Our First Do It Yourself Haircut

Athena caught Carter in our bathroom tonight cutting his own hair. He's needed a haircut for a few weeks, but he said he wasn't quite ready to go get it cut, so we let it go. It's not down to his waist or anything like that. Turns out that our son is suddenly Mr. Take Charge and acts on his impulses immediately (think back to the trip down the pool slide).

He said he was ready for a haircut and was going to give himself one. Patrick told him that he'd cut his hair for him and he agreed until he learned that Patrick would just buzz it all off. "I don't want Daddy hair", was his answer. Silent cheering from me as I like Carter with hair.

Patrick and I were both in the bedroom while he was in the bathroom and were oblivious to the hair cutting episode. Carter was supposed to be brushing his teeth. Patrick says he cut quite a bit off - I didn't notice anything severe, but if it's bad, I'll post a photo tomorrow.

Carter and I have talked before about how scissors are only for cutting paper (when he was three he cut up Hanna Andersson pajamas - thought I'd pass out from that one) and I thought we were in the free and clear. Oh well.

Down He Went!!!

I took this photo when we got home from the pool tonight. It's a big day for Carter! He asked to go down the big slide at the pool. He just stood up and said, "I'm going down the slide now" and off he went. Luckily, Patrick was right there and went up with him - that's a lot of steps for a little guy like Carter. Patrick said there was no hesitation, he went down immediately.

Then the realization (which we knew) hit Carter about how big a deal this was when he came out of the shoot - although he's technically tall enough to go down the slide, he's not a good enough swimmer yet to beat the current created by the gushing water. He flailed around in the current and the lifeguard almost jumped in after him. Patrick broke the "stay on your side rule" and helped him or he probably couldn't have gotten to the stairs himself. The lifeguard told us if he can't get back to the side by himself, then he's not big enough to go down the slide.

We'll try again later in the summer. Still an awesome thing! He was very pleased with himself. :~)

This is the best picture I could find of the pool slide:

Rest in Peace Mr. Stag Beetle

Carter was super happy yesterday. His Uncle Tom called him in the afternoon to let him know he'd be stopping by later in the day to drop off the Stag Beetle he'd found on his front porch all the way in Sugar Tit, KY that morning. He didn't know it was a Stag Beetle, Carter and I did some research later on google and that's what we determined the bug was.

Tom told Carter he had to take Grandpa to his sailing club first. After hanging up the phone, Carter had a fit - I hate Grandpa's boats and I HATE SAILING!!! He informed me that we could not go to the pool or anywhere else until the bug was delivered.

Lucky for us, Tom must have realized the torture he was putting a four year old boy through as not 20 minutes after he called, the door bell rang and it was the bug delivery man himself. Carter was over the top excited and bug was truly horrendous looking! It was HUGE - it's about as big as an adult's thumb.

When it arrived, it was very much alive. It eats rotten fruit, so after we put it in the bug habitat we have, we went to the pool, came home and fed it some mango and cantelope. It looked dead then, but we didn't say anything.

Well, first thing this morning, Carter rushed out onto the deck (You didn't think I'd let it in the house, did you??). He came back sobbing his little heart out that the bug was dead. After some cuddles and empathy from me, we decided that it was still a cool bug and something to definitely bring to camp today to show his friends.

He wanted to make sure that everyone knew it was dead and wouldn't hurt them, so he got out a label and wrote "Won't Pinch" on it. He did it all by himself - "I'm a big boy, Mom, I can write this myself!" (well, I had to help him with the spelling - but woo hoo!!! As he'll rarely write anything for me much less on his own initiative, I had to post it here:

Who knows what bug will unfortunately cross our path tomorrow. :~)

Our Mermaid and our Fish

Both kids have been in swimming lessons - Athena for the past two weeks; Carter for the past week. Both finished tonight.

Athena - started out this summer swimming her strongest ever. She goes under water and would try to do actually swim. She soared during swim lessons and passed with flying colors. She will swim for 10 seconds under water and does the crawl really well (they haven't taught her how to turn her head yet to breathe). She also jumps off the diving board. I didn't, oh, yes I did just write that she JUMPS OFF THE DIVING BOARD IN THE DEEP END. Can you even believe it? We are so pleased and excited for her. She is just loving swimming this year. She has passed level 2 and I go tomorrow to sign her up for Level 3 which will start on July 6th.

Carter - this year we're still in adult/tot swim which means that a parent is a participant in the class. The goal is not to teach the child how to swim but to be comfortable in the water. Last year was not fun for anyone and this year started out as same ole same ole. But, by the second night, Carter started to get more confident and he really began to take off and he did such an incredible job. He was smiling and happy and by tonight he would dunk, jump in and try to swim on his own (with a bar bell or a float bar to hold onto). After class tonight he put on his goggles and started to swim under water in the toddler pool - he's never even considered doing that before.

Huge steps for both kids this summer so far. I am super duper proud of them both and can't wait to see what other wonders this summer will bring!

