Dear Lucas,

I felt like a bad mom today. I woke you up early to take you to the doctor for your one year physical exam. The nurse pricked your toe to test for iron (you screamed and screamed) just so she could tell me what I already knew: you were perfect. I wouldn’t let them prick the other toe to test for lead. You’re welcome.

There’s a big debate about giving your child shots. Dad and I would rather a needle than a horrible disease so I hope we picked right. It’s so hard to tell sometimes because the memory of today isn’t going to easily fade. I’m so sorry that I had to hold you down while two nurses gave you five shots and you screamed and cried and tried to get away before you gave up and just stared at me with those eyes, like “why are you letting them hurt me?!” I hope that you never have to take your own child to get shots because that feeling is terrible.

This afternoon I could tell that you weren’t feeling well. You cried a lot and only wanted to play with toys while sitting in my lap. I took you to the store to pick up some baby Tylenol and you screamed the whole time in the cart holding your arms up for me to hold you. Baby boy, if I had 5 arms to carry you and a gallon of milk, a diaper bag, and a box of baby Tylenol, believe me when I say I would have done it. Instead, I had to let you cry and try to ignore the judgmental stares that I was getting.

When we got home I changed your diaper, but didn’t realize that one of the band aids from your shots was stuck to the diaper so I accidentally tore it off when I took your diaper off. You REALLY didn’t like that, and this time we both started crying.

I gave you a bath at bedtime and it made your lips turn blue and gave you the shivers. I took your temperature and it was 101.9. I’m sorry that I didn’t realize sooner. Dad gave you some Tylenol so that you could be mad at us both, and you wouldn’t let me rock you. So we put you to bed with a fever.

You’ll never know what mother’s instinct feels like, but it’s waking up from a deep sleep exactly 4 hours after dad gave you Tylenol. Lucky for me, you were okay that I woke you up. You stood in your crib with your arms up and your eyes closed, because you were too tired to keep them open, but you knew that it was me and you wanted to cuddle. I didn’t have to take your temperature this time to feel that you are what I already knew: perfect.

I rocked you in that chair for at least 30 minutes. You were awake the whole time but you didn’t move and let me cuddle with you. You stared at me like you did in the doctor’s office, but tonight you didn’t look sad.

I’ll never know what baby instinct feels like, but you must have it because while you stared at me in the quiet, dark, nursery in the middle of the night, you took out your pacifier and very quietly made baby babble noises. It’s so hard to tell what you were saying because you only know two words, but since one of those words is “Mama” I think that I can guess what the inflection meant. You took out your pacifier, looked at me, and in your own words I think you were telling me that you love me, too. Then you put your pacifier back in your mouth and closed your eyes.

Oh, Baby Boy. Mommy loves you.

It’s just so hard to find good help these days

Yesterday Lucas learned a new word: no.  I was changing his diaper on the floor of his bedroom when he rolled away from me and started playing with his toys, butt naked.  I didn’t mind until he started playing in the pile of clean laundry, at which point I stopped him because I didn’t want to wash the laundry again.  I said (in my sweetest mom voice): “Lucas.  Can I put a diaper on you?”  He looked at me, said “no” and turned and walked away towards his pacifier.

I really don’t know how to argue with you when you use the word correctly.

I did get to spend some time with him and Molly in the backyard between rain storms to enjoy some quick fall photos.  Molly enjoyed being let out in the backyard for the first time in months, and Lucas wasn’t really sure what to do with the leaves when he wasn’t allowed to eat them. Is this food?  Can I eat them?  I’m going to eat them.

On a light note, let’s talk for a minute about how Kate Middleton is ruining it for the rest of us Moms.  Have you seen the photo of her playing volleyball 2 months after she had her son?  Allow me to refresh your memory:

Yeeeaaahhh, this isn’t normal.  Where are her stretch marks, fat spilling over her jeans, and bags under her eyes?!?  Before I had a baby I saw all of these celebrities in magazines talking about how they lost baby weight in “30 days!” and looked like an airbrushed version of Kate Middleton and I thought this was normal.  So 6 months later when I was still wearing Spanx and avoiding mirrors, I thought that I was the unusual one.

Can we all just agree now to call a duck a duck?  Let’s throw some Spanx on under our shirts, pile on makeup under our eyes to hide the fact that we haven’t slept in a year, and then throw a cardigan over it all and pretend like no one notices that we’re anything less than awesome?  I say this all after I threw out my eye makeup and used eye drops for my pink eye.  But what’s a case of pink eye among family?

All in a day’s work….

We dressed Lucas as a monster and took him trick of treating this morning at the local nursing home. Between that and the sun going down he had puked all over his costume so he spent Halloween night raiding the candy bowl in my favorite jammies. Go Sun Devils!!

It was snowing today, so this is what I made during nap time.  If you can’t have fun with your kids, you may as well send them to their grandparents now because it’s going to be a long 18 years.

The time has come, readers, where I have peaked as a mom.

