The Peanut had a play date with his girlfriend today. She’s one month younger, but probably two inches taller and is quite the daredevil. She climbed up and fell off our elliptical, tipped over the Little Tikes car with herself inside and choked quite spectacularly on a chip.
She hugged and kissed the Peanut goodbye – he was shocked, arms at his sides, eyes wide and begging for rescue.
By the time she left, I’d had at least two minor heart attacks. And the Peanut went to bed early, lol.
My mom’s been talking about getting the entire family to go to Hawaii in a year or so. I love Hawaii, but hate the idea of such a long plane ride with a toddler. I keep telling her that yes, Hawaii is gorgeous, but we have the Bahamas just south of us… a very short plane ride away. And we haven’t been there yet.
No, she insists, we need to go back to Hawaii. It’s been too long. I want to see our friends there and take the Peanut.
My resistance wavered today when I saw these amazing photos posted on Neatorama. Wow.
My baby isn’t really a baby anymore.
After dinner we let the Peanut scurry down the sidewalk from the restaurant, one of his favorite things to do (sidewalks are super! cool!). He walked up to a group of guys eating at an outside table and said, “Hi!” They smiled and said hi back, chuckling a little at his exuberance. He smiled and continued on his way, stopping only when the sidewalk ended – and I told him he had to turn around.
We had his first scheduled date with the occupational therapist this morning. They sat on the floor and played; he was delighted at all the new toys that came out of her bag. It’s an interesting thing to sit and watch your child play with a “teacher” in your house. Do we play too? Do we intercede at any point? He came over to us a couple of times and sat in our laps, but for the most part he happily played.
Her goal is to work with him on communicating more, something that’s odd to me, as he communicates pretty well in my opinion. Except that they think it’s more we know how to read him, so it’s less about him and more about us. We know when he’s hungry or tired or done with dinner; we know when he wants to read or play or be left to his own devices. Isn’t that what you’re supposed to do with toddlers?
Her one takeaway from the day that she mentioned to us was that he likes to be in control (LOL) and perhaps that’s why he fights eating. He doesn’t get to control much, but he can certainly control what goes in his mouth. I can’t fault him there, being in control is embedded in his genes from my side of the family.
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.
