Arriba!

Well, dear readers, we are Mexican Caribbean bound for the next week. I’m afraid though that what I thought was a cabana boy named Ernesto is actually an approaching tropical storm/soon to be a hurricane headed for out little towels on the beach. Maybe we’re foolish for still going but dammit, I earned this freakin’ vaca and I’ll be damned if some wind and rain are gonna stop this determined-to-have-fun-no-matter-what-and-are-we-having-fun-yet mama! If I find a place to blawg then I’ll send an update. If not, I’ll be back on board this full disclosure train week after next. Until then, stay safe and take care of each other.

Viva Mexico!

Vogue

W is a young man in touch with his feminine side. Since infancy, he’s always been attracted to fabrics of all textures and colors. He waltzes through the house with armloads of clothing hijacked from the hamper, closet or floor. Every morning, he’s fully engaged in my routine as I dress for work and sits with me while I put on make-up. His little hands tear through the bag of goodies like a hyperactive drag queen. He has figured out how to “use” the eye stuff and most recently added a nice 5 o’clock shadow to his tiny jaw line. As soon as I pop open the compact of face powder, he’s right there waiting for this nose to be shine free. I can’t go into the closet without him climbing me like a tree in an effort to be sitting on the shelf above the skirts and below my hanging shirts. He buries himself in there grinning like a member of the Fab Four after a make over.

Here he is sporting his terry cloth robe/striped onesie combo with binkie accessory. Work it, baby!

Ch-ch-ch-changes

It’s amazing what a little sleep can do for a person. I got a nice chunk of it last night and I feel like a million pesos (subtle reference to our Mexico trip coming up this weekend!). I didn’t get there easily though as I ended the day watching a MSNBC program (and they have some of the best) about the sex trafficking of children in Cambodia. Are you kidding me? Some of these kids are 5-YEARS-OLD and selling yum yum (oral sex) for $30 to pathetic, disgusting, should be spending the rest of their lives in jail and getting it up the yen yang, pedophiles. If Bush ever did any good while making a mockery of the US it was signing in to law that if you, as an American, go to another country to have sex with minors, you will be prosecuted. I went to bed mad but easily calmed my nerves with thoughts of lounging and frolicking on the beach with the fam.

The landscape at work is changing as my team will be relocating to a studio apartment next door to the headquarters over the next week. As we gear up for another year of monumental multi-tasking and glad handing, we are finding that we all need more space to set new records and work ourselves to the brink of divorce from our spouses. Thank goodness this monster only happens once a year. For the past few days, I have been sharing my space with two New Yorkers, a German, and another European of Irish (?) origin and it’s been refreshing to have the energy around. Their presence sends home the reality of the crazy months to come. The proverbial ball is officially rolling now.

The first year landmark birthday of my son is fast approaching. I have mixed feelings about this but I will save all of that nonsense for another entry. Right now I want to point out a few changes that will –hopefully- take place just beyond the big day. I will wean W from breastfeeding and that will be hard for both of us. This hardship will also be endured by Hubby (I guess I should start capitalizing Hubby and Papa and all of the other things I call the Sig Other since he is an actual person with a Real Name). He will be the first person baby will see in the morning since that is usually the first boob nosh of the day. That should be interesting. Their relationship is rather strained but I am seeing this as an opportunity for them to become close friends and not just two ships passing in the morning.

We will be changing out the rear facing carseat for one of those front facing jobbies and I have been waiting for that for, like, ever! I will return to the passenger seat with Papa instead of being limited to back seat driving. I will be able to see what W really needs when he starts screaming in the car while I’m at the wheel instead of blindly reaching over the carseat with my hand feeling around for anything to give to the screaming banshee instead of smacking in him the face over and over in the effort to console him. I will be able to look over at him and carry on conversations to his face instead of sending him into a critical state of “I hear mommy’s voice but I can’t seeeeeee heeeeeeeeer! This is so cruel! Whaaaaaaaaaa!”

We will try to move beyond the binkie and teach him to deal with his emotions more effectively (which honestly, I don’t see working because the binkie is like the hands free nipple and I’m already taking two of those away). I remember when my youngest brother was a toddler. He was a binkie junkie and his tiny life revolved around the whereabouts of this rubber device. Even when he was potty trained he was still a binkie boy. You’d see him walking around in the backyard playing with his standard poodle/best friend with a giant bulge in his terrycloth britches. He looked like a toe headed version of Ron Jeremy. You’d ask him where is paci was and he’d happily reach in the front of his underwear, yank it out and pop it in his mouth, a triumphant grin hidden just beneath. That still makes me laugh.

