Mommy's boy all the way

The sky was very threatening this morning and clearly it was a day to spend indoors, sooooo off to the outlet mall we went. Brendan lasted in the stroller approximately 5 minutes and after that he was either dragging me along in his wake or I was dragging him. This boy does not know how to just walk, lol. He had a great time touching every item he could get his hands on and inhaled a huge slice of pizza in nothing flat. He also entertained everyone in Victoria's Secret. He grabbed handfuls of thong undies and shouting through the store "I'm picking out underwear for Mommy." He lay down on the floor and wouldn't get up. I told him I was going to count to 5 and by the time I got to 4 I leaned down to start to pull him up and he told me "No, you didn't get to 5." But the best was when one of the salesgirls came over and told him he was very cute. He gave one of his usual friendly responses of "No." She said to him "Can't I say hi to you?" and he replied, "No, I love Mommy". Now you can't beat that kind of faithfulness can you?



I guess Brendan was taking a lesson from the birds we saw in the grass around the outlet mall. They were right up close to the highway and road into the mall, and they had little babies following them!! They were just so adorable, all going together in a row after the Mommy bird. I'm such a city girl I don't usually see sights like this. They look like ducks but I'm not sure what kind of birds they are, but they love their Mommy and so does my big boy.

Color on my pants

On a lighter note, be wary if you hear the above statement issuing from your child as you assume he's sitting playing nicely on the couch.



And Oxyclean is a beautiful thing, lol.

Today was a nice day. I had already decided to take the day off from work for a "Me" day. I used to try and take at least one day a month where I would take at least a few hours off from work and just go shopping, go to a movie, or whatever, just something that was all about me, not work or child. I hadn't had a Me day since October I think all of my time off being about sick child and doctor appts. I dropped Brendan off at my parents, slept in a little and then went shopping. For me. I bought clothes for me and I didn't buy anything for Brendan. Totally foreign concept. And screw it I ate a whole plate of onion rings. If there's one thing yesterday taught me, life is too damn short to not enjoy yourself. And then I went home and hugged my child and watched him decorate himself and the carpet with Alphabet soup. A good day.

Walking and walking

Today I had an inkling of what it must be like to have your heart ripped out of your chest. One of my co-workers, one of the sweetest, most loveliest woman you could ever know, her 17 year old son died yesterday. She was also a single mom and her son was her whole life. He had been ill in February and again in March, but this was a complete shock apparently. They aren't sure why he died and will probably have to do an autopsy. This child was her entire life. How do you go from being a parent to suddenly not being one? To having a life, an identity that has been built on being someone's mother and then he's just gone. I've known her for over 10 years and I can't remember a morning when she didn't call Sean before he went to school. Even a 17 year old senior in high school, she needed to talk to him every morning and he needed to hear from mom. Here he was on the cusp of manhood, his whole life ahead of him with so much promise, and just gone. And god help me I keep having horrible visions of this being myself and Brendan. Ohmigod, how do you live with that kind of pain? How?

I went out for my regular walk at lunchtime today and I was like a woman possessed. I think the sheer physical sensations of getting out and moving and feeling the wind, the sun, it was a good tonic. Alot of the time I have no particular destination when I go walking and today I just found myself walking down Houston Street. I've walked as far as the Bowery before but this time I just kept on walking and walking. Without realizing it I was on the Lower East Side. Something told me to keep going and for some reason I wanted to walk all the way to the East River. I work only a couple of blocks from the Hudson so this would mean I walked across Manhattan completely from West to East. I actually made it to a few blocks from the river when I realized I'd have to cross the FDR Drive to get to the river that I really didn't care about seeing and I had already walked for about a half hour and needed to get back. Really, I just wanted to keep walking and never stop except to go home and hold my baby in my arms.

