Silly Old Bear

And in other news...Alton has discovered his first teddy bear! Hasn't ever shown any interest in stuffed animals before even though they were in his bedroom and playroom. We introduced a "lovey" at night--a little flat washcloth of a pooh bear who looks like a flying squirrel--but Alton hasn't become attached to it other than to wave it around and throw it out of the crib when he wakes up in the morning. But a couple of months ago our friend Holly gave him a big stuffed pooh bear (if you scroll way down, he's one of the last pictures in this post) and it has been sitting decoratively on the spare twin bed in Alton's bedroom ever since. On Mother's Day, Andy was getting Alton out of bed in the morning when suddenly something clicked, and his eyes lit up when he saw Pooh Bear sitting there on his bed. He was practically leaning out of Andy's arms; he had to have that bear!
He insisted on carrying it from room to room most of that day, and continued to be so enthralled with Pooh that I nearly considered bringing it on the upcoming trip Alton and I were taking. The only bummer is that P.B. is so large that when Alton has his arms around it, the bear's big 'ol cranium is in Altie's face and he can't even see to walk! I mentioned the problem to Grammy, who proposed a solution: she would hunt for a smaller version of the bear for Grandpa to bring up in his suitcase over his Memorial Day weekend visit. Victory! The diminutive bear was procured and imported to Oregon. Alton, however, feels that two bears for the price of one is the way to fly. He likes to hold either bear by the leg or the paw and sling it backwards over his shoulder to carry it around the room. He gets the smaller bear in a headlock. He hugs the big bear tightly and rests his head on Pooh's fluffy softness. Best of all, the toys have inspired a new word for him to speak: bear! He sounds like a Bostonian saying the word "bar": bah! Today he added a "boo bah!" just to make sure we knew who he was talking about. Pooh Bear, of course.

Real Men Wear Madras

I am way behind on posts and letting our nearest and dearest know of all our goings-on. But perhaps that is what Memorial Day weekend is for...catching up? Truthfully, the weather is supposed to be out-of-control gorgeous this weekend, so I doubt I will spend too much time online. But here is a summer, shortalls-clad little cutie to wish you a Happy Memorial Day!

April Visitors: Part II, Nonna

After Grammy's April spring break visit came Nonna's, and they were considerate to me and booked their flights on the same day: Grammy departed the day Nonna arrived! So Alton and I dropped off one grandmother, headed over to Ikea to stroll around (Alton really enjoyed getting behind his stroller and pushing it through the store) and kill some time, then picked up the other grandmother! Very efficient. And we definitely packed her visit with things to do. The day after her arrival was the "Underwater Eggstravaganza" at our local community pool. I had signed Alton up for the toddler age group, and then the staff throws tons of plastic eggs into the pool and the kids get to collect them from the water. Parents included, of course, and inside the eggs were small plastic toys (tiny jars of bubbles, jumping frogs) and plastic tags that you could redeem in another room for stickers, pencil toppers, or candy. I was on swim duty, Andy took pictures, and Nonna held onto the eggs that we collected, because it had not occurred to me that Alton would need some sort of bucket to collect them in the water. Afterward they had the "Easter Bunny" in the sticker room for you to take pictures, so Alton and I got dressed and posed for the kitsch factor, even though big freaky plush rabbit suits are not really my thing (or Alton's, judging by the confusion on his face).





Okay, fun's over. When Nonna got into town Andy and I had debated about painting the kitchen, and since you've already seen that post, I guess you know we decided to do it. So as soon as we got home from the pool and for all of Nonna's visit, the kitchen was torn apart and cooking anything was a challenge. However, the Sicilian sweatshop prevailed and my mom was able to bake her traditional Sicilian Easter Ring. (The backstory, of course, is that she usually bakes one at her house to have on Easter, and bakes smaller breads to ship to her children who live farther away...except this year she didn't have time to bake one at home ahead of time for the family to eat back in Santa Maria and they really didn't let her forget it. Seriously, KC knows that his mom walks on water, and he had this very chilling Michael Corleone stillness in his face and voice when we talked to him on video chat. The fam gave Nonna exactly 1.5 days off when she arrived back home, then they made her bake bread for them the Sunday following Easter. The picture below is just so that I can rub it a little more in their faces that Oregon had "Easter bread" and they didn't. Mmmm.)

Then two days after Easter was Alton's Easter Photo Shoot, and we all know how adorable that was! Nonna was prop mistress, holding the basket or camera case or eggs as needed, and good-naturedly freezing her butt off and dodging rain drops. Despite the grey skies that I had to try not to get in the shots, it was actually a great day for these pictures because the light was bright and the flowers were in bloom. Less than a week later these fluffy white trees were almost bare!


