Self Entertaining!!

Car-cars and George-Georges

   Whoa, guys, Wyatt has gotten really good at playing with himself. Wait, I mean, let me rephrase that. Wyatt's gotten really good at playing by himself. He's at this adorable, precious little point where he will drive his cars everywhere, say a bunch of gibberish, and then have a big exclamation. Like this.

   Just so you know, this video is like 50 seconds long and is not 100% action, which means it will feel like it's four years long in internet time. However, the main reason I have this blog is NOT to entertain you and NOT so that I can get attention for myself, but so that I can have a place to come and look at videos and pictures and stories of me Wyatt for years to come. Also, odds are pretty good that you are my grandma and want to see this anyways, so, you probably don't care.

   Are you curious about what he is thinking, saying, or acting out? Well, pretty much all we watch is the Fast and Furious: Tokyo Drifts in our household, so, odds are pretty good it's that.

A few things to notice about my parenting techniques:

1. I have a "dog-bowl" style feeding system. There's a big vat of food, eat it if you want.
2. Dirty hands are not bad hands. Go ahead and touch that cute little stationery your Aunt gave your mom. In fact, touch every page just a little.
3. Do you see how he plays around the laptop?! He knows he shouldn't touch it, but what can he possibly due if that George and George George head in the computers direction?
4. I have to ignore Wyatt for about 10 minutes for him to play like this. Once he gets the point, he'll play. He'll bug his mom ALL DAY, however, so she has it harder.

   Here's a bit more of the same, a few minutes later (I edited out some gripping footage of him slowly walking to the couch to get a couple more car-cars.) I always have the same thought: What triggers him to do what he does? Why does he decide to drive to the banana and play with it for a second? Why, all of a sudden, does he grab more tomato sauce? What on earth is going on in that head of is, and holy cow I wish I knew what he thought he was saying.

   He will do this for hours. I mean, hours. I'm pretty sure that I could go to the store and back and he'd still be doing his Vin Diesel on the floor. He even does it as he's falling asleep. (This video's like 12 seconds long so chill out!!)

  Sure is cute and sure is fun!! We'll see how long he is able to self entertain, and hopefully it lasts through the long, wet winter.

My mood: kind of left out, actually
Wy's mood: Car crash george george!!
Listening to: Jake and the Never Land Pilots. Oh, wait, Pirates, they're pirates.

The Pioneer Father "Cooks"

   I'm home with the boy a lot of evenings right now. Mom's working late a couple nights a week, and dad's in charge of making food for her. Mom's very unhappy if she comes home to things that aren't just right. It's kind of ridiculous how high her standards are. Like, just the other day, she came home and was all "why haven't you changed his poopy diaper why haven't you cleaned anything why is the water running in three of our sinks why is there a big pile of mayonnaise on the carpet why are you still playing pokemon at your age!?" and I'm all "Whoa!? How about some it's great to see you husband who I love when you walk through the door next time!?" I know Wyatt would appreciate it, he hates to see me unhappy. Just, you know, make sure when you walk through the door you don't step in that bowl of salsa with chips around it.

   Anyways, food. We have a persimmon tree in our back yard that puts out hundreds of fruit each year. That is not an exaggeration (I need to make that clear because I exaggerate like 6 trillion percent of the time. Our first year, I tried to eat one, and my face went numb (exaggeration!). It turns out they don't get ripe until November, and it was, you know, September.
   Our second year we left them on the tree until they were ripe, but all the birds and squirrels ate them in just a couple days. It was sort of fun to have so many woodland creatures around. I would wake up in the morning and stick my head out the window and sing and pretend like they all came running to me.
   This year, our third fall in our house, we knew to pick them in September/October and put them in the garage, then eat them in November/December. And to freeze them so we could eat them whenever.

Yumm! bowls with a smoothie. (If you aren't from Eugene, you probably read that wrong.) See that orange thing to the far right? It's a persimmon. So is the thing cut in half to the left of the banana. This is the only healthy meal I have made in seven months, so don't be too impressed.