Tuesday ramblings

This morning I went to the post office and to CVS. On the way back from CVS I felt someone give me a push. I turned around and there was nobody there. Literally nobody at all around me. I walked about half a block and it happened again. I felt someone's hand in the small of my back give me a little push. And again I looked around and no one was there. It was soooo strange. I'm a skeptic by nature and don't really believe in the supernatural but I had this feeling like I was supposed to hurry up and get back to my office right away. I even thought maybe there was something wrong there that I needed to be there for. Nothing was wrong, so who knows. I talked to my mom and she thinks it was my guardian angel protecting me from something. My supervisor at work who believes in very strongly in the supernatural and having connections to the "spirit world" and even black magic, really was interested in this and was telling me a slew of stories about freaky experiences that he's had. He even called him mom to get her interpretation of the pushes, "she's Puerto Rican and knows all about this stuff", lol.

So an eerie start to the day. Actually I had a brain fart for the start of my day. I sent Brendan over to my parents house without a pair of shoes. I swear this is the first time I've done this since he's been wearing shoes. My mom not wanting to go with the white trash look had to call me and ask me where I keep the shoes so she could a run to my house (and damn without me having a chance to clean the joint up before she got there.

So my boy got shod, and was in a pretty good mood when we got home later. First off dinner was pizza, food you're *supposed* to eat with your hands, ooh yeah, that's what food is supposed to be. But he was so cute showing me all his finger letters. He can make A through J, L through P and T through X with his fingers. There is just no opportunity that this child won't take to make it all about the letters. He also is having so much fun with the potty chair. No not in the intended manner, although my mom and I have set next Monday as D-Day for him sitting on the potty at set times of the day, whether he produces anything or not. He loves to pull it over to the living room window and look out. Today he was standing there in that late afternoon/early evening sunlight, shining and beautiful and trying to catch the sunlight with his hands. I started to tear up because he was so beautiful standing there and so sweet and innocent. These are the types of moments that I imagined when I would dream about being a mom.

And there are the laughs too. He got into bed tonight for us to read his books and out of nowhere starts saying "My dick, my dick. No more dicks, where are the dicks?" and laughs hysterically. Uh, what was that all about? I'm sure he didn't mean what it sounded like he meant, that he was trying to say something else, but I can just imagine how well that statement would have gone over in preschool, lol.

The highs after the lows

In comparison to dinner last night, chocolate pudding affair was a joy. I got Brendan a special dish to use and he was sitting at his little table eating a pork chop I cut up and peas. He ate maybe a quarter of the chop and one or two peas. He would barely touch the fork to the chop and would whine when the food wouldn't miraculously spear itself on it. He insisted on trying to eat the peas with the fork instead of the spoon. Then the few times he tried the spoon he would turn it over so the peas would fall off or he'd just fling them. Mostly he'd bang the spoon and fork or throw them. He'd try to get up and play or run around. At one point he was twisting on the chair so much that he and it fell over. He refused to get up or pick the chair up so I picked it up and put him right back on it, so he deliberately fell over with it. Eventually I just lost it and told him to get up and go upstairs, I was so annoyed. I also took away all the little bowls with snacks I usually keep around (cereal, crackers, etc.) so if he wanted to eat he'd have to eat real food. But he never mentioned food the rest of the evening.

But today was far better. For lunch I gave him a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, carrots and mixed fruit. He hasn't eaten a sandwich for at least a year but on the way home from Target this morning he asked me for a peanut butter cup (uh no, I never give my child candy, lol). I told him no but that he could have peanut butter and jelly for lunch and damned if he didn't eat the whole sandwich. He ate most of the carrots, with his hands yes but not that big a deal. The fruit he needed to use the spoon and he did try. He's still so uncoordinated, uh must be the donor's genes there yeah, and not used to using the spoon. So I guided him part of the time but the last few spoonfuls he managed completely on his own. Okay he threw the spoon after he was done and his milk cup too, but minor issues.

For dinner I decided to play it safe and make one of his favorites, alphabet pasta. There was one ear-piercing scream when he realized I expected him to do it himself and he started to cry. My heart started to break when he started saying "Stop, stop, stop, no crying". He was trying to get himself to not cry, bless his little heart. I helped him with the fork for the first few bites and then he did it all by himself. He had such a good time since he had to identify each letter before he ate it. Hmmmm, letters and food together, what could be better? I swear he sat there for almost an hour eating that darn pasta. So after today's success, I'm encouraged. I wonder how he'll be for my mom tomorrow, but hey I'll be at work, lol.

