The Weekend

So this weekend I was daycare home hunting. I had three interviews and two of them pretty much didn't have a chance. The one house was so disgustingly messy and stinky and just gross. I wanted to turn around and walk right out, but I didn't want to be rude, so...of course, Aidan had a fit when I told him it was time to leave. Figures, doesn't it. The other one, the mom did all the talking and the girl, who was going to be the caregiver, didn't say a word to me. It was kind of weird and the house had lots of knick knacks and also a ton of dogs. Fortunately the third one was a lot better. The girl's name is Jolene and she's got a 4 year old and a 1 year old and is looking for 2 full time kids. If I can't get my first pick ( I dont think I'll be able to get in) then I'll go with Jolene. My first pick is a retired lady who has a degree in child psychology, serves homemade food and seems to really genuinely want to make a difference in these little kids lives. She sounds way too good to be true, so I'm going to stay on her waiting list until I can get in, unless I can get in right away.

Oh, the place where the mom did all the talking - as I was driving home, she called my cellphone. It was partly sad and partly funny. I had noticed she had this huge purple bruise on her arm and she was calling to say that her daughter had noticed it and wanted to make sure that I didn't think that there was weird stuff going on, like abuse or stuff like that. She says 'No abuse here!' in a really cheerful voice. I almost laughed, I know it's not a laughing matter at all, but these days you never know what people will think!

This past week we walked to the spraypark and had a picnic dinner and then stayed for Aidan to play - we did that Tuesday, Thursday and Friday. Aidan loved it so much. Friday was a lot cooler, but he wanted to go anyways, so we went and gradually everyone left until we were the last people there. We stayed until almost 8:30 - the last kid there and he still cried when I said it was time to go! We might go tomorrow, we'll see what the weather's like.

We went out Saturday morning (for a cancelled appointment - that's so frustrating!) and came home to play, then went out again for the interviews and then home again. For dinner Aidan and I made blueberry poppyseed pancakes. Pancakes (and probably everything else) are so much better made from scratch! These pancakes are pretty filling - they have sour cream and the recipe calls for thin slices of peaches, but I think they're almost better with blueberries. Anyways, I got Aidan's all ready for him and then I asked him if we should pray and he said yes. He said we should pray for everything - I can't just say 'thanks for dinner' I have to say 'thank you for Aidan's milk, Adan's pancakes' and be very specific. Then after I prayed, he said he was going to pray. He sat there for a minute with his hands folded then he said 'Thank you. Luff Daddy, Mommy, Amy, Tina'. It was so cute! He's never really prayed before - I've tried to get him to say amen, but that didn't go over very well. Kind of a hard word to say. Amy is his current babysitter and Trina is her sister and Aidan loves Trina about the same as Amy.

BC Lions won their game Saturday night, so Aidan wore his jersey to church on Sunday. This particular jersey comes down to his knees, so we have to tuck it into his pants and pull it out a little, it looks kind of funny. He really likes the Seahawks, almost better than the Lions, but I told him the Seahawks weren't playing yet, so he was happy with the Lions. His little phrase lately has been 'Go team!' He'll get his hockey stick out or football or whatever and if he 'scores' (basically if it makes it's way across the room) he'll stop and put his stick in the air or his hands in the air and cheer really loud 'Yay! Go team!' We played hockey Sunday night, hitting a puck across the living room with little hockey sticks. Then he had to go get a hat for me to wear. When you play hockey, you have to wear a hat and he gets pretty upset if there's a picture of someone not wearing a hat while playing hockey. He has a shirt from please mum and on the shirt a teddy bear is playing hockey without a hat and he's really not happy about that. Fortunately the goalie (I forget what animal it is) is wearing a hat, so I try to draw his attention to that instead. Anyways, he's got a fireman's hat and a yellow construction hat, so generally those are the hats that he, and whoever he plays hockey with, wears.

Well, I finally got our watermelon cut up, so I'm going to go have some before it's time for bed.

