Rockless No More

My mom was so sweet to us and watched Hunter this weekend so James and I could travel to Austin for my friend Liz's wedding. I met Liz in graduate school, and we became almost instant friends. Liz always has a crazy story or comment that brings a smile to everyone's face. She, along with my other dear friends from grad school, made those 2 years so special to me. We shared many hours studying, eating, talking, laughing, dancing, story telling (my favorite:)), and on and on.

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During our first week of grad school, we had a class where we had to stand up and do the typical tell your name, why you love speech path, blah, blah, blah. Our professor also wanted us to add our biggest fear onto our little intro. This is probably my favorite get to know you topic of all of the ones I've experienced. Favorite pizza, favorite color, shoe size, boring, boring, boring. Biggest fear...that will give us some real insight. Did I mention this professor was a genius? She was. Anyway, many of us said that our biggest fear was that we'd never get married. In case that wasn't a dead give away, there aren't many men in the speech pathology world:)

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So Liz (I think it was Liz) decided to form the rockless club for us gals who weren't yet married, but still had hope! That was six and a half years ago, and here we are (most of us anyway) today...

I'm so thankful for their friendships, and I'm so excited for Liz and Philip!

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Here are some more pictures from the night... me and my honey...I love going to weddings with James because it always makes me think of ours, and how lucky I am to share my life with this wonderful man.

me and the bride

Trend Setter

The two year molars are beginning to rear their ugly heads. Hunter has all of the signs - sticking his fingers back so far into his mouth that it's amazing he doesn't gag, drooling until his shirt is drenched, a constant runny nose (unfortunately Hunter has learned to wipe his nose with his sleeve, or worse his wrist, instead of patiently waiting for me to get a tissue), coughing all night long, and of course the poop changes. (No shame here peeps. Kids' poop consistency is often a conversation topic for me at work. So I have no problem referencing my own kids poop here for y'all.)

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So as a result of the poop issues, last week Hunter had a little accident at school. Now being the good parent that I am, I haven't switched out the spare clothes that we keep in Hunter's cubby since last season, so when I went to pick him up, this is what he was wearing...

(He's really embarrassed about the outfit, hence the fight during our photo shoot.) Ms. Hadzira (hah-jir-uh), Hunter's teacher, told me, "I tried to pull his socks up so his legs could be a little warmer." Thanks Ms. H. Loving that look. I'm sure Hunter was really excited about walking down the hall with shorts and hiked up socks.

Little did he know there are worse looks than that one. This week Hunter had another poop accident at school. The problem this time is that mommy forgot to bring up a replacement pair of pants for him, so when I went into his room and saw the bag with his pants in his cubby, I was really nervous to walk into the kitchen and see what my kid was wearing. Would he just be in his diaper? Surely not....No ladies and gentleman, he's not in a diaper. He's in PINK, girl pants...with dolls and hearts on them. Nice.

The best part about this is that my dad and I had plans to go visit one of his tenants that day to see if it would be a good place to have Hunter's birthday party. I wasn't too worried because I thought, it'll just be family members and the owner.

Except, uh no. We get there and it's open bounce...kids are everywhere. Hunter freaked. Not because of the pants, but because he was crazy overstimulated by all of the screaming 8 year olds. Oh yeah, and one of them touched him. A lesson for all of the kids out there: DO NOT touch my kid if you don't want to be screamed down in public, especially if you're a strange 8 year old. I promise my child will scream at you. Loudly. And then he will have a melt down on the floor.

This is exactly why we moved to the toddler area and stayed in that portion of Bounce Town for the remainder of our visit. As you can see, the toddler area didn't bother Hunter nearly as much as the huge inflatable bounces with large srecaming kids everywhere. I think he had so much fun in the toddler area, alone, that he totally forgot about those embarrasing pink pants...

Forget the Clearasil, I need some Clairol

So this past Sunday I actually made it to church with make up on and my hair fixed and down. This is pretty unbelievable considering that my new Chi has been used all of about 4 times since I got it for Christmas.


During the service, James and I sat in front of our dear friends, Mike and Molly. I often tease Molly - out of love of course - about her age since I am sooo young at the ripe age of 28, and the three of them are nearing - or in for our boys - their mid 30s. So when Molly leaned forward during the service and whispered, "You've got a gray hair," I wasn't phased by it at all because obviously I DO NOT have gray hair. I'm 28 people.


You can imagine my shock when I pulled the hair out and saw this...

The picture doesn't do it justice, but that hair is in fact gray...from root to tip. No matter what light you hold it in, it's gray. Believe me on this. I viewed it from many, many angles.

Now I'm not going to get all "I'm so old" on y'all. I hate it when my twenty-something friends talk about how old we are because we are obviously not...we're in our twenties. It doesn't get younger than this. We were teenagers less than 10 years ago. Nope, I'm not going to feel old at all. I'll just be telling myself this is a side effect of the pregnancy. Y'all have heard of that side effect, right?

If anyone even checks this anymore...

Hi. Remember me? I'm the one that writes on this here blog thingy...supposedly.


