john's mom works

seriously? every time i look at this picture i start giggling all over again. that hat! his pose! he looks like he's SINGING! sometimes just when i feel like i am stuck in a rut, suddenly there's ACTION. i've been officially unemployed for a month tomorrow. and if you've ever been unemployed and job searching, you know it's a pretty craptastic process. you send out a million resumes, hear back on maybe three, two of which tell you "we've already found a more qualified candidate," repeat ad nauseum. i've been exceptionally blessed to find that i know some amazing people willing to go to bat for me, so i have that going for me. but as the days poured into weeks, the initial onrush of possibilities slows down and ...  you ... wait ... and wait ... and then. last week i had a couple of interviews. i have a second interview for one position tomorrow. i have an interview with another company monday. slowly but surely, this process is worki...

captain undies insists on wearing not one but two pairs on his head. last night when we were heading towards bedtime for john, he suddenly became enamored with what had just come on the tv -- dancing with the stars. he immediately wanted to dance with daddy, asking, "where's my tutu, daddy? i need my tutu!" daddy convinced him no tutu was necessary, and they danced around the living room to the end of the current song. then i got a little spin around the room with my favorite little dancer, too. maybe the kiddo is psychic, because today we got some news worth dancing about! a little over a week ago, the maternal fetal specialist sent my blood off to a lab in wisconsin to do a test that is uncommon enough here in the u.s. that only one or two labs do it -- in fact, the hospital didn't even have the protocol for sending a sample to this lab, so they had to research it to figure out what to do, and i went back a couple days later to have the blood drawn. t...

sleeping peacefully despite the MASSIVE quantity of animals in his crib. and the santa pjs. shush, they still fit. reasons i might be crazy: #1 i love to take pictures of john when he's sleeping. don't get me wrong - i don't interrupt him in the night to creepily snap stalker pics of my sleeping love. but if he's sleeping late in the morning, and it's about time for him to wake up anyway, i might just surreptitiously mamarazzi my way into his room for a little peek. he's so peaceful and sweet and still, i just can't stand it. reasons i might be crazy: #2 since i've been unemployed, i've been seeking out all sorts of ways to save money. one of the obvious places to look was at my cosmetics -- if you've known me a while, you know i use an awesome botanically based product line that's amazing for my skin and that i love ... but like most things, you pay for that quality. "so, self," i thought to myself, "maybe there are...

ingenuity: fitting two crackers perfectly between the tines of your for so you can eat them at the same time. john has recently started singing songs with us, instead of just by himself or wanting us to sing them. i think the first one was the til-then-obnoxious "i love you" song from barney. i've always hated that song. but somehow, delivered in a sweet little sincere boy voice, it suddenly is pretty freaking great. we progressed to the alphabet song, which john can now sing just about perfectly. he sometimes skips t-u-v, but he mostly sings it along with us beautifully. same with twinkle twinkle little star (tho in john's rendition, it's twinkle little little star). but just the other night, something happened that was pretty amazing for me. john requested, and then started singing along with, one of the lullabies i wrote for him. it shouldn't surprise me that he has learned these songs, since i've sung then to him almost every single nigh...

mommy, i have an idea! john ... john is a talker. it's pretty much a running dialogue everywhere we go. he's got something to say, or ask, or point out, about everything. it's actually pretty awesome, and as his vocabulary gets bigger and bigger, he gives us some pretty awesome insights sometimes. and sometimes less so. the last time we took john grocery shopping, it was a looooong trip. we bough a ton of stuff, we went all over the store, we doubled back, and he had to be good for SO long. he was a trooper, only a little bit of fussing, and we made it through almost entirely unscathed. then we were in line at the check out, waiting for the two people ahead of us to get finished so it would be our turn. very enthusiastically (read: not quietly), john exclaims, "mommy, i have an idea!" somewhat exhausted, and hoping for a fascinating commentary from the not-quite-three point of view, i asked,"what's your idea, john?" he lit ...

