Kiss Me, Kate

JM is kissing now and I love it. He will put his hands on either sides of your head and pull you toward him with his mouth in a big open-mouthed O. He doesn't shut his lips, just leaves them in the O, which I love. I am not sure what has gotten into him, but he is very cuddly all of a sudden. I am loving our new pre-nap routine. He snuggles into me when I am reading his new favorite books (Go Dog Go or Put Me In The Zoo, Dog is so two months ago). He also hugs me back and puts his head on my shoulder when I am singing to him before I put him in the crib. Since generally during the day he will never let me hold him, anymore, I am cherishing this so much!

Can I also say he has started signing the word please? I think this may be my proudest moment in parenting, because he has been a whiny hiney lately and we've been working hard on this!

ac: humour

Making marinara party

Two years ago I read an article in Real Simple magazine about a party where you ask your guests to bring 5 pounds of tomatoes and you set up stations in your kitchen for dicing and cooking, you then make the sauce and then eat it for dinner. It sounded fun. Last night we put this article into practice and had some of my cool mom friends from playgroup over with their husbands.
I made cute signs for each stationWe cut...we blanched... we spent a lot of time dicing up garlic before we realized we could put it in the cuisinart... we waited and then we dined. The sauce was pretty good! We had fun. It was a neat idea and I'm glad we did it. Everyone even got to take some home. It feels really adult to host a dinner party!
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Sandy, Karen and I prepping lots and lots and lots of tomatoes. Where are the guys? Hmmm












JM and Domenic played so cute together. Guess it's time to get out the Windex...













My favorite pic. Mike and Samer doing the dishes.
















So sweet! (and wet, JM!)

Writing this down

JM was just eating some yogurt raisins. I jokingly said "where's mine?" and "mama's hungry." He proceeded to take one out of his mouth and aimed towards me with a drooly, half-eaten yogurt raisin. So sweet! It blows my mind that he might actually understand what I say! And man, could the guy melt my heart any more?

Since I'm on a roll here, I've also noticed that if I've accidentally taken the lock off the refrigerator controls and he's gotten water all over the front of the door, he will also get a towel down and start mopping it up. So considerate!

Although exhausting, these little people are amazing!

Beach weekend

Growing up in Iowa, we had to drive 20 something hours to get to a beach. Well, not counting Palo, this manmade beach located near the nuclear power plant that had a weird smell and tar-like bottom. Anyway, it greatly brings joy to my heart that we can drive 3 hours and be on the coast. It ain't Florida, but it works for me!

JM loved playing with his Corpus cousins and their sweet stash of beach toys, including buckets, shovels and dump trucks! He is a beach boy.

Best year yet

It's my birthday. I'm 33, in case you were wondering.
Been an interesting day so far. Woke up to a kidney infection and couldn't sleep. JM has pink eye. But it's actually quite a great day.
The boys made me breakfast in bed. Mike got me a case of wine. JM got me Jelly Bellys.
And JM and I are both cozy in from the rain, laying low doing something we never do, which is plant ourselves in front of the TV.
Tonight we are going to one of my favorite restaurants with the rest of the fam.

I am reading an amazing book called Calm My Anxious Heart: A Woman's Guide to Finding Contentment. In the book, there is a story about a woman who volunteered as a missionary in Africa for 43 years. I think her prescription for contentment is going to be my goal for the next year and hopefully the rest of my life:
* Never allow yourself to compain about anything, even the weather.
* Never picture yourself in any other circumstances or somewhere else.
* Never compare your lot with another's.
* Never allow yourself to wish this or that had been otherwise.
* Never dwell on tomorrow- remember that tomorrow is God's, not ours.

Good stuff.

Back to Work

About a month ago I casually mentioned to my old boss that I'd be interested in doing some freelance work if a project ever came up.
I didn't think about it too much, much more like mentioned it in the tone of "we should get together for lunch some time" not thinking it really could indeed happen. Little did I know that when he wrote me back, he wanted to talk seriously.
A little research (thank you, Michele!) and a few phone calls later and I'm back on the clock, freelance writing from home doing some newsletters and hopefully some social media stuff (dare I hope to be paid to blog? sweet!).

It feels really good to be back so far, I must say! I am praying I can balance my number one priority (JM) and this opportunity. Yay!

Troublemaker

Sigh... We are that family. We signed up for Gymboree and my kid is the one who won't participate in *any* of the activities. He only wants to run around. He is having a ball, but he doesn't want to do what the other kids are doing.

