The Little Rascal(s)

We're allowed to check out movies for free at our local library. Nice, but not too many options as far as selections go. I had found "The Little Rascals" -the black and white version of the old skits, (not a remake) on the shelf and decided to give it a go. Later that evening at bedtime we watched a few skits. The next evening Dawson repeatedly cried out "I watch wascals! I watch wascals!" So we watched a few more with him. I was teasing him later and said, "Are you my little rascal?" To which he quickly replied "No! I not wascal! I Dawson!" Of course it's much cuter to hear in person so I got video of him saying it. Notice the finger in the nose as the video starts.

Here I captured video of Dawson reading one afternoon. You really can't hear what he's saying, but I do believe most of it was Dawson language anyway.

I call this next one: Glutton for punishment. You can plainly hear us listening to old school Audio Adrenaline. And that is why we are awesome.

And now if I may conclude with the story of how my career as a wii playing fiend almost came to an abrupt end.

Jason and I were happily playing wii bowling. He was trash talking thinking he's all better than me because he can do this little spin with the remote at just the right moment and end with a strike. However, on this particular evening, my game was on. After about 3 strikes in a row I started busting out some cheerleading moves. (not recommended while playing wii sports). The next thing I know: WHAM! (emphasis on the wham for effect) I'm hit in the ankle with a wii remote so hard that I fall instantly to the floor in a flood of tears. Jason turned off the game and asked me what happened. I figured this is the punishment I deserve for all those college years of making fun of cheerleaders... Alas. Jason did feel really bad and even called my friend Steph to have her comfort me in my pain though I was balling like a baby and mad at him for making me talk to her on the phone, so he brought me strawberry cheescake. It hurt the rest of the night but the next morning there was not even a bruise. All that pain and no bruise. hmph.

After looking through the wii manual, I found no warning concerning cheerleading moves during wii bowling. So I'm wondering if I should inform them.

Hooplah

Spinning should be a sport. Do you agree?

See Dawson Jump.

I'm having a rather tired and blah day, so here are a few random facts to brighten everyone else's:

American car horns beep in the tone of F.

(will someone run out to their car and honk quickly to verify that one please?)

The movie Grease was released in Venezuela under the name Vaselina.

(Do you believe that's true? Because it's pretty funny if it is.)

A Sentimental Journey

Last weekend I was going through pictures on our computer looking for some specific pictures. Along the way, I came across some old pictures of Dawson and I got all sentimental. Then I started singing the song "We're gonna take, a sentimental journey". Great story huh?

So I decided to share the love.

Look at his tiny chicken legs.

I think he was waiting for us to get his diaper off, because he wanted to pee on the camera.

The above picture was taken at the park in Colorado.

I'm thinking Jason and I will put mountains in our backyard so that Dawson can have a similar play area.

These were taken when he was first learning to walk in our tiny apartment. The second pic makes me laugh because the look on his face says "If I apply myself, I can get away from my parents on this thing."

He was learning to crawl! He started out army crawling.

I know you may think this video clip is torturing. Dawson still talks about the time his daddy made him crawl for a nose aspirator...

Really. What can I say about this picture?

Short. Not Sweet.

This is how Jason dressed Dawson for daycare on Monday of last week.

Imagine my shock and awe when I came to pick Dawson up after I got off work.

The HAIRCUT.

Here it is!

Dawson's first professional haircut experience ever.
He actually did SO well! Jason and I were quite proud of him. The hairdresser gave him her face brush to play with while she cut his hair and that seemed to help for a bit.

BEFORE:

DURING:

He was rather serious through the whole ordeal except for the times he could see himself in the mirror:

He really liked using that big brush:

In case you were eavesdropping on our conversation and wondering what we were talking about... I had just discovered that her daughter was the flowergirl in my friend's wedding. But really, next time you should try to not be so nosy.

AFTER:

And the thousands of pictures I kept taking of him and his new haircut at all different angles. Several times I made him angry and annoyed which shows on his face:

He does look older now, and it only bothered me a little. He's still got a baby face so that helps. All in all I was very happy with how it turned out. I think she did a good job and he is just as adorable as ever. He even got a fruit roll-up for behaving so well when it was all over with. I didn't get a fruit roll up when she finished cutting my hair, and I have to admit, I was a bit more still than Dawson was. Hmph.

