New Mommy Low

For some reason, every day this week when I've picked J-man up from school, he's been grumpy. Not just a little irritable, but full-fledged, whining, pink-faced grumpy. It has been unpleasant, to say the least.

Today was truly the icing on the cake. I got to school to pick him up as usual. When I walked into the room, he was slumped against a bookshelf crying. When I asked "Nina," his all-time favorite teacher, what the problem was, she told me that he wanted the purple sparkly backpack another kid had and he was upset about having to share. I scooped him up, gathered his belongings and headed to the car. On the way home, he intermittedly asked for Nina, juice, trucks and Abby (my mother's chihuahua with whom he is unnaturally fascinated). These requests were punctuated with exclamations of "eat, eat" which normally (and logically) means that he's hungry.

So we get home and I fix one of his favorite dinners--chicken, cheese and peas. With ample supplies of ketchup, of course. I put him in his high chair, put the bib on and give him the tray with his dinner on it. Immediate meltdown. Incalculable levels of whining. I tried to ask him what was wrong and it just escalated. Add to this that I had a completely HORRID day at work and I seriously thought I was headed for a 72 hour stay in a psych ward. I tried everything and then his eye caught a box of Little Debbie Pecan Spinwheels. Only one remained. He pointed at it and said "eat, eat." When I asked him if that is what he wanted, he said yes. Initially, I said "eat some dinner and then we can have it." That tactic failed miserably so, in an effort to save my sanity, I opened it and gave it to him.

All whining ceased and he happily ate the Spinwheel and drank a box of juice (100% juice, but still!). That was his dinner. So I sacrificed good nutrition for my personal sanity. Is that selfish? All of a sudden, I realized I have done a complete 360 from this time a year ago. This time last year, I literally agonized over every ounce of sugar or artificial additive that went into his body. I went out of my way to purchase organic baby food or, at a minimum, all natural products. I viewed high fructose corn syrup as an evil to be avoided at all costs. And now, this very day, in fact, my child consumed a Little Debbie product FOR DINNER. I am horrified, but at the same time, the end of the incessant screaming was pretty awesome. Someone please tell me that this is just a phase....

Amusing Jonathan Tidbits

Jonathan has had a language explosion over the past few weeks, which has led him to say some pretty hysterical (at least to me) things. I'm afraid I won't remember all of them if I don't write them down, so I thought I could make a record of them here:

Last week, I arrived at Jonathan's school to pick him up, as usual. He was not in the toddler room as expected, but I was told he went to the kitchen with one of the other teachers to get "cackers". When they came back into the room, he saw me and said "Hey, baby." I busted out laughing but managed to squeak out "Jonathan, why don't we call Mommy, Mommy." He looked at me with a completely serious expression and said "OK, baby."

This morning, we were driving to school and a huge red dump truck pulled up beside us. Jonathan is REALLY into trucks at the moment, so our car trips are punctuated by exclamations of "TRUCK!" every time a truck is even within earshot. We're working on colors, so when we see a truck, I acknowledge its presence and then say "And what color is it?" Usually, this is pretty successful, but today the truck was red and, for some reason, Jonathan doesn't DO red. So he says yellow. I say "How about red?" This usually works to get him to acknowledge the color, but today he seemed to think about it and then busted out with "Purple? Geen?? Blue?" I guess he didn't trust my statement that the truck was in fact red. Maybe he will be an attorney after all..

Jonathan loves all things electronic, but particularly my cell phone. I give it to him in the car ALL THE TIME because it makes him really happy. He calls it a "hello", which I suppose comes from the fact that's what you say when you answer it. If you push the button with the green phone on it twice, it will redial the last person that was called. That last person is usually hubby, which makes for some interesting conversation, at least at the end I can hear. But yesterday, he actually managed to text message some jumbled up letters to the supervising attorney at my office. She is the first person in my phone book by nature of her name starting with A. She found it pretty amusing, as do I, but I'm not really sure how he did it because I have trouble sending text messages myself and I am a fully grown adult! I told her to watch out because I plan on continuing to allow him to play with the phone until he destroys it and I can get something new and preferably pink!

Early J-Man Video

I just discovered how to upload videos and I thought you guys would enjoy this video of an early Jonathan and Arthur encounter...



So do you think this is why they don't recommend chihuahuas as pets for small children?? I swear I am a competent mother...

Wikipedia Tag

How much do I love Wikipedia? I think the whole concept is just fascinating to begin with, and adding this "tag" element to it is yet another fun use of this conglormorate of information. The rules are simple--my birthday (January 8) yields the following information:

Three Events
1790--George Washington delivers the first State of the Union address in New York City
1958--14 year old Bobby Fischer wins the United States Chess Championship (how impressive!! Wonder what ol' Bobby is doing now?)
2006--George Bush signs into law the ever-controversial No Child Left Behind Act

Two Birthdays
1935--Elvis Presley
1978--Marco Fu, Hong Kong snooker player (interesting soley because we share the EXACT SAME birthday)

One Death
1825--Eli Whitney

One Holiday/Observance
The Feast of Our Lady of Prompt Succor in the Roman Catholic Church (I have no idea what that is, but there wasn't much to go on in this category!)