Since I've had some emails and phone calls from people checking to see if I was okay because I haven't posted in, oh I don't know, FOREVER, I thought I'd just let y'all know I'm alive -losing the will to live more and more each day, but still alive:)


I haven't posted because I've been sleeping or fighting with all my might to hold back the vomit...sometimes unsuccessfully. James does the cooking and cleaning and parenting most days. Like I said, I do the sleeping and vomiting and whining and guilting (of myself of course since I contribute just about zero most days).


Christmas and New Year's came and went with zero pictures, but when I realized this I took a picture of Hunter in the tub with his new bath toys. That makes up for it, right?


The expression on his face pretty much sums up how we both felt Christmas day...

My goal is to try to do a little more every day, which I'm proud to say today I did well. Hopefully in a month or so we'll actually get out and do something worth noting on the blog. Until then, pray for positivity for me. I feel really guilty about my negativity and complaining...which is actually mostly in my head or to my husband, but even the #1 husband in ALL OF THE WORLD can grow weary of the constant whining that comes out of me.

Night in Bethlehem

Saturday night we went to our church's Night in Bethlehem. It was so much fun! I am a horrible church member and didn't invite any of my friends or family to go, but my excuse is this is the first year that we went so I didn't realize how cool it is. (Also, James and I were Joseph and Mary in the live nativity for part of the night. This may have had a little something to do with why I didn't want all of my friends and family there. I'll just say I should not win an academy award for best actress...or even a golden globe for that matter. We were more like statues than anything with our ad libbing consisting of "Do you want to see baby Jesus? He's sleeping in the manger." Good sharing of the Christmas story all around. Hey, we never claimed to be good actors.)

Anyway, here's some pictures to entice y'all to come next year!

Hunter's two favorite things were...

*The "Abraham's Kickin' Chicken" game where you got to kick (or throw for Hunter's age) a rubber chicken into a bucket. Hunter actually just walked up to the bucket and put the chicken in, but he still got a prize. (They're really generous at our church:)).

*Another favorite was the bread from the Bethlehem bakery. Hunter tried to take a bite of the bread while the man was still holding it. He just opened his mouth and walked right up to him. Luckily Mr. Reimer knows us, so hopefully he assumes our child has been taught some table manners.

The least favorite thing was for sure the head covering booth. Hunter fought this pretty hard, but I really, really wanted, no needed, a picture of the 3 of us all matchy matchy. This is the best I got...

We also had goats...

(We made the mistake of not taking the bread away from Hunter before putting him within the goat's reach)

and sheep...

and camels (Hunter is looking at the camel in the sheep picture above)...and a donkey the kids could ride, but after this fiasco, we decided not to try that.

There were so many other cool things there too. I hope y'all can join us next year!

Where I've Been

A lot has happened during my blogging hiatus. Here are the highlights of the past couple of weeks...

*Hunter's been training for the upcoming Rocky: The 43rd edition film....

I think he's a pretty good stunt double for Rocky for the far away shots, but he's way too cute up close......so we've given up on that dream.

*We played a fun game of hide-n-seek one day, and I obviously came out as the winner on that one because, well to be honest, my son has a poor grasp on how well he can fit into certain hiding places...

...also the loud whining that came soon after Hunter realized he was stuck kind of gave away the game.

*One word. Seven letters. V-O-T-I-V-E-S

Hunter's new favorite thing is pulling the wicks out of all of the unused votive candles in the house. Luckily, I only have one wickless candle in the drawer right now. I'm sure that wick will show up in the vacuum soon enough.

*Ladies and gentleman, the duck has left the building...er I mean nest. I know y'all are totally disappointed, but be reassured in the fact that NOONE is as disappointed as I was when I got to the playground and all I saw were some remnants of the nest and bits of cracked egg.

*And probably the most exciting, or maybe the more appropriate word would be traumatic, thing that has happened to us, is Hunter's first fight.

Actually it wasn't much of a fight. It went something like this...Hunter's playing with "a child" (apparently when your kid is harmed by another kid at school, they won't tell you who the bully is...probably so you don't go to their house to retaliate...not that the thought ever entered my head. ever.). The child bites Hunter ON.THE.FACE. Hunter starts screaming and crying. The teachers - and supposedly all of the girls in the class - run over to comfort him with "hugs and kisses". (Not kidding about this. That's what was written on the form...comforted with "hugs and kisses". I love that. Warm fuzzies.)

James will be starting self-defense classes for toddlers in our home next week if anyone would like to join.

I am proud of how whinyless Hunter was once I came to pick him up. If you had this battle scar, you'd whine, right?And just for dramatic effect, a close up...

Hope to post again sometime before January. I am checking y'alls blogs (if you have one) and I LOVE reading them even I haven't commented much lately. I promise to start commenting more!

Soon

The nausea has already kicked in, and the fatigue started several weeks ago, so that's my excuse for no posting in forever. I have so many things to tell y'all about, so I promise to post soon! Just wanted to let you know I'm alive...just tired...and feeling yucky:)