Ickity Dickity Dock is quite the fish. Talk about two kids who love the pool — take a look at her smile. Thank goodness, since that is what our backyard is.
Scout in his Sharky, and Siss in her Ducky.
(Fitting that she is in the ducky since our pets Daisy and Donald have consumed her life.)
(The ducky is slightly large on her because the makers don’t expect someone this young to be wearing one.)
I would expect nothing less, but Siss about gives me a heart attack when she is in the pool. She jumps off of everything, happily goes under the water, runs around the jacuzzi on the uneven cement, all in the ducky that is a bit too big for her and laughs the entire time. Here she is after jumping off of the side.
For Skilly’s 12th birthday, B kidnapped all of her friends (which included Scout and Navy) and took everyone to breakfast. It was really fun. On our way home, I said to Scout, “I never have you this early on a Saturday morning….let’s figure out something really fun to do.” He started thinking right away. After about a mile, I saw a sign that said “Community Garage Sale”, and asked Scout and Navy if they knew what a garage sale was. They obviously didn’t, so I told them we were going to go garage sale-ing. We drove up and down the streets, and Scout was fascinated. He saw a couple of things that we “looked” at (nasty, old, used stuff), but I told him that we had to find a real treasure in order to buy it. We were having the best time when we hit a serious gold mine!
Before I elaborate — let me take you on a walk down memory lane. When I was in elementary school, I was walking home and found a garage sale. It was in the backyard of a little old lady. I went in to see what it was all about, and realized that I could literally shop right there and then — and better yet — for great prices! I only had my milk money which was 15 cents. I started browsing, and I settled on two fabulous items. To my great excitement, the little lady let me have both for my small offering. I took both things…put them in my book bag…and skipped the rest of the way home. When I got home, I ran in to my mom to show her my loot. As I was pulling everything out, I was telling my mom that there are these really cool things called “garage sales”. Imagine my surprise when my mom started yelling, “KeeKee KeeKee” (our family word for gross). I still can’t understand why a sheer nightgown and a coffee-stained mug were so “KeeKee”.
Hopefully it is pretty easy to understand why I am kind of snotty when it comes to garage sales. If there is any sort of “KeeKeeness”, I steer clear. Actually, if you want to know the truth, the last garage sale I attended, might just be in the backyard of a little old lady.
So back to the goldmine…in an attempt to teach Scout about the garage sale culture, I was determined to buy at least something. And like it was Heaven-sent, I stumbled across the rep of Little Tikes — one of my favorite toy makers. Everything in her garage was pristine, and completely packaged. She is single, has no children, and doesn’t have anywhere for her samples to go after she receives them. So she decided to put them up for sale. I ended buying about 3/4 of everything she had to offer. I even duplicated things I already have because the deals were too good to pass up. Scout and Icka were thrilled, and I ended up with over 30 brand new perfect toys.
Everything was great until my snot of a mother looked at my find. When I showed her everything, I made her guess how much I paid for EVERYTHING. (At this point, I reminded her what I had paid -retail- a month before, for the exact same toy in the exact same packaging.) She thought for a while and said hesitantly, $100. My steal was for $120, so I told her she was crazy. She was not only clueless on what these toy’s retail prices were, but she clearly didn’t know how nice the garage was from whence they came. She then said, “I don’t care how nice the garage was. I wouldn’t have paid two cents.”
SNOT!
Don’t ever touch one thing I bought.
EVER!
Here is Skylar’s ear piercing in pictures.
This also depicts Skilly in a nutshell.
Here is our overly dramatic bag of nerves.
She spent an entire month worried about getting her ears pierced.
Scout tried to help the situation by singing “Baby, baby, baby” — you know….Justin Bieber.
But this wasn’t the last we would hear from Mr. Bieber.
B had to literally hold Skylar down like this so that she wouldn’t move.
Moving had become Skylar’s greatest fear.
Let’s be honest — who would want uneven ears?
She was saying, “NO…NOT YET…NO!!!”
But then Justin Bieber came on the radio over the loud speaker, and in a moment of Bieber Fever weakness, she said, “OK….DO IT!”
And they did.
She immediately said, “That was it? That didn’t even hurt!”
Really?
You mean what we had told you for months was true?
We were glad to see our brave soul comfort the next girl.
(Notice the hand holding.)
Interesting how that next girl started bawling and just couldn’t go through with it.