My new haircut

I had a hair appointment today and it was just for a trim, but then I told Nathania to just do whatever she thought would look good and I think it turned out pretty good! According to her I have side swept bangs with a modern shag, both of which are supposed to help me grow my hair out quicker. I'm not sure how, but I'm a big fan of the bangs, I think they look good. Of course now I gotta learn how to style it like she styled it. Anyways, I thought I would post these pictures because Carene just had her hair cut and she posted pictures too *smiles* I just didn't take a before picture - maybe I should have taken that so you could see what a big improvement this is.

This was taken in front of the bathroom mirror which is why there's a weird glare by my neck.

These pictures are driving me crazy!

I've spent like 45 minutes trying to get these pictures on here properly! Ahhhh! Okay, here are the last two.

It looks like he's knighting Superman, what he's doing is just wacking and poking him until he falls over. It's all over so quickly, I was lucky to get this picture!

Here he is with his light saber. Note the wild look in his eyes - this is brought on by waaayyy too much sugar!!

I also have to say here that finding child care is HORRIBLE!!! People in this crazy town have decided that just because they can, they're going to charge between $700 and $750 per month - and these are dayhomes, not the actual daycare facilities!!! That is INSANE! I'm seriously contemplating opening a dayhome myself, it's just nuts. I called like 10 people who had ads in the paper and a couple of them act like I'm really weird because I'm objecting to paying $30/day or $700/month. There's gotta be something else out there! And there are, I talked to about 3 or 4 people where I can get about $550 a month, a couple are a little more but less than $600 and right now, that's looking pretty good. So I'm trusting that God has a plan - I'm sure he does - and I'll find someone reasonable.

Okay, it's past my bedtime - I hope you all enjoy the pictures!

Pictures

So this is the infamous swiper smile, and a picture of swiper the fox, so that you can see what a good impression he does. I got the picture off of http://nickjr.co.uk/shows/dora/swiper.aspx. I'm not sure if I'm allowed to just steal pictures, but there it is.

Here's Aidan lying on his stomach reading a book outside. Once he sees me or Michael do something, he's got to do exactly the same thing *smiles*

Michael helping Aidan hit the golf ball properly. Aidan gets very frustrated when he can't hit it, and Michael wants Aidan to have proper form *smiles*

Aidan riding the little horse at the circus. It was very nice that I was allowed to walk beside him because I'm sure he would have fallen off otherwise!

Aidan jumping through the sprinkler. Note the very cute Bob the Builder underwear!

Here he is contemplating the sprinkler.

The last couple days

I honestly meant to post over the weekend but somehow it never happened. The weather was crazy – sooo hot! It was actually no higher than 35, but felt like we were in the 40's. And, on the radio I learned that 35.6 (Sunday's high) was the highest that it has ever been in Grande Prairie in the history of Grande Prairie - we beat the last high by a whole degree and that was set back in 1983. Pretty cool - or hot...ha ha.

On Friday the circus was in town! There were 2 shows, one at 4 and one at 7:30. We went to the later show because I couldn't get away from work and it just worked out better. I rushed home and Aidan and I had showers to cool off, cleaned up (apparently during Aidan's 3-4 hour nap there was no time for my babysitter to clean up) and had a quick dinner before heading out.

Michael had said we should be there an hour early because there were horse and elephant rides and other things to do. Aidan thought the elephant ride sounded pretty cool, but I told him that once he was up there he couldn't get off so he wisely opted for a horse ride instead. I don't know who decided the circus had to be so expensive – when did that happen?? Although I should say that this circus (Jordan World Circus) wasn't as bad as the Barnum and Bailey Circus that came last year.

Aidan had 2 horse rides on cute little white ponies and then we bought him an extendable light up light saber which he said was his favourite part. He had brought along his piggy bank money to spend on a treat – I had thought he would want to buy a toy, but he really wanted a snow cone, so he got that and cotton candy with his piggy bank money. It was another wise choice on his part because the building was so hot with everyone packed in that he was seriously overheating. The circus itself was nothing special - I felt bad for the performing animals. Hopefully they’re treated well in the trailers or wherever they live. I think Aidan enjoyed his horse ride and all the treats he got most. He was majorly ticked off at me when I told him, at 10:30, that it was going to be bedtime soon. He had set up the blowup Superman that Michael bought and was busy knocking it over with his light saber. I have some hilarious pictures of him doing this - he got really into it!

Despite his late bedtime (11pm) he still woke me up at 7am the next morning. I had to have a Red Bull energy drink with breakfast in order to function normally – it really helped, except then I couldn’t take a nap while Aidan napped. We had a nice lazy day at home – watched some shows, played outside. After his nap I thought we could go for a walk on the trails. Aidan loves it because he can run ahead of me or lag behind and doesn’t have to hold my hand all the time. We just do a short walk up to a look out point and then he climbs up on the rail and checks out the view. We had had freezies before we left, but it was so hot we were both red faced and sweaty when we finally got back to the house so we sat down on the kitchen floor and had some frozen yogurt to revive ourselves.

After that we went outside and I set up the sprinkler for Aidan. I set it so the water only sprayed as high as his waist and he enjoyed it quite a bit – so much that he didn’t want to go in the pool at all, just run through the sprinkler. Lately he’s learned how to say ‘Look Mommy!’ and uses it all the time. As he was jumping over or running through the water he would say ‘Look Mommy! Aidan let (wet)!’ Then he would come over to show me how wet he was. Once he was tired of that he came and lay down on the blanket with me and read some of his books and then he told me that he had peed on the blanket, so we packed it up and headed inside.

Whenever he runs around naked after a bath or just in a diaper, we call him a naked bum – he says make bum. It was so hot that night that I told him he could sleep in just his diaper and he was pretty pleased with himself that he got to sleep naked bum.

The little Thomas the tank engine table and chairs are really working out well. I think he enjoys being a big boy and eating at his own little table. Actually he’s been very firm lately about saying that he is a boy (as opposed to a squirt, stinker, weasel or poopy-bum) but that he is a little boy. He used to love being a big boy, but he’s decided that he is a little boy and he likes little stuff – for example, I buy these cheese sticks that you can peel, I think they’re called cheese strings. Aidan loves them, he takes the cheese stick and peels off a little string and comes to me and says ‘Baby cheese!’ The other great thing about the little table and chairs is that they’re easy to take out to the porch so we can eat outside.

After a stop at Superstore for some groceries, Aidan played outside with the sprinkler and his inflatable ball some more. I went out with him and we got each other wet and it was pretty fun. He likes to kick the ball and then he says ‘You!’ for me to kick it back and starts running for it so he can get to it first and kick it again. I’m not really sure how to play that game! We ran around for awhile and then I realized I had forgotten to put sunscreen on him, so we went in for a break (loudly protested by him) and to watch a show and of course after I had cleaned him off and doused him in sunscreen, he didn't want to go outside!

Well, I think I'm going to have to cut it off there. Right now I'm at work - I meant to upload the pictures to this post while I was talking to my mom last night, but then Symantha popped up on MSN so I talked to her. That was nice though, I think that's the first time we've talked on MSN.
Tonight I am planning to talk Aidan on a little walk and then have a picnic dinner near the trails that I usually walk on. Then after he goes to bed I'm doing dishes and all the other stuff that has to get done - including uploading pictures. So don't forget to check back, they're all super cute!

How Aidan Really Feels

The one person who is completely less than thrilled about my recent obsession with taking pictures of him is Aidan. He still hides from the camera unless he is allowed to do a 'swiper smile'. I will post some examples tomorrow along with other pictures from this past week including our trip to the circus.

If someone could help me please!

