Wednesday, July 01, 2009

The reason they invented those bibs with sleeves



CJ turned 13 months old on Sunday, and while he can feed himself finger foods just fine, I've yet to let him use a utensil. That is, until today. We tried fruit first, and when he couldn't get it onto the fork, I turned to yogurt, his third course tonight at dinner. I thought it would be a little easier to work with, you know, because it's goopy. (And an unnatural shade of purple. My mess radar may have been turned off today. I'm just saying.)

Enjoy.

Cross posted to Facebook.

Sunday, June 07, 2009

Typical

See, this is what always happens. I get all motivated, I post for a week, and then…nothing. It’s not that nothing’s happening, it’s just that nothing’s happening that I consider post-worthy. Like, I was on call Friday night and I didn’t get called in. While that does deserve a woot-woot (woot-woot!) I can hardly write more than two sentences about it.

This weekend was a weekend of movies and stuffing our faces. Since today was probably the most interesting day of it all (we LEFT! the HOUSE!) I figured I’d share it with you. And before you click away to go read about a more exciting person’s life, I want to say that I love hearing about the day-to-day stuff. That’s stuff we don’t normally get to hear about as readers. We get the deep thoughts, revelations, and the life events, big or small. But we rarely get the rest of the story. So here’s mine.

Deep thought for today: I am so grateful that we live near family.
Revelation: I forgot to brush my teeth this morning.
Life event: CJ went down a big, big slide. Also, he cried on the swings. Again.

Last night when Chris and I went to bed we made a plan. Do you feel like if you don’t make plans on the weekends you end up lying around the house until 4 pm and then by the time you get showered, dressed, and ready to go it’s 5:30 and all the stores you wanted to go to close at 6? Yeah, that’s pretty much every Sunday for us. But today was different. Today I wanted to go to Target and pick up some hairspray (really, any excuse to go to Target), and then I wanted to eat at Q’doba.

OK, people, even I’m bored. Blah blah blah errands. Blah blah blooey Q’doba. I think I can cut this down to 100 words or less: Woke CJ, got dressed, fed bottle, fed oatmeal, morning nap, Chris mowed, up at 11, out the door, 50% off at Old Navy, free drink duffle (I know!), swung by Target, tried Bed, Bath, and Beyond, didn’t have what I wanted, CJ protesting, cut errands short, college kids at Q’doba, spit out quesadilla, devoured burrito, threw food on floor, refilled sippy cup, caught in rain, raced home, afternoon nap, visit to sister-in-law’s, played on play set, cried on swings, slid down slide, climbed up slide, giggled with cousins, made Kimberly’s sloppy joes, pigged out, crashed on the couch.

What did you do this weekend?

Sunday, May 31, 2009

Birthday boy

Dear CJ,

This past Thursday you turned one year old. You are an excellent pointer, you love to point at things and sort of “Ehhhh” until we get them for you, so I thought I’d turn your pointing skills into a more entertaining gesture for your birthday party: I would teach you to hold up your finger and show everyone you were one. We worked on it for a week, and then, the day after the party, I held up my finger, said “One,” and you finally got it. You chose not to say the actual word, but seeing you figure out what I meant was pretty cool.

Lean back

I know there will be a lot of pretty cool things for us in the future. You’ll master walking. You’ll learn to talk. You’ll listen when I say no (OK, maybe wishful thinking on my part) and you’ll continue to develop the awesome personality you have now. You are one of the coolest, most laid-back babies I know. You can put on a good show when you want something, but when you get it, you can immediately shut it down. And what’s wrong with that, really? If I wanted something I’d ask for it, I probably wouldn’t cry, but otherwise there’s not much difference between us.

While according to the 12-month questionnaire from the doctor we’re a little behind on your gross motor skills (I hold your hands to walk and you immediately bring your feet up so your legs are parallel to the ground—you’ve got some ab muscles, my friend), you’re communication is blossoming. It seems like for a while there, you had new words every day. We’ve got a few with concrete meanings now: “Doh” is ball, “Be-th-be-thb” is balloon, “Da-da” is Daddy, and “Ma-ma” is the sound you make when you’re crying some serious crocodile tears and you don’t know what else to do. Sometimes I can get a “Mom” out of you during bath time, but usually you reserve the use of my name for those special occasions when you know I’ll do absolutely anything to make you feel better.

Uncensored

As far as the rest of your development, you’ve been hitting your milestones right on track. You got your first tooth at seven months, and started to crawl not soon after. You’re a speed demon on your knees now, which is part of the reason I think you’re so hesitant to walk on your own. You will seriously be standing in front of the ottoman, holding on with one hand. You’ll throw your ball with the other, and then instead of walking over to it, will bend down and crawl to retrieve it. It’s like you know intuitively that you’ll get there faster on all fours, and you’re in no hurry to experiment with any other type of forward motion. That’s OK, though. You’ll get there.

Argh!

