Showing posts with label mommy stuff. Show all posts
Showing posts with label mommy stuff. Show all posts

A month, condensed

JG | 1:45 PM | , | 0 comments

It's been awhile since I've posted anything, so here is my life over the past month, via bullet points (because I'm extremely wordy and bullets help make me more concise ... sometimes):

  • My husband is home and has no plans in the immediate future to travel again for work. He is working a lot lately, though, as is the case for most people in retail this time of year.
  • Halloween was a blast. We carved pumpkins, the little guy was the cutest elephant ever, and I got to take him trick-or-treating for the first time.
  • I had another round of meetings in Chicago for work. The days were long and hectic, as usual, but the last day ended with an early holiday lunch for the office at a fancy restaurant, which was fun.
  • We finally bought a car that allows someone to sit in front of the little guy's car seat without forcing their knees into their chin. It's shiny and pretty and we love it. The little guy enjoyed checking out all the new buttons as well.
  • I realized that neither of my goals for the summer--potty training and moving the little guy into a twin bed--were accomplished. We're still working on the potty training, though, and we have a twin bed frame waiting for a mattress.
  • I booked a trip to NYC for my dear friend's bachelorette party. It should be a blast, but it will also be the first time I'm leaving the little guy overnight in more than a year. The mommy guilt has kicked in a little bit.

As for the rest of this week, I'm hoping to rearrange some things in the garage so I can dig out our Christmas decorations. I started decorating the day after Thanksgiving last year and I'm hoping to make it a tradition. And of course there's Thanksgiving. I'm a pretty lucky lady this year--I have a wonderful husband and son and I get to work from home so I can spend as much time with them as possible. Even on the days when the little guy is throwing things out of drawers and D is working from sunrise to sunset, it's a pretty good life.

We're now a movie-going family

JG | 9:18 PM | | 0 comments



For several months, D (that's my husband, btw) and I have been debating when to attempt to take the little guy to his first movie in a theater. I said that we should wait until he was at least 2, so then D got online, did a quick search, and discovered that Toy Story 3 would be out during the summer following the little guy's second birthday. After his mild obessesion with the Pixar shorts DVD, it seemed like Toy Story 3 was the perfect choice for a first movie.


We did a trial run at home with the first Toy Story movie, which we borrowed from my parents (trying to buy a copy the week that the third movie came out was a bust). The little guy seemed interested at first, noted that it looked like his Pixar DVD, but probably only paid attention to a third of the movie. However, he asked to watch the second one, so I took this as a good sign.


This week, we decided to go for it and headed to the theater. One of the pluses of my current work-from-home schedule is that we can do things together as a family when D is off during the week (he very rarely has an entire weekend off) and I can still get some work done when the little guy is napping. Thankfully the 11:15 show was almost empty and we got there after all of the previews were over, cutting down the amount of time required for the little guy to sit still. He sat on my lap enraptured by the big screen when that familiar Pixar intro came on, then pointed to the Toy Story characters when they appeared. Between the characters, the popcorn, a box and a half of M&Ms (which I shared with him to avoid a major toddler sugar rush), and sips from my Sierra Mist, he pretty much sat still or stood in front of me or D for an hour and a half of the roughly two-hour movie.


For the last half hour or so, I stood in the aisle at the bottom of the theater holding him. He was starting to get antsy and not even the action-filled climax of the movie could distract him from trying to pick up all of the popcorn and other bits of garbage off the floor and disposing of them in the row in front of us (which was thankfully empty). It was also approaching naptime, so he spent a good chunk of the time I held him laying his head on my shoulder. So when it was time for Andy to leave for college (I don't think I'm spoiling anything here), and the mom grabbed her son in a sad hug, as I'm holding my son, well ... let's just say some tissues would have been nice.


However, we made it through the whole movie without any screams, tears (from the little guy, that is) or need to leave the actual theater. And after not really wanting to watch the last part of the movie, he sat still in his own seat and insisted on watching all of the credits (he has a weird thing for credits on any TV show or movie). Then at the end, he asked for "more." So I'd say it was a successful outing. I wonder what other kid movies are coming out soon ...

Sometimes it's the little things

JG | 3:05 PM | | 0 comments

Watching the little guy gently offer our crazy beagle an animal cracker.

Reruns of Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman (what can I say, there's a dorky girl inside this woman).

My husband getting home in time for dinner.

The little guy running up to the door yelling "Dada!" the second he hears my husband's footsteps on the porch.

Singing along with Britney Spears in the car (judge all you want, but I bet you've at least hummed along to "Toxic" once).

The little guy still giving me a kiss and hug whenever I want.

It may not always be an exciting life, but the little things make it worthwhile.

