One of my all time favorite things to do is give presents. If I had a million dollars (if I had a million dollars…), I know exactly what I would spend it on (aboard the world with my entire family… booyah), but I’d also reserve some for all the awesome things I can’t (also shouldn’t) buy for Christmas/birthday/Valentine’s Day/etc. presents.

To wit:

Vacations (Thailand, Australia, Ireland) for everyone to go together. My family is HILARIOUS on vacation, especially if we all have our own rooms and bathrooms and someone can speak some of the language. Also, we like to eat, which leads me too…

Foodie meals at the best restaurants. A few years back the Chop and I went with my sister and her then-boyfriend to Craft in NYC. We racked up an INSANE bill, but it was also one of the best meals of our lives. So we’d need to visit these chef’s restaurants: Thomas Keller, Grant Achatz, Ferran Adrià, Wylie Dufresne, the Voltaggio brothers, Tom Colicchio, Alain Ducasse, Heston Blumenthal, Daniel Boulud, Eric Ripert and David Chang. To start.

Handmade furniture. I find the most awesome artists online and if I could afford to spend $8000 on a table, we’d have a few. Although the Chop would kill me on it.

Private plane and pilot. Hello, how else are we going to get around the world?

Live in housekeeper/chef/butler/driver. It’s one of my dreams, to be able to work and play and have someone make me dinner, pick up groceries and open the mail.

Why did I start thinking about this lately? Because people seem to be up-in-arms about what Blue Ivy (child of Beyonce) received as baby gifts… and that’s freaking ridiculous. Of course she’s going to get thousand dollar strollers and several thousand dollar pieces of art – her parents are filthy rich and their friends are filthy rich. You can’t just show up and give her a layette set and stuffed bear (unless it’s crusted in jewels of some kind)!

Update 2/11 And holy crap, that is one cute baby they made!

Today is my Mom’s 58th birthday, and just writing that down is a little bit mind-boggling. I’m not sure how a 58-year-old is supposed to act, but I’m pretty sure mine is a very young 58.

My dad and her arrived this evening (they’re heading north to look at housing again tomorrow), and the birthday dinner we made included lobster, garlic cream potatoes and red velvet whoopie pies and cupcakes. My momma likes to eat. 🙂

I love everything about my Mom, but lately what I love most is how much she loves my son – and he absolutely adores her. He was ecstatic when my parents walked in the front door.

Every year on February 7th I think about my grandmother. Today was no different, except that someone posted on FB that it was their grandmother’s 93rd birthday, which made me inexplicably sad. My Nana would’ve been 87 today. How come they got their grandmother for so much longer than us?

Certainly yes, I realize genetics and cancer screwed us, so my mind gets it. But my heart thinks it’s bullshit.

Every evening before bed, the Chop and I try to clean up after the Peanut. Some nights we’re too exhausted to clean at midnight, but most of the time we spend 10-15 minutes resetting the house. This includes putting together numerous puzzles, lining his little plastic toys (people, monsters and animals) in rows on the tables, putting his blocks in their bins and stacking his books in a box. We’re making strides at getting him to pick up his own toys, but we tend to spend the last hour he’s awake running around the house laughing, so toy pickup often falls to us.

The best part is when he walks into the living room the next morning, smiles and goes to each area and selects what he wants to play with first. He likes a clean palette to screw with. 😉

The Peanut has two new favorite games. One is to scrunch shut his eyes and speed crawl around, grinning like a maniac. On one hand it’s hilarious; on the other, we’d prefer he didn’t crawl into the wall, off the bed, etc. The second is to speed walk around the house, arms out in front (like a zombie, wth) and laugh. Sometimes he chases the cats or us, but mostly he just runs around in circles.

We have no idea where he came up with these, but they’re definitely entertaining. I feel like we could make a ton of money charging admission to our house. 😀

The Peanut and I are both sick, rocking coughs, runny nose (him), sore throat (me) and a general malaise. It’s quite sad. One of the “perks” of being a parent seems to be getting sick regularly – or so I’ve gleaned from Facebook – and while we’ve been incredibly lucky (only sick twice in 16 months), I know that will change eventually. Between school, events and other activities, we’re destined for regular sickness.

Boo.

Fridays for us are generally the start of a three day weekend. Most of our clients don’t require immediate attention in the morning, so after we get up with the Peanut, we nap when he naps. It’s more for me than the Chop, as he naps when the Peanut naps almost every day (jerk), while I start working once he goes down. So Fridays are for naps, catching up on the work I couldn’t get too during the week (haha), running errands in the afternoon and watching movies at night.

There was also pizza and Prosecco. 🙂

I’m currently working on a behemoth of a site – over 1500 products and loads of customization. I enjoy aspects of sites like this, but the mind-numbing detail work of organizing the content into CSVs to upload it into the site is enough to drive me mad. Particularly when the images they sent don’t correlate to the product IDs. Which means the uploads fail and I have to try and assess if the image was named incorrectly or if they just forgot to send it. Sigh. Is it really so hard to send what I need, in the way I need it?

So I’m taking a break and shopping kid’s clothing sales. I’ve been stalking my three favorite (but way too expensive unless deeply discounted) stores: Polarn O Pyret, Jacadi and J. Crew Cuts. And aside from the cutest pair of Christmas pajamas (I shop ahead) and four shirts, I snagged a pair of red jeans I’ve been coveting for the Peanut for $17.

I know, I know, you’re all impressed and you totally care. 😛

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.