I just spent my entire lunch half hour putting in links to my friend's blogs so that they would appear on the sidebar (check it out, now you can go see Dave and Carene, Jade Daniel and Addison, Matt Teresa and Brooklyn and also Michelle) but I am not sure how to put a title of My Friends or whatever without it being a link to my blog. I also think it would be great to have right under my nonexistant picture but am not sure how to do that. Anyways, I know I keep saying this, but I will post. I'm off now to adjust my inventory and finish it once and for all!!!

I can see the light...

Well my inventory is almost almost done. I just have to run upstairs and make sure we have a couple pieces of glass (tractor windshield, 2 left doors and 2 bottom LH panels) which I'm sure we do, and then all the counting is officially over! YAY! I had, however, forgotten about all the adjusting work - I still need to go into Simply and readjust everything. So hopefully that will only take 1 day and I won't have to come in on the weekend. Anyways, I've been hunched over my clipboard all day and needed a break to straighten out my neck, so I thought I would post. I'm trying to learn how to do more things on here so this is my experimental post.

First off, a link. My friend Carene just recently set up a blog, inspired by me *grins* and I must say, what a wonderful blog it is. There are some really cute pictures of her sister's brand new puppy! Click here to see them!

Alright, that worked out well. The other thing I wanted to do was to set up a link to all my friend's blogs. I think I figured out how to do that, but I'll have to go into settings to do that.

Well, 13 minutes til quitting time. Our car alarm is going back in the car - hopefully it doesn't act up again. We originally got it installed, then we would have an issue with the car and would take it to the dealership and they would say 'your alarm is interfering' and we would be stuck with $200 for removing the alarm. We paid that twice and then just got it uninstalled. It will be really nice in the winter to just start the car - it's a starter/alarm combo. And then after that we'll pick up some healthy dinner - either a wrap or a sub - and then we're going out to a movie! I'm very excited!!

Alright, have a wonderful day everyone, I'll post again soon.

Thomas the tank engine

Today I was heading out to go check out the new spray park in town and pick up some groceries. Michael decided he would come with us and man! I don't think we could have spent more on groceries if we had tried! It wasn't that bad, but I pick up some groceries every week and it seems like every week it gets more and more! Anyways, the spray park was really cool, we'll definitely go back.

While we were at Save-On we noticed some Thomas the tank engine stuff - a bed, a night table, and a table and chairs. The table and chairs were only $40 so we decided to get it for him - he thought it was really cool.

Aidan loves his milk!

Right now he's getting really ticked at Michael because the camera is still going off!

I think I'm going to take the highchair down and replace it with this little table and chairs. We'll see how it goes, the only downside to the cute little chairs is that I can't tie him down to prevent him from running away before he's done eating!

Have a great Monday!

This might be kinda long...

Lately Aidan won't let me take his picture, I'm not sure whether he just doesn't like it, or that he doesn't like the flash, or what. Here he is trying to block my picture with his teddy:

And again, still not removing his bear...

Finally I talk him into actually uncovering his face - you can see his cool Incredibles socks. They are almost knee socks on him and super thick but he loves them all year round.

This is his super messy room. If you look closely, you can see a big stuffed Winnie the Pooh (which just gets ignored) sitting beside a large stuffed Bob the Builder which also mostly gets ignored. His old babysitter gave it to him and I thought he would fall upon it with cries of joy, but apparently not. The string around his doorknob is there for when he's bad and has to be locked in his room. Since he can open the door by himself and the door doesn't have a lock, we have to tie the string around his door and the bathroom door. It seems to work - and better than smacks, which is good.
I just thought this picture was cute, I caught him hanging there trying to get something and made him get back up so I could get a picture of it.


Well, I was uploading the pictures from the camera and I found some other ones from awhile ago....

This is Aidan sitting on the little lawn tractor's that we sell at work. This particular model has a 50" mowing deck. Aidan loves crawling all over the tractors in the showroom and putting the keys in the ignition.

This is one of our mini excavator's, a rental unit. This is like the coolest thing for Aidan!

