Well, shit.

See this charming innocent little puppy?

A few moments ago I was sleeping blissfully on the couch. The fireplace was roaring. The baby was sleeping....well, like a baby, upstairs.

Mulligan went out. Mulligan came in. Mulligan got sprayed by a skunk in the meantime.

Mulligan is spending the night on one of the back porches (the one with no ground access so that he can't run his smelly self into the road and get hit by a car)

The party came to a very unexpectedly smelly conclusion.

PS ~ Nate let the dog inside before he realized the stench situation. The house bloody stinks. Nate stinks too cause he had to touch the dog. Ugh. I may put Nate out on the porch tonight too :)

Party at our house

Life is good around here. Luke has learned to pick his nose, and I am GBS NEGATIVE. I just got my test results back today, and I feel as though a huge weight has been lifted off of my shoulders.

I did not quite have the birth that I had always hoped for with Luke. I got a RESULT better than I had ever dreamed (My amazing, healthy, happy son..... and that part is for life, thank God) but the actual day of his birth was much different and intervention laden than I had always hoped for. It took several weeks before I could talk about his birth without crying. That said, I can now say with utter confidence that it was the best day of my life. With a year of motherhood under my belt I know that the beauty of the mother/child relationship is forged not in the actual day of the birth, but in the falling in love process that happens when you meet and as you grow to know, love, and cherish one another. I could go all into the steps that ultimately led up to the C Section, but that is neither here nor there at this point. Let's just say that I feel that testing positive for GBS and having my water break before labor had begun started a long line of interventions and "rules" that did not go well with me.

That said, I have another birth approaching. I have been a mess the past week as I awaited the results of my GBS culture. (And for anyone who is not familiar with GBS, Google it, it would take too long and be too boring for me to explain). I have the option to schedule a C Section as I am now a CS Mama. I don't want to have another C Section. I would like to say that my motives are totally altruistic and pure......but truth be told I don't want another CS for a few (mainly selfish) reasons.
1. I am admittedly an excitement junky. Knowing and planning the day of my child's birth is too anti climatic for me. One of the penultimate moments of my life was the early morning hours of Feb 13 when I woke up to my water breaking. I have never known such excitement and anticipation, (nor have I ever seen Nate run up and down the steps frantically so many times :)
2. I want to experience a vaginal birth. I don't want to hear my baby cry for the first time again while strapped down to a table behind a drape.
3. I don't want to have to spend 4 days in the hospital again. While those 4 days were absolutely magical and wonderful after Luke's birth ~ staying in the hospital with Nate and Luke while all of our friends and family came to visit us and meet our sweet son.....this time it will be different as Luke will be at home. I will miss him terribly, and would much prefer to go home after just 24 or 48 hours this go round.
4. I worry about healing from a CS while taking care of our new baby AND the 13 month old Luke. My heart breaks to think of not being able to pick up Luke for a week or two after the birth, so anything that I can do to avoid that would benefit our whole family.

Anyway. I could go on and on. I am just thrilled that I feel like I am at least going into this birth on a level playing field, rather than fighting from behind due to my GBS status to have the birth that I hope for.

Suddenly I just have a new found peace and excitement about the upcoming birth. It still may not go the way that I hope, but at least I don't feel like its history repeating itself before we even begin.

Oh, and Luke learned to pick his nose. It's charming. Ugh. Judging from the joy that he seems to glean from it, you will be seeing a picture soon.

Snow much fun

We got home from VA after a wonderful three days. Luke was a total champ, as usual, while travelling. The resort was awesome, the food great, the spa delightful, catching up with friends wonderful, and I got to see both Christine and Ronan, and Tamara and Regan (hi!). I'm flat out beat. I have to say, that I'm really really craving some time with no travel, no packing, unpacking, extra laundry, all of the thinking that is involved with travel with a youngster etc etc. I need to make a more conscious effort to relax and refresh before this baby arrives.

I need to pack a hospital bag. I can't believe how soon this baby is going to be joining our family. The baby pool is filling up ~ most everyone seems to have this baby coming right around its due date (I think that I picked March 19th). I can't wait to see if I have a son or a daughter in there delighting me with its crazy movements ~ I have to say, I know that some people love knowing the gender of the baby ahead of time ~ but I am just way too much of an excitement junkie. The last few weeks are absolutely tortuously delicious to me as I wonder if its my son or my daughter who I have been getting to know these past 36 weeks. I love hearing the guesses of my friends and family. I already can't wait to make the phone calls to my friends once this baby has arrived. I had a little foot in my ribs this morning at 5 am prodding me awake, lately I feel as though this baby is going to be big.

Anyway. It snowed while we were away, so Nate ran out and picked up a sled so that Luke could experience his first snow day. He loved it. I think that maybe we loved it even more. Its amazing seeing things through your children's eyes ~ droll and common things get exciting again. I was a little giddy getting him ready to get into the snow.

Nate and I are pretty much on the same page with the whole parenting thing in general. There have been a few things that we came into our marriage with a different perspective or background on ~ He was raised Catholic, me Non Denominational. He is a Jets fan, me an Eagles fan. Those things have been worked out very smoothly....... We just discovered another difference. Nate calls sledding "Sleigh Riding". I (like the rest of the world) call it "sledding" (to me the term "sleigh" denotes horses and jingle bells and maybe even Santa) . Anyone else out there call it "Sleigh Riding"? Input?

One little finger

This is the conversation round the house the past two days with Nate up in Boston.

"ah dat?"
A balloon! Isnt it pretty?

"ah dat"?
That's your lunch that Mommy is making (Yes, I am ashamed to admit that I have become like T.O and talk about myself in the third person all too frequently. Gag)

"AH DAT?!?!"
Thats your lunch that is cooling off, hang on, you can eat it in just a second ~ **Blows on food until feeling lightheaded and starting to see stars trying to get it to cool off faster**
(I swear I need to invent a "reverse microwave" ~ something that quickly cools off the food that I cook Luke so that Little Starving Sir Impatient can eat it sooner)

"Ah Dat?"
Thats Mommy's glass of water.

"Ah Dat"............."Ah Dat?".........."Ah Dat?"

The power of that little pointer finger! I love it that he is curious about his world, but today I literally must have said "thats a balloon" no less than 40 times. Not kidding. And we were at playgroup and running errands for a good bit of the day! I'm secretely hoping that they all deflate and we come home to a housefull of shriveled sad little mylar heaps when we get back.

We leave tomorrow for our last little fling before we settle in to await our new arrival. Three days down in VA. I believe that the last time we had the little guy down there we were on our way to Norfolk for a Rugby tournament and Luke was about 7 weeks old or so. Maybe he was older, I forget. I DO remember it was going to be our very first time staying in a hotel. I was so nervous, just the unknown of it all.... What if he cries at night and the people in the room next to ours get angry? What if he is unhappy? How do I nurse every 3 hours on a 7 hour trip in the car etc etc.....
I realize now that just as you get the hang of one thing, things change. Breastfeeding was easy for us, but you still have to learn how/when to do it all. How or when to pump, introducing a bottle etc etc..... that segued into introducing solids and all of the "rules" around that.....then with this pregnancy we had to introduce formula around 10 months......so I had to get used to that. Mixing it up, figuring out quantities, and how to cart it around, to leave the country with a formula drinking baby etc etc......

Now comes the "whole milk challenge". Luke is weaned. He has joined the world of the non babyfood eating non formula drinking people. So now I have to learn how to travel like that. Im admittedly weird about what he eats. He has only ever had organic milk (The hormones freak me out. I don't want my son to have boobs. Seriously. If your kid does not drink organic milk I am not saying that he will have boobs. This is just a weird theory of mine about cows and milk and estrogen. Its a throwback to the hippy thing. Please allow me this one little paranoid indulgance). I make all of his meals. I'm weird! And now for 3 days I feel at the mercy of restaurants and hotels. Deep breath. Learning curve, learning curve.

"Ah dat"?

Thats Mommy packing up milk and food as though they dont have it in Virginia.....because Mommy is a little crazy.........

More nudity

I just can't resist bringing my camera into the bathroom with this little guy lately. All of that delightful roly poly pink cheeked baby~flesh all in one place.

I need a name for my unborn child. We are still very undecided on boys names and its killing me. Should we have a daughter, her name will be Julia. Should we have a son, we are in trouble. Input?

The short list includes :

Brody
Ryan
Jake (does this sound way too much like Luke or is it just me???)
Chase
?
??
and
???.

Argh.

Good doctors appointment today. On the cusp of 36 weeks and going strong.

Luke is ONE

I think that I have been putting off this post. I can't believe that my little guy is already one. I'm living in this strange emotional overload land ~ reminiscing about "this time last year" for the past month now, and thinking about "this time next month" ~ running the emotional rollercoaster between missing my tiny newborn Luke, to loving the big strong funny toddler that he has become, to anticipating just who will be joining our family in a few short weeks. I understand that I am having a baby, but to date, all I know of having a baby is having Luke. Its hard to fathom that a different baby, a Non-Luke baby, will be born very shortly. I have no idea if that makes any sense or not, but its how I feel.

