Happy Birthday, Paul

Paul turned 1 on Saturday. Over the past few weeks, it seems like he turned into a little person instead of a baby. He understands what we’re saying. He can communicate. He can walk! (Have I not mentioned that?) He can even run, in a Phoebe-running-away-from-Satan kind of way. He eats real food. He drinks out of sippy cups. He only nurses first thing in the morning and before bed.

He follows directions. If I tell him to shut the baby gate, he goes and does it. When I hear Meg stirring in the morning, I tell him to go get her and he RUNS to her room, giggling with excitement. Some mornings he sneaks in there while I’m distracted and wakes her up because he just can’t wait to see his sister.

He wants everything to be “right.” If he notices the baby gate is open before we do, he’ll shut it without being asked. He loves to pull our stockpot out of the cabinet, then repeatedly take off the lid and replace it carefully.

I never did teach him baby signs, like milk, but last night he begged me to pick him up, then pointed at the spot on the couch where we always nurse.

He makes “rrrRRRrrr” sounds while running his toy cars along the floor and I think that’s the very best thing about having a boy. It kills me with cute.

He thinks birthday cake is awesome.

Things I’m enjoying lately

Twitter book club: Shalini has started a Twitter book club and I’m excited! I’ve never been in a book club. Also, I’m the type that will always read the book and this seems like the kind of situation where the discussion will have to be about the book…because how else will it work? (I guess it would just be regular Twitter then.) It’s kind of bad timing mentioning it to you today, since the first meeting is tomorrow. You don’t have enough time to read the book and I don’t have a review of a meeting to give you. But if you’ve read The Mysterious Benedict Society before, join in! I’m excited to see if it works or just gets super confusing with everyone tweeting at once.

Erica takes on Bon Appetit: Erica is freaking hilarious. I’m sure at some point my claim to fame will be being her Thursday night roommate at the Blathering. (FYI, we intend to pool our resources and have a real kick-ass cat knickknack display, so stop by! Or maybe we’ll issue invitations and pretend it’s a fancy BlogHer party. Can someone bring a black and white cat-themed cake display?)

Anyway. This summer Erica is making the “60 SUMMER RECIPES” from the June issue of Bon Appetit. There’s no way on earth I’d be up for that (the recipes seem…involved), but it is so fun to watch. I really wish I lived closer so I could taste test.

My new kindle: Amazon had a deal a month or so ago and I snagged a refurbished Kindle for $49. I loooove it. Especially since I can borrow library books – the whole reason I got a Nook instead of a Kindle was because at the time library books were only compatible with Nooks. The Kindle is much smaller and I carry it in my purse all the time (though the Nook is a year old and I think they’ve gotten smaller now, too). I’ve traveled a LOT in the last six weeks and it’s been nice to have lots of books without lots of bulk.

L-theanine: I don’t sleep well in hotels. I’m always nervous someone will break into my room. As I mentioned, I’ve been traveling a lot. Since the first week in May, I’ve been on three business trips, two weekend trips with the whole family, and our anniversary trip to Vegas. Near the end of all this (OF COURSE) I started taking one of my hippie pills before bed since I realized I was feeling anxious and poof! Anxiety gone. Best night of sleep ever. Obviously I’m really smart, since I told you months ago the pills made the anxiety dreams I didn’t even know I was having go away…then stopped taking them when I wasn’t such a mess anymore (at least during the day). I’m never traveling without them again.

Growing into strangers

Last night I went into Meg’s room to put away some laundry and ended up sitting next to her bed watching her sleep for 10 minutes. I get to watch Paul sleep all the time, what with the co-sleeping, but I rarely see Meg sleep. She looked different – like her face was missing something. I think she has so much personality it takes over her face when she’s awake and it seems wrong to see her without it. It made me sad to not know this relaxed-in-sleep face. She’s only three. How can there be parts of her I don’t recognize?


Goofball personalities

Paul aged a lot over the four days I was gone last week. He went from taking a few steps here and there to walking the majority of the time. I took the kids to the library Friday and he was proud of himself as he toddled around. He was tall enough to see all the toys on the kids tables and thought it was the greatest thing ever. I almost started crying because the era of crawling is almost gone. Each time he’d stumble and decide it would be faster to go on all fours I tried to memorize his crawl. 

Hard at work

This is the best thing EVER, mom!

Every day, they turn more into little strangers. I used to know every little detail of their lives. Now I miss so much. Meg has little songs and games from daycare and routines at Grandma’s house that are foreign to me. I didn’t even know how much milk Paul drinks during the day until someone other than my mom was going to babysit and needed to know – normally I just stick breastmilk in the fridge/freezer and she takes whatever she needs on a day to day basis (I breastfeed when he’s with me and don’t really know how much he gets.)
I just feel like they’re still so little – shouldn’t I know everything about them?