   You've probably never had persimmon. It's an Asian fruit, I'm told, that Asian's love, I'm also told. So if you see an Asian, be like "hey do you like persimmon!?" and just watch what happens. Also, don't pronounce it "permission" because then that last line sounds even worse. There are two types of permissions, one that you can pick and eat and love off the tree (they really are delicious, I've had one once) and then there's our kind. Ours is only ripe when it's skin is like a water balloon, and the stuff inside is like a bunch of jelly. It doesn't eat well, but it cooks quite well. That's where I, Grant, Master Chef Recipe Instruction Follower come in. I've got three moves so far:

The one on the left has blueberry. The one on the right should have some vodka, I think.

1) Persimmon/Banana Smoothie. This involves a banana, some persimmon, and a smoothie. Well, ice, and if you are adventurous you cut it with some apple juice and maybe throw some blueberries in there. It is actually really, really good, and since we have so many persimmons we have them a lot.

This was probably my best loaf ever. I miss it terribly.

2) Persimmon/Banana Bread. Yeah okay fine everything involves banana, leave me alone. This is also quite wonderful, and quite easy (Not that it matters how easy it is! I COULD DO IT EVEN IF IT WERE HARD!!). We have this once or twice a week as well.

Mater loves to tow bread around!!

3) Persimmon cookies (no banana!) They taste a lot like persimonny ginger snaps, but you don't know what a persimmon tastes like so that means nothing to you.

   We're thinking about making some persimmon jam, and maybe just throwing some persimmons at our neighbor's houses. Other than that, we still aren't sure what we can do with them. I had a friend come and take hundreds of the fruit, so maybe I'll ask him what he did with all those. But my guess is he'll just say"art."

   This means that between my staple, ready-to-make-for-a-party meals of "chicken," "Costco Lasagna" and "hot ham water," I can really throw a shindig.

My mood: full!!
Wyatt's mood: neglected!
Cara's mood: Angry about the state of the house but get over it or fix it yourself it's not my fault Wyatt loves to mash chips into little crumbs and spread them all over the living room!!

Color Symmetry!!

   Hey guys! Listen up! Wyatt's starting to color coordinate things! Wow is it fun. I need to show you like a hundred pictures to prove it.

You're really glad we got these new, larger, high-quality photos here at MKIS so that you can really enjoy these blocks.

   He did this while we were at the aquariam in Monterey, California. Yeah that's right we went on a trip to the California Sunshine and I didn't even facebook or blog about it because whatever it's not like it's a big deal and I don't have to announce it to the world or anything. Also, Yeah, uh huh, while at the aquariam that had actual sharks, otters, and lots of pictures of jellyfish without actual jellyfish, we spent most of our time playing with blocks that we have at home. Still, this color action was new for him, I hadn't seen it yet.

   Full diclosure: I am not convinced this was Wyatt. There is a chance it was Cara, because this is about at her level of craftsmanship and (in)attention to detail. I think it was the special kid, though, so we'll go with that.

   Man, can you believe it?! Coordinating and symmetric with colors already!! Most kids aren't doing this until they are, I don't know, twelve? (No, seriously, I don't know. Fifteen? Judging by my freshman, it's probably after 15.) And my brother still doesn't quite get that YOU CAN'T WEAR GREY SWEATS WITH A GREY SWEATSHIRT TO OUR AWESOME DINNER PARTIES!! Heck, based on how the girl students at school point at me and laugh, and have even suggested a fashion tumblr for me to follow, it seems that Wyatt is really getting these color-matching skills without any help from his dad's side. Regarding that tumblr: I didn't follow it, but instead sent in a picture of myself and asked what I needed to work on.

 

And so you can really enjoy... whatever this is.

   They did not respond. There's only one way to interpret that: I have nothing to work on.

My mood: so proud Wyatt is inheriting my color-awareness genes (and jeans, if we're lucky)

Cara's mood: trying to stack the blocks higher than ever!!
Wyatt's mood: george george
Listening to: Magic Schoolbus Theme Song