn't hold their attention so it was back to the engine.

My little choo choo ragamuffins.

There was a bunch of birds with a nest somewhere on top of the engine or something, because we heard lots of loud squawks every time we got near the train.  Somebody wasn't happy that we were encroaching on her territory.

Whoah.  That's one big choo choo.

After our visit to the park, we brought lunch to Corey at work.  We ate in the lunch room, which the kids thought was the coolest thing ever.

No trip to Daddy's office would be complete without playtime with Daddy's little cars.

Peter wasn't happy until we had inspected each and every car.

We had to wake Peter up after he napped for nearly three and a half hours.  It really wears a guy out to visit a choo choo AND Daddy's office all in one morning.

Peter's Top Ten

These are the top ten cutest things to hear Peter say:

10.  "RICE!" (translation: "SURPRISE!") -- Alicia and I heard him saying "RICE" over and over at us yesterday evening, and it took us a while to realize he was saying it after hiding briefly behind a curtain.  Today, he has been running up to me with pieces of paper bearing his artistic scribbles and presenting them to me while yelling "RICE!"

9.  "Joo" (translation: any liquid to be consumed) -- I suppose he always heard Charlotte referring to her sippy cup as "juice", and decided that "joo" must mean something that you drink.  He spits out juice whenever he tastes it and he vastly prefers drinking plain old water, but he still calls it "joo".

8.  "M'ow" (pronounced like a mashup of the two syllables of meow; translation: "meow" or "cat") -- Peter has a love/hate relationship with the cats.  In other words, he loves them and they hate him.  Peter's great love is to lie down on something soft and squishy (like his pillow pet bubba), and he figures cats fall into the acceptable squashing category.  The cats disagree.  Peter also thinks it is HILARIOUS to poke at Pacey when Pacey is up on his pillow (barely within Peter's reach if he stands on the rocking chair in our room) and for Pacey to hiss and smack at him.  Pacey disagrees.  Peter's idea of a good time is to try to drag Rocky around by his gorgeously fluffy tail.  Rocky sincerely disagrees.

7.  "Ree, GO!" (translation: "ready, set, go!") -- This one is made even more hysterical when accompanied by the visual of his stubby little legs pumping as fast as he can make them go as he races away.

6.  "FWEEEEEEEEEE!" (translation: an elephant's trumpeting sound) -- This was one of his very first animal noises, and he does a pretty darn good job making the sound while pretending his arm is a trunk.  Okay, so this isn't really a word, but he also uses it as a noun to refer to elephants.

5.  "Nonnie foo foo" (translation: "Connie dog") -- All dogs are "foo foo" to Peter.  That's also the sound he makes when you ask him what a dog says.  It's funny how Peter can say a hard "c" sound when he refers to his beloved "car-cars", but he says "Connie" as "Nonnie".

4.  "Wa' show" (translation: "watch show") -- Unfortunately, Peter watched much more TV much earlier than Charlie Jo.  He gets into crazy scary tantrums sometimes when the only thing that will calm him down is to watch a show.  These tantrums can't be soothed by cuddles, food, music, books, stuffed animals, time, or any other techniques that I have ever tried.  And believe me, I have tried it all.  He still absolutely adores books and his favorite time of day is cuddling story time before nap and bedtime, but the TV is sometimes the only magic trick to snap him out of a rage.

3.  "Rea' book" (translation: "read book") -- He's starting to learn how to weasel one more book out of me before I kiss him good night.  I spent so many months worrying about his speech delay that I can't help but obey a sweet request for another book.  He's such a dream to put down for naptime and bedtime (much easier than Charlie Jo, so Corey and I always sigh with relief when it is our turn with Peter at bedtime) that I haven't refused this request yet.  The books he likes are all pretty darn short, anyway.

2.  "Chah-yee" (translation: "Charlie/Charlotte") -- He says it probably 400 times a day, and I never get sick of hearing it.  It's especially cute when he says "'mon Chah-yee" ("come on, Charlie") and then motions for her to follow.

1.  "PEE-yoh" (translation: "Peter") -- He says it so fast it almost sounds like one syllable.  He love love loves to assign ownership to darn near everything, so it's common to find him pointing to the kids' sippy cups and saying "Chah-yee joo.  Pee-yoh joo.  Chah-yee joo.  Pee-yoh joo."

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Honorable mentions: "Wee-wee" (LiLi, aka Alicia), "Fay-fee" (Faithy, aka Faith Carol), "Babbee" (Abbey), "Beeee" (NanaB), "Ga'dah" (GrandDad), "Sho-nah" (Sonia), and today's newest word, "Shah-shun" (Madison).

Okay, so pretty much any words out of that child's mouth are enough to make me melt.  His speech has been later and slower in developing than his big sister's was, so I savor every semi-intelligible word he utters.  I know I will yearn for the wordless days sometime soon, but for now I'm enjoying the chatter.

Stringers at UT

This past weekend, Niki, Charlotte, Peter, and I traveled to Knoxville to stay with some friends of ours for a weekend.  The highlight for the weekend was attending the UT/MTSU game in Neyland Stadium.

