Batty Bat!

If you're familiar with old time Sesame Street, there is a bit with the Count, doing the Batty Bat. Anyway, that's been going through my head a lot these days.

On Saturday, Gulliver will make a Halloween appearance in his awesome costume. Today I was a good mother not because I cleaned the house (I didn't), not because I fed my son three square meals with nutritious snacks in between (I didn't), and not because I put away the loads of clean laundry we have (I didn't). Today I was a good mom because I made my boy a Halloween costume. To me, Halloween costumes are supposed to be made. I don't think that I ever wore an out-of-the-box Halloween costume, and I'm fairly certain that I did wear a Halloween costume made out of a box. At least once. Anyway, before Gulliver can be old enough to beg for and request any of the prepackaged Halloween costumes out there, I needed to at least knock ONE out of the park. And I'm SOOOOO proud of what I did today. I don't have great photos, but there will be more to come after Saturday!

Gulliver is a bat this year (I still will keep a secret what our coordinating costume will be). I bought him girl leggings (an excellent suggestion from Jenny) and a black turtle neck (unfortunately, my idea that Gulliver could be Steve Jobs for Halloween only occurred to me today...).

Today I bought some black felt and some black glitter felt. I made up a bat-wing shape, and I cut it out of both felts. Then I put that iron-on glue interfacing between the two felts and iron-glued them together. That way, I made a pretty stiff wing! Then I sewed on snaps to the wings and to Gulliver's black turtleneck. I'm REALLY happy with how it turned out, and I promise some better pictures, but this is just a teaser.

Tomorrow I'll buy a black toque (stocking cap) and I will sew huge bat ears onto it. And Saturday, Gulliver will be the most awesome bat you've ever seen. All home made!

My Tough Boy

Here's one more post about Gulliver, but I didn't want it to get lost in the last post. Today, he made me very very proud. We took him to the doctor for his flu shot today. Because I was there for another appointment, when they called Gulliver, Murray went with him alone. I reminded Murray to please ask if they had suckers because Gulliver is old enough to be mollified with sugar now.

Then I waited in the waiting room and listened. I didn't hear a peep and all of a sudden, Murray came back into the room carrying Gulliver, and Gulliver was completely dry-eyed. And carrying a candy.

Apparently, Gulliver got his flu shot and did not even cry. Let the record show that Gulliver is 21 months. (At this point, you don't need to chime in with comments about your children not crying when they received shots at 21 months because I am completely happy ignorantly believing that he is the strongest boy in the world!)

Murray, our eye witness, did say that he whimpered a little. But that was it.

Heck, even during MY appointment, I whimpered a little bit, and when they apologized for hurting me, I explained that I just had to be tough because my 21-month-old just got his flu shot without crying. And then they celebrated with me and told me that he must be REALLY tough.

I really am proud of how tough Gulliver is. I think I always heard that if you give kids too much attention when they hurt themselves then they'll learn that hurting yourself gets you love and attention and then they are wimps. So I have gone to the other extreme and I have actually cheered most times that Gulliver has fallen pretty much his entire life. And either as a result of my superior parenting, or a result of super-tough genetics, when Gulliver falls, 49 times out of 50, he picks himself up and dusts himself off and goes on playing as if nothing happened. (Because let's face it. Nothing happened. He just tripped and didn't actually hurt himself.) When Gulliver DOES hurt himself, he lets me know because he cries. And then I can pick him up and love him. Most of the time, if he hurts himself only a little, he'll come to me holding out the injured part to let me kiss it. But even then, he doesn't cry.

So there you go. I love my tough boy and I'm proud of him.

(And my mom and I have talked about instead of watching out for bullies, I'm going to have to watch out and make sure that Gulliver doesn't BECOME the bully!)

Gulliver Loves

Here is a post all about Gulliver, who Murray and I continue to be in love with.

Gulliver loves the swings at the park more than any other piece of equipment. Today I even let him go on the big boy swing and he held on the whole time.



Gulliver loves the moon and the stars. Every time it's a little dark out (and sometimes when it's completely light out) as soon as we step outside, Gulliver starts saying, "Moon! Moon!" It's hard for me to get his exact pronunciation here. It's very exaggerated, with an extra little syllable at the end, like MOON-uh. When we're driving at night, it's pretty much a steady stream of babble about the moon. And then he also loves stars and will point them out, too. He calls them "Tar."

