my goofy little boy...

... since there are more teeth coming in (there better be, from the amount of whining, drooling and chewing), cole's taken to gnawing on his fingers. fine, except that they're going to get all chapped and red, not to mention the mess it makes when he leaves slobbery handprints all over everything! so i've started handing him one of his (several) pacis, in hopes that he'll chew on those instead. yesterday he dug his camoflage one out of the diaper bag all by himself and brought it to me... i didn't even know it was in there! leave it to a small curious person to find things... i took a few photos of him chewing on it, but this one is my favorite. he almost always hams it up when he realizes that the camera is on him. i thought this one would look cute enhanced and was going to post it on my photo blog, but then remembered that most of the posts there are of him. don't want to over-do it... besides, brittany's photos turned out well enough that i don't want them to get lost in a sea of cole-photos.

this morning i went to take photos of the interior of the house that got vandalized... oh my. the spraypaint and damage really didn't do much to reduce the value of that dump! i'd only seen the outside before and yeah, it could have used a little cleaning up, but the inside is just nasty. it smells really weird, for one. it's just disgusting- i had to take pictures of every room; i didn't think i could do it for the first-floor bathroom. for those of you who know me and my bathroom issues, you'll probably get a good giggle out of this one. it was carpeted, for one... there was about a 1/2 to 1 inch gap between the tub and the surround, it smelled moldy, the sink was all nasty... oh my, i thought i was going to puke and pass out. even now, i feel like jumping into a vat of boiling lysol. the first thing i thought was "i hope these people didn't have any kids living here", but i think they did. how terrible. i know our house is nothing to sneeze at and has it's issues and stuff, but it's wonderful compared to that house. yucky. it was creepy, too- i knew it was empty and the door and lockbox were both secure, but between all the lights being smashed out, the wanna-be satanic graffiti, the small nasty rooms and the fact that half the windows were boarded up, it was like a haunted house. seriously- someone could buy it, leave it as it is, charge admission for the month of october and make it worth it. kelvin stayed home with cole, so i didn't have to take him in there, thank goodness!

anyway, that was my wonderful experience this morning... still worth the money, though, since it's about the easiest work ever, close to home and didn't take much time (i was there less than 30 minutes).