Schools out for summer!

Today was the last day of school before summer vacation.

I work at a school, and although I do technically work for a portion of the summer, the excitement and feeling of freedom that come with the last day of school still gets to me every year. I feel like a kid again with visions of sleeping in, long days by the pool, barbeques, and sticky popsicles dancing through my head.

I dare say I might suffer from Seasonal Deficit Disorder, because the winter months tend to settle over me with a gloom. While the first few weeks of fall have me excited for the idea cozy sweaters, hot ciders and the holidays, I quickly fall into a funk that only truly seems to lift when the first warm days of spring finnaly start to come through. Summer has always just been a happy time for me, a time when things seem more relaxed and carefree. Summers are meant for long talks on back patios with old friends, and cold beers, and trips to the lake, and camping. Even after I graduated college, and worked a normal year round job, summers seemed to still be a vacation.

So today, while the kids cleaned out lockers, turned in textbooks, scrambled to get the most yearbook signatures, and shouted invitations for pool parties and slumber parties to each other, I found myself getting caught up in the excitment. I love summer vacation, regardless of wether or not I am actually on vacation. And this summer is my first summer with L, my first summer as a mommy. How absolutely exciting is that?

And while he is only 8 (almost 9) months old, I am as excited for summer vacations to come as I am for this summer. I see us taking weekend camping trips where we roast marshmallow and sleep in tents, I can't wait for S to teach him how to fish, I see vision of boyscout camps and backyard cookouts in our future.

But for this summer my main goal is to start our first summer on the right foot. Wether L remembers it or not, I want it to set the tone for all summer vacations to come. So, without further ado, here is my list of "to do's" for this first summer:

• Take L to the pool as much as possible. Long days soaking in the sun and teaching L to love the water as much as S and I do.
• Picnic, picnic, picnic. Wether we picnic at the pool, or picnic at the park, I want to break in our picnic basket as much as possible this summer.
• Paint our bedroom so that it become the sanctuary that I picture it being in my mind.
• Paint our master bathroom...... same thing with the sanctuary idea.
• paint, decorate and put back together our office. Not so much to make it a sanctuary, but because it is a project I started several months ago and I really just need to finish it.
• Read, read, read. I want to read every night, to soak in the lives of fictional characters.
• Buy girly, fruity beverages like twisted ice teas and wyders rasberry cyder and drinking them on the back patio while reading the above books.
• barbeque with old friends, and reminisce and laugh and tell jokes over burgers and hot dogs and cold beers
• Keep writing. I want to write more then I have these past few weeks. I want to document this first summer, to remember exactly how I felt for each happy moments, and to include many, many photographs.

So, although I return to work on Tuesday for three weeks, tonight I am reviling in the feeling of summer vacation!

Happy summer everyone!

A bad week

I am so glad it is the weekend. And not just in the usual TGIF kind of way. The weekend signifies that this week is finally over, and let me tell you my friends, this has been a very-bad-no-good-rotten week. It started last Sunday, when we had a fantastic day planned as a family. A homecooked breakfast, followed by a long day playing at the pool, a picnic lunch.... I was so stoked for last Sunday. And then, at about 3:30 A.M. Sunday morning, L woke up and promptly threw up. After we cleaned him up and comforted him, it hit S with a vengance also. He retreated to the guest bedroom, horribly sick. I was fine and stayed with L until about 9 A.M., and then suddenly it hit me too. It was awful. S and I rarely get sick and suddenly we were both feeling like we were knocking on deaths door, and trying to juggle a sick baby between us. S felt slightly better on Monday, but I called in sick and had S take L to daycare so I could try and sleep off the sickness.

On Tuesday I still felt not great, but needed to go to work. I dragged myself through the morning routine of getting ready and took L into daycare. The daycare teacher stopped me in the parking lot. Apparently L had a slight fever (100 degrees) when he left the day before. The didn't tell us with a fever over a hundred he couldn't come back to daycare without a doctors note. So there I was, 15 minutes until I was due at work and stuck in the daycare parking lot. Needless to say, my work was not so understaning about me calling in again for the second day in a row. I attempted to make up for it by taking L with me to work for the morning rush until my sub could get there, but it still did not go over too well. Then I took L to the doctor where they informed me that he has a slight ear infection, which explained the fussiness and sleepless nights we had been having.

And so the rest of the week went. I didn't start feeling much better until yesterday, L has had rough nights almost every night, and work has been a disaster as I try to catch up on everything and wrap up the end of the school year. It was just one of those weeks where you wish you could rewind to the beginning and make the desicion to just gather the whole family and stay hidden in bed for the duration, until it finally passed and it was the weekend again.