I’m sure other changes will come but these are my immediate plans as W grows from infant to toddler. Man, the year has flown by.

*Note to self: There is a good chance that blog hits may increase since the words “sex trafficking." “nipple,” “Bush,” “junkie,” and “Ron Jeremy” were included in today’s entry. Yea!

From White To Bright

You saw the "before" images of our living room and kitchen in the "Pony" video. Well, here's Skittleland now...

































Here is W's contribution on the wall in the hall (which we are keeping)...












And here is the guilty party...

Wedded Hiss

It was a rough evening last night and to top it off, I missed Anthony Bourdain’s No Reservations: Beirut version. I ended my workday by heading to the insanely crowded grocery to get W some classy vittles for daycare because God forbid they think I feed him veggie corn dogs and pizza everyday when Sexy Chef is out of town. I blazed through the aisles to meet the sitter’s 5 p.m. cut off time and arrived with armloads of bags, work gear, Target crap and, thump, the door was locked. It’s hot, I’m tired from a long weekend of solo parenting with sick baby and I can’t get any assistance at the door. I finally come crashing in like a boulder, unpack and soak up snotty W. Papa, who is leaving AGAIN tomorrow for three days, was working all day in the studio but was going to be providing late night nosh and was expected to call around a certain time. Around that certain time, I went looking for my purse to grab my Barbie phone but couldn’t find the damn thing anywhere! Guess where I left it? On the shopping cart at the grocery store way out in the BFE part of the parking lot! Freak the F out! I grabbed baby and barreled out the back door to the studio (not the one where daddy records) and grabbed the landline. After having frustrating conversations with the B team members of HEB and directory assistance, I finally talked to a guy who actually said “Yes, I have your purse right here.” Sweet Goddess of Good Karma, someone, a person with a good heart, actually turned in my purse! I couldn’t believe it and was so relieved, I cried. Somehow though, that relief evolved into something else and I later found myself fist-a-cuffs with papa when he finally got home. It was a terrible breakdown of fatigue, stress, bullheadedness, and miscommunication and it sucked. That’s why we missed Bourdain’s show and why I hardly slept last night and felt like such a bitchy, whiny baby but sometimes, there is a crack in the core that unleashes things better left unsaid. But you say them and you can’t take them back and you hope your spouse knows the real you and the improvements you’re trying to make on the faulty bits. But most of all, you hope they know that they are deeply loved more than anything and are always missed terribly when they are gone. Yup.

Skittles (And Your Imagination)

(Seriously, what's up with Blogger? I have spent way too much time much too late in the evening trying to upload some pictures to tell you a story but now that Blogger isn't cooperating, you're going to have to use your imagination until I can get the damn things loaded. Damn! Damn!)

Baby and I rocked the weekend in croupsnotland but made it through mostly unscathed. Would’ve helped if papa had been around but he had to make bacon in Missouri and Kentucky. We love bacon! He came home to find that he now lives inside a bag of Skittles. See…

(insert pic here of very colorful kitchen and breakfast area)

W did his part, too.

(insert pic of his handprint on the wall in red paint)

Thankfully, W was too snotty to inhale the paint fumes but I floated around with a brain-numbing, debilitating headache all weekend. Papa came into the kitchen this morning and quipped that he didn’t need any coffee. The walls woke him up already. Earlier I had turned on the overhead lights and quickly shut them off after nearly singeing my retinas. The under shelf lighting does the job just fine now. There’s more Skittlizing to come but we will be on vaca when that happens. Oh glorious vaca! How I dream of thee and can’t get any work done. I checked the extended forecast and it’s possible it could be raining most of the visit but I don’t care. Really, I don’t. I’ll just do indoor stuff like lounging and drinking fruity cocktails and lounging s’more and getting more fruity cocktails and someone find that sitter already and lounging and drinking s’more and talking to myself and trying to put my key in the door and barely making it to the bed and sleeping it off and what happened to my kid? Lord, PLEASE DON’T LET IT RAIN THE WHOLE TIME!

For your viewing pleasure, here I am playing indoor pony. Beneath those jeans are some burning thigh muscles. What you can't hear is him clucking and clicking (I need to get a camera with some freakin' audio, huh?)...

