Mardi Gras Muses

Nang let me tag along on a business trip to New Orleans on Mardi Gras weekend, and we were lucky enough to catch my cousin, Michelle, on her inaugural ride with the Krewe of Muses. Nang and I got to see the parade three times - once at the beginning (with Aunt Cake, Uncle Marshall, Aunt Nancy, and two of Michelle's friends), again along Canal Street, and again from our hotel room.

Muse pride

Michelle's float - an homage to the unofficial state insect

(official state insect? the honeybee)

Michelle and krewe friend

Flambeau carriers

Zoomed from our hotel room

Butter up

My mom's side of the family has a strong fondness for butter. In restaurant critiques, the quality of the butter is an important consideration. Aunt Cake has been known to sneak a pat of good butter every now and then - a habit she seems to have passed on to William...must've skipped a generation (insert winking smiley face here).

William has become quite a butter sous chef, and takes his job of peeling the paper from frozen sticks very seriously. When the freezer opens, he makes a beeline to the ice box to clank around with the ice cubes or the butter box to take a stick out and commence his peeling. This week, William helped unwrap a stick of frozen butter, and then helped himself to a sample.

Concentration requires sitting down

Freed from its paper wrapper!

Seems like the next natural step

And in desperate need of a hair product to tame his wild curls, he ran his buttered hands through his hair.

Let's see if this gets the same results as dad's hair gel

THAT'S better!

Happy Valentine's Day!

Cleanliness is next to godliness

William has developed quite an elaborate bathing routine. This morning, he added this little maneuver after a shower. Thank goodness...he was getting a little ripe!

Is this my scent?

Yep! Let's get it on!

Parental disclaimer: This is an empty deoderant container...no danger here!

Harvest time

January 6, 2012

Head Lemon Inspector reporting for duty

The crop

Inspecting

A more thorough inspection

Consider this crop inspected

Nang mentioned from time to time for years that he wanted a lemon tree, so for one birthday, I bought him a tree, planted it in a great pot, and thought he would take over from there. Little did I know that he didn't actually want a tree, he simply wanted to make lemonade from homegrown lemons. I never caught the weeding, and planting, and tending bug that my parents had, but I begrudgingly took over caring for his lemon tree. I monitor the weather and wrap the tree in quilts when it freezes, keep track of the fertilization and watering schedule, and suffer when all of the blooms turn into baby lemons, and then disappear mysteriously one day. So when "we" finally grew some lemons (for which Nang was not as ecstatic as I think he should have been), I decided that William and I could harvest them on our own. William was pretty interested in picking the orange-apples (said quickly as one word to describe any fruit other than a banana), but after they came off the tree, he was pretty sure that they were just balls grown for his amusement.

Time-out

Discipline is not our strong suit. I think Nang's too harsh and inconsistent, and Nang knows I'm too lenient...uhhh....caring, so the beginning of February marked a foray into a new discipline strategy: time-outs. William tends to have fits when we are otherwise occupied, most often in the kitchen while we try to cook, so the time-out area has been by the garage door - slightly separated from the hubbub of activity but within sight, so we can make sure he stays put.

Sensing our change in discipline strategy, William decided to put us through our paces on the very first night of the month. Here's how it went down:

Trying out Ba's running shoes

Learning how to make a fish face

Fish face accomplished

Temper tantrum censored to avoid offending any sensitive readers. It was a pacifier-flinging, scream-bringing, whammy of a fit!

Ahhh....William's first time-out

Time-outs have been followed by, "William, tell Ba/Mama you are sorry for , and give Ba/Mama a hug. OK, now go play." We're still a little unclear on when a time-out should be finished - when he stops crying? looks less demonic? tells us it is finished? All a work in progress!

Say cheese!

William has had a camera stuck in his face since the day he was born. Nang bought a good camera just for the occasion, and I'm pretty sure that the baby thought his dad's head had a camera attached to the front. We've been trying not to encourage William to "SMILE" when we take photos in the hope that he would not develop the dreaded fake smile. Lunar New Year festivities with Nang's family did in those well-laid plans. Wilbur heard, "One. Two. Three. Cheese!" or its Vietnamese equivalent fifty times a day for a week, so it was just a matter of time until we got this:

A big, fat, cheesy, on-command grin

Snacks: carbo loading

With all of the talk of jogging and biking going on around our house with Nang reminiscing about the marathon and looking forward to another MS150 ride to Austin, William is excited about carb loading. For his after dinner snack tonight, he sat down with a nice colander of stuck-on noodles and went to town.

Ooooo....cold!

Not wasting the opportunity, and really getting into the noodles

Mmm...mmm...good!

All done!