On Saturday, we celebrated down at 'Newcastle Days' -- our little town festival. We got Matthew all pumped up for his first pony ride. We attempted it last year and he backed out at the last minute, so we were anxious to see if '06 would be our year. And I'm happy to report, indeed it is. Matthew hopped up (with Daddy's help) on Snickers, the dark brown, somewhat rebellious pony. When I called to Matthew to look at me (camera on the ready) and to see if he was OK and not about to panic, he raised one arm up and said, "I'm the farmer!" When I went to take the picture, he did get briefly side-tracked by the pony in front of Snickers who was taking care of business before getting back to work. We had to talk about it a few times that evening, that "the pony went pee-pee."

Speaking of pee-pee (sorry, but this is my blog and I am the mother of a hopefully-soon-to-potty-train three-year-old, therefore, you must be willing to read a fair amount of potty-related stories. Also, as you know, we do tend to have a body-function curse on our house, so it is a common theme with the Fartin Martins)...Matthew has been totally anti-using the potty lately until Mike decided to treat Matthew like the little man that he is and let him attempt standing for his business rather than sitting. Potty time has turned into 'Target Practice Time' and Matthew gets to shoot Cheerios in the toilet. I'm just concerned that someday we'll be out in public and instead of saying, "Mommy, I need to go potty," he'll say, "Mommy, I need to shoot my O's." Just sounds a little bit odd if you ask me.