That was also the day of Alton's re-discovery of yogurt (he had some before, but it didn't agree with his stomach at that age). Mom was eating some and he was so interested and intrigued by the taste that we stripped him to the waist, put him in his high chair and he scarfed it up!

After a day of tax-free shopping at the mall, we had a visitor come to our house! Alton and *B had so much fun playing together and during our afternoon of sun we went to the park: toddlers, Daddy, Nonna, Mama, dog, wagon, blankies. Aaaaand...scene!









We had a great visit with Nonna and her week of spring break was over much too quickly. Both she and Grammy were very kind to each babysit Alton for a little while during their trips so that Mama could attend dr's appointments, volunteer at a local consignment sale, go grocery shopping, etc. We were really glad to have them here, show off all the work that we'd done to our house since they'd last seen it and get some more work done, and have fun, fun, fun with Alton! He says that now that he's walking, they had better go into training before his next visit if they want to keep up.

April Visitors: Part I, Grammy

Alton is a very lucky boy that he has two grandmothers who are teachers! They have spring breaks, summer breaks, winter breaks, and they often like to visit us up in Oregon during this time off. Our first visitor was Grammy (Rhyne) at the beginning of April, which coincided with the start of some wacky weather! The day she arrived it was fantastically sunny, mid-70s, and we grabbed her from the airport and hustled out to the park in Hillsboro to take advantage of the gorgeous afternoon. Grammy was looking into her suitcase and lamenting that she had sensibly brought warm layers to wear instead of shorts and t-shirts! Andy took a day off so that we could hit the Children's Museum and the park, and we caught lots of fantastic pictures of Alton and Grammy having fun.




Portland Children's Museum

Alton and Grammy explore the water exhibit

Alton gets smocked and finds out how to pour with the watering can!



Shopping at the grocery store/restaurant exhibit (that plastic fruit was seriously heavy!)



Checking out the latch/switch board at the construction exhibit

Sensory and climbing play in the Baby's Garden


Grammy puppet show

Framed! - by Andy

In a recent issue of the Pottery Barn catalog, Katie found a picture frame that would be perfect for displaying Alton's growth from birth to 1 year old. These frames exist all over the place and serve roughly the same purpose, but what made this one unique was that it was actually 12 small frames hanging inside of a larger frame.

We thought this to be a cute frame, but at $250 (on sale for $200) the cost was prohibitive. So we thought about how it was made and figured we could make one ourselves. The basic construction is as follows: a large frame without glass; a backing for that fame covered in fabric and equipped with hangers; 12 small frames all evenly spaced in the large frame. Seems easy enough. Once all of our pieces were gathered, we went to work and created our masterpiece!

Clearly, we chose different colors for ours. We also chose a landscape orientation, rather than the portrait orientation of the Pottery Barn model. The pictures we chose represent AJ roughly one month at a time starting from the top left corner, working across, then down to the bottom right corner. Here's a better close up of the pictures we used (please excuse the weird angle - taking a photo of a glassy photo is a lot harder than it would seem.) These pictures are in the same order as the frame.

Lastly, the best part. Making this frame ourselves saved us about $150! And we've found that we already enjoy just standing there, looking at all the Altons.

Vintage Post: Nonna's January Visit

In January, Nonna (Carnine) decided to take advantage of her long winter break from school and come up for a visit. We spent some time down in Santa Maria for Christmas, so her trip was just a casual one, but while she was here we did manage to squeeze in a big Italian meal with the Groener boys: Seth, his brother Matt, and *O (Di and *E were home sick). Matt had also missed out on Uncle Dave's traditional Christmas Eve feast, so we had a nice pre-dinner olive and cold cut platter to whet our appetites, plus lasagna and a tiramisu-inspired cake for dessert.




We also made time for a few major projects during her visit (foreshadowing for her April trip!): finishing babyproofing the house against our crawler-soon-to-be-walker, making curtains for Alton's bedroom with blackout lining, and putting up the alphabet border in Alton's playroom. In our house we are lucky enough to have an "office" space in the upstairs that is a perfect spacious playroom for Alton and his toys. The previous summer, Andy painted the lower half of the walls in that room blue (the upper half remained white) and we'd been planning on adding a wallpaper border with alphabet letters on it. But since we'd never done a border like that before, we were nervous about starting the project with Alton around: would we be able to complete it during a nap? A weekend? Would the glue be really smelly? How would we keep Alton out of the workspace and glue while we worked? The obvious solution was to wait until we had a full-time babysitter, so Nonna kept Alton occupied downstairs while Andy and I blew through the border installation. It was actually very quick, painless, and non-smelly, but definitely a two-person job! Here is the border in progress and complete in the room! (Click on pics to see detail of the border.)






Thank you, Nonna, for all your help!