On the way to the game, we walked past the SunSphere - the centerpiece for the 1982 World's Fair.

Here is the business school at UT.

 The band takes the field.  This stadium is HUGE!

Kay and Niki.

 The football team takes the field.

MTSU brought their band.  They had a great sound, but they never marched.

UT won, 24-0.  Niki and I after the game.

Lloyd and I.

Charlotte's Adventure in the Cobb Creek Woods

Okay, these pictures go back a few weeks.  After Charlotte went to her first cider mill, NanaB and GrandDad took her on an adventure in the woods, where she found four little pumpkins.

 

On her way into the woods . . .

up the hill . . .

and around the bend.

NanaB and GrandDad have been keeping up the adventure path.

GrandDad and his adventure path.

Charlotte finds the last pumpkin!

And off she goes back home.

Later on in the afternoon, she found this little berry.

NanaB and GrandDad.

On Saturday, Charlie made this picture and told NanaB a story while making it.  

Tea parties were a hit all weekend.

See anyone familiar?

Charlotte has a subscription to a bi-monthly magazine called "Turtle" (a gift from NanaB and GrandDad that she adores).  Each issue has a two-page spread called "Turtle's Pet Show" that features photos of readers with their animals.  When we got the most recent issue, we were all hanging out in Peter's room while Charlotte flipped through the magazine.  She suddenly said, "hey -- there's me, Mommy!"  I looked over her shoulder, and sure enough there she was in all her ballerina glory holding Rocky on the day he came to live with us at 5 weeks old.  (Click on the photo to make it larger.)

I couldn't stop giggling.  Even though I had uploaded the photo to the magazine's website a few months ago, I had forgotten about it and never really thought the photo would get in there anyway.  We Skyped with NanaB and GrandDad to show them and they were as tickled as we were.  Charlotte really wasn't exceptionally impressed.  After all, she has grown up with seeing herself plastered on the fridge, the walls, the internet, in photo albums, in those self-published photo books, etc.  This was just another piece of evidence to support her conclusion that the world revolves around Charlotte JoAnn Stringer.

Cellular oddities

Shots of our wacky life as seen through the cruddy lens of my crappy cell phone:

1.  Baby Megan came over to visit (and brought along her mom, Melissa, and big sister, Madison).  My arms were the crib of choice that afternoon.  I took this photo to send to Alicia to make her jealous.

2.  It turned out, however, that Rocky was the one who got jealous.

3.  Charlie Jo LOVES to do "homework", so I dug out an activity book I had bought her ages ago just to scribble in because Dora was in it.  Here, she was working hard coloring each shape a particular color.

4.  We still mostly have temperatures in the 60s and even 70s right now, but a few weeks ago we actually had to wear jackets outside.  One of the kids' favorite games is to race between the two trees in our front yard.  There is no particular purpose other than to touch the tree trunk and shriek "I WIN!"

5.  "I WIN!!!!"

6.  A very special little girl named Evelyn came to visit us last week.  Her mom, Kate, also came along.  Evelyn just couldn't be bothered to wake up so I could hold her, so we're going to have to get together again soon.

7.  Peter loves the dog statue at the vet's office.  When we picked up Connie from being boarded over the weekend, he decided to ride the statue like a horse while yelling "NONNIE FOO FOO!  NONNIE FOO FOO!"  (That is Peter speak for "CONNIE DOG!  CONNIE DOG!")

8.  Our garage door opener inexplicably died a few days ago.  Corey decided to install the new one himself.  I was way too scared to do anything but watch and hold stuff when I needed to.  He's going to finish the job tonight, so cross your fingers.

9.  We needed to buy food for all of the animals, so I packed up the kids and told them we were going to a sort of zoo.  They thought the PetsMart fish section was just as good as a fancy aquarium, and we spend a good 15 minutes mesmerized by the fish.  Peter, of course, was shrieking "HI FISH!  FISH!  FISH FISH FISH!!!"  Why does everything need to be shrieked?  Anyhow, I would really love to beg PetsMart not to have their cheapie goldfish down low with open tops on the tanks.  Peter does not yet possess the self control to refrain from petting the fishies so I had to watch him like a hawk.

A review of Charlotte's costumes through the years

This was Charlotte's fourth Halloween, and I got all nostalgic about the Halloweens past.  It's so much fun dressing her up like a little doll.  This was probably the last year I will have been able to heavily influence her costume choice, so I'm going to savor it.

2008 -- a ladybug.  She was new to crawling and solid foods.  I'm not even sure we took her to any houses.  I think she just helped us hand out some candy.

2009 -- one half of the epic punk rock duo "Toddler Tantrum".  We probably had the most fun planning this costume.

2010 -- Ruby (from the TV show "Max & Ruby").  She understood the whole trick-or-treating process a little better that year, but she still had to be heavily coached.

2011 -- Ladybug Girl!  She babbled on and off for weeks about being a princess and I kind of just ignored her (because every other little girl on the planet chose the same costume).  One time she mentioned how much she loved Ladybug Girl and I asked her if she wanted to dress like her for Halloween.  She said "okay" and I raced out to buy the costume before she could change her mind.

What will she be next year?  Stay tuned!