April 12th, 2012 by Busy Mommy

Man I love these chickens!  Nolan has spent a good portion of the day today outside by himself among the chickens.  While he was out there I could hear him humming and singing and talking to himself (and the chickens).  I looked out through the office window and saw him standing in the chicken’s water bowl, literally just hanging out in a bowl that’s ten inches across.   Later when he came running in Nolan told me, “I was getting baptized! I was getting baptized mommy!”  Pretty soon, all his clothes were off and he was running around buck naked and “getting baptized” in a chicken water bowl.Where do I draw the line?  Shoes in the chicken enclosure AT ALL TIMES.  He’s actually really good about that, and he’s a total expert with his chicken (rain) boots now.  Oh yeah, and we rinsed him off after he was done with his foray.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ul3i_Xi4LM[/youtube]

April 11th, 2012 by Busy Mommy

I have a lot of great “Nolan Video Footage” sitting right here in my computer- all nice and orderly, filed by his age in months.  Why aren’t you seeing it you wonder?  Because I’m so behind!  And it’s only getting worse as each month passes by.  One rainy day I will have to catch up.  Or rather, one rainy day when Nolan is with Grammy or Grandma.  Not much computer work happens these days with our two and half year old around, so it’s usually get-in, pay the PG&E bill, and get-out, before Nolan threatens to shred our patience to tiny pieces.

Just picture it: Attempting to do your taxes or writing a well thought out email letter to your dear relatives, all the while a robust and friendly monkey (weighing over 30 lbs) is jumping all over you- climbing across your lap, hanging off your neck from behind you while you struggle to swallow, then sitting on your lap so that you keep having to tilt your entire upper half to the right or left in order to even see the computer screen (because the monkey is tall for it’s age, and you are short for yours), which then makes typing with two hands inefficient and more than un-ergonomic.  This leads to the inevitable avoidance of said computer in order to spare our backs, our patience, and a myriad of other things.

But here’s a little tidbit I did manage to throw up real quick, that’s actually from only 2 nights ago- wow- something actually on here about the same time it happened!  A lot of things you’ll probably be seeing in the near future may be months old already.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AgFI5fiM0jE[/youtube]

April 1st, 2012 by Busy Mommy

Hey, I’m just passing on what I’ve been told by this little guy: I haven’t gotten a chance to mention it, but Nolan and the phrase “compost pile” the last 6 weeks is akin to…..ducks on water, or Ben and music. Not only does he use the phrase randomly at odd times in sentences that have nothing whatsoever to do with compost piles, but he whips out the phrase even more often whenever we have company- I think he thinks it’s impressive to people (ie…..friend says to nolan: “how are you nolan?” nolan smiles and says: “uhhhh….in…um….compost pile!”

He replaces words- many words- in songs with it.  The more riled up he gets, the more he says it- “the compost pile came OVER the sea……..and a……COMPOST PILE!……I told you that I said NO COMPOST PILE……….mary had a little COMPOST PILE!! heeeeheeeheheeee”  Anything and anywhere he can make it fit, he uses it- which of course, in most all cases, the phrase totally doesn’t fit the occasion or sentence, which makes it that much funnier- to us and him since he knows it.

Now he’s gone the next step and as of yesterday, Nolan has decided that he IS compost pile.  “I’m compost pile.”  “My name is…..compost pile!!”  Perhaps this started when just a few days ago Nolan set a record for the number of times he said “compost pile” in a span of a few hours when our good friend Desiree was over.  She tried to teach him a song that started “my name is No-lan” which he was supposed to then repeat, but he said instead of course: “my name is…Compost-Pile!!”  We gave up after that.

The funny thing about all this is that you’d think we make a big deal about composting and talk about it a lot or something but we totally don’t.  While we do have a real compost pile, we aren’t even actively composting at the moment (until we figure out a way to do it that keeps the varmints out).  However, we did recently have a VERY large load of woodchips (like probably 12-15 cubic yards worth) delivered from a tree trimming company- I think it was this huge pile of chips sitting in our driveway for a time that Nolan was climbing up and around for awhile that made an impression on him and that he had started referring to as the compost pile.  So I think that’s where it all began.

I wonder if he’ll remember this little “phase”?