Our first haunted corn maze. Yikes.

The wife and I have really been looking forward to this holiday season. Baron is, of course, older now and we really think that he'll "get" the holidays and get into the spirit of things. Our hope is to decorate what little space we have with whatever little decoration(s) we can buy and really embrace the crazyness and really point out all of the decorations and symbols of each holiday and explain everything. And sing silly holiday songs. ESPECIALLY CHRISTMAS SONGS!!!!! Love, love, luv, LOVE me some Christmas songs. Year 'round if I could get away with it, but I can't. It makes "people", (my wife) highly irritable to hear Christmas songs in March or July or September. I don't get it but I gotta accept it.

Anyway, the first holiday on the docket is every bodies favorite candy fest, HALLOWEEN!!! The wife and I talked about getting pumpkins and what the boy would wear and what we might wear and going to the pumpkin patch and the corn maze and all that stuff that makes October worth putting on a calendar. Nana and Papa took us to the corn maze and it was really fun. By all rights the whole experience should have been a disaster but every time things looked like they were stacked against us karma would come up and turn things around for us. From the get-go I don't think anybody knew it was a haunted corn maze. Haunted corn maze's are for adults and teenagers who think that a spooky corn maze is a good place to make out with their special some one. Not for little kids. It didn't really dawn on me until we were in line to get in and the scary music was loud and the fog machine was firing up that Baron wasn't going to be into it. But we were there, we might as well try. What's a little terror? For all the noise and excitement Baron did really well waiting in line. We also did not realize that the maze wouldn't be opening until after dark so we waited in line for about forty five minutes before we started moving forward. Then, a group of young, evilish teeny boppers that were loitering on the other side of the ropes broke through and piled into the line right in front of us. I became almost irrationally mad at these pukey punks but wasn't gonna make a deal about it, especially in Baron's presence. We moved up about thirty feet and I heard them as they realized that they needed tickets to get into the corn maze, which they did not have. Ah.. innocence. Where everything is free and their are no repercussions until they slap you in the face. So, they stepped aside while we went in. The scary clown gave us the rundown, no touching, no leaving through the entrance, no tearing through the corn in a flight of gut wrenching terror. Baron made it twenty feet in on his own before he jumped into mommies arms. After a few different people in scary costume jumped out at us from the corn we decided this might be a bad idea and that we should find the exit. But see, here's the thing; WE WERE IN A CORN MAZE!! The whole point is to TRY and FIND the exit and it's not supposed to be easy. I've been in a few corn mazes' and I've never been through one in a short amount of time. I'd never tried it in the dark. I began to fear more and more that we were going to be stuck in that maze for at least an hour, at best. Nana led the charge by flashing her nice camera in the eyes of people who jumped out at her, as she giggled in a frantic fashion. That part was pretty brilliant. She actually used her camera's flash as an effective defensive weapon.

We had come around a familiar section of corn that looked a lot like the other sections of corn we had passed in the dark when somebody tripped on something and stopped to inspect said item. Turns out it was one of Baron's rain boots that must have fallen off when we were in that section of maze before. We didn't even know he was missing a boot! Score!!

But here's the crazy part; we were out of there within thirty to forty minutes. I couldn't believe it. We should've been chasing our tails much longer than that. Not that I'm complaining, far from it. We just really beat the odds on that one. And when we emerged triumphantly from the corn maze EXIT the line to enter the corn maze had grown into a giant serpent that coiled around the entire farm area and their was a line of cars trying to get into the parking lot. Now, that's crazy, but can you imagine what that maze must've been like later that evening? Hundreds of hairless apes shoulder to shoulder in a dusty dark corn maze. Imagine the percentage of those apes that were drunk or in the corn to get drunker! That, in every way possible, sounds more frightening and disturbing and grotesque than whatever some stoners in hockey masks could whip up to fit the limpest definition of 'scary'. Ewwwww..... No, no, we had an excellent time in the maze, all things considered. Baron was scared, of course, but it could have been a really bad scene. I liked it and when I'm older and grayer I'll look back on the whole occasion fondly.

Mommy had to work on Halloween evening and Baron is going through a phase where he's really scared or pretends to be scared so I didn't have any expectations for trick or treating. We don't live in a neighborhood for it, bunch of stuck up old pirates. I dressed Baron in his Batman pants and shirt with velcroed cape, grabbed a Spider-Man bucket and hit the streets. We walked all around the hood, enjoying the lovely, sunny fall weather. A couple of places were decorated but admiring their creativity from a short distance was as close as we were going to get to their front door. When all was said and done and we returned home he poured out his bucket on the floor and enjoyed the spoils of his holiday; Two rocks and four leaves.
I love that kid.
So friggin much.

Luv dem berries

We just went for a little walk behind the house here and the blackberries are gettin nice and ripe. I can't tell you how many years it's been since I've grabbed a berry off of a vine but he pointed to them and said "Boo! Boo!", which is his way of saying 'blue berries'. He loves blue berries!! So, I chose a nice, big, ripe blackberry and handed it to him. He looked at it for a second and then trepidatiously brought it to his lips and gave it the tinest of nibbles. He considered the flavor for a moment before he voraciously shoved the remainder into his ravenous maw. They passed the taste test, to be sure! So, I figured if they're okay for him they should be okay for me, right? I chose for myself another nice, big, ripe berry and popped into my mouth and immediately spit it right back out as my eyes watered and crossed at the sourness of what I had just sampled. I do not like sour. Blech!! I really hope his tasted better than mine! He wanted many, many more but we were on our way back home to change his diaper. Something about the majesty of the great outdoors makes him load his pants every time we go outside. It's irritating sometimes. I doesn't matter if I change his diaper right before we head out the door, as soon as he hits that fresh air he drops a lethal stink bomb. It's time for me, as his parent, to look forward to the day when he has a child and gets to experience the joy of diaper changing. Vengance is a dirty, stinky thing. As it should be!!

