A Day with Peanut

Good morning, and welcome to a day with Peanut! ;)

No time to chat mom, get me out of here!

Out of the crib, trying to figure out what's going on. We've got a lot to do today, from getting ready for the day, eating, feeding the cats, and starting out our fun day. Better catch your breath there kid.

He's been into reading us books lately. It's mainly just 'choo choo', but every now and again he'll throw a twist in, like 'Cow' and sometimes if we read a story in a sing song manner he'll mimic it while reading. However this is a library book, so I was a bit surprised to see him venture into reading it himself after only a few days with it.

Well, I guess the boy is ready for breakfast! I was planning on french toast, however I neglected to make bread last night, sooooo pancakes it is!

 So this is how I may normally portray making pancakes. A picture with him with a spoon... or something... next to a bowl of ingredients, 'helping us.' Of course in reality, after 10 seconds he's bored and playing with his trains in the other room.

Like so :)

He doesn't even have a train here, he's just having fun running around and around the table going choo choo! He's great at having fun independently. So I can make the batter while waiting for daddy to come down.






There's daddy! Now that I have an extra pair of hands, the fun can really begin! Starting with a diaper change. Hooray Superman!!! Then they can play while I make the pancakes, hopefully giving it a little bit of time to cool before he remembers that he was hungry and hears me cooking :)

Chowing down on his breakfast of pancakes with Daddy. We ended the gluten free experiment yesterday, and so far things seem fine. And hopefully they'll stay fine, though we'll keep an eye out today just in case. I was very worried that maybe he has an issue like me when things improved quickly after we started him on the diet, but perhaps it was just all coincidence.

 Halfway through breakfast, Peanut ran out to the living room, pulled off his sock and started counting his toes. PRIORITIES!

 Time to get dressed, it feels like a sweater kind of day, but for right now we'll stick with jeans and an undershirt. Blink!

I suppose it's high time the cats get fed too. Peanut is good at scooping out there food and delivering it haphazardly to the top of the dryer :) He gets upset if he finds out we've fed them without him, he likes to scoop it, put the back on, and shut the cabinet door back up. The cats like to sneak food out of the bin while they wait for him :)

A video compilation of putting up the tree! Lights are good fun, lots of weird stuff to look at and play with. Plus there's XMas music, because we're so festive! He was intrigued by everything, but he had no clue why all this stuff was happening. Which, I mean, yeah. He was 15 months last year, he'd have no memory. So I'm thinking we spend a few days talking about Santa Claus!

 A giant box! With a cat in it! Quick, climb inside and play! He didn't know what to do when he got in, so he just stood there and looked at me for awhile, then demanded help getting out.

Checking out the XMas tree from a different angle.

So then I went downstairs and started uploading some vidoes and stuff, tasking Daddy with playing with Peanut for awhile. So a few minutes later, what do I hear? They're already outside shoveling. And I guess Peanut was being quasi helpful while I was still inside, but ah well, here we are as I get out there.

We've been working on identifying vehicle types (school bus, tractor, garbage truck) and lo and behold it was garbage day here! He was even nice enough to wave at us. Then we badgered the neighbor's family a little as they arrived to visit, and Peanut was very interested in what was in their vehicle. SMH.

 We're back inside, time for a snack on some peanuts! Gasp! Canabalism! He will say 'nuts' but not 'peanuts' yet. Working on it!

 Packed up tight in a light jacket and his Thomas train, we're going to the library! Unfortunately, even with two adults there, he was a bit too much to handle and I didn't get any pictures there. He likes to run from stack to stack playing peekaboo and laughing as loudly as he can as we desperately shush him and try to get him to read a book or play with a toy. Someday it will be easier and more enjoyable for us adults... someday.

 Back home again, looking outside with the kitty, admiring the decor. We've got Santa Home, Rudolph and Snoopy on the front window, and on the sliding door we have a Penguin and the words Ho Ho Ho. Clearance from last year on those guys, woo hoo!

Our library loots! We returned Pinocchio, so we picked up Castle in the Sky for tonight (Friday night is Movie night), a Santa Claus book, a Sandra Boyton book, and a few books by an author that I love.

It seriously took me forever to find a book just about Santa. Not a mouse pretending to be Santa, not a book about other Christmasy stuff, just a book about Santa. I kind of found one, at least he was the main character. Maybe all the good Santa books are checked out :(

At the bottom of our XMas box I spied a wind up Santa. Sure enough, he loved it as much as he did last year! Santa eats your brains!!!


So then it was time for lunch. And me realizing that I planned on making lunch which meant I needed to start BEFORE lunchtime. So I scrapped my plans, and threw some Smilies in the oven and opened up some canned fruit. Sometimes simple is best, right? While I did that and it was cooking, Boi decided they would cap off their festive morning by watching the Grinch Stole Christmas. It looks like he enjoyed it.

We always try to have him help by getting his plate/bowl out and putting it on the table for us.

