In retrospect...

So 2012 was definitely a weird year.  I got a real job with the state, my monkey turned two, we had a series of babies placed with us - some for very short periods of time and two for longer term (one of whom will hopefully get to stay with us forever), we lost a few friends, we saw some tragedies unfold in our nation, we grieved for the bad things that happened and then we watched as we put ourselves back together.  I had friends adopt their babies and other friends give birth.  I lost my companion of 16 years over the 4th of July weekend and we had several storms give us a run for our money.

All in all, I'm glad 2012 is gone.  I'm looking forward to 2013 being a good year for us.  Me and the boys spent the first day of the new year playing at the park before going to my aunt's for dinner - well, Warrren played while the duck slept in his stroller.  Here's a peek at the fun we had:

Warren loves to climb - and he's getting quite fearless.  That kind of scares me... but I gotta let him have fun and time to explore!

 

I don't quite remember exactly what he was saying right here, but doesn't it look like "Oh snaaaaaap!"

 

I can't even begin to tell you how much this little man lights up my life with his smile.

This is his GQ pose.

What is it about a tunnel that makes little boys just giggle?  He loves to climb into everything he can!

I can't wait until the duck is old enough to play with his big brother.  I just know they're gonna keep me on my toes!

 

The 1st Night of Hanukkah

So the first night of Hanukkah was fun! We video chatted with Grandma while the boys opened their gifts from her and Papa Bill.

Then mommy and daddy gave a gift to each of the boys... they were super excited!

But the best part was watching Evan and Warren play together with the Hot Wheels. Do you think he's gonna flip out when he gets the uber big assortment of Hot Wheels mommy got him? :)

It was all obviously way too much for Tater Head to handle because he passed out cold in his jumparoo!

The power of a minivan

So I've been fighting the need to get a minivan for so long, but it finally won out today. It was the worst customer service experience ever, and I totally won't recommend the dealership to like anyone, like ever (Thanks Taylor Swift). But I now have room for all the kiddos they try to throw at me!!! Woot. Woot.

A little more chaos... sort of

If it's chaos I crave, then I sometimes wonder if my mind stops working on purpose to give the rest of me that little jolt of what it wants. Sigh. So I was supposed to work at the fair today as part of our external affairs outreach for our Division. I wrote down my time for today as being from 8 to 10 PM and planned accordingly. Had a leisurely morning snuggling up with my boys (all three of them) in bed this morning, got the boys ready to go to grandma's for an amazing Cuban lunch (omg - it was so yummy), hung out with my grouchy half-awake cousin and mean old Uncle (just teasing Uncle John), and had a nice afternoon with my aunt and the boys before heading back to the house to get ready to head to the fair to do some reaching out. SO imagine my shock and small amount of fear when Evan calls to tell me that my shift was from 6 to 8 PM (he called at 6:15 PM and I was still twenty minutes from the house with the boys in tow). Eek! I had all sorts of things running through my mind as I nudged the accelerator pedal to ten miles an hour faster than I was previously speeding... err... I mean driving. I was going to be publicly shamed and flogged at the next all-hands meeting as being the only person to ever miss a fair shift. I would be fired and put in the bread line never to find meaningful work again. I may have even thought that they would shove bamboo under my non-existant fingernails as a form of punishment. I drove through the night, hoping that the boys would cooperate with me once I got home and would be easy to hand off to their daddy. I imagined that Warren would go through one of his defiant moods where he'd refuse to get out of the car, would make gravity reverse itself when I tried to set him down to walk, and would possibly even spin his head around Linda-Blair-Style. I was convinced Chris was going to scream his head off the entire time I was gone and I would come home to Evan buggy-eyed and mumbling things about shell shock and the things little boys can do to drive their father crazy. Fortunately, traffic was light, and we made it home in record time (did I mention I was TOTALLY driving the speed limit). The boys were little angels and got in the house and handed off very easily. I was able to find my SERT shirt first place I looked (nevermind that place was the dirty laundry pile), and I even got to the fair in time to only be 45 minutes late. As I was walking up to our outreach booth I had all these stories in my head that I would tell about how I had to rescue the world from the mutant mole people and that's why I was late. As I walked up to the state meterologist who was working the booth I started feeling super guilty because she was alone, and in my head she'd been working 12 hours straight without a bathroom break because I was late. As I started to explain how I had simply written my time down wrong she proceeded to tell me she had too - where she was supposed to work from 8 to 10 PM and I from 6 to 8 PM, she had reversed it also... so she was covering what was supposed to be my shift on accident. Talk about serendipity!!! I offered to make up a shift for her tomorrow, but she was completely fine with us working the booth together for a few hours tonight and calling it even. Whew! I really do think my mind totally did this to me on purpose! Maybe I'll teach it a lesson by withholding coffee tomorrow. Nah... it was my mind's fault so I shouldn't punish the rest of society for its mistake!