Do we live here?

A week ago this past Monday the start of cool things began in the Eborall household. After four years of contemplative thought (HA!) we got a new refridgerator! I can hear you gasping over the nano waves of internet space. Our last new fridge was 16 years ago. That one was bought for our first house. We used it for 12 years before leaving it when we moved from Owensville to here. Since then we had a really crappy basic fridge that had wire shelves and a tilted bottom shelf so that everything fell out when you opened it and then my sister, Carol, very kindly lent us her old fridge to use until we could save up for a new one. It was mustard yellow and although better than the old one, it was an energy hog (heat came off of it) and whenever you opened it up, something would fall out of the door.

The time had come and we were ready. We now worship at the foot of our new Kenmore. Particularly Carter - he loves and I mean LOVES this new appliance. We have little black toe prints on the inside of the freezer from him trying to climb in. It has a filtered water and ice dispenser. Everything now needs ice and or water in it. You thirsty? Carter is your go to boy. He'll hook you up. I mean it.

It is sooooo nice to have this lovely fridge. Things don't fall out, it's cool to the touch and it's super duper energy efficient. The old hog is in the garage waiting to be picked up and transported to camp; I can't wait to see what happens to our electric bill when it's no longer spinning the meter around at warp speed.

My brother Tom came last Friday and hooked up the water line for the filtered water and ice. He's fabulous! After he spent most of the day doing that, he then helped me install a fake wood floor in the foyer. It's vinyl resilient flooring (sound super duper cool and extra fancy, eh?). You can get it completely wet and it won't rot it - well, surely we will put this to the test! I think it looks splendiferously fantastic and I might just put this down in the kitchen sometime within the next year.

But wait, Karen, you say. Love the "wood" but is that your carpet? I don't remember it being so lush and so speckled...... It's not our old carpet, yes, it's hard to imagine, but we actually got new carpet for the living room:

It's a shag - take me back to the 70's please - and it's magnificent! It's a cream with a tan and brown braid in it - to hopefully hide kid stains, dog stains and Grandad stains. :~) We upgraded our pad as well so it not only looks good, but boy does it feel good. The carpet installers said we got really good carpet and the best padding. Next room for carpet will be the dining room which looked bad before but now looks super bad next to the living room. Luckily it's a remnant size so hopefully, maybe, if the stars align, we'll get it replaced this fall and maybe we'll paint the dining room as well (I know, scary thoughts).

What's left? Painting our bedroom, making new curtains for that room; painting the kids bathroom; new floor for the kitchen (badly needed right behind dining room); OH and finish up the living room. I actually hope to have the living room (started two or was that three years ago) finished before back to school. All that's needed is some paint touching up (notice big white spot by chair and fireplace in above photo) and some new blinds. Still unable to decide about any window treatments other than blinds.

Zebra Swallowtail Butterfly

Yesterday morning we noticed this absolutely gorgeous butterfly gracefully visiting our lavender. We'd never seen anything like it - the black and white stripes went all of the way out to the edge of the wings instead of the normal black edging all of the way around the wings. Also the "tails" were quite long.

We watched it rapturously for minutes on end. It was so beautiful that Carter didn't even think about catching it. We tried to find what kind of butterfly it was and had no luck. So I sent a photo to the website www.whatbugisthat.com and they answered. This is a variation of a Zebra Swallowtail.

It's been back once more and this time Carter tried his hardest to catch it. Luckily it got away. It's just gorgeous.

We Got You Beat!

Our number of critters just keeps on growing. We now have the dog, the three cats, the two frogs, four fire flies, a gaggle of prehistoric fish - like 5 and counting and this:

This is a Bold Jumping Spider. He (maybe she) is not allowed to live in the house. Yes, it has green, I repeat, green fangs. It loves bugs. We have lots of this spider around our front porch which I try desperately to either ignore or kill depending on my mood. Patrick and Carter caught one this past weekend. It quickly ate the beetle that I had caught for Carter on Friday. I keep hoping it will either be released or will just flat out die. :~)

Tiddlelick and Fred

Last month we gained to new pets - Tiddlelick and Fred. They arrived via the Jesy mobile. A friend of hers at her work caught them in their pond for the kids. They're super cool Wood Tree Frogs.

Fred, Carter's frog, is quiet and just likes to hang out and have an occasional bath. Fred it almost always stuck in a corner just hanging out. Fred leans toward the green side, but stays a bit on the grey side most of the time.

Tiddlelick, Athena's frog, is just plum crazy. Tiddlelick likes to be a burnt red color and tries continuously to escape - hanging upside down from the mesh roof of the aquarium. Tiddlelick also talks, normally about 2pm every day. Gorgeous sound which requires her (we don't know if it's a her) to fill her whole body up with air.

Both eat crickets; about two dozen each week.

Once the blueberry patch opens up in a few weeks, Patrick, the kids and the frogs will come out to visit me and then we'll return the frogs to their pond home.

They will be missed. As far as pets go, these two are easy peasy.