I told Symantha that I would post my burger recipe on here and I forgot this morning, so here it is:

The most awesomest burgers I have ever made! (they are actually called Sirloin bourguigon burgers)
-from the June 2006 issue of Chatelaine Magazine

1-2 tbsp butter
8oz pkg sliced button mushrooms (I just chopped big stuffer mushrooms)
1 garlic clove chopped
1/4 cup red wine - optional (I didn't use any because I only have white wine)
1 lb ground sirloin or medium ground beef (I used lean ground beef, couldn't bring myself to use regular)
1/4 cup sour cream
3 tbsp fine dry bread crumbs (I crumbled some soup crackers as fine as I could with my hand)
1/2 tsp each salt, pepper and dried thyme leaves

Saute the mushrooms with the butter and wine (if using) and garlic and refrigerate until cool (I just threw it into the bowl right away to be mixed, it didn't seem to be a big deal). Crumble beef over mushrooms and add sour cream, bread crumbs and seasonings. Use your hands and gently mix together and shape into 4 burgers, about 1/2" thick. To prevent burgers from puffing up when grilling, make an indentation in the middle of the burger with your thumb (this actually works! I forgot to do it the last time I made these). Grill on the BBQ 5-8 min per side.

Anyways, as you can see I make tons of substitutions which is why half the time my stuff never turns out!! But the burgers were really fantastic. The other thing I didn't follow was you're supposed to saute the mushrooms before chopping them, but I chopped them first. Only half of them go into the burgers and the rest are supposed to go on top of the burgers after they're done cooking.

So this is probably way long enough already so I'm going to go. I can't get any more pictures on here and there were 2 more I wanted to put on, so I'm going to do one more post today, which I'm sure you will already have seen because it will be above this one!

It's the weekend!

Today I watched the Manchurian Candidate while I worked out. Last night I was going to go on the treadmill, but Michael was watching football, so I procrastinated until today. It was actually a pretty good movie. I don't see many movies anymore and Michael has stopped buying and copying them like they're going to stop making them sometime soon so that's good. Even so, it's amazing that I can stand in front of our almost 500 DVD's and think to myself 'there's nothing to watch'!

Yesterday (now it's Sunday) I took Aidan to this carnival at the mall. It was pretty sad, just a couple bouncy castles sitting out in the parking lot. Whoever planned that should be educated as to what an actual carnival is! There were some 'sidewalk sales' inside, so we walked around and I got some stuff. We stopped at Coles and Aidan 'read' some books. Usually I buy Aidan a book at Coles when we're at the mall together, provided I can find one at a good price. They have some good sales there - I got him a book called My Shadow which was an illustrated poem by Robert Louis Stevenson and a Bob the Builder book, Bob's A to Z Words. The shadow book was actually quite appropriate because after we got home and were sitting out on the porch while Aidan played, he noticed his shadow on the door and we had fun making different shapes and wiggling our hands around. Then we read the book and Aidan quite enjoyed it.

I've tried to put a little more of an emphasis on learning the alphabet lately. Aidan really enjoys 'counting' the letters and knows most of them already! Last week I bought him some alphabet flashcards with upper and lowercase. We're just introducing the lower case letters and hopefully he won't find it too confusing. So now he's got a baby einstein alphabet book (I would totally recommend this book series, they're so great! This is where Aidan first started learning his letters probably a year ago) the flashcards and now the Bob the Builder book.

