Thursday, October 20, 2011

One Big Happy "Toy Story" Family


My attempts to blog once a month have failed. I'm sure super-mom can maintain a full-time job, keep two kids half-bathed, stock local stores with fresh produce, market a pumpkin patch, help coach cross-country, train for a half marathon, be supportive to my husband, aannnd keep up a blog, but that's super-mom. I am just mom. That is unless you talk to Carter lately.

The kid is into role-playing. At first I thought it was just because he was super-excited about Halloween coming up, but no, I'm pretty sure he really does think that he is in fact Woody from Toy Story. The other night I was tucking him into bed and I said "Good night Carter", to which he replied, "I not Carter, I Woody". "Okay, Good night Woody!". His response? "Good night Jesse".

The role-playing continued the next morning when he told me that "we have to get out of the backpack Jesse". I swear, he has only seen Toy Story 3 a few times. He has decided that Miles is Buzz Lightyear and that his dad is Andy. His Nene and Biyah are Mr. and Mrs. Potatohead, but is quite perplexed as to who should be Bullsye the horse, so he switches characters between Woody and Bullsye. Things get quite interesting when Woody has to ride a horse.

It's amazing how our entire dinner conversation and evening activities revolve around the needs of Carter and his imagination. Some nights we have "cowboy pie", while others we "blast" each other in between bites. Miles is very calm and just goes along for the ride, but I often wonder what kind of spin dinner will take in another year when Miles has a different imagination track than his brother.

In other news, Miles is SOOOO close to crawling. He gets up on all fours, rocks, then scootches forward or just falls. We all cheer him on, but he just smiles and stares at us. We try to bribe him with toys to come to, but he just looks at us. I personally think he is more intrinsically motivated.

The pumpkin patch is doing extremely well. We have been busy every weekend and have finally broken even on our investment. It has been a lot of fun to see and meet many different people. Carter seems to get a kick out of going on and getting in the wagon, or showing his friends around the patch. I think he may have set a record for the most pumpkins picked by any one child in a season.

Last weekend I went and ran the Nike Women's San Francisco 1/2 marathon. I had a great time with all girls. Right before I fell asleep on Saturday night, I realized that I was about to experience my first full night of sleep in six months. I wanted to run faster than I did, but my alter-ego super-mom kicked in and I was running sub 7 minute miles for the first six miles, when I hit the first hill my legs were toast. I still finished 336th/16,000 runners, and 57th/2,979 in my age group, but I think "Jesse" could have done even better.