1 lb., 6 oz.

We arrived back from our Thanksgiving festivities last night. Sam is now a seasoned air traveller, now having 9 flights under his belt in his 18 month life. As usual he was great. The wheel on our stroller was bent on the flight though and it turns out it's going to be a lot more of an ordeal than we thought to fix it. We'll probably end up needing a new stroller entirely, and I can't begin to tell you how annoying that is.

I think this is the longest I have gone without posting (or commenting) since starting this blog 9 months ago. I felt very mindless during our break and visit to my parents' house. I couldn't seem to do anything that required thought other than play Mah Jhong on the computer and Scrabble and poker with my family. Hubby and I also got to go out to dinner twice and we saw 2 movies: Casino Royale and The Fountain. Still trying to figure out the latter - again, too much thought required, but not due to any fault of mine.

Does it seem like this post is sort of pointless? I know. I think so too. I think it's because all I really have to post about today is Sam's poo this morning, but I really feel I should spare you all the details since the scenario resulted in me throwing up. Let's just say that Sam gave birth to a baby poo this morning after a very painful labor...and I was his midwife.

Holiday Prep: Bangs and Boobs

Here's a little bit of unsolicited advice:

If you look at your child and think to yourself, "He needs a haircut before we go visit our relatives for Thanksgiving...I think I'll cut it myself," just stop right there. Even if it will save you money. Even if you just have such a long to do list that the thought of scheduling another appointment makes your heart race (in a bad way). Even if your friends paid you in college to cut their hair and you even cut your own hair for 4 years and the haircuts you give your husband are always his favorite cuts. Just stop. Because none of this will matter when you are feeling rushed because it is past bedtime and you and your husband are trying to trick your child into being still in the bath tub so that you can trim his bangs. Yes, that's right, you will decide that the bath tub is the best place for this salon session to take place because your child's hair will already be wet and the only time you can get a comb through the dreads in back is when you've glopped conditioner all over his head. And so you will think that you can get in the bath with him and sit behind him and cut his hair while your Hubby entertains him by pouring water from cup to cup. But you will be wrong, thereby predestroying all holiday photos by cutting your son's bangs to an odd length that somehow emphasizes his abnormally large forehead. And that is why you should just stop. Ruined Thanksgiving pictures to follow.

And now, as if I didn't have enough to stress me out before flying for the holidays with a toddler, did you see this crap? (Now that you're enraged you can go sign this petition so as to not feel quite so powerless.) Let me just say that if Sam were to not nurse for take off and landing, and as a result his ears started hurting during the flight then every passenger on that plane would wish that they'd gotten to see both of my huge nummies exposed rather than experience the shrieks that would ensue. And yeah, just try and cover his head with a blanket while he nurses. I dare you.

Doh!

Sam has moved on from his "Rollin' It" obsession to Play Doh. He loves the stuff. He searches for where I hide the little jars of it and screams until I bring them down. We even busted out the flour and the salt and made our own dough yesterday. Remind me to never, ever do that again. Sam's reponse to feeling flour in the bowl, that's cute. Flour is soft and cool and nice. It is enjoyable to touch in the bowl, yes. Flour is not enjoyable to sweep up when it's been flung all over the kitchen floor, however. Never again, or at least not until another flash of temporary insanity comes along.

More importantly Play Doh has been the impetus for Sam's first repeating word. Now, every time I roll the dough into a ball he says "bawu." That L sound, it's a rough one. He also finds balls around the house and brings them to me to tell me it is, in fact, a bawu. So good to finally hear my son's voice...saying actual words.

Da 'Burbs and Da Baby

I know, I know. I've not been around very much, not been posting, not been commenting (I have been reading your blogs though, just so you know). You may recall when I warned you all that I was going to take blog break to do NaNoWriMo and you have jumped to the logical conclusion that that is what I'm up to, that is, if you even noticed my absence and bothered to jump to a conclusion. Well, I've written 3 chapters...all right, 2 and 1/2. I have my whole outline of the plot and my characters and all that. I just really havn't felt motivated to write during the extremely rare times when I've actually had the opportunity. So no certificate or whatever it is for me. I still plan to write the thing, just not in one month.