Now that it's the summer, Aidan's favourite thing to do is go outside and play golf. Michael's got a set of clubs and once in awhile he sticks a tee in the porch and Aidan watches him hit a ball - then of course, Aidan wants to do the same thing. Now everytime we go outside he's in a big tizzy because he can't find his tee, then when we finally find it then we have to stick it in the grass and then as soon as he runs away to do something else and comes back, he can't find it and it starts again. Sometimes I let him go outside while I'm still getting dinner ready to go on the bbq or something so once in awhile he's got his tee and ball and everything set up so he calls me to come watch him hit the ball and he says 'Mommy! Aidan yay!' I think he says that because whenever he hits it I say yay! but it's still cute whenever he says that. He's doing much better about bugs outside but he's still terrified if a fly happens to buzz too close. I've told him he's got to stop stomping on them or running away from them because they live outside and they just want to play. So then sometimes if a bug gets too close he'll say to me in a nervous voice 'bee live yout, bee play'. Outside is either 'yout' or 'ee-yout' it's hard to write how he pronounces it. And all bugs are bees, there's no distinction.

Here are some words that crack me up every time he says them: macaroni is matt or mah-noni, smoothie is moo-mee, touchdown tut-down, thirteen is tur-teen - he's obsessed with this number and throws it into conversation randomly, like 'oh, tur-teen' I'm not sure why. More is mo, he's been saying that for a long time and it's still cute.

Well, I think I'm going to go hunt down the camera and upload some pictures. Michael went to Summer Slam last night to see Our Lady Peace and took it with him. He actually got his cd signed too which is kind of cool. He took the cd with him but I don't think he was expecting to actually be able to get it signed. Okay - have a great day everyone!

Got it!

So I got the job. My interview was this morning at 8am (poor Michael had to get up early to look after Aidan, our babysitter is back Monday) and it seemed like an okay job, though it seemed like it might be comprised mainly of photocopying. However, it won't include parts (yay!) and the person I interviewed with also raised the possibility of either me taking over bookkeeping (once I'm trained by the current book-keeper) or of taking a correspondence course in book-keeping which is what she did.

That got me thinking - I'm always trying to plan ahead and see if there is some way in which I can get myself a job that will pay well but require not as many hours so that I can do it after we (if we) have another baby. If I were to get trained as a book-keeper, then I might be able to work from home either directly for some companies or indirectly for a book-keeping company. This sounds very positive (of course anything at this point would) and I am excited to get out of my current position.
The only drawbacks to this new company are: it is owned by a husband and wife and I have not had good experiences with family owned businesses (but they've had it for 10 years and branched out with a new company so it might be okay), there is literally NO parking! but that's not major. I'm just trying to move up as I change jobs, but on this one I might just be moving sideways and that's okay too. It is $1 per hour more than I make now with an increased $1/hour in 3 months, so in 3 months time I'll be making $2/hour more than I do now and that's cool. I composed my letter of resignation; actually, I just used a form I found online because I had no idea what to say. Here it is: 'Please accept this letter as my notice of resignation, effective July 21, 2006. This wasn't an easy decision, because I am grateful for the rewarding (not rewarding, but it sounds good so I left it in there) employment I've had with TC Equipment. But after long (it said 'hours of' here, but I took that out because I haven't spent long hours of consideration, I just plain don't like it here!) consideration, my decision is now final and I have accepted a position with another company. Sincere thanks and best wishes for the future, Alanna Latham'. I left a copy on the desk of the sales man who is sort of the manager here and I will deliver a copy to the owner later today.

I have to finish warranty claims and I haven't even made a big dent in the year end inventory which really is awful. I hate doing inventory, but to preserve good relations I know it would be a good idea to try to finish off as much as I can before I go, that way there won't be any resentment etc. It sure would be nice to just walk out today though! Anyways, having said I have tons of stuff to do, I really shouldn't be on here posting, so I'm going to go and try to get all that stuff done. Bye for now.

More pictures!

This is back when it was still pretty cold out...maybe February. Aidan loves riding his bike but still hasn't learned how to use the pedals.
Here he is snuggled up on my side of the bed. He thinks it's the greatest funnest thing to hop in our bed and pretend to sleep.
Only after these pictures were taken did I realize just how short I had cut his hair! It's almost shaved bald! No wonder some people did a double take after they saw him!
Aidan and Mommy's teddy - he loves stealing this thing!
Here he is pointing to his hand showing me that he wants me to take a picture of his hand instead of his face.

