Buying a house.

It turns out that buying a house mostly means signing a lot of junk and making appointments with 30 billion people. It kind of sucks. I'm tired of doing all of this, but at least in less than 30 days it'll be done. I mean, hopefully. I assume. We've been really busy, and I'm behind a couple of posts but I'll be sure to get up our apple picking experience and his birthday party.

Oliver's birthday weekend went great, he had a lot of fun. Yesterday we told Oliver to find all of the pacifiers throughout the house and gather them into a ziploc. He found them all, put them in the bag, and then we went to the store to buy something with all of his old pacifiers.

"You don't need pacifiers anymore, Oliver. You're a big boy. You can get a big boy toy!"
"Uh huh."

We drove to Toys R Us with that sack of pacifiers and he walked all around the store looking at things. It was a tough decision between all the Thomas the Tank things and all manner of cars/trucks/construction vehicles but he finally chose a mine  addition to his Thomas set. He had a great time looking and "testing" all of the various things, but nothing compared to a mine that featured a waterfall and a talking Sir Topham Hatt.

I went ahead to explain to the cashier that our son would be handing over a bag of pacifiers as payment, and she totally accepted that. She did not think we were crazy. In fact, she was very nice about it.

Oliver plopped the bag down on the counter without hesitation and walked out with his new Thomas mine. He played with the toy while we ate dinner.

Then, last night at bed time, he didn't want to go to bed. He asked for the pacifiers, and I told him they were gone. I may also have spun the lie that they are going to be used for little babies who need them.

"Get back pacifiers! Get back pacifiers! Mine!"

I told him that if we got the pacifiers back, he'd have to lose his precious mine toy. When I said that, he decided he didn't need the pacifiers, after all. He did, however, continue to wheedle his way into a later bedtime. He's an excellent negotiator when you take his limited vocabulary into consideration.

"Stories? Please, mom. PLEAAASEE."
"Fine. One more, VERY short story."

After the story finished,
"Mom! Thirsty. Water, mom? Water? Thirsty..."
"Here is your water."
"Song? Sing songs?"
"I will sing you one song! Then I am leaving! That's it!"

The song ended, I got up to leave,
"MOOM... Diaper change. Diaper change."
"I just changed you. Goodnight."
(Muffled from the other side of the door after I walked out.) MOOOOMM. NOOOO.. NOOO, MOM!

He did, however, go to sleep. Eventually.