Preventing Beckett Suffocation

Beckett is doing his best to give us a nervous breakdown and suffocate himself. I used to find this quite often:

Please note the tiny foot hanging out at the bottom right corner. He loves to pull blankets, or his much beloved Ghost Bear, over his face when he goes to sleep.

If that wasn't bad enough I also found this:At least he didn't have the blanket over his head while being face down. In an effort to curb these self destructive tendencies we have instituted a no-blanket-Beckett-in-sleepsack policy.

I love Ken Jennings!

My hero has returned triumphant again! Ken won Grand Slam, a seeded tournament that pitted the greatest minds of game show stardom against each other. Ogi Ogas was a pompus mathlete who won on Millionare. Thankfully Ken showed that Jeopardy is truly the thinking man's game as he crushed Ogi in the finals. Bravo my love, bravo.

******Chris objects to me calling Ken my love, but when Chris wins 8 zillion games of Jeopardy in a row then he can be jealous. Or he can just recognize hyperbole.******

Hanging out in the park

My friend Jenny finally came back from Arizona so we could hang out. You can't trick someone into moving into your city and then leave for a month. Despite this hiccup now that she's back I'm commencing with my plan to stalk her and force her to hang out with me all the time. This week I convinced her to come with me to a farmer's market that didn't actually exist. It was supposed to be in the park, but like Brigadoon it disappeared into the mist. But at least we were at a park so we decided to play with our babies for a while.

The babies were very attractive to the older children who were at the park playing with their nannies. (I think Jenny and I were the only actual mothers there.) So one little boy came over to say hello. He patted Beckett gently on the head several times. Then things turned south. I looked away to make sure one of the many dogs present at this NOT dog park wasn't running over to eat the babies and when I turned back our new little friend had his finger under Beckett's sunglasses and was about to poke him in the eye. I grabbed his hand and pulled it back and told him to be careful. Then he started to cry and ran away. I guess he liked strangers grabbing his hand about as much as I like unsupervised children poking my baby in the eye. Way to earn your wage negligent nanny.

Since we were planning on buying produce, not playing, neither of us had a big blanket for the kids. I let Beckett lay on his carrier, but as you can see his little feet were hanging off. Well he was enjoying his time and his excited little legs were just pumping up a storm. I picked him up and noticed he had wiggled so much that he'd churned up the grass and his feet were covered in dirt. Finally, a real need for a bath.

Christian Herr got ripped off--Labor Day Trip Part 2

In case you haven't visited our site in a couple of days, we urge you to check out Part One of our Labor Day Vacation before you read Part Two.



Monday was the last day of our trip. Sunday evening Chris had a migraine so we spent a lot of time in the hotel room. Beckett thought that was great and spent the time lounging on the bed looking adorable and teasing his father by half rolling over, but never quite getting those elbows down. These poses were achieved with help. At least the getting to the belly part. He did those arms himself.

As a result of our early night we really tried to pack in the fun on Monday. Okay, so we did things that were probably more fun for me. Chris is very patient about indulging my interest in museums and historical sites. We're probably the only people who went on vacation to Santo Domingo and somehow missed the beach.

The first thing we did was head to the Hans Herr house. It's the oldest surviving dwelling place of European settlers in Lancaster County. For more information please visit: http://www.hansherr.org/

It was a very neat old house. I'm always so impressed when old buildings have multiple stories. I guess I just can't ever believe that you can get a cellar, first story, attic (not a second floor even though the kids slept up there), and second attic with no concrete or "modern" building materials.

Herr (hee hee) is the house

The first thing that struck me, other than the whole height issue, was the way the real owner of the house got totally ripped off. It was built by Christian Herr. Hans Herr was his father who was in his 70's when they came to America. He just got to live with them. If you can blow this picture up you can see above the door where he carved his initial C.H. and the date 1719.

So what I want to know is why is it called the Hans Herr house? The whole tour is about Christian. He did all the work, and, you know, owned the place. I meant to ask, but I sort of freaked out our obviously volunteer tour guide with lots of other questions. Plus some other people showed up half way through the tour and threw her off a little. So it is a mystery, but more than that it is an injustice. Poor Christian Herr will never get his due with his name posted on little maps of attractions placed in budget motels around the Lancaster area.

Here I am at the lovely garden standing by some hops which if I lived in 1719 I'd use to make whiskey which I'd then feed to my baby.

Mmm smoked meats...

After we finished with the Herr house we went to a few more Amish or Mennonite shops. I think the Mennonite's try to horn in on the cache of the Amish, but I know those floral print dresses and bicycles mean you're not really Amish. Your bonnet and apron can't fool me. We had the most delicious soft pretzels I've ever eaten. And some great home made potato chips. Herr's potato chips come from this area. You know that episode of The Office where Jim is trying to find salt and vinegar Herr's chips for Karen? Well no wonder that's happening in Scranton because Pennsylvania is the home of Herr's chips. In fact, the exhibit in the barn at the Herr House was sponsored by Herr's Potato Chips. I hope Christian Herr chips.

