A perfect moment

It was one of those I just don't want to forget... and now I won't have to!

Yesterday, Sunday, we planted flowers. Steve had finally had enough of our stunted azaleas in front of the porch rail. So, out they came, and in went impatiens. Allen was having trouble fitting in to the process... "I like to dig, but they tell me I can't dig! But they're digging! I like to walk, but they tell me not to walk there! I like dirt!!!" etc. You can imagine how that tortured his tiny mind.

He also likes flowers. Very much. One of the leftover plants, we put in a pot. After at least an hour of being denied his destructive tendencies, he was tottering over toward the lone flower in the pot, armed with a shovel. I kept yelling at him: "Don't dig the flower, Allen! Do easy! Stay away from the flower, Allen! Nooo!" Finally, he just put down the shovel, went over to the flower and sniffed it, as gentle as could be. Awwwww. I had pegged him so wrong. Toddler profiling.

Jennie's Book Chat: "Bad Blood"

I also keep reading these Alex Cooper books by Linda Fairstein. Linda Fairstein, I'm sure, was a great lawyer. She's not really a great writer.

But, I got the book for 2 bucks at work, and so I read it. The central characters, Alex, Mike and Mercer, are pretty good. Alex always finds herself in some sort of moral peril. Hard to buy for an assistant DA. But Fairstein tends to bog us down in legal detail. This book was not as bad in that regard as past ones. A lot of the time, she throws in these random cases just to illustrate some particular point of sex crimes law. Yippee. And Alex spent hardly any time on Martha's Vineyard in this book. Just Joan's wedding, where she made out with a French chef. Even this felt thrown in.

But the plot device of the DNA/bone marrow transplant was cool. Did you know that, if you have leukemia and get a marrow transplant, if it works right, you'll actually make only your donor's blood, on a DNA level. So, if you leave your blood at a crime scene, it's actually their blood. Keep that in mind next time you want to commit a crime...

Sweet sleeper

I just uploaded this to see how fast my new DSL is, upstream. Wicked fast!

The Crabbe Trap goes broadband

It's here! Our high-speed connection!

The Crabbe Trap itself will not change. It'll still be right here where you're used to seeing it. But our "mindspring.com" mail accounts will be no more. So, if you want to e-mail Jennie, it's jccrabbe@sbcglobal.net. If you want Steve, it's wickethump@sbcglobal.net. We're also on Yahoo! Messenger with those user names.

I haven't tried to upload any new photos yet... Emilyn came home sick from school today and sort of derailed our computer play time. But it should be a lot faster, and I may not have to reduce the size of my photos by so much. So, stay tuned!

Mamas, don't let your babies grow up to be jpegs

That was a funny ad I saw online for HP printers... But the theme has been sounded by a lot of printing outfits... You have a digital camera, but where are your pictures?

Now, I'm a really big fan of DropShots, as everyone knows. It keeps all my photos in perfect chronological order. Everyone can see them, read my comments, make their own. You can go back and check what Allen looked like last year at this time, or on his first birthday, or whatever. I'll never have to ask: "How old was Emilyn when she learned to ride a bike?"

But there is much to be said for that photo on the fridge, or in a frame on your desk.

I'm also a big fan of Creve Coeur Camera. They are experts there. But their digital prints just stink. How can this be? They have the best of everything, and the expertise to go with it! But my pictures always looked fake. Flat. The colors were all wrong. I looked at my film prints wistfully... Can't my digital prints look real?

So, I began a grand experiment. I took 10 pictures from our beach vacation. I put them on a CD. From the same CD, I ordered 10 prints from Walgreens, Shutterfly and Creve Coeur Camera. I just wanted to check CCC again. I really want to give them my business!

But the winner was revealed, hands down: Walgreens. Can you believe it? The crappy drugstore that's on every corner, with the surly clerks who know nothing about photography, and their prints are far and away better than Creve Coeur Camera. Real skin. Real hair. They're nearly every bit as good as my old film prints. And they're ready in an hour, for pete's sake!

So, if you're wondering where to take your pictures, The Crabbe Trap officially endorses Walgreens.

