Question...

Wow! What a difference a year makes.

This is a picture of Little Elvis from last August.

See how little he looks in his high chair?

You can click here to see video of him looking even tinier in his high chair.

Here's what my baby looks like now in the same high chair:

What a big boy!

His head is definitely over the top, and his feet are hitting the bottom.

He still fits in it fairly comfortably.

But our high chair is bigger than many others that we've encountered.

At some restaurants, I've had to squeeze him into the tiny high chairs provided.

Which brings me to my question -- when is he too big for the high chair?

I'm not so comfortable with the thought of putting my squirmy, wriggling, fearless son in a booster seat with no belt at a restaurant.

Should we already be sitting him in one of our dining chairs for meals? Maybe that could help prepare him for booster seats?

As you can see, although he's grown quite a bit, his knack for making a big mess while eating have not changed.

So, I don't know what to do. Any advice would be much appreciated.

Mommy's drawers drawer

Little Elvis found a fun new toy in one of my drawers this morning.

We were supposed to be getting ready to go for a walk. I was slathering myself in sunscreen while repeatedly calling for Little Elvis.

I tried luring him with promises of sunscreen (he loves the stuff!) and going outside.

My little stinker was not budging from our bedroom, though.

Once I had myself sufficiently covered, I headed back to get Little Elvis. Finally, he came running into the hall, carrying my new, bright orange bra.

He was so proud of this new toy that he'd discovered.

The fact that I started laughing just encouraged him more.

We walked back to the bedroom so I could grab the camera and have proof of his shenanigans.

"Hmmm. Wonder what these strap things are for?"

Little Elvis usually likes to take toys on our walks. Luckily, I was able to exchange this new toy for something a little more appropriate -- a roll of medical tape.

Over all, I do a decent job...

Little Elvis has the cutest pair of overalls. And finally this week, we had a day where it wasn't too hot to dress him in them.

I had a devil of a time getting a picture of them, though.

Every time I brought out the camera, he came running to me. For some reason, our camera takes an hour (ok, maybe 4 seconds) to take a picture. That's plenty of time for a fast toddler to make his way to Mommy.

It's the most frustrating thing! It took me a while to finally snap a full length pic of my little farmer.

He doesn't look happy in this picture, though I don't think he was upset. He was ready to go out, but he wasn't in crisis mode. I think he was confused, because I kept saying, "Stay! Don't move!"

I'm sure he was thinking, "Why would she bring out that fun toy if she didn't want me to come running and poke at the buttons?"

I ended up with several pics of the top of Little Elvis' head. This has been pretty common since he started walking. My pictures folder is full of pictures of the top of his sweet little noggin.

When I downloaded the pics, I was shaking my head at the slowness of my camera. Then, I actually looked at one of the head shots.

Look at that hair!! Bob and I have been talking about how much it's growing, but we hadn't really taken any photographic evidence!

It looks like it will be a light (possibly reddish) brown. When he gets hot and sweaty, the back curls up in these unbelievably cute little wisps.

Some strands hang over the tops of his ears, and in the back, some brush the collars of his shirts.

He's definitely not going to be due for a haircut any time soon, but I'm debating giving the back strands a slight trim.

I'm pretty sure I won't. Bob's last hair cut (performed by Mmselle Moi) was not so great. He said it looked wonderful, but I got the front part way too short. It was so bad that no one even commented on it! You know hair cuts are bad when people say, "You got your haircut!" and nothing else. You know they are awful when people say nothing.

And my timing was atrocious. He had his morning show interview 4 days after the botched 'do. And although I've made him two weather jackets, I have neglected to make him a weather hat. My hats are almost as bad as my haircuts, I'm afraid.

At least I do a great job styling my baby, though. Right? I think I hit all the right notes with his little overall outfit.

Mister Rogers still has it

This is my sweet little man watching one Mister Rogers.

