My son, the diva.

OK, it's not the Carter Family, but I'm sure they had to start somewhere, right? Watch at the end for Sadie's new (non-food-related) trick.

Soen scolded me in the pool the other day: "Don't mess up my hair, because then people won't see my curls." Great.

Meat!

Rare photo of Sadie not eating.

Can you guess which one of these is Sadie's new favorite food?

Eggs
Meatloaf
Buffalo
Sausage
Filet Mignon

Answer: All of the above. Wife bought me some ground buffalo meat the other day, which I grilled as burgers. Sadie, with a tray full of food in front of her, saw me eating a burger and started yelling at me, as is her custom whenever someone is eating anything she doesn't have. So I gave her a piece. She ate it and started yelling for more. Pretty soon I couldn't keep up with her. Next thing I know I can't put enough buffalo in front of her to keep up with her. This basic story gets repeated on a daily basis, just with different ingredients.

What cracks me up about it is that there's no smiling in appreciation of the food. She just consumes it and yells for more. I think her first words are going to be, "Yo! Keep it coming!"

Thank God for Britney

Soen makes his move.

So, as wife mentioned, lots of fun was had at the wedding. We weren't sure how long the kids were going to last since Soen hadn't had a nap in three days and he was cranky going into the church. This was his first time in a church. In case I was wondering how he was feeling about the whole experience he let me and everyone unlucky enough to be sitting near us know by rolling around in the pew and saying, "I don't like this! I don't like this!"

Anyway, he was still being cranky at the reception and I feared it was going to be a short night, when 12-year-old Britney caught his eye. She was very sweet and played with him during much of the reception, which gave him his second and third wind and got us through the night. The highlight of the evening for me was when Soen asked me if Britney could go night-nights with him.

Why I love my kids

So, after a lovely visit to Philly during which my kids were alternately sugar addled, sleep deprived, overstimulated maniacs AND complete and utter syrupy sweet angels, we returned home to NC. Scott's cousin Lauren got married and managed to squeeze a few dances in with her new hubby while spending a good part of the evening whirling an ecstatic Soen around the dance floor. Cute, yes. But travelling with children does NOT inspire undying maternal love. What does? Well, today I was serving the kids noodles and sauce while daddy was off golfing. Expecting the worse, I girded myself with a glass o wine and 6 wet paper towels. What I got was my kids trying to wink at each other across the table. That's right. I've been winking at Sadie, and she tries to imitate me--does a pretty good job too--just 2 eyes instead of one. Well, Soen thought this was HI-larious and joined in. The two of them were in absolute hysterics and we had the world's funnest "most awesome" dinner. And THAT is why I love my kids.
P.s. My husband just got all surly and said to make sure ya'll knew it was me writing--as if you couldn't tell from my run on sentences and imperfect grammar. Um, George Clooney? Looking for a wife/accountant??

Wife

I was looking for a good photo of the wife but I didn't have one handy, so I grabbed the next best thing.

We're heading up to Philly this weekend for my cousin Lauren's wedding and we were hoping to meet up with our friends Sasha and Dee at some point. I was discussing our plans with Sasha when I realized I really had no idea what our plans were, other than getting on an airplane on Thursday and going to a wedding on Saturday (I think). This is in spite of the numerous lengthy emails from my mother laying out the complete details of our itinerary. This is nothing new. I really have no idea what's going on at any given point in my life. I basically just go where wife tells me to go and so far it's worked out pretty well.

But my discussion with Sasha reminded me of the other day when we were buying our new car (minivan). Wife found a good deal on a car loan and she told me the bank would be calling to verify that it was in fact me who was taking out the loan. So the bank called me and they had to ask me a few questions to verify that it was me. I got my name, birthday, and social security number right, but then she started in with who our mortgage was with. I had no idea, which was rather embarrassing. Then: With what bank did we take out a car loan in 2000? Again no idea (although that did turn out to be a trick question.) She asked me a few more questions that I was completely unable to answer and I started to laugh and I said, "I'll have to call you back when my wife gets home so she can tell me all the things I'm supposed to know that prove to you that I'm me."

Back to the wedding trip: Wife was having a conversation with my mom and she asked her about some detail or other and my mom says, "Well, I sent Scott an email about it," to which my wife says, "Why do you bother?" I just hope George Clooney gets married soon, so I don't have to worry about him stealing my wife and leaving me completely unable to pay the bills. I should probably go buy some flowers or something. But first I have to ask Wife where the flower store is.

Foul Beast

Our filmmakers caught Sadie in her one cute moment of the weekend.

