I went from working back-to-back gigs to having no scenic artist jobs at all, so Aaron and I quickly made the choice to take Porter out of full-time daycare.  We were able to keep him in one day a week.  That choice allowed him to learn and play with his friends while giving me one day a week to solely devote to job-hunting.  Also, we wouldn’t lose our “spot” at daycare so we wouldn’t have to reapply (and pay another application fee) once he needed to go full-time again.

During my stay-at-home time I was always in doubt.  Was I providing P with enough stimulation and education?  Was I going to return to work as a scenic artist ever again?  Was this a sign from The Universe that I should switch careers?   Should I go to graduate school?  What would I study?  How the hell would I pay for graduate school?!  ::brain explodes::  It was rough, but things managed to work out–as they always seem to do.  By May I started working with a small theatre company in town that provided me with work through the summer and late fall.  I also picked up some extra work in September with a well-known regional theatre company in town and returned to a local university to paint a few operas.  Though 2011 had a rocky start, it actually ended up provided me with connections that not only kept me employed from May through December but has led to more work into 2012.

This year I am now the Scenic Charge Artist for the entire season at aforementioned small theatre company, it doesn’t pay much but I love working with the company and the designer.  Oh and it doesn’t come with benefits.  Well…there is this one: Aaron and I will be working together!  This season he is our Technical Director!  This is the first time that Aaron and I have worked together in this capacity in EIGHT YEARS so this is very exciting for us.  So we are working together from now through the rest of the year!

We actually have a lot of great work projects lined up this year including this one.  Aaron is doing graphics/illustrations for new version of a textbook being put out by one of his former professors (he also worked on the last version of the book published in 2007.)  All this on top of his usual duties of running a program at a university.  And me?  I have been working at a great regional theatre here in town while I have been waiting to start the season with this current company.  So we are very busy.  And as we like to say: “WE WORK ALL THE JOBS.”

Things have definitely improved since 2011 and here is to hoping that things will continue to improve this year and into the next!

One of my favorite so far happened as I was making dinner the other night.  Aaron and Porter just came home and I was already in the kitchen cooking.  Porter went to his room and closed the door.  Aaron was reading mail at the dining room table.  The following scene took place:

Porter: (making a noise like a European police siren) weee-ooo, weee-ooo, wee-ooo  Oh no!  Dat’s the phone in the kitchen Santa brought for me!

(The sound of running footsteps.  Porter flings open his bedroom door.)

Porter:  Phone is ringing!  I get it!

(Porter runs from his bedroom, down the hall, passed the kitchen and to his play kitchen in the corner of the dining room.  He has one shoe and sock on and one foot is totally bare.)

Porter (answering his fake phone):  Helwo?  Hi Papa.  I can’t talk now.  I taking off my shoes.  Okay.  Bye!  (hangs up phone.)

(Porter runs back into his bedroom.  He closes the door.)

And scene.

And stuff like this happens All. Day. Long.

It is amazing.  I love being a parent.

Now where was I?

Oh yeah, Porter turned 34 months old on Wednesday which means we are just a mere three months away from his third birthday!

What Porter is Wearing:

• Slowly growing out of his 2T shirts.  He needs more 3T shirts STAT.
• Even though he is 34 months, his 24 month pants still fit well.  He wears one pair of pants that are 2T.
• He wears 2T pajamas right now, but he’ll be out of those in about two months.
• Still in size 5 diapers (more on our potty progress later.)
• Just about to bust out of his size 7 shoes.

What Porter is Eating:

• We have entered the “This is your dinner: take it or leave it” phase of parenthood.  We use to give him dinner and then if he refused it we may give him something else later.  I use to worry that he wasn’t eating enough or thought that he would wake up hungry.  I’m passed that now.  He needs to be eating what we are eating.  His pickiness is getting ridiculous.
• He is now refusing to eat chicken and beef.  He pretty much won’t eat any meat that isn’t deli meat, hot dogs or bacon–all of which is loaded with junk.
• Still refuses to eat pizza or macaroni and cheese.  When he was offered a piece of pepperoni pizza recently he said, “Pizza is yucky to me.”
• However, he will gladly eat lettuce of all kinds, cucumbers, tomatoes, carrots, celery and lots and lots of fruit…
• …except blueberries.  He ate them when he thought they were grapes, but we let it slip that they were something different and now he removes them from his plate.
• He will only eat potatoes in fry or tot form.  This has always been the case.
• Porter now enjoys sunflower and pumpkin seeds.
• He and I both loveChobani Greek yogurt.  
• We also have been sharing bowls of popcorn lately.  Porter finds the popped kernels really fun to look at (and then eat.)

