T minus 49...

As I type, it's just under 48.5 hours until Rob comes home, and I must say, it's actually gone by faster than I thought it would.

It's incredibly silly for me to note the length of his absence given the frequency with which I travel. It's actually beyond silly. It probably borders on obnoxious, but I figure he was a bit concerned with how things would go, too, the first time I left town and he had to manage the situation all alone.

I know people do this every day, but it's clear that I am just not very organized. Sam's fine. He's happy. His routine barely seems disrupted. I know it's all going swimmingly on the surface, but it's become apparent that I can just barely take care of myself on a regular basis.

I've always been conscious of not taking my superhuman husband for granted, but perhaps I will have to try even harder from here on out. Rob makes our house function. I am mere window dressing, and not necessarily good at that either.

Seriously, I'm feeling like I can't keep up with my almost-three-year old. How is it that someone who regularly requires 12 - 14 hours of sleep to be a civil human being can outlast me like he does? By bathtime, I'm pooped myself!

The secret of all of this is that I'm guessing the weekend will actually be more exhausting than trying to juggle Sam's schedule, my work, an entire department in from out of town for three days worth of meetings and a bunch of laundry to boot. I'm feeling a great deal of pressure to be fun. I bought him a bag of contraband Cheetos tonight, so I think we're well on our way.

Still a chance?

I swore I would stop looking at JaeHo's listing on RainbowKids, but I caved tonight. I still think about him all the time... Well, as I know the rules, children over three aren't eligible for adoption from Korea. He turned three nearly a month ago, but he's still listed. I HOPE that means that perhaps they're still actively searching for a permanent home for him.

I had the thought, too, that he's still listed as an active case because someone is in process for him. That would be the best news ever at this point. A few people have come out of the woodwork in my Holt circles to say they got the same response we did about not being allowed to view his file. The biggest blessing is that the conversation about so many families being rejected actually caused more people to take a look at him. I REALLY REALLY REALLY hope some good news will come soon. It happened when we were sponsoring Rogette... She'd been in a group home in Haiti for eight years when we started sponsoring her, and she ended up getting placed just four months later!

Cute Sam story of the day... It's not news that he adores the movie Cars. He seems to recall different lines from it regularly, then repeat them until even he can't stand the thought of them anymore. The last one to have worn out it's welcome? "To not to." Prounced "Tuh Not Toooo" by Mater. As in "Sam, what did Daddy say about touching the buttons on the TV?" Uh..."Tuh Not Toooo."

The new fave is "WAKE UP, SLEEPING BEAUTY!" It sort of sounds like "Way UP, Seepin Booty" when he says it, but we know what he means. Thanks to my never-ending rash of germiness, Rob has retreated to the guest room for the past few days, completely terrified that he'll have *gasp* sniffles while out of town for work. I want to sympathize. I do. Traveling while under the weather is for the birds. It can be done, however... Sometimes a wife just needs to know her husband isn't completely skeeved by her, ya know?!

Anyway... I woke up just as Sam did this morning and went into his room. He asked where Daddy was. I took him right to the guest room, where he proceeded to SCREAM "Way UP, Seepin Booty Daddy!!" Rob actually jumped!

I am easily amused.

Rejected

Ok, that sounds a bit too harsh. I knew it was a longshot to get chosen for the creative team of a well-known designer, but such is life... I wasn't chosen. She was very sweet, though. She just chose scrappers that have been around a while. Can't blame her. Their stuff probably gets looked at more. Being the PR guru that I am, I knew how that cookie would crumble.

I'll try not to sulk as if I was chosen last for the dodgeball team. ;-)

Seriously. Enough with sounding sad... I'm really just happy to have been considered. (I know I'm very often saracastic, but I'm really not in this instance!)

In other news, I've decided that Sam is a low-level germ factory. Well, it would be more accurate to call him a carrier... He picks up germs at school, goes about his playing-eating-sleeping life, giggling all the while MOMMY gets deathly ill.

I'm exaggerating a lot today. I'm not deathly ill, but perhaps a bit miffed that all week he's been frolicking on the playground at school while I trudge through my job with eyes too gooped up to see (now cured thanks to outrageously expensive bottles of drops) and a lovely chest bug of some kind that somehow manages to make both breathing AND thinking difficult. So, I'm off to the doctor for my second visit of the week.

I wonder if I can accrue US Airways miles for each doctor's visit? I think there's a marketing opportunity there somewhere.

Our new friend

Every night when we take Sam out of the tub, he wants to "hide" from whoever hasn't been the one to wrap him up in his lion or puppy towel. Basically, I wrap him up, carry him to his room, and tell Daddy that I've lost Sam. Daddy runs in, looks all around the room while Sam hides his face but audibly giggles, and then Sam jumps out and "scares" Daddy.

This game apparently never gets old. Ahh, what joy there must be in being two.

Well, last night it was my turn to get scared. Daddy had Sam wrapped up in the lion towel and I came into the room to search for him. When I looked on the top bunk for him, I noticed the coordinating lion puppet washcloth that we rarely use. I guess I thought I'd mix things up a bit by pretending I'd "found" Sam when I found the little lion.

Sam found this to be hilarious.

Then, he started talking to the lion puppet. Not just "Hi, Lion" like he might usually do, but Sam needed to know his name, where he lives, who his friends are, who his favorite train is, if he wanted to read stories before bed... You get the picture. They made fast friends.

When he got up this morning, we found "Leonard Lewis Lion" neatly arranged on the pillow, where he'd been sleeping. He needs more shut-eye than Sam, as it turns out.

