the whole memory-lane thing

I was just reading through some of my earliest posts on this blog, and man, I gotta tell you--I miss the old me. I change so many diapers these days that getting crapped on by a bird on the way to Rob Gym is nothing close to newsworthy. Well, I suppose being in the vicinity of Rob Gym would be newsworthy, but I'm pretty sure that wasn't the part that I focused on at the time. What a zest for life I had back then! What a lot of time I had back then!

On the subject of diapers, let me tell the world that I don't actually mind changing diapers, but I do mind cleaning out training potties or whatever those disgusting things that kids use before they're big enough to use the toilet are called. We don't have ours anymore. I declared them retired. Will just uses the toilet. Sure, he's terrified that he's going to fall in (again), but what doesn't kill him makes him stronger. And yes, I know you can buy those things that go over the regular toilet seat to convert it for a small-derriered individual, but Will's daddy taught him early on to pee standing up, so he sits on the toilet relatively infrequently and does pretty much fine, so I think we're good with the system we have. Hopefully Ryan will be as quick a study.

Summertime

We've been having a good summer. For one thing, until the last couple of days it has not been miserably hot and humid. We've done decently well keeping busy, generally going to the Y at least a couple of mornings a week and playing with friends another one or two. We've also enjoyed eating dinner outside most evenings. Above is Will and Ryan expertly tackling their ears of corn.


We also finally got the chance to paint the downstairs bathroom. A large portion of our house was painted a pretty but very dark chocolate brown when we moved in, and little by little we're lightening the place up. Here is Will applying the first strokes of the lavender (OK-purple-but-shut-up-I-like-it) paint. My next project with the bathroom is to accessorize so that it doesn't look quite so purple, though I do think the color is pretty. Voila, so far (valance is temporary):



Also this summer, Ryan spent some time in his booster seat eating. The kid likes to eat an awful lot. I believe he was disappointed weighing in in the 30th percentile at his one-year well-baby appointment, so he's done all he could since then to bulk up. Here he is sitting in his booster seat, just looking cute (in my opinion).



Last week we went on our big summer tour of upstate NY and New England. We visited my parents for a few days, where Will carried my mom's dog all around and rode on a tractor (see pictures below). We then drove to Maine, via Vermont and New Hampshire, where we met up with Matt's brother and his girlfriend for a couple of days. And we then caught up with my best college friends at Liz's beautiful farm in Maine. I don't have pictures from that portion of our trip, but Will got to feed Liz's goats, rabbits, and chickens (and maybe some other animals too, I'm not sure). It was a really nice trip, though a lot of driving and extremely tiring for all involved.




One of the best things about going on vacation was coming home to find our front walk completely redone. This wasn't totally unexpected since we arranged with the contractor for it to happen during our absence, but we were nonetheless pleasantly surprised to find that the work actually got done and to our satisfaction, no less. Our front walk used to be broken concrete and front porch primarily poorly-patched concrete. Now the walk is red brick and the porch is repaired and embellished with red-brick trim. (It will look even nicer once we mow the lawn, but first it has to stop raining.)



Now for the bad part of the summer. Will got Lyme disease! We have no idea where or when, but over vacation he was horribly tired and very sensitive and then he broke out with this really weird rash. We wasted no time getting him to the doctor upon our return, and blood tests verified Lyme a couple of days later. Luckily he is responding magnificently to the antibiotics and is more or less back to his old self, only four days into the treatment. He gets tired pretty easily, but is otherwise truly back to being himself already. Here's the poor kid, all splotchy-faced a couple of days ago: