7 months

dear gavin,
you are the light of my life. you have grown, learned, and changed so much since the day we took you home from the hospital; what an awesome privilege that i have to get to be with you every day to watch your little capabilities unfold.

at seven months, you love bananas. LOVE them. to the point of getting a spoon full and leaning forward with your mouth dropped open for the next bite. another thing you just can't get enough of are gerber bites. it's so fun introducing you to new foods! you can also sit up for an extended period -- all by yourself! what a little man! you can roll from front to back and then back again and while you're not crawling just yet, i have a feeling it's not too long before you're well on your way to scooting around the house. you can recognize people and sometimes you don't like it too much when mama or daddy leave the room. (this you let us know by protesting... loudly!) i love that you can reach your hands up when you want to be picked up and i love your wonderful belly laugh. you are such a happy child. we feel so blessed to have been gifted with a child who posses such a cheerful disposition.

you're an easy going baby and mama does not, for a single second, take that for granted. 95% of the time, you go down for naps and bed like a dream. the other 5%? ah well, we're all allowed to have bad days. :) a few weeks ago, you took your first international flight (across the pacific!) to visit grandma and grandpa and you handled it like a champ. such a good baby boy.

my sweet gavin, i love you so much. you're seven months and i feel such pride for you and for the little person you continue to grow to be. i look forward to what the next few months will bring as we close out your first year.

love you forever,
mama

I have no idea where to begin...

So basically, 5 days after I wrote my last post, B and I packed up for our month-ish long trip to my parents' house. My parents, by the way, live on the other side of the world, so this was no ordinary pack job. Throw in two people travelling internationally with a baby for the first time and you get craziness.

So yeah. We've been away from Oregon for quite some time. I have updates about our fab vacation and stuff Gavin's been doing and I have no idea where to start. Since Gavin hits the 7 month (!!!!!!) mark tomorrow, I may start there.

Sounds like a plan. If you can't tell, I'm not feeling to charged to do anything swiftly these days. Spending days on end in the South Pacific (with 24/7 babysitters aka grandparents) will do that for a girl. :)

One week later...

We're all moved in!

::collapses on sofa in exhaustion::

I never want to do that again. We moved without having a baby sitter to watch G. My in-laws were out of town, my sister is back home for the summer, B's sister works like 73 million hours a week, and anyone we tried to get in contact with just couldn't do it. Not that we blame them, people have lives, but let's be real. I'm never moving without a babysitter EVER. AGAIN.

But we did it. What rockstars.

Today I'm home with nothing on the agenda. It's the first slow day of the past week and I'm totally taking advantage of it. As soon as G goes down for the afternoon, I'm curling up next to the fireplace with some tea and a book.

Procrastination at its finest

I've been married for exactly a year and a half and I'm just NOW getting around to putting together my wedding album.

What can I say? We took off from the reception for a two week honeymoon in Hawaii and then I got knocked up 3 months later. Literally, everything (as in, my wedding china is still in its original packaging because I had to put together a nursery!) has taken a backseat to this little person.

So what's got my fire going? The fact that I'm going to be seeing my mother in two weeks. She's told me, in no uncertain terms, that she wants to see an album and so far I've held off because, let's be real, how good can she make on her threats when she's literally halfway around the world from me? But seeing as how we'll be on her side of the globe in two weeks, I've got an album to put together. Better find time to do that in between, oh I don't know, moving to a new HOUSE and being a full time stay at home mom these days because my in-laws are currently spending two weeks at their timeshare in San Diego! As a whole family, our timing could not suck any more than it currently does. Gah!

1,000 other people

Tonight, while I was reading this week's entry on postsecret.com, someone mentioned feeling alone until they looked at the number on the counter. That got me wondering how much that number would change from the time I got to the page, read the entries, then hit refresh.

The number increased by over 1,000. It's mindboggling that that many people were doing the same thing I was, at the same time I that I was doing it from my living room couch.

Huh.

Sabbath shmabbath

So much for restful Sundays.

When you're married to someone who's a pastor, Sundays are anything but.

Try as I might, 'observing the Sabbath' is a commandment I might have to re-negotiate with the Big Guy. You know, just to make sure that He knows it wasn't my idea to blatantly go against it.

I'm just sayin'.

"My how the turn... tables."