Everyone always said I would hate it when you started to crawl, when you became mobile. But I love it, CJ. I love that you have this independence, this spark, this drive to get yourself where you want to go. I love that I can walk into the kitchen to put a dish in the dishwasher and you can follow me or not follow me, whatever you want. That simple choice alone has eliminated about 50% of your daily amount of crying. Now if only we could find a way for you to tell me you’re done eating that doesn’t involve you throwing your food on the floor.

You are the high point of my day, CJ, and getting to spend time with you is something I look forward to always, but especially on days I have to work. I recently started working full-time again, a decision that I didn’t make lightly. I hope that when you’re older you won’t resent me for doing so, that you’ll see the value in a mom who has worked hard for her education and thoughtfully chose to continue to pursue her career. If there were a way spending time with you could fulfill all my needs, I wouldn’t ever have a job, ever. But that just isn’t possible, and besides, I wouldn’t want to put that kind of pressure on you. I hope you can understand that, someday. And I hope that you can see that when I have the chance to do my own thing I come back to you refreshed and ready to throw myself into whatever adventures you and I get into, 110%.

Cookie face

I love you so much, CJ, and I can’t imagine my life without you. I can’t believe that a year has passed already. Everyone said it would fly by, but truthfully, at times, it seemed to drag. I wondered if you would ever outgrow that newborn phase, that I’m-basically-just-a-ball-of-nerve-endings phase where you needed me every second of every minute of every hour of every day. That was hard for me, Bud. But just when I thought I couldn’t take anymore, you smiled at me. The next day you took a two-hour morning nap and a three-hour nap in the afternoon. And it was like all the energy that had been sucked out of me over the last six weeks was back. I felt like I could handle things again. That I could handle you, period.

Now, I feel like so many of those difficult things are behind us. You have a predictable schedule, you’re sleeping through the night, and you’re eating real food (your faves right now are grilled cheese and yogurt). Yes, we’ll have some tough transitions ahead of us (right now I’m trying to get you to drink milk. Ha!) but I honestly believe what all those moms have been telling me—with each month that passes things with you get better and better. My diaper bag is the size of a pincushion, for goodness’ sake. What could be better than that?

Innocent

CJ, you are a handsome, amazing, giggly, adorable, loveable little guy. I couldn’t ask for a more perfect son. This year has totally rocked my world, in the best possible way. Some days I look at you and wonder what I have done to deserve this. To deserve this time with you. When you look at me I can see the love in your big blue eyes. When you reach for me there’s an expression of such need on your face that it makes my heart melt. I feel inadequate at times. Like I don’t deserve to be a mother to someone who doesn’t judge, who doesn’t question, who loves me completely, wholly, and unconditionally. I will always be grateful for what you’ve taught me not only about being a mom, but also about being myself.

I love you, CJ, just the way you are. I can’t wait to see what the next year brings.

Love,
Mama

Friday, May 29, 2009

Balloon



CJ recently learned how to say balloon, maybe because we got about 1,000 of them for his birthday (man, one-year-olds are easy to please). But it's possibly one of the cutest things I've ever heard. He doesn't really say it correctly, it sounds more like "be-th-be-thb", but he totally points to the balloon when he says it.

Listen closely at about 10 seconds and again at 40 seconds.

Wednesday, May 27, 2009

None too proud of my progress

I realize that half my blog is blue and brown and the other half is pink and purple. I realize that for most of the day today, the footer was about 100 pixels wider than the rest of my page elements. I realize there are only two columns where there used to be three (this one was on purpose). But I need help, people.

I used to have a fake blog. A blog in which I coded my redesigns, tweaked them to my heart’s content, and then simply copied and pasted everything over here. But I decided I wasn’t utilizing it enough to keep it, and I deleted it a few months ago. Not that it was costing me anything, but I don’t know, opening up Blogger and seeing that I had not one but TWO blogs to manage started to become a little overwhelming. So to blog heaven it went.

For now I think I’ve got the design mostly where I want it. I’m still having width issues (issues with width. Hee.) but now the colors at least match. What I want to do now is a fade out from my white main space to my patterned background space. This, really. But with a patterned background.

What I think that involves is two backgroud images layered on top of one another, one repeating horizontally and vertically, the other centered and repeating vertically (repeat-y). I cannot for the life of me figure out how to do it! Am I reaching for the stars here, people? Is this a total impossibility? Or is there some kind of CSS hack I’m not aware of (not that I’m aware of many, but still)? If you would be so kind as to take a look at my slip-shod, pieced-together-from-other-blogs code and give me any advice about how to make this work I will be forever in your debt. Should you actually get it to work? I’ll buy you a cupcake. Not the little dinky kind, either. A huge, chocolaty cupcake from Cakes on Walnut, which I may or may not have visited yesterday. And the day before.

I really HATE posting about design stuff (hello blog archives, I’m so glad I saved a post about LAYERING BACKGROUND IMAGES) so you know I’m desperate. Help, please?

In other news, welcome to the world baby Miles! I am dying to meet you.

In Other other news, someone smeared peanut butter and jelly all over my phone. I spent my evening baby-wiping the crusty remains of sandwich from the crack between my phone and its screen protector. Parents of baby Miles, this is what you have to look forward to.