I bet Anthony Bourdain wishes he had been a spy. Or maybe he was...or is! *gasp* I'd better stop writing this entry now, I'm starting to fear for my safety.

I stumbled across a cake disaster website last week which my friend Mel happened to forward to me today which was enough of a reason for me to feel like posting it here. It's called cake wrecks. They're all...interesting. However, they're cake, so I'd still eat them. Except for the bound foot cake. That one was gross.

Through an entry on that site I found The "Blog" of "unnecessary" Quotation Marks which has some very funny stuff on it.

That's all the news from over here.

Henry happens to know that a certain someone, we'll call him "Grandpa", hordes his beloved root beer popsicles so that he can share them with his grandson whenever said grandson comes to visit. This may not seem like a big deal, but it requires the consumption of blue raspberry and the ever-unappetizing banana flavors of popsicle, because you can't just buy root beer flavor alone, you have to buy the mixed bag. Life always requires a sacrifice of some sort, you know?

Anyway, Henry's Grammy made him spaghetti and meatballs for our first night back in Boston. Henry ate one or two bites, squirmed a lot, ate another one or two bites, then finally made a break for the freezer, which he tore open, quickly locating the bag of popsicles. We told him he couldn't have any until he ate more of his dinner, so he reluctantly returned to his chair where he sat sort of still but not really, all the while looking longingly at the freezer. After about a half an hour of trying to get him to eat, my mom told him he could have a popsicle if he had three more bites of meatball. She held up three fingers, which Henry studied very closely. Finally he got off his chair, pushed down two of her fingers (and her thumb, which was slightly sticking out; he didn't want there to be any confusion), and said "Henry have a popsicle after one more bite of meatball."

We agreed to his terms. What choice did we have? He used math against us!

Then I went ahead and purchased the soundtrack for the original Broadway production of Sweeney Todd. I could make an argument that I absolutely needed to buy this album, but it would be a weak one and you all would be shaking your heads and feeling a little embarrassed for me. You probably do that anyway, so why add fuel to the fire.

Fine. Since I'm making confessions, I may as well also confess that I bought "Balls of Fury" while at Target today. Terry Crews' pecs deserve an Oscar nomination for their work in that movie. What oh what will Dave and I do tonight to pass the time?

We've been extremely busy, riding lots of trains, doing some toy shopping, running up to Salem, and riding more trains. Today I left Henry in the hands of his Grandparents so I could head off to do some shopping on my own. I bought some clothes, a book (the first book I've ever purchased based purely on the author's good looks), a chai latte, and a Hawaiian crêpe. I thoroughly enjoyed leisurely browsing through stores that I had noticed on previous trips but knew I couldn't fully appreciate with a toddler in tow.

We're heading back to the wilds of central Pennsylvania on Monday. Tomorrow we're going to try and squeeze in as much fun as can possibly be had on the last day of a vacation.

Dave, your days as a bachelor are almost up, so get in all the Doom you can, because we're coming home...

Tomorrow Henry and I are getting dumped on the doorstep of dropped off at my parents' house. I waited until this evening to tell Henry we would be seeing them on this trip. He's now extra super duper incredibly excited. I think Leo's Grandpa Bill will be equally excited to see him go because this evening every three minutes Henry would drop what he was doing to go up to Grandpa Bill and say "Hey, hey! Whatcha doin' Bill? Hey! Whatcha doin'?" and he wouldn't stop until he would get an answer. I finally had to ban him from the room Bill was in but that didn't stop him from following him down the hall and into his bedroom.

I'm starting to get the distinct impression we're not fun guests to have in your house.

Also, Kraft Macaroni and Cheese crackers = Heaven in a box.

Henry's looking forward to stopping at his Great-Grandma Ethel's house on the way to NH tomorrow because she has not only a piano, but also an organ. It doesn't even matter that the organ doesn't work, it's just as awesome anyway because it has two whole rows of keys, plus a ton of pedals and levers. She also has a stream with lots of rocks and she always has cake ready for his consumption. We're going to have to pry his fingers from her doorjamb in order to get him to leave.

Henry's also looking forward to riding lots of escalators with his Grammy and Grandpa. In fact, on Thursday when we asked him what he did that day, he said "Rode the escalators with Grammy and Grandpa!" Poor confused kid. And yet, that's how much of an impression riding the escalators made.