Luke had a fabulous birthday. His actual birthday (Wednesday) was spent alone with me all morning as Nate was down in DC. I made him a special banana waffle breakfast with fruit and syrup. The dog loved it. (Have I mentioned the special joy that Luke gets from sharing his food with the Dog? Something about sitting up high in his highchair pelting the ground and the dog with food seems to give Luke some sort of God complex as he bestows his wealth of food upon the lowly plebes below him). We had to skip playgroup, which made me sad as it was his birthday ~ but coming off of the illness streak we had been on I just really felt the need to let his little body recover without introducing any new illnesses. (Every gathering of small children is simply an experament in germ warfare this time of year, in my opinion). We were sad to miss out on seeing all of our friends on his birthday. Anyway. Nate came home to see his little guy that afternoon, and Luke opened his presents that night. I was a weepy mess as the night went on....thinking of being in labor and his birth. One year already! My little guy.

His birthday party was on Saturday. Ever the showman, Luke LOVED being the center of attention and played the perfect host to the 30 people we had at the house. He loved seeing all of his grandparents, and cousins and Aunts and Uncles in one place. As you can see from the pics above, his cake was a huge success. I could go on and on, but Nate is impatiently awaiting me in the living room so that we can hang out before he leaves for Boston tomorrow. Thanks to all who came to the party ~ Luke (and I) love you like mad and cant even imagine our lives without all of your love and support!

Sock it to me

Luke is a great helper. He loves to "help" with all sorts of mundane household tasks ~ Like unrolling papertowels, making toilet paper mountains on the floor, pulling out and inspecting each and every piece of tupperware that I own, taste testing different varieties of dog food, and performing random safety testing of our kitchen drawers by pulling them out and sitting inside of them. One of his greatist joys is "helping" me fold the laundry. The dryer is Luke's blushing bride ~ the recipient of countless wet Luke kisses as she spins her day away drying our clothing. My laundry baskets double as sleds, wagons, and general "great things to sit in/on/around". The clothing that they contain, straight out of the warm lovin dryer, is enough to send Luke into a lustful frenzy ~ Running around the upstairs hallway happily screeching and waving clothing around like a tiny cheerleader with pom poms on some sort of illegal substance. Cute, funny, etc......but not so much when its the already folded clothing that he attacks.

This morning I was trying to get a load of laundry folded when I came up with a brilliant game. It's amazingly simple in concept. It's free. It only requires two socks. Put the socks on the hands of the baby ~ and watch the fun unfold! Baby cant grab anything! Folded clothes are safe! Baby commences to run around the upstairs totally amazed that his hands are somehow there....yet, not there at the same time. Gosh I'm getting good at this mothering thing. It's all about imposing your will and making it seem fun at the same time :)

Love and stuff.

So. I don't even know where to start. Bullet points are always good.

* Please refer to my previous post about Luke eating eggs, and my prior post about all those hippy years. Combine the two into me now having a microwave, deciding to cook Luke's egg in it, and creating an egg explosion. Literally. IN. MY. FACE. Burnt my forehead. Me a screamin, (then a cryin), Nate a runnin, Luke a laughin, egg everywhere. I have a lot to catch up on.... that decade or so without a microwave while the rest of you all were getting good at it really put me behind. No one told me about the explosion phenomina associated with microwaves. I now distrust it and am punishing it by not using it for a while.

* Our anniversary was Fabu. Being married to my best friend is pretty fantastic.

* Luke had his first "serious" fever. (No, thats not a medical term, thats a Mom term....but when I took his temp at 2 am and it read 104.2 I wanted to scream "are you SERIOUS?" and run him directly to the emergency room....but of course better logic prevailed and instead we brought the little critter into our room to sleep on Daddy's chest ~ first thing in the AM we took him to the Dr's where they proclaimed him the proud owner of TWO infected, bulging ears. Ugh, bulging. Armed with antibiotics, we left him in Dr. Mom Mom's care as we left for our first overnight without the baby since his birth 363 days ago.

*Luke gave us a FANTASTIC anniversary present by sleeping from 8 pm to 8 am for Mom Mom despite the wretched ears. I was so relieved, having been fearing the worst.

*We had a wonderful romantic getaway downtown ~ From the moment that we were greeted with the house's finest "sparkeling ginger ale" for the pregnant Mama at check in, to the goodbye of delicious hot chocolate handed to us as the valet brought our car, it was all perfect. I literally got the single best massage of my life, thanks to Dan at the spa at the Ritz. If anyone is pregnant, or gets pregnant, or just wants one hell of a great massage, go see Dan. He was uber gay and sweetly flaky (i.e, he told me all about the "male energy" he was getting from the baby, whose favorite color is green, who likes cheese and onions (!?!?!?!) and who thinks that Travis is an okay name but he really likes EVAN. I could go on and on, and, really , that alone deserves its whole own post, but I simply don't have time). Anyway, this reminds me of a public service announcement that I have meant to make for a long time now. If you are pregnant, if you know anyone who is pregnant, get (or get them via gift certificate) PRENATAL MASSAGES! I am so lucky to have a sweet thoughtful and generous husband who buys me gift certificates for a mad amount of prenatal massages at the beginning of my pregnanty, and I 100% credit them with keeping me happy, sane, and relatively comfortable throughout my pregnancy. They are entirely worth every penny. Guys, they also mean that your wife will both love you more, and bug you less for back rubs.

