Brown Taye

Tonight, about 37 seconds after I finished changing Taye into his pajamas, he emerged from behind the couch in nothing but his diaper. He said, "Hi, its me." I said hi back, and he climbed up next to me on the couch. He looked at me and said, "I is brown. Names Brown Taye. Say 'hi, Brown Taye!'"

Darius, Evil Genius

Evil* - 1.) In the last week and a half, he has bitten Taye hard enough to leave a bruise three times.
2.) The other day he was playing with a toy of Rebecca's. When she reached to have it back, he pulled it away and promptly said, "No, mine!"
3.) He can frequently be heard screaming, "Mine! Mine! Mine!" over and over while either trying to grab a toy away from Taye, or swatting at him to get away from one.

Genius - 1.) Today he started crying and when I picked him up he held out his foot and said, "I got boo-boo." I looked and found a splinter.
2.) Tonight while we were playing, he started patting himself on the chest and saying, "Me. Me." over and over.

*Disclaimer: I don't really think he is evil, lighten up will ya?

Uncle Bunny gets a new name

Tonight we were playing on the bed, when Taye bounced over to me and said, "Uncle Tank?" I thought a minute and said, "Uncle Tank? You mean Uncle Frank? Uncle Bunny?" To which he laughed and said, "Uncle Bunny!!" Then he thought a minute more and said, "Penny?" I said, "Penny, yeah, you like Penny?" He laughed and jumped away saying, "I love Penny!" A few minutes later he came over and asked to "See Uncle Frank." I told him he is at his house, and he lives far away. Taye said he's a meanie, he shouldn't live so far away. (OK, I made that part up, and I'm kidding!)

12:04 PM

That is the time I opened the last piece of Halloween candy. Its all gone. Every.last.piece. I think this may be some new record. That is not to say that it was all eaten. A lot of it was just opened, inspected, maybe licked once or twice, and then discarded in favor of the next piece. Oh well, that works for me. Its all gone!!

You know you were really low on gas when...

you fill the tank and the pump clicks off at 12.439 gallons - and your car has a 12 gallon tank!

Happy Halloween

Last night, as you may know, was Halloween. We went Trick or Treating, just to be original. Taye was not so sure about it at first. He liked seeing the kids come to our house, but once we started walking around he seemed a little out of sorts. We went to Kathy's house first. He wouldn't take candy from anyone, and when they would put it in his bucket he would scream "no!" and pull the bucket away. Darius, on the other hand really enjoyed it. He went right up to people and took the candy.

At the second house, Taye threw himself down in the yard after the man dared to give him a Tootsie pop. I told him if he didn't like it we could go home, and he seemed to want to so we started heading back. As we walked, we passed someone with a wagon and I asked if he wanted to go get his wagon to ride. He did, so we went home to get it. After that it was hit or miss for a few houses. He liked being out, but still didn't want anyones candy. At one house, he looked at the candy in his bucket and said, "Its making a mess!" Kevin and Rebecca's house was the first one he seemed to like being at. Their mom gave him candy, and he said "Thank you!" in a very excited voice, as if this was all new to him. After that he got more into it. Some houses he didn't want to go to so we skipped them. We just went around the block and then came home.

My attempt at a group (pair?) photo:

Finally ready to go:

The post-Trick or Treating consuming begins:

I tried to get a picture of the pumpkins all lit up. I couldn't get it to shoot without the flash, so I tried to use manual settings and this is how it came out. Its clearly not a good picture, but I think it looks cool anyway.

Getting down to business early this morning:

Welcome to Trash Mountain

Well, technically its Recyclable Mountain. This is what happens when I don't get to the dump in about 4 weeks. And not because I'm lazy, like you're thinking (and I resent that you think of me that way). I went a few days before Nana Week began, so that I wouldn't have to stop the fun to run to the dump. I figured I could handle a week and a half or so of trash after they left. Then, the Monday after Luis' car wouldn't start, so he had to use my car for 2 weeks. By the time he gets home the dump is closed, and while they are open on Saturdays, we are so popular that we didn't have a chance to go on the weekends. So finally, after all that I went down Tuesday night to sort out this mess. I ended up with 3 trash bags of plastic, 2 bins plus 1 trash bag of 'mixed paper', two shopping bags of glass (Penny drank a lot of wine while she was here, she needed it to recover from the 'kid energy' - my kids drive a lot of people to drink), 1 shopping bag of tin cans, and a good size pile of cardboard. I also had a trash bag full of soda cans, but I had already brought them to the store for the nickels. :o)

So no one can ever say that I didn't do my part for the enrvrinment. Speaking of which, I recently read in a magazine that satellites have shown a floating pile of trash in the middle of the Pacific Ocean that is twice the size of Texas! I find that unbelieveable.

Oh, and if you're wondering what became of our actual trash during those 4 weeks, don't worry. Our neighbors across the street have curbside pickup, and they were nice enough to let us throw our bags in too since they never fill their barrel anyway.