But, like all bad things (bad dates, bad movies, bad interviews) this too shall end. And it has. It is officially Friday, the promise of a fun weekend lies ahead of me, and I am choosing to put this rotten week behind me.

Here's to the weekend, hope everyone has a fabulous one!

"My" Friday

I love that today is my Friday.

After a particularly stressful work week (think audit, lot's of mistakes from when I was gone on maternity leave, having to tell someone their child has to repeat the 8th grade, and lot's of other annoyances), today is my Friday. I am so incredibly blessed that not only do I only work part time, I only work Monday through Thursday. And when Thursday rolls around, I am so ready for my weekend. So, as I sit here with a glass of wine and Sex and the City playing in the background I think about how lucky I really am.

I like these "alone" moment where I can just sit here with a glass of wine and think. With an 8 month old baby and work and a husband, it doesn't happen very often. But when it does, it is usually on "my Friday" (A.K.A Thursday nights) Because it is the only night that I get to stay up later, while S goes to bed because he has to work in the morning and L has been in bed since 8. The house is quite and I have time to relax and watch whatever I want on TV (Reality shows are usually a good choice) and just think and reflect. And, even though we all know I hate actually being alone, I like this "alone" feeling that comes with everyone else sleeping peacefully.

And I like that in these alone moments, the urge to write often strikes. I feel as though I can be creative and insightful and that, and as much as I love writing about my family, I can also branch out and write about other things. It is in these moments that I think about all the things I would want to do in this life. I want to be a nurse, because I was so inspired by the labor and delivery nurses who helped deliver L. Or maybe a teacher, because I have so much respect for those who teach our children. Or a lawyer, because what is more noble then defending the innocent and down-trodden?

It also the time when I think about things I could be doing right now. Like, why don't I take a creative writing class? Or maybe a cooking class, so my dear husband can enjoy something besides the endless rotation of quesadillas and sandwiches for dinner. Or a photography class, so I can capture L and S and the beauty of our life in all it's glory.

yes, I love these "alone" (but not really) moments that occur on Thursday nights, while the rest of the world sleeps and prepares for another work day, and I revel in the fact that a morning of sweet baby cuddling and drawn out cups of tea on the porch await me the next morning. And I love thinking and imagining and planning for all those many things that I want to do in this lifetime. But I also love that while me and my glass of wine may envy Carrie Bradshaw and imagine a world of high profile court cases, or best selling novels, I will crawl into bed tonight with S, with L softly snoring in the pack and play that is molded to the side of my bed, and I will be 100% satisfied with my life just as it is at this moment. And all the stresses of audit and held back 8th graders will have faded away and I will go to sleep knowing that tomorrow I will wake up refreshed and loving every moment of my life right now.

And as much as this blog is about being a mommy, and the wonders that are my little L, tonight’s post will have no pictures of crawling or bath time because it was written on a whim by Leah and not by Mommy.

Goodnight, sweet dreams, and I promise sweet baby pictures in the next post.

Mother's Day

Happy (late) Mother's Day!


I was going to write yesterday, but my first Mother's Day ended up being so busy, and as much as I wanted to write down every moment as they happened so I wouldn't forget, I couldn't (and didn't want to) tear myself away from my family for even one second yesterday.

S took L downstairs yesterday morning so that I could sleep in (Glorious!!!!) and when I finally made it down I was met with a beautiful bunch of pink roses, an avocado omelet and bacon, yum!

After we ate we headed into Glendale and went and saw Babies at the movies. So cute, and I definitely cried a little, remembering L when he was first born and how little he was, but I think you probably have to have children to truly appreciate it. It was a good message too, basically that despite race and culture and circumstance, we are all the same and we all start out the same. After the movie we grabbed a quick lunch and then S took me shopping. Shopping makes Mommy very, very happy! It's been a long time since I've bought anything for myself so it was a great gift. We wrapped it all up with sandwiches and wine and watching Ugly Betty curled up on the couch. What a great day. What a great holiday. I love Mother's Day, and not because of the flowers and the gifts (although those were pretty awesome) but because I felt so, so loved and it was an excuse to just soak in that love and spend all day with the two people I love most in the world.

