What a life.

Mr. Smiley

Originally uploaded by Bake & Destroy!

Today Teno pooped while eating M&M’s. Beat that, world!

Teno <3s Surprised Panda

Here’s Teno’s favorite thing on earth:

And here he is obsessively watching it over and over again:

In other news, Teno knows his colors, but only by Thomas the Tank Engine names. So blue is Thomas, red is James, green is Percy and so on. Works for me!

Percy!

Teno loves Percy.

Video update.

Blue’s Clues is out, Thomas is back in. This week end Teno stole a Toby train from Toys R Us, we were very proud. Here’s an old video about Blue’s Clues and mail. I just uploaded one where he pretends to not know all the names of his trains, even though all he ever talks about is Percy but it’s not ready to be embedded yet.

Cinders and ashes.

toot toot

Originally uploaded by Bake & Destroy!

Teno is back to Thomas obsession. He took like, three months off and I was cursing our stupidity for buying him hundreds of dollars worth of Thomas the Tank Engine stuff for Christmas and then out of nowhere- he loves it again. Again, he’s addicted to a really boring TV show, but I can tune Thomas out a lot easier than Blue’s Clues. And for whatever reason, Thomas is less…unmanly than Blue was.
Having the wild imagination that he does, Teno has decided that window sills are train tracks. If you look, they do kind of look like them, moreso even than his wooden tracks do. So he stands in my bedroom window and plays “toot toot” all day long, only taking breaks to demand chocolate yogurt (“ding ding” because we weaned him off pudding with yogurt) and chai. The child drinks chai. Not only that, but he has a preference about which milk he’d like- some days he wants soy and some days he wants dairy.
But the window still toot-tooting is nice, if I’m tired from him kicking me in the face all night (um, he’s been sleeping in bed with us sometimes) I can lay on the bed right next to him while he plays and if I need to do homework, which I always do, I can do that without him getting mad at me, at least for a little while.
Little sentences are starting to string together now, too. Yesterday I asked if he wanted to go outside and he said “a-bring-a toot toot” and grabbed two trains. He also pointed to Tony’s face and said “Da-yee’s nose.”
We talked a little bit about maybe getting a potty chair yesterday, and as interested as I think he would be in that, he seems to really enjoy pooping his pants still.

The Mr. Clean Company is Going to Be Bummed

teno face

Originally uploaded by Bake & Destroy!

Teno is basically a professional colorer. He colors the walls, the floor, the tables and chairs, the desk, his crib, my notebooks, my wallet… you name it, he’s colored on it. And it’s not like he’s doing it unsupervised, he has crayons stashed all over the house. I’ll catch him coloring the table one minute and while I’m grabbing for the Magic Eraser he’s digging another crayon out from between the couch cushions and coloring on his lunch plate. So today he colored a big patch of orange on the desk and I’m out of Magic Erasers. I’m too tired to go to the store to get more and he can’t go anywhere without finding, and demanding a new ball despite the 5 he has in the back yard right now.
So I looked up DIY Magic Eraser recipes and found that baking soda and water is a good substitute. A bunch of message boards suggested wetting down your white or light-colored walls with plain water, tossing on some baking soda and scrubbing it back off again. I tried it out on the colored-up desk and it worked like a charm. It was free and easy and it didn’t leave weird drippy milk stains like Magic Erasers do. So there you have it. Hopefully that’s as useful to some other mom as it was to me.

Gross and awesome.

teno and Vegemite

Originally uploaded by Bake & Destroy!

I always have great ideas for additions to the Teno blog. Ironically, the ownership of a Teno prevents one from blogging about him 99% of the time. He’s pretty content finding clues all over the house right now, which give me just enough time to make two short lists of the grossest and awesomest stuff Teno does these days. He’s eating Vegemite out of a tube in this photo. Consider it a bonus to the gross list.

Gross Stuff Teno Likes to Do:

1. Get into my bed naked and fart on my pillow.
2. Play with money. Filthy, gross money.
3. Age his food under the couch, then find it weeks later and eat it.
4. Lick window screens.
5. Drink his own bath water.
6. Pick other people’s noses.
7. Eat cold toaster waffles.
8. Lick the bottom of his own shoe.
9. Touch things on the bus, then put his fingers in his mouth.
10. Eat pinches of dry ingredients while I’m baking. Think baking powder and flour.

