Welcome. Join the party.

I turned twenty-four today. I'd like to lie and say it was the best birthday I've ever had, but I can't. It wasn't my best birthday. That award still belongs to my twenty second birthday. We had just found out that we were expecting Walter (I was literally 4 weeks along), my sweet husband sprinkled rose petals all over our itty bitty, old, cheap apartment, and I got to spend the entire day with the one person in the world who means the most to me. Heaven.

This year my husband spent most of the day at work. In fact, he's still at work now, prepping for a software audit. I saw him for three hours total. Walter woke up with a fever, which got better then worse and right as I was about to go to sleep for the night, woke up screaming and continued to scream me straight out of my birthday and into a new day. Probably because I'm pregnant, about twenty-five minutes in, I broke down and cried with him. It seemed like the right thing to do.

The highlight of the day was during a video chat with my parents. My father walked in and joined the conversation by saying, "You look really pretty." Maybe I'm a big old Daddy's girl, because I just wanted to pretend that I was turning four and not twenty-four and whine like a little baby about everything that had NOT gone the way I wanted it to today and how I didn't even get a birthday cake or a solitary candle to blow out. Instead, I very calmly discussed my child's fever and my father, in his infinite wisdom said, "Welcome to adulthood." And...well...isn't that just the truth?

At least next year I'll know what to ask for: a completely healthy family.



* At my fourth birthday party, there was a cake with Flounder on it and the icing was so thick and deliciously rich I vomited everywhere and couldn't enjoy icing until years later. That is what a birthday should be like.

an orange is a ball but a ball is not an orange

Yesterday Walter got his hand stuck in the shower curtain. It was just one of those days for him. As I watched my accident prone little one run around the house and yard, I kept thinking, am I ready to do this again?

Ready or not, there will be another beautiful little boy entering our house around the nation's birthday. That has to be a good omen, right?

It must be, because today I got Walter to eat an actual lunch, composed of tuna salad and apple pieces and mini crackers.



The nursery remodel continues on and I am so elated to see the final product. In about two months. Because that is how long it will take for us to save up money for a nice comfy rocker and a few other things. Hooray!

Adjusting

For those of you who don't know, JL got a new and amazingly better job that he started at the beginning of this month. Like, we actually get health insurance that doesn't just cover preventative medicine, i.e. yearly check-ups. Everything in our home has been much happier since the beginning of the month, mostly because when Husband is happy, Wife is happy, and when Wife is happy, Mom is happy (duh), and when Mom is happy, Walter is happy.

Anywho, one of the perks of the new job is that we get freakishly cheap gym memberships to Gold's Gym, including daycare. This has required a little bit of adjustment for Walter. First, because we try not to leave him with other people unless we're going on a date. Second, because when we have left him with people, it's usually someone that he knows really well. Since the cute daycare workers rotate, there is a 90% guarantee that each time we drop him off, someone new will be in charge of his age group. Hence, adjustment. After three weeks, I am happy to say that I did not get called out of my Turbo Kick class, Walter was not crying when I left him, and he was not crying when I picked him up. This means that for one hour a day, six days a week, I get Me time.

And that is a beautiful thing.

there was an epic battle

It involved Walter. And something sticky. And his hair. We solved it the best way we knew how. By making him look like this guy.

Going to the chapel and I'm goooonna get marrrr-r-r-ied...

JL got in bed last night and I had a total breakdown. Instantaneous, hysterical sobbing for thirty minutes until I noticed that I had literally soaked through his shirt. Why do men put up with us crazy ladies?

My poor husband, completely unsuspecting, happily walked into our bedroom last night to go to sleep, and I went psycho, teenage drama on him, crying and hyperventilating about the most retarded things. And what did he do? He pulled me close and rubbed my belly and wiped away tears. Without complaining that I was keeping him awake after a full day's work and school. I finally understood all those crazy commitment ceremony people.


I need to redo "marry" this man. After I'm not hugely pregnant with his child.

Adorable note: He also wrote a paper for one of his classes on how he could help me not be so stressed out. I am still swooning that this was the most serious local problem in his life, even over the outrageous and growing potholes on I-15.

R is for Reptile

This morning Walter and I briskly walked the seven blocks from our little house to the Provo Library for Toddler Time. Toddler Time is like Story Time, but geared for children between the age of two and three, which Walter is not. But Mother Goose, the story time for children between 13 months and 24 months, only happens Friday mornings. And we needed to get out of the house ASAP.

Mr. Dallin and Mrs. Laurel were just what the doctor ordered! We sang songs, Walter danced, we pretended Mr. Dallin got eaten by a boa constricter...all in all, a morning well spent.

Now, if only I had more suitable weather to continue my nursery remodel. But it is just a bit too frigid to try and paint beds, the chest of drawers, and the bookshelf.