Anyway, I don't know how much posting I'll be doing while I'm gone, not that I've been doing much at all anyway, but I will be taking lots of pictures with my brand-spanking new awesome camera, so there should be lots to see when I get back.

And for the next five years that's still all I had to do. Two weeks ago I bought a pillow form and a zipper. A week ago I realized that although I put a zipper in my cart the week before, it never actually made it onto my receipt or into my bag, so I went back and really did buy a zipper. This afternoon I sat down and put the thing together:

I'm really happy with the results.

I'm not going to tell you how after I put in the zipper I went ahead and sewed the rest of the square shut because, hey, there's a zipper there. It wasn't until I cut the thread that I realized it probably would have been a good idea to unzip the zipper before sewing the rest of the pillow square shut. After some finagling I managed to get it open, but I felt incredibly silly the whole time I was messing with it. But, again, I'm not going to tell you about that.

A whole penny off the original price! WOW!!!

I'll give you one guess what Henry's getting for his birthday...

Since it wasn't in stock at the store, we ended up purchasing it online. I'm counting the seconds until its arrival.

1. Lose the binky.
2. Get Henry into a "big boy bed"
3. Get him potty trained

Of those three things, the one which really struck fear into my heart was number 1. And 2. Aaaaaand 3.

As it turns out, it wasn't too bad. We tackled item number 1 first by telling Henry we lost his binky. He asked for it a few times then he seemed to just get over it. He never cried or seemed very upset that it was gone.

Item number 2 took care of itself while we were at the beach. Ages ago I bought him one of those toddler aerobeds for traveling. He hated it so we kept using the Pack and Play even though he outgrew it in length and weight. After a week of sleeping in it while on vacation, he decided he'd had enough. He asked to sleep in our bed which we let him do until it was time for us to go to bed, after which we would move him back to the Pack and Play. Henry did this every night until we got home. He seemed pretty happy to get back to his own bed, but we figured if he had spent a week getting accustomed to a bigger bed, we didn't want to lose this opportunity to transition him to one at home. So we brought up the mattress in our guest room and he's been happily snoozing away in the freedom of a full-sized bed ever since. The bonus is now we can crawl in with him and talk about our day after he's been tucked in. It's one of my favorite times of day.

The third one we accomplished with the help of my friend Gabriella who I've since told should write a book about potty training. I thought it was going to be a nightmare, but it was pretty easy, until, of course, he regresses, but, you know, la-la-la-la-laaa...

So, the potty training was the really big thing we needed to accomplish because at the end of the summer Henry is starting school. In fact, he's starting school on the 8th of September. He isn't going to know what hit him. I feel bad, because once you start preschool it doesn't end for a really long time. So long carefree days of playgroups and sitting around banging drums, and hello text books and teachers' dirty looks. Poor kid.

After the parade and the post-parade popsicles, we headed over to the park with a cooler full of food and met up with another couple of friends who also brought coolers full of food. We played and ate for a few hours and then we carried our tired selves back to the house for naps. It's been a full day and there are still fireworks and BBQ to look forward to.

Hope all of you are having an equally fun and festive 4th!

This morning I woke up completely exhausted. The thing about being that tired and cranky at the start of the day is that twelve hours later, you're no worse off. So I'm feeling at the end pretty much like I felt at the beginning. Does that make it a good day?

What? Potty training's been rough on me too!

When Henry found out I was getting Leo a pillow and making him a pillowcase just like the one I made him, he decided he was in dire need of a new pillowcase as well. This is the fabric he picked out. The boy is very secure in his masculinity.

Meanwhile, on Friday night we took Henry to his very first professional fireworks display. He was warned repeatedly and by many different people that the fireworks, although very cool, would also be very loud. He was fine until Megan brought it up, then he just looked really nervous, which either proves he'd heard it enough times to believe it, or he doesn't listen at all to anything either Dave or I say. I don't think he was disappointed after all of the buildup. When we came home he pulled out a book that has a drawing of fireworks and after staring at it for ten minutes pointed out all of the colors he'd seen earlier that evening, the most popular being green.

He's been talking about them nonstop ever since.