So I got an interesting call the other day. Out of the blue a couple months ago one of our customers offered me a job interview with quite a good chance that I would get the job. I was pretty excited about that and sent the resume like 3 days later and never heard anything back. It was kind of disappointing, but not that big a deal. So out of the blue again he gives me a call on Tuesday and says that he hired someone else in the time he was waiting for my resume (3 days!!?) but that he knew someone else who was looking to fill a position in accounting and he could send my resume over. I said of course and then like 3 hours later I got a call from this place and they basically offered me the job on the phone! That's exciting!! I've been thinking about getting a new job for quite awhile, after our company got taken over last November I was given to believe that I would be able to take over the bookkeeping position and that's why I stayed. But now, 8 months later, nothing that the new boss has promised has happened, including what he had mentioned to me. I think if this company isn't to tiny and the job looks good it will be great - and might lead to a good paying part time job if I ever decide to go that way.

Anyways, I set this blog up mainly to tell you all about how amazing cute and smart Aidan is, so lets talk more about him. He is really into Dora the Explorer and Go Diego Go. His other favourite shows are Rolie Polie Olie, Blue's Clues and Blue's Room, This is Daniel Cook, and of course, Bob the Builder. In Dora the Explorer, there is a fox called Swiper and he pops up usually once an episode to try and swipe something. If Dora and her sidekick monkey Boots hear him first, then they say 'Swiper no swiping!' and get the kids watching to hold their hand out (like you're stopping traffic) and say it with them. Sometimes it works and then Swiper says 'Oh Man!' and runs away and sometimes it doesn't, and then he takes the thing and hides it and then you have to help Dora and Boots find where Swiper hid it. Anyways, Aidan can't say Swiper no swiping, but he can hold his hand out and instead, he says 'Top you!' (top is stop) a couple times with a lot of force. Then when Michael or I do something he doesn't like he does the same thing to us. He is talking so much more and trying to say new words every day, it's really great how much he can communicate now. It's still kind of confusing because he can't enunciate very well and there are still groups of words that he uses one word, or a variation of one word that sounds almost identical, for. The last couple days he's been at work with me I've let him sit on my lap while we drive the little lawn tractors out to the display lawn. He thinks this is great fun and likes to help me drive them. He thought we should put the biggest tractor out on the lawn as well - maybe it would work and we would finally sell it!

Of course now that I'm trying to think of funny things that he does I can't think of anything! He loves to 'lace' (chase) either outside or inside around the living room, down the hall, through the kitchen and around that circle over and over. When we do that, then halfway around I turn around and go the other way and yell boo or something or stop and hide behind the fridge or behind a door and jump out at him. Then he has his turn hiding behind the fridge and jumping out and I pretend to be scared. Or he'll tell me he's going to jump out at me and then go into our room and close the door, wait a few seconds, open the door, run down the hall and when he's a couple feet away then he yells boo and I'm supposed to be properly surprised. If I pretend to be too surprised then he stops and says 'Mommy okay?' to make sure that he didn't scare me too much. It's so cute when he starts doing things to me (like asking that, or warning me that something is hot) that he's seen me do to him. He also likes to race his little hot wheels cars. He takes two of them and lines them up and says 'Tee core (three four) GO!' and races them down the floor. Lately he's been adding thirteen to his list of numbers counting down, and sometimes he'll sit there for quite a while saying numbers before saying go. He's very preoccupied with the number thirteen and awhile ago we had to have a discussion about why thirteen wasn't on the clock, he was pretty upset about it. I'm not sure where he learned it or what the fasination is, but it comes up at the oddest times. He has 4 little race cars and one is in the style of a VW bug and that one is the baby car or baby hum. His cars are all 'hum's'. The baby car doesn't always win, but when it hasn't won then he does another race where it wins by quite a long shot. Anything small is a baby, for example, a small rock is a baby rock, a small grape is a baby grape, stuff like that. I think it started back at Christmas when we were eating so many mandarin oranges and sometimes there's a tiny little orange segment and I called that a baby orange, so I think that's where he got it from.

