itsy bitsy teeny weeny

local theme parks in New England: Santa's Village and StoryLand. Both want slightly over $20/day for adults and free for 3 and under. Both let you bring in your own food and provide picnic tables. Lots of kiddie rides and precious little else. Amazingly, StoryLand actually has a .pdf on their website for every freaking food item served in the park for 2006. Presumably they'll update it for '07; they don't open until Memorial Day.

VRBO has rental properties for Glen (StoryLand), Bartlett (pretty close) and the general area. Lots of ski condos, townhouses and the like, many for around $100/night during the summer. Sweet.

Despite being in New Hampshire and New Hampshire being a small state, it'll still take almost 3 hours to get there from here (the Whites. They may be short, but no one ever said they were dull. At least, not anyone who got up close and personal with them). But I think that'll be our summer outing this year. No planes. We can bring the groceries with us. Something to amuse the kiddie. Depending on where we stay, access to a swimming pool.

bridal shower

C., whose wedding I'm matron of honor for in June, is visiting late March/early April and dropped very broad hints recently about if there's going to be a shower, it should probably be during that visit, and connected me with another of the maids who was interested in helping put on the shower. J., in fact, had contacted C.'s mother regarding whether there was a shower in the works. Of course I had done nothing, because it came after Disneyland. Worked out in my favor. J. called me today and she's a wonderful, bouncy, organized person who has great taste. She volunteered her parents house (big, in an ideal location -- they live in Florida this time of year anyway). She suggested Costco for food. She volunteered to pick up candles/ribbons for favors and to locate, purchase and address with directions and recipe cards and cards with bridal registry info. The recipe cards are for an interactive thing (game) where we give her a favorite recipe. Not really a game, but a nice thing. And bingo cards where we fill in what we think she'll get and then watch her unwrap and mark off and see who gets a bingo and receives a gift card. Wow. Okay, a little consumerist, but compared to what I've endured at other showers, I'm all over it.

Basically, she had in the whole show planned out and was happy to do all the legwork. I volunteered to use the minivan to get the food from Costco and wherever else we get stuff, details to be determined slightly later. All in one phone call. I don't have to do _jack_ for weeks.

Wow. I really like this J. A lot. I'll volunteer to get the gift card for the bingo game, but I bet she's already got in mind where to get the card, and whatever it is, it'll be perfect.

I think J. should be maid of honor. Honestly. Oh, she picked April 1st for the shower. Which is soooooo tempting. Hopefully J. does not have a wicked sense of humor.

miscellaneous Teddy observations

Shortly after our return from D-land, Teddy kept putting the battery operated train engine (hopefully I haven't posted this already) into the Castle Pounder toy (a plastic castle that you put balls in at the top and they roll down a ramp through the castle and come out the bottom), going up the ramp. Needless to say, it'd get stuck just under the balls and he'd get me to extract the engine so he could do it again. The third time I got it out for him, I asked, why are you doing this? And as soon as I said that, I immediately knew the answer: he was playing Dark Ride At Disneyland with the available toys. Wow.

I put away the 18 months clothes and got out the 24 months clothes, because the arms were looking kinda short, and while I like looking at his belly button, it looked a little cold in this weather.

I put the mittens from A. on him yesterday, which was good, because I really needed to bundle him up to go to the town forum on the library (R. wasn't home from work but he met me there and took Teddy home); it was maybe 11 degrees out. Brrrr. When it's cold, he likes them. And when it's really cold, he doesn't want to be put down; he wants to be carried.

He brings me the Going To Bed Book by Sandra Boynton when he wants to take a bath and makes me read it over and over, laughing at that page each time, until I get the picture and take him up for a bath. Because we're not traveling for a while and because he's 18 months old (in a couple days), I decided it was time to order a bigger potty and some potty books and try this whole potty training thing. Today I got out the little potty. We hadn't used it since we moved, because after the June trip, he was putting up a lot of resistance. He did not want to be held on the potty, and couldn't safely get on and off by himself. We put the flip-n-flush on here, but he hollers when we put him on those. Since he's sitting quite well in chairs (able to climb in and out of his tall chair by himself), I figured we could try the little one until the bigger one arrives. And it worked! Well, he didn't want to sit and pee; he wanted to sort of crouch over it and pee, but hey! Whatever. I'm hoping he will figure out he can bring me a potty book when he needs to go and even oblivious me will get that hint.

I had figured on just taking him out of his diaper when he needed to go, the way we used to, but apparently everyone seems to think that training pants are required. Green Mountain Diapers is not enthused by training pants, however, and suggests the All-in-One Bummi's, so I ordered another dozen of those (we had six already for the outings bags -- they really are very easy to get in and out of). He hasn't been night time dry the last few days, but I think that's because he's sick. Normally he is, which makes me optimistic about the whole process.

'Course, judging by everyone I know who didn't do EC, we'll be dealing with accidents for years to come. *shrug*

got up late

Had to do a mad dash to get to the library. Once there, A. and L. were there, so R. talked to them for a bit about the calculation that Brookliners do when assessing local property so the facilities committee could digest that and come up with an appropriate response for questions at the Town Meeting. After that, I shelved books, checked stuff in and out and J. showed me the list and bin for culling non-fiction. Didn't get around to starting it today, as before I found out about that project, I suggested to Deb that since the Abe Lincoln event was over, we could pull the Presidents books off the display and put up some stuff for Black History month. After all, the only thing worse than a library only doing African-American stuff in February is not doing any all year. She put together a little flyer and I puttered around in bio pulling books off the shelves. We have a new Colin Powell bio, which was kinda cool; it looks interesting.

I just finished reading _Engaging the Enemy_ by Elizabeth Moon, the latest Vatta's War in paperback. I really enjoyed it, altho initially I was distracted by the fact that it only had a 13 digit ISBN and that caused me momentary difficulties with LibraryThing, which then led me to investigate what is Amazon doing given their 10 digitness. Answer: once the 979s start showing up, they'll be assigning non-ISBN ASINs to those 13 digit ISBNs. Wow. I mean, when I set that up as base 36 (I _wanted_ it to be case sensitive and base 62, but NO ONE liked that idea), it was with the intention that they would have enough room to do whatever they wanted with it but this was, nonetheless, a startling turn of events for me. I hope they're doing some kind of programmatic mapping, and not just assigning the ASINs one at a time. I _hope_ that's what they're doing. However, I know nothing.

This is the first novel I've read in a while. The last several books were _Gone Tomorrow_ and the Disney stuff (still haven't read the Gabler bio, and I've started _High Tech Trash_). I also have yet to finish _Power Unseen_. But I'm thinking that when I'm done with this, I may tackle some of the other novels that have been lying about neglected: there's _Firestorm_, _Wintersmith_, _Sleeping with the Fishes_, that Rachel Caine vampires novel, a Wrede/Stevermer epistolary novel (third in the series and the first two were awesome) and I forget what all else. OTOH, the used Disney books are starting to show up, which is also tempting.

Teddy is doing spectacularly well on the slide. His grandma (mother-in-law -- not my mother; a cold day in hell before she'll ever see the kid) came over for a play date and the slide was a good way for them to play where she could be audience and he could be active. She's not really one to chase him around the kitchen island for minutes on end. She says it makes her dizzy. Anyway, he can now consistently get up the ladder and get both legs under him to go down the slide with no assistance required whatsoever, slide down and dismount standing up (most of the time). Quite cool.