It's September 25th.

Jess's Mom-iversary

I guess it never really occurred to me before, but now that I'm a mom myself, I kind of understand how parents can go so nuts over their kids' birthday parties before they can really even remember any of it: birth is a crazy transformative experience, and a child's birthday is as much a celebration of the parents' memory of that occasion as it is a chance for the kid to celebrate his or her own existence.

I was so fortunate to be a part of Jhonen's birth one year ago today, and as much fun as it was to find fun presents for Jhonen's birthday (2 AWESOME Yo Gabba Gabba toys and a set of "Big Boy" PJ's), I really wanted to do something special for Jess on the anniversary of one of the most amazing things I have ever witnessed. Not only was Jhonen's birth significant, but the year since has been an amazingly fast, hard rollercoaster.

He is HUGE, and has been since the start, and poor Jess's body has been abused heartily by his - albeit sweet - clingy nature. Try lugging around a 30 pound boy who NEVER wants to ride in his stroller! And since he's been able to get around on his own, crawling and walking, a 30 pound boy who doesn't want to ride in his stroller, but DOES want to be put down - regardless of whether it's an appropriate safe place, of course. The only thing worse than a 30 pound sack of potatoes in your arms is a 30 pound sack of potatoes trying desperately to get OUT of your arms.

She is one tough mama. But, I guess we've always known that. :)

Anyway, I wanted to do something nice for her, to celebrate getting through birth itself as well as making it to the end of a very fast but very exhausting first year of momhood, so gramma and I rode out to the Winter Park farmers market this morning before the party and picked out an awesome bucket of mixed plants, a huge mixed herb pot, and a pot of gerber daisies (her fave), and a hazelnut coffee cooler from Barnie's.

[We incidentally discovered that A) the Winter Park Farmers Market is AWESOME and B) that they had a paramedic station with mercury-free flu shots. Trying desperately to NOT get the bug I had last year. Ick.]

So, it was a nice surprise. Like I said, I never really thought about it before, but... It's hard to see this milestone come and go. Calina's about to hit 6 months and I just cannot-belive-it. I guess as a parent your job is to just make sure that every day you appreciate what you have, enjoy each moment, and make sure that the day was as good for that little one as it could have been. Now that my little girl is really starting to "enjoy" doing things, I think we're going to make it a point to start doing more things. Playing at home is awesome, but I can already tell that she gets a little bored and stir crazy with the same toys every day. She loves morning outings when she can get them. She loved the farmers market this morning. She had a good-ish, if a little overstimulating, time at the party today. And her day, really, is only from 7 or 8am to 5pm or so when we start winding down for bedtime.

We're off to Oregon on Wednesday, gramma and Calina and I will be staying out there for 2 weeks, and Colin will come home after the first week. (One whole week away without daddy. Yikes!) Sooooo looking forward to it, though!

Like Riding a Bike

I used to do this sort of thing a lot...

It's prettiest if you go over to YouTube to watch it, but here's a teaser: (Okay, it's the whole thing, but... much smaller.)

Time Suck

I've discovered that, despite the fact that I am now waking far earlier than I have in years, I am losing days left and right. Just, poof, gone. Today, I was up too early, went to Dunkin Donuts for Coffee, drove to Kohl's and Target to let Jess return something and to pick up some new picture hangers, and suddenly it was 5:00. I don't have any idea what happened there.

So if I haven't been faithful about updating this daily, it's because by the time I can even think to remember to sit down and write something, it's hours past the time I should already be asleep.

Like now, for example. It's midnight, and Calina's been sleeping for 5 hours. That means she'll want to be up for good at 7am, and I'm looking at another disappearing, sleepy day ahead of me.

I did make dinner tonight, around 9pm.

What You Can't Store... Use!

We may have just doomed ourselves to a lifetime of obsessive picture-straightening, but we had to do something to relieve our storage issues in the garage. Hanging the art on the giant blank wall over our couch was a good step toward organization.

Colin was kind enough to provide a size comparison. He's not a small boy by any means... We like how the massive wall-full dwarfs the ridiculously monstrous couch we have.

From August 09

That's our living room -- we used to have a big bookcase on that wall behind the couch... then we moved the bookcase and that wall looked really bare... and we realized that we had a TON of art & mirrors in the garage that was weird and old, along with a creepy haunted-mansion type lamp, and some weird old books. None of it really goes with anything else in the house, but our living room didn't really have much personality. So we decided to roll with it.

Bravery

I spent the day yesterday painting Calina's future bedroom a soft, soothing pale yellow-green "Captured Moment". The day before, I tackled painting the ceiling a with a fresh coat of white. I think it turned out quite well.

There's something really soothing about the light coming into this bedroom. We noticed it when it was the guest room, too, but now the new wall color really makes it feel like a sanctuary. Somewhere you'd want to sleep for a very long time. We hope it makes Calina feel that way someday. ::grin::

Other rooms in the house are either coming along swimmingly, or not at all. The guest room? Best room in the house currently:

It's even got a DVR box. Cray-cray! Ben uses it for watching shows & playing games, Colin uses it for reading, and the babies use it for TV time and safe baby-proofed playing.

Our bedroom, on the other hand, looks like we raided a Goodwill seconhand store and it just spewed all over everywhere.

Pretty horrific. I suppose we'll get to it eventually. Unfortunately, Colin doesn't really mind it like this, so... It might be a while. The wall to the right of the door there could have a door installed that would lead to a walk-in closet (the closet in the guest room), which would really help our clothing storage situation. We were hoping that the flowered couch could go in Calina's room, but we realized that it won't go through her door, due to positioning of walls around the doorway. So it's continuing to live in our room, but we repositioned the bed to be under the A/C vent, and despite the fact that it's a pretty large room, you can't really walk anywhere in the room anymore.

It's OK, though, because we're comfortable sleeping, and... it's representative of our current life. It'll get put together when we get put together.

Sending off

While I was in the airport in Bangor, I was surrounded by soldiers waiting for their plane to Iraq. Probably a couple hundred in all. Many talking quietly on borrowed cell phones that the airport military office provided, some surrounding the TV blaring Fox News and its updates on Afghanistan, a few milling around the tiny gift shop. I bought a moose picture frame on the clearance rack, and listened to a few guys in camo behind me asking for scratch-off lottery tickets. One joked about "winning $100,000 right before getting on the plane to Iraq. Wouldn't that suck?"

I passed through security to one of three gates in the airport, on the other side of a glass wall from them all in the main terminal.

I imagine they made some sort of announcement I couldn't hear, asking them to pass through a set of double doors leading to their plane. They all calmly passed along the other side of the glass, shaking hands with a line of well-wishers to their right; I caught the eye of a young guy, and waved to him. Calina was sleeping in my arms. He smiled and waved back, glancing over at her on my shoulder. I wondered what he was thinking. Maybe just taking note of her helmet. Or maybe that she was why he was getting on a plane.

I like to imagine our military with noble ideals like that. Even if I sometimes think that their goodwill is abused or misused, it would be nice to know that they hope they're doing some good.