Kickin' new shoes

Little Elvis has been rocking his soft-soled shoes for a couple of months now, so we decided that it was time to move on to a pair of "real shoes."

Since I wasn't able to find any blue suede baby shoes, we ended up with a super cute pair of blue jean shoes with a red foam bottom. These were lighter than lots of the baby shoes we saw, so that (and the fact that they were so cute) were our main reasons for getting them.

In honor of his new kicks, we had to make a music video. And this time we went with a fairly new song!



To anyone fairly new to the blog, we like to make music videos featuring Little Elvis. There are links to the other videos in the right hand navigation under "Little Elvis' Greatest Hits."

Pick a little, talk a little, pick a little, talk a little...

There's a definite give and take to small talk. I realize this, but am powerless to really participate.

I definitely have the gift of gab, (ask Bob, ask former co-workers) but I don't have the gift of small talk. I have to warm up to people before I just start talking to them. And small talk questions? Well, I'm usually tongue-tied when it comes to a response.

I can say that I'm fine and ask how someone else is feeling. But even though my husband is a meteorologist, I'm really not big on talking about the weather. Politics and money make me uncomfortable and I'm kind of out of the pop culture loop at the moment.

Little Elvis has been a wonderful treatment for my smalltalkphobia. Because people typically ask questions that have a definite answer. He's 13 1/2 months. He has 7 teeth. Yes, he's cutting an 8th. Yes, he is absolutely adorable.

If strangers ask me any tangible questions like these, I'm golden.

But I'm at a loss when people say, "You can tell he isn't loved," (wink, wink) or "Poor thing, he's just not attractive at all," (again, wink, wink.) Or today's strange comment made by an uncle in front of his two very sweet nephews who were I'm guessing 4 and 5. "Start drinking now."
What am I supposed to say to that? I just kind of half smiled and laughed. I'm assuming it was supposed to be funny. But it was just weird.

This is my problem with small talk. I think some people just need to fill up the empty air with nonsense. I guess I'm fine sitting in empty air.

The strange thing is that my dad is like the king of small talkers. He makes friends while standing in the checkout line. He doesn't really meet strangers. My mom is in sales. I should have inherited the small talk gene. But I didn't.

So if you encounter me in a store and say something weird to or about Little Elvis. Don't think I'm rude if I don't respond. I honestly just don't know what to say.

Food wars

Does this look like the face of a little boy who doesn't like spaghetti?

Look closely, see how he was so excited to get it into his mouth that he got it all over his mouth?

Well, this was a one night thing.


Little Elvis loved, loved, LOVED spaghetti the first night we served it to him.

The next day? Not so much.

I'm not one to take no easily. I tried again, and again, and again. Finally, I gave up when he unceremoniously threw the entire bowl of pasta on the floor and barely missed me. I was bending down to pick up something else.

Yep, our little guy is a one taste boy. He loves anything... once.

But the novelty wears off fairly quickly. He prefers eating whatever Mommy and Daddy are having. And since Mommy can't eat spaghetti (pesky tomatoes!) well, it's easier on her not to serve it anyway.

Last night our little food critic downed lamb curry with orzo pasta (rice substitute) and seemed to really enjoy it. At least, for that one time. Lucky for him, there were no leftovers.

At least he enjoyed spaghetti the first night, and we had the forethought to take pictures then. My little cutie-pie.

Dancing with the Wookies

This is an actual conversation. No names were changed to protect the idiot.

INT: It is evening, Meredith and Bob are watching "Dancing with the Stars" while editing video of the cats on drugs. Meredith likes the show. Bob tolerates the show.

Meredith: Kristi Yamaguchi is lucky. She probably already had the posture and hand poses down thanks to her skating.
Bob: But she was a singles skater, right? She didn't skate with a partner.
Meredith: She skated in those Icecapade shows, I'm sure she skated with Mark Hamill.
Bob: Yea.... You mean Scott Hamilton?

End scene

One more thing, I seriously thought that Mark Hamill was the guy on NCIS and had a much better title picked out. N-C-I-Scapades. That man's name is Mark Harmon.

Combat cats

Our house has been a little crazy since mid-last week. Why? My mom, aka the bad influence, mailed our cats a new catbed. For most, this wouldn't be a problem. But this bed had a little something special in it, and my cats go a little nuts for this something special -- catnip.