The Little Dipper

Lea and neap and gorp

What a great time we had for lunch at Aunt Amy's house! Great burgers! Great guac! And I brought my (new) famous pomegranate vinaigrette! I just love typing that!

Anyway, it was a fun day for all. Some highlights: Allen going for the squat record; Steve's clutch crossword hits (What the heck is "gorp"?; Wyatt's waxings on "The Land Before Time"; Emilyn's multicourse dessert; and Will's rubber snake! It's all over on DropShots, so, click below and take a look!

Lunch at Aunt Amy's

What's up with Emilyn

So much is up with Emilyn! On Thursday, she was so nervous about her trip to the dentist that she forgot her homework. There was no time to go back and get it, so we headed right to Dr. Dunagan's office.

The visit went fine, after Emilyn got past the X-ray part. She doesn't like gagging on nasty-tasting plastic. But she's really working on staying calm and still and letting the nice dental health professionals do their work. She had just lost another tooth a few days earlier, and the hole started to bleed as the hygienist was doing her cleaning... Emilyn's mouth has been a very uncomfortable place lately, with many teeth loose at once.

So, she freaked out a little over the blood, but mostly she settled down and was pretty much fine for Dr. Dunagan. We looked at the pictures of her teeth and, after the professional cleaning, they look bee-you-tee-ful. And NO cavities!

So, with that ordeal aside, we headed back to school to pick up her homework. We met her principal, Mrs. Scott, in the lobby. "Emilyn, I was just about to write your name in the announcements," she said. Everyone who ordered spring pictures was eligible in the drawing for a free iPod Shuffle! And Emilyn won! Out of all the kids in school!

So, Mrs. Scott hands us a tiny little box, with a little metal contraption slightly smaller than a cigarette lighter. Holy cow! Daddy and I have had our heads in the technological sand for as long as we can, I think. Right away, we went home and upgraded to broadband with AT&T (more on that when it's activated next week). The guy at AT&T was so nice and helpful, he even taught us a bit about what to do with our iPod once we get it up and running. Emilyn's being very patient, but she's very excited about her new "teenager" tool.

On Friday was the big spring party at Sorrento... with a carnival theme, and what a beautiful day outside it was. The whole second grade came out for popcorn, sno cones and carnival games... I ran the duck pull. When it was over, Emilyn declared to Mrs. Biever: "This was the best party ever!"

Then, on Saturday, it was time to pick up our April Showers bag for Brownie Scouts. A week ago, the Scouts left bags on porches in the neighborhood, asking people to leave out donations of toiletries for needy people. On Saturday, we went around to pick them up. Then, we took everything to Olivia's house to sort it out. We asked Katherine to come over for a play date, and she got to come with us for lunch and a trip to the park to feed the ducks.

And today, we're off to have lunch at Aunt Amy's! Going to see Wyatt and Will! So, more pictures to come from that.

Fork this!

Toddler-dom has set in... Allen very often now insists on trying to feed himself with a fork. He's not too bad at it... It's that disastrous final wrist twist that always ends up with more food on his shirt than makes it into his mouth!

Allen likes hats

Boy, does he ever. Here he figured out this green Christmas cookie tub fits his head just right.

Fill it and spill it

This is something that all babies go through... But boy, Allen loves to put stuff in containers and dump it out... and then do it all again. His favorite thing is the money jar, which has about 20 years worth of spare change in it. I figured out a brilliant thing for him to "fill and spill" outside: bird seed. That way, whatever he gets all over the ground just stays there, and nature cleans it up.

Miss Julie came by today

And she brought the farm! A cute little farm with lots of nifty animals, and we practiced our animal sounds. Allen is pretty much up on these. But it became clear once again that Allen only knows one vowel... Wait, that's not giving him credit. He spans the whole realm between 'uh' and 'eh.' I think they call that a diphthong...

Miss Julie had some ideas about this. She wants us to practice showing him how you move your face to make these sounds: Eeeee! Ooooo! Oh! She says we should also try giving him an array of different kinds of cups. So he'll have to work his mouth in different ways. And, music to Daddy's ears: Miss Julie recommends singing lots of "Old McDonald." Eeee-iiii-eee-iii-ohh! (For those of you who don't know, Daddy's not much for singing. He says he may instead do a dramatic reading of "Old McDonald," sort of in the style of James Earl Jones.)