Yesterday I tried to run to the grocery store for some ground turkey for dinner real quick before I put Lucas down for a nap.  So I strap him into his car seat without his pacifier which is the recipe for a screaming match every time except when the stars align to give me the middle finger.  I pull into the grocery store and open the car door to this:

Wouldn’t you know?  The only time that my wolf-in-a-sheep’s-costume decides to peacefully, quietly, fall asleep on his own.  So I leave him sleeping and do what every mom in her right mind would do: I pop his car seat into a cart, haul it into the store, and come out with ground turkey and a 6 pack of my favorite beer.  I pulled into my garage, opened the car door, pulled up a lawn chair, cracked a beer open, and tailgated the afternoon nap.  I would like to think that my drinking a beer in the garage alone while the school bus drove by classed up the neighborhood a little bit.  You’re welcome.

In case I was still questioning if that was my new low or not, this afternoon I was graced with the pleasure of using the phrase “please take your penis off of the window” when Lucas decided to wiggle his way out of a diaper change and bang his bottle against the sliding glass window at the boy who was in our backyard to blow the water out of the sprinkler system.  True story.  The dog was barking, Lucas was showing it all off and squealing, and I just sighed and sat on the couch and let it all happen.  I have 17 years left of picking my battles with this little man, and letting him go all Magic Mike in my family room just doesn’t seem worth the effort today.  So, instead I just asked my son to remove his penis from the window because I didn’t feel like taking the Windex out to clean off a teeny, tiny print.

Mom’s, raise your coffee mug with me and say: There’s a chance this is vodka!

Lovely.  I’m once again so far past my last post that I don’t have the time to tell you what I did.  So here it is, in usual photo montage format.

Is there something on my face?

We took Lucas to his roots in Puerto Rico

When we were in Puerto Rico we went to a wedding and when I picked up our table card and showed it to Angel he says to me “They even spelled my name right.” I looked at him all confused and he said “Yeah. See? They put the accent on the A” Yep. I had no idea that was the proper way to spell my husband’s name. Wife of the year!

At the beach in Puerto RIco

When did he turn from a baby into a little man?!

After 3 weeks of travel to Puerto Rico and Phoenix, I think my little man started to get a little bit concerned that he was going to get left. For the record, this is exactly what my dog does when I try to pack: sit in my suitcase and start pulling things out. Tempting as it may be to leave my little man some days, he’s lucky that he’s cute.

Three weeks wasn’t enough travel, so we threw my sidekick and our dog in the car and drove to Chicago for the weekend. While we were there visiting the Gerstner family, Lucas got to finger paint for the first time. I think a little bit of paint even made it to the paper

In the resulting pink bath of the finger painting, our kiddos stopped giggling long enough to whip out one of these

A nice fall day in Illinois

Baby’s first pumpkin patch

When daddy works late, this is what dinner looks like: cut up cheese sticks on the family room floor. At least I put it on a plate.

It’s too bad that he doesn’t ever smile

All of these toys, and he climbs into the toy box. Go figgure

Giving Momma some love

Today, this little stink pot climbed onto the couch, took the remote, and changed to Mickey Mouse Clubhouse and then climbed off of the couch to watch TV. The buttons on the remote were a total coincidence but I swear it changed the channel from One Tree Hill to Mickey Mouse Clubhouse. Mommy makeover: complete.

I’m now required to share all of my caramel apple lollipops.

…Because this is what happens when I don’t

Yesterday i took Lucas on a hay ride and to apple pick at the orchard by our house. He was totally digging the whole thing

….And then he fell asleep in the backpack while mom did all of the work. Go figure

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!

It’s already 10, so I’m going to have to be quick because my head is dying to hit my pillow.

I really should be better about updating the blog because every time that I actually sit down to do it, I honestly can’t remember what I’ve been up to, though I feel like I’ve been busy.  I guess a tiny, teething, human really sucks the energy from me.  Who would have known? (Except for every other mother on Earth).

I’ve been doing a low of sewing projects.  A. Lot.  But they’re all gifts for my knocked up friends and family members who read the blog so I really can’t post pictures and talk about how proud of myself I am.  But there are a few lucky ladies with some awesome custom gear headed their way when I head their way.

Speaking of, I suppose that our family is turning into somewhat of a snowbird family.  We have all of our vacation plans in fall and winter!  First, we’re headed to the Caribbean to introduce Lucas to Angel’s side of the family.  I’m a little excited to bust my shorts out of mothballs (see: what a lovely spring we’ve had this summer).  In case this move hasn’t been rough enough for me, it turns out that I really miss the heat.  And I no longer believe everyone who tells me that “this (fill in the blank) really isn’t normal!”  I think the constant rain, heater in May, sweatshirts in August, and blankets at night are my new normal.

Also, I blame Dave Ramsey for my new desire to take my snorkel gear to the local  mall fountain and start stealing change.

Anyway, here’s what I’ve been up to while I wasn’t here:

Too Lucas to the zoo in Grand Rapids

Where the excitement quickly got to him

Got the exterior of one of our rental houses painted in Arizona. The dead grass reminded me that it’s probably 120 degrees there and made me miss it a little less

Lucas turned 9 months old! We celebrated with his first “big boy” dinner of carrots, pasta, and a sippy cup. I’m not sure if I was more proud of him for turning 9 months old, or myself for keeping him happy and healthy for 9 months!

This face just makes my day. Every day, any time.

I’ll write more tomorrow about his 9 month well visit at the doctor.  Nighty night!