Our tour of Amish-landia at an end we decided to head home via Valley Forge. Ah, more learning. Unfortunately we didn't think too clearly about this one since Labor Day is a national holiday. The visitor's center was closed, but there was a ranger at Washington's Headquarters so it was open and we could look in.

Chris was much impressed that General Washington ate ham. Beckett was not as impressed.

This is the spring house. I think. I just heard a lady behind us saying, "This is the spring house. You know what likes spring houses? Snakes!"

Then we drove home on the surprisingly reasonable New Jersey Turnpike. I don't get how they price it. We drove over half the state on it and paid about $4. We drive a few miles to Jersey Gardens and it's $2. We actually stopped at Jersey Gardens on the way home. We didn't stay long. Too much chaos with Labor Day sales. I did get a new pair of jeans though. That was good. Then we got to rest at home. Ah, home.

Livin' in an Amish Paradise, Literally--Labor Day Trip Part 1

Labor Day weekend we took a trip to gawk at people who are different than we are. Yes, we went out to Lancaster County to stare at the Amish.

Before we got to the plain people we decided to stop in for some gluttonous decadence.

It is indeed a Hershey's Chocolate world.

We took the fake factory tour with the chocolate scented air and this is what I learned:

1. Chocolate in the wild looks like a papaya. Here I am at a plantation learning that.

2. Cocoa looks like gross white nastiness. You'd never look at busted open cocoa pods and think, "Mmm let's process this through like 90 steps and I bet it'll be suuuuuper good." Of course, you'd also never look at it and want to eat it the way it was.

We're happy because it finally started to look like chocolate that you'd want to eat.

3. Hershey Corp is stupid because they discontinued the greatest candy ever--the Almond Joy Bite. Those tiny balls were the perfect ratio of almond to coconut to chocolate. Instead they're making things like special edition Elvis Reese's that have banana cream in them. We tried them. GROSS!

4. The whole world thinks Beckett is super adorable. As we were taking the below pictures we literally stopped the flow of walking traffic around us. One guy told us to send it in to Hershey's because it was so cute and maybe they'd pay us. We'd prefer to be paid in Almond Joy Bites.

5. I'd do it all again for the free candy at the end.

Now for the Amish part

I know this will sound strange, but it's seems a lot easier to be Amish than I thought it was. Now before you go, but wait, how could you live without electricity?! I learned I wouldn't have to. I could have a generator, plus propane and propane accessories are just fine. I couldn't keep running this blog, but electricity is cool, it's just the wires that connect them to the rest of the world that are bad. I guess they like to be off the grid. You can go buy junk food at Wal-mart, and if you're a guy or it's really cold buttons are a-okay. And you only have church every other Sunday. Lightweights.

The best thing about Lancaster county is, of course, the awesome town names. Those Amish think they're the plain people living a simple life, but behind closed doors....

Disclaimer: I know these jokes have been made a zillion times before. I also know that I am completely incapable of refraining from making them again.

My favorite thing is that it used to have a different name. They changed it TO intercourse. That's like being named Adam Smith and changing your name to Johnny Hildo. (Ah, such an old Saturday Night Live Reference.)

Here is a county map with a couple of other awesome, real town names added in. Have fun playing, "Spot the town you can't say you live in with a straight face."

We went to an "authentic" Amish farm. Okay, the house was built in the early 1800's by some Quakers, but Amish people lived in it after that. Regardless, it was fun to tour the house and grounds.

Here we are with a tiny Amish horse. Large horses are considered vulgar and ostentatious. :-)


We tackled the corn maze....

And were ultimately triumphant!

Then we hit the school for a little book learnin'. All the grades are together so Beckett and Chris enjoyed being able to attend classes together.


But once school was out it was time for some chores.

I'm not Amish, but I'm pretty sure that's not a real sheep.

Beckett thought he'd masquerade as an Amish kid.

He obviously doesn't have the hang of it just yet.

Coming soon--Day 3 and the not quite visit to Valley Forge.

Jersey Garden Beckett

Taking full advantage of our car we decided to drive to the big outlet mall, Jersey Gardens last weekend. I went crazy and bought Beckett tons of new clothes. But when the Children's Place has 4 racks of $1.99 items how can you go wrong? (By the way it was totally biased towards girls. Way cuter stuff and way more girl stuff. But I still managed to stock up my guy. Blue cammo shorts, so cute.)

Here is happy shopping mommy sporting her new headband from Claires.

Beckett is loving the airplane move now.

Here he is reposing on the rocks around the food court. The first look is Ferrari, the second, Le Tigre, obviously.

I know I'm biased, but seriously, is this not one of the cutest babies in the universe? His little face is so sweet in this close up.