Bowman West

In Pictures...

Our wonderful class at church gave us a going away party last Friday night. It feels funny even saying "class at church" because they are so much more than that. They are some of our best friends. Anyway...there were a ton of kids and they had a blast playing together. It was quite a scene. At one point they all crowded into the office and were entertained by Ben, kid-wrangler extraordinaire, and they couldn't stop screaming and laughing. It was hilarious! I tried to get some good pictures, but for some reason Charlie's face was the only one that wasn't moving at this point:
















A few weekends ago we introduced Charlie to the correct way to go to the drive-in. He's been to the drive-in several times but he's always been strapped into his car seat. We thought he was old enough now to do things right. That means an air mattress and tons of blankets and pillows in the bed of the pick-up. Throw in the perfect West Texas night and Charlie's first push-up pop and it was pretty much the perfect night. Man, how we're gonna miss the drive-in and these West Texas nights!




















A few weekends ago was the Annual Ranch Day at this cool museum in town. There are several acres of old farm/ranch/frontier buildings, wagons, trains, etc. I thought Charlie might like it so we went and wandered around for a while. We must have spent at least thirty minutes or more hanging out around the train. The man dressed as a cowboy who was hanging out in the caboose said that Charlie was his best customer all day. I don't doubt it!
I tried to get a good picture of Charlie sitting on the enormous engine, but as you can see he wasn't in the mood.











































And last, but not least...do you know what that is on Charlie's floor? That's right, they're poop pellets!! I know, that's sick and even sicker that I took this picture. I just really needed evidence to show you that these things really do happen. Charlie was very uncooperative during an earlier diaper change and I guess things just got out of hand (or diaper!). To make it even worse, I stepped on one -- again!

There are several lessons to be learned here: #1 Charlie needs to lay off the cheese and eat more fiber, #2 I need to keep a better eye on things during diaper changes, #3 Motherhood involves dealing with a lot of nasty things.

Speaking of nasty things, Charlie refers to things in people's noses as "food." I have no idea where he got that. He'll say, "Ewww. Nose...food...wipe." It reminded me of some of the rules that my grammy imposed on us as children. We couldn't call things in people's noses the b-word. We had to refer to them as "nasties." She would probably also cringe at me discussing poop on my blog (I have no idea why I can't stop talking about it -- sorry!!), although when we did use the bathroom at her house she made us leave it unflushed until she could take a look at it and make sure everything was ok. She asked us daily if we had "moved our bowels" today. Grammy was a little quirky, but awesome. Speaking of bowels, yesterday while grocery shopping I just really had to go. Charlie for some reason is currently afraid of public bathrooms. I think it's the overly loud flushing. While I was trying to get things taken care of, he insisted on sitting on my lap. Have you ever tried to take care of your bathroom business with a toddler on your lap?? It was definitely a "How did I get here?" moment! Of course then he proceeded to say, "Ewww...poo poo" over and over for everyone to hear. Thanks, Charlie.