Yes, my son watches PBS while he noshes. I use this as my time to eat my lunch and do chores that don't require his assistance, like hanging the clothes out to dry.


My picture was a little fuzzy.

So here Little Elvis is in focus.

"What are you doing, Mommy? Can't you see I'm watching Mister Rogers, here?"

In this picture, my sweet little man did not want any help while eating his yogurt. He's capable of feeding himself with a spoon, but it's a very messy endeavor. Sometimes I like to help.

Who needs help from Mommy, when yogurt is drinkable?

Snif, snif

Little Elvis has the sniffles. He sounds a lot like his mommy these days, and I'm so hoping he doesn't inherit my allergies.
No fever yet, so I don't think it's a summer cold. As I always do, I will blame the teeth. He's cutting what I hope will be his final tooth until the 2 year molars come through. Little Elvis has been cutting a tooth since he was 6 months old. The first two came in together, but the last 13 have come in one at a time (and they took their sweet time doing so!) He needs a break.

My dad had a wonderful time hanging out with us and playing with Little Elvis. His grandbaby just about wore him out.
Here they are playing in the play area at our mall. Little Elvis goes back and forth on this place. I'm glad he had such a great time for this visit.


Little Elvis also has some spankin' new sneaks! A visit from Coachpa just can't be complete without a present. Little Elvis got some slip on tennis shoes! They have little monsters on them and even have red teeth along the sole. He was sorely lacking in the shoe area.

These are size 7 1/2. It kills me. Looking at them in the box, I just knew they would be too big. I also said that he couldn't wear his new socks, because they were too big. I was wrong on both counts. My baby is growing so fast!

Old MacDonald

When I was in college I decided that I wanted to make music videos for a living. Why I thought working in television news would get me there is beyond me.

In my dreams of doing beautiful black and white music videos that were stark and emotional, Little People never popped up.

They should have, though. I thought they did an excellent job for us in this little ditty.

Poor Bob. He has a dorky wife who comes up with crazy ideas.

Here's the world debut of... Stormin' Bob Swanson's "Old MacDonald Had a Barn!"

Special visit

My dad is coming for the weekend! He's getting here this afternoon and will stay through Monday.

He asked me yesterday about the fun things we had planned. Ummm. Well, since I've been convinced that this week was last week, (Bob thinks I'm trying to delay my birthday) not much.

But, we do have some very strange plans laid out that were kind of already in place.

We're taking my dad to KFC tonight because Bob somehow managed to get mucho KFC bucks. We will still have plenty left, even after feeding all four of us this evening.

Our KFC is right beside a Baskin Robbins. Bob signed me up for the birthday club 2 years ago, and we got a free coupon. So, Little Elvis will get an ice cream treat after his fried chicken meal.

This evening, after Little Elvis is asleep, my dad gets to watch "So You Think You Can Dance!" with me. He doesn't know this yet, but I know he will be so excited. Bob just LOVES Wednesday and Thursday nights during the summer.

Bob's going to be interviewed by a local TV station Friday morning. He's pretty excited about the publicity for his next Stormin' Swanson performance. We are going to try to get a DVD of the interview and put it on his site.

And on Saturday, we're planning to walk to one of the grocery stores in our neighborhood. The store is closing and they're giving out ice cream and cake.

Sounds like loads of fun, right? Bob and I sure know how to entertain in style. Luckily, Little Elvis is so precious that he helps mask our hosting foibles.

And, expect another music video tomorrow! It's one for Bob's upcoming interview and I'm trying to be funny in an ironic and kitschy way.

Achtung Baby

Little Elvis is getting more vocal everyday. I worry about his vocabulary some days, and then the next day I realize he IS talking.


Last week, after I spent a few days obsessing over his words, we realized that he's been saying, "tickle, tickle, tickle." This is a phrase Bob and I both say when we're tickling him and Little Elvis has picked it up.