My Happy Little Life

I seem to be one of those people who lives in a state of constant chaos. When there is no chaos to be had, I find a way to create some myself. I realize that about myself. Unfortunately, I am helpless to fix this relatively minor flaw in my personality. Were I still a carefree, single gal in my late twenties or early thirties, this liekly wouldn't even be an issue - for anyone else let alone myself. But I am no longer a spring chicken doing her own thing. Nope. Not me. I am now a wife and a mother of two young boys (and possibly soon to be my niece as well - though that little piece of chaos is still... well... up in the air). I have been somewhat moping around for the last few weeks - not really comfortable in my own skin, but not really uncomfortable either. I have had job envy a little when I see people doing things that I know I would be super awesome at or super passionate about. I have had car envy in that I long for a vehicle that I don't have to squeeze my little chickens into during daycare rush traffic just so the more mobile one doesn't dart out into traffic while I'd trying to buckle the littler one in. For once, I actually don't have house envy because I love our house - though I hate sweeping the hardwood floors. I think I may have had life envy for a little while until I started looking back over the photos I have posted over the last few years. I realized tonight that I have it pretty good. I have a husband who I absolutely adore - even though he can be quite the curmudgeon on occasion. I have one little monkey who is my whole heart and light and makes me just beam with pride every friggin' second of the day. And I have one little chunky onion headed duckie who can most definitely aggravate me when he refuses to sleep (like ever) but can also make me laugh out loud with his little antics and giggles. I look back at my photos and relive the memories I've made with my family these last few years and I realize that in every photo I see, I can remember my utter joy in the moment. I recall watching Warren paint more of himself than his paper when he was about a year and a half old and I crack up thinking about how long it took me to clean the paint out of his ears. I see photos of my engagement to Evan and I remember just how many laughs we've had with (and at) each other, and I recall with warm fondness all the times we've snuggled together and talked about our future together. I see all of this and I remember I am happy - even without the chaos, though I'll never completely convince my brain that I don't need the chaos. I don't see that in a lot of other people's photos. I see poses and fake smiles. I see people winging it, trying desperately to convince others that their lives are perfect. Maybe it's because I know their back stories and know the real turmoil that are being covered up in the ski lift photos with the family or the debutante ball for the deb-that-shouldn't-have (is that mean and catty of me?). I see niceties and pleasantries, but not real joy and definitely not real happiness. When I really stop and think, even though there are days when my life may seem like utter chaos to the world outside, it's perfectly perfect to me. So for the first time in a few weeks, my skin seems to be perfectly comfortable again. Maybe that means tomorrow will be a rearrange the closets kind of day! Yeah... that'll do the trick... shake up the closets a bit!

My Family

Two years in the works befoer I could finally brag... but brag I am now!

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I'm Your Mommy - We're Going to be Good Friends!

From the very minute I met little man in the hospital, all wrinkly and scaly and dry and scrawny – I knew he and I would have a bond that cannot be broken. My very first words to him were “welcome to the world – I’m your mommy – we’re going to be good friends.” I knew I would love him and protect him – I had absolutely no idea just how much he would love me and give back to me everything I give him and then some.

He is funny – I mean truly funny – the kind of funny that’s not rehearsed or shtick – though it would be cool to say my baby is so smart he’s already developed his own shtick! He’s kind and thoughtful and generous with the hugs and kisses – though his kisses are only just now beginning to be like real little kisses on the cheek! He’s rambunctious and completely one hundred percent all boy! He plays hard, and at the end of the day you know just how hard he’s played by the little dirt lines on the backs of his knees or under his chin. He can be completely grouchy and irritable when he’s tired or hungry. But in the mornings, when I wake him up for school and he’s still slightly half asleep and he lays his head down on my shoulder and tucks his hands under his chest, oh my goodness I could just totally eat him up! He knows my buttons and is learning how to push them – he’s super smart when it comes to testing boundaries! And he’s the biggest flirt to ever walk the planet – just watch him whenever a pretty little brunette girl enters the room – he knows how to catch their eyes and flirt like a mad man! Who on Earth would have ever imagined ME saying those things five years ago?

It’s been quite a while since I’ve updated my blog – and there are many reasons why this is so, but I’m going to skip the litany of weird things that have been happening lately and focus only on a few things that have held significance for me and my family.

The happiest thing thus far is that my little baby has become a big boy. He recently celebrated his first birthday (monkey themed of course) and is starting to blossom into quite the young man. He celebrated in true monkey fashion with Grandma and Uncle John and some dear friends of the family beside the new pool. The funniest thing of all though is finding out that my little monkey doesn’t like to get his hands dirty with cake! He definitely didn’t want to smash his smash cake, but if I held it up to his face, he was plenty happy to nibble on it.

Now that he’s over a year old he’s also moved up to the big boy room at school! When he was in Infant 1A and Infant 1B he never napped. He would maybe sleep thirty minutes a day, if that. But now that he’s in a room with more structure, he’s napping two hours a day which makes for a much happier monkey in the evenings! He’s also learning how to sign more – we can sign “more” “milk” “please” “thank you” “all done” and “juice”. And his babbling is starting to take on more adult like babble – I can tell he’s trying to tell me things; I’m not just sure what they are yet – though he does a pretty good imitation of Evan calling Gabriel a G-D Dog, oops!

We had another child placed with us recently – an infant girl – and we found out very quickly that little monkey is most definitely NOT okay with being a big brother yet. The minute he saw me carrying her in her carrier at his school, he turned to Miss Ella, started crying and demanded that she pick him up. She actually had to carry him out to the car for me. My goodness the little green monster took hold of him so quickly! If it was time to feed the baby, he had to be up in my lap too. If she made a sound, he was right there looking over into her bassinette all sorts of up in her business. About five days into the new placement, little monkey started getting very sick with very high fevers. I was terrified of the new baby catching something from him while she was still so young, so when I started to get sick too, I had to have placement move her to another family. I felt awful about that though because I was thoroughly enjoying having a little girl around. It turns out that it was a good thing she moved when she did though because both monkey and I got very sick.

And now we’ve come up on Mother’s Day again, and monkey had his daddy bring me some flowers at work! They are so pretty and delicate – and I’m so happy to have them! I love being a mom. I have to say that it’s hands-down the most awesome thing I’ve ever done. This is my second Mother’s Day being a mom, and I am quite happy to say I look forward to this feeling for many years to come!