Heavy and Light

I’ve been staying up late reading the book "A Mighty Heart: The Brave Life and Death of My Husband Danny Pearl" by Marianne Pearl, the wife of the Wall Street Journal reporter who was kidnapped in 2002 in Pakistan and murdered. I was going to save it for our beach trip that’s happening later in the month (!) but I’ve been sucked in and it’s heartbreakingly good. It’s her love and devotion in the face of this terrifying event that drew me to the story but I am finding so much more. Courage, dedication, deceit, strength, faith and fear are themes woven in and out of the pages. I can’t imagine how traumatic such an experience might be and, to top it off, Marianne was pregnant with their son when it happened. When I am finally able to put the book down and turn off the light, I steep in the story a while longer and get scared. The world was a scary place when I was young but it’s so much scarier as an adult and now I have a child to send out into its clutches someday. I am afraid of what he will find or what will find him. Of course, thinking about this at night alone in bed makes it even darker and I sleep with one eye open, a talent mastered when Willem came into the world. It proves to be both useful and frustrating. Tonight I’ll watch a movie instead and save the book for broad daylight.

Now about that beach trip…
Sweet Jeebus, I’m cabana boy bound! For one entire week, this tiny family of three will be doing absolutely nothing. We’re staying in a highly rated, all-inclusive resort (a first!) that will be adults-only come this November. It’s located in town which is good. When you get tired of being waited on hand and foot you can wander out to the neighboring restaurants and be served by surly waitstaff. The resort has BEDS ON THE BEACH UNDER CANOPIES, and BABYSITTERS and GRATIS HOOCH IN OUR ROOM and did I mention CABANA BOYS! A dream come true, no? I went to Just Add Water yesterday to get a swimsuit where it cost me a small fortune but it’s reversible (2 suits in one…price justified!) and covers a lot of the post pregnancy soggy parts of mommy flesh that shouldn’t be viewed in public. It’s a great, stylish number and after finding something I feel good in, I’m ready for Mommy’s Gone Wild in Mexico. All I need is a packable straw hat, my sarong, sunglasses, and lots of one-dollar bills. Arriba!

Cheap Date

I read about 25 blogs most days. Nearly all of them are of the parenting genre. It’s an addiction, a curiosity. Some of the bloggers I know and some of them I wish I knew. I read about far away birthday parties, girls night out, and collaborative mommy projects and wish I was part of it all. Baby and I don’t get invited to do much but that’s okay. We’re tight. We’re tight. When pictures are posted of offspring, I study them. I peer deeply into their images and survey the backgrounds looking for hints, parenting tips in the form of toys, educational materials, stuff. I file away items in my mind, things I’d like for baby to have when he’s older or things he should have real soon. He doesn’t really own that much except the loot I won on ebay half a year ago and a plethora of infant toys I need to pack away. His favorite things right now are chess sets, plastic to-go containers, books, and anything resembling a blanket he can nuzzle (robes, dish cloths, an old t-shirt). He’s a wonderful cheap date.

Speaking of cheap dates, it’s date night with the hubs tonight. We have a delicious evening planned and this mom is stoked. We need the solo time together. It taps into a certain energy we had before baby was born and we easily revert right back into couples-only blissfulness. Sooooo good.

DJ Baby Velcro

The Usual

Well, it didn’t take long for the nasty little germs that hide in every nook and cranny of daycareland to sink their claws into W. Within 24 hours he had a glistening snail trail of snot on his upper lip, a transparent mustache. It doesn’t seem to bother him much until I wield the blue bulb nose sucker and then he knows something’s up and about to go down on his person. Poor little guy tries to break free of my clutches while clinging to me with the hopefulness that I will make it all stop. He’s developing a cough, too, so I guess he’s going to cycle all of the illnesses through his system in a relatively short period of time. The sooner we get this over, the better. There is an end to this, yes? Isn’t he building up an armory of defending agents to fight off later infections? I think that’s how it works.

On the caregiver front, I have found someone to finish out the month with W on the M/W/F loop. She’s a friend of the Alabama nanny and SUPER sassy. When she was visiting with W this past weekend I was telling baby who she was and that they were going to have fun together and hang out and she said “We’re going to dance!” with such enthusiasm, I wanted to be around to join in. W’s never had a dancing caregiver before, I don’t think, so bring on the Ginger Rogers or Madonna moves. I inquired at daycare on Thursday as to when W might be in line for a full time spot (I know, full time seems like a lot to me, too, but I think some consistency for a while would be nice for all the family members in our household…besides, hunting for sitters SUCKS).

