Eat your heart out, Nora. I received some negative feedback about last week's one-photo blog post. So I got right to work the next day taking pictures to ensure I'd have an assortment this week. These demonstrate some of his latest skills and, in one case, what passes for entertainment amid the sweltering summer heat.

In addition to knocking down towers, Edward now likes to participate in their creation. He hasn't quite mastered the art of scale, however, as you can see him trying to stack one of the largest blocks above one of the smallest. Today he put his sippy cup on the block and then tried to put other blocks on top of that. Live and learn, Edward.

He also loves music, and seems to be interested in creating as well as listening. For the last two weeks the "theme table" at the front entry to the daycare has held an assortment of rhythm instruments and it is a struggle each day to get him to move past the front door back to his classroom. There's a wood block, some bells on sticks and a shaker, among other things. He also walks up to the stereo case in the living room and starts bopping back and forth until we turn on one of his CDs. Then he moves from one side to the other listening to each speaker in turn. And, as you can see, he has tried John's guitar, with careful supervision. I think he thinks the sounds are cool, but what he really likes is dropping the pic in the hole. They mostly play with their fingers.

Edward is also a skillful climber and has learned to hoist himself into his high chair unassisted, as long as the tray is not attached. Luckily, he doesn't attempt to climb down alone...yet. He also likes to stand on the back legs and reach up to pull the straps through. He thinks it's hilarious when John is on the other side pulling them back. This occupies a great deal of the "dinner's not quite ready" time.

I am quite certain we are not alone as parents in exploiting our child for our own amusement. While playing outside the other night after dinner, Edward decided to take his hat off, which was fine since the sun was on its way down. (He still has too much exposed scalp to risk going hatless during the day!) John noticed how sweaty he was (no surprise given the humidity levels this last week) and decided to create a new hairdo. We'll probably pay for this some day in the future: "What do you mean I can't dye my hair blue--YOU once gave me a mohawk!" But for now, it was innocent fun.

It seems like Edward is learning a new word or words every day. He now says "bye" when waving and blowing kisses. He also caught on to "ring around the rosie"--especially the "all fall down" part. But he also says something approaching "ashes ashes" when looking for that page in his nursery rhyme book. He also said it when he heard John update the grill progress tonight: "The coals are starting to ash over so we're almost ready for the meat."

Finally tonight, here's a game that John and Ed created that they both seem to enjoy. It is perhaps an homage to PopPop's famous "stair ball." Given that we don't have stairs, this was the best they could do.

Not much action on the house this week. All the action went into keeping it ready for the action it didn't see. It's tough to make your house seem homey, and at the same time, as if you don't live there. Never anything on the kitchen counters...no dishes in the sink...no shoes on the shoe rug near the door...no toys out of the toy corner. This is how we have to leave it every morning when we go to work in case anyone calls to see it while we're gone. It's only been a week and already stretching my admittedly meager housekeeping skills.

The realtors toured on Tuesday and didn't have very nice comments for us. Three thought it was overpriced. Of those three, one thought it was a duplex (it's not) and said "you could get a real house for that price," another thought it didn't have a garage and the third thought it didn't have a basement (it has both.) So clearly they were not very careful or interested observers. Annoying, especially since these are the agents who work for the company with whom we have listed the house. Our realtor sought out the commentors (they're anonymous, but not hard to figure out I guess) and set them straight on the various things they'd missed or misunderstood. He held an open house this afternoon and said eight "groups" came through. Only one identified themselves as neighbors and even they weren't just there out of curiosity, but because they had friends who might be interested. So that's good news. Our agent says open houses usually draw primarily nosy/curious neighbors.

As far as Edward is concerned, the best thing about having the house for sale is the realtor lockbox on the front door, which he thinks is a telephone. He loves to push the buttons (which light up!) and say "a-lo, a-lo!" (We tried unsuccessfully to capture video.) He's figured out this aspect of phone communication, but hasn't translated it to actual phone calls. If we offer him the phone to talk to a grandparent or anyone else, he just stares at it and then grabs to push buttons. He never says a word. Luckily, he now gets to see one set of grandparents in person a lot more. John's folks moved to Coralville (neighboring town) this week so it's great to have them so close. We got to celebrate Bill's birthday today while hanging out during Ed's naptime and our open house exodus.

Big news since the last post. Our house is for sale.

We've been looking for a few months to see if we could find a place that had a few amenities that this one is lacking--namely space. We'd seen lots of duds and a few possibilities, but last week we finally found one that had (almost) everything we were looking for. We made an offer and after a few counters we reached an agreement. We offered contingent on the sale of our house so that meant we had the weekend to get it ready to list. That meant no rest for the weary around here. Lots of cleaning and "decluttering." A trip to the dump and another to our recently rented storage facility. Oh, and keeping track of Edward all the while. No easy task given that he was very curious about what we were doing that was taking our attention away from him. He did try to help a bit, which was fun for all. John was washing the kitchen storm windows and Ed wormed his way into John's lap to get a closer look at the action.

