it's hard to be unhappy

snuggle party!

last night, i was in a little bit of a funk. no particular reason, just feeling emotionally iffy. it happens sometimes to all of us, i suppose. my husband wound up having to be out late for a meeting, so it probably didn't help that he wasn't home, but i was already feeling somewhat yuk.

fortunately for me, it is nearly impossible to be unhappy around my child. we had a lovely snuggle party on the couch while we watched the olympics, and it was so good for my psyche.

perhaps the highlight was a wonderful game we've invented together. here's how it works:

i shout, "i love john!" as loud as i can.

john giggles, and shouts back, "i love mommy!"

i shout back again, "i love john!"

he shouts back again, "i love mommy!"

repeat ad nauseum - or at least until the next synchronized diving event comes on. (john calls it "jumping" and loves to watch it.)

this morning, the snuggle-buggy-ness continued, as he bundled up on the couch with a blanket and watched "today" - because swimming was on. we played the i love you game again in the car, and he happily skipped (literally) off to school.

depression is not even possible with this kid around.

Comments

on lullabies

i am not a singer. if you've sat behind me in church, you know this to be true. (and i'm sorry.) a musician, yes. a singer no. and yet i find myself singing to john almost nonstop. and the beauty is, he seems to actually like it! (there's no accounting for taste. he also thinks i'm the most beautiful woman in the world. i'm no ogre, but i'm certainly not winning any beauty contests outside of my son's brain!) and actually, i've written some lullabies for john that are pretty nice. and it made me think: did your parents sing to you? do you remember what they sang, and better yet, if you have kids, do you sing the same songs to them? reply in the comments!

i'm furberizing my baby

ok, let's get this straight right off the bat: i don't know if i am literally following dr. furber's methods of sleep training. there are so many versions out there. but saying we're furberizing john is WAY more fun than saying that i'm letting him cry his little lungs out in an attempt to teach him to sleep on his own. it's night two of our efforts. he went right to sleep last night, which was great. and he slept for 5.25 hours (!!!!) before waking up at 2:30 a.m. when he woke up crying, i let him cry for 5 minutes before going in to soothe him. (the soothing barely works at all, by the way, but it's what i'm supposed to do ...) then i let him cry for 10 more minutes before going in to soothe him again. next on the agenda was a 15 minute stretch of crying - but he fell asleep after 8 minutes. so a sum total of 22 minutes of crying. not too bad for night two. i've heard night three can be the worst ... so we'll hold on to our hats tonight. mean

home

annapolis rock 1988 thirty years ago, my family moved from denton, tx, to a tiny rural town in the mountains of maryland. i remember being sad as we sold our things (we were packing everything into two old cars to drive north) and actually crying over the sale of our washing machine. transition does strange things to kids' emotions. yet i remember arriving, excited, into this strange green mountainous place, and i remember even more anticipation as we found a home ("the old taylor place") and got ready for school to start at smithsburg elementary. third grade -- the same grade john starts this school year. i remember meeting my first friend on a dusty dirt road - the "alley" that ran behind the high school tennis courts and athletic fields from our home just at the town's outskirts to her home just outside downtown. (if you've never known a small town downtown, that's probably hard to envision). it was an amazing place to be a child. 199

john's mom works

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