Just to let you know, I’ve changed Willem’s name to DJ Baby Velcro. He is going through an intense version of mommyitis and won’t let me go. Wanna hike Mt. Everest? C’mon. I’ve got the back of a tenured sherpa. He constantly wants to be held by me and no other substitute will work. I find myself lying on the floor a lot just so he has proximity to my arms and torso and I don’t have to heft his skinny frame all damn day. Problem with being on the floor is that he makes his desires to play “horse” known and his charming way of inquiring if the stable is open makes it hard for me to say no. He leans on my back, clutches my shirt and clicks his tongue like the sound of horse hooves and soon we are running through the house. My back aches just thinking about it.

More later today. It’s time to punch in at the salt mine.

Jelly Cat Weekend

After what seemed to be an eternity of Blogger downloading these pics (really, that little spinning icon gets on my nerves), here is a brief clip of Sunday...

Jelly Cat as backpack...

















Jelly Cat gets stuffed with to-go containers...

















Jelly Cat table for two...

















Sexy Chef...

TGIF

We had familial dinner at a grocery store tonight. Okay, so it’s a grocery store with a café, an outdoor eating area, a live band and a playscape but it’s still a grocery store and an overpriced one at that. BUT as we sat there with our child tucked into the indestructible plastic grocery store high chair and sipped some delicious jammy vino we bought in the wine department and waited for disco coaster to vibrate and twinkle signaling that our food was ready, we realized we were exactly where we needed to be. The place buzzed with the liveliness of families. Any other time in our life, we wouldn’t be caught dead in such an arrangement no matter how much hooch was flowing but when our child made his usual attempts at decibel violating conversation and banged his toy like a gavel in court, papa and I looked at each other and flashed purple-lipped grins knowing full well that no one was paying any attention to us. Daddy took the rugrat to the playground while I made a quick dash through the aisles to pick up edibles for the weekend. It was a perfect arrangement…dinner, vino, burn out baby’s remaining energy, pick up groceries for the weekend and call it a day. Wonderful way to end a Friday.

Little Couch Spud. Thank goodness he goes to school a couple of days a week or I'd never dress him. It's just too bloody hot to wear much.

Mighty Good

Another morning at the oasis that is the neighborhood coffee shop. Ahhh…no one knows me here except the cashier/latte maker/order taker guy and he’s getting my routine down already. One dollar tips work wonders. He even brought my nosh out to me and this place is super lo-fi on a level that you’re lucky if your breakfast taco is remotely warm. I like this crap-hole café though. It fits my groggy sensibility in the morning.

I dropped W off at school earlier. I was in a mental dither and forgot to write down when he woke up and when he last ate on a little sheet they provide. Great. Now he’s going to starve AND be sleep deprived. I phoned and left a message for his teacher but, seriously, I need to get it together. W burst into tears on my departure this time but I know he’s in good hands as long as they don’t let him take another swan dive off of the back deck. I call his facial scab his “DiNero” ‘cause it looks like he has a giant movie star mole on his mug.

The pops returns tonight with presents for me in the form of clothing and this is a new high, folks. He did buy me a foxy jacket at Anthropologie last year but gifting mama while out of town isn’t his usual routine. I’ll post the purchases later in the evening. We shall see the flava of the rockstar/dad/hubby.

Paging Mary Poppins

So I’m once again on the never-ending rollercoaster ride of finding a replacement caregiver, sitter, nanny, faux mama, whatever the hell you call those that you hope protect, love and cherish your child as much as you do (which is impossible, I know). It’s upsetting and nerve wracking and I just want to win the lottery already so I can be with my kid and not do this anymore. I read Craigslist and email strangers and they email back and then I read Craigslist some more and see WARNING: DO NOT HIRE THIS PERSON postings and I get freaked and email that poster and they send me a novel about what happened to them and how they got ripped off or that the sitter hit their kid and include the person’s real name and I wait to get emails back from those that I want to interview and hopefully the names don’t match up. I find someone I like and then they decline because our “house is too far away” or they “need more hours” or they “just got a job at Hooters.”