I should have known something was up with the box when Wally wouldn't leave it alone. I knew the box had a "present" for Slappy, Easter eggs for Little Elvis and pants for Bob. So I wasn't completely sure what the problem was.

Finally, I opened the box and discovered a whole bag of catnip attached to the bed! Catnip is like a drug for Slappy and Wally. And they both have decidedly different reactions.

Slappy gets all sweet and giddy, (at first) she purrs and rubs her nose all over. Wally is a mean drunk. He attacks Slappy and gets hysterical.

At first Wally was the goofy one, chewing on the bag of catnip and rubbing himself all over Bob's new pair of pants. Slappy was rubbing herself all over the chair and purring like she was in Heaven.

Then the fireworks began. I managed to have great timing for this. The camera was rolling and Little Elvis was happily ensconced in his high chair, enjoying the craziness.

Of course, we made a music video out of the chaos.



Why was the bed just for Slappy? My mom was convinced big ole Wally wouldn't fit inside. Guess he proved her wrong, huh?

The bed has since provided us with lots of laughs, and even Little Elvis gets in on the fun. He has twice chased Slappy out of the comfort of her bed.

Hippity hoppity

This isn't Little Elvis' first Easter, but it's the first time he got to get out and experience Easter. Last year it was too cold for us to get him out.

But this year, he got to participate in our church's Easter Eggstravaganza and visit the Easter Bunny at a local store. We didn't make it to the actual Easter egg hunt at the church, because it was too close to naptime. But he did manage to hunt and find every single electrical outlet.

Here's some video of him running around the Fellowship Hall having a big time.



After naptime, we headed to the store for his visit with the Easter Bunny. He walked right up to the bunny as soon as he appeared.

Interesting tidbit about Little Elvis:

For some reason, the appearance of a magical person or creature who will bear gifts brings out the poo. We skedaddled out of the store right after the picture was taken so we could change his dirty diaper.

The exact same thing happened with Santa, but I had been waiting in line 30 minutes, and um.. I kept waiting until it was my stinky fussy boy's turn to visit the big guy.

The person wearing the bunny outfit apparently couldn't see anything, so that's my bright blue arm holding Little Elvis next to the bunny.

All in all, I think he had a very nice Easter. We did.

Comedy of errors

We love that Little Elvis can walk. Really, we do. Even when he's stretching his little puppy backpack/harness tail taut and screaming if we try to stop him.

Ever since he's learned to walk, shopping has become harder. At first, he wanted out of the shopping cart to help Mommy push. It took us longer to get around the store, but it wasn't so bad. And he looked super cute pushing that big basket.

Then he started basket jumping -- going from our cart to someone else's. I decided that this was obviously just proof that our son was super polite by offering to help other people push their carts.

But he's decided to branch out. He still occasionally wants to help push the buggy, but he also wants to run down aisles and pull stuff off the shelves. He's not picky, he will gladly clean anything off of those shelves. Still, that hasn't been too bad. He's only fussed a little when I've picked him up.

That was NOT the case today.

He has recently learned a new trick, which came in handy for him today at Wal-Mart. Little Elvis will now arch his back and make his entire body rigid when you try to put him somewhere that he doesn't approve of. These places include his diaper changing table, his car seat and shopping carts.

He pulled this little trick out of his bag and cried. So Bob pulled out his puppy backpack/harness.
Once Little Elvis was allowed to walk on his own, he started running for anything that he thought looked fun. This included bags of green plastic Easter grass and the make-up aisle.

I told him that Mommy didn't need any make-up, and reached for his hand to pull him along with me. He went limp (another fun new trick) and started crying. Bob picked him up, and he wailed.

Bob put him back down and he pushed the cart for 2 steps before trying to head down another make-up aisle. This time I picked him up. He went taut, bowing his little back like he was doing a backbend, and cried. We managed to get to the soap aisle with a fussy baby, so I put him down. He immediately grabbed a Softsoap bottle and began sucking on the pump. It was closed. I didn't take it out of his hands immediately. He was quiet for about a minute.

A kind lady told me that my son had a bottle of Softsoap in his mouth. I smiled and nodded and attempted to take it away from him. She quickly realized why he had that bottle in his little hands. I managed to get it from him and pick him up again. Again, a rigid body and an earful of pitiful wails. He also managed to chopblock my larynx, but I'm pretty sure this wasn't intentional.

