When we first started going to the baby gym class, the Peanut stuck close to us. He sat in our laps during the warm up and the introduction; we carried him willingly to do the group activity and during free play, he usually stayed wherever we set him down. These days he’s off like a rocket the minute the door opens. He’s uninterested in staying on the big red mat, choosing instead to walk and crawl up and down the gym equipment (he loves the wedges). The warm up and introduction go as usual, with the teacher pointing to him and waving. He smiles and watches, but stays where he is. There’s obviously way too much for him to explore to waste time with us.

Today his teacher (whom he just adores) set up an obstacle course on the mat. Several hula hoops and rings to crawl through, all while on top of big blocks. As the other toddlers milled around, some banging on the blocks, others refusing to move once placed on top, we grabbed the Peanut and placed him at the beginning. He looked at us, turned and proceeded to crawl perfectly through the entire obstacle course, before jumping down and going back to his wedges.

We were shocked, but clapping, and we grabbed him again. Like a mouse to cheese, back through he went, not once veering off course or getting distracted. His teacher was impressed, and the Porkchop and I smiled a little and shrugged, noting that it must be all the playground time he gets.

Granted, once we left we talked about it nonstop and gave ourselves high fives. Whoop, whoop, parental pride baby!

My memory, never that good, has suffered greatly since the Peanut entered our lives. I’m assuming it’s lack of sleep, but perhaps it’s also affected by having someone else to worry and think about. Nonstop. Because that’s what parenthood is – an unending state of constant attention, sprinkled with concern, panic and terror.

While driving the Peanut back from the park, I had a very funny conversation… that I don’t remember at all. Which is sad, because all I could think was, “Ooo, I should write this on the blog.” What the hell? Five minutes ago I opened a browser window and promptly forgot what I wanted to look up. Thoughts flit in and out of my head with no rhyme or reason, and unless it’s Important Shit, I don’t remember it. Work stuff – no problem; baby stuff – no problem; anything else – it’s a crap shoot.

I’ve always had a “book” problem, one that caused me to stay up until the wee hours of the morning and suffer the next day… the need to finish reading whatever I’ve started. Perhaps I have a problem with delayed gratification (haha), or I’m just impatient, but once I’m into a book, I have an incredibly hard time putting it down – even to sleep.

When I was a kid I would use a flashlight under my covers, trying to soundlessly turn pages so as not to alert my parents.

When I moved out east, I would leave my lamp on, tea (or something stronger in hand) and read to my heart’s content.

By the time the Porkchop moved in, I had slowly begun to keep better hours, preferring to read a book in two nights and get enough sleep to prevent zombie-fication.

When I was pregnant I switched back to finishing in one night – I couldn’t sleep well the last few months anyway, might as well do something.

When the Peanut came, reading became harder. Between work and sleep, my free time was nonexistent. Occasionally I would buy a few books and read them over the course of a week, chastising myself daily for staying awake until 2, knowing full well I’d need to be up by 6 or 7.

A couple of days ago, after an idiotic decision to drink a latte at 4PM, I was reading an article in bed around midnight that mentioned an interesting book. I perused it on Amazon, swiftly downloaded it on iTunes and read until almost 5AM.

Two days later and I’ve purchased the entire trilogy and am halfway through the final book. The author has some serious echos issues, which means I think I’ve been speed reading roughly half of each book (page count: 900, 1200 and 1300), but getting to bed between 2-4AM.

If this was the good old days, I would’ve purchased the first book and waited several days before purchasing the second, and so on. But it’s 2012 and you can download a book in less than a minute.

eBooks might very well be the death of me.

It’s been snowing for a couple of days now. Not a lot, but enough to be cold and wet and generally annoying. Especially considering last week it was warm enough to walk every day and go to the park. The Peanut and I are suffering from serious outside time deprivation. Boo.

In better news, my darling friend had a birthday today and so I made a Ryan Gosling meme with our babies. Heeeee.

On Sunday we went to Whole Foods, an entertaining trip we make every other week or so to stock up on baby milk (non-homogenized), baby snacks (hello Whole Foods homemade tortilla chips), produce and the miscellaneous crap we pick up that interests us. It’s the miscellaneous stuff that always causes trouble.

The Chop has an affection for their cream cheese biscuits, Fleur de Sel caramels and Evol pizzas and flatbreads – all of which are amazing, I admit. But my real problem lies with their chocolate truffles and the Bread & Circus chocolate chip cookies. And by problem, I mean we bought a small bag (six I think) of the cookies on Sunday and I’m down to the last one. Evil, those cookies are. Deliciously, fantastically, magically evil. One cookie and your day perks right up.

Especially when consumed with a nice iced coffee.

Some friends of ours were over last night (seriously, did you think that I ate all that crap by myself!?), and this morning, the boys had a ball playing together. They were both incredibly sad when they departed, but we parents had stayed up until past three and the boys were up at 6 and 7. Oy veh. Parenthood means you aren’t supposed to stay up late. Why do we keep forgetting that??

I only vaguely remember not having self checkout at grocery stores. In high school, a kid that we knew worked one of the lanes at our local Safeway, and depending on what time of day it was and what we looked like (morning pajamas or afternoon clothes), we would avoid or beeline for his lane. These days I can walk into Shaw’s near our house, pick up the few items that I need, go through self checkout and be out the door in less than 10 minutes, without talking to a soul.

Generally I don’t mind the chitchat, but when you’re buying a small chocolate peanut butter cake, five tubs of ice cream (one pint, four individual sizes), eggs and sausage, it’s much easier without the judgement, lol.

One of the Peanut’s favorite things to do is play on our bed. Especially in the morning when one of us is trying to sleep… the Porkchop is much better about keeping him out of the bedroom when it’s my turn to sleep in (he just loves his Daddy so much, I can’t keep him out!). He loves to stack his toys up there, sitting snuggled next to the dog, sorting puzzle pieces or blocks into separate piles.

And of course the minute I post about the Peanut being a picky eater he goes and decides to bite into an apple. Three bites and he was done, but we were suitably impressed.

The Peanut is once again teething, which means our life is a long slog of drool, the occasional extremely cranked baby and lots of nibbling on anything he can get his hands on.

I was at the dentist this morning (every six months, boo yah) and the hygienist surmised that he’s probably cutting his second molars, in addition to the incisors I think are coming in. Yay, I said, because molars are his FAVORITE thing. She laughed.

I love the entire staff at my dentist’s office. I’ve tried to steal the receptionist – she’s the sweetest, funniest, most entertaining receptionist I have ever met. She’s pushing 60, still wears size 2 and has her hair done every week. Who does that these days?!

The hygienist and I always have a lovely chat about current events – she reads People every Friday, without fail. Today it was the Grammys, Whitney Houston, did they air brush Adele and seriously, why do little boys grow up and have stinky feet?!

Best office ever.

I have a painfully excellent sense of smell. (During my pregnancy, it was horrible and caused me to gag all the time.) On one hand it’s nice, because it’s seriously contributed to my ability to taste things; on the other hand, when something or someone has an odor, be it offensive or not, I take note.

Normally my adorable son smells delicious. Like babies and baby powder and baby soap – even his breath is sweet – but now he’s eaten guacamole two days in a row and he smells like a pile of garlic.

Of course the Chop can’t smell it at all, so I’m sadly suffering alone.