Well, I think that's all for tonight. I set up the comments option, so you can send me your comments now! I need to go take care of our dinner leftovers and tidy up the kitchen before going to bed. I hope you all have a great evening and a great Thursday!

Trying to post some pictures

I'm having some issues with posting pictures, so here's my third attempt:

Yay!!! It worked. Okay, so now I can put more pictures on my next post.

That was easy...

I was envisioning sitting here for the longest time setting everything up, filling out yes and no and other information fields but that was pretty easy and quick! Sunday evening Aidan and I took some pictures except he just wanted pictures of his hand or tummy or ear and got pretty grumpy when I tried to get his face. I'll try to add some pictures of that as well as some other ones I found on the camera. I haven't taken any pictures of anything for so long, I need to start doing that again.
During the summer we have a 13 year old girl, Amy, coming to the house to look after Aidan. Aidan loves her and frequently collapses in tears when it's time for her to go home - or what's worse, he'll hear me come home and get really mad and say 'No mommy!' and then tell me to go away. I know she's pretty young and there are definitely drawbacks, but the fact that Aidan loves her so so much kind of makes up for all that. We've noticed a change in his behaviour since the summer which is really really great. Now I just have to find a super great dayhome for him to go to in September! This week though, Amy is gone to teen camp and since I couldn't find anyone, Aidan gets to come to work with me! It's not really that bad, and Aidan is well behaved and loves climbing over the little Cub Cadet lawn tractors so it will work out well. Today (Monday) he made it for 6 hours and tomorrow (Tuesday) we're going to aim for 5 hours and if I can get 6 that will be wonderful. Then on Wednesday he's coming for half a day and Michael will take him that afternoon as well as Thursday and Friday since he's off shift. Today because he was so good, I bought him a chocolate milkshake. We were going to get an ice cream cone but weirdly McDonalds was out of ice cream. It was going to be a major catastrophe that he had to settle for a milkshake, but in the end he agreed and it was actually better - less mess with a straw than a spoon, and I think he enjoyed it as much. I think he thought he couldn't get chocoate if he got the milkshake, so once he figured out there were different flavours he was okay. He had this weird rash on the back of his neck and I called the healthlink line to find out if there was an allergist in my area (I thought it was from his clothing, and since this was the second time, I thought maybe he had some weird kind of sensitive skin or allergy) and it turns out the possibility for rashes are endless! So I drove down to our doctor's office on the pretext of picking up a form to fax over to my previous (mean horrible) doctor to transfer my file and while I was there mentioned that I needed to make sure this rash wasn't something weird. I hoped she could squeeze me in and she did and it turns out it was just heat rash. It seems like every time you call that healthlink they give you this scare story about whatever the situation is so you rush down to the hospital or the doctor and wait and wait and wait and wait and then it turns out that it's nothing which is both relieving and frustrating. Our new doctor is from Australia via Spirit River (just across the border in BC I think). There are a ton of 'import' doctors in town, I think because Alberta is desperate for doctors so they're making it a bit more attractive to set up an office here. The only downside is that they load up on a ton of patients to make money from the government and then the wait times for appointments are like 3 weeks. Today I was in there are she was booking for July 27th!

Well, I just loaded a bunch of pictures on the computer and that's what took the longest - that and resizing them so they're not huge and take up a bunch of space. I think I'll leave it for today and maybe try and come back tomorrow. Please feel free to comment or email me at alannalatham@gmail.com!

My First Post

Hi everyone,

I've been fairly delinquent in sending out those update emails and lately heard about a couple of my friends who had blogspot websites (hi Jade and Teresa!). I thought that this might make more sense and be easier, so here goes! I'm just setting stuff up now and will try to get back within the next couple days to post more. Hope to hear from you all soon!