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.)