I took the little tyke to work today for a few hours. We are in between sitters and papa is playing some Food Fest in Albany, NY…more on that in a second. We had an all-staff staff meeting. Baby paced, clapped his hands and babbled loudly like the floor was his. He then fell down, burst into tears and didn’t stop. Thank goodness I work at a very cool place where some days are “Bring your dog to work” day. My desk is on the second floor. My child prefers the first floor and tried many times to take the stairs…alone. He tossed everything he could find in the recycling bin. He’s teething. He fussed. It was too much to bear. I can get more work done from home. There, he’s in his world and those crib walls work wonders. Plus the Herradura is to my left. So the sitter search continues. It shouldn’t be this hard but it is and always will be.

Before papa left, I told him it was okay to go to a store called H&M and buy me stuff. To my super-duper surprise, he hopped in a cab in Albany to seek out the oasis of cheap and trendy clothing and nearly landed in another town that also had the store. I think the crackhead cabbie thought he had a sucker on his hands. $40 later, papa calls, a tad frustrated, and starts asking me questions about skirt lengths, dress sizes and other dreamy topics of shopping for me. I’m thinking “Hello, is this my new gay boyfriend?” Even if papa ends up buying me clothes only Pamela Anderson-Rock can (barely) wear, he’s getting some serious lap dancing for just asking those kinds of questions. I told him to pick out whatever he liked (hee, hee) and bring it. Later he called to say he needed to purchase a duffel to bring the goods home. Although I hoped it was all threads for moi, he said he found some dude duds, too. Bueno! I can’t wait and I will share the newly purchased and picked by my husband items when he returns. I am waiting with bated breath.

Chalk Outline

Here is baby sporting his facial boo-boos from his first day at school. I wish I could say he got them saving a damsel in distress but evidently he took a step off of a short deck and proceeded to break his fall with his face. Thank goodness the scratch on his forehead is already fading.


















Here he is artistically expressing himself on the kitchen floor. He has a whole wall that is a chalk board but hey, I guess it works on the floor, too.


















This is how he crashed out in bed after a long, eventful day. Sweet dreams my little cowboy.

Coffee Camping

So guess where I am? In a coffeeshop at 9-something in the a.m. by myself! Sweet Jeebus, this rules! I took the little one to his first returning day at daycare and he was the consummate duck in water. I sat on the floor with him as the other tykes sucked on plastic toy food and he promptly scooped up a faux chocolate chip cookie and started to snack (Oh, the germs!). Snotty noses all around but I couldn’t deny his immediate level of contentment. He blended in so well that I actually had to look for him as I was putting his stuff away. There’s only about six kiddos in his class but he was so in. I told him good-bye, that I’d see him after work, and he didn’t bat an eye. Rejoice! So here I am eating a breakfast taco, drinking a huge latte, and adding yet MORE mommy blog URLs to my bookmark list. Yes people, I could get used to this.

Stress Alert

On a spontaneous whim, I bought some sushi from HEB this afternoon. I get back to my desk and see that it’s more bait than sushi. I’m not even sure fish would eat it. That’s $6 down the drain. Such a bummer. Today’s lunch is now a salty oatmeal cookie.

It’s going to be a week of craziness and because I’m expecting it to be crazy, I’ve already heightened the stress level to “unhealthy.” Tomorrow the dad figure goes out of town for three days to earn some dough so baby and I are left to our own devices (TV dinners, co-sleeping). Tomorrow the little one returns to school, an event that has me gripped with anxiety because I know the crocodile tears forming tiny ponds on the playroom floor will be hard to bear. He’s only going Tuesday/Thursdays so he’s not already locked in to being in school for like the next 25 years. Knowing my past at daycare though, I can only hope I have everything in order and nothing will spill, fall out, get left behind or broken. I’m a nitwit that way, a klutz under parenting pressure. I am excited though. I have been imagining mornings of home-based yoga, coffeeshop camping, and Target sprees for months now. Finally, they all will be mine!