Home alone

JG | 10:02 AM | , | 0 comments

Yesterday, for the first time in months, I was home alone. Well, I had the dog with me, but I was the only human in the house. When I worked in an office near home, I would occasionally run home at lunch to throw in a load of laundry or grab something to eat, but I was only there for 30 minutes at the most. Yesterday I was home by myself for more than three hours. That is definitely the longest I have been alone since the little guy was born two years ago.

My husband was at work and my mom had offered to watch the little guy so I could get some work done. Even though he was asleep most of the time he was with my mom, I still felt guilty coming back to the house alone. My brain knew I was coming home to work, but it didn't feel like that when I walked in the door. I don't have an office, so working involves me sitting on the couch with my laptop, which is what I'm doing right now and the little guy is playing on the floor next to me. Because I wasn't going to work, I was going home to work, I felt like I was abandoning the little guy in a way. Between the guilt and the overall feelings of weirdness, I didn't get as much accomplished as I should have.

Since my mom is a teacher and she's off for the summer, she'll be watching the little guy about once a week with the hopes that I can cram in a bunch of work in one day and then have more time to do other things the rest of the week. Next time I'll probably be home alone all day. Here's hoping I can get over the guilt and the weirdness and actually be productive.

The power of mute

JG | 10:32 AM | , , | 0 comments


I had a conference call I had to be on this morning and was a little worried about how it would go with the little guy running around the house. The true test of a work-at-home situation. If the little guy made any noises, not only could they be broadcast to everyone calling in to the meeting, but would also be heard by a conference room full of people via speaker phone. Thank God for a mute button on the iPhone that turns off the phone's microphone while on a call. Using this plus the speaker phone worked fairly well. My husband was also home, so he occupied the little guy as best he could. There was a scary moment, though, when I was going to have to speak and the little guy was making all sorts of noises playing with a flashlight. I had to run across the house, pray that he didn't pitch a fit over me leaving the room, quickly take the phone off mute so I could say what I needed to say, then immediately put it back on mute. Thankfully he didn't start screaming, because with our house, I could be on one end, my husband could take the little guy into a closed room, and there's a good chance his screams could still be heard on my phone. He's really well-behaved for the most part, but I think we're going to have to work on what "quiet" means.

Next week I'm actually going to be going to a meeting, so I'll be working out of the house for a whole day. Now that I'm starting to get used to the whole working-from-home set up and don't feel like I'm just taking time off, I wonder if it's now going to feel weird to be gone for a day. I'll actually have to set my alarm and put on real clothes!

Going back to the iPhone, it's a big day in this house because today is the release of the newest operating system for the iPhone. While most people are excited about the multitasking feature, my husband and I are most looking forward to the new app organization feature. Supposedly you'll be able to organize your apps into folders (I say supposedly because I haven't downloaded the update yet and my husband is currently in the middle of it), which you can then lock if you want. This means that the little guy can play with our iPhones, but we can lock away everything except the games we want him to play. No more deleted apps, no more settings getting switched, no more photos and videos ending up in the garbage. No matter how closely we watch him when he's playing with one of our iPhones, he's just too fast to prevent all the damage and he's so tall and sneaky it's hard to keep the phones away from him entirely.

The little guy in my life

JG | 8:59 AM | , | 0 comments


Since he's bound to be a major topic of this blog, I thought I'd introduce you to my son. And, no, he doesn't look anything like the cartoon baby pictured above. That is a still from one of his current favorite cartoons--the Jack Jack short from Pixar's The Incredibles. He has very little interest in TV and movies in general, but he loves the Pixar shorts. My parents got him a DVD for his birthday that contains all of the Pixar shorts and he wakes up every morning asking to watch it (he calls every movie a "disk," but usually he means his Pixar disk).

He's a funny little guy, as most toddlers are, and just turned 2 earlier this month. Besides running around the house and watching his Pixar cartoons, he loves to play outside, draw, cook (or pretend to cook) and attempting to run up to every dog he sees (real or fake) to give them a kiss.

From the ages of 3 months to just a few weeks ago, he spent a lot of time with my mother-in-law since she watched him while my husband and I were at work. This resulted in him becoming somewhat of a neat freak, which my mother-in-law fully admits is her fault. He runs up to me for cleanup when he gets something on his hands, he can't stand to wear clothes after they get a little messy, and he often runs around the house looking for things he can throw away. In some ways, I hope this continues when he's older.

This summer we have big plans for him--moving from his crib to a regular bed and starting potty training. He loves his crib and is content to play in there after he wakes up (in fact, sometimes I have to force him to get up), but he's tall for 2 and I'm afraid he's going to fall out one of these days. I know it's time, and I'm sure he'll do fine, but I'm pretty sure some tears will be shed on my end when the crib is gone. As for potty training ... well, I'm in no hurry. We'll work on it, but I'm not going to set a deadline where he HAS to be potty trained by a certain date or age.

Stay tuned for the amusing stories that are sure to come from those summer activities ...

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