The Stitch

I know, I know. I'm HORRIBLE at summertime blog maintenance. Truth be told, I'm just too busy watching Tyra reruns and eating Bugles and Easy Cheese to bother.

But you ALL know better. It's actually peak Renaissance faire, wedding, costume convention season and we're starting to get pelted with Halloween orders. I'm not complaining - business is good, and when business is good, Mama doesn't have panic attacks. When Mama doesn't have panic attacks, Dada is happy.

So, that's what's keeping me from updating my blog. If you're all really hungry for dish, please check out Brian's blog - which he is doing a fabulous job keeping updated. Especially since we bought a new camera. I've been playing with it too, taking some shots of the Elizacritter and close-ups of Brian's flowers.

We took E-Beth to her 18-month checkup and she received her last set of vaccinations until she turns four. They really knocked her on her butt this time, with a 101 fever the next day.

Things I did not admit to our pediatrician:

* The morning of the appointment, Elizabeth's breakfast was supplemented with a wad of cotton candy - but only because she caught me eating some and threatened to publicly blog about it if I didn't give her some too.

* Pool time often counts as a bath (thanks for the great summertime tip, Jane!), and after messy dinners of baked beans, (which makes great hair conditioner), we frequently dunk her in the pool to wash the beans off.

* We have a poopy song. "P is for poopy, that's good enough for me. Poopy, poopy, poopy starts with P."

* She farts at the dinner table, and the sounds resonates LOUDLY on her plastic booster chair. It makes her laugh. It makes us all laugh. We shouldn't laugh, but we do.

* She is obsessed with her right nostril. Her right finger loves it dearly. This makes us laugh too.

Right now the VMS schedule is booked straight through to October, so if you're hoping to get a Halloween order in, you need to do it within the next couple of weeks, or it's going to be too late.

Busy season will be over soon, and I'll have a bit more time on my hands to update. I promise. I hope.

Elizabeth went "number two" in the grownup potty yesterday. It's a big day in the Piper household! Brian actually took pictures of it. (We have a new camera that arrived yesterday)

I'm her mom, so naturally I think she's the cutest thing. This video is Elizabeth in her portable bathtub. The ends of the tub have foam cushions to help make baby's bath experience more comfortable. If you rub your finger on the foam pads very quickly, they make a fabulous squeaking noise. Elizabeth LOVES it. Watch and see.

Squeakybath

This one is me and Elizabeth in her lap pool, practicing dunking techniques.

Dunkabeth

Bread as a hat. It's a good thing.

Elizabread

And finally, you can see the costume designer trying to break free in this video. Instead of using fabric, Elizabeth likes to use balogna to make her costumes.

Balognasleeves

For those who wish to view the infamous back-breaking landing, here it is, from Brian's helmet-cam perspective.

Please note that this is NOT work safe - You are going to hear a whole string of obscenities, so keep the volume off or turned down low if naughty words offend you.

It's definitely going to make you cringe and realize just how lucky he was that the outcome wasn't much worse.

That's the kind of message I'm sure all moms dread hearing on their answering machines. Especially when the rest of the message involves words like "skydiving accident," "hard landing," hurt my back."

And of course, he downplayed the urgency just a hair.

Saturday afternoon, the Briguy made his second skydive of the year (usually he's got hundreds in by this time of year, but he's got a naggy wife and a kiddo to entertain, so we rarely unchain him from the kitchen table). A couple of his parachute lines snapped. He tested them to make sure he could "flare" (which makes him slow down as he lands). Everything seems ok, so he didn't cut away, and attempted a landing.

Well, long story short: flare didn't flare, the ground came at him a little too quickly and the end result is a whole stream of curse words captured on video via helmet cam, and one very sore hubby with a compression fracture of a vertebrae.

We spent Saturday afternoon/evening at the hospital entertaining the nurses with Brian's muddy Teva-toes and Elizabeth's ability to fart and laugh hysterically at the most unimaginable moments. The two of them scored lots of stickers - E-beth's had smiley faces and ads for "Liquid Stitches," and Brian's were for EKG monitors - attached only at the hairiest places on his body.

I want to nag. I want to lecture. I want to lay down the law and ban people who live in the Piper homestead from falling from the sky, but I won't. I'm going to do the smart thing (as advised by a very wise woman I know) and leave the nagging to everyone else who knows him. ;-)

Again, cuteness overload. Don't click if spit offends you.