* Beyond just knowing who and where Mom, Dad, and the dog are, Luke has also ascertained the location of some "Parts". He can find with a starteling degree of accuracy where my Nose and Mouth are. He isn't quite as confident with locating his own, but hey, one has to start somewhere.

* He has also learned where "the baby" is. I can ask him to "give the baby a kiss" and he will come running over, lift up my shirt, and start kissing my belly. Pics above. This is now suddenly accompanied by a war whoop, he "sings" while putting his mouth on and off of my belly, and sometimes while hitting my belly. He is either a very old soul and doing some sort of Native American blessing ritual over his new sib, or he is using fierce jedi mind tricks to intimidate this baby into staying put in utero so as to not disturb the pretty sweet set up Luke has as "only child". Whether pure and spiritual, cunning and shrewd, or simply exuberant, it's all pretty freakin cute. I have to get it on video as it is quite a spectacle.

* I am so emotional and nostalgic. I can't stop thinking about "this time last year" ~ Those very last few days of pregnancy before my little joy came into the world. I can't believe that it has been a year. I can't believe that we are about to experience life's greatest blessing again, in so few weeks. Much to be thankful for!

Baby Butt

Its not really a blog until it includes naked baby butt. This is Luke running away with his diaper tonight after dinner. I have a ton to catch up on, meant to do it tonight but it just aint happenin. Enjoy.

Superbowl Sunday

Luke has has a lot of firsts this week.

*First plate of scrambled eggs. We took him to the Classic Diner for Nate's "After birthday breakfast" and ordered the little guy some eggs, ham and toast. He ate with a gusto. Eggs are one of the "wait till a year" foods, so I was happy that he tolerated them well and enjoyed them as they make for an easy breakfast to add to our yogurt/toast/fruit/waffles/ lineup. I'M bored with his breakfasts, I can only imagine how he feels.
*First birthday party (Happy birthday Zach!). He loved the hat and found it especially funny when Mom was wearing one. He also loved the cake. As you know, Luke has two parents who made/make a pretty decent living in sales. His mad sales skills are already showing ~ His new gig when he either sees or tastes food that he wants is to lean in very close to it while saying "Mmmmmmmm" as loud as he can. Its very effective. How can I resist a fat little finger pointed at my food coupled with a transfixed joyfilled gaze? He pointedly looks from the food to my eyes, to the food......you get the picture. We are officially done with babyfood, I think that its been a full week now since he has had any. Luke is becoming such a....kid all of a sudden.
*First NBA Game! He saw the Sixers (who totally stink) lose by 2 in a very entertaining game against Orlando. This pic is of him sitting on Dad's lap eating his first Chicky n Petes. He loved the game, and spent the whole time pointing at everything..... all of the lights mesmerized him and he paid special attention to the scantily clad "dance team" or whatever the half naked 19 year olds are called these days. That made me nervous and his Daddy proud :). His new nickname is "The Mayor". Luke seems to feel that it is very important that every person around him not only make eye contact with him, but is then joyously greeted like a long lost friend.
*First "incident report" at the gym. Monkey boy decided that at not even a year he was old enough to climb up the little plastic sliding board. Apparently he isnt.......they say he bit it, although without the incident report I would never have known it, somehow that precious little face and head escaped unscathed. I have a gut feeling that there will be more "incident reports" and even some ER visits in our future as I remember back to my brothers childhood and hear Nates stories of growing up with his 3 older brothers. Luckily this entre into the world of injury was painless, for me anyhow. He seemed to have forgotten all about it by the time that we picked him up.
*First Superbowl today! We are heading down to Pete and Lex's for some poker and great food ~ I cant wait. Luke is rooting for the Giants just like his Grandpa. Nate and I are both depressed at the fact that our teams didnt even make it into the postseason, so today rooting, not really for the Giants, but AGAINST the Pat's.
*The whole milk has been bought and tomorrow morning starts Luke's foray into the wonderful world of milk drinkers. I am nervous about it and I don't really even know why. I just so so so hope that we dont have to deal with any allergy issues and that the transition from forumla to milk is an easy one for us. I plan to make it slowly as I still have one whole can of formula left.

The other pic is just one that I find very funny ~ Considering that my husband and my son are two of the biggest clowns I know I had to laugh out loud when I saw the serious faces in this pic.

Anyway, enjoy the superbowl, all. May you all gain a few lbs, enjoy the commercials, and hopefully see a much better game than the spread seems to indicate that we are going to see.