During all of the craziness Bob somehow put our biggest coupon envelope (we have three, I am seriously a little mad about coupons) in another woman's cart. We were turning our cart upside down while holding onto a screaming Little Elvis when a kind woman came up to us with the coupon envelope.

What a mess. We decided not to browse through the baby clearance items and just leave. I actually left out some details, but this shopping trip was a true comedy of errors. From the trail of red gatorade that I spilled throughout the store, to the coupon mishap we had while checking out. Wal-Mart probably doesn't turn away any customers, but I'm sure they were thrilled when we left this afternoon.

Busy boy

Little Elvis is a busy, busy boy. When he's not trying to eat hydrocortisone cream, he's all over the house.

Thanks to the new layout, he's able to wander around as much as he wants. He's got a whole room full of his toys, and then he's got a living room with stuff he sees as nontoys. I am so happy with our new layout.

It's been a while since our last music video. I just didn't have any great ideas. Then I heard the perfect song on the television a couple of weeks ago. It's in a commercial for coffee, but it's perfect for our busy little boy.

Enjoy!



If you're new, we like to do music videos for the different stages of Little Elvis' life. They are on the right hand nav under greatest hits. My favorite is still Rice, Rice Baby; but Best of Friends is a close second.

Channeling Bel Biv Devoe

I made my first call to the Poison hotline yesterday. My sweet little curious guy decided to taste some hydrocortisone.

How did his diligent mother allow this, you ask? Well -- she answers while blushing slightly -- he's been playing with that tube for weeks, but hasn't been able to open it. Yes -- she continues blushing even more -- I have been letting my son play with a tube of hydrocortisone. And yes, he has TONS of real toys, but prefers the things he thinks he's not supposed to have.

After I realized he had opened the tube and had white cream around his lips, I immediately grabbed the tube and read the label. Little Elvis smacked happily while I handed him a sippy cup of water, called Bob and then called the Poison hotline.

Does this look like a little boy who would willingly eat hydrocortisone?

I'm not sure what I was expecting from the poison hotline, but a real person answering on the first ring was not it! I kind of figured I'd listen to a recording, press 1 for English, and 2 for Emergency, and then hold until a brusk person answered.

Instead, a nice woman named Nancy answered, and told me that Little Elvis would be fine. She said he might throw up or have diarrhea, but he would be fine. She suggested I get him to drink something and was so nice!

In all my reorganizing craziness, I did not touch our bathroom. And although my crazy need to rearrange everything has passed, I tackled the bathroom this morning.

Now, when Little Elvis pulls out the drawers, he gets band-aids, and maxi pads to play with. I figured those were the least worrisome objects.

Since the mild scare, the Bel Biv Devoe song, "Poison" has been running through my head. "Moms, I must warn you, that hydrocortisone looks very tasty ... "

Lucky in love

Little Elvis love, love, loves his daddy. In fact, his first word was "dada." Sure, he also calls the guitars "dada," but Bob plays the guitar. It makes sense to me.

Little Elvis cries everytime Bob goes to work, and beams whenever his daddy gets home. He also LOVES playing with his daddy. (Daddy's a lot more fun than Mommy.)

Little Elvis also loves going over to the guitars whenever Bob is home, saying "dada?" and getting Bob to get the guitars down. (Mommy just holds him up to the guitars, she doesn't pull them down for him.) At the moment, our budding musician seems to prefer the 12-string.

And of course, Bob adores his boy. Little Elvis is teething again, and Bob has been getting up with me every night -- no complaints -- to help out.

I thought I'd include some fun Daddy/Little Elvis shots from recent trips.

Here Little Elvis is showing Bob a leaf that he picked up at the park. I think it looks like he's telling Bob all about that leaf.
Wow does Little Elvis love to pick up things off the ground!



In fact, he picked up a pine cone while we were hiking this weekend.

The weather was beautiful, but our main reason for this trip was to try out our baby backpack thing.

Bob said it was pretty comfy.


Little Elvis seemed pretty pleased with it as well.

Who said I didn't like swings?

Silly Mommy. Of course I like swinging!











I just wasn't in the mood to swing the other day.