What Porter is Saying:

• Porter seems to have reached the non-stop-talking part of toddlerhood.  This is fascinating to me since I am a fairly quiet person.  He is saying all sorts of funny stuff these days–mostly because his imagination is going full-tilt.
• Porter has started referring to me and Aaron as “you guys.”  Pittsburgh hasn’t taken a hold of him yet since he isn’t calling us “yinz.”
• He likes to call things “cute” or “pretty.”
• He asks us for privacy during diaper changes if both parents are present.  All thanks to this book.
• After he has gone to bed, but has yet to fall asleep he likes to open his bedroom door to tell us things, such as “Mommy, kangaroo is sleeping.”
• Sometimes he will come to the bathroom door while I am in there.  He’ll knock and say, “Mommy, you in there?”  I will respond with yes. “Can I come in?”  I will ask him if he needs to or wants to try to use the potty.  He replies, “No, I just want to watch you.”  Great…
• Everyone is his “best friend” lately.  Even his toys.  ”This is my best friend Toby, the steam tram.”
• Restaurants are now referred to specifically as “food restaurants.”  Not sure why the change…

What Porter Likes These Days:

• “Cooking” in his kitchen
• Books
• Puzzles
• Pretending
• Dancing
• Singing
• Mr. Roger’s Neighborhood

What Porter Doesn’t Like These Days:

• Using the potty at home.

What Porter is Doing:

• Porter is creating long and involved imagined scenarios.  It is fascinating to witness–both by eyes and by ears!  I think I am going to write a post just about his imaginings.
• He is “reading” (and by reading I mean reciting word for word) books to us and to his stuffed animals.
• There has been lots of spontaneous dancing lately.
• Singing the theme song toMister Roger’s Neighborhood.

- I got a bad haircut.  This is my second bad haircut in a row–from a completely different stylist at a completely different salon.  So bad that I actually had Aaron fix it with scissors in our kitchen last night.  My husband cutting my hair?  A definite first for us.

- We took Porter to a birthday party for one of his daycare classmates.  It was a bowling party.  Porter did a “victory dance” after every turn.  His victory dance included rolling on the floor, jumping up and down and saying “I DID IT!  I DID IT!”

- At aforementioned birthday party, Porter tried soda for the first time (no other beverages offered.)  He hated it.

- I made slow cooker oatmeal for the second weekend in a row.  One batch provides me with a week’s worth of breakfast making my mornings much easier.  Do you have a slow cooker steel cut oatmeal recipe that you like?  I’d love to try it!

- Aaron did all of the laundry this weekend.  He’s my hero.

- I found the new Chobani flavors at our closest grocery store.  I am abnormally excited about this.  Chobani greek yogurt is my new favorite thing.

- Winter decided to show up and stay awhile.

- I filled out valentines for Porter’s class.

- I bought the supplies to make tiny cupcakes for Porter’s daycare Valentine’s Day party and regular sized cupcakes for my current coworkers and Aaron’s students.  I will be baking SO MANY cupcakes tomorrow night!

- I enjoyed laughs with my husband.

- I received kisses from my son.

- I felt cozy and content.

Not a bad weekend.

We were in the car driving through the city, heading home after dropping off a friend at the bus station.  Porter was babbling in the back seat.  Aaron and I were having a conversation up front.  We stopped at a red light.   That’s when I heard it.

“My money. My choice.”

I stopped mid-sentence.  ”What?  What did he say?” I asked.  Aaron shrugged.

I turned around to Porter.  ”What was that, buddy?”

He pointed to the Meineke sign on the corner.  ”Meineke.  My money.  My choice!”  Porter said, excitedly.

We were stunned!  How could he have learned that?!  Porter’s television habits consist of PBS…and then PBS shows on Netflix.

But some days later he started singing this one particular Queen song and that’s when we figured out what was up:  Porter was memorizing all of the commercials from The Wheel of Fortune/Jeopardy! hour of television that we watch after dinner!  That Queen song was featured in a local furniture store ad.  Even though this started this summer, his little brain has not stopped absorbing all sorts of consumer information.

On New Year’s Eve I was upstairs getting ready to head to our friends’ place.  Porter yelled a series of numbers up to me.  It sounded familiar.  Why?  Because it was a 1-800 phone number for an injury lawyer!  I had seen the commercial before–and apparently, so had Porter.