So what the hell have I been doing, you ask? House hunting. Yep. Well, not real house hunting, not yet. We still have about 7 months on this lease, but we decided we should go ahead and start looking at what was out there in different areas and stuff since we've never bought before and are totally freaked out by it. How do you people do this? How do you make these decisions? I've been going to open houses and driving around and looking at houses my agent is sending me and reading the details of hundreds of listings and I'm already stressed yet barely have begun. I can't narrow this down at all. And what's more - I think I might be old, because the 'burbs are lookin' real good to me right now. When Hubby and I discuss this we always decide we aren't ready to leave the city yet, but I tell ya when I'm out there looking at what's available in our price range I'm really leaning toward that little rancher with the small fenced yard and super high taxes (better schools) over that 3 story rowhouse with no parking but leaves us with money to spare. All right, that's an exaggeration. But the point is this is freakin' hard and I already feel like I'm going to have an aneurism. How do you do it and avoid a panic attack? Yesterday, for the first time, I actually liked one of the houses I saw and it felt like a panic attack because I had no idea what I was supposed to do. I don't think I can keep this up for 7 more months.

You know what else I'm totally indecisive about? Babies. It's this whole second child thing. See, about 2 months ago I was totally thinking Hubby and I would be officially "trying" by now. I was thinking around the time Sam was 18 months old would be a good time to get started. I talked about it all summer. Seriously, I was ready. Went off the pill and everything. Even almost wanted to go ahead and get going, if you know what I mean, because I was baby crazy. Now...not so much. And I don't really know what happened. I kind of just want to hang out with Sam. The apprehension about the second baby thing might have started when we had that incident at the playground. You know, he got hurt while I was trapped holding a baby. And I see other moms unable to do things with their toddlers because they're holding a younger child and I just don't want to let go of any of that with Sam. I just can't quite envision how it all works. Then I look at other moms and calculate the ages of their children in my head and see that they're doing just fine and think, "I could do that," and recognize that it will always be scary to make such a decision.

But the thing is, how do I say this, I have started to feel like I might resent another child for getting in the way of my relationship with Sam. And I hate to use the word 'resent' because it feels so harsh, especially when talking about a newborn of all things, but that's the best word I've got. I'm trying to be honest here. Are these feelings normal? For those of you that have more than one child, did you experience anything like that either when making the decision or as you waited for the second to arrive or even after the baby came? I can't tell if this is an actual change of mind and we're really not ready, or if it's just normal apprehension because the decision is so close at hand and therefore more real. Because really I can't imagine that there would ever come a time when I'm not worried about losing my time with Sam due to another baby; that threat will always be there no matter when we decide to do this. It's quite a change though. All of a sudden I feel very protective of my time with him and my ability to give him my undivided attention. And then someone passes me their 3 month old at a playgroup and Sam walks up and gently pets her head and I wonder what we're waiting for...

Roll it...roll it...roll it!

Sam has become obsessed with Patty Cake. Ob. Sessed.

Initially he would just start his rolling arm motion when I would begin the song. Now he doesn't need me to initiate the Patty Cake. He has been walking around the house "rollin' it" for days. It's cute, it is. But see, when he starts to roll it he wants me to sing the song. And if it takes me too long to get to the "roll it" part he screams. And if I pass the "roll it" part and for instance, "pat it," he screams. And if I stop singing he screams. And if I try and sing another song, even one with hand movements, well, he screams.

Marking it with a 'B' is ok. Sometimes, if I'm lucky, marking it with a 'B' is an acceptable substitution for rolling. But then this baker better get my ass in gear and roll it again.

One Hit Wonder

We've had more words around here lately. But there has yet to be a repeat of "sho" or "cah." In fact, Sam seems to only be interested in saying his words for us a few times in the moment and then never coming back to them...ever. It makes us wonder if he is even saying them in the first place.

In the past week we have had "buh bah" (bye bye), "gat" (cat), "Daghee" (Daddy), and "bal" (ball). But again, we've only heard each of them a few times when he says them initially. So the cat walks by and we say, "There's the cat," and he says, "gat." We say something like, "Did you just say cat?" and he says, "gat," "cat?" "gah," and then it's over. There is absolutely nothing you can do to get the kid to say gat again for days and days and days. It's like he just wants to let us know he can do it once and that's enough for him. It's clearly just much more fun to point and grunt like an ape.

Sam the Builder (Can he fix it? Yes, he can!)

As it turned out the Halloween parade was the perfect amount of festivity for us. Sam had fun playing with his friends in his lame costume. He actually did keep the belt on the whole time, but I would still say he was the least costumed of all the kids. He had fun carrying his bucket around and pulling out all of the snacks that people kept putting in it. Then he would transfer them to his hat that wouldn't stay on, and eventually back to his bucket, but not before mushing them to a pulp. Please note the very sad NutriGrain bar in this first photo.




Want to know how many kids came to our apartment trick or treating? Two. How many bags of candy did we buy? Three. I think we have about 8 pounds of candy in our home now.