On Monday evening, Bob decided that Little Elvis was trying to say "cat." It's great that he's vocalizing more now and we're enjoying then fun of new words.


But most days, I'm convinced that my little boy speaks another language -- German, to be exact.


He's been making gutteral sounds for a few weeks now, and when you mix gutteral sounds with dah, gah, and sah... well, it sounds very German to me.


Little Elvis is especially Germanic when I put him down for a nap. He's gotten to the point where he doesn't cry, but he chatters for a while. And the chatters make me feel like I'm in Germany somewhere drinking hefeweisen delivered by a blonde woman with braids while eating weinerschnitzel. Gotta love traveling to another country without even leaving my couch!


On Sunday, Little Elvis said something that sounded like "achtung." That gave Bob the idea for the great title.

He's hard to keep up with!

Little Elvis is getting so big! And I haven't been doing a great job of keeping up with him in terms of videos and pictures.

The Outside video was mainly shot while we were in Mississippi in late May and early June. Some of the video from him sleeping while eating was shot in June.

This music video is a compilation of cute things he did last month. It starts with video from Father's Day. I had every intention of putting it up the Monday after Father's Day, but well... I didn't.

This also includes video of his first successful furniture climb. He's advanced to much taller items at this point. I'm just behind. I have one more video in the works, but actually have to shoot more video first. It will hopefully be more timely.

He is such a little cutie and ham that he gives me too much material to work with!

I realize from the last few videos that it looks like I never dress him in anything other than a diaper. Little Elvis doesn't need cute outfits to make him cute, but I do dress him. He usually goes through a couple of outfits a day. To prove my point, I took some pictures of him after we got back from our walk this morning:

One of my mom's friends bought him this onesie last year. It says future weatherman.

Bob loves this outfit.

Look at how thin his legs are getting! The dimples are almost all gone. He's getting to be such a little boy now.

These are his new sandals. He's outgrown most of his other shoes!

I can't really call him a baby anymore can I?

Moo-tastic!

Little Elvis became a little cow for about an hour today -- we "dressed" up as cows as part of "Cow Appreciation Day" at Chick-fil-A... and we all ate for free!!

See how cute my little cow is? He had no idea what we were doing.

I "crafted" (the term is used very loosely) our little costumes out of objects we had around the house, figuring that if I had to buy something then that would negate the whole "free" thing. We found out about the event at Money Saving Mom. I'm sure she would agree with that reasoning.


I glued ears and horns that I cut out of cardboard to three of my old stretchy headbands. My placement wasn't great. I realize that Little Elvis looks more like a goat than a cow, but he pulled it off.

I then cut us "spots" out of a black T-shirt from my former employer, and cut tails out of one of Bob's old socks that I had just set aside to use as a dust cloth.

The people at Chick-fil-A were great! They were so nice to us, took our picture and gave us all free meal deals. They even let me special request the books they had for kids under age three. He got a really cute book "Duck for President." It's part of the "Click, Clack, Moo, Cows that Type" series. We have the typing cow book and absolutely love it.


I normally embarrass very easily, but this was so much fun! We were the only cows in the jam-packed restaurant when we first got there, but several little calves came in while we were eating.

I went to change Little Elvis after his meal and encountered a "herd" of such cows. I told Little Elvis to say "hi" and one of the cows told me that he was supposed to say "Moo." Then she told me that this was "Moo-tastic!"

She was right. I cannot wait until next year. He will have so much more fun next year.

I also wanted to show off his shirt. Bob made it for him this week. It says "I'm with the band... the one man band."

Bob had a performance this morning as Stormin' Swanson the Singing Weatherman, and Little Elvis was his roadie. He did a great job.

Gee, thanks Mommy

Little Elvis has my nose, and possibly my chin. But that's not all that he's inherited from his dear ol' Mama.

Another trait inherited from me? His love for pillows! Bob poopoos my pillows. He doesn't think that every chair needs a pillow, or that the loveseat needs two. We won't even discuss the numerous pillows on our bed.