Awesome Stuff Teno Likes to Do:

1. Punch Tony. (He also likes to punch me, which is less awesome.)
2. Demand chai at least twice a day.
3. Help with everything.
4. Pretend to sleep by jumping into my bed, getting under covers and screaming, “Sleeeeeeeep!”
5. Find clues, write them in his notebook.
6. Ride his tricycle.
7. Play nicely with Bishop.
8. Use the computer.
9. Show you where his eyes, mouth, hair, nose, head, belly and weiner are on command. I know the weiner one is probably in bad taste, but it makes him really happy that he knows where it is.
10. Give hugs and say “awwww!”

So there’s your update.
We’ve made lots of videos lately, too.
Bye!

Some new videos.

I drove the car!

Bishop played Guitar hero at my birthday party:

Two.

Cuteness at Superdawg.

Originally uploaded by Bake & Destroy!

Hi, I’m Teno and on Monday I’ll be two years old. I thought I’d take this opportunity, on one of my last days as a not-two-year-old to tell you a little bit about myself.

Well, first of all my name is pronounced Tee-no. It rhymes with bambino. A lot of people call me Ten-o as in 10-oh. That would be a stupid name when, in fact, my name is pretty awesome. It’s not short for anything, that’s another one I get a lot. It’s just Teno like my great-grandpa Teno Petitti.

So, let’s see. I was born on St Patrick’s Day which is pretty cool because neither of my parents is Irish and they don’t drink. So now they have something to do on St. Patrick’s Day besides try not to get hit by drunk drivers. I was supposed to be born at the end of March but I knew my mom was pretty sick of being so fat so I came a little early.

When I was a baby I didn’t really do a lot. I mostly hung out in my swing and ate smooshed up food. Sometimes Lila would come over and once I started walking that was pretty fun.

For my first Halloween I was a goat. No one saw me, though, because it was freezing and my mom didn’t want me to get sick. She still shows me the pictures, though. She’s retarded.

Last year my parents had like, 50 people over for my birthday party. Personally, I think that was a bit much so this year it’s more like 20. My favorite part was getting to eat an entire cake by myself but everyone else seems to remember something about me licking Bishop’s head.

So, since that party I’ve been busy climbing on things, coloring the walls, refusing to eat one day and then eating non-stop the next day, not taking naps and then taking 4 hour long naps, obsessing over Thomas the Tank Engine only to get 10,000 toy trains for Christmas and immediately deciding I like Blue’s Clues now… stuff like that. I’m starting to wonder if my parents changed my name to Butthead, because they call me that a lot nowadays.

I also say some words now. Mostly I like to say “Oh, a clue!” and “No.” But sometimes I say “mama, daddy, is it hot, shoe, sock, pants, foot, belly and Blue.” My mom never stops asking me “whose belly is this?” If she doesn’t know by now that that’s my belly I’m not helping her.

There’s been a lot of talk about me getting a “big boy bed” lately. I don’t know how I feel about that. I really like to fill my crib with hangers, stuffed animals, diapers, sippy cups, crayons and step stools and then jump on top of all of it until something pokes my eye and I cry. I don’t know if you can do that sort of thing in a bed. I’ll ask Lila when I see her Saturday.

So far it’s been pretty cool being born. I get to go to Superdawg and eat in the front seat of the car and my dad buys me milkshakes when we go out so mom can do her homework. I get a lot of cupcakes and carrots and bananas and people here seem pretty nice.

I’d like to spend the next year learning my colors and some letters and numbers and maybe learning how to use the potty. I know how to flush it, I just don’t understand any of the rest of what goes on there.

So thanks for reading my blog. When I learn to read I’ll read yours too.

-Teno Slater

Gigantor!

Looking for clues.

Originally uploaded by Bake & Destroy!

Teno decided to grow about three inches this week. It’s never a surprise when he has these insane growth spurts, he eats and sleeps like a prize fighter for like, two weeks leading up to the up shoot. Yesterday I swear he ate THREE mac & cheese cupcakes before I even left for school in the morning.
Needless to say all of his pants are too short now and we can’t find black baby jeans anywhere. Last time he needed pants we got tons of black jeans at Old Navy and now it’s like no one makes them. A Slater isn’t a Slater without black jeans. it’s just weird.
I finally gave in and decided to go ahead and make Blue’s Clues cupcakes for Teno’s birthday next week. I was hoping he’d move on to something more fun to make before then but he’s still sleeping with his Handy Dandy Notebook. Maybe I can get creative and do some striped cakes so they look like Steve’s shirt. We’re all about Steve here. Joe is weird. No one likes Joe.
Here’s the skidoo in action: