Family Fuller

I feel as though I would be great for a job at the UN or as a diplomat these days. I spend my ENTIRE day negotiating deals with Colin. He says he wants cereal for breakfast, OK…then it’s waffles…fine….then a peach. Finally we settle on eating a peach while waiting for the waffle to cook. Of course as soon as the waffle is done he wants cereal. And not just any cereal “new cereal” - I think he saw Chuck’s cinnamon Toast Crunch…but I pretend I don’t know what he is talking about, so we settle on rice crispies. All set, until I get get out the bowl…he doesn’t want the little green bowl, he wants a “big bowl” - not the one I have, a different one. Eventually I have 5 bowls, 3 spoons and 2 boxes of cereal on the table…but it isn’t good enough, now he wants the “new cereal” again. Finally for the sake of my sanity I tell him…you are having rice krispies, in a big bowl like mommies, with a big spoon. He relents and starts eating. This little breakfast episode takes about a half hour (after spending about 20 minutes convincing him that he is hungry and we should go downstairs - even though he just spent 15 minutes trying to get me out of bed.)

That is a typical morning…imagine trying to get him into the car, or into a store, or to walk a certain direction in the store. Sometimes I really can’t believe I have the patience for this…but I do. I rarely give in, but I spend a LOT of time waiting for him to agree with me

Couldn’t wait to add this one that Jess just sent me - Colin with his crew, from left; Sophia, Sierra, C-Man, George. They meet at the park a few times a week, and love running the bases and monkeying around. Looks like Colin’s telling a fish story of some sort.

This morning Colin turned the TV on and of course daddy had left it on ESPN so first we watched some football and then they showed some tennis highlights. Colin got super excited and said “tennis…tiny, yellow ball.” I said yes, they do play tennis with a yellow ball - then I asked Colin if he would like to play and he said “Yes, yes, yes… oh boy, oh boy”. I told him Daddy could play with him when he got home. We called Chuck and work and Colin got on the phone right away and said “Daddy - play tennis.” Of course then we had to wait until 6 for Daddy to get home. Colin talked about playing tennis all day - ALL day.

When Chuck got home they went right outside to play - but it didn’t go so well. I could just hear Colin screaming about something, but we still aren’t sure what. He wanted to treat the racquet and ball like a golf club and golf ball and whenever we would throw the ball to him and it would hit the racquet he would just freak out - screaming and crying. So much for the first tennis lesson. I think he wants to move on to golf.

One other note. The other day I was reading the paper while Colin was eating and he goes “Mama…President Bush” I looked on the opposite page, and sure enough there was Bush. Immediately after I said, yep that is President Bush Colin goes “Mama….Boooooo”. Ah, our little liberal

Not to jinx anything, but Sevi seems to be dealing with things very well thus far. No outward signs of anything wrong, and to date I haven’t noticed any changes in the lump on her foot. She’s just as anxious as ever to be outside in the yard, eats regularly, and hasn’t lost any weight. So fingers are still crossed, and we’re being even nicer to her than we usually were (and trying to remember that we have two kids already, and she needs plenty of attention when we can spare it).

The picture is older, from April I believe, but I don’t think we’d thrown it up here before, and as we head into the winter months it’s good to remember that spring is actually out there on the horizon.

It only took a week, but I was finally able to get the zoo pictures cropped and ready to roll on here. We couldn’t have picked a nicer weekend, might have been the last nice weekend of the year in Michigan - about 75 degrees and sunny. Colin had a blast, although I think he could have probably stayed in the butterfly house the entire time we were there. It was a small enclosure, but the butterflies were everywhere, landing on your head and your hands - he couldn’t believe it.

…and since Jess says I never take pictures of her with Colin, here’s one of her with Colin in front of a fountain - clearly Colin saw something new of interest.

There were peacocks running all over the grounds. Colin managed to get pretty close to a few of them, not to mention getting plenty of peacock poop on his shoes.

Moving up to slightly bigger animals, Colin was finally impressed by the tiger. As with most animals, I think he wanted it to sing Itsy Bitsy Spider…sadly, the tiger didn’t oblige.

On to the seals and polar bears, the zoo had a glass walkway below their pools, which the bears seemed to love, since they kept going back and forth across it.

Made a quick stop by the warmer climate bears, Colin liked the black bears - which he called “chocolate bears”, but again was disappointed when they didn’t follow his command to jump in the pool.

Wrapped up with the giraffes, a hippo and the zebras - Colin didn’t want to leave at this point, although he was exhausted. He excitedly told us the giraffes were eating the grass.