Gulliver loves some of his shirts! But usually if there's something on it that we can point out. Like his shirt in the above picture, which is one of his favorites because not only does it have a moon and stars, it also has LETTERS, which we're coming to. Whenever he wears a shirt with something on it, I ask, "Where's your monster?" Or "Where's your star?" Or "Where's your plane?" and then he stops, looks at his shirt, and points it out.

Gulliver loves planes. This started at my parents' house last month where on the deck, my parents started pointing out the planes overhead. Now whenever he hears a plane, he stops and looks for it in the sky. He LOVES planes. He pronounces it PEEN! or PEENuh!

Gulliver loves letters and numbers and he's SO GOOD! Wherever we are, whenever he sees a number or a letter, he reads it to us. I am considering decorating his room with some numbers and letters since he loves them so much. So far, he can do the whole alphabet other than L, Q, T (he pronounces this too, and I think it's a combination of both T and U, so we're not counting it), U, and W. Although lately, it seems like when we get to W, he just tries to put a few random syllables together, thinking that that must make a W. As far as numbers go, he still doesn't do 1 (although sometimes I feel like he's making a monosyllabic try at it) and he doesn't do 7. Other than that he can count to ten, and this weekend even counted 10 pumpkins in a pumpkin patch. I think this is the first time that he properly counted ten objects. Gulliver also loves 13. He waits for us to do 11 and 12, though. And then he just does variations on 13 (random syllable + teen) until we get to 20.

Gulliver loves his baby cousin Frosty, and other babies too. Recently Frosty, who is 4 months old, was put down on the ground in a Bumbo, and for the first time was accessible to Gulliver at his level. Gulliver immediately went over and gave her a hug. And then another hug. And then another and another and another hug. He basically kept hugging her until we dragged him out of the house. And Frosty loved all the adoration.

Gulliver loves baths. When I ask him about the bath, he says "Bathoom!" Recently, as soon as I mentioned it, he went to the bottom of the stairs, turned on the stair lights, and headed upstairs into the bathroom himself to get ready. He doesn't know how to take his own clothes off yet though.

Gulliver is starting to learn about bodily functions. We're prepping him for potty training and even bought a potty yesterday. My mom said that we were all trained before we were 2, and I didn't even realize that was an option!! I'd like to give a HECK YES to the idea of getting him out of diapers before we have the next one! So we are trying to at least make him more aware of his bodily functions because we need to have names for things if we're going to do this right. He doens't really respond to "Pee" but if you call it "Pee pee" he does. And then instead of saying "Poo" or "Poop," he says "Poot!" Which we think is really really funny.

So there is your update on Gulliver's development! Basically we believe that our child is the smartest, strongest, handsomest, most adorable boy on earth.

Holy Guano

A conversation between me and Murray, concerning some details of our party costume for this Saturday that will be revealed at a later date:

Murray: We could have guano.

(I think Murray just likes to show off that he knows the word for bat poop.)

Me: We could do that.

Murray: I think it's white.

Me: It is not white.

Murray, in a borderline condescending tone: I'm pretty sure it is white.

Me: I know what guano looks like. It's not white. It looks like mouse poop.

Murray: No, I think it's white.

Me: I will bet you ten thousand dollars that it looks like mouse poop.

Murray looks it up online.

Let's take this small moment to just point out that Murray knows a lot of random things. But there are times that I know a random fact or two and when I happen to know it, it seems that Murray rarely believes me. Like the time that I was trying to tell him that superman was invented by a Canadian. That debate I would say got fairly heated.

So back to the guano:





Yeah.

What does that look like?

Murray, trying to save face: See all this white area around this image? That's the guano.

Me: And then a mouse came and pooped all over it. So. Murray. Do you realize that when I speak somewhat authoritatively on a matter it is because there is an actual real reason for me to know something? Like for example, we had a hunt camp when I was growing up and the attic was full of bats and the ceiling had holes in it and the bat poop would drop down on us every day and we had to sleep with our mouths closed and sweep it up in the morning. I know what guano looks like.


Murray: Well why is bird poop white?

Me: I think they pee and poo out the same hole.


-- Posted from my iPhone, with apologies for any typos.

Monkey Man

Last week, we were driving down University Parkway and all of a sudden Gulliver started screeching and oo-ing like a monkey. We thought it was funny so we joined in.

Last night we were driving down University Parkway and in the exact same location, Gulliver started going monkey crazy again, and was clearly very excited.

Obviously he was seeing something but what? We thought it through and realized it must be the blow-up missionary on top of the missionary mall.

Today we tested out that theory and sure enough it proves correct. Gulliver thinks that Utah's own giant blow-up missionary is a monkey.




-- Posted from my iPhone, with apologies for any typos.