I LOVE the childhood pictures people have posted. I will try to see if I can't find one of myself lying around to scan in tonight.

My Best Trip to WV in a LONG Time!

So this weekend, I went to West Virginia to visit my family and also to attend Hailey's birthday party. The party was great, as I knew it would be. And, surprisingly, my visit with my family was pretty awesome, too.

Most of you don't know that my youngest sister is currently under indictment for a robbery she and two co-defendants committed in November of 2005. Not that this is an excuse, but she was severely addicted to prescription pain medication at the time and also has some pretty substantial mental health issues. Needless to say, the lifestyle she has chosen for herself is so foreign to my own that I have experienced great difficulty in dealing with her for the past several years. My response generally has been to just not deal with it, talk to her when I absolutely have to and otherwise try to keep it out of my mind. Her most recent exploits left me in such a bad place, a place full of anger, embarrassment and sadness over what I have seen this do to my family.

Amazingly, her arrest and the three weeks she spent in jail before my parents were able to post a sizable bail did nothing to change her attitude. She half-heartedly attempted rehab, but relapsed several times. She, for the past couple of years, has essentially been a selfish monster, a person that if you looked at her funny, you could expect an onslaught of profanity and insults. Due to the fact that she is currently on home confinement at my parents' house, it made family visits difficult, to say the least. This has been really hard on all of us because my parents love nothing more than to spend time with Jonathan.

Most recently, however, there have been some positive developments. My sister entered a five week in-patient rehab program in January of 2006. She amazingly (to me, at least) completed the program and has been diligently completely her after-care since she was released two months ago. Additionally, she has admitted to her wrongdoing and is set to take a plea on Thursday that will keep her out of prison, assuming that she continues to behave herself. And, most importantly to me, she and I have had the best conversations over the past week than we have had during the past five years. I am optimistically hopeful, but I am hoping with all my might that this continues and that I am able to build a relationship with my youngest sister that we have simply not been able to have. I am tired of being angry with her and I truly want to be able to support her and be proud of her. This weekend, I saw the first glimmers that it may come to fruition and I am SO happy about it.

Also making my weekend awesome is some news about my mother. My mom and I are REALLY close and our relationship just keeps getting better as I get older. Last week, she got some results back from a mammogram that were less than stellar. They saw some spots and wanted her to come in this morning for a magnification. She had a similar issue a few years ago, but it all turned out to be fine. Still scary, regardless. Well, I am happy to report that she called me today and they actually compared her mammogram from this year with her previous one (apparently they were in storage in Virginia and had to be ordered) and, when they did, they found there had been absolutely no change! So she is totally fine and I can breathe a little (actually a lot) easier.

One more happy note (and then I'm through, I promise!). About a month ago, my hubby was having to go out of town two nights a week for work. This went on for a month and it was some extra work on me. My hubby duly recognized this and, as a "thanks for being a great wife" gift, bought me a new black Coach leather purse. He picked it out and everything and it was really awesome! So, this left me with no need for the black Kate Spade purse I've carried for the last couple of years (also a gift from hubby). I decided to sell it on E-bay and it sold for $79.00 last night. I was so happy! Now I need to scour my house to see what else I can sell!

Mommy Ponderings...

I've had a pretty rough week, both with work and with Jonathan. Nothing particularly new at work, but Jonathan has just been more difficult than normal. He's had a bout of separation anxiety every day when I drop him off at school. He's learning new words at an alarmingly fast pace, but yet has chosen to practice them by screeching them at me in a pitch I am certain only dogs can hear.

And he's decided to become the bully of the toddler class. That is partially funny, due to the fact that, although he is 21 months old, he weighs just over 21 pounds and is around 30 inches tall. But it's also a little embarrassing because I suspect he may have inflicted a scratch or two on some of the other "friends." If your child gets harmed in any way while at school, you get an "incident sheet" signed by the teacher who saw it happened and the director of the center. There's a big space for description of what happened, the injury sustained, what was done to treat it, etc. Fortunately, there is no area to place the name of the perp. Not that any of the parents SHOULD suspect my sweet, baby-faced son, but I am beginning to think that I may just need to issue a blanket apology...

This has led me to some other (random) thoughts as I am winding down from a nutty day that has culminated in my applying for a new job (not that I dislike my current one, but maybe a change would be nice):

1. Why is it that both Bryan and I get paid on a regular basis and make decent money but yet it is one day before I get paid and I literally have one dollar in my wallet?

