Happy 1st Blogaversary

I missed it on Saturday, but apparently I have been writing this blog for one whole year now. I started it as part of a class and I’m happy to say that I’ve kept it up. Yay me!

It may not be that interesting, but at least it’s kept me writing.

This was the picture of Brady in my first blog entry

Here's Brady 2 weeks ago (there's a hat theme)

A trip to the burgh

Brady and I try to go to Pittsburgh to visit my mom and sister at least every few months. This past weekend we got to bring Daddy along with us. It was a short trip, but a fun one. We got to celebrate Grandma and Aunt Von’s birthday on the 2nd and then went to one of the most fun places ever…Kennywood!

Hello Kennywood cowboy

Kennywood is an amusement park near Pittsburgh. Nearly everyone ends up working for them at some point in high school. I worked at their water park down the road, Sandcastle. My sister worked there. One of my best friends met her husband working there. It just rules!

Brady had a blast there and I got to ride 2 rollercoasters. Something I hadn’t done in years. After going to Kennywood at least once a summer, every summer, my whole life it had been 9 years since I had gone. And watching my little boy’s delight as he rode the kiddie turtles was worth every second I had been away.  It was amazing!

On the 4th we cooked out at my aunt’s house and then on Sunday we headed home again. It was really tough to say goodbye to my mom and sister. Brady was so in love with them while we visited and really remembered them this time.

Each time I go home to visit I’m stuck with conflicting emotions. I think of how nice it would be to be able to just drive over to my mom’s and have dinner with her. I think how nice it would be to have a yard, and a car, and more than 2 rooms, to be able to go to the community pool. But I also think of how much I love hanging out in Central Park and walking everywhere and being able to get anything I want or need at any time of the day or night.

Most of all I miss my family and having Brady makes that feeling even more acute because he has to miss them too.

To the beach!

Mommy makes me wear long sleeves on the beach because she's afraid of the sun...

We took advantage of one of the nice perks of living in NYC this weekend…we went to the beach. This is one of the things that I have not taken enough advantage of living here. I’ve been here 8 years this week and this was only the third time I’ve gone to the beach.

The husband has been swamped at work and really wanted to get out of the city, so he obsessively watched Zipcar until a car was available near us and then immediately booked it for the entire day on Saturday.

We packed up our stuff and headed out around 10:00 Saturday morning. We went all the way out to Robert Moses State  Park because we had been told that it would be less crowded. The trip took about an hour and 15 minutes, during which Brady slept, waking up in a great mood right as we were parking.

We staked out a spot, laid down our blanket, and headed down to the water…which Brady hated! But only for a little bit. After a break and a snack we went back down and the little man was ready for another try. After braving a few small waves a big one came and knocked him over covering him with sand and causing him to cry and hang onto Daddy for dear life.

But he’s a trooper and went back in only to have a great time. We had to drag him away from the water as he shivered and screamed “more, more.” We got changed, had lunch, and got back on the road where Brady got another nap in. We even stopped on 23rd St and picked up my father-in-law’s birthday present at Best Buy.

After weeks of drizzly, gray, cool weather this was the perfect way to break into the summer.

A late Father’s Day wish

So yesterday was Father’s Day, but I was really busy so I didn’t get to post. We had a lovely day. Brady woke Daddy up with cards and presents, including the mug that he painted for him at Make. Then, all the in-laws came over and we had brunch at our place. We spent the afternoon just the three of us enjoying the little bit of nice weather we got.

The cup that Brady colored for Daddy

I just wanted to say a big THANK YOU to my wonderful husband for being such a great dad. Because of work he hasn’t gotten to hang out with us as much as he’d like to lately and I know it’s tough on him and on Brady. It makes me so grateful that I’m able to be home with Brady nearly everyday and I feel so bad that he misses out on that.

Anyway, I don’t think I say it enough or get the point across a lot of the time – but I have a great partner in this crazy being-a-parent thing and I really don’t know what I would do without him.

Flipflops, mulch, and the ER

Sprinklers are fun!

On Friday afternoon we took advantage of the few hours of sunshine that we got and headed over to the sprinklers in the playground. Brady had an awesome time and the husband left work a little early and came over to meet us.