Oh, and laugh at me for this, but I put him back in the highchair. He hasn't sat in it for over a year, but I figured he'd do better if he couldn't get up and have playtime. He can transition back to a chair when he's got the feeding part down.

Peanut butter and jelly time -



Alphabet pasta and broccoli, yum!! -

Toddler travails

Or is it preschooler travails? I guess at almost 3, he's more of a preschooler now than toddler, not that you'd know it by some of the meltdowns he had today.

Monday is D-Day for the master plan for Brendan to feed himself totally. We've been doing it in bits in pieces since last weekend but we're going cold turkey on Monday. He is not happy about this. Can I restate that, he is NOT HAPPY about this. I think it's more than just his usual resistance to change and that he just loves being fed. If he doesn't see any benefit to an activity there is no way he'll do it unless cajoled, wheedled and pushed into it. He did pretty well at lunch where I cut up his food and he used a fork to eat most of it himself, but oh dear goddess the screams to wake the dead when I suggested he use the spoon himself to feed himself the chocolate pudding he requested as a snack this afternoon. I was very proud of myself, very calm during his rather crazed and intense meltdown, repeatedly telling him that if we don't like something we don't scream, hit, etc. Also that it can be lots of fun to do things for himself and that he has to try. Eventually we worked it out where I fed him first, then we did it together and then he did the rest. But we were both so knocked out over this and just chilled on the couch afterwards.

We also had a smaller trip to meltdown city at the library. It was Brendan's first time there. I hadn't wanted to take him until I was sure he wouldn't rip pages in the books. And the branch near me has been closed for renovations for over a year, unreal isn't it? He loved it there and couldn't get enough of the books, but he just didn't get the concept of speaking quietly in the library. He was so excited and shouting and running around. Eventually we had to leave because he was disturbing people after I had asked him for the zillionth time to whisper or speak quietly. Not a very pretty picture when we left as he did not exactly agree with our departure. And this was after Brendan told a little boy at the restaurant at lunch "Be quiet, that's rude" when he was running around.

Dinner is in about a half hour. Have mercy.

These feet were made for walking

After dropping and breaking two of them, I got a new pedometer. I loooove the pedometer. It gives me such an incentive to really get my body moving. Yes, in a way it feeds into my weight obsessiveness, but hey if it gets me to exercise more that's never a bad thing. I go for a long walk every day at lunch when I'm at work and I try to break the number of steps I took the day before. Today I walked all the way down to Chinatown and back, almost 9000 steps!!! And they say you only actually need 10,000 a day. I like to get at least 25,000 steps a day on work days and even more on the weekends when I'm chasing the rugrat all over.

And yesterday was so damn beautiful, in the 80s and sunny. When I got home from work, I said to Brendan, let's go for a walk. We walked all over the neighborhood for about 45 minutes, examining every tree, flower, sign. We did have to walk around the "yucky dirt" that Brendan made a point to avoid, lol. And dinner was late, bathtime was a rush, but who cares it was fun!!

The Big Anniversary

Today is 5 years that I finished the big weight loss. Sometimes I'm amazed that I did it, that I stuck to it anyway. I had been pretty skinny through high school and when I first started college. I started to put the weight on in college but still not too bad, around the 170s-180s. Then in the next few years after that my weight just kept going up and up and up. I wanted so much to take it off and to feel like my old self again but it just always seemed like such a daunting task. Honestly it was a health issue that finally got me dieting. To get rid of it I cut out every bit of sugar and any kind of unrefined grain. By the time I got everything back under control, I had lost 25 lbs and figured why not keep going. I'm so so glad I did it. My health is so much better. My cholesterol is down, my blood pressure is down. I have PCOS and was completely anovulatory then so I wouldn't have my precious son if I hadn't lost the weight. I know it would be so easy to put it all back on again. I've fluctuated up and down since then. I gained and lost 30 lbs a year and a half ago, and I'm getting near the end of taking off the 20+ lbs I put on since last summer. I guess I'll probably do this for the rest of my life, but I'm okay with that. The only other thing I'd really love would be a tummy tuck. When I lost the weight, the skin never bounced back. And having a child after that hasn't helped, but that's something for another day.

