The only time I will say "That's a Cute Spider"

Remember how I told you the boy wanted to be a cave spider for Halloween? It's not the most popular of costume choices which means I got to craft it myself. I let the boy try it on the other day to make sure it fits.

I'd call it a success. He loves it, which is really all that matters to me.

I thought it would be fun to do a doodle of the boy. I'm interested to see what he thinks of it once he gets home from school. I've never drawn him a picture of himself.

Hope everyone has a freaky Friday and a great Halloween!

Monster Minion

While looking at cute Halloween pictures this morning, I kept seeing a minion dressed as a vampire. I'm guessing it's from when they worked for Dracula, before they exposed him to the sun. I think I saw a few in other costumes. A Halloween classic was missing from the minion costume repertoire though.

The boy has only recently discovered Frankenstein, or the monster as literary nerds like myself would call him. I thought a minion would make a cute monster. I don't think I was wrong. What are your little monsters planning to be for Halloween?

Are you my mummy?

The boy has trouble picking just one costume for Halloween. Luckily, the season offers many opportunities to dress in costume. I refuse to allow more than two choices, so he usually wears one to Boo at the Zoo and one to trick or treat. This year, we also have a costume birthday party on Saturday afternoon, in addition to his school's Halloween get together and another costume night at his gymnastics center. Like I said, plenty of chances to get into costume.

He was Link for Boo at the Zoo, and will wear the same costume to gymnastics and his school. For the birthday party and trick or treating, he's going to be a cave spider from Minecraft. Weird choice, I know. As such, I had to make the costume for him. I'm proud of the fact that it is recognizable to him as the character he wants to be. I've never made a costume for him before.

With Halloween just around the corner, I found it fitting to throw in a few festive doodles.

I think the remainder of the doodles this week will be Halloween-y. This little guy came up in my google image search this morning. I think it is the cutest mummy I've ever seen.  

Being brave

So, there isn't a doodle for today. The boy only had a half day of school, which means he ate lunch at home. I thought about doodling on a napkin for him at home, but it didn't feel the same.

We had a lovely visit with the allergist this afternoon. After three glorious hours, we discovered that the boy is neither allergic to eggs nor latex.

He's got super sensitive skin, so the needle things that they use to administer the tests irritated his skin, but the doc doesn't think he's allergic to either of the possible triggers. What does this mean? Next year's flu shot will be interesting. We get to test him with a bit of it first to see if it irritates his skin before we administer the entire immunization to him. After all the fun we've had this year, there's a very good chance we'll be skipping the flu shot next fall.

Duck, duck, moose!

While the boy's favorite animal is an elephant (though recently it may have changed to tiger), one of my favorite animals is the moose. Cartoon moose are especially adorable. In real life, they are monstrously huge and a bit terrifying, but I still love them.

Since today is my birthday, I decided to include a little moose in my doodle.

I wanted to do some wonderful Monday moose pun, but couldn't think of anything good. This way, the boy got two cute ducks to keep his moose company. Hope everyone had an a-moose-ing Monday! (see? terrible)

Boo!

When the boy was barely walking, we started a family tradition. Every Halloween, we go to Boo at the Zoo at the National Smithsonian Zoological Park. It's not free, but there is no danger of cars, and he gets just as many healthy treats as sweet ones.

Today is Boo at the Zoo day for us, so I wanted to do a doodle to acknowledge that. This friendly little ghost was on a poster for a previous year's Boo at the Zoo. I think he's cute.

Hope everyone has a spooktacular weekend!

Finally back to school

With an arm that is still very much swollen, I sent the boy back to school today. He's full of Benadryl and antibiotics since they can't determine whether he got an infection from the shot, or had an allergic reaction to the vaccine. Either way, it's been a fun week so far. On the plus side, the boy's attitude and energy levels have been absolutely normal. He's very much himself, just with a bigger arm.

Happy Olaf wasn't supposed to look like he has a swollen head, but, given the current situation here, I found it fitting, so I didn't try to fix it.

Another day at home

Took the boy to the doctor yesterday. The nebulizer treatments will continue. He also got his flu shot. Like every other shot he's ever gotten, he had a reaction to it. His arm is at least twice the size of the other, angry, red, and inflamed. He says it hurts if you touch it. I'm keeping him home from school for another day.

Doodles to hopefully resume tomorrow.

Poor guy :(

Under the weather

The boy has another cold. Trip to the pediatrician this afternoon to make sure it's not something more since he's had this cough for like three weeks now. 

Hopefully, he'll be on the mend soon and school will resume tomorrow.

Mistakes

Horror of horrors! I thought I posted Thursday's doodle, but didn't. I'm so sorry that I forgot you, Maisy.

I thought the boy had outgrown Maisy books, but he surprised me on Wednesday. We brought a Maisy book home with us from the library. She was our Thursday doodle as a tribute to all of the times we've read her books, especially Maisy Big, Maisy Small.

Since I'm a day behind, here's today's doodle as well.

It's funny that I drew Ms. Frizzle this morning, because her motto has never been so appropriate for me as it is today. Not only did I forget yesterday's blog post, I also forgot that it was a teacher inservice day at the boy's school today. Drove all the way to school to read the sign on the door reminding me they were closed today. Oh well. The boy and I got to spend a lovely day together instead! Hope everyone has a great weekend making mistakes, getting messy, and taking chances!