But it doesn’t stop at jingles or mottos or phone numbers; Porter can also identify logos.  He knows the logo for Home Depot, Giant Eagle, GetGo,  and Taco Bell (and he has never even been IN a Taco Bell) to name a few.  However, he does know the logos for more child-friendly things like Sesame Street and Thomas and Friends.  Those are more appropriate, but yet the whole thing is still unsettling.

I am amazed at Porter’s ability to identify these things.  I am also terrified.  We are exposed to so much advertising.  I know that I am numb to a lot of it (at least, I hope I am?)  But our kids are just sucking this stuff up.  Although we can limit some of the media our kids are exposed too, there is no way that we can really block it all out.  We just have to make sure our children aren’t consumed by consumerism.

I’ll just keep at that and if I happen to need an injury lawyer, I’ll ask Porter who he recommends.

The following conversation transpired:

Porter:  (pointing to the paintings around his room) Mom, you paint those for me?

Me: Yeah, I did paint those for you.

Porter: Before I was boring?

Me: (Confused, I take a second to process what he just said.  Then I figure it out!)  Oh no, not before you were boring, buddy–before you were BORN!

As you know, I’ve been a bit behind in the blogging as of late so Porter has said A LOT of funny things in the last three months or so.  Here are the phrases I remember:

• The other night I was getting ready to go to work.  Aaron was in the kitchen.  Porter was in his room playing with his trains.  I heard Aaron start asking Porter about his day.  They were chatting back and forth when Porter interrupted Aaron: “It’s not funny, Dad!  NOT FUNNY AT ALL.”  But Aaron wasn’t laughing and made no reference to anything humorous, so we have no idea where that comment came from.  Porter keeps saying it–especially when he is getting scolded.  Last night, I sternly told him that it was inappropriate to squeal at the dinner table to which he responded very seriously, “It’s not funny at all.”
• Porter now likes to announce his bodily functions.  He will run into a room and say, “I pooped!” or “I pooping!” or “I peeing!”  It does not matter who is around or where we are, by the way.
• “Smiley Face Cookie House!”  That’s Eat N’ Park.
• “Star Store!”  That’s Macy’s.
• “Cay-ron”  That’s a crayon.
• “The M car.”  That’s our minivan.  It’s a Dodge and he think that the ram emblem makes an ‘M’ shape.
• He has entered the dreaded “Are we there yet?” phase.
• “Tea time.”  Though he definitely heard the term from some episode of Thomas and Friends, he actually isn’t referring to a late afternoon cuppa.  ”Tea time” is what is calls dusk or dawn.
• “Tea whistle!”–that’s what he says when he hears the tea kettle sound.
• “Take a break.”  Porter tends to get all wound up and over-excited at daycare, so his teachers frequently tell him to sit down and “take a break.”  Now he will tell himself to take a break while at home, particularly when he is on the verge of a Time Out.
• “I don’t want to know!”  Aaron and I were talking in the kitchen while I was making dinner some night last week.  We laughed and something and then we heard Porter chime in from the living room, “I don’t want to know!”
• “On time in two weeks!”  Honestly?  We don’t know what this means.  And he says it ALL the time.  He’s been saying it for at least six months!  Aaron and I have tried to figure it out…we know that being “on time” is something very important on Thomas and Friends.  The only thing we can come up with for the “two weeks” part is from the book The Very Hungry Caterpillar, in which the caterpillar stays in his cocoon for two weeks.  Why does he put the two things together?  Beats the heck out of us.  And we can’t even use context clues to help us figure it out because this phrase is usually surrounded by a rapid-fire string of toddler gibberish.  ”On time in two weeks!” is usually the only thing we can make out of the whole thing.  We hope to figure it out someday…

If you have enjoyed this post then you may want to check out HowToBeADad’s My Kid Just Said page on Facebook where parents can post the amazing, confusing, hilarious things that their children have said.  It is amazing.  Aaron and I have both laughed ourselves to tears while reading some of them–especially the “house carrots” one.  Enjoy!

P delivers a spirited rendition of "Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer" on Christmas Eve

What Porter is wearing:

• Size 2T shirts, but with a few 24 month shirts still in the mix.
• Mostly size 24 month pants with a few 2T pairs creeping in.
• Still in size 5 diapers.
• Would be in size 2T underwear if he let us put them on him

What Porter is eating:

• He is on a huge vegetable kick right now.  As always, raw vegetables ONLY.  I just can’t believe that a toddler can enjoy salad so much.
• Chicken use to be his favorite, but now it is hit or miss.
• His “on again/off again” relationship with wheat toast with peanut butter is back “on.”
• He still refuses typical toddler favorites such as pizza and macaroni and cheese.
• Spaghetti and meatballs use to be our “go to” food since we knew he loved it.  We were eating it once a week.  Now?  He could take it or leave it.  Depends on his mood.
• He likes olives now.  Green only, please.

