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Ezra squeals when I put his helmet on, so yesterday he showed me how he prefers to wear it. It does look way cooler. We've had a sunny, balmy, almost down right hot weekend I am happy to report. I am a little pink. Ezra, a nice golden dusting. We had a lovely day today. We went to the farmer's market this morning and bought some gorgeous strawberries. Then we came home and Ezra slept for 3 hours! Whoa. I think it was a combination of the heat and the fact that he did not sleep yesterday.

Why did he not sleep? Well, allow me to have rant #2 about the pains of child care. We show up 15 minutes before I have to be at work and they tell me they can't watch him. They give me a letter that's dated two weeks ago that says that Ezra is not a good fit for them. They gave me no notice what so ever and I was left scrambling to find someone to watch him. My neighbors took a shift, then two friends each watched him after that. It was so so so so so crappy. It made me so stressed out all day. Ezra did not sleep, no one applied his diaper rash medicine, so when I got home I had an insanely tired, chapped butt little man. I don't blame the people who helped me out, I didn't have time to explain where everything was. No I certainly blame Circle of Life, the worst child care facility in the world. I am going to make a post on craigslist (where they advertise) warning parents of this. Under no circumstance should anyone do that to a parent.

Anyway, at least today he had a good long nap and lots of butt medicine and he's looking better from top to bottom. I did give him some air out time as you can see in the following video:

The toilet paper is so tempting. He really can't resist it. Well, I have a paper to write and my eyes are crossing so I'd better sign off. Hope you had a great weekend!

Video Vault

He really wants to get his hand in that camera case. He does succeed eventually.

Here's Ezra's first short film.

Ezra trying to decide which bop he'd like to read, coming to find he'd rather clobber Mama.

His newest word, Up, is a favorite. Pick me up, pick it up, put me down, it's the word for everything!

My son: the booze hound.

Matchers

I had it on first. I put on my overalls and he just had to wear his too. We tooled around all day in our matching get-ups. Later we added red bandanas around our necks. Some people noticed; more amazingly, some people did not. It's just a lot of stripes.

Tomorrow is Mama's Day. I have no idea what Ezra is planning. He won't tell me. I hope it includes a long nap, solid movements, and laughter. Not too much to ask for. We are going for a picnic with some friends. We are bringing strawberries, bbq'd golden beets, blood oranges, peaches, and pears to share. It is to be sunny and 74. Yes please! We'll ride the bike to the waterfront. I've been meaning to tell you that we do indeed both wear helmets now. Mine is blue and Ezra's is yellow. He is always taking his off! It is such a pain, and then I have to buckle it under his poor little fat chin even more. So far I've only caught him in the buckle once but oh my did he shriek. I got a proper baby seat for the back, it's very nice, German made.

We are set to ride.

Here's a short snippet of my dear boy taking the garbage out. What a helpful little man he is.

New Hat

Little Darling leaves his new owl hat on for roughly one minute, which is substantially longer than the normal immediate removal of other hats. I guess he likes it as much as I do. He's finally feeling better today, thank the good Lord. I've spent the whole week home with him, which initially really stressed me out (to be missing class) but with every day of lolly gagging around with Ezra I minded it less and less. Luckily my teachers are all very flexible this term, and I don't think I'll fail or get a worse grade because of missing this week.

Child care stress continues. I don't know how much I've gone into it, but I had been taking Ezra very far, 3 hours on the bus every day. The woman who was taking care of his is absolutely wonderful, so it was worth it. I got a lot of reading done on the bus as well. But, about two weeks ago I found a new place on four blocks from my house. Great! I thought, and they are fine people, but I recently learned that they have NO experience with babies. Children ages 3-5, yes, babies, no. Which, yes, you learn as you go, but... I just don't know about them learning about babies with my baby. I wouldn't be good at all with babies previous to my recent intensive training.

It struck me when the lead gal was asking me why Ezra cries so much. Excuse me? Cries so much? At the last place the woman knew how to keep him content. I don't want to hear that he cries so much. Forty minutes on the bus thinking about him crying is way longer than 3 hours knowing that he's happy, fed, and loved.

So, I found another place that's close by and run by a mom. The only glitch is that they don't do cloth diapers, which is a better glitch than being so far or Ezra crying for sure. So $40 extra dollars a month in disposable diapers and that much more trash. We are going to try it out this week.

If it doesn't work out I'm going back the original. She was so good at getting him to eat, he was so delightfully chubby. Not that he's skinny now, but he's certainly thinner. I can see his ribs. I want his rolls back.

In the process of all this 3 new grey hairs sprouted from behind my bangs. Hmph. Then of course this week makes me just want to be with him all day every day. Oh the trials of mama.

Let's hope the new place works! Phew.

Saunter

Doesn't he walk like a cowboy? He's got this funny little swagger. His legs seems to rotate around his belly. It is very amusing. For the first couple of days of his walkingness I would day dream about him walking while I was in school. What a Mom. He has been under the weather this weekend, which means both of us have been rather shut up in the house. Today was a good day to be in, we got horizontal hail! Yikes. Tomorrow it is supposed to be the same, so we're in for another cabin fever session. I got out my guitar and he even let me play some.
Previously when I had tried he would get jealous, why are you holding that instead of me? Are you actually nursing that crazy looking contraption? Take me! (Flails himself in my direction.) It does mean that I get a three day weekend, which I usually have a one day weekend so that's nice. Maybe we'll go to the mall tomorrow. Something indoors.
Hope you're having a great weekend!

Here's a bonus shot of the little mohawk man:

Alaskan Visitor

This week Uncle David has been visiting Portland attending a class, and we had the good fortune of seeing him. In the photo above, David and Ezra pose in the patio of the r over priced Peruvian restaurant where we went for dinner. It was good, just a little too she-she for my tastes. I took U.D. to the sensory overload known as Last Thursday. Here in Portland every Thursday is an opportunity to attend some artistic event. First Thursday is held downtown, second and third Thursday are somewhere that I don't know (but I know they're out there), and Last Thursday is here in my hood. I generally don't go because it is so wacky and supremely overwhelming. There are vendors, food, art, people dressed up crazy (some on stilts), street musicians, drum circles, face painting, hoolahoops, fossils, and people people people up the wazoo. The sidewalks are crammed so you can't even really look at any of the gorgeous wares on sale because you're just trying to not step on the wiener dog dressed in leopard print.

David commented that as many people that were on the street was probably about equal to how many people live in the town where he lives, Wrangell, Alaska. It was the first time he'd ever seen someone play a saw! Pretty cool.

Maybe a bit much, I probably should have taken him to a quiet park for a walk. O'well, something new and different. He took it well.

At the Peruvian Restaurant I had clams and David had some Snapper. Ezra really liked drinking the clam juice from the shell. He also liked the yucca and purple potatoes that garnished the dish.
His favorite was definitely the orange crayon he received as an appetizer.

So thanks for spending some time with us Uncle David, and we swear we'll be coming up to Wrangell pronto! We won't bring the art walk.

Waatch Out