And as an additional Mother's Day Gift, L had two big milestone moments leading up this weekend. First, our boy is officially crawling. And, oh boy, he is loving it. He is on the move big time and there is no stopping him. And he seems to especially gravitate to stuff he isn’t' suppose to be getting into. (The DVD rack, the garbage can, the dogs water bowl. We have had at least three instances where he has dumped the water bowl on himself. He thinks it's hilarious.) It's tiring, keeping up with him, but it is so much fun to watch. I love how proud of himself he is. He makes little grunting, squealing noises and he crawls along, like he is just so excited to finally be moving like this. It is so funny, and so cute.

Secondly, he went swimming for the first time on Saturday. So much fun. When I was in high school I spent my summers life guarding and teaching swim lessons to all ages, babies through pre-teen, and it was some of the most fun I ever had. I remember when I used to teach the "water babies" classes thinking "someday I'll be able to do this with my kids." And now, ten years later, here I am, with a beautiful baby boy and teaching him how to swim. Ok, not really teaching him how to swim yet, more like holding him in the water and letting him splash. But it was great, and he loves the water and I am so excited to spend summers by the pool with him.

Overall, this was one of the best weekends I've had and it was made all the better by getting to celebrate Mother's Day for the first time. So happy Mother's Day to all you other Mama's out there, I hope you had as wonderful a day as I did!

New blog name

I changed the name of my blog. (If you are reading this, you probably already realize this). I've been giving it a lot of thought, and it seemed like the right thing to do. When I started this blog it was almost an experiment. I knew I wanted to do it, but I honestly wasn't sure if I would keep up with it. I have a bad habit of getting excited about a new project and then quickly growing tired of them. There is proof of this by the discarded knitting needles and yarn that was barely even unwound, cooking books that don't even have the spine broken, our office desk that currently sits half re-painted in our garage.... I could go on and on. But so far, this blog seems to be different. I love documenting what is going on in my life, and I especially love documenting L as he grows and changes. I hope that I will be able to look back on what I have wrote and remember exactly what he was like at each stage. It's also helped me to appreciate my life and all that I have. If I'm having a horrible day or throwing myself a pity party, nothing can brighten my day faster then reflecting on my wonderful husband or posting pics of my beautiful son.

But, I digress, that point is I changed the name. When I choose the original name, it was kind of on a whim and I thought it was kind of witty and funny. If you know me personally, you know I have a fairly sarcastic sense of humor. But sarcasm aside, I am not in any way a cynical person and I was worried that those who didn't know me view the title of my blog as cynical. Also, the more I wrote the more I wanted the title to reflect what my blog is about and that really is about being a Mommy. Everything I love about my life is now deeply rooted in my this new adventure of "mommyhood".

So, if you were here before I hope you keep reading my posts despite the name change, and if you're new then it doesn't really matter to you what the original name was! (Of course, this is all me assuming that there are any "you's" out there reading my blog in the first place!) But if you are out there and you are reading, please feel free to leave a comment and introduce yourself! 

And, how can I leave you with out some pics of my handsome little guy!

So close to crawling!

The first time I ever gave him a teething biscuit to chew on. I turned my back for two minutes and when I looked back he was covered in biscuit goop! It was so funny I had to get some picture before I cleaned him up!

Teething

Houston, we have a problem.

And that problem is teething. Oh. My. Goodness. I feel like karma is just laughing at us for all those times we made comments like:

"Oh, our baby sleeps soooo well, he neve wakes up!"

"He always sleeps though the night."

"We have to wake him up for feedings!"

That, my friends, is no longer the case. For the past 5 days poor L has been up pretty much every hour on the hour. And we are exhausted. I feel like this is the kind of tired everyone said we would feel when we brought him home from the hospital, only it's hitting us 8 months later. And I feel so bad for him, because you can just tell that his poor little mouth is hurting him, and he doesn't understand it. During the day he seems to be ok, as long as he is always chewing on something, but night is a whole different game. He wakes up wailing and calms down as soon as we pick him up, but it's like he knows that his mouth is hurting when he sleeps, so he refuses to go back down.

Thank God I have a husband like S who helps out at night, even though he works such long hours. We take turns walking him and feeding him, but his crying still wakes both of us up everytime.

Poor guy, I hope this passes quickly! Any advice out there on teething would be greatly appreciated! Please post comments!

Here is how L is when he is a happy baby:

And here is how he is at night when his mouth hurts::

(Ok, this pic is actually from when he didn't like the baby food I was trying to give him, but it's not like I have my camera on me at 3 A.M., and you get the idea!)

Sorry if this post is a little rambly.....did I mention I'm so tired?!?!