But he also had a bit of a stomach bug, which meant he was not his usual cheerful self, he couldn't eat many of the things he loves, and we couldn't really ask anyone else to watch him for us because we like our friends too much to impose those kinds of diapers! We managed to make it work, mostly because John broke his back getting things done while I kept Ed corralled. The most egregious example was when we went to the park while John and our friend Loren loaded up the truck and headed out to unload it in storage.

We're hoping Ed is on the mend now. At daycare they think it might be related to at least one new tooth, a molar. He has his (delayed) 18-month check-up tomorrow so we'll review the last couple of days with his doctor to see if she thinks we should be doing anything differently. The biggest thing is trying to get him to drink. He refuses water and of course juice is out of the question. He had quite a bit of sugar free Jell-o today, which I understand to be an acceptable form of hydration for sick kids. He's not too fond of the pedialyte, but maybe in the morning he'll be thirsty enough to give it another go.

In the meantime, our house is cleaner than it has ever been. And I've been reminded of just how terrible a housekeeper I am--oh my, the cobwebs!

The heat broke today sometime between 4 and 5 p.m. The windows are open and a cool refreshing breeze blows through now, replacing the stale air conditioned atmosphere we've had since returning Friday from our trip to Evanston for the 4th of July. The weekend heat was simply oppressive. Even a foot dip in Ed's wading pool didn't take the edge off.

We had a great time in Evanston though. We got to see some family on the 4th, and then John and I went to the Police concert at Wrigley Field on the 5th. It was a great show; John offers better details on his blog. We were amused and chagrined at the Chicago Tribune's crowd description: "more mini-van than mosh pit." Truth hurts I guess. For the record, we don't drive a mini-van, but substituting "station wagon" would have sacrificed the alliteration.

The picture above is Ed on the 4th with Shadow, my aunt and uncle's extremely patient dog. His best efforts to hide in corners, under chairs and even once in the bathroom did not thwart Edward's determination to show his "love." We're working on "nice" gentle petting of animals, to varying degrees of success. Edward can say "niiiice" but the actions don't always follow.

Other words in his ever-expanding vocabulary are: car, outside, all done, and of course, NO. He's been saying this for a while now without any exact meaning, but has started using it as intended in the last week or so, much to our dismay and frustration. In this video he demonstrates some of his language, his understanding of the difference between hot and cold and his version of the sound a dog makes.

Did you know church could be hazardous to your health? Edward and I found this out this morning...the hard way. He's usually pretty good, despite the total inability to sit still. He sits and stands on the kneeler, reads the books I bring, puts the envelope in and out of a slot that holds a spare one for those who forget their own, makes faces at the people around us, etc. Generally harmless. In the last few weeks, he's learned how to climb up on the pew, so he's added this to his repertoire, standing and sitting over and over to amuse himself. I generally keep a hand right behind him because of course I do not trust him, and really, why should I? Today he got himself seated in between me and the other person in our pew. I watched him scoot forward to the edge of the pew and could see he was trying to get down. In an instant, he pitched forward and crashed into the pew in front of us. He must have caught the corner of the missal holder as well because by the time I carried him screaming back to the cry room, I felt something moist when I pressed his head against my face to comfort him. Blood. Lots of it. We left the cry room in search of a helpful usher, who led us to the church basement seeking a first aid kit. We never did find it, but I managed to mostly stop the blood with a wet paper towel in the bathroom and then cleaned as much blood from the two of us as possible. The usher was still waiting for us when we got out of the bathroom and tried to find us some ice, to no avail. I could see two knots swelling on his head and decided we'd better head home. He screamed when we tried to ice it here, so we gave up after a few attempts and covered it with a band-aid. The photo above was taken several hours later, after a long nap. He's not actually crying here, just making a funny face. He cried amazingly little, for how shocking the whole thing must have been.

Maybe he'll have to get out his winter hat again this week to cover the wound. He dug around in a cupboard he has easy access to and found these items earlier this week. He brought them to me for help and then walked around like this for quite a while. His other silliness these days is walking around with his highchair toys dangling from his pockets. He walks quite gingerly and giggles as he goes. I'm not sure why this is funny, but whatever keeps him amused is fine with me.

Unfortunately for Edward, most of the Geraghty family injury sympathy is used up this week on my brother, P.J., who had a motorcycle accident on Tuesday and severely injured his right leg. He's had surgery and was supposed to leave the hospital today to go home to the hospital bed they had to bring in for their downstairs. He'll have a long recovery ahead (including another surgery in a week, after the swelling has gone down) but we're all SO glad it was only his leg, as an accident of this type could have been much worse. And thankfully, the motorcycle has been towed to the repair shop where it will remain until some other fool decides to buy it. If you're interested, the link above takes you to his recovery blog where he's keeping us posted on his daily progress.