Maybe it was all of the drama and freaking out that she saw from Skylar for twenty minutes prior to the piercing.
You are the big 12!
You are official babysitting age.
Don’t forget that I trump everyone when it comes to babysitting.
And I pay free fifty free.
Your payment came in the form of me naming my child after you.
After dinner, we had just enough light to get a family walk in. Scout was on his two wheeler, Icka was on the trike (telling me she wanted out the entire time), Micah was overseeing Scout’s safety, and I pushed sweet thing.
The beginning of our journey.
Icka kept flashing her smile, so we tried to get a photo. Micah realized how impossible it is to snap a shot of her, because our girl doesn’t wait for anything — especially the three red eye flashes. Good old Scout smiled on cue every time.
Our neighbors rose bushes are insane! They look like this every year.
Dasiy and Donald are back!
They have shown up for about the last five days, and my kids love to feed them.
My mom gets so annoyed (due to the massive poops) whenever she sees them, and basically forbids us to provide their snacks.
So we usually do it when she isn’t around, or is still snoozing away.
This was the first time that Daisy showed up solo.
Scout had a lot of theories as to where Donald was — Duck Chuck E. Cheeses, Duck Work…
But since it is Sunday, we finally settled on Duck church.
(Update — when we returned from church, the couple was reunited and waiting patiently for us and their bread. Glad to know that there wasn’t a duck divorce like there was two years ago.)
We renewed our pass to the Wild Animal Park, and spent an afternoon there with Nonnie.
Scout used to totally be into feeding the birds, but was much more hesitant this time around. He actually kept a good distance, while Icka was trying to basically terrorize the innocent creatures. They had their revenge when one of them bit her. Lesson learned.
Scout had a death grip on me from behind.
Our time was pretty short, so we headed to the tram that takes us into Africa. Notice Scout sitting so happily on my mom’s lap and Icka trying to escape.
She tired us out, and by about minute fifteen, she was all over the place.
Her favorite place was the seat behind us with a little girl that would scream her bloody brains out at Navy. Icka held her own, and out screamed her. This shot is pre-fight.
As soon as she could tell that her carers were wiped from her shenanigans, she would charm herself back into our good graces with a supersmooch.
I read one of these books a few years back as I only had one little masculine baby under my belt.
I recently picked up another book, that I am just starting.
I will let you guess which child goes with which book.
(Sidenote: (for my children who will read this in the future) I have two perfect and adorable children. One is calm and my little shadow who is agreeable and happy. One is quite the busy little bee, who has started using the word “NO” in a screachy, high-pitched voice. This little one is not bad by any means. In fact, she is an absolute delight and makes me laugh all day long. I am just trying to nip my sweet thing’s strong will in the bud, before she gets into her toddler years. I love her strong will. I love that her personality is bigger than life. I love that Scout is learning great life lessons, I am learning consistency and patience, and Micah is learning that his personality genes took over on this girl.)
Anyone who knows me might keel over and die when they find out what I just bought. For the first time in my life….I bought a calendar. I don’t know whether to celebrate or cry. I have always been able to organize everything in my mind just fine. I am still pretty fine with how I do things. But lately I’ve found that when people ask about a certain date, I get an inkling that I “have something” that day…I just don’t remember what that “something” is. At least this way, when I excuse myself from an activity, I will have a legitimate reason, instead of, “I know I have something, but I don’t remember what it is or what time it is.” I also might show up where I am supposed to when I am supposed to. I think Micah and my mom might have a special party in my honor because of my recent purchase.
But as I write this….I am starting to perspire under my arms just a bit. Who wants a schedule. Who needs a schedule. Certainly not me! We’ll see how this goes. Time will tell.
Talk about buyer’s remorse!
(August 12th update — My calendar is still on May, with scribbling all over it from Skylar.)
Carruthy took a strep test. He said it caused a fight within the office. Carruthy thought it was negative, and the peons thought it was positive. Obviously Carruthy was right, but as a precaution, he took another swab and sent it to the lab. “It would be extremely rare for a child this young to have strep”, according to Carruthy. The results proved that he is the only person worth seeing in that office. No strep. So I asked what else it might be? “Even more rare than strep would be mononucleosis.” I guess my boy is one rare child.
And by the way —- Isn’t mono the “kissing disease”? Furthermore, I don’t have mono….so who else has he been kissing? I wonder if Roly the Holy Poly had mono.
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