As we were walking home my foot tipped over the edge of the area around a little tree, sliding off my flipflop, and into the mulch. A piece of the wood stabbed the bottom of my heel and, as the husband says, I “went down like a sniper took me out from the rooftops.” I’ll admit that I was a little dramatic – but it hurt! I pulled the piece of wood from my foot, limped home, and cleaned it out. Oh and the best part – as I sat on the sidewalk yelling at my husband that I actually was hurt, my son was crying “mommy, shoes, shoes, shooooooes!!!”. Apparently it was NOT right that my shoes should be off outside like that.

Now, this wasn’t just any weekend, this was the first time that the husband and I were going to have a night alone in 19 months. Brady was off to his Nonna and Nonno’s house for Saturday night. We were so excited to be able to go out and meet up with friends and not worry about getting home. But as we went about the day on Saturday my foot hurt more…and more…and (despite bloody mary treatment) more.

It was looking not so great – red and swollen. It was deep and I couldn’t tell if I had gotten everything out of it. I could barely walk at all. So off we went to the ER. Super fun. Luckily they saw me very quickly. The doc came in and took a look and then went out to grab the syringe of Lidocaine. I warned him that I have a bad reaction to Lidocaine, and although he didn’t believe me. I did have a bad reaction. I got hot and flushed and sick. I made it through and he cleaned up the wound, but the last shot of Lidocaine did me in. I tried to breathe through it, but I couldn’t take it and I had to puke. Probably the worst part of the whole thing.

Foot wounds are NOT fun!

We got out of there, went home, showered and went out anyway. I think we did a great job of salvaging the evening. We couldn’t meet up with friends like we had planned but we had a nice, late, leisurely dinner at Jacques, down the block and shared a delicious bottle of wine. If you want good  moules frites, Jacques is the place. They are awesome.

We slept in until 9 the next day…a real treat. My foot was feeling much, much better. And we were super excited to see our little pickle again! He had a great time with his grandparents and slept fairly well. Which makes us feel like we might be able to do it again sometime! Minus the trip to the ER of course.

The Most!

I’ve always said to Brady, “how much does Mommy love you?…the most!” The other day I said this to him and he answered me “the most!” It was one of the most heart warming moments of my life! So cute.

Now he’ll answer “how much does Mommy/Daddy love you?” with “the most” every time. And when I ask him who loves him the most he’ll answer either Mommy, Daddy, or kitty. I have to beg to differ with him on that one. Out of everyone in our family, I’d have to say that kitty loves him the least. In fact, if he’s lucky, she’s indifferent. But he loves her very much, so I see where the confusion comes from.

I love Daddy the most if he does this!

Contemplation

I’ve been feeling very contemplative lately and have been trying to stop myself from writing a post entitled “why can’t I get my shit together?” So instead I’m going to write a mushy mommy entry.

As I was lying on the couch holding my sleeping little boy about 20 minutes ago – an activity that I have complained about countless times – I had a sudden and stark realization. It occured to me in the heart-stopping, breath-sucking way that it occurs to you that you will one day die. One day Brady will be separate from me. We will not go on being the two-headed monster that we are today forever.

There will be a day when he won’t ever sleep lying on my chest. When I will no longer be able to kiss his lips and smell his skin and cradle him against my heart the way I do now. One day he will be his own person living his own life. One day he will have secrets from me, things I will never know. There will be days when I have no idea what he’s doing.  One day he will let some girl know more than I will ever know about him and share his life with her instead of me and he won’t ever remember the way we used to live our days together.

Of course he will always be mine and I will do my very very best to make sure that we always have a good relationship – the way I do with my mother. But regardless of that he will absolutely still be apart from me in the future. And I’ll want it that way. But it’s difficult to fathom right now.

So I think I’ll enjoy his sleeping today.

precious

Poked and Prodded and Catheterized…OH MY!

I’m sure Brady will appreciate the fact that I’ve put this up on the web for all to see when he’s oh say 12…

My poor, poor baby is sickly. Actually, he’s feeling much better now, but yesterday he was pretty sickly. He had a fever that kept going up and down and was getting pretty high at times, diarrehea, and general ickyness. I wasn’t very worried until I saw blood in his diaper. Then I called and we got into the pediatrician stat.