This is making me tired and I feel like a bad mom. I feel like I should be doing more to get him to try to participate with the other kids in stuff like this, but he throws a fit if I try to take him away from what he's doing that he likes and redirect him towards whatever we are *supposed* to be doing in class. It really feels like he is totally in control and running the show and I am the bystander. Obviously I don't like this. But, if I pick him up to take him over to the "parachute" for example that the class is doing, he will scream and cry and go all wet noodle on me (even if I act really excited about the activity, gently and lovingly pick him up, etc.), so I usually let him continue doing what it is that makes him happy. I am not sure how else to react. Obviously, I want to keep him happy, but I don't want him to be running the show, either.

Any advice, internet? At home I generally find him to be quite pleasant and chill. It's when I'm trying to corral him in some way that things get sticky. I really don't want to raise a bratty kid that Supernanny has to come save...

Either way, thanks for letting me vent.

Watermelon

This is really the minutae of our daily lives, but it so makes me smile how sure he is that he is saying watermelon right. Mmm!

Update on el diablo

I blame the teeth.
John Michael has been MUCH happier the past few weeks.
The hitting has completely stopped. The temper tantrums are minimal. The weirdest part of parenting are these bumps in the road where your child suddenly goes from one behavior to another and you are totally scratching your head thinking they have been abducted by aliens.
If you are indeed scratching your head and you have a baby, it could be a lot of things, but you may want to consider whether it's a tooth breaking through. Cause JM just got two bottom molars.

It seems like he is moving towards looking and acting like more of a toddler and less of a baby. In some ways this makes me sad, but one benefit is that it is such a joy to have him be able to more clearly express what he wants to me via sign or word. He now tells me when he's done eating by saying "all done" and motioning with his hands. He goes to grab the bag of raisins (still) when he wants a "nah," that is snack. He climbs down the stairs now, too. He even will sometimes stand by his bed when he wants to sleep. How cool is that?

In not so praiseworthy news, he has a new love, which is TV. I can totally see how parents could easily let it babysit their kids because he is literally mesmerized by it. He never liked those Baby Einstein videos and never had much of an interest in anything else, either, but one day I turned on Elmo and he stared at it open-mouthed like a little couch potato and will now point to it during the day for me to turn it on. I have to be careful to limit him, but it is nice in the mornings for him while he drinks his milk.

Here are some pics from the past few weeks.
fun at the children's museum



















goofing around with rhys at phil's



















AC: joy

Fall freedom

It's been a week and our little nipper is officially done taking two naps a day, methinks. Being kind of a stickler for naps that I am, we have spent sire's whole life so far spending our mornings at home. After our trip north, he spent the first week home needing to catch up on sleep with the two naps, but then started afternoon playtime in his crib, again, so I decided it was time to try to move him to one. We started by seeing if he could hold out until 11:30 to go down and he slept 3 hours! Since then I've been moving him back a few minutes each day and hoping he'll ultimately go down closer to 1 and the naps (thus far) have remained 2.5-3 hours (knock on wood). He's got two molars in on the bottom now and even seems to be back to his old self in the behavior department, as well!

And just when I thought I was going to check myself into the SAD clinic, we've even had some cooler weather. The extra hours of 'fun' time and more time outside have seriously lightened my mood! We have had a blast this week so far going to the gym, children's museum and playgroup. This morning we played with sidewalk chalk in the front yard. I was surprised that JM seemed to rather enjoy doing 'art' and didn't just eat the chalk. He is growing up! :( Fall is in the air!

I am thrilled to announce we are painting our red room this Friday. I am going with the infamous 'tobacco road' color thanks to the Nestor. I think part of the reason that I am so excited about it is that the red really reminds me of the former owners. Even three years later, I still have such a bitter taste in my mouth about them because of our utter miscommunication during the closing process. You may recall they accused us of having a "party" in the house (after they accepted the offer) while they were out of town, when really we were in the house with their realtor's permission having Art check out the A/C unit and our realtor had given us a bottle of champagne (for some other time! we didn't drink it!) in the driveway. A neighbor saw us and jumped to conclusions and instead of getting the story from us, the owners bitched our realtor out, started giving us a lot of attitude about our arrangement with them and instead of asking us what really happened instead reported us and our saintly churchgoing non-drinking realtor to the Texas Real Estate commission. I am blessed that few times in my life have I felt that I have been judged so harshy and unfairly without a chance to defend myself and I guess that's why I'm still so bitter. Our realtor was ultimately cleared, but sadly it took a court of realtors to get the story out and made us feel really uncomfortable moving in to the hood. Thankfully time has eased a few ills, here, but I say a fond fond farewell, to AM and your red walls!

Anyway, not to end on a sour note, it's almost the weekend! We are headed out to the lake with ALL of us. 8 adults and 8 kids under 7 in a small 3.5 bedroom lakehouse for the first time. Crazy!

New words for JM: all done, shoe, raisin, juice, cookie :(, snack