Great job for your first haircut experience Dawson! :)

The Naughty Bunny Rabbit

Dawson is learning how to "clean up" at daycare. (I am personally grateful for this little tidbit of help in rearing my child).
The other day I was in the bedroom getting ready for church. Most days Dawson is quite happy to play in the living room while I'm about my business doing my hair slathering on the lotions and creams (Jenessa, name the movie that quote is from) but on this day he was intent on playing in the bedroom where I was. At first he decided to drag out all of Jason's magazines that he has on his nightstand. Then he reads them. (By the time he is 3 he will know more about Jeeps then any other child in the U.S.). But THEN. Then I look over and I see this:

Guess he had all the Jeep knowledge he could attain for one day. He kept going until there was nothing left on the shelves in daddy's nightstand. We have no maid or nanny so who is left to clean up?

"Not I", said the mom.

"Not I", said the dad.

So...

Dawson, -"Do work son".

(Steph, what movie is that quote from?)

Yep. I asked him to clean up. And he really did a great job... as long as you are not the type of person who needs any sort of organization in life. He may end up being a youth pastor.

This morning Jason called me to tell me that Dawson was relentlessly mentioning a naughty bunny rabbit while he was eating breakfast. He continued to talk about the bunny on the car ride to daycare so Jason said he finally asked Dawson why the bunny was naughty. Dawson's reply to him was:

"Bunny rabbit naughty. He got timeout."

I'm thinking maybe Dawson has been in trouble one too many times in daycare?

Playdough in all its forms

Well, maybe not all its forms, but some if its best forms...

Dawson made... stuff.

I opted to make:

An octopus. 

The first octopus known to man to have only 7 tentacles, rather than 8. But I ran out of pink playdough. And he certainly couldn't have one tentacle made of a different color. Seriously!

Of course we have the artistic one in the family. Jason. I draw stick figures, he can draw a masterpiece. He opted to make:

A pile of poo.

Nice.

Good job hon.

This is a quick shout out to my friend Ashley who introduced me to my new love: scrapblog.com which is where I made my new header. Yeah! Thanks for the compliments I got on it.

On Sunday we babysat for my niece and two nephews. I was scrounging around everywhere looking for something to make for them for dinner and I came across a box of Hamburger Helper. Perfect. So I'm slaving away over the stove with my hamburger helper when my niece comes up to me (she's 8) she's says: "Aunt Joy, how come you're so good at cooking?" If she only knew. I explained to ther the complexities of Hamburger Helper and she was amazed. Astounded acutally. I am a great cook.

And now at this time I'd like to come clean with the fact that I'm in therapy. I'm in therapy because I'm zealous about my site meter. I check my site meter several times a day and then I email some of my blogger friends to see if know anyone from (insert name of state) who may have visited my blog. Actually, now that I think about it, I'm free from this addiction and my therapy is over because the last time I did this, I got this email:

Don't know anything about the (insert state) thing. My aunt and uncle live in (insert city) and (her husband's) dad spends half the year in the (insert city) area. I don't know where (insert state) is so I can't help ya there. But if it has to do with the blog thing, then maybe you should stop checking where people are from. :)

I gotta love her. She freed me from my demise.

Besides, that stupid site meter doesn't give me names!

Theater seats, hold music and nesting

I just got off the phone with a company that has the most fabulous hold music! And trust me, I've had to listen to a lot of hold music in my day. Actually, if you had called my office a year ago, and got put on hold, you would have heard music that sounded like a beginner piano player at a crappy recital. Ask anyone who was ever put on hold with our school district. It's true. We had to fight to get new hold music. I'm not making this up. Now it sounds like a jazz concert in a tin box. But it's an upgrade.

And while I'm speaking of music I'll tell you about this little thought I had the other day while Jason and I were at the movies... Have you ever gone a whole day-one full day- without hearing any sort of music at all? Coming from your tv, listening to your mp3, or whatever? The world be a weird place without music. And I can't remember what made me think of that, except that I know at one point some school distritcs were pushing to cut classes such as band and music out of their schools to save on money and it's not a "critical" class... So obviously the people who got that great idea have never gone to a movie with no music. Because that movie would be really boring and they would be to blame.

And also, this is the other thought I had while I was sitting in the movie theater waiting for out movie to start.

"has anyone ever farted in this seat before?"

Because I was really gassy and I was feeling bad for the person coming in after me.

