year four

kris and i celebrated our four-year wedding anniversary today, a couple of days after the actual one.

her mom and dad came down -- kris' gift to me -- so we could have a few hours to catch a movie and a meal.

(i got her ... nothing. for some reason i thought i wouldn't be able to afford a traditional or even non-traditional gift, so i just got her a card. which got lost after i'd bought it about a month ago.)

(the real bummer was that i could have afforded both the traditional -- flowers or fruit -- or the modern -- linen, silk or nylon. i'd assumed it would have been some precious metal or jewel that she would have been cheesed off at me for buying. dumb.)

anyhow, after a speedy cleanup, so as not to offend gaga and papaw, we cleaned ourselves up and tried our best to sneak out of the house.

(failing miserably; the boy got away from papaw and stood with his hands and face pressed against the window, probably howling. we felt like dirt.)

still, we sallied forth and hit the road knowing only that there were no movies in town that we wanted to see and that we were still mostly full from lunch with the boy.

we formulated plans as we drove down the hill to main drag on corridor g.

sad thing was we both knew we wanted alcohol -- preferably in a martini. now all we had to do was think of things to put around it.

it came together pretty quickly after that: i'd never been to the bridge road bistro, but knew they had a nice bar. food to go with drink. bing.

with no live performances happening at 2 in the afternoon, why not take in an art exhibit at the clay center and make that family membership of ours work? entertainment. bing.

and away we went.

resisting change

this may be the last remnant of a design i picked when this thing first went live about six years ago.

recently, facebook quit uploading photos or text when i'd try to post blog entries, so i figured a newer template design would allow it to scan better.

no such luck.

so now i've uploaded straight via google's picasa site rather than my flickr account, in case there's a translation issue.

 if this doesn't work, i'm going to be really pissed.

outgrowing things

this hat was the boy's go-to "going out," cold weather hat this winter. next winter, he'll be on to another one.

a bummer. i seriously loved this ridiculous hat.

these toddler years, he's outgrowing outfits from season to season, if not month to month.

he's wearing my ass out, but i know once he only needs to change what he wears from year to year, i'll miss these days when he was small enough to carry.

becoming a person

so a few days after mama and the boy went to the east end coffee shop, they wound up at a downtown cafe after a trip to the library.

the boy kept pointing at the big coffee cup sign in the window and urging "kah-fee! kah-fee!"

kris decided she'd indulge him, so she sat him down with a cup of ice water and a straw, while she pulled up with a nice cup of fancy coffee.

miraculously enough, the boy sat and sipped and stared at people walking by the window for about half an hour. (definitely picks that up from mama's genes.)

and kris got a real, relaxing coffee break of her own. what a bonus.

i had my own coffee miracle later that week when a quick trip to the library ended without any snack or refill for the boy's sippy cup in my backpack. this would not portend a good travel bridge between breakfast and lunch.

so we swung by our favorite downtown bookstore cafe and i ordered a black coffee and a cup of milk.

unfortunately, this did not meet the $5 minimum for debit card purchases, so i gambled on a cranberry scone.

we almost had a perfect sit, where he noshed on bits of the rich, buttery bread and stared around the shop.

then his mother's genes kicked in and he started craning his neck to see what else what going on, forgetting to keep his cup of milk upright and spilling it on the floor.

ah, well. it was a good 10 minutes.

still, he managed to comport himself in a public place without fidgeting and squirming. i'll have to call that progress.

(contrast that with last weekend's anniversary dinner with mom and dad, where he was past dinner time and encroaching on bedtime and out of his mind with restlessness and irritability.)

and then there's this:

From kris re the boy at supper: When i sat him down to eat, he put a tudor's napkin in his lap and then blessed himself.

— some asian guy (@grumpnet) March 5, 2012

two steps forward, one step back. such is child-rearing.

reduce, re-use, redux

today was the last day to drop off recyclables at the county recycling center.

the dangerous building at the facility led to the abrupt announcement of its closure this week.

it kind of threw kris and me into a panic, as our family generates bags of plastics, metals, paper and cardboard every week.

the city kindly picks up paper, plastic and metal curbside once a week.

but they don't pick up cardboard or glass, which we end up a lot with, what with diapers, wipes, cereal and pasta boxes we toss, not to mention the beer and wine bottles and assorted jars we go through.

so i trucked out with the boy this afternoon to ditch our last caches of glass and cardboard.

broke my first-ever recycling bottle dropping out of the jeep. there has to be some irony there. cut myself on it, too, picking up the pieces. hope i cleaned it out well.

it really is kind of astounding how much crap we have to get rid of every day.

no sooner is the trash and recycling out the door as we start a new bag or filling the box under the sink.

at the moment, we're still generating only one true bag of trash a week, if you don't count a bag that is only diapers. (those things get very heavy.)

the rest -- about two or three big yard waste bags -- is recyclable material.

i guess we'll hold up on the glass and cardboard as best we can. hopefully, the county will have at least found an alternative if not a replacement before we have to start chucking it into some landfill.