babes in toyland

behold the toy box:

today, two lovely little girls (ages 4 and 1) joined summer and me for an hour in the afternoon. naturally, upon entering our home, the older girl went straight for the toys. i directed her to the box beneath an end table, and eyes wide with excitement, she dumped the toys in a pile on the living room floor. she paused. a quizzical look. and then: "this is just trash and junk."

touche.

i can see how the empty yogurt containers, plastic spoons, random game pieces, assorted lids, pens, broken glasses, torn pictures, gift tags, old flashlights, (yes, those are birth control blister packs), kitchen utensils, lotion bottles, expired credit cards, toothbrushes, nail clippers and nasal aspirators may not appear to be your average children's toys, but in my defense, summer likes to play with trash and junk. we tried to curb the interest at first, but eventually just gave in to her carnal desires.

i guess it's true what they say, "one pre-schooler's junk is some baby's treasure."

movin on up

as posted earlier, we have just recently re-entered the world of the two-car-family. while this development brings with it much rejoicing (hooray for not leaving in the midst of fixing dinner to pick up bryan from the bus!), we have also had a few challenges. namely, the car seat shuffle.

in many homes, this in-and-out of the child safety seat is not a problem because the wife takes one car as her "primary" and the husband the other. whomever chauffeurs the kids around most likely has all the car seats in his or her vehicle.

however, bryan decided that he wanted to get a manual transmission on the new car. however, for at least a few more years, the civic is to be my primary mode of transportation (seeing as how the accord may die any day now). yes, i can drive a stick shift (phew!), but no, i do not feel comfortable driving it around bellevue and seattle (and parts of duvall) where hills reach +20% grade. i mean, i've just barely gotten over my fear of freeways!

anyhoo, at the end of the day we decided i was driving one car as much as the other, and we ought to just invest a bit earlier than usual in summer's convertible seat to keep one seat in the accord and the other in the civic.

summer loves her cushy new chair. she sho is spoilt.

Anatomy of a wedding photo

Ever look back on a large group wedding photo and wonder who some of the people are? Before you lump the complete strangers into the "Unidentified Inlaws" bucket, I would suggest adding another classification: interlopers. Case in point? My cousin Jake.

Before I dive into the details, I need to share some context for the uninitiated. The Salt Lake Temple is a remarkable piece of wedding machinery. On a given Saturday, dozens of newly weds stream out of the edifice, each trailed by one or more photographers (and several dozen relatives with their own cameras). Given the finite number of prime group photo shot locations around the temple, several wedding parties typically queue in front of a good photo spot, waiting while a preceeding party is photographed.

The boredom of such moments is all but overwhelming. To cope, we dared Jake to pose in another wedding party's photo. He hesitated momentarily, but once the kitty hit $30, he was all in. Here is the sequence of events:

Jake makes his entry. Notice that he's one of the first ones in the photo.
Plenty of time for the crowd to spot this intruder.

Jake positions himself between different nuclear family groups.
Each family suspects he belongs to the other.

Jake feels smug as he blends in to the crowd.

With this caper fresh in mind, I recommend you carefully review any group wedding photos in your collection.

bite me

i went to retrieve summer from her nap this afternoon, and this is what i found:

hmm...maybe someone should have invested in a rail guard.

(ps - long lost message to kristine hanson: those are paint chips).

all's fair

glory be! summer is still going strong here in the pacific northwest. our bonus week of sunshine 'tis a gift that we did not squander. my parents were in town (lucky, lucky), and we played much the same as when kenny and emmelie were here.

adding to the sunny northwest experience, the puyallup fair was in full swing this week, so we decided to head on down. state fairs figure prominently in my family history, and we have been to many, but all agreed that none were quite as good as the puyallup.

summer looks skeptical of her portrait:

roberto the magnificent!

behind us is the largest cow we've ever seen.
jabba the cow.

a day old calf and her mum.

mom and dad wander the fairgrounds with their
newly aquired (what a great deal!) fair backpacks.

at the end of the day, summer had had too much cheese.

crawfish boil

cindy has wanted a down south crawfish boil as her pre-wedding night feast since she was a little girl. alas, fifteen years later, her wedding approaches and a truly unfortunate hurricane blows all the little crawfish away. what are the odds?

not to be deterred, her family rallied and decided to proceed with some minor adjustments: shrimp it is! and who doesn't like eating their dinner off of newspapers?

double, double, toil and trouble

is there something in my teeth?

bryan's dad, mike, explaining how to properly consume the delicacies.

summer enjoys her first crawfish - er, shrimp - boil.

dig in!

summer doll

summer came in as second most beautiful at cindy's wedding:

Cindy Heart Peter

Behold the happy couple. As a faithful reader of WheelerWonderland, please enjoy these exclusive photos of Cindy's wedding, which union took place on Saturday. For those of you who don't know (or couldn't tell from the resemblance in the photos), Cindy is my sister. She married this nice Peter Sutton chap (who comes complete with a genuine South African accent). Congrats!

summer's first band-aid

yes, we like to document all the important milestones. i'm not going to reveal how this particular accident happened. mainly because it was idiot mommy's fault, and i'd like to save just a little bit of face here. but let's just say the injury was on top of the fingers, and thus, in a very precarious place to bandage.

summer has since recovered and is doing well. unfortunately, i can't say the same for the bandages. minutes after painstakingly applying an ingenious double bandage on both the thumb and the forefinger, the thumb's wrap became a casualty. not having yet learned my lesson, i reapplied said bandage, and only moments later, both bandages were lost to the baby "i-have-eight-teeth" powers that be.

so summer was confined to her highchair and force-fed kix until the bleeding subsided.

maybe we should invest in one of those plastic cones they put around animals' heads so they don't bite the stitches.

solitaire

aha! during a scheduled import of what images were left on my camera, i found the only picture in my possession from last week's activities:


this is summer and me at snoqualmie falls in (where else?) snoqualmie, washington. i'd like to thank the teenage tourists from china who were kind enough to take the photo as my charges, aforementioned lovebirds kenny and emmelie, were gallivanting (albeit illegally--gasp!) on the riverbed: emmelie trying in vain to convince kenny to attempt some death defying feats (i.e, swim across the raging river), and kenny rebuffing her efforts whilst scolding, "come down off that boulder!" ah, marriage, what a blessed event.