No crying over spilled milk

Little Elvis went to a birthday party this weekend and had a great time!



This is him prepping for the party (an older woman -- she's turning 2! -- so he had to look very dashing.) These overalls are the cutest things ever, but I didn't do a great job catching them in all their glory. There's a little blue horse with a white rope tail. I will do a better job the next time he wears them, because they seriously are the cutest things ever.

Back to the party, it was held at a new play studio in our area called Monkey Business. It's been a while since Little Elvis has been in an area like this, and I was nervous about how he would behave.

For the most part, he was a gentleman. He ran all over the little play area, and if he saw a child playing with something that looked interesting, he'd go try to horn in on the fun, but in a nice way. He also played with one unsuspecting mom's hair and patted her back as she bent down to talk to her child. And he rubbed a pregnant mom's belly while looking at other kids. Yes, he really did that. She seemed to think the invasion of privacy was cute and funny, or at least she laughed. So, not too bad.

Then, he saw it. A little girl drinking a sippy cup of milk. And he wanted that cup of milk. He made a beeline for her in his bright red overalls and grabbed the cup! I quickly took the cup away and handed it back to her. So, he grabbed it again, getting the top off and spilling some of the milk onto the floor. Nice. Again, I took the cup away, apologizing profusely to the people behind the girl. That was when I realized that several people were crouched down with cameras trying to take a picture of the sweet little girl with her milk.

Surprisingly, the little girl never cried over the spilled milk (2 drops, but it makes for a nice title.) I later found out that she has a twin brother. Maybe I can say that Little Elvis was just being a boy and she was used to that?

I think I'm the only person who was worried over the event. The parents didn't mind, the girl didn't mind. Little Elvis didn't mind, he just ran off in another direction.

He seemed to have a great time at the party. We went to a monthly church group meeting right after the party and we could tell that he was completely worn out by the time we got home. All in all, a great day.

Sniffles and snuffles

Little Elvis hasn't been sleeping well. He's been crying out in his sleep for the past couple of nights and last night he woke up screaming. The screams sounded so painful that I was tearing up while trying to rock him.

It took us a while, but we finally got him back down to sleep. He doesn't have a fever, but his little nose is running. We've been waiting for tooth number 8 to break through, but I'm thinking he might be cutting more than one tooth.

His little nose was runny when he cut his first two teeth (at the same time) but it hasn't run with any subsequent teeth. I think maybe it just gets runny when he's cutting more than one tooth.

I hope so, and I hope those teeth come through quickly. Poor little sniffly boy.

Tinky trifecta

Isn't it amazing how certain scents can transport you to a completely different time and place? Some can even completely change a mood.

The smell of Zest or Irish Spring soap takes me back to the days of grocery shopping with my mom. I loved to run down the "clean" aisle and sniff all of the strong smelling soaps.

Whenever I think of my mother, I can almost smell her "signature scent" -- Red. I actually had a little old-timey glass perfume bottle that I sprayed some in once, so I could smell it when my mom was out of town. On those nights, I would carefully open my little bottle, inhale and then say goodnight to my mom before going to sleep.

We found out about 5 years ago that I'm allergic to most perfumes, so no scented soap or heady cologne will bring memories of me to Little Elvis.

What scents will he associate with me? Well, I like to call it my 'tinky trifecta.

1. Due to the aforementioned allergies, my nose is usually stuffy. I keep Vics Vaporub by my bed and slather that strong stuff under my nose most evenings.
2. Since I still spend a good part of my day picking up and corralling a busy 25 pounder, my back also aches a lot. This means I usually reek of the pepperminty Icy/Hot muscle rub.
3. Winter means dry skin and lips, so I like to top off my trio of tinkiness with some nice and smelly Carmex.

Yes, my son will probably have vague memories of his childhood whenever he walks down a medicine aisle at a grocery store.

I hate that I can't smell better for him, but so far he has no complaints about Mommy's odd taste in perfumes.

Have any odd scent stories?

Mississippi lessons

Now that I have our house completely re-organized, (not the best job ever, I can't reach our mixing bowls) I can get around to posting about our fun trip to Mississippi.