Little Elvis has a completely different take on my pillows. He loves them. He thinks it's a huge treat to be allowed to frolick on our bed (with me, Bob or both present of course!) and play with the pillows. He falls on them, crawls under them, hugs them, loves them. He has one neckroll that I made a while ago that he will bring out to the living room to play with.

I realize this little trait may fade or change as he ages, but for now I plan to use the whole two against one argument in favor of adding more pillows!!

Onto the not-so-positive traints. When he wakes up from a nap in a very tooncey mood, I know I have nothing but my genes to blame. I am not a morning person.

One summer during high school I worked in a mail room with several really nice women. About a month into my stint, one made the comment to me that they knew better than to talk to me before 10 a.m. That was a very astute and true observation.

His fighting of naps also comes from me. That fighting of naps led us to the realization that he has one more funny trait from his Mommy: the head bob as he struggles to stay awake.

I was a huge head bobber my freshman and sophomore years in college. I actually had a really cute guy tell me that he stayed awake through our "Rocks for Jocks" class by watching my head bob. Great impression, huh? I wrote for my college paper, and was assigned an article about sleeping in class. The professor I talked to said it was extremely rude and I decided to cut the practice out.

Good thing I wasn't insulted as my little man struggled to stay awake during a meal. And, of course, we made it a music video! I think the music is doowop.

Little Elvis loves lotion -- he licks it, he really licks it!

Little Elvis' eye is doing much, much better. It's still slightly swollen and pinkish purple, but he hasn't been bothering it.

I wrote that I haven't been putting his mosquito repellent on him. I feel like I had good reason.

One, up until this week, he really wasn't getting bitten. He'd only had two other bites for the whole summer.

Two, Little Elvis loves lotion. He loves creams, too. Pretty much anything that comes out of a tube or bottle is tops with him. Especially if said bottle is found in the bathroom. He has definitely tasted all of my lotions and potions and make-up. They are currently pushed as far back on the bathroom counter as possible. But he must be getting taller, because he managed to get his greedy little paws on my new undereye cream yesterday.

When I say love, I'm not exaggerating. He's always been this way with bottles in the bathroom. At first it was cute, and we would let him hug the bottle to his little heart's content. But then he figured out how to open the bottles and decided that nothing tasted better than lotion, cream, base or shampoo.

If he manages to get his hands on any bottles, then I have to brace for a battle. He will not give up his prize bottle willingly. He will cry and kick and sit on the floor bawling.

Every night, after his bath, we put lotion on him. He loves this. As soon as Bob starts rubbing the lotion on his little legs, he bends over and begins to lick the lotion off of his knee! No lie. He does. The lotion says it has oatmeal in it, so maybe it tastes like breakfast?

I did manage to find a lotion that Little Elvis won't eat: sunscreen. He likes the bottle and the process of being sunscreened, though. When I tell him it's time to put on sunscreen, he runs for the TV (I hide the sunscreen behind our set just in case he decides to start eating it) and waits for me to put it on him.

How does this tie into his mosquito repellent? We bought him Gentle Naturals Deet-Free Bug Repellent. I don't know what the ingredients are, but it smells sweet and lemony. It smells kind of like candy. I think it smells like something my little lotion lover would really enjoy. So, I wasn't putting it on him.

He proudly wore it yesterday and didn't get bitten. He also didn't lick it off. Hopefully it will go as well today, because there's no way I can keep Little Elvis inside.

Mosquitoes, Gene Hackman and a new club!

Little Elvis favors an older actor right now. Actually, our sweetie-pie looks more like Gene Hackman than either of us!

My poor little guy got bitten by an evil, blood-sucking, no-purpose-whatsoever-in-my-opinion mosquito.


We noticed the little bite on his eyebrow last night after about 3 minutes of frolicking in the sprinkler.