Of course we got the doctor that we have gotten every…single…time I have taken Brady in for anything other than a checkup. I swear to you she thinks I’m nutty. But this time I was justified. She wasn’t very concerned and thought the blood was just from the poor bubba’s bum problems. She figured it was a virus, but ran a blood count to be sure. Unfortunately, his white cell count was a little off so she ran some more tests to see if it could be bacterial.

This is where the fun begins. Thank GOD the husband was able to leave work early and come and meet me before this. They had to catheterize my poor baby to get a urine sample. And while this went on, I had to lie across him to keep him still as he screamed “No Mommy, no mommy, no peepee, no peepee!” Once that awful bit was over, I got to lie across him again as they stuck a needle in his arm to get blood. He made it through that fine and was actually coloring with me afterward. Not treating me like I had betrayed our wonderful loving relationship.

Then the worst came…the antibiotic shot. Apparently it hurt…a lot! He is normally pretty ok with shots and cries for a minute or two and then goes back to playing. But for this I had to lie across my screaming son once again while he cried in absolute pain. And he kept crying too. Poor poor angel.

I carried him all the way home (I still can’t believe he wanted me to touch him after I had been a co-conspirator in his torture.) Then he  passed out.

He was in good spirits in the evening and went to bed fine. But at 1am he was up and would not go back to sleep. If we left him in his room he screamed “the bed, the bed, the door, the door, Brady, Brady.” Meaning “Brady wants to be in your bed so come open this door!” When he was in our bed, he was twitching and moving and pinching and kicking to keep himself awake. After about 3 hours of this, he finally, finally fell asleep lying across me. Not a fun night by any stretch.

Today he is feeling much, much better. We are off to the doctor again this afternoon for another blood count and results of the urinalysis. Will update and add photo later.

UPDATE

White cell count is great and Brady is feeling much better! Yay! Antibiotic course to follow.

Sick baby eating Cheerios yesterday

Feeling better and striking a pose!

I love technology

If you’ve seen Napoleon Dynamite that’s funny, if not, I feel bad for you.

As I was watching another mom walk along texting while pushing a stroller, I was thinking that I wouldn’t have been able to do this before blackberries and facebook and blogging and cable and all of the things that make being a stay at home mom so much less isolating and so much more convenient.

When Brady was very small I kept in touch with everyone, including my husband, via email. It was easier to type while holding a sleeping baby than to talk on the phone and it made me feel as if I wasn’t all alone. Once I got my Blackberry I no longer had to be alone at Starbucks, or the park, or the grocery store, or anywhere else.

I started this  blog as way of keeping my brain working when the most challenging this I was doing mentally was to

Brady loves technology too… but in a more violent keyboard smashing type of way…

figure out the best way to take a walk while the baby was napping in order to maximize my errand running for the day. It made me feel halfway intelligent and useful again.

Cable television is a wonder that beats all other wonders. How else could I have gotten through days of holding and nursing a newborn on the couch. When I think that my mother had to get up to change to one of the 12 channels she had to choose from when she was home with me, it makes me shudder. Plus DVR allows me to watch whatever I want whenever I want and to record Brady’s favorite shows so that he can see them when it’s convenient to me, ie while making dinner, cleaning up, emailing for work, etc.

And Facebook has really been so wonderful. I’ve gotten back in touch with so many girls from my past – even from grade school – who are now moms. Although we can’t see each other in person, I’ve rekindled some of those friendships in a new and really meaningful way.

I just don’t think I would have been able to do this without being able to use all these technological advances to stay in touch with the outside world. I am so grateful that I had my baby in 2007 and not in 1907. Imagine that? No breastpumps, no disposable diapers, no epidurals!!! And most of all NO in-home entertainment!!!! (other than reading of course, which I love)

Happy Mother’s Day

I just wanted to say Happy Mother’s Day to all of you moms and moms-to-be. I hope you all enjoyed it.

Today was warm and sunny and I slept in, went for a run, got my nails done, and ate Two Boots pizza for dinner. Yay! Oh and the husband and Brady got me a Victoria’s Secret giftcard, flowers, and new sunglasses.

All-in-all a super wonderful Mother’s Day.

We played in the park today!