Little Elvis wore his birthday suit (and a diaper) to his second (yes, second) first birthday party! He got a red velvet cupcake at this one and truly enjoyed the cream cheese frosting. The cupcake, not so much.
He learned lots of things on this trip -- how to sink the seven ball in the corner pocket....

how to turn on a light, with a little assistance of course....
riding in wheelbarrows is lots of fun....
so is playing in Coachpa's new red boat...
merry-go-rounds -- not so much fun...
spoons are not necessary when eating applesauce...
sleep isn't all that bad after all.

Eskimo kisses and crinkle faces

I haven't posted about Little Elvis' newest antics recently, so I thought it was time to update everyone.

He's still really into clapping, waving and shaking his head 'no.' But he's added a couple of new tricks to his repertoire -- eskimo kissing and crinkling up his little face and making a "shsh" noise.

The eskimo kissing is basically him shaking his head while leaning in to touch noses. It's extremely cute, and I haven't been able to catch it on video.

But I got a great snapshot of the crinkle face! This is the funniest, cutest little face. He sometimes just does it while walking around. If you blow in his face, or he feels a gust of wind on his face, he will also break out the crinkle. My dad had been blowing on his face when I snapped this shot.

He loves doing the eskimo kisses and crinkles, but he's also stumbled upon some not-so-fun things -- merry-go-rounds and swings.

I took him on a merry-go-round while we were visiting my family and he got so scared! He didn't cry out, but his little body tensed and he got splotchy. His little heart was also hammering. The nice lady running the merry-go-round stopped it and let us sit on a bench before she started it back up.

We discovered the swing fear on Monday afternoon. We took him on a walk to the little park we visited regularly this summer. He always seemed to enjoy the swings, but he had the same reaction to the swing as he did to the merry-go-round. Poor little guy. I guess we'll have to re-introduce him to the swing gradually.

Huzzah!

Little Elvis isn't exactly saying words yet, but he chatters endlessly. Usually it's dadada or mamama (FINALLY!) but now he's saying lots of other syllables, too. I told Bob it often sounds like he's singing the "Double Dutch Bus." It also sometimes sounds like he's cheering on folks at a renaissance fair.

And since I recently won some blogging awards, we can pretend that he's saying "Huzzah!" for me.

Marla Baltes presented me with the Winning Attitude Award last month for my fun take on being a mom. I was thrilled to get the award (I'd like to thank my husband for his support, Little Elvis for being so photogenic and cute and, of course, members of the academy...) and read the nice words she had to say.






And Laura over at Synchronization of Us gave me this pretty bouquet! How nice.












These are my first awards, and I'm not completely sure what to do with them. But I'm going to try.

I'd like to give the Winning Attitude Award to Lainey-Paney at Life is Just So Daily. She's got such strength and I'm so amazed with how well she is handling things right now.

I'd also like to pass the Winning Attitude Award to Dawn at Coming to a Nursery Near You. She just recently had surgery and her husband hasn't been feeling very well either. And if I remember correctly, she's planning a trip to Tennessee soon. So the winning attitude might be tested.

As for the great blog friend award, I'd like to pass that onto mpotter at oops-- I dropped my bonbon and Little Bean's Blog.

Huzzah! Huzzah! and Wizzy, wizzy, wizzy, wizzoo, wizzee!

Ch-ch-changes

We're back! And I'm in a changing sort of mood. Poor Bob. While we were gone, he worked on taking apart some stereo cases and moving his desk and other things around the house to make a sort of play room for Little Elvis. These looked great, but I wanted MORE.

The first night we were back, I started setting up all of Little Elvis' new toys and rearranging his old ones. My Dad and Bob both helped. Then I needed to move all the chairs. I could not stop myself.

As soon as I woke up on Saturday, I was ready to move our hutch, table, and other odds and ends. I'm sure Bob and my Dad (who spent the weekend with us) would have rather done other things, but I needed that hutch moved.

After all of that stuff was done, I still needed to change more. We've been home since late Friday night and our living room/dining area looks completely different. I've also reorganized most of the kitchen cabinets and worked on Little Elvis' room. I can't stop myself.

The good news is that Little Elvis absolutely loves having two rooms to run around. He loves all of his new toys -- as well as his old toys -- but he seems to enjoy this new freedom so much more.

I'm not sure where my crazy need to redo our whole house is coming from. I remember reading about how some pregnant women know when the baby is about to arrive because they start cleaning and rearranging everything. Maybe my cleaning phase took a year to kick in?