So Dawson seems to be in this nesting stage. Jason finally moved his toybox away from the living room windows because Dawson would sit on it and kick the wall, thereby inadvertantly messing up the paint. Now Dawson's toybox is on the other side of the room next to the tv/wii/stereo speaker on the left. And this leaves just enough space for Dawson to crawl in there and sit. And sit and sit and sit and sit. And play and cause havoc by getting himself stuck because he has unloaded every single toy from his toy box into this little area with him and he can't get out. Then I explain to him that this is a good problem solving lesson and he should just learn to figure his own way out rather than having his mommy come to his rescue. But have you seen how many toys he has? I was afraid I'd get reported to children's services so I helped the kid out.

Happy Anniversary...

TO US!

We've made it 5 whole years!

And believe it or not-

Jason just put in our order through a digital picture studio online to get our wedding pictures professionally developed for our album.

No joke.

Summer Fun

We found a little yard sprinkler ring at Wal-mart. So we bought it for Jason and I but decided that Dawson could use it too as long as he had no temper tantrums, demanding episodes or toddler meltdowns. As you can see, we opted to let him play in the water anyway.

His first reaction to the untested geiser of water in his back yard:

Once he ran through it several times and got used to the freezing cold water, he seemed okay. We're fun, innovative great parents aren't we?

He liked it so much that he was willing to try it out again the next day. And this time I made sure I put on his new swim trunks. Because they're cute. And it's important to look cute in your own back yard.

It was my turn to be in the pictures so I thought it would be a novel idea to show him how funny it would be if he stood over the water to make it look like he was going pee. Evidently, Jason thought this was a great idea too, and I found a picture of it on our camera:

Dawon's reaction to his mommy's lesson:

I think maybe he was scratching his rear?

I just think the picture below is a marvelous angle. That's important for a blog post you know.

Kudos to my husband who spent hours working on our front and back yard planting grass seed, watering the grass seed and doing all sorts of crazy things to get our grass to look splendid. And it worked because he found a rabbit in our front yard digging a hole because it liked our grass so much. Jason was not hapy with the rabbit. But I assured him the rabbit's actions were a compliment to his caretaking of our yard. Rabbit's will not nest in unsightly yards. It's leaves a poor impression on their babies.
By the way. Dawson is getting his very first professional haircut next week.

Independence Day (USA)

That's what my calendar says as being scheduled for the whole day on July 4th. So rather than being boring, and having my title be "July 4th) I thought I'd add a little zest and go for the Independence Day title.

However, Zesty, my 4th of July was not. Would you like to know what we did on our 4th of July? We watched the Macy's Firework's show from the comfort of our living room on our new tv. Dawson even stayed up to watch part of them. Though he kept asking to watch "Night at the Museum". The fireworks set to music in our living room on our tv must not be as exciting as that movie...

Yet,

Our 6th of July was quite fun! And I have the pictures to prove it.

My sister B was home from the state in which she currently lives. So we made family plans to get together and eat and fight like sisters do.

First we decided to get together for some sisterly snapshots:

That second picture really cracks me up because my sister A looks so disgusted about something.

And, for the record- we were drinking tea. And my sister put vanilla in it. Vanilla from Mexico.But she never went to Mexico, so I'm not sure how she got it.

As you can see, I didn't get in these pictures, so we called my bro-in-law Tim over to take a few pics of all of us.

Little did we know the conspiracy he had with Jason against us all...

Take a look:

Do you see Jason in the back??

Our reaction.

Punks.

Then it was time for some swimming.

I am so proud of Dawson. Taking him to the Y for daycare has really turned out to be worthwhile in that he gets free swimming lessons. He is not afraid of the water and he swims all over the place. Jason and I had just bought him some new swim trunks that came with an attached life jacket. He hated it at first and screamed and raised a ruckus to put it on. But he shut up quickly when he got by the water.

Isn't he cute?

Watch him swim:

My mom's cute too.

My sister's and I all took a turn at "don't rock the boat"

Action shots:

The twins, Kazlan & Kadan each gave Dawson the opportunity to try on their sunglasses.

He suprised me and wore Kazlan's around all day.

Isn't he just saying "check me out ladies."?

By this point, Dawson hasn't taken one nap the whole day, and he's getting grumpy. Jason took him to jump on the trampoline.

And now it's time to head home. But first we have to drag out Tiger, the cat.

Dawson opted to just take his nap on Tiger, but Tiger was not thrilled. But he did stick with it long enough to let me get that shot. Good kitty.