What a difference a year makes! Yesterday Grant and I went to get the Nissan inspected at CarSpa. It's a chain, but isn't located in many places (I had to find their website yesterday morning to check what time they opened). That's such a shame, because it's about the nicest place you can go to wait while your car is being worked on. It far surpasses any of those dirty, hole-in-the-wall lube/inspection joints; this place is huge and super clean inside, with a coffee bar (free of charge). There's also a big area with kids' playground-type equipment, with slides, a playhouse, etc. And there are windows along one wall that allow you to watch the cars as they go through the car wash. There's even a little landing area with steps for little kids to go up and watch!

Well, we went there last January to get the car inspected, and of course Grant was only about 6 weeks old then. He, of course, slept the entire time, and I remember seeing the play equipment and thinking he was nowhere near being able to enjoy that stuff. Well, this time he definitely was! He loved exploring it all, and he rode down the slides and was amazed by the little playhouse. The entire time we were there, he was moving! At one point, Great Day Houston (a local talk show) was on the TV, and Grant walked up to it just as they were doing a segment on women's bras. He put his hand on the TV right as it went to a full shot of one of the models, wearing only a bra and underwear! I really don't think he meant anything by it, but I was a little embarrassed and was glad to see that nobody saw him!

It was really rainy out yesterday so nobody was getting their cars washed....I think he would have loved to watch them get sprayed and scrubbed by those machines! But we got a rain check for our free car wash, so we will have to go back soon and see what he thinks of it.

Trying again

Grant is taking a nap but we have some people coming to our house in a few minutes to work on making our house more energy efficient, so we'll hopefully be able to lower our energy bills a bit. It's a free service that our friend Carissa told us about, so we'll see what they do! We've noticed that, with all of our windows downstairs, it gets cold in the winter very quickly. So hopefully this will help to plug up some of those leaks.

Okay, here are some pictures from last week. Here's Grant answering his phone......we haven't taught him that it's impolite to talk on the phone while eating!The day after Grant and I got home from Baton Rouge, I brought in our suitcase and he had fun climbing inside. He and the cats are very similar in this respect; they both like to climb in (and on top of) suitcases and empty boxes.
This pretty tree in our backyard suddenly changed colors and lost its leaves within about a week! The leaves turned a pretty orange/red color for those 10 days or so! Dean and I took turns raking them all up a few days later....one of us would rake while the other pushed Grant in his swing.

After Dean came home early from his trip to surprise us, we took Grant outside to swing. He always love when Dean pushes him because he plays fun games with him! Grant has started this thing where sometimes he'll tilt his head to the side and wait for you to mirror him. When you do the same thing, he laughs! I don't know what's so funny about it, but he likes it!

More pictures

This past week has been kind of hard....Grant and I both have colds, and for some reason I just haven't had a lot of time to be on the computer. It seems like we're on about a six week schedule with colds.....Grant (or both of us) seem to pick one up about that often! But they still don't seem to bother him much....I don't think he acts much differently than normal, except for maybe sleeping a little more (at night).

Anyway, he's been doing some funny things this past week or 10 days:

-Last week, we went to the resale shop and bought him one of those Sesame Street pop-up toys, where you push on a button and one of the characters pops out of a door and sings a song. He doesn't push the buttons like he's supposed to do yet, but he loves to pick it up and carry it with him. And when the songs play, he's started to "dance," which means that he sways back and forth, side to side. He has also started to dance when he hears music on the radio or on some of his other toys. I am sad to say that he has just about as much rhythm as his mom and dad!

-He loves his toy cars more and more now, and will make a "vroom" sound when pushing them along the floor.

-Lately we have been sleeping in later than usual (esp on the weekends) and sometimes Dean will get Grant and bring him into bed with us for a few minutes. A lot of times, I'm taking my temperature when Dean brings him in. A couple of days ago, Grant saw that my drawer was opened, and he found my thermometer and stuck it in my mouth!

Well, I intended to post a few pictures but Grant is not being very patient at the moment, so I will have to do that later!

Wow!

This is an amazing story, so I had to share it with anyone who might be reading.

Yesterday Grant and I were at Carter's (children's clothing store), and a lady was standing in the same section as us, looking very pregnant. I asked when she was due, and she said she's having twins, but isn't due until April. In her hands, she had four pairs of boys' pajamas, two each of two different sets. She said that she was taking advantage of the good sales in winter clothes, because she already has twins. But I noticed that the pajamas were sized 12 months, so I asked how old her twins are. 10 months old!!! So.....she has twin boys who (presumably) will be a year old in March, and she's pregnant with another set of twins (a boy and girl) who are due in April! And she has a 5-year old boy too. WOW!!!!

I think I just stood there with my jaw open wide for a couple seconds. She was quick to say that this was NOT planned, but she actually seemed like she was pretty calm about it all. She kept talking to Grant and asking questions about him, and was a really nice lady. But that just boggles my mind.....that would be like me having two Grants right now, and giving birth to two more babies within the next few days!

My life suddenly doesn't seem so difficult!

Trip to Baton Rouge

We went to Baton Rouge last week because Dean had a few days' worth of meetings, and Grant and I always love an excuse to go someplace new to explore! We got there on Monday night and had dinner with one of Dean's old friends from Alabama, Gabe, and his wife Diane. They had us over for pizza and we watched the national championship game. Gabe is the new bassoon teacher at LSU, so they've just moved there in the past few months. Grant of course wanted to explore everything, and he was particularly interested in their little kitten. He chased her all over the place! Diane is an amazing artist, and showed me some of her work. I never knew there were so many different ways to create art.....I guess I kinda just assumed it was all painting on canvas!

Anyway, we had a bad night that night at the hotel, as I had feared. Grant has just simply outgrown those pack n' plays, which is what they give you when you request a crib at a hotel. He woke up multiple times, and had to be rocked back to sleep each time. Dean hardly got any sleep, so the next morning, Grant and I explored around the city a little bit and then drove home! It was kind of a bummer, because it's a four-hour trip. But Grant did better than expected with the drive, so we just learned our lesson.....it's probably going to be best to avoid trips where he has to sleep in his pack n' play for multiple nights in a row.

One thing I learned, though.....even though we were only there for less than 24 hours, I was very pleasantly surprised by Baton Rouge. It's not a dirty industrial city like I had imagined. There were some really beautiful parts of it, and it seems like a really nice town! It's possible that Dean will be transferred there with work at some point, so at least now I'd be okay with moving there!

And something kinda fun....Dean was planning to rent a car and come home on Friday. Well, on Thursday afternoon, he called and we were talking for a while. Then the doorbell rang, and I told him to hang on a second. I looked out the door and could tell that it was a guy on a cell phone. Then it hit me that it was Dean! So he had come home early and surprised me....what a nice surprise, especially because it's a little hard being on your own with a toddler for a more than a few days in a row!