Author: Melissa

I hate all the whininess here. I really am so sorry you guys. Ugh. Let’s get back to Monkey for a moment.

On Saturday, Monkey was begging to “walk the dogs?” I finally caved in even though it was pretty much dead last on the list of things that needed doing. We stayed in our neighborhood and had a really nice walk, Monkey was chatting with me about two topics:

1. Apparently there are heffalumps in the trees in our neighborhood. Monkey saw three on our walk, a blue, a pink and a green one. This morning he saw an orange one in our backyard.
2. Monkey really wants to fly on a plane. He wants to go to the airport. He wants to go fwying! When asked where he wants to fly to he says “airport” like, duh, where else would you fly to? I couldn’t really argue that.

When we got back to the house Monkey immediately asked to go for another walk. I left the older dog at home, since he can’t handle long walks anymore, and we just took the puppy ((Who at 12, is not much of a puppy anymore!)). I offered to let Monkey walk him because Barwee is really good on the leash for Monkey and, for the first time ever, Monkey took charge all by himself! He usually will only walk Barley on our street and then hands the leash over to one of us. He held Barley’s leash the entire time and did an awesome job. Now all he wants to do is “walk the dogs?” the dogs probably won’t mind 🙂

The title has nothing whatsoever to do with the post, but it needed to be said. Honestly, a drum set and pool table as background on his set? Ugh.

Anyway, I failed to post anything yesterday but given the post content on Friday I think it was still an improvement so I declare a win. I am just about to leave the house for a LINKS group planning session. A couple local families (HI!) have generously volunteered ((I’m pretty sure they volunteered themselves but I might have volunteered them too.)) to assist with the group sooooo it’s time to plan some social and fund raising activities! Anyone got suggestions? 🙂

I am a little, err, somewhat, OK, ridiculously ticklish. When I was little my mother, my mother, would torture me by…pretending to tickle me. I would be laughing helplessly on the floor and her hands never got closer than 4″ to my body. But I hated being ticklish, perhaps because my mother, my own mother for pity’s sake, thought this was hysterical.

You expect that sort of treatment from big brothers, right? And I had two of those so…I certainly got some of their brand of torture too. Their idea of torture, though, was scarily close to actual torture and involved filament lines strung between trees and 4 foot deep pits dug in the woods and covered with branches to conceal them ((To their credit, they never put any sharp objects at the bottom of the pit.)) from pesky little sisters who might follow them ((Everywhere)) into the woods. We certainly couldn’t have that happen because pesky little sisters might tattle on them when they played war games with actual guns…OK, fine, they were “only” bb guns. Dude, I get on some wicked tangents sometimes.

Anyway, to me tickling = torture. Monkey, however, loves to be tickled. He craves tickling. It’s actually something we can do to him to make him comfortable in an otherwise uncomfortable situation, like an exam room. He laughs these great big belly laughs that make me want to eat him right up. Honestly, those curls plus that laugh = code red on the Monkey-nomming scale. Though, to be honest, the Monkey-nomming scale is generally at a pretty high level of yellow. The poor kid is used to it and even makes the snarfing sounds I make on his neck when the nomming commences to coax me into doing it sometimes. I can’t even make it a whole paragraph without a tangent.

As I was trying to say, Monkey also loves to make people laugh. Recently he has made the connection that tickling Money = helpless laughter. Do you see where this is going ((Seriously, if you do, you deserve a cookie because I was not sure until just now.))?

This evening, while I was trying to get the little beast in his pajamas, he took every single opportunity he could find to stick his hands under my arm to tickle me! You know what, there are a lot of opportunities to tickle someone when they’re focused on squishing a little Monkey into his pajamas!

To sum up…

Money: tickle = torture
Monkey: tickle = helpless laughter

I’m doomed. DOOMED!

oh, boy, is this child ever adorable *sigh*

Duhdee is cooking dinner, Grammy & Grampy have come to visit. Tonight’s dinner is homemade beef stew and it is divine. Monkey, however, is not impressed. While Grammy, Duhdee and I were in the kitchen chatting Monkey came out asking for blueberries. Alas, he had eaten all of the blueberries. His next request? Pizza. Of course.

Pizza is not an option…and we told Monkey so.

Then Monkey:

1. Grabbed his stool;
2. Flipped through the menus we keep on the top of the fridge ((Yeah, he’s that tall.))
3. Found the menu for our favorite pizza place;
4. Handed the menu to Duhdee;
5. Grabbed Duhdee’s smart phone;
6. Navigated to the phone icon;
7. Held the phone to Duhdee’s ear;
8. And said, Pizza?

It turns out that pizza was an option for such an adorable and enterprising little Monkey.