Fuller spent most of yesterday cooped up in his room watching DVDs while his Daddy and I spent a lot of time installing the new ceiling panels in the living room.

Any time we took a break we were in there playing with him, trying hard to make up for the fact that for those hours he wasn’t able to move about the house as he pleased. He was fine in the company of Wallace & Grommit and Leap, Tad, & Lily but of course it didn’t really make up for the fact that he couldn’t reign supreme over the whole house.

So, as a treat for being a good boy, we took him to the Hamilton Place play area- a free, indoor play area for kids Fuller’s age and size.

Fuller had a blast climbing through the tunnels, climbing the wrong side of the slide, and finally sliding down the slide all on his own. The two hours we spent there were punctuated by a few escape attempts as he ran out the exit and straight for the American Eagle store.

When we returned home Fuller was immediately ready for bed, where he slept fourteen hours.

When we see Fuller exploring a place like that, interacting with children his age and size, it makes me realize just how quickly he is growing and changing. He is tall for his age and very independent and in a few years he will probably be beating up some of those kids in the play area, but for now I relish the fact that when he climbs something and looks around for praise he spots me and smiles really big.

Earlier this week I got an email from a Moms email list I subscribe to. The email was suggesting that a fun thing to see on the internet was this commercial. I finally found time to watch it yesterday and I was astounded. The idea was magical, the visual effect was stunning, and the music… the music made me want to cry.

The song, Heartbeats, covered by Jos? Gonz?lez is just so beautiful that the emotion I felt was a deep primal urge to bawl my eyes out and feel at peace at the same time. It came so unexpectedly and was so pleasant that I just had to share.

I listened to the song over and over today at work. I made a few of my coworkers watch the commercial. I downloaded the album, Veneer, from iTunes tonight and I think I finally found a CD to replace my Garden State soundtrack in the car.

Today our little family unit headed downtown for a little free ice cream action. It was actually my second trip to the Ben & Jerry’s today since I had my free ice cream with some co-workers. I didn’t ask for a second helping when we took Fuller, I just knew that some of his chocolate ice cream would also be my chocolate ice cream.

After the ice cream goodness and a good swipe of Fuller’s mouth with a napkin, we walked downtown exploring the Passage and letting Fuller stretch his legs around the amphitheater seating.

When we were walking back to the car we were remarking on what a great evening it had been and what a neat city we had settled down in.

You know what?

We are right.

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Fuller has decided that vegetables are offensive. If he had his way it would be bananas and cheese for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Cheerios are ok, waffles are fine, and meat? chicken? Forget about it. Yogurt has become a fickle food item.

But for some reason I just can’t seem to get over the fact that he really isn’t eating vegetables. We like green beans, corn, broccoli, cauliflower but Fuller just isn’t having any of it. It might be a phase and yes Fuller has a multi-vitamin to try to make up for something, but still a vegetable is a vegetable and the sweet cartoon characters don’t add up enough for me.

My creative husband realizes that this is a concern and decided to try to do something about it. We melted down some cheese, pureed some vegetables, put them together and let them um… congeal back together in an edible form. This vego-cheese is used for grilled cheese sandwiches.

It fills Fuller’s stomach and satisfies my desire that my child eat some vegetables.

So, I am asking… what do you do to get your child to eat vegetables? (And french fries do not count.)

When we got home on Tuesday we proceeded to bring the luggage into the house and just place it where ever we decided our feet didn’t need to go. Until yesterday, Fuller’s Easter candy was still in a purple bag buried in a shopping bad just sitting on the floor in the dining room. Man, I wish that candy was still in that purple bag.

Unpacking the suitcases wasn’t going to be just a matter of placing the clean clothes in the drawers and hanging up what needed to be hung up. My mom gave me a wardrobe’s worth of spring/ summer work clothes that were going to have to find homes somewhere in our clothes space. That meant cleaning out all the winter wear, packing it, and putting it all in the attic as well.

Unpacking didn’t mean unpacking- it meant rearranging our living space to create room for the new stuff. And to add to the labor I also had to face the disaster area that was my yarn stash. It had exploded about a month ago and was all in front of my dresser. If I wanted anything from the bottom drawers I really had to want it.

The seasonal ritual of swapping the warm clothes for the cooler clothes is one that I despise. I really, really, really want that gimongous walk-in closet where I can just put winter stuff on one side, summer stuff on the other, and the shoes all in the back.

