Somewhere between Phoenix and Kalamazoo, I traded a high-paying, emotionally non-stimulating job costing computer processor parts to the penny, for a kitchen mixer and a 16 pound man who yells at me, loves to sit in my lap, and drools all over my clothing.

My Kitchen Aid Mixer, nicknamed “Hello Kitchy” has been put to work now that I actually have time to use it.  I’ve been making meatballs, pizza from scratch, and soft beer pretzels.  Who is this person in my kitchen cooking from scratch?! And more importantly, I haven’t set my oven on fire trying to cook pizzas.  I’ve come such a long way from the literal use of fire extinguishers. So anyone looking for recipes for homemade (from scratch) pizza dough and pizza sauce send me a comment or email and I’ll send it over!  I once made a dinner of appetizers:

Furthering my Domestic Goddess status, I’ve been sewing, embroidering, and crafting like crazy.  Granted, none of it is for me.  i’m sure Angel would appreciate if I finally finished that honeymoon scrapbook that I started years ago, but whatever.  I’ll get to it when I get back from all of these vacations.  I nearly promise.

On Labor Day I let (let, demanded, whatever you want to call it) the boys bond upstairs while I decided that it was finally time to stop fighting the move and finish unpacking.  I call this “acceptance” and the last stage of my grieving the move.  My basement has looked like this for months now:

 

This is where the movers decided to throw everything while we weren’t paying attention during their unload.  I seriously once found a box labeled “Master Bedroom dresser” thrown in the corner of the basement.  The only reason I found it is because I knew I had sweatpants and under garments that were missing and it seemed like the least logical place for them to be.  The basement became such a mess after looking for belongings for 6 months in boxes like this:

 

Hey babe, have you seen our garage crap?  I’m really looking for something that the movers didn’t inventory.  How about I look in this box meticulously labeled “garage crap” because I’m sure whatever I’m looking for is in there.

9 hours of lifting, bending, hauling, trashing, and spiders later, my basement now looks like this:

 

To reward my effors of Monday’s labor, I woke up Tuesday sick as a dog.  This is the world telling me that I’m not made to work.  Ever.  And because I’m working towards my status as World’s Best Mother, I then passed my sickness on to my sidekick.  So we spent Tuesday looking like this:

 

And this:

He clearly rebounded a little faster than I did.

While I was laying on the family room floor on Tuesday with Lucas bouncing up and down on my belly, I decided that the floor was just asking for death.  So I pealed myself up onto the couch where I may have accidentally closed my eyes for a minute.  I woke up to the sound of the baby gate closing, and this:

 

Anyone with kids knows that finding the baby gate like this gives you the same amount of fear that you had seeing the raptor fence torn on Jurassic Park.  Luckily, my sweet little man was just giggling away chasing after the dog who was trying to herd the tiny human back into the jail cell.

So I spent the rest of the day back on the floor with a blanket and this little guy crawling all over me giving me hugs.

 

On Wednesday I was  luckily feeling much better, but my little man, however, was not.  So we spent Wednesday welcoming his top tooth (and it only cost $3 to the swear jar!), and a lot of time in the rocking chair, which Lucas only appreciated for 1/1,000 of a second before he decided that cuddling was for babies.  Ugh!  I miss those days in the rocking chair!!!!  I snuck in one quick snuggle after a bottle when he was just too tired to fight me:

 

And it was priceless.  He quickly bounced back and we’ve spent a snotty rest of the week looking like his usually adorable self.

Somewhere in the middle of all of this, Angel told Lucas that he couldn’t have the beer glass that daddy was drinking out of.  After 3 times of saying no and taking his hand away, he shot us one of these looks, which just means that at 16 pounds he’s learned how to get whatever he wants.  Excellent.  There’s only 17 years and 3 months to go before I legally don’t have to look at this face any more.  We are so screwed.

 

…And then Lucas turned 9 months old, and it took us 2 days and about 349 tries and these were the best 3 pictures that we could get.  Life is already getting harder with a little boy.  I can’t wait to see what other tricks he learns to get into things and capture his mommy and daddy’s hearts.

 

Cheers!