Should I take this as a hint?

This week my work travels have taken me to a good old fashioned mental institution. I’m getting the most unsettling feeling I’m actually IN Shutter Island. It’s not actually on an island, obviously, but apparently mental institutions built in the 1800s all look the same. There’s razor wire all around the beautiful old brick buildings and not a soul to be seen anywhere outside. When we returned from lunch, we found out someone had cut power to the building and may have started to freak out ever so slightly. “This is just like a scary movie! Haha! OH GOD.” (There was a crew a few buildings over working on…something vague…who accidentally dug right through a power line - or at least that’s what they’re telling us.)


A drawing of the administration building that hangs in the hallway

It’s turning out to be a banner week regardless, as they’re being very accommodating of my pumping – first setting me up in the conference room, then deciding I shouldn’t have to worry about the meeting schedule and hunting down an unused room on another floor. Look at my new room!

It was empty and they set the place up for me – commandeering chairs and a table, complete with fake flowers.

I was rather geeked about not being told to pump in the bathroom until I realized perhaps being super excited about your own private room in a mental institution isn’t entirely rational.

The worst part was when I tried to leave the room and found I was (seemingly) locked in. At that point I decided maybe I should seriously consider the possibility I was in some sort of Shutter Island situation. I mean, you never know, right? Thankfully, it turns out I just hadn’t been forceful enough with the handle and I made it out of the room alive.

My coworkers are acting kind of odd today, though, so I’m not ruling out the possibility they may be therapists in disguise.
(Sorry, you had to have seen the movie to get that one.)

Five years

Seven and a half years ago, in early November, my college roommate dragged me upstairs to meet a former dining service coworker of hers. She thought we’d be perfect together. I thought she was being a little pushy and being set up was too awkward. But she convinced me to go to his room (only one floor up from ours!). She stayed 10 or 15 minutes, then conveniently remembered she had to go do something vague. We ended up watching a movie and staying up talking until around 2 am. I call it our first date, even though it wasn’t really a date, per se. By Christmas break, we were inseparable and didn’t know how we’d survive 3 weeks apart.

A year and a half later, over summer break, he blindfolded me and drove me to campus (telling me we were going somewhere else and taking a roundabout route), then led me to a bench and proposed. We got married the next year, two weeks after I graduated from college, on May 18th, 2007.

I can't believe I almost didn't go meet this guy.


2006

2007



2008 (this is the only picture I found in the entire year of 2008 with both of us in it!)

2009

2010

2011

2012

Please tell me you've done this, too

I have been watching Friends for years. YEARS. I've seen The One With the Fake Monica dozens of times. Maybe a hundred. The only context I had for Joey Tribbiani's stage names in that episode is Joseph Stalin, so I'd always assumed Joey Heatherton and Holden McGroin were serial killers I'd never heard of (probably because I was pretty sure they weren't dictators and Joey says something about Stalin being a murderer). I figured since I was 10 when the episode aired the names were just a part of early nineties culture I wasn't familiar with.

I finally realized today Holden McGroin is a joke. A joke! That I totally didn't get for all these years!

Holden McGroin = Holdin' my groin
Mind = Blown
IQ = Questionable

As you were.

(P.S. I guess Joey Heatherton is an actress and singer. Sorry for assuming you were a serial killer, Joey!)

I didn’t tell her I’m treasurer of my Friday morning mommies group

Oh, you guys. Everyone knows all children are different, but it helps so much to have the internet to show you all sorts of different kids so you don’t get cocky. We all know an un-potty-trained 3 ½-year-old boy is not uncommon, right? Also, the ease at which potty training is accomplished has little to do with parenting skills, yes?

I saw someone today who, when she found out (by asking) Meg was potty trained at 2 ½, went on a rant about how her 3 ½-year-old nephew still isn’t potty trained. In HER DAY, as a working-full-time-AND-getting-her-degree single mom, she absolutely had to have her son potty trained by age 3 per daycare rules and she DID IT. Because no matter how much else was going on, it had to get done. It wasn’t even that hard! But her sister-in-law (the lazy bum) stays home and “just must not have enough motivation.” “Seriously, what’s the point of staying home if you’re not going to do your job as a mother? What else is she doing all day?”

It was so absurd it was hard to keep a straight face. I realize things were hard for her in a way I can’t begin to understand, but geez, that doesn’t mean her sister-in-law’s life is bon-bons and soap operas.

The kicker, though, was when she said snidely “I guess she’s just too busy with her mommies’ group on Fridays.”