We decided to go in because of the way those awful creatures were feasting on Bob. We didn't even notice Little Elvis' bite until after we got into the house.

It didn't look bad last night. This morning, it was more swollen, but not terribly so. Then he woke up from his nap looking like Royal Tenenbaum.


OK, only his right eye looks like Hackman. And Hackman's eyes aren't a purplish-red.


The good news is that Little Elvis picked a cool actor to resemble for a while. I mean he could have picked a certain political pundit.


The better news is that his doctor thinks he's doing fine. He doesn't bother with his eye unless he's tired, and he didn't mind her inspecting his eye. He also took his medicine very well.


Since his little eye (maybe I should call it a slit?) looks so sad, I decided not to take any pictures and post them.


Mosquitoes suck. If you haven't guessed, I hate the little buggers. Guess I need to start using Little Elvis' mosquito repellent.


I think I will write tomorrow about why I haven't been using it more...


If you hate mosquitos, feel free to comment. Maybe we can start a little mosquito haters club called the Skeeter Beaters.

Goodbye and no clearance!

I made a horrible mistake last week. Horrible. It took me two days to fully realize what I had done.

Somehow, I managed to lose my huge folder of coupons. This folder had three separate coupon dividers, as well as coupons from local stores stuffed in it. It also had my only small steno pad, along with my lists of what to buy where and with which coupons.

This folder represents several hours of work on my part. It usually goes everywhere with us. I used to stuff it in Little Elvis' diaper bag, but have begun putting it one of my reusable bags.

We did our usual shopping run this weekend, and still managed to save a good bit with coupons printed from the internet. We really only missed out on surprise clearances at Target and Wal-Mart.

These clearance items are usually for things we don't need anyway. Our makeshift pantry (a small shelf in our water heater closet) currently houses two bottles of unopened mustard (not counting the 4 or 5 different mustard flavors that are INSIDE our fridge.)

And Little Elvis' room is practically overrun with boxes of diapers that we've gotten on sale and with coupons. His closet has boxes stacked two deep, and I've also stuffed as many boxes under his crib as possible. Since some of his size 4s are already a little tight, (ahem, I do NOT recommend Luvs) I should probably stop buying them for a while anyway.

Although I will definitely start clipping coupons again tomorrow, I've found this experience to be more freeing than anything else. At first, it felt like a game when we were trying to match my coupons with clearance items. But that hasn't happened in a while, and I've been throwing away more than we've used as of late.

On a side note, we did go back to the last store where I used them. I'm pretty sure I left them there while trying to avoid a weird man that lives in our neighborhood. I got stuck talking to him and I lost my coupons! The only ones I will really miss are the Gerber Graduates coupons that I sent away for. We had just received them two weeks ago and I had only used three in hopes of getting to double the 50 cent ones when my grocery store put them on sale.

I hope whoever found them and didn't turn them in will use them, especially my Gerber coupons.

If you have nothing nice to write, hit delete

My posts have been a little infrequent as of late. It's not Little Elvis' fault -- he's still doing lots of super cute and adorable things. OK, last week was a little his fault, he decided to change his nap schedule and made for a rough few days.

The lack of posts is all me. I've been in a mood for the past few weeks and when I attempt to write anything, only negative stuff comes out. I tried just writing and then deleting. But hitting the delete button only managed to delete my words, not my mood.

Since the writing and deleting didn't work, I tried ignoring my mood. Even when I'm very foul, Little Elvis can make me smile.

But it hasn't really gone away. Stuff happens. And I need to accept it.

On top of my foul mood, I've gained weight. These are probably connected.

So, I'm starting a new exercise routine -- unbelievabley awful allergies, headaches, exhaustion and mood be damned.

Hopefully it will help lighten up my mood, as well as my body.

In the meantime, look at that sweet face. He was trying to smile for me, and I had the camera set on some setting that took forever before it clicked. Those are some pretty eyelids, though, aren't they?