Smarty pants

Chris has always been a smart guy. Not only did he choose me as his one and only, but he’s always excelled academically. But not in a nerdy, spend all your time at the library kinda way, but more of a party all night and still aced next morning’s test kinda way. Yeah, he was THAT guy in college. The one who was all, Oh yeah, I only got a 92%. Maybe I shouldn’t have stayed up all night playing poker with the boys. Maybe next time I’ll actually study or something. Which was totally frustrating to me because I was the student that opted to follow a path in writing so as to never have to take another multiple-choice test ever again. To this day I still break out in hives thinking about choosing A, B, C or D, all of the above.

So when Chris first started his new job in finance two months ago, he was told time and time again that nothing really matters until you pass your Series 7 exam. In fact, if you don’t pass the exam, your fired. Yep, FIRED. Talk about pressure. So, obviously, he spent the past weeks studying for this test more than he’s ever studied for anything in life. And yesterday was the big day. And, of course, because I’m posting this, you’ve got to know that he passed. But let me just brag on my man for a bit, and say that he didn’t just pass it, he KILLED it. Of all the people that take the Series 7, only 66% of those test-takers actually pass. And of those people, the average score on the 250-question, multiple-choice test is 73%. And my husband scored a 90%. And not only did he pretty much ace it, he took half the time a normal person takes because he was anxious to catch the last few holes of the British Open.

So this weekend we’ll be celebrating my husband’s brilliance, eating steak and popping bottles of champagne. I am so very proud of him and this huge accomplishment. Let’s all hope Miss Taylor gets her Daddy’s big brain.

Sweet corn princess

That's right. She may have been born in the South, but she knows where her roots are.

That’ll stick to your Ribfest

Growing up in rural Iowa, one thing we always looked forward to as kids was celebrating the surrounding town’s special days. Galva had Fun Day, Holstein had Children’s Day, Schaller had Popcorn Day. All in the summer, most involving dizzying rides, cheap, plastic prizes, candy-tossing parades and tiny, fried donuts. It was heaven. It was what we looked forward to during the long, hot days of summer. And while I haven’t been to any of the before mentioned festivals for too long to remember, it’s nice to live in a place that still honors random reasons to gather locals together with carnival rides and greasy food.

And now that Chris has weekends to play, we’ve made a habit to scour the local papers for fun, Saturday activities. And it’s not too hard to find some sort of outdoor party within a 20 minute drive from our front door, and this weekend it was Ribfest. Which was basically a three day event that brings our nation’s finest barbeque vendors and pairs them with local bluegrass and other carnival booths and activities.

Oh, and it was sponsored by Yuengling beer. So it was basically like Christmas for my husband.

And while Chris enjoyed every moment of his finger-licking ribs, my yummy-time was spent trying to divert Taylor’s attention away from my lap.

Until she took a tumble off the blanket, taking down my entire, tangy-delicious plate of smoked goodness with her.

But don’t worry, she didn’t miss a beat. In fact, she came out the winner because she still doesn’t mind eating something that’s been in the grass.

Unfortunately the BBQ festival didn’t boast a parade or a court, but if it did, I’m sure she would have been Ribfest Queen.

15 months old

Taylor turns 15 months old today. And not only is that in itself exciting and fun, but today is also Friday, and that means it’s party time. I’m predicting an all-out Amys dance party tonight in the living room, and maybe, just maybe, Chris and I will take a cue from the Taylor school of dance and spin around in circles until we’re so dizzy we fall down.

And us copying her doing something will be a nice change of pace right now, because for the last month she has started mimicking EVERYTHING we do. Whether it be using her fake, plastic keys to lock the basement door, holding her purse on the crick of her arm, rubbing her hands together when I get out the lotion, throwing the ball to the Rubes, yelling in disgust at the nightly news - Apparently this kid has been studying our every move. Which isn’t a bad thing, especially if she can start pulling her weight in chore-department.

Taylor also picked up a few new words and facial expressions over the past month. The most noticeable - read, ANNOYING - is when she shakes her head and says No. But when she says it, it sounds more like Doh. And last week, during a sandbox playfest at the park, a bigger kid took her little shovel away from her. And then Taylor took it back from the girl. And when the girl tried taking it back again, my daughter kung-fu gripped it, pointed at her and shouted Doh! As in, No! Get your grubby hands off my shovel! And the girl looked at me, and I was all, That’s right. You don’t mess with the T.

