Full on video cuteness

It has been a while and I am betting everyone is just jonesing for the embodiment of cuteness that is our son! These are in no particular order and there are no special occasions, just the same level of cuteness we see every day. Ok, not quite true as we are generally not filming every second of his waking life. For example, remembering to work the camera goes right out when he is cranky, upset, injured, screaming, throwing himself on the ground, spinning his head around, shooting lightning bolts from his eyes or dismembering household pets. Not that he does these things regularly or anything. Nothing like that at all, it is just we have not managed to catch it film, trying as we are deal with the particular situation at hand. (I am in fact kidding about the dismembering pets thing. The cat may walk funny for a while but it is just fine, thank you very much.)

This first one is a typical day in the back yard. First we help water..everything, including ourselves. This is followed by a rousing course of "what are you doing and can I stick my nose into the camera?" Ending finally in a demonstration ofboth jumping and making noise.

This second one reflects the process of eating as demonstrated by a toddler. Notice the fine display of dexterity, creative use of fingers and exploration of body art as personal expression.

Table forts, or blanket caves, are simply the coolest thing when you are a toddler. Right up there with empty boxes and dirt for demonstrating that the best toys and memories are more about approaching a moment with a sense of glee and less about the amount of money spent. Now if only he were doing something more interesting than crawling in and out of the "cave".

And finally, nature provides the greatest thing of all, puddles! Puddles exist for splishing, splashing and running through, in case you were curious.

early morning adventures on Friday

My darling bride and son have been slightly unwell this past week with what seems to be summer colds. Lots of blowing of noses and similar trumpeting. My bride was having trouble sleeping this past Thursday night (ok, it was Friday morning by this time) due to all of the coughing and nose blowing on her part, so she went down stairs. She claims this was to let me get my sleep butI think she has gotten hooked on late night tv. Once she got down stairs she found she was not the only one up. Ok, not so much that someone else was up but better said that we had a visitor. A visitor that was startled almost as much as my bride. There was much flapping about as my bride tried to convince the visitor that 5 o'clock in the morning was not a good time for a social call. After that did not work she begrudgingly decided to wake me in the hopes I would have better success in convincing the visitor to view the wild egress. Bleary eyed, groggy and not sure I had heard my wife correctly I came down stairs to confront this persistent visitor. Not believing my eyes I thought I should record the moment. It helped that I was standing next to the camera when I had this thought. Here is our visitor:

It had decided to take a break on the curtains in the sun room. The unfortunate thing is that this room has no windows that open and is the farthest any room can be from either door to the outside. So I, armed with a broom and a drowsy determination to get back to sleep, went forth that convince it to remove itself. I figured the ceiling fans were not going to do its echo location thing much good, so they got turned off. Then I nudged it with the broom to get it started flying again. After that it was a matter of getting the front and back doors open and trying to convince it that certain doors were in fact walls. What I learned was that even though this bat could fit in the palm of my hand when curled up, it had a wingspan of at least a foot. I also learned that up close it does not fly like a bird does and can be very disconcerting when it is flying very fast at you. The swooping and circling does not help much either. Despite these challenges, I stood my ground and slowly, with several restarts, managed to get it outside. The we realized that one of the cats had decided to take advantage of the open doors and went exploring. Our cats are indoor cats so this was a bit of a tense moment as it was coaxed back inside. I left this to the expert and took my chance to go back to bed.

I can only hope your Friday morning was less interesting.

*smiles*

Spirit Animal Meme

I can live with this score. *grin*

Your Score: The Otter

Here's your results! Your spirit animal has a Nobility ranking of 11 out of 18.

Your spirit animal is the otter. Playful, curious and fun animals, they are truly the start of what can be considered a noble creature. Otters are good at figuring things out, and make great friends. You are lucky to have one as a spirit animal. Otters are fairly rare as spirit animals.

***Wondering how this animal was chosen for you? These questions were carefully thought out to see how important you hold certain virtues such as: humanism, self-knowledge, rationalism, the love of freedom and other somewhat Hellenic ideals. Some of the questions were very subtle. Your score was then matched with an animal of corresponding nobility. However, you shouldn't think this was a right/wrong sort of test, but more of an idealistic values test. It's ok to not hold these values, you'll just get an animal spirit of lower stature if you do!***

Link: The What is Your Spirit Animal Test written by FindingEros on OkCupid Free Online Dating, home of the The Dating Persona Test