All about poop. !

We bought him a little trainer toilet seat, some pull up training pants and some Pixar character underwear for reward/incentive. Here we go! We (as in all three of us) are ready for this. The time is now. I know he has the ability to figure it out, but I've been wondering if the short gut is gonna make it hard for him to know when it's time to go potty. Or something. I don't want to go into specifics but I just like to cover all the possible outcomes. When dealing with poo it's good to have people with their lights on all the exits.

Let's talk about this

He's said please and thank you! Said them! With his mouth! Earlier this morning we were in the car and I had just put in Metallica's Master Of Puppets and he instantly raised his hand in the air and pumped his index finger like he was shooting the metal up to the sky! He's never been able to rock the horns, he's always used his pointer finger. But today he watched my hand pound the air and he studied it for a second and then he tried really hard to get his pinky up and keep his other fingers down. But....he....just......couldn't....quite..do...it... He could get his middle finger tucked but that darned ol' ring finger just kept popping out and snugglin up to that kinky pinky. He started to get frustrated. I told him we'd work on it later and everything was going to be okay, he'd rock the horns like a metal monster in no time 'tall. I could tell he knew what he wanted his fingers to do, he just doesn't have control of them completely. Yet. It's moments like that, when I can see his gears grinding and turning and see him figure something out (or not), I find so fascinating and unbelievable rewarding. And most times humbling, but a smiling kind of humbling! He's just so fun. Each day is a new word or problem solved or area explored. He watched Mickey's Clubhouse for the first time and he liked it so we watched a couple of episodes and this morning it was on when we all got up REAL early and he knew which mouseketool to use at the right time and all that stuff. Really interactind with the program in a positive way and actually getting something out of it for his betterment. We both saw it and looked at each other like, 'I'll be damned, did he really just do that?'. His lion roar with hands clawing at the air is priceless. Him thinking that everything is MINE, MINE, MINE? nnnnot so much. Boxes of food at Safeway, toys at Target, Ollies Elmo, my food, EVERYTHING is 'MINE'!! His least attractive characteristic at the moment. Oh, and throwing things. Not really in a protest, tantrum type of way but more in a mischeivious, playful way and the kid has an amazing arm. He can really throw! He's gonna make his parents rich someday.

The wonders of speech therapy

Sarah, a speech therapist through Early Intervention, has visited us four times now and the benefits of her expertise are already becoming evident. She stays for about a half hour and just shows us a few things in sign language and plays/works with Baron. He LOVES her. He wants to show her everything as soon as she walks in the door and really wants to take her into his room so Daddy and Mommy aren't interfering with their time. He now knows the signs for 'please','more','go','hungry' and can understand quite a few others. Sarah said that he's taking to signing faster than any toddler she's worked with. Not only that, but signing is helping him understand words and their meanings and that understanding is helping him speak more. He says quite a few words now and he says a new one every couple of days. It's so exciting. He and I almost had a short conversation on Thursday. Our first!
Boy loves to dance. He has a couple of favorite kids shows and all of them are music based. Wow Wow Wubbzy, Fresh Beat Band, Yo Gabba Gabba, and live concert footage make him MOVE! The other day he busted out The Disco Roll dance that Jack Black performed on Yo Gabba Gabba. Killed me!!!! The other day he let me watch John Legend and The Roots on Austin City Limits and he actually liked it. I couldn't believe it. He sat through a few Pantera videos on Youtube. But, as much as he loves to listen to Pantera I think the visual of the band was a bit much for his impressionable little brain to handle.
And a slightly funny development; he's afraid of monkeys. It's because of the monkeys in Toy Story 3. The only things in this world he's afraid of (other than not getting his way). Whenever he sees a monkey on TV he runs to us and buries his face so the evil monkeys can't see him. Precious.

He's just self concsious of his personal odor.

He demonstrated his gift for mimicry today by opening 'my' drawer in the bathroom, grabbing my deodorant, unzipping his sleeper and applying my deodorant to his underarms. He is just so cute. And now he smells pretty good too.
He babbles all of the time now. He has an actual vocabulary that is growing, finally. He says 'shake' when we make his bottle because we always make it a game, building the anticipation of each part of the process until we screw the cap on aaaaannnnnnddd shake-shake-shake-shake-shake-shake-shake-shake-shake-shake etc..... and he just loves it. He says 'kitty', or at least an understandable variation.

He just walked up to me and pulled up my shirt and stuck hid finger in my belly button, which he KNOWS I cannot stand. Then he unzipped his sleeper and pushed his own belly button and said 'OWWW!' in perfect mockery and mimicry of his over exaggerated father. Cute kid. Can't wait for him to get a job.

An appetite like a shark!!

He has been eating so much the last few days! It's so unlike him. Today Papa took us out to breakfast at Elmers and he all but devoured Mommy's steak. Then for lunch he consumed a good portion of MY cold pizza. Cold!! And he's had pizza several times in the last four or so days. But cold pizza? I still can't believe it. I mean, I don't know why I like cold pizza. Weird. He feels heavier. I'm not going to be able to hold him much longer. I'm expecting a big 'ol growth spurt in the next few days.
Great.