And since the giraffes were pretty cool, even for bigger kids, here’s one last shot. Fun day, Colin had a blast. Of course he asked at least once, probably twice, to see the elephants, which were recently moved (not the ideal winter climate for them). And believe it or not Detroit actually has a very respectable zoo. Good thing they didn’t shut it down (it has been threatened).

I meant to get a post up after Colin went to the zoo for the first time on Sunday, but there will be quite a few pictures and I was exhausted last night, so it’ll have to wait till this evening. In the interim, I thought I’d drop in this shot of the man from a christening party we went to recently, where Colin made a friend, Ella. They latched on to each other, and proceeded to ‘get married’ about five or six times at this makeshift altar. Needless to say, Colin was a hit at the party, and he and Ella are very happy together.

Colin has been pulling out all the stops to avoid going to bed lately. We have routine - bath, play on our bed for awhile, book and then in the crib. Once in the crib Colin starts into a list of things that are wrong with him (we are downstairs by this time, listening to him on the monitor.) It usually starts with a simple “out the crib” - about 10 times. Then he says “Mommy, where are you?” about 30 times. He throws in a couple of these “Get boogie out.”, “Jammas too big”, “Potty”, “I hungry”,”Drink water” - occasionally he will throw in a “Daddy…”

Last night took the cake though. As a bit of a back story…the past two mornings he woke up at 5 AM, when Chuck got up and I brought him into bed with me. So last night he screamed “out crib, sleep mommy daddy bed” for a solid 15 minutes. Then he calmly said “Mommy, open door please. Morning. Coffee. Bagel.” His excuses went on for about 45 minutes. Later I went to check on him and he was asleep sitting up in the corner of his crib with his head cocked back and his socks in his hand. It looked totally uncomfortable, like in the middle of thinking up ways to get us in his room he just fell asleep.

Keep in mind he just turned two yesterday…so the fact that he pretty much knows every word I can even think of him needing right now, that he puts them in sentences and uses excuses to get us to get him out of bed is pretty amazing to me. Chuck and I just sit downstairs listening to the stuff he comes up with while in his crib and laugh everytime he thinks of something new.

Oh, yesterday he just starting saying “Wait a minute…” as in “Hum, I just thought of something”

Colin has been doing well…just a few days away from his 2nd birthday.

Saturday we had a little party - after a long debate about whether we should cancel or not due to his fever the day before and the terrible night sleep we had all had on Friday. In the end, we canceled with a few people and had mainly family over. It ended up being fun, but Colin hit the wall before it was over so everybody ended up leaving pretty fast after that.

One funny note from the party. Colin has been singing “Happy Birthday Colin” for the past couple of weeks ever since Grandma sang it to him in Block Island. So yesterday during his party when everyone sang to him he clapped and got so excited when they said “Happy Birthday Colin…” that he asked to do it again (including blowing out the candles)…so everyone obliged…it was pretty funny. Everybody said he should get to hear it twice because he was turning two…which led Chuck to comment “No one is going to come to your 18th birthday now.”

In the end, it turned out to be a fun day…and it seemed like fall started immediately after the party ended. We even turned on our fireplace a bit on Sunday - while playing with the great new workbench from Grandma…see pic below.

That’s right - as Chuck said in his last post, I am in fact pregnant with Colin’s little brother or sister. He always says he is having a baby sister but we won’t find out until the end of Febuary. I have been feeling pretty bad up until recently. Pretty bad morning sickness just like with Colin, but it is starting to fade now. Both times I have been pregnant I have said how terrible it is and that I can’t imagine doing it again…but we did. As for #3…we will have to wait and see about that.

It won’t fit in about six months, because Jess is expecting baby Fuller #2. As with Colin, we won’t be finding out the gender until baby is out - we’re very excited (everything was planned)!

Had the first sonogram a few weeks ago, heartbeat was strong - but you begin to realize how matter of fact the doctors start to be with baby #2. I suppose they figure you’ve been there and done that, so who wants to hear a methodical beating for more than 10 seconds - um, that would be me.

Not much to do about that, but as a second child myself, I’ll most definitely be advocating for the uniquely special aspects of having another child (it can’t get routine after just one).

In any case, it’s going to get a little more crazy around these parts pretty soon, but I think we’re ready for it. Colin has his 2nd birthday party coming up this weekend (slightly in advance of the actual date, Sept. 14), and as per the usual the adults are going to far outnumber the kids. Should be fun (I think we can still get away with having beer there).