Likes: playing in water, putting small items in water bottles, being outside, cars, Oreos, animals, reading

Dislikes: having his diaper changed, meat, being hungry

Back in 2006, right after I left my first “career-oriented” job, I had the best summer. I went to the beach with my friend J (a lot – we were so tan), slept in, read hundreds of books and went to see live music a couple of times a week. As the weeks progressed, I took on a couple of contract jobs and went on half a dozen interviews, fully prepared to receive a job offer at any moment, but certain I would defer the start date until after my summer of fun was over. I hadn’t had such a relaxing summer since I turned 15 and started to work.

It took a few months longer to get a job and once I did, I was more than happy to start. Having nothing to do is fun – but only for a little while. Then it becomes tedious.

There are some days I wish I was back at that point, career-wise, having a few months with nothing to do but play with the Peanut and go on play dates to every conceivable baby-friendly location within 50 miles. Today is most definitely one of those days. The build-a-site-in-two-days and also we have twelve other HIGHLY important projects that need to be completed and oh, did you have other clients… too bad – kind of day.

But I know tomorrow I’ll be glad to wake up and know that we have enough work to ensure we won’t have trouble paying the bills.

We start each week here with grand plans. We’re going to finish picking up leaves (shut up) in the yard, pull weeds, clean the house, finally take this or that to the dump, not take naps when the Peanut does because he was up at 6AM and we didn’t go to bed until 2 and both of us get up when he gets up so we can work and go to bed at a reasonable hour. We give up on the both-of-us-getting-up by Monday and the no-naps by Tuesday (mainly the Chop, but I do occasionally try to sneak one in when it’s my turn to get up and I’ve slept four hours, wtf), but we try in vain all weekend to clean the house, go to the dump and do yard work. It’s not that we don’t have good intentions, we just find hanging out with the Peanut – and sleeping in – more entertaining by the time the weekend rolls around.

Holiday weekends are my favorite. I feel like Sunday is Saturday, so I can clean and the Chop can go to the dump and we can take the Peanut to the park and I don’t have to bust my butt to work all night… because Monday no one calls me. No one calls, mostly no one emails and I have a day to work on big or overdue projects. We still get to play outside and the Chop gets a nap and I get several blissfully uninterrupted hours.

Then it’s Tuesday and there are only three more days left of the week and yeah, the weeding is probably not getting done. But we did go to Home Depot and buy a bin for clippings and a wheelbarrow for hauling and a new wading pool for the Peanut, so this weekend, we shall tackle the damn yard.

Don’t buy a house with a quarter acre of beautifully manicured, loaded with flowers and plants, yard. If you don’t have time to weed and whatever the hell it is they do in the spring and the fall, you’ll spend an arm and a leg on someone who does.

Many of my family members served in the military. My dad, both of my grandfathers, three of my cousins, one of my uncles and many of my great uncles… and all but one of them came back alive and whole (one great uncle’s plane was shot down). My dad tells marvelous stories about being in the Army, as did my grandfather about being in the Air Force and my uncle about being in the Navy. They ribbed each other about being in different branches, but they respected the choice.

I’m proud to call each and every one of them family.

I think I can definitively say that I’ve spent more on the Peanut’s wardrobe for the past two years than I did on my own for the past decade. Baby clothes are adorable… toddler clothes are so cute… and he lets me put him in whatever I want. It’s a problem, particularly when there are sales.

Fortunately he doesn’t really like the mall, so I have to speed through and probably end up saving a bundle, lol.

We had the first appointment with the Peanut’s coordinator for Early Intervention today. The Peanut swept her off her feet with giggles, smiles and constantly walking up and saying “hi!”

His plan is to see her twice a month, the feeding specialist once a month and go to a group activity once a week – for now. That might change depending on the progress. It seems odd to me that we’re only going to see the feeding person once a month – but apparently most of her time spent will be working with us and not the Peanut. We’ll have homework.

On one hand, this is what we’ve been waiting for; on the other hand, I need more to do like I need a hole in the head.

After 12 years at a major bank, my sister and her entire department have been laid off. She’s understandably pissed and hurt, but also looking forward to a change. They gave her eight months of severance (which is awesome), but it only starts after she stays there for 60 more days. 60 days of doing, according to her, nothing.

She’s been organizing her personal email, reading books and being cranked. It’s odd to me that they’d make her continue working for two months – especially when they really don’t have that much for her to do – and it’s irritating to her. She has to drive/train almost an hour every day to sit in an office and read a book. Boo.

On the plus side, she now is on iChat all the time, so the Peanut and I can harass her. 🙂 It’s the little things!

I came back from up north with little, red, blister-type bumps on my right index finger. There are probably 10-15 in all, very small and slightly itchy. I’ve been trying to figure out if I touched a weird plant or maybe a weird bug, but nothing comes to mind – and searching for “itchy red bumps on hand” on Google turns up some incredibly odd results.

One result was poison ivy, so then I looked up images of poison ivy.

Whatever you do, do not look up pictures of poison ivy in Google. You will be scarred.

The Chop and I decided earlier this year that April would be the ideal time to start trying for a second baby. We have family trips in August and October and the rest of the family is coming out for Christmas so we can all drive to my parent’s new place. If we started trying in April, we’d have a few months to get pregnant, then I’d only be moderately pregnant in August and October, and able to go north for Christmas without concern of going into labor.

Except we forgot that we get pregnant extremely easily… as in freakishly easily.

Baby number two is on it’s way. I’m not sure how far along I am, but I’m guessing about five weeks. Which means we managed to get pregnant in two. What. the. hell.