A Play Date at The Club

Charles had his first play date this weekend. We got together with my friend Nikki and her son Carter. Carter is 4, so he is a little bit older than Charles, but Charles loves older kids, so it worked out great.

It is very mom of me to set up a play date for my child. It is also very posh of me, because the playdate itself was at The Club. It would have been more posh, if I was a member at The Club myself...but it was close enough that Nikki is a member at The Club and she let us join her as her guests. I was trying to think of some posh names for Charles and I to go by when we went to The Club. I was going to go by Buffy, but when I was trying to think of a name for Charles...I realized that his name is already Charles and it doesn't get much more posh than that.

Everyone involved had a WONDERFUL time. There is a little indoor waterpark at The Club and I even think I will have Charles's birthday there. (here is a link in case you are curious). We rebelliously took the kids into the hot tub. Carter can barely touch in the hot tub and was showing off his height. We tortured Charles through the lazy river. He hated the whole thing, but was brave enough to not cry the whole time. He merely pouted. Charles's favorite part was the kiddy pool. it had a 2 feet high slide and Charles would have played on that all day. He also loved that he could run around in the water on his own. However, it wouldn't be a family adventure if there weren't a few mishaps. These mishaps were hilarious.

• Charles loves to take off his socks and shoes in the car. We were already running late for our play date and I wasn't happy that I had to redo the socks and shoes. Somehow, Charles made one of his socks dissappear. I drive a small car. I don't know how he could make the sock dissappear. Finally I gave up, and put on one sock and two shoes. What a great first impression we made on The Club.
• The Club has an amazing family locker room. It is a hall way of lockers, and there are individual rooms that you go into to change. These rooms have their own shower, toilet, sink, and bench. It is a good thing we had this private room. I am sure that if I let Charles walk around in a regular locker room, he would go around grabbing strange butts. However, even in this private room we had some hilarity. First Charles flushed the toilet and it scared him. Poor little guy. It scared him so bad that when I took off his diaper to put on his swimmy diaper, he peed all over the floor. As I was getting paper towel and wipes to clean up the pee, he started stepping in the urine with his one good sock. I had to take it off and throw it away.
• We were going to eat lunch at The Club. We were even going to call it Brunch to make it more posh. We thought that maybe we would go back in the water afterwards. The Club doesn't serve lunch that early, so we were forced to go to McDonalds. It was ok, because as Carter nicely put it, "I love McDonalds too!" Because I was expecting to possibly go back in the pool, I had just put on my clothes over my bathing suit. With that particular outfit, it was a bad idea. The pants I had on that day were thin, and the water soaked into them like crazy and it looked like I really peed my pants. It was so bad that I left a butt mark on my car's driver seat and the seat at McDonalds. Oh well, so be it. Charles did eat his McNuggets like a mad man, LOVED his car he got in his happy meal, and loved running around following carter.

Even with our funny little hiccups, the playdate worked out great and I think maybe I need to plan some more.

Brandon - the new guy

Brandon is the new guy at work. He is great. Today he was hilarious.

Brandon, myself, our project manager, and our boss went to a meeting today to see a prospective client to get some new business. Towards the end of the meeting the following took place:

Prospective Customer: Where did my pen go? I know I had a pen, what happened to it.
Brandon: I have a pen if you want to use it to jot something down:
PC (taking the pen and looking at it intently): This looks like my pen.
Brandon: Nope, this is my pen, it is the only thing I brought with me.
PC: I don't know, it looks just like my pen.
Brandon: Wow, I guess we have matching pens.
(Boss looks around on the floor for the missing pen)
Brandon: Well you can have the pen if you want, I have more at my desk.
PC: That's ok.

We all went back to our desks and then the people on my team got an email from Brandon. He admitted that when he got back in his car, he found his pen on the passenger side seat. He did indeed steal the pen from the prospective customer. I guess we will all know who to blame if the deal doesn't go through.

Dry - Wet - Dry

I have two cousins named Joel. One is on my Mom's side of the family and one is on my Dad's. Recently I discovered that they have something very odd in common. Both of them (at least at one time in their lives) have regularly used wet wipes to wipe after going to the bathroom. I know that one of the Joels does it now. I am not sure if the other one still does, but I know he did when he was a teen. I was recently talking to the Joel who uses wet wipes now, and he has quite a system. He buys the special wet wipes that are flushable and when he wipes he uses dry toilet paper, then the wet wipe, and then dry toilet paper again.

I scoffed when I heard this detailed process. I couldn't imagine the expense and toilet clogging that must take place to make this process work. I was sure that some of the wiping could be eliminated.

I talked to Joel about this during a recent vacation. I was reminded of the conversation when I was in the 50's style hotel room alone with Charles. He took our lone roll of toilet paper and threw it into the toilet. He was so proud of himself when he did it. I had to fish it out of the toilet. It was super gross. I should have called the front desk and requested more toilet paper, but it was late and I was in my jammies. I didn't want to have to deal with all that. I looked around the room to find my alternatives. It just so happens that I had a full container of baby wipes. Not the flushable kind of course, but they were definitely made for wiping butts.

I won't go into detail, but I don't think I will be making the switch any time soon. However, in Joel's defense, I didn't give the dry-wet-dry system a chance. I only experienced the -wet- wipe system.

It did get me thinking though, I have a cousin that is also named Catherine. Do her and I have odd things in common?

Do you have any cousins with the same name as you? Do you have odd things in common? Do you use the dry-wet-dry method of wiping?

The "My baby is so cute" blog

Every Labor Day weekend of my life has been spent at a family reunion campout near Grand Rapids at my Great Aunt's farm. This one was no exception.

The campout is always really fun, but now that I bring a toddler along, it gives me a whole new perspective. I no longer see the campout through the eyes of a teenager who would ride jet skis all day long. Now I see it through the eyes of a 18 month old. The last time we were at the campout, Charles could walk, but he wasn't really mobile enough to get into big trouble. He was just starting to explore the outdoors and he wasn't interested in getting dirty. Oh how one summer has changed things.

If awards were given out at the campout, Charles would have won the dirtiest toddler award. I wasn't ready for this. Sure, I packed him lots of clothes, but not nearly enough. The first surprise came when I let charles play in the water in his clothes and regular diaper and then I let him play in the sand. This led to a giant swelled up diaper and a baby butt covered in sand. I tried to change him, but my frustration must have been obvious to everyone. Baby wipes are no match for sand. To add to the fun, Charles hates laying on the grass, so he was trying to get away. My aunt Marie came to the rescue with a tub of water for butt rinsing and a towel for drying and changing. The tub of water worked out great. In fact, it became the favorite adventure for little chazzy chazz. He loved sitting in the tub more than anything else.

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Of course, he also found many other ways to get dirty as well:

• Dragging Aunts and Grandparents to the food tent to get cookies.
• Begging brownies with white frosting.
• Climbing up onto dusty pavilions.
• Climbing into paddleboats.
• Falling down on dirt roads.

The nice thing is, I know that he enjoyed it more and more with every bit dirtier he got.

Did you have a nice holiday?