On the Move

We're on the move... in more ways than one.

I'm being a brave mommy according to anyone who's heard that I'm headed to Kansas City today with Sam in tow. I've got a meeting with in our High Plains office on Wednesday, so took the opportunity to use up leftover vacation time. I'm excited to introduce Sam to many of my family members for the first time!

I'm not so sure how brave I am. I think that award went to Rob when he flew to Laguna Beach with an 18-month-old Sam to visit me at another meeting. Sam had been home just five months and Rob braved two legs of air travel to meet me in Orange County. Alone.

I've got a slightly older and more experienced child traveler with me, as well as my mom. Nonni will be put to work this week, I'm sure!

Sam's very excited to hit the road. He's known we're going for weeks and keeps asking when we get to fly on "Big Jake," the freakishly weird looking passenger jet on Jay Jay the Jet Plane. I also told him we were going to visit my family, including my Uncle Bob. I relayed this bit of information while in Sam's room, seated in front of his Bob the Builder tent. There's a two-foot-tall picture of Bob on the tent. Sam leaned over to Bob's ear and exclaimed, "Bob! We're comin' to your house!"

My Uncle Bob is all prepared to fill the role. He even bought a hard hat for the occasion. Sam now asks me daily is Bob if going to show him his tools. As luck would have it, my uncle has plenty of tools in his garage to show to a delighted toddler. He has granddaughters, so I think he's secretly eating up the opportunity to show a little boy his own toys!

The other move news is not terribly dramatic for anyone but me, but will suck up naptime for a few weekends to come. I'm working on moving my blog to WordPress so that I can have a bit more creative control. It's probably some sort of clinical problem that I'm manually moving every post I've ever made just so that I can have a digiscrapped blog banner on my page.

I'll get even more ambitious once that move is made. I'm responsible for launching Relay For Life's first-ever website (with the help of lots of people much smarter than me, of course.) It's built in Drupal, a modestly amusing word for open source software. I like to know as much as possible about how things I'm responsible for actually work, so I'm going to learn Drupal by building my own webpage/blog. Rob has visions of me somehow making money that way to help fund the next adoption, but my sights aren't set quite that high. I'll be happy with some proficiency in coding as well as a pretty page to post all of the stuff I make.

I wonder when I officially inherit a "geek" title?!

Molly or Mommy?

I remember with fondness the days that *I* was my son's best friend... It was only a few brief months ago when he started declaring my position on his pedastal on a regular basis. Daddy was included, too. We were both deemed his "best friend," and he fully understands we are a family.

Apparently the pedastal is easily rocked. All it takes is Nonni and Bitty spoiling him for a weekend while Mommy and Daddy tag-team a Relay meeting in Austin, TX.

Seriously, our trips only overlapped by about 14 hours, but in those precious few hours, Nonni had purchased a new Molly train that Aunt Bitty presented to him.

This morning, while eating breakfast together (that's me, Sam AND Molly at the table) he started feeding Molly his yogurt and kissing her little yellow face.

Then, I heard the words: Molly... You're my Best Friend.

I know it's typical toddler behavior, but my delicate little mommy feelings were slightly wounded!

On the bright side, he was as kissy, huggy and happy to see me as ever when we were reunited yesterday. He was particularly impressed with the wearable blanket my ever-so-romantic husband won for me during a Relay raffle. That's a story probably best saved for Valentine's Day, though romantic it's not. Sam kept declaring that he loved my "dress." I paired the lovely frock with a headband when I'd washed my face. The whole picture was less than fabulous, but my sweet little boy kept telling me how pretty my dress and hair were. So, I wasn't totally replaced in just one weekend.

Sam's eating habits may have suffered while I was away, too, but at least he's branched out a bit from beige food... My mom made sure to inform me that she'd indulged him with two breakfasts on Saturday. The first was hot chocolate (which he called his coffee) served with a nice bowl of Cheetos in front of the TV! The second was his favorite family speciality... cinnamon bears.

Rob continued the trend on Sunday morning. When Sam pointed to a box of Chex and said "Want those," my husband somehow assumed he wanted Rob to make the Chex party mix recipe on the box for breakfast. I am doubtful that a 2 1/2 year old recognized a photo as a recipe AND that Daddy could instantly produce it, but alas, Daddy could and did. Sam ate a nutritious mixture of corn Chex, pretzels, raisins, M&Ms, kettle corn and marshmallows for his morning meal.

Try to imagine how easy it was for me to give him yogurt and fruit this morning...

I'm so indecisive

At least when it comes to this blog... Some weeks/months, I deem to do much better at keeping up than I do others.

My two issues: I get behind and then it's overwhelming to catch up... sort of like laundry, and I'm not great at that either.

I'm also still fully addicted to digiscrapping. The more I learn, the more I want to do, which has made me ponder moving my blog to some place that I have a bit more "control' creatively. While I ponder, I sort of stopped blogging.

It dawned on me that it was sort of stupid to stop all together while I decide, especially since it's January and this was last year's resolution. I guess I subliminally thought a resolution only lasted a year!

This year's resolution, now that I'm doing a better job of memory-keeping, is to actually print what I do. We've also committed to a "real life" resolution... To PLAN our budget and menus out better. Should help with finances and Weight Watchers for both of us... Wish us luck!

Now that it's already mid-January, this will be a fairly pathetic rehash of the fun family memories from the holidays, but here goes:

Christmas with a toddler was awesome. Sam really seemed to appreciate opening gifts this year. The cutest thing was that he would actually try to "read' the back of any package he got. I think he noticed us doing it with books, music, etc. He was really serious about his study of new gifts, though!



He was not a Santa fan! His first words Christmas morning were to "get that man out of my house!" He was happy with his cool train table that Santa left, though, so I'm pretty sure he'll be more welcoming next year.

We had a great New Year's... We didn't have much planned, so we went down to see the down-the-street cousins. Sam had a blast and stayed up very late.

All that's left to do to apply for Baby #2 is to get our physicals done. I'm hoping we'll luck out with the timeline again and have an early summer arrival so that we can all be home together for a while... I won't count those chicken just yet, though.

Happy Belated New Year!