Ten (Part 2)!

I'm finally done procrastinating, so here are the pictures from Luke's 10th month:

He discovered the joys of toilet paper. Of course, he made this particular discovery while I was rinsing out a diaper, so I couldn't stop him until it was already too late.

Trying to fill McMoose's shoes...

McMoose discovered one evening that if we put the baby in the toy box, it buys us a couple of minutes of rest. Suffice it to say that the baby has been spending his fair share of time in the toy box lately.

McMoose also gave him a taste of some of his weird, flavored water one day and ever since then, Luke has been determined to figure out the cool, adult water bottle. Um...he hasn't quite figured it out yet... (Oh, and yes, he is wearing a Santa outfit. Had to get our money's worth out of that outfit somehow.

It's finally warm enough for the park, so he got to try the baby swings for the first time. I'd say he feels pretty positive about them, wouldn't you?

One afternoon, he was absolutely convinced that there was something on the floor. There wasn't, but he sat there like this for a good 15 minutes.

A Bullet Runs Through It

I know I'm supposed to be working on putting up pictures for Luke's 10 month post, and I'm doing it, I promise, but in the meantime, I'm doing a bullet post because I have a lot of thoughts rattling around my head at the moment.

• It's Thursday again. Lately, I feel like Thursday accounts for approximately 75% of the week. Not that I'm complaining--Thursdays are good days. 2 days until the weekend AND I get to watch a new Grey's Anatomy tonight. Nope, not complaining AT ALL.
• Did you know that cats love strawberries? I had no idea until a few days ago, when I cut up some strawberries for Luke, turned my back for a minute, and by the time I got back, half the strawberries were gone and two cats were hovering around the plate. And this morning, I cut up some more and Yellow Cat has been going CRAZY. In fact, he's currently dragging around the bib that Luke was wearing while eating his strawberries. Who knew?!
• I'm pretty sure I'm going bald. I lost a lot of hair after Luke was born, which is normal, but then it STOPPED and now it has started again. Granted, I have enough hair for three people, so I could probably stand to lose some of it, but I'm thinking of stocking up on Rogaine, just in case.
• Luke's current entertainment: hitting himself over the head with a toy and saying "Oh-OH!"
  
• Did I mention that I have a new laptop? I have a new laptop. It's small and cool and has a battery life of longer than 20 minutes, which is to say it's a HUGE improvement over the old one. As a result of said new laptop, I'm completely hooked onto the Internet again.
  

Ten! (Part 1)

Luke turned 10 months old on Sunday and because this post is already two days late and I still haven't uploaded pictures from this past month from the camera to the computer, I decided that this could be a two-part post.

Recently, I've been thinking a lot along the lines of "This time last year..." It's hard to imagine that a year ago, I didn't actually know Luke. Oh, I knew that he was active and that he had a tendency to get grouchy when Yellow Cat tried to sit in my lap, but that was the extent of my knowledge about this person who, over the course of the past ten months, has been my almost-constant little companion.

Over the past month, Luke has become super social, which is great because I love to see him interact with other people. I have to admit though that it feels kind of strange, after 9 months of always having this baby in my lap or arms to suddenly have to look around the room to locate him. And when I do locate him, he's usually crawling furiously to try to keep up with any "big kids" who might be around.

He has pretty much decided that All Toys Suck and that it's so much more fun to play with the recycling and the dog food and computer cables and laundry. He constantly has black grease on his fingers because he sticks them in the runners for the sliding door. At first, I walked around with a wet rag permanently attached to my hip so that when he stuck his fingers in grease, I could clean them off immediately. Recently, I've decided that meh, a little bit of grease probably won't hurt him. (Right?)

He's a stubborn little person, which could have been expected, given the fact that after almost 5 years, McMoose and I STILL haven't learned the art of compromise. He follows Yellow Cat around and pulls his whiskers and fur and tail. Yellow Cat, for his part, is no fool and is perfectly willing to use his claws on anyone who abuses him. The baby, as a result, currently has several scratches on his hands, but still, any time he spies Yellow Cat, off he goes to sustain yet another scratch.

The child still has NO TEETH, which I find strange, but dude, I'm SO not complaining. I have heard plenty of stories of babies who have bitten their moms while nursing and I am not looking forward to this particular experience.

For the longest time, he was only able to stand if he was holding on to something, but for the past couple of days, he's been letting go and standing there all by himself. What this means, of course, is that he now has TWO available hands with which to grab everything in sight. And THIS is exactly why I wanted to baby proof everything while I was still pregnant--even back then, I knew McMoose and myself well enough to know that once the baby got here, we'd spend so much time saying "Oh, we'll do it next weekend," that the baby would likely be 3 before it got done. (Needless to say, nothing is baby proofed, which could be why I found the baby sitting in a bathroom cabinet a few weeks ago.)

I'll post the pictures for this month as soon as I get myself, the computer, the camera, and the USB cable all in the same place at the same time.

In Flux

In the almost-two-years that I've been writing on this blog, I've used it to document everything from my impending wedding to my pregnancy to my schooling to my journey into motherhood. What I haven't used it for is to talk about the future, in part because I have no idea what I'll be doing 5 years from now. Not a single, solitary clue.

