Another Brayden-ism

Brayden and his mom are running late this morning, so I have just a few minutes to type another "how cute is that?" item. Yesterday it was hot and we filled up Brayden's pool. Being the boy he is, he peed in it once he was in and sitting down. I told him not to drink the water because he peed in it. A few minutes later, he decided to "cook" and "made" macaroni with his plastic pail and soup ladel he was playing with. I reminded him not to really eat the "macaroni" because he peed in the pool. A bit later, he used his pail to "make" coffee for me. He handed me a cup and told me it was coffee. I asked what else he put in it? "Ummmm.... swee ten low, cream and no pee pee." LOL!

There's a new weatherman in town...

And his name is Brayden Lee! Today I was putting Brayden down for his nap, laying on the bed with him and pretending to be asleep. He often talks to himself during these quiet times, and today I was listening. Today he said, "No thunder, no lightening. But thunder AND lightening AND rain on Wednesday and Friday." LOL! I swear! It was clear as a bell!

A Day at the Cincinnati Zoo

I woke up this morning and it was a gorgeous day -- a record-breaking low of 47 degrees last night (I love it), and today the high was forecast at 81, which meant it would be in the high 60's to mid-70's for the morning at least. Brayden arrived around 7am today, and I announced that he and I were headed to the Cincinnati Zoo. He was SO excited! We arrived around 10am, stayed for about 2 1/2 hours and saw about one-third of the zoo. Brayden walked the entire time, and there's no hurrying a 2 yr old! I have taken him to the Zoo before, but this time he "got it"...he was fascinated with the animals, roared at the lions, wished he could swim with the rhinocerous (rye-son-si-sus), and wanted to play with the "big kitty" (white tiger). But above all else, he absolutely loved the train ride. First, he just couldn't believe that WE were actually going to get ON the train! He was so funny about it. While we were standing in line, he must have asked me 20 times "On train, Umma?". And once we got on, he was so seriously enthralled with the whole thing. I swear, he was almost shaking with excitement. I guess being a Thomas the Train fan helped. He was also excited about telling Kelly (his other babysitter) about his train ride. Whenever we finish any "adventure", I always like to talk with Brayden about what we did and what we saw... Kind of refresh his memory about it all. I asked him today what he liked best about the zoo, and he said "ice cream cone". LOL And I asked him what animal he liked best and he said, "Ummmmmmmmmmmm... rhinocerous sleeping in the water." Then I asked him if he'd like to come to the Zoo again, and he said "Yes!" and "Umpa go to the zoo!". I said, "You want Umpa to come to the Zoo with us next time?" and he said, "Yes! And Mama!" Looks like we need to have a nice family day at the Zoo soon! He stayed awake in the car all of 10 minutes once we left the zoo around 12:45. And if Mr. Energy looked like this

you can imagine how tired his grandmother is tonight!

Take my Poll: How often do you thoroughly clean your house?

I love surveys and questionnaires. Always have. I'm not sure why, but give me a bunch of questions to answer and I'm in hog heaven. I took a survey yesterday that asked "How often do you (or someone else) thoroughly clean your house?" It didn't explain what "thoroughly clean your house" means, and I assume it means different things to different people. For me, "thoroughly clean your house" would include the following: -- Change sheets -- Vaccuum all rooms, including stairs -- Wash floors -- Dust furniture -- Windex windows and mirrors as needed -- Wipe down kitchen counters, clean kitchen sink -- Clean bathrooms (toilet, sink, tub, shower, tile) -- Empty all trash -- Wipe down baseboards and windowsills Now, I don't do all these in one day. I spread things out throughout the week. I tend to "thoroughly" clean the upstairs (4 bedrooms, 2 full baths) one day, and the downstairs (dining room, office, kitchen, family room, laundry room, half bath)on another. Trash gets emptied throughout the house on Wednesday (trash pick up day is Thursday). I answered that I "thoroughly clean my house" once a week, and that was the answer of 23% of the 86,000+ people who responded. But 7% of those 86,000 answered that they NEVER thoroughly clean their house! This floored me (and luckily, my floor is clean). How is it possible for someone to NEVER clean their house? They can't respond "because Mom cleans it" or "because my wife cleans it" because the question was "How often do you OR SOMEONE ELSE thoroughly clean your house?" The population of the U.S. is 304,459,438. Let's assume there are 5 people per household. That's sixty million plus households in the U.S. If this survey response is true, that means there are SIX HUNDRED THOUSAND homes in the U.S. that are never cleaned! I'm hoping people just think they never "thoroughly clean" their home because maybe they don't dust the top of the doors as often as they should or maybe they don't move the book-laden bookcases away from the wall and dust behind them as often as they think they should. I'd love to know what "thoroughly clean your house" means to you, and how often you do it! I put up a poll in the right-hand column of my blog page for you to answer the "how often" question -- and leave comments about what "thoroughly clean your house" means to you -- or respond on your own blog and leave me a link!

Umma got run over by a 2 yr old

Wow - I'm exhausted! Happy, but exhausted! I've had 2 yr old sweet grandson, Brayden, with me for 4 days in a row, 7am to 5:30pm, and my goodness, why can't they make energy proportionate to age. That little guy uses up more energy in 15 minutes than I do in the entire day. But my oh my, we had a great time together and I wouldn't trade it for the world. I discovered the best way to spend the day with Brayden is to maintain a fairly firm schedule. So here is how our days went: 7am - Brayden arrives, goodbye to Mom, make a list of what we're going to do that day 7:15 - 8:00 - Eat breakfast, help me fix Jeff's lunch, feed the fish and cat 8:00 - 8:30 - Brayden plays with Jeff, then we see Jeff off to work 8:30 - 9:00 - Play outside, ride his bike, play in the puddle at the end of our driveway 9:00 - 10:00 - House work (he vaccuums or sweeps, helps load the dishwasher, helps clean bathrooms (!), gets a Clorox wipe and cleans kitchen appliances and table 10:00 - 12:00 - Out* 12:00 - 12:30 - Lunch 12:30 - 2:30 - Nap 2:30 - 3:30 - Basement playroom (his larger toys are down here) 3:30 - 4:30 - Outside (pool or just playing in water) 4:30 - 5:00 - Snack, movie or book 5:00 - 5:30 - Transition over to Mom *Our trips out this week included going to the library, going to the car wash (the kind where you get out and watch through windows as the car goes through the wash - Brayden loved this), going to a playground, and going on a hike in the woods at a local park. Brayden is really working on learning new words and sentence structure now. He is amazing. He is putting full sentences together, using verbs and prepositions as well as nouns and pronouns! And he is fascinated with math - counting, adding, taking away. We got out some dominoes this week to just stack up and play with, and he preferred to count the dots on the dominoes. Here's a little movie of him doing so! (Notice his shirt - "No" means ask Grandma!) My house looks like World War III hit it, I'm behind on grocery shopping, coupon clipping and laundry, my garden has weeds as tall as my grandson -- and I don't care. This little boy is going to be grown before we know it, so my priority right now is being with him and enjoying every second of it!