A love stronger than kitten hugs

Hw do you know you've got a love that's truly special? When you love to give that person hugs more than you love kittens.

While I worked at the library, I stumbled across a gem of a picture book. It's called Prudence Wants a Pet. It's absolutely adorable. I laughed out loud the first time I read it to the boy. So, I think today's doodle is a little more for me than for him. He likes to listen to Prudence, but I think I enjoy the story more than he does!

Feed your curiosity

A few weeks ago, the boy read an entire book to me for the first time. It was an amazing moment for me. The book nerd in me has always loved that he enjoys being read to, and now, I'm hoping he will enjoy reading to himself just as much. The first book he read was The Snowy Day by Ezra Jack Keats. A few days later, he read a Curious George book to me. I had to help him with the big words, but he read the majority of it on his own.

I guess I should have drawn Peter since The Snowy Day was the first book he read, but George was one of the first characters he recognized from stories. I think the cartoon series helped with that immensely, but we read a lot of George books.

My little one loves experiments and figuring out how things work. I think George might be his spirit animal. 

Let the wild rumpus start!

The boy is a very wild thing, even on his best day. The more exhausted he is, the wilder he becomes. It seems to defy nature, really, the bursts of energy when he should be sleeping. Take, for instance, a dark Monday morning, long before sunrise, when he's asking me (repeatedly) if he can get out of bed yet. We've instituted a rule that states he must stay in bed until my alarm goes off. How I birthed such a morning person is beyond my comprehension.

I mentioned last week that I was going to feature storybook characters in my doodles this week. I figured Max was the perfect way to start the week.

I hope you all had a wonderfully wild Monday as well!

Do kids these days even know what groovy means?

There's this storybook character. He's blue and very chill, and says things like groovy. He's also a cat. My son loves him. He was his first favorite storybook character. If you haven't met Pete the Cat, you should. At least the first three books anyway. They're filled with repetitive, catchy little songs. The boy's favorite is probably Pete the Cat and his four groovy buttons. Yup. Groovy.

The Pete I packed in the boy's lunch today isn't blue, but he does have an awesome pair of sunglasses. I hope he helped my little man have a groovy day. Have a great weekend!

To the moon and back

My doodle yesterday got me thinking about Guess How Much I Love You. It's an adorable book about a father hare and his son. The son tells his dad how much he loves him, and the father always loves him back a little more. I haven't read it to the boy in a while, but I think it's time we revisited it.

With the story occupying my thoughts, it was impossible to consider anything else for a doodle today.

While Guess How Much I Love You is not my absolute favorite book to read to the boy, it definitely ranks pretty high on the list. I think I might doodle some favorite story characters next week. It will be fun to see how many the boy recognizes. For the record, he didn't recognize the bunnies.

Guess how much I love you

So the good news is that the fire alarm did not go off this morning. The bad news is Little Man still had a bad case of the grumps. I felt like it was an especially good day to remind him how much I love him.

The boy and I like to play a game that goes something like this:

Me: Did you know I love you all the way to the moon and back?

Boy: Mama, did you know I love you all the way to all the planets?

Me: Wow, that's far.

Boy: Yup.

The distance changes, but he always chooses something in space. It never fails to make me smile. It also makes me think of the book Guess How Much I Love You. If you've never read it, you should. Every bunny (or boy) deserves to be loved as much as that little nut brown hare.

I felt like the boy needed some extra love today. This little dino has a lot of love to give. Maybe next time I'll have to make it a bunny.

I'm Gonna Wreck It!

We got off to a bit of a rocky start this morning. In the middle of sketching today's doodle, the fire alarm in our building went off. I scurried around the apartment gathering pants for the boy, jackets for both of us, and shoes. Then we headed to the parking garage to wait.

Our apartment complex is above retail shops. There are many new businesses, which means, many fire inspections and alarm tests. They give us advanced notice for those. However, with all of the new construction, the alarms are set off frequently due to sprinkler heads being knocked off, too much dust from sawing or drilling, or any other number of things that trigger our apparently sensitive fire alarm system. Don't get me wrong, I'm happy to know that should there be a real fire, the alarms will go off with no problem. I just wish there weren't so many false alarms.

Needless to say, we were a bit pressed for time once the alarms finally stopped blaring and we came back inside. I hastily finished the doodle, and packed a lunch that was almost entirely out of the pantry. I usually like to have more fresh foods in there, but there wasn't time for that today.

We made it to school on time, but just barely, and I did manage to send a doodle in with the boy.

I hope tomorrow morning is less harried. At least there wasn't a fire, right?

Almost feeling better

The little man still has a cough, but was feeling much better this morning, so we sent him back to school. He came home exhausted, and especially grumpy, but he made it through the whole day. I'm happy he's starting to feel more like himself.

I went back into the world of puns this morning when I drew my doodle. I think I'm drawn to them more than I would like to admit. Today's doodle is an oldie, but a goodie.

And I do love that little man so very much, even after a very long weekend of little sleep and an abundance of grumpiness.

Taking a sick day

The boy woke up this morning with a terrible cough. We broke out the nebulizer, gave him a dose of albuterol, and he's able to make it a few minutes without coughing and the wheezing has stopped. It was a rough night though. He didn't sleep well. I didn't sleep well.

I decided to keep him home from school today so I can give him another dose of albuterol at lunch time, if needed. It might be nice to keep his germs contained and not spread them to his classmates too.

So, no doodle for today. If he feels better, there will be one tomorrow.