I am having some of my walls painted in my house tomorrow, too, and the cleaning lady comes on Wednesday (yes, it’s a generous luxury and I openly thank papa for footing the bill). Baby will be at work with me that day and THAT should be interesting. He’s still mommy-centric but I believe arming my co-workers with baby bribery tools will encourage rapid bonding. Thursday is another day of tears (mine and his) and separation at school but I’m hoping for the best and perhaps W will be so stoked to be with other little people he won’t even know I’m gone. Friday is the debut of a new caregiver as Miss Jo is back to teaching second graders. She seems nice and to know her stuff about babies but we’ll see. As a child, my brother and I had a plethora of sub par sitters as mom tried to make ends meet while my father took jobs in Alaska on the pipeline or worked the night shift at a plant of some sort. I have foggy memories of a few of them. Certain things trigger memories of those uncomfortable days. The dry heat of space heaters, the essence of moth balls, cheese sandwiches on white bread, cigarette smoke embedded in furniture, rough blankets. I even have a few songs that take me back there, too. I call them “Bad Babysitter Songs”. The Starland Vocal Band’s “Afternoon Delight” is a big one. “Muskrat Love” by Captain and Tenille and “I Am…I Said” by Neil Diamond. Ugh. Those songs make me cringe with bad babysitter memories.

Anyway, it’s a lot to digest in one week without the daddy soundboard so I will defer to the blog instead. Onward.

Muff

Willem is the proud owner of one Baby Einstein video. He’s a pint-sized animal lover so I knew this one would be right up his alley. It goes through a series of animals in different settings, i.e. “Animals In My House,” “Animals In My Yard,” etc. This is where he learned to say “mouse” but daddy gets his panties in a wad every time he hears the little girl voice over say “mouse” because it sounds like she’s saying “muff.” I admit, it does sound like she’s saying “muff” but not that muff, I mean, much. He does his own version of the voice over with a lazy tongue and it sounds something like this, “Animaths In Mu’ Houth…muff, cath, dug,” and so on. Thankfully, W is completely absorbed by the puppets and the dancing about on the screen to notice me beating hubby with a broom to make him stop before I pee my pants laughing. There’s also a hilarious part that involves the “bug” portion of the show. A dog puppet bounces into view while a series of black dots track across the screen like a bug flying around. It sounds something like a killer bee and the dog follows it with a fly swatter in his mouth. The bug allegedly lands, the dog slowly rears back and “whack!” kills the bug. At the moment he’s about to smack it, W’s eyelashes flicker in anticipation of the attack and then he jumps out of his skin when the swatter connects. The screen fades to black and immediately after, he always says “muff.” It’s rather bizarre.

Time and Tenderness

Last night as I got settled in to bed, I was startled by a metal on metal banging sound on our deck. We have one of those balcony decks that juts off of the side of the house and is only wide enough for a barstool and a 12-pack cooler of boxed wine. I couldn’t place the racket and bravely peered out into the darkness to solve the mystery. I didn’t turn on the light to improve visibility because, honestly, I was afraid of what I’d find. If it was a stalker, robber, or baby snatcher, they’d have to come in the house before I’d take action (makes no sense really). So I got back in to bed and again with the banging. I knew there weren’t any tree branches that could be taping the metal railing as they’re all too large so I held my breath and, click, shed some light on the subject. I found, facing away from the door, a teenage possum banging his head on a metal doorstopper that was perched on the deck. Ding, ding, ding the metals rang out as they connected. I could tell this guy was seriously disturbed, maybe drunk, and definitely not long for this world. Hubby would barely look at the creature and sang out all sorts of rodent-related names. I watched it for a few minutes and begrudgingly closed the curtain, turned off the light and hoped he would make his way far, far away. And then I had a dream that my husband left for another woman (who I’d almost leave me for) in San Francisco on my birthday and I had to walk to the airport. Is there a connection? Maybe. Maybe not.

I got to spend the last two days at home with baby nursing his growing pains and the time with him has really spoiled me. I have concluded that his caregivers should pay us to hang out with him. He’s become more affectionate and interactive in the sweetest ways. When I’m squatting down to do something he either hugs my back or leans on me and makes a clack sound with his mouth meaning he wants to hop on my back while I gallop around the house like an indoor pony. This old gray mare can only make it a couple of laps before I have to put him down to catch my breath. He pats me constantly like a reassuring therapist, stands on my legs when I sit on the floor and spins tales of baby life and adventures in his own language. He totally makes me laugh. He starts back to school next week and I’m sure it will feed his growing spirit. He’ll have lots to babble about then.

We are in the midst of changes in this household of ours…return to school, new sitters, daddy tours, new record release, increased workload at the job, Mexico vacation, landscaping projects…and the list goes on. Please stick around to hear more about this circus that is our lives. It should be fun (or funny, at the least).

Baby Labor

To earn his keep, W has to water the lawn.