My sister, the blogger

How do empty nesters deal in the digital age? With a blog, of course!

With Caurie's imminent move to Florida, and the arrival of Derek's second just months away, Laurie has entered cyberspace with a blog of her own, The Waddellettes. I know it'll be a great place for the gang to keep in touch...

There will now be a permanent link there, and to other places, on the left of The Crabbe Trap, under the header "Sites to visit."

A year of The Crabbe Trap

Hey, guess what? Our first anniversary passed (quietly) over the weekend. In fact, I didn't even realize it until my sister said she was looking for an old post from last May. So! Thanks to everyone who's been reading, and I hope we'll have another exciting year. And don't forget... YOU can contribute! Write a comment! Send me a picture you'd like to see here! Send me links to things you've seen and liked! If you want a message posted, I can handle that, too! But, by all means, let's make this everyone's Web site.

The Cohen Report: Allen at 18 months

Our big boy is getting longer and leaner! Again! (He still eats like it's going out of style...)

Length: 33.5 inches (79th percentile), up from 32.5 inches at 16 months
Weight: 26 pounds, 11 ounces (60th percentile), up from 25 pounds, 4 ounces at 16 months
Head circumference: 48 cm, unchanged (That may be off, because he was really wiggly. He acted like he was getting tortured, not measured. All this, and he didn't even have any shots!)

Once again, Dr. Cohen says he looks great. He talked about accidental death (cheerful!) and tantrums (not a problem!) and discipline (we didn't tell him that we thunk our toddlers on the head when they need it).

Someone canceled spring

Well, it's a good thing we weren't at the beach this week. Highs of 50 there. Here, record lows. 22, and the like. Killed the peach crop. Killed the apple crop. And our yard isn't looking too hot, either. It may be too late for the tulips, lilacs and azaleas... But we're really going to have to keep a close eye on the trees. It could be an ugly, brown summer!

A real killer

Jennie's Book Chat: "Step on a Crack"

OK, OK... I bought another James Patterson book. Another book with a co-author. Will I ever learn?

But I actually liked this one quite a bit. A little thin on details, setting, character... But, as usual, a fast car of a plot. What I do know of Mike Bennett and his brood, I like! The loss of Maeve was a little depressing, but I'm sure it sets up all that's to come. In dozens of other books that I swear I won't buy. Really.

So much to update, so little time

Well, we're back from the beach, and we had a marvelous time. A few wrinkles, of course. Allen wasn't a big fan of the car. He cut his finger on a plate shard. Emilyn got pinched by a crab. And knocked down by the waves. And she and I got very sick on our last night there! Bad tuna? Who knows?!

But beyond that, we had some excellent beach fun. And we've got the pictures to prove it. Underneath this post, you'll see each entry, by day, wrapping up our big Gulf Shores adventure.

Day 10: Throwed rolls and the road home

After we stopped for the night just south of Memphis (room smelled like smoke, breakfast was awful)... We headed off on the last leg home. Emilyn and I were still a bit queasy, but we managed to work up an appetite for throwed rolls at Lambert's Cafe in Sikeston. What's really weird is that there's a Lambert's at the beach, too! There are only three in the country, and we've been to two. Emilyn caught two rolls... and missed one. But I rescued that one from ending up on the floor. Got some cute photos of the kids playing around outside. Most of all, Allen was overjoyed to get back home to... the moon in his room! Thanks, Aunt Laurie! It's the perfect present!

Outside Lambert's Cafe

Jennie's Book Chat: "Gone"

Another good beach read was the one I picked up at Just Books in Gulf Shores... "Gone," by Lisa Gardner. She writes about a whole law enforcement family... Dad is a former FBI profiler... His wife is a former deputy sheriff... his daughter is FBI... and her fiance is a Georgia state detective. This was the first I've read by Lisa Gardner, and I plan to go back and read the rest. So, look for more on Quincy and his crime-fighting bunch!