And the independent, non-pushover story doesn’t end there. She has officially grown out of the Cling-all-over-your-Momma stage I told you about last month. She now runs into the YMCA Child Watch room and frolics the ways nuns do on top of grassy hills. In fact, it’s now more of an ordeal for me to pick her up, dislodge the toys out of her arms and leave. But then I remind her that there’s macaroni and cheese waiting at home, and she practically skips to the car.

And other than her obsession with pasta and baby-spoons, some of her favorite things this past month were her beloved baby doll, a mesh bag filled with curly ribbons and all of her books. We had a few literary-casualties this month, one in where she pretty much patted the bunny to death. And after tossing it, Chris and I braced ourselves for an all-out Taylor-tantrum, but she just shrugged it off and started loving, patting and kissing her other books.

So, there ya go, another month has passed and we’re still having lots of fun and are absolutely in love with our little girl. And while we never expected anything other than that, Chris and I will still stop and remark upon how we had no idea parenthood was going to be this exciting and wonderful. And how that just when we thought we had smiled as big as we could, laughed as loud as we ever heard and loved as much as our hearts would hold, the next day comes and we do it all over again plus some.

Sauced

After taking a mini-break, thanks mostly to the five new Elmo toys Grandma and Grandpa brought her, Taylor has resumed her obsession with her plastic bag full of baby spoons. Which means that when someone leaves the baby gate unlocked, our little girl will come running into the kitchen and go directly for the drawer which houses her coveted treasure. And then she will also knock Ruby’s water dish over and then kiss her reflection in the stove. It’s a routine now. Which is only changed if there are chips or other snacks on the counter, and then she will hold her chubby claws up in the air and shriek until she gets a tasty treat. And I can’t really punish her behavior, because she most likely learned the treater-dance from watching me react to being within a two-mile radius of Sonic. Mmmmm… milkshakes.

So last night, after trying to spoon everything out of her toybox with her mini-utensils, Chris suggested that, Hey, maybe we should let her actually EAT with her spoons. I think she might be ready. So at dinner, after devouring her mac-n-cheese and peas and carrots, we re-bibber her, opened some applesauce, gave her a spoon and let her go for it.

And while we may start budgeting for table-etiquette lessons, I think she did a pretty good job for her first go-round. After building a sizeable applesauce-beard, maybe getting a few bites in her actual mouth, she dropped the spoon and went in with her digits. So we’re not quite ready for staining-foods or the Greenbrier yet, but I think it’s a good start.

A happy fourth

Yesterday I spent my first-ever full Fourth of July with my husband. And not only did he have a holiday off, but since the markets were closed on Friday, he had a three-day weekend. Wow. So this is how normal people live. And because he had been working at the golf course the past six Fourths, we were completely lost as to what kind of celebrations Asheville offered for America’s birthday. And after scouring the local papers and narrowing down the Taylor-appropriate festivities, we settled on an outdoor, afternoon concert at a park downtown.

And after a few hours of boogying, our dancing queen was too exhausted to stay up for fireworks, so we headed home. And because I was too exhausted to think about cooking, we swung through McDonald’s for dinner, and treated Taylor to her first-ever Happy Meal. And for someone who has only had a steady diet of organic, natural food, of course she was a happy, happy little girl to get her first taste of the dark side.

And while she has had tastes of fries at restaurants before, she had never experienced the heavenly goodness of McDonald’s crispy, delicious, deep-fried, salty fries. She ate them like they were beef jerky, holding a single fry in her chubby hands and aggressively chomping off each bite. Not to mention there was a cheap, plastic toy involved.

I don’t know who enjoyed the Happy Meal more, her or us being able to watch her. It was hilarious. And afterwards, when she fell into her fast-food sleep coma, we stayed up, had another beer, and listened to the giant booms of everyone setting off fireworks. It was the best Fourth we’ve ever had.

You can call me flower, if you want to

So, like many of my fellow bloggers, now that we’re in the middle of summer, I am finally reaping the beauty of all the tiny, young flower-seedlings I planted months ago. And after the frost-marigold disaster, which resulted in a late vinca replacement, most of my precious plants are blooming and thriving. Except the ones that my other growing, precious thing is picking the petals off of.