fishing and vocab

on saturday we went up to stevens point to go fishing with kelvin's family- his parents, kandace, duey, uncle randy and aunt karen. it was cloudy and a bit chilly, but that didn't seem to matter much! i was geared up for a day of screaming and tantrums from cole... we did the normal bedtime routine on friday night, but he didn't fall asleep till a little after 3.30 am saturday. don't ask me why- he wasn't crying or anything, just wide awake. cole immediately designated himself co-captain. as soon as randy started the boat, cole was climbing on his lap to steer... i think that was the highlight of cole's day!

madison just chewed on stuff.

cole's little disney cars pole that daddy picked out for him to match his life jacket... every time someone casted their line out into the water, cole would screech and holler "uh oh!". funny!
and for the record, the pole stayed with us for at least an hour... shortly after i snapped this photo, cole dropped it into the water. "uh oh".
*why don't they make kids' poles to float when they're dropped into the water?*

after the lake and lunch, cole was getting a bit tired and uncooperative, so we headed home. we decided that since we were close, we'd swing by mom and dad's to see this snap-on mini chopper that dad had gotten as a raffle prize for his customers. we ended up staying for supper... cole immediately went to the playhouse and found the old doll stroller from when us kids were younger. we discovered that miss squish is petite enough to sit in it, so cole had a blast giving her a ride! of course, they were well-supervised...

out of curiosity this evening, i decided to jot down all the words that cole knows (as in, says, not just understands). we came up with the following list:

cole, mommy, daddy, madison, grandpa ("papa"), sarah, george, corn, house, moon, banana, up, down, on, off, cheese, apple, hot, no, bum, peepee, owie, baby, car, bus, kitty, hand, uh-oh, please, cow, bath, hi, bye-bye, eye, happy, ball, woah, see, all done, run, pop, bubble, color, wow, and poo. if i got them all, that's 45, 46 if you count "all done" as two words. he knows some signs, too, like milk, eat, more, i love you, thank you, please, love... the kid has a nice vocabulary indeed. it's funny to ride in the van now- all the way to gospel mtg this afternoon, we heard "corn. corn, house, corn. sarah. house, corn. corn. bye-bye. corn. george. house. house. house. sarah."... you get the idea. pretty cute!

as for madison, well, she's trying new things too- she hates bananas. really dislikes them. and her 6-month well-baby visit is tomorrow, so we'll post her stats later.

on a side note--- does anyone have any tips for getting rid of ants? we have those teeny tiny ones, just in the living room, for some reason. we need something that is effective but is safe if the kids were to get ahold of it. i tried a chalk line, since i've heard many times that ants won't cross chalk, but i guess these little guys have boots or something. chalk doesn't seem to bother them much...

*i found a suggestion online: mix together 1/4 c sugar, 1/2 c molasses (i used syrup because we don't have molasses) and 1/4 c baking yeast. spread the paste onto index cards and place in ant-infested areas. this particular hint popped up several times in my quick search, so i mixed some up, spread a little onto three index cards and within the last 5 minutes, all three cards have caught and trapped quite a few ants. the sugar attracts the ants, the molasses (or syrup) traps them and the yeast absorbs their body fluids, so essentially, it's a trap and dehydrate deal. cool... totally safe, non-toxic, so far it seems effective... we'll see what the traps look like in the morning!