That's a quote from a recent episode of "The Office". Gotta have me some Michael Scott!

Anyway.

Today B and I strapped Gavin into his stroller and headed to our local Saturday farmers market for the first time since we've moved here. I loved it! Needless to say, weekly jaunts to the market (especially now that it's summer!) will be in order. Just the sights and smells of all of the fresh vegetables was enough to almost make me want to grow my own garden. Almost. We're all about the baby steps here people. I'm the person Dimitri Martin makes fun of when he talks about killing a cactus ("Damn. I'm less nurturing than a desert."). Thinking I'll start with some herbs: basil (love), cilantro, thyme. Aren't herbs notoriously hard to kill? I'll get check back with you on that one.

Confession

Today is just one of those days when I'm desperate for my little guy to take his naps so that I can get a moment to think... breathe... catch up on sleep myself.

I have this tiredness that I can feel in my spine. Most likely that's because when I'm tired, I tend to slouch and if I slouch often enough, my spine starts to ache.

90% of the time, I can't wait for Gavin to wake up from his naps. Often, in the couple hours he's asleep I miss him. Today, however, I'm crossing my finger and hoping and praying he just. stays. asleep.

Saving the planet, one drink at a time

In honor of today being Earth Day, C&C is here to let you know about organic vodka. Yes, that's right. Everywhere else in the blogosphere, you can learn about how to green up your life and C&C is not about to be left out. Your liver might be dying and on its last leg, but damnit, you might as well be doing right by Mother Earth and imbibe some all-natural, organic vodka while you're at it.

Packing definitely did not happen. Shopping, however, did. (toes ground, shamefacedly...)

B called while I was at the mall and proceeded to rib me for spending money when we're moving in a few days and should be saving for things for the new house. I replied, "Boy, I was home with our 5 month old by myself for the last couple of days. You're lucky I didn't buy out the whole mall!"

What to do...

The Mister is out of town for the next couple of nights attending a conference. Really, this is an ideal time to pack up the house my way*, but with DVR'd episodes of Gilmore Girls and The OC plus this past week's Desperate Housewives, it may be a better time to drop the tyke off at Grandma's and zone out at the boob tube.

Should I pack or should I participate in brain-melting TV marathons... Dilemna.

*packing my way: methodically going through each room and doing a keep, toss, donate routine and then labeling each box with the room that the contents will go in the new house.
packing The Mister's way: sweeping things haphazardly by the armload into the back of his truck and unloading in no discernable organized fashion. In other words: my nightmare.

Thank God for Grandmas

Since 9 this morning, I've vacuumed the house, cleaned the upstairs bathroom, mailed off taxes at the post office, gone grocery shopping, run the dishwasher, and had a leisurely lunch.

Currently, I'm catching up on DVR'd episodes of 'The OC' (yay, syndication!) and 'Gilmore Girls' will be on in an hour.

I love grandmas who are wonderfully immune to the wriggling feistiness that is a teething infant.

Welcome!

No stranger to the blogging world, my subscriptions list runs so deep that it's become embarrasing to me that I don't just bite the bullet and get on the blog train myself. I'm officially de-lurking and have a proper and respectable sign-in so as to no longer be confused with the other crazy anonymous commenters I know some of you have had the joy (?) of coming into contact with. Rest easy, first time visitor, I'm of the friendly variety! :)

Basically, this blog is my "honest" place (insert: candor). Not that I live my regular life with dishonesty, but I do have to edit myself on regular occasion. I chalk that one up to what my husband does for a living but... I can't talk about that in too much detail because I'd like to maintain a level of anonymity. This is to protect myself because should certain people of the gossipy, chit-chat variety that frequent the non-profit organization of which my husband serves in a leadership capacity, come across some of the things I'm sure to say in this blog, let's just say that the tongues will not cease to wag on Sunday morning. And who needs that kind of drama? Not I! (How was that for thinly-veiled analogies?)

The clatter half of this blog comes in on behalf of my 5 month old son. Quiet times are few and far between... especially since we've just entered the realm of teething. Oh boy. Add that we're moving into our first house in less than a month and leaving the country for a month two weeks after we sign, clatter may well move right on into chaos.

That all I've got for now. The jumperoo, my one and only ally against the Teething Monster, is no longer sufficing as entertainment for Baby G. And on we go...