To etch

Andrew is like Buddy the Elf on the etcha sketch. It's really quite amazing to watch. So far he's etched his name in cursive only he made it look like a roller coaster...and trust me it looked just like an "Andrew" shaped roller coaster, if that makes any sense. Then a couple weeks ago at church he etched Calvin of Calvin and Hobbes fame in a matter of minutes. Unfortunately none of these lasted long enough to get a picture. One day Tim and I jokingly told him to etch a chess board and shade in every other square. (He loves to play chess with his daddy if you can believe it.) He was like, "okay." And he did it...very quickly.


What's so amazing, besides how fast he is, is that he does all of these in one shot...no shaking and starting over. I'm trying to figure out what kind of life skills he could develop from this or if he just really needs to get out of the house more often.

TIME ME...with nickels.

We were timing Andrew to see how long he could do a head stand.

Mom: "That was about 4 seconds, Andrew."

Andrew: "More like 4 and a quarter seconds...or 4 and 5 nickels."

Pinewood Derby

Andrew got to experience his first pinewood derby on Friday. He had a blast. We were a little worried because being the master procrastinators that we are, we didn't get the wheels on until the night before. The wheels are the most important thing. Tim had sanded the wheels and nails smooth to get rid of burrs a couple weeks earlier and they seemed great. But once we got around to putting them on the car we noticed a wheel was out of round and not spinning well. I'm not sure how we didn't notice that earlier. And we're not sure if Tim sanded it out of round or if it was just a bad mold to begin with. Not that that matters but I like to blame things on Tim whenever possible. Anyway, there was nothing we could do since we can only use specific BSA wheels and there's no place to just go buy them. And it's just a kid race after all, as Andrew kept informing us. (I can see how parents get really obsessed with these races and completely take over). So we stuck the wheels on and graphited the schnock out of them. His car did great, bad wheel and all, good enough to go to the big race next Saturday. I was actually secretly hoping that he would do good but not good enough to move on to the next race. Ugghhh. Am I a terrible mother? Don't answer that.

Andrew designed his car all by himself and drew it out on the wood block on his own. He used a couple of his hot wheels cars for inspiration.

Craft crap

This is my first vinyl project with my new cutter. I finally got some rolls of vinyl in the mail yesterday and whipped these blocks out. I'm not a big pastel person but it's been so dreary and cold here I wanted some cheery color. I thought the yellow was a bright enough shade for the white letters but the P and N are a little washed out. Oh well. I'm having A LoT of FuN figuring out what this little machine can do.

Squirt and the manila folder

I apologize for another cat post. I'm really not a crazy cat lady. At least I haven't started wearing kitty cat sweaters...yet.

Anyway...

Squirt regularly annoys me when I'm trying to work on the computer and usually tries to lay across the keyboard like this...


So the other day when I was trying to get some work done he jumped up on the desk as usual but instead of going for the keyboard he eyed the folder next to the monitor. He opened it up with his nose and pushed out all of my papers.



Then he settled into the manila folder and tried to get comfy.


This wasn't comfy...


...but this was.


I guess it was just the site of an overweight cat so determined to fit in a folder that was so amusing to me. Dumb, I know.

Squirt & the butter box, part 3

The black cat has been curious about all the excitement with the box and finally tried it out herself. She likes it. It makes Squirt jealous.


The butter box is almost completely gone on the two sides. We need to turn it around and see if Squirt will start chewing on the other sides. But I almost think he's been chewing it down like this on purpose. I think he has a plan for just exactly how he wants his box to end up.


Fat and happy...

Random Andy Quotes

The other day I was looking through some of the piles of paper that have accumulated in the office and I came across a small collection of scratch papers with funny Andy quotes on them. You know, when your kid says something cute, and you write it down on whatever you can find so you don't forget. I'm so glad these didn't get thrown out accidentally. Unfortunately not all are dated but they're fun nonetheless. Here are some of them.

04/08/2005, age 4. Tim called from work and we were talking. Andrew picked up the phone in the other room and said "Hi". His daddy asked, "What are you doing?". Andrew answered matter of factly, "I'm talking to you."

08/15/2005, age 4. "Tomorrow I want to be bigger...yeah, I want to be taller."

08/15/2005, age 4. "I want to grow up to be a white kitty cat."

08/19/2005, age 4. "Momma, I'm going to be small today." (first thing he said waking up in bed).

Not dated: We were sitting around the table playing a board game with my parents. Andrew pointed at each of us individually and said first to me, "That's a star", then to Papa Harold, "That's a moon", then to Grandma Sue, "That's a sky", then he pointed to his daddy and said, "That's a toilet paper."

Not dated: Andrew was spending the night with his cousins and his grandma. He popped awake in the morning, seemed really relieved about something, and very jubilantly said, "I'M ALIVE!"

02/25/2007 age 6. "When I grow up like a human, I can work there." (as we drove by his grandma's place of employment.)

08/07/2007, age 6. I was cropping a picture of me and Andrew riding the waverunner on the lake, a dreaded bathing suit picture. I was trying to crop my arm out of the picture because it looked fat. Andrew asked what I was doing and I told him I was trying to get my fat arm out of the picture. He said, "It's not a fat arm, it's just getting old."

08/07/2007, age 6. Editing more pictures. I'm not sure what picture this was in reference to but he said..."mom, you look aweful in that picture."

03/01/2009, age 8. "I wonder what the Chinese are doing right now."

Mr. Bean

We had a horrible nights sleep last night. All thanks to Mr. Bean.

Tim loves Mr. Bean. I'm not nearly the fan that he is. Tim has been craving Mr. Bean lately and decided to introduce Andrew to him. So they got on You Tube last night and watched clip after stupid clip of Mr. Bean. I had better things to do with my time and left the boys to do their thing. I smiled at each belly laugh that erupted from the computer room.

Then it was time for bed and we did our normal night time routine. As Tim crawled into bed he mentioned that Andrew thought Mr. Bean was really funny at first but then he started to "creep" him out. I was like 'oh great'. I know how Andrew gets when something creeps him out. Sure enough we didn't sleep at all last night because Andrew kept waking up with Mr. Bean nightmares. (No, I have no idea what a Mr. Bean nightmare would consist of). Being the gracious wife that I am, I just laid in bed and let Tim deal with the freaked out 8 year old all night long - it was, after all, his fault. (I know, I'm a terrible woman). Finally, Andy ended up in bed with us, which is always great because he emits so much heat when he sleeps that steam rolls off of him. And the last time he came into bed with us during a night of nightmares I got slapped...HARD. Andrew was slapping a bad guy in his dream and didn't realize that I got the brunt of it in real life. So I've learned when Andrew's mind is going wild in the night you don't really want to be too close to him. Luckily, I didn't get beat up last night but we sure didn't sleep well. Who would have known Mr. Bean could have such an impact.