Pumpkin Patch Kid

It's pumpkin time! I think there's a law that says everyone who has a small child has to take that child to a pumpkin patch this time of year.

So, even though I have a very reasonable and justifiable fear of pumpkin patches (something to do with pumpkins rotting due to a certain city's October heat and humidity, sitting on pumpkins to prop up a 4-month-old and standing up to discover pumpkin all over my backside) I manned up (mommed up?) and carted Anthony to the festivities.

I'm glad I did - he got a lot more out of it this year, as he was able to walk around, climb on piles of pumpkins and pick out his own Anthony-sized pumpkin, whereas last year all he could do is lounge where Grandma Char and I put him and endure the endless picture taking (although I swear I heard him snicker when I stood up with pumpkin on my butt and had to ask for a baby wipe...)

And now for my next trick...

Now that Anthony can stand up and walk all by himself (I KNOW!!!! And he's ONLY 16 months!!!) he's trying out some cool new tricks.

Unfortunately, this is one of them:

Oh well, I guess they're just baby teeth...and it's not like we thought an orthodontist wasn't going to be a big part of our future, anyway.

Still, I hate to mess with a smile like this one:

Anthony is 16 months old today...

…can I please be marooned on a deserted island until he’s 3 or so?

Month 16 has brought walking and its associated cuteness and relief from back strain, but also a flip side … tantrums. Basically, the back pain caused by hauling around 25 pounds of toddler has been replaced with the headaches born of what sounds like an entire day care center being told that Michael Vick has just kidnapped Blue AND Clifford.

In other words, the cuteness of walking? Completely mitigated.

At a belated 15-month pediatrician visit last week, I wouldn’t let Anthony wile away the 30-minute wait by opening and closing the door to the exam room ad nauseum, as I don’t wish for him to be diagnosed with OCD just quite yet. Oh, and also because it is annoying and what if he closed the door right when the doctor was about to walk in to see us and the doctor thought I had closed it because I wanted privacy for some reason and so he moved on to another exam room and I had to wait another 30 minutes trapped in a small windowless room with a 16-month-old?

I think I’m hyperventilating.

Fortunately, my cruel ruining of Anthony’s fun ensured there was no way the doctor, or anybody else for that matter, could overlook us, what with the wailing and the screaming and the carrying on that could probably be heard in Fort Lauderdale. Maybe even Pompano Beach.

Come to think of it, once Anthony threw his fit, the doctor did seem to make his appearance with unusual promptness, and whipped through his routine checks with impressive efficiency. Hmmm…if this could get me moved to the front of the line at Target, maybe the fact that the Terrible 2’s seem to have arrived eight months early won’t be so bad…

Well it's about time!

I'm not playing in that s**t!!!

So you may or may not know that Anthony's favorite tv show is Ni Hao Kai- Lan--a show about a cute little Chinese girl teaching the young American toddlers elementary Mandarin Chinese.

A couple of minutes ago I was buying some free tv time by playing some Kai-Lan videos for Anthony on Youtube. I came across this doozy:



I guess when we go back to Illinois this Christmas and Kelly refuses to get out of the car and cries "I'm not stepping in that s**t!!!!" it will really be nothing more than an educational tool for our little bilingual boy.