The latest...

Happy belated Easter, everyone! This was the best Easter picture we could get, and we didn't get any pictures of the 56 Easter egg hunts in which Charlie participated, but the kid is just not into picture-taking. And he isn't really into Easter egg hunts either, truth be told. As soon as he gets that first egg, all he wants to do is open it and see what's inside, and if it's filled with candy, (which it invariably is) he just wants to eat the candy and call it a day. I guess it's all about instant gratification when you're only two. Will and I had more vision for the long-term situation (more candy for Charlie=more candy for us) so we made sure he had a nice haul at each of the Easter events we attended. One more Easter-related thing: if you like rad things, go to the link below and check out the best peep show you'll ever see. No, not THAT kind of peep show! It's the good kind of peep show, click on the link and you'll see what I mean.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/03/20/AR2008032002753.html

The week after Easter, Charlie and I went up to Idaho for a short visit, which was fun for him because it's the first time he's been on a plane since he started getting really interested in planes and other types of aircraft. He may not be able to tell the difference between a horse and a cow sometimes, or Mickey Mouse and Chuck E. Cheese, but he definitely can distinguish between airplanes, helicopters, space shuttles, biplanes and rockets. So of course he loved the whole airplane experience, and would have REALLY loved it if he had been able to "drive the airplane." (When we got to Boise, Charlie's cousin Cameron kept asking "Did Charlie drive the airplane here? Did Charlie drive the airplane?) The downer to the trip was that Charlie caught a flu bug and had his first experience throwing up, which was pretty traumatic for both of us. It was worse because Charlie seemed to think that proximity to ME actually caused the throwing up, so he would run away from me every time he felt the urge. Which obviously made containment difficult, and we were all really glad when he started to feel better.



Because of the lingering effects of Charlie's flu bug, we decided that Charlie and I would stay home when Will went to Disneyland with his band kids for their spring trip. So I tried to fill our time while Will was gone with trips to the park, to the pet store to "see doggies" and various other places Charlie finds entertaining. I took this picture at the little climbing wall at the park, and right after I took this picture Charlie scaled the wall to the very top in a matter of seconds, but I was so stunned I didn't get a picture of that. Just kidding! Actually, what you see in the picture is about as high as he got, because he got his legs crossed and couldn't figure out how to uncross them. But I haven't given up on Charlie becoming my climbing buddy sometime in the future, maybe in a year or two...

Other random items: I finally, finally got around to something I've been plotting for months and had my hair chopped to a nicely manageable shoulder-length bob. For about a week after my haircut, when I was still in my "hair honeymoon" I could go on and on about how much I loved it. My feelings have cooled a little, but I am still pretty enthusiastic about how great it is to have short hair. I will post a picture sometime, but I don't have one yet, and as I just went to get the camera out I realized that the battery is dead. How convenient...

My sister, Jo--who also has a blog, "tagged" me to find the nearest book and pick a quote from page 123. I'm not really sure how the tag thing works, I guess it's just a fun way to make sure that I have something interesting to say in my blog? The nearest book is one I've been reading called "Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed" by Jared Diamond, the author of "Guns, Germs and Steel" and there really isn't anything on page 123 that makes sense out of context, but I suppose it does give a taste of what the book is about.
"Imagine the excitement when the first canoeload of Mangarevans discovered Pitcairn after several days' travel on open ocean, landed at its only feasible beach, scrambled up the deep slopes, and came down upon Down Slope Quarry, Southeast Polynesia's sole useable lode of volcanic glass, whose flakes could serve as sharp tools for fine cutting tasks." That's some juicy stuff, huh? I'm actually not even to page 123 yet, so I can't give much of an opinion yet as to how much I like the book, or how much of an environmental activist I'm going to become as a result of reading it :) And now am I supposed to "tag" someone else?