I thought this might be a one night thing, but he was all about Leonard tonight, too. The good news is that he's decided there are no monsters with Leonard by his side. Not quite an imaginary friend, but serving the same purpose, I assume.

It's fine with me. The Monster Spray thing is only fun when you're not getting wet at every turn. Which I was.

I finally got inspired to scrap a story of Sam's arrival today. I realized that I could easily do a whole album on the subject, but I loved how the first page turned out. A nice designer who just retired a couple of weeks ago surprised me with an email that includes links to every single thing she was selling in her store, including several templates, so I used one of them to do this brief journal entry of how we "found" Sam online. People have been telling me to write the story down for a long time and for some reason, I can never do it. It's kind of like the story about what I experienced when I lost my first ectopic pregnancy. It was an overwhelmingly emotional experience and, even being a writer, I've found it hard to commit to paper. Having fun scrap stuff for this page helped me wrap my mind and words around it. Not sure there's a kit for the other story, but maybe someday I'll discover a therapeutic scrap remedy for that one, too...

An addiction gone mad...

For the approximately four people that I think may ever read my little blog, you all know me well enough to know two things. One -- I have a wee tendency to overschedule myself. Two -- which compounds the aforementioned -- I am addicted to digiscrapping. (Thanks to Noel, who totally enables the habit!)

So... I decided that, should some particular fun thing come to pass, that I will absolutely find time to live up to my duties. What duties? Those bestowed on the members of a digital designer's creative team. I am already an "Oh Girl," happily helping my friend Randi get her design business promoted, but I also decided to challenge myself a bit more. A designer I really like posted a Creative Team Call this week, and like a loon, I applied. We shall see what happens... (The curious can check her out at www.laurenreiddesigns.com/blog. Cool stuff.) I won't say more here for fear of pandering. Assuming she even looks at my blog, the URL of which was required in the application, I don't want to look disingenous.

Yesterday was our buddy Ethan's first Gotcha Day! His parents, Kim and Ted, are great friends who experienced the whole process with us. Next to Sam's arrival, there was no other travel call that got me as excited at Ethan's. We love to take silly pictures of Sam and Ethan, and joke that they'll hate us when they're 15. It's just nice to think.. KNOW... that the boys will still be in each other's lives then. And their siblings, too! Kim and Ted and Rob and I are all ready to get things moving again, so we have plenty of additional opportunities to commiserate over paperwork, waiting, waiting and waiting.

Monsters no more

Well, it worked!

Mommy's Monster Spray, along with a fierce Diesel 10 resting next to Sam did the trick!

My little boy slept like a brick for yesterday's nap and again all night last night. No night wakings, no screaming, no early morning wake-up (well.. he was up at 6, but that's normal for him!)

Let's hope it sticks! Mommy and Daddy feel like new people having gotten a whole night of sleep.

Things that go BUMP in the night

I bought Sam an adorable pair of Sully slippers from The Disney Store about a year ago. They were so cute that I bought them long before they'd ever fit him. Every so often, we'd pull them out and try them on. It should have been a clue that this day was coming that he was never very happy to see the fuzzy footwear, complete with claws.

When I say "this day" has come, I mean that we've reached the there-are-monsters-under-my-bed phase. Since Sam's bed is a bunk with the bottom mattress right on the floor, we don't actually get goblins *under* the bed. Ours hang out on the walls with "eyes" that stare at my poor kid as he's trying to sleep. They follow him to our room, too. If we bring him in to our bed to help him get some rest, he just stares at the place on the wall where a bit of a glow from the streetlight comes in, certain that those are moster eyes, too.

He's complained about it before, but not to the point of fearing his own room. He apparently was working his way up to all-out terror. I feel AWFUL about it. He's been waking up for a few nights, whining that he wants to come into our room. He usually starts at about midnight, and we have been thinking it was just a ploy (because he's gotten pretty good at those, too.)

Now I realize that he was probably just dropping off after a long time of fighting sleep for fear of being joined by monsters in his bed, and waking soon after, scared to death to open his eyes. Seriously, it would break your heart to see it.

As soon as Sam woke up for real this morning (at 7 a.m.... Hallelujah! He may have finally gotten past the 4:30 wakings, though I'm half-guessing those might be monster-related, too.) he started telling us all about the "scary, scary monsters" hiding in his room. We told him that monsters aren't allowed in our house, so it must have been his imagination, much like when he pretends to make us blueberry pie.

He wasn't buying it, so he and I went off to Target right after church today. If you didn't know, the store that has everything you'll ever need also carries monster spray, cleverly disguised in a 79-cent spray bottle that we filled with H2O at home. (Funny aside: when I picked up the bottle and held it up to show Sam in the cart, he squealed at me "Don't point that at me, Mommy! I'm not a monster!")

Just for good measure, we also got a Diesel 10 engine because Sam firmly believes that big metal claw is just the thing to threaten large monsters, and a little kiddie lantern that he can keep by his bed.

Perhaps it was overkill, but I remember being terrified of the scary old faces that I swore popped out of my Holly Hobbie curtains as soon as my mom tucked me in, too. Not gonna happen to my kid.

One more funny that's too good not to share (because there haven't been enough poop stories around here lately.) Sam's Sunday School teacher Susan saw him standing quietly in the corner of the room this morning.

SUSAN: Sam, are you ok over there?
SAM: Yes.
SUSAN: Are you poopin'?
SAM: Yes.
SUSAN... approaches Sam to change his diaper.
SAM: Stop. Please go to the other side of the room now. I poop by myself.