2. How does my son go to bed clean and wake up with gunk between his fingers and stickiness under his chin? He's still in a crib and I have no idea what he could be doing in there...

3. Why do my two chihuahuas enjoy having peeing contests in the kitchen?

4. Why did Jonathan feel the need to cry for Daddy most of the drive to work and then randomly switch to screeching "truck" at everything that possibly resembled a truck for the rest of the way there?

5. What did I ever do with all the free time that I must have had before I had a family?

6. Why do none of these concerns matter at all when I see my son's smiling face and hear him say "Mommy" (even if it is at an ear piercing decibel??)

With that, I'm off to bed! I'm looking forward to seeing some of you guys this weekend at the Hailey birthday bash!!

Easter Fun

I wanted to post about our Easter weekend last night, but Bryan and I ended up going out for a much needed cocktail so I had to wait until today!

So, happy belated Easter everyone! We had a really nice weekend, even though the weather tried to thwart us. We had an awesome dinner Friday night with our friends from Chicago. Unfortunately, Bryan and I drank WAY too much wine, so waking up to a boisterous J-man Saturday morning was...interesting, to say the least. I had an appointment to get his hair cut, as you all know, on Saturday morning. Although he has had no less than 6 haircuts prior to this one, he was none too pleased. So, no buzz, but I got it cut pretty short and I'm overall pleased. He recovered from the trauma very quickly, however--it is so amazing what a balloon and an safety lollipop can do. Maybe a hellium tank would make a good birthday present??



You can see the cut pretty well in this picture. For some odd reason, my child decided it would be a wonderful idea to put himself rather than his toys in this box. And yes, he is wearing Christmas PJs on Easter. In my defense, it was obnoxiously cold and all his spring PJs have short sleeves at best, so give a mom a break :)

Anyway, we had Bryan's parents and his brother over for Easter for a late lunch. We ate a delicious Honey Baked ham and I made a cake. It was my first attempt at cake decorating and I absolutely could not wait to share it with the family. Unfortunately, only my mother in law seemed excited, but that was OK. My brother in law had to celebrate his 39th birthday, also on Easter with this cake. I'm thrilled with how it turned out, though. Not as good as Alicia's cakes, but maybe one day...






The Easter bunny brought Jonathan a nice selection of gifts. Unfortunately, he really didn't care too much for them, so no pictures. Overall, it was a really nice weekend, but I was a teensy bit happy to get back to work today and actually have some time to myself without the constant call of "MOMMEEEEE"

Picture Success!!

These are my newest Jonathan pictures, at least newest from the professional standpoint. I am so happy with how they turned out that I wanted to share!

They were taken about two weeks ago at Jonathan's school. There is this great company, Porchlight Productions, that comes to the school approximately once each season. Not only is this incredibly convenient as the teachers will get your child dressed and ready for the pictures (which I have never done--I am entirely too anal about picture day, so we get up early so we can IRON and get to school early so I can be a part of the process), but the guy who owns the company is someone I used to work with ten years ago. He and his wife had a baby in December of 2006--both he and his son are, incidentally, named Jonathan. The pictures are a little more than Sears, but I'd much rather see my $$ go to people I care about. Plus, they do a wonderful job!

I just got these on Monday when Bryan and I got back from Mexico. My mother in law was thoughtful enough to not only pick them up from school for me, but also to bring them to the airport since she totally knows me well enough to know that I couldn't wait to see them. You get the disc when you buy the whole package, which I always do since I have so many people to send pictures to. The disc usually doesn't get any use, but tonight I looked at it and thought, "Ah, my blog would like those pictures..."

Return from Mexico!

So as you can see, I survived a long weekend without Jonathan, despite my initial trepidations. Bryan and I had an incredible time and it was really nice to touch base again and remember why it is that we're married with a child in the first place! Four days of sun, sand and incredibly blue ocean was exactly what I needed to reinvigorate me!

Jonathan and my mom had a great time together. The kiddo actually learned to say "yes" rather than just shake his head up and down when something you asked him was agreeable. Not a huge developmental leap, but certainly useful in everyday life! You would have thought almost five full days with Jonathan would have been an undue burden on my mother, but considering the situation with my youngest sister and my father (a subject for a later blog all its own), this was actually a vacation of sorts for my mother as well.

As a side note, is it sad that I really missed blogging?? We got back on Monday and I tried all day yesterday to find time to post, but it obviously just didn't happen. Another random thought, why am I completely pissed that I won't be able to put Jonathan in his precious madras shorts for Easter. And, while I'm at it, anyone have any thoughts pro or con for a buzz cut of sorts for Jonathan?? They always use the clippers on the sides and back, but not yet on the top. I've got an appointment on Saturday at ten...