So, like clockwork, two days after starting day care, Sadie caught a bug of some kind. First it was her runny nose. Then... well before this weekend, if I had used the term "shit storm," in this blog, it would have been as a metaphor for an extended tantrum. But now I use it as a literal description of what hit our household this weekend.

On Saturday, wife was at work and I was feeling brave enough to take the kids to the aquarium. Long story short, we never got out of the door. I put Sadie in her neglect-o-saucer so I could get myself and the boy dressed. Then I went to get her dressed. I'll skip all the disgusting details, but let's just say that the neglect-o-saucer and my T-shirt are now in the trash. By the time I got her and her changing table clean I was too exhausted and disgusted to even think about taking her outside, lest someone think she belonged to me. Good thing, too because that wasn't her only "fexplosion." In fact, at one point today I changed her only to have her poop again the moment I got her dressed.

And then there's the river of snot, which wouldn't be so bad if she didn't scream bloody murder and punch me in the face anytime I tried to wipe her nose.

So it was nice to catch her on video when she wasn't being a vile creature and actually being cute. Here she is pushing yet another piece of furniture that's not her new walker, which you see at the end of the clip.

Sadie starts school

Sadie started day care today. We were a little anxious about her first day, because it's rough on kids to be left at a strange place. Sadie, however, forgot Mommy was there the second she saw all the other babies. She had a great day all day, and when I picked her up tonight she was about as happy as I've seen her. Gosh, I hope her nanny doesn't read this.

In other news, I just learned that I can upload videos to this thing. This was filmed a few weeks ago and has nothing to do with anything.

Camping!

Soen failing to understand the spookiness of flashlight face.

I'd been wanting to take Soen camping for about three years. Not sure why I all of a sudden decided to do it this weekend, but it had nothing to do with ditching Mommy, who has a sinus infection, and the teething baby who woke up several times last night. Actually, I did offer to not go, but wife, not knowing that Sadie would pull an all-nighter, told us to get lost.

Anyway, we wound up "camping" in a trailer park, which was a great way to ease the boy into the experience. After we set up our tent we decided to hit the pool. On our way to the pool I realized we had suddenly stumblrd upon "the south." This campground is literally 15 minutes from our house, just off a main beach road that we drive on all the time. But this place was nothing like our North Carolina. It was the North Carolina all my coworkers were teasing me about when I told them I was moving down here. It wasn't quite Deliverence country--after all everyone we met was incredibly friendly. But it was quite a shock. Their accents were quite thick. We were swimming in the pewel. One kid swam up to me and asked me if I could read because he couldn't. He was 15. But once I got over that, like I said, everyone was very friendly. One 10 year old I was talking to wanted to go in the pool with us. He said, "I'm gonna go tell my mama I met a nice man named Scott and that he'll watch me in the pool." Soen had a blast playing with all the kids.

Rather than trying to cook dinner over a campfire, we did the traditional dinner at a chinese restaurant and picked up some marshmallows, which Soen had been looking forward to for days. Back at the campsite we built a fire, roasted two marshmallows, and sat there watching the fire for all of ten minues when Soen was ready to go to bed. It was very cute. Earlier, when we were setting up the tent, Soen was all excited about it. "Daddy! We're going to go in the tent and talk and then sleep and it will be awesome!" So we get settled in the tent--"settled" means he got naked--when he realized he had to poop. So... back on with the clothes and that's when we heard a sound in the woods. Soen asked me what it was. I said I figured it was a cat since we had seen a bunch of them earlier. But when we got outside and shone our flashlight in the direction of the sound, it was a raccoon. This was the highlight of the trip. Actually, the highlight wasn't so much seeing the raccoon as it was that I had been wrong about what the animal was. As he retold the episode to me and everyone we met again and again, the story changed to how I was wrong about it being a cat and he was right about it being a fox. "Raccoon, Soen." "It wasn't a raccoon. It was a raccoon, Daddy?"

Once we got back in the tent he was wired, wanting to jump up and shine the flashlight on every noise we heard. But aside from being excited and talking for at least an hour, he was the perfect little camper. He finally fell asleep around midnight and slept straght through til 6:30. I, unfortunately wokeup at some point and couldn't get back to sleep for about two hours.

The next morning we went to a diner, then to a playground, and then to the beach. Everytime we got back into the car, Soen wanted to hold onto his bag of marshmallows. Today, after his nap, I roasted him another one (using the toaster oven), and you can see the aftermath of that. All told, camping was a big hit and he can't wait for Sadie to get older so we can all go together and he can see another raccoon.