while we're at it, how 'bout a little baby #2 update? we saw the maternal fetal specialist on thursday of last week. first we visited with the ultrasound tech, and it was actually way cool - they had brand new fancy ultrasound equipment, so the company's reps were still there showing them how it all worked ... soooooo we got a million pictures of this little babe. i was at 12 weeks 2 days when they did the ultrasounds, so i didn't expect to see much - but with the new equipment, which is apparently pretty high fallutin', we could see all four chambers of the heart beating, we could see the sections of the brain, we could see the bones in the hand and the long bones of the legs and arms. we counted two hands, two feet, and two kidneys, among other cool stuff. (no gender yet, be patient!) (i am interrupting this baby report to tell a very awesome story: john just came to get me, brought me back to the big boy room - which is still not his room yet - and said, ...

one cool cat in his daddy's sunglasses today, i thought i'd give you a glimpse at what school mornings look like for john. we're going to do this in a series of pictures. right off the bat, though, i am going to cheat: that picture above is actually from on the way to a class at church, not technically school ... but the sun was bright, and he asked if he could wear daddy's sunglasses. and then he just looked too ridiculously adorable for me to not snap a pic. so there's john, SORT of on the way to school, looking like the coolest cat you've ever met. nothing like a little doc seuss to ease the morning commute one day last week, john woke up, took a shower with me (a prospect that used to terrify him but he did great!), and then spent the rest of the morning while i got ready not watching his iguy (or fussing to watch his iguy), not playing with his train table or other toys, but reading books in his room. it was so quiet i went to check on him right be...

i love a kid who, before his third birthday, recognizes that fridays are cause for dancing. this morning we put one of john's "toddler tunes" cds on and he was listening in the living room, but he got tired of it and brought me another cd - the "anxious dog music" cd we tried for buddy back at the height of his craziness. "mommy, i want to listen to DOG music!" said my gleeful little bug. so i put it in the cd player, and the twinkly "calming" piano started. and john said, "i want to dance, but i need my red tutu!" you know i am not a mom built to deny a boy his tutu. so pjs and tutu and all, we danced around the living room for a while. we did spins, and leaps, and bows. after a little while, i looked at the clock. "mama's gotta go get ready, my love," i said reluctantly. "we have to get you to school." he looked at me innocently and said, "i wear my tutu to school?" i talked him o...

chipper little fellow. when i got john out of bed this morning, i asked him if he would hold me for a minute. he said, "but i awake, mommy!" i said, "yes, baby, but mommy just wants to sit in this chair and snuggle for a sec, even though we're awake, is that ok?" and he snuggled up on me and said he loved me. and i knew, right then and there, that thursday would be a better day. and better it was. first of all, john was in a reasonably good mood in the morning, which is not a given with our not-a-morning-person family. he was a little grumpy to daddy but they made up before daddy had to head to work. then our ride to school was full of singing songs and talking about what he would do that day (intermixed with requests that ms. meka give him a poptart when he arrives at school). he plonked down for his breakfast with a smile and a goodbye kiss and mama was off to the doctor. i was oddly nervous going to the doctor - there was no reason to believe a...

had a little too much fun at the zoo. normally, i'd lead with a too-cute-to-stand picture of john instead of a face-screwed-up-fat-tears picture, but that pic sorta sums up my mood today so i'll run with it. i haven't written in so long because, frankly, there's just been a lot going on. last tuesday (a week ago yesterday) i went into work to be told that the new owner of the mall had eliminated my position. i had about 30 minutes to clean out my office and i was gone. i had sort of seen it coming -- in my interview with the new company a week before, the lady consistently referred to "whoever handles the marketing," which hardly inspired confidence that that would be me -- but i thought i'd have a little more time before they made any big changes.  so on a random tuesday morning, i found myself with a lot of free time on my hands. and surprisingly, i felt pretty ok about the whole thing. i am sad, sure, to leave a place that i've inves...