Smilies and a fruit cocktail side, he really didn't end up eating very much anyways though, he never has much of an appetite when he has pancakes for breakfast.

Brushing his teeth, he loves brushing those toofs.

Saying goodnight to different things in his room, after reading Grandpa and Me and the Santa book. He wanted me to read, so no pictures there. Pictures always suck in the light of his room anyways, I'll try to grab the good camera for tonight, it's just a pain in the ass to try to keep it nearby right now and keep his tiny sticky hands off of it.


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Nap break over~! He didn't actually nap though, which has elevated his cranky level. So it took me a little bit longer to get back to you guys. But he's busy being productive with Daddy, so here we go!

This is what we walked into when we gave up on napping. Little stinker! Then we gathered up all our gutso and headed outside for the daunting task of finally hanging the lights. We've had bad luck this past month with it always been cold or snowy on Boi's days off, so today we just had to do it.

Look Daddy, I can hang the lights for you! You just hold me... and do all the work too? We went for a short walk after that, and played stop and go. Of course the one time he didn't want to stop was when a car was heading down the street... sighs.

We got the first string up and decided to contemplate the next one while watching Jeopardy, in the warmth. So we headed inside and started on dinner while it was on. Peanut, what's the answer???

No seriously Peanut, I don't know the answer! Boi got Final Jeopardy, but only because it was a sports question. Boo hoo :( At least I got Dinner prepped without being bugged too much! Except when I turned on the blender... but I was just asking for it then, Peanut loves loud noises.

Then Boi headed out to hang the second string. In the meantime Peanut and I feasted on potato pancakes and fruity jello. Deeeeeeelicious! I was going to make the cauliflower... but well that didn't happen. A lot of things not happening today! Tomorrow we'll make up on the lack of vegetables today.

 We kind of had a vision for the lights... it turned out ok. It wasn't long enough for one idea, and two short for another, so we  thought, what if the extra just hung in semi circles above the garage? Well it's a new string, so the end of it was all tightly wound up and didn't lay nicely. But we'll call it Art Inspired By Peanut.

Peanut wanted to run and play, but we just wanted to show him it. His response? 'Wow!'

Then of course when we took him inside and he THREW A FIT! He didn't want to come in that fast, and just be held out there. He cried and yelled and screamed, and it was all fine and dandy until he took it out on Kiara. She behaved beautifully, despite his yanking on her ear madly. Soooo we had a timeout to chill out and de-stress. And afterwards he very calmly laid around playing with his toys. So I guess it worked.

We had a bit of an interlude then doing a thing for Boi's family, drawing names out of a hat for gift giving. That took... a lot of takes. After 3 or 20 false starts though, and an intermission to snack on milk and peanuts, we got it done. It was clear though that he was completely wiped for the day.

So then we figured, it's movie night, let's put on Castle in the Sky...

That did not work out great. He sat for it great, but partially because he was falling asleep. So 15 minutes in we had to hit pause and find something loud and entertaining to do! He did watch the Grouch today anyways, so he's good on his movie technically. It's an hour before bedtime here, and with no nap, we're extra tired *yawn* me too!








Ho hum, what's left to do that fits our holiday themed day???

Why let's hang the stockings! Boi is missing his, as it managed to get dirty in storage, but we figured we could hang the other ones. Peanut had a blast helping with his blue hammer.

But fun times apparently can only last so long, and we opted to start bathtime. No girls allowed! He just actually likes shutting the door on me. It's so funny! I guess I can see that.

And have lots of bathtime fun. Right now he's been liking the showers more, so that's what we're doing here. Shower time!!

And wear our Thomas the Train robe as we brush our teeth. If we could get him to say 'Thomas' or 'Train' I'd be stoked. STOKED!

Read an extra fun Elmo book, the Freight Train book, then Happy Hippo Angry Duck, and then the Good Night Train. I really need to get a video of him reading Freight Train, he's starting to point out parts of the train on that one. 'bell' 'istle' 'light' and 'stack' :D

Plus look at those snazzy TMNT pajamas. No seriously, look at them, they're adorable.

Good night birds, Blue Jay, Torn House Finch and Cardinal. Good night letter L and baby Peanut. Good night Froggy, Dragon and Tree.


Look at your train blanket, let's pull that up over you as daddy refills your water.

We tried to get a video of him saying goodnight, but that just made him all sorts of upset. Took him 40 minutes to fall asleep even. Poor tuckered out kiddo :( But I think he's asleep now at least, a bit before normal bedtime. Obviously on no nap days bedtime gets bumped up to make up for the lost sleep. Now it's about 9:00, and I can finish this up, glare at Boi's cookies (not gluten free :( ) and we can get the house cleaned up and finish that movie. We start again tomorrow, of course just me and Peanut tomorrow after Boi goes into work. 4 days on until the next day off! You know we'll be counting down :)

Thanks for joining us!