I finally got it all done yesterday. And by “all” I mean I got the yarn put away and my stuff sorted and swapped. I even got the luggage put back in the attic. I know that I will need it again in 10 days, but I just needed it out of sight.

Now, if I could just figure out how to get all the mail to sort itself, I would be ecstatic.

1. Fuller has figured out, all on his own, how to push a chair to a location, climb on the chair and reach something that maybe he shouldn’t have.

2. Fuller can say “Noooooooo!’

3. Fuller has decided that sometimes he just doesn’t want to eat whatever we put in front of him.

4. My son thinks the back door is a great place to escape through.

5. The noisey toys are the favorite toys. (Buy ear plugs now.)

Fuller is taking his afternoon nap and will probably be up soon, but I have to share that after such a crappy work week (and it was only three days!) I am thrilled to come home to such a fun little guy. His laugh, his smile, his peek-a-boo games… they all make the chest pains melt away.

Pilgrims!

Just a little bit of funny to make you crack a smile.

When I was ten or eleven I went to camp for the summer in the mountains of Arizona. And when I say I went for the summer, I really mean two weeks.

Anyway, one of the things I remember about camp were the thunderstorms that would roll in sometime before, during, or right after dinner. The rain would come pounding down so fast that the red dirt trails we walked from our cabins to the main hall became mud rivers that stained our white socks forever. I remember sitting on my bunk listening to the rain pound the roof of the cabin and feeling a little scared as the lightening lit the sky showcasing the ridges of the mountain that surrounded our little camp.

The past week or so our little family has been huddled inside while the rain pours down, the thunder rumbles, and the lightening flashes. I love cuddling with Damon when the thunder comes through. It makes me feel safe but still gives me that secret thrill that I remember from my camp days.

One day, when sitting in my car thinking about the blog I thought about different methods of blogging and my mind somehow ended up at the list- something that some bloggers do to indicate a lot of information without a lot of insight. Kind of “Just the facts ma’am” blogging. Then I remembered diber and her blitz and like a lightbulb going on, I figured out that blitz means blogging list.

I think. I mean it makes sense to me and it is what I choose to believe.

So, in a manner of getting on with our lives here is a crumleyDOTorg Blitz:

1. Sunday night D and I went to the Neon to see “Thank You for Smoking.” It was a rather funny movie but could have done with less Katie Holmes. The best part of that outing was the atmosphere of the Neon- a small independant film house where you can have beer while enjoying your film.

2. Monday Austina & I enjoyed the Diana: A Celebration exhibit at the Dayton Institute of Art. It was an interesting exhibit, but really Austina is the Diana fan.

3. D, Fuller, & my dad enjoyed a few hours at the Boonshoft Discovery Museum. Apparently Fuller really enjoyed the open close open close open close game with the jail in one of the exhibits. He also enjoyed some quality clubbing time in the disco room.

4. Our trip back to Chattanooga was uneventful.

5. Today is Damon’s birthday! To celebrate we left Fuller with our friends and D & I went to the movies. We saw “Inside Man.” Overall we thought it was a good movie and worthy of D’s birthday celebration. I’m still looking for his gift.

6. Tomorrow the Tour de Georgia takes a spin through Chattanooga. A friend of ours plans on watching from atop Lookout mountain. D & Fuller may try to catch it from the bottom of the mountain, where Ochs Highway meets St. Elmo.

Old houses can have interesting quirks. My parents live in an old house and as much as I like it, there are some challenges in the Fuller-proofing arena. Mainly the doors. They are old doors, with old pointy doorknobs that require some hand strength when opening or closing them. While you might think that this would impede Fuller’s favorite game of open close open close open close, it really doesn’t. Instead he finds himself on one side of the door, pushes it hard and it closes. Then he fusses until someone with strength that he lacks opens it again for him.

Do you see where this is going yet?

This morning we were all getting ready for church and I was in the bathroom fixing my hair. Fuller had closed the bathroom door and when I was ready to go back to the bedroom he decided not to obey and follow me. Instead he stayed in the bathroom and managed to close the door again. I heard the knob rattling and knowing that the “click” I head indicated that he would not be able to turn the doorknob, I went to open it again for him, telling him to come out at the same time.

Well, I couldn’t open the door.

I bent down, looked and there it was- the dead bolt for the door had been turned and locked the door firmly in place.

The obvious course of action would be to find the skeleton key and unlock the door. Except, here is where another quirk of this old house comes in- this door did not have an exterior keyhole. In this hallway of four doors the bathroom door was the only one without an exterior keyhole.

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