I have a Master's degree in a field that I don't ever plan to return to. I have random job experiences--daycare worker, camp counselor, researcher, writer--that I have no hope of ever combining to one, productive line of work. Every evening, I tell McMoose what I'd like to be "when I grow up." And every evening, it's something different.

Before Luke was born, I had a plan. I knew where I was going, I knew what I had to do to get there. In fact, it was because of that plan that we decided to have a baby when we did. In my mind, the approximately 18-month hiatus between graduating from my Master's program and entering a Doctoral program was the perfect interval to be home with a baby.

And then, the baby arrived and for the plan went up in big, dramatic flames because (a) the plan required me to start taking pre-requisite classes and do some volunteer stuff when Luke turned 6 months old, (b) the plan required us to wait at least 5 or 6 years before having a second child, and (c) the plan required me to leave Luke full-time by the time he's 18 months old. Except that (a) he's well past 6 months old and I have obviously not started taking classes or doing volunteer stuff, (b) I enjoy Luke way too much to consider waiting 6 years for the second one, and (c) leave him 8 months from now? Full-time? To go back to school, which would mean that not only would I be gone all day, but I'd also be mentally "gone" in the evenings and on weekends because I'd be busy with homework and studying? Yeeeeeaaaaahhh, right. Seriously, I don't know what I was thinking.

So for the first time ever, I don't know what I'm doing. And right now, that thought is scaring me to death.

In Which I Write A Letter

Dear State Of Virginia,

As much as I enjoyed my 4 years of living within your borders, it has to be said that I NO LONGER LIVE THERE. Haven't for several years, actually. So please, stop asking me to pay vehicle and registration fees to you.

I mean, okay, I get that there was some error that made you believe that I still lived there in 2007 (you were MISTAKEN, but I can see how it might happen.) And I understand that the first two times I called to get this cleared up, the people I talked to might have been completely inept, which is what led you to issue all kinds of threats and warrants and levies last week. If I try really hard, I could probably forgive all of this.

BUT! After I called you the THIRD time and talked to the MANAGER of some county office (where I was directed after many, many "Could you please hold"s, by the way), AND faxed documents that CLEARLY SHOWED that I lived in North Carolina in 2007, I was hoping we could put all this behind us. In fact, I even called again the next day, just to make REALLY sure that we were over this mess and was assured that everything was fine and we could go back to being on speaking terms again.

So surely, you can imagine my surprise when I get a phone call from someone from the county office AS I'M TRYING TO PUT THE BABY DOWN FOR HIS NAP to tell me that if I don't pay the bill in 3 days, my account is going to be sent to the collection agency. And then, when I explained YET AGAIN what had happened, all the woman has to say is "Oh. Yes. I see that your account was resolved."

REALLY? You SEE that my account has been resolved? SO WHY ARE YOU CALLING AND ANNOYING ME?

Sincerely,

Highly Frustrated In NORTH CAROLINA.

Turn, Turn, Turn

Luke and I started going to La Leche League meetings when he was not quite three months old and we've been going faithfully ever since. In the beginning, he was one of the youngest babies there and I remember one time in particular when another baby came and took a toy that I was dangling in front of his face...a toy, by the way, that he had no interest in because he was tiny and was still intent on figuring out the whole How To Live Life Outside The Womb thing. Externally, I smiled and talked sweetly to the baby, but on the inside, I have to admit feeling ever so slightly annoyed that this GIANT child (who was probably about 8 or 9 months old) had so callously STOLEN my sweet baby's FAVORITE TOY.

8 months later, he's one of the bigger babies there and because the Universe just loves a good joke, he is by FAR the roughest kid there...and that INCLUDES the four- and five-year-olds who come with their younger siblings. For example, this morning, he knocked over two babies, sat on one's head, hit three others, and made a TWO-YEAR-OLD cry by taking her snack. And then threw a kicking, screaming FIT when I returned her bag of crackers to her.

At one point, when he was in the midst of his reign of terror, I looked up and saw the mom of a 4-month-old looking at us in horror and I had to laugh internally at the idea that in the not-so-distant future, her sweet, sleeping baby might be the one wreaking havoc on the group.

Good-Bye, February.

Generally speaking, January is my least favorite month of the year because (a) it's hard to come down from the holiday-high and (b) it's dark and cold and cabin fever sets in about halfway through the month. This year, we got through January with amazingly few instances of "Oh, this month is going to last FOREVER and it will NEVER be warm enough to leave home without a jacket, EVER AGAIN!" (Yes, I actually say those exact words multiple times during the winter.)

I was excited that January went by so quickly and I had pretty much decided that having a kid meant that I no longer had to dread winter because hey! Winter is fun when you have a baby to entertain you! And then....February happened. Seriously, those were the longest 28 days OF MY LIFE.

Apparently, having a kid might delay the onset of cabin fever, but it will surely not prevent it altogether. I am so grateful to be done with February because now that it's March, I can look forward to longer hours of daylight and warmer temperatures and more chances to get outside.

Of course, as I write this, we're trapped inside because it's cold, dark, and rainy out there.