What Porter is Saying:

• A lot.  So much, in fact, that a whole post is in the works solely devoted to what he says on a daily basis.

What Porter Likes These Days:

• Cuddling under “cozy blankets.”
• Books books books.
• Thomas Thomas Thomas.
• Timmy Time
• Puzzles!

What Porter Doesn’t Like These Days:

• Wearing his winter hat.  He’d rather wear his hood on his coat.
• Using the potty at home.

What Porter is Doing:

• Imagining.  In the last three months, his imagination has blossomed.  It is just amazing to watch him play and to play with him.  He likes to hide from “monsters” by sitting on his bed with the covers pulled over him.  He isn’t scared of the “monsters” or anything, he just thinks it is fun to hide from them!
• Having a “party”–which means he turns the overhead light on in his room and spins in a circle until he falls down laughing.
• Having a “kangaroo party.”  Same definition as above with the addition of him throwing his stuffed toy rabbit named Kangaroo up in the air.
• Cooking in his play kitchen that Santa brought him.  He only serves water and hot dogs at the moment.  And he keeps his eggs in the dishwasher.
• Playing trains!  Never gets old.
• “Reading” books.
• Hopping around on all fours pretending to be a frog.
• Running.  Always running…
• He can recognize his name and some words–like zoo and school.
• He likes to refer to himself by using his full name–first, middle, last.
• And…HE IS USING THE POTTY AT DAYCARE!!!  Not all day, but one time most days–sometimes more!

I announced it on Twitter last week and a few people asked me why.  Well, I originally joined  Twitter in the summer of 2009 to help promote this blog and to connect to other parents who, like me, were new to this whole parenting thing.  At first it was fun and I “met” a lot of cool people and steadily gained a small following.

One weekend this past summer, I gained 800 followers in less than 48 hours.  It was crazy.  A lot of my new “followers” were definitely bots, but so many were attacking me that I just couldn’t keep up with reporting and blocking them all.  It was impossible.  I complained to Twitter support.  They suggested that I supply them with a list of all of the possible bot @names, BUT I couldn’t give them a screen shot–I had to type them all out or copy/paste them into an e-mail.  Um, ALSO IMPOSSIBLE.  So I blocked as many as I could but soon gave up.  It was a battle I couldn’t win.

Then I think because I was rapidly gaining followers I started to be featured as someone “Who You Should Follow” by Twitter.  Most recently I was listed in the “Who You Should Follow–Family” category with the likes of HowToBeADad, The Pioneer Woman, Dooce and celebrities.  I was flattered but mostly I was like, “What the–?!  I don’t even say anything important–like 20 people read my blog!”  So, because I was listed alongside all of these super cool people, the number of followers I had increased even more.

And then things started getting weird.

No one was really responding to what I had to say, but people were tweeting to me begging for follow backs, asking me to promote their website/book/music/project, telling me to find The Lord, imploring me to Buy American…the list goes on and on.  And those were the tweets I understood–I’m not even counting the tweets that were sort of gibberish or just contained a link.

Twitter was no longer fun.  I wasn’t connecting with people.  It became this whole other weird thing.

When explaining it to Aaron I likened my Twitter experience to a party.

At first, joining Twitter to me felt like having a few friends over to my house for a get together.  Just a handful of friends–we were just going to hang out and talk and have a few drinks and it was going to be pleasant and fun…no big deal.  But soon other people started arriving at my door.  Friends of friends showed up, and they were cool…but soon it was their friends.  And some neighbors.  Then some shady dudes from down the street…Suddenly things got loud and crowded and jerks were spilling drinks on my floor…

Soon Twitter felt like a raging kegger at my own house full of people I didn’t know.  The people I actually wanted to talk to weren’t around and instead I was trying to force my way through the crowds of loud, drunk people, throwing out the troublemakers.

Finally, with 53,000+ followers I hit the point of “THAT’S IT.  EVERYBODY OUT!  YOU DON’T HAVE TO GO HOME, BUT YOU CAN’T STAY HERE!”  

Too much BS, not enough real connection for me at the moment.  I have 30 days to reactivate my account, if I choose.  And I might do that, but for now I am absent from Twitter.

You can still find me on Facebook, Instagram and Pinterest and of course, here!