The latest house project

Thanks to a letter from the City of Webster Groves, which apparently has some sort of issue with spalling brick and peeling paint in our fine community, we have finally embarked on our long-delayed but much-anticipated chimney repainting project. For those of you less familiar with the details of our house, the chimney is constructed of white brick that was painted a rather unfortunate shade of bright red by a previous owner. I've hated it ever since we bought the house (eight years ago yesterday, incidentally). Mike borrowed a 29-foot ladder from a coworker and began patching and priming over the weekend, finishing this morning. (He took the day off for some family fun that we timed to coincide with my birthday.) The finish coat/s, to match the original brick color, will follow soon, but even with just the primer, the chimney looks so much better. Mike rocks.

A silly boy and a poor daddy

We ate at Bandana's in Rock Hill tonight. The weather was lovely, so we sat outside, which really helped keep the boys entertained, as there was a busy intersection and a large fountain to watch. As it turned out, this particular fountain was much like the ones at Tilles Park and the Missouri Botanical Garden: jets of water shooting up from the ground, just made for running through. Dominick couldn't resist, and we decided to let him go ahead. So here it was, getting dark, and our crazy child was screaming and running through the fountain. Periodically, he stopped to run circles in the grass but always headed back to the water. As we left with our soaking wet boy, another boy's dad said to me, "Good luck with all that." No kidding! Mike had to strip Dom down to his underwear in the parking lot and wring gallons of water (well, maybe I'm exaggerating slightly) out of his clothes.

Mike had a fun day yesterday. He went to an oral surgeon to see about a clogged salivary gland and ended up having it removed. Apparently, the surgery did not go very well. It's never good when the doctor yells, "We have a bleeder!" Mike's been taking it easy since and seems to be feeling a little better, but he'll be on meds for a few more days.

Rant on behalf of my innocent child

This morning, after dropping off Dominick at school, Noel and I went to Aldi. He and Dom both are obsessed with bumps, be they railroad crossings, curbs, thresholds, or whatever. Aldi's tile flooring has metal seams between large sections. They're not very bumpy, really, but bumpy enough. So Noel was riding in the shopping cart, repeatedly saying "bump." As we approached the bread section, he was still saying it, but not too loud and definitely not throwing a fit. An elderly woman came over to get some bread, I guess, and Noel said "bump" to her. She said to him, "Are you talking to me in that voice?" and gave him a long, withering look before turning away. There was so much wrong with that I don't even know where to begin! Maybe I shouldn't, on second thought. I'll just leave it at that. As I said so eloquently on Facebook, grrrr!

Speaking of Noel speaking, he's really starting to put words together, two to three at a time. Sometimes it sounds like more words, though longer efforts are usually unintelligible. I'm sure they mean something to Noel. He says "please" a lot, which is lovely. We had a cute little exchange yesterday: I was changing him and singing "Eine Kleine Nachtmusik" to keep him still. The second I took a break, he said, "Again. Song, please." So I continued, but a second later he held up his hand to me and said, "Dop! Dop!" You know, as in "dop sign." Funny.

Welcome to the Yellow Room

Dom has just finished his first week of his second year of preschool. He's graduated from the Red Room to the Yellow Room. Because of the summer program, he was already acquainted with the room and his two teachers, so the transition was incredibly smooth. Everything is going really well so far.

In other news, I learned today that the insurance company upheld its original decision regarding coverage of laser treatment for Noel's birthmark. No dice, as Dom would say. (The things his daddy teaches him!) The next step would be to appeal to the state of Missouri. We may do that just to see what happens, but honestly, if that effort fails, I'll be okay with it. I don't love the idea of putting Noel under six to eight times for treatment. We can always do it later, too, although the benefit of doing it soon is that Noel won't remember anything. I spoke to his dermatologist this afternoon, and she told me, interestingly enough, that her teenage daughter has a birthmark on her cheek, and she (the daughter) has chosen not to have it treated. We'll see. I'll keep you all posted.

Back from Branson

We arrived home early this afternoon after a lovely three days in the Ozarks. I've just finished looking through all the photos we took. I'll try to put them on Picasa over the next couple of days. For now, I'll just tell you briefly what we did:

Thursday evening: arrival at Tribesman Resort (stayed in a one-bedroom apartment with full kitchen and free washer and dryer) and a late dinner out. Noel just about fell asleep at the table.

Friday: Silver Dollar City. We had decided to pass on this because of the expense (about $150 for admission) but sucked it up and went anyway. Then we experienced the most amazing phenomenon: season-ticket holders giving away guest passes at the entrance to the park. We were approached twice, but the first time it didn't work because we had to enter with the season-ticket owners, who had already gone in after giving us their discounted passes. A second generous couple came up to us, this time with free passes for adults and $5 off a child's admission, so we got in for $36! If this kind of thing happens often, it was news to us, and we were blown away. Not only that, the weather was absolutely perfect, and we had a wonderful day, staying from opening until nearly closing. Dominick loved the Lost River, American Plunge, and the Flooded Mine. His favorite part of SDC? The railroad crossing. He drove us crazy constantly wanting to see the "bump." Another memorable moment was when Dominick stripped down to his underwear to run through the fountains near Geyser Gulch. It was a struggle to put his clothes on again. After all that, he didn't really go in the fountain. Noel's favorite part was the ball play at Geyser Gulch.

Saturday: Miniature golfing (the fastest, most frenetic game I've participated in, although I did get two consecutive holes-in-one) in the morning, lunch, back to the resort for Noel's nap (yes, he took a good one!), then out again for go-karts and dinner. Despite all the fun, the highlight of the day, for me, had to be when we returned to our room for the afternoon. Dominick, poor deprived child, was fascinated by the wrapped bar soap and amused himself for a significant amount of time by talking about it, wrapping it in a towel to give to Noel for his birthday, and then creating conversations between the bar soap and a penny. Both were later lost, but Dominick took it like a man.

Sunday: home, and time to get ready for a new school year and a new refrigerator tomorrow.

(That's me and Dominick in the front of the boat going down the American Plunge.)

The staycation ends

I don't really love that term, but whatever. We decided, on somewhat short notice, to take a trip to Branson this weekend. I haven't been there since I was a senior in high school. I'm sure it looks much different now. We'll be heading out tomorrow afternoon, which means I should be preparing right now instead of blogging. Many of us have been mildly sick this week, so we're hoping for good health and good weather for tomorrow and the rest of the weekend. And may Noel sleep in the car instead of crying for four hours!