My Little Giraffe

Thomas had a very uneventful 1st Halloween.  We are not big halloween people. Personally, I think it’s kind of creepy. Ghosts, spiders, witches, freaky jack-o-lanterns….it’s just not easy for me to get into all of that. However, I am all about babies in costumes, fall festivals, candy, apple cider, hay rides, games, fires, and fellowship with friends during this time of year!  That is much more the route and approach we plan on taking with “Halloween.” Call it what you want.

 

I used Halloween as a great excuse to waste $20 on a costume (I can’t believe I spent that much on a costume now that I type it out….grrr…) and get an adorable photo shoot with Thomas, at his expense:) It was hot that day.  He was nakie underneath his costume.  And usually, my photo shoots bore him. He’d rather be crawling around in the leaves and eating his pumpkin than sitting still and grinning at my lens. I had my favorite assistant that day helping me. Maybe you can recognize him from his carhartts with a hole in them and gray t-shirt. After all, navy and gray are the only colored shirts he likes to wear.  And sometimes, when we are living dangerously, he comes out in a hunter green t-shirt. We clearly live on the edge in the Smith household.

 

The whole, “Hey Babe (Yes, I call my assistant “Babe”…we’re just wild like that) pick some leaves up and throw them in the air around Thomas please,” idea totally backfired on me. For starters, the pile he decided to pick up just happen to be right behind my little giraffe and consequently, he was in the background of my photos…again! Secondly, his leave-collecting-project left our little man unattended as I behind the lens. This is about the time that the stem on the pumpkin started to look tasty….

And then, as quickly as it began, it was over. Thomas decided he was tired of sitting still once we took the pumpkin out of his mouth, and he was on the go!

So, we decided to do a change of location. We moved into Lady’s Territory, aka-our back yard, and brought along with us the wheel barrow my brother-in-law, Scott, made for me as a wedding present! It was a wonderful way to contain our mobile little man!

We parked it in front of our chicken-less chicken pen. We would love to have our own chickens in there, but we’re not going to buy chickens only for Lady to kill and play with them for her personal entertainment. As I type this, there is a dead little red bird laying in my back yard that she has been dragging around for several days. So, as long as Lady is my protector of the back yard, no chickens can had. We’ll just have to keep stealing some eggs from Papa Joe’s chickens across the road:)

  

Starting to get hot and grumpy…..

Luckily, at that same time, Papa Joe, Mama T, Great Aunt Cindy, and Uncle Greg pulled up in the driveway to see their little giraffe.

Thomas greeted them at the fence and thanked Papa Joe for rescuing him from his over-the-top obsessive Mother. I love those three generations of Smith men.

I Love the County Fair and I’m Not Ashamed of It….

And I’ve loved it as long as I can remember. My Granddaddy Brown used to take me and my sisters every year. I remember how hwy 67 used to back for miles with traffic, but since he used to be the President of the Kiwans Club and actually was the one who originally brought the fair to town, he got a special parking pass. So going to the fair with ‘Daddy Brown’ was even more special in my mind as a child because it meant more time for rides and games and less time spent stuck in traffic and parking. In later teenage years when Daddy Brown was not well enough to attend the fair and after he passed, I can remember going on Thursday nights, aka “Wristband Night”, with all of my high school friends and seeing everyone who was anyone. Oh, the joys of living in a small town!

I’m not sure if I have ever skipped a year of going to the fair besides last year when I was pregnant and about to move into our new home. I spent all of last September and October picking out new paint shades for the wall, new carpet and countertops, and being a 24/7 incubator for the baby in my belly.  And now that our Little Red Bird has arrived,  I want to take as many adventures to the fair with him over the years as he will allow me to.

 

I love everything about a county fair. The funnel cakes…the livestock…seeing everyone you know….eating a bag of cotton candy while I’m there and then another bag when I get home…the excitement that’s in the air….all of the different colored lights on all of the rides….the corndogs….heck, I even like the rap songs from the 90’s they blast out.  I thought Thomas would really love it this year, but I think he was just completely over stimulated.  The music is so so so loud, and I had forgotten, or actually never really taken into account, how loud the rides are themselves. If you look at the fair from Thomas’s eyes, it is pretty scary.  He ended up wanting to be carried almost the entire time. There’s nothing like having to push an empty stroller and carry your kid. Luckily, I had many helpers on this little outting, but I’ve been known to use one arm to push the grocery cart and the other arm to carry T on my hip.

 

This year, we went with Heather and Kelby, or better known as “Aunt Heather and Uncle Bubba” to Thomas.  Some of the pictures below are ones I’ve stolen on Heather’s facebook account (forgive me, Sister!). Between lugging my child, our stroller, and my camera around, I didn’t get a chance to take too many pics.

           

All of the hours Kelby’s logged in the gym lately paid off when he was able to hit the thingy with the hammer hard enough to win his woman a lollipop.

 

Heather was so proud!

 

See, I told you I had a lot of helpers. They juggled Thomas and shared a corn dog while D and I chowed down on our nachos and corn dogs. Oh, how I love this picture!

 

 

On a completely different note, don’t you wish your refrigerator looked like this every day?? I had washed both purple and green grapes, cut up both green and red apples, strawberries, and cantaloupe!!  It was all being used for a party the next day. I’m not this on top of things on a daily basis. But, YUMMY!  I wish I were and could keep my fridge looking like this!

And on another completely random note, this is usually what I see when nap time is over.

Every time I get Thomas up from a nap, we play a little game of peek-a-boo. Mainly because I’m already down on the floor picking  up all of the pacies he’s thrown out. I love seeing his little face through the rails!

And in case you’re thinking, “Oh, what a boring nursery. She doesn’t even have a cute bumper.” Let me explain…well, for starters, it is kind of a boring nursery. I didn’t really get into the whole “have a perfectly cute and completed” nursery thing when I was pregnant. I was 6 months pregnant when we moved, and well, I was just too exhausted and sick of decorating when we moved to do much in his nursery. I have a lot of ideas and it is slowly coming together. But for now, it’s kind of random. And I did have a really cute little baby bumper in his crib with character farm animals and tractors and such, but I felt like it was entirely too wide and took up way too much room in his crib. Not to mention I was worried that with it being so thick that it wouldn’t allow air to circulate well throughout his crib. So, we now use this little mesh one from Babies-R-Us, and I think it is great. It is enough to keep his limbs from getting stuck and to cushion a few falls, yet still breathable and thin!

 

And lastly, I’ll leave you with Thomas and his best friends.  He greets them both at the door.

He and his Daddy love to sit on the porch and rock in the afternoons.

And just for kicks, here’s yet another picture of Lady with one of her kills!