Here are some before and after pictures. The first is from March of 1999 not long before I started the diet. The second is May of 2000, after I finished the diet. The third is yesterday with my favorite guy.







Edited to add - The big anniversary was commemorated by a celebratory free cone of chocolate therapy ice cream at Ben & Jerry's followed by a trip to Ann Taylor Loft where I bought two pairs of pants and a skirt. I swear it felt almost illicit, chocolate nirvana and new clothes for me and not Mr. B.

What am I going to do with him?

We had been counting up to a million, 1-10, then by 10s to 100, then 100s, 1000s, 10,000s, 100,000s to a million. Brendan would always stop at a million but on Saturday he wanted to go on, we did 10 millions, 100 millions, billions, trillions, quadrillions, quintillions, all the way up to 40 sextillion before something distracted him. Yesterday, he was in the swing at the playground and next to him was a little girl about a year younger and her mother and young teenage sister were talking to her. The sister was asking the little girl what her birthday was and Brendan throws out June 19th and they laughed. He got encouraged and he just chatted away and charmed them and the sister commented "He's so smart". I never know what to say when people say that. I don't want to seem like I'm some strutting mother, so I think I said "Oh he and talks all the time" as if that ameliorated his being smart. Today he wanted to play with play doh, which means I make things he tells me to make. Of course I had to make the whole alphabet, the numbers up to 30 (he stops at 30 because that where I drew the line the last time we did this) and then shapes from a circle to an octogon. He's constantly stopping to spell something or ask "What spells XXXX" and then tells you.

This little boy is so smart it scares me sometimes. Honestly he keeps making some leap of comprehension that I'm blown away by. I have been doing alot of searching but I wonder where will I be able to find a decent education for him. I recently saw what is considered to be a standard kindergarten curriculum and Brendan at 2 years and 10 months is already doing everything in it with the exception of the writing. And he still has another year of preschool and then pre-k before kindergarten. How many times can he do the alphabet before he'll lose interest in school?

He's such a happy little boy and doesn't realize at this point how different he is. And his differences are compounded by his lack of social skills. He's been at preschool part-time since August. He's progressed alot in terms of relating to the other children and according to his teachers he plays with them now, but he's still so socially unaware. He doesn't seem to know how to relate to other kids alot of the time. I guess most 2 and 3 year olds don't really care that decagon has 10 sides or any of the other things that often interest Brendan. The only child he really seems to want to play with and plays well with is his cousin Kyle, maybe because Kyle is very smart too? We're going to Sesame Place in June with another SMC and her 3.5 year old daughter. I really wonder how Brendan will do relating to another child on a one on one basis for a length of time. I'm hoping it will be a really good experience for him.

Then again, why does a child who can add by 2s, 3s, 5s, 10s, who can tell you odd and even numbers, why can't he eat with a fork or pull his pants down? But he won't go off to college not knowing how to put on his socks, right?

Toddler boot camp and a few laughs

Thursday marked the start of toddler boot camp. The first of the tripartite plan was the transition to the bed which I have to say knock wood has gone more smoothly than I could have imagined. Brendan slept much better this weekend than he did last weekend and he doesn't really seem to miss the crib at all.

The second part of boot camp started today, feeding himself. He honestly prefers it if I spoon everything into his mouth for him. Today when we were out I got him a new Blues Clues spoon and fork. He got so excited and wanted to use them right away. I sat him at his little table and chairs (he normally sits wherever when he eats) and he used a fork for most of the meal which was a bowl of chicken, rice and peas. He's so awkward with the utensils from lack of practice, although he supposedly uses a spoon to eat his cereal at school. I had to keep telling him to put the fork in sideways not straight down to scoop up the food, to keep the "round" side down and to put it straight into his mouth since he tends to turn the utensil over and the food falls off. I'd say he ate about half the food with the fork and the rest with his hands. And I also told him no more feeding him at all by next Monday and no more baby food veggies, only big kid veggies.



Then comes the big one - potty training!!!!! Oh dear goddess, I think I'm feeling sick about that one.

And this boy just cracks me up. Yesterday we were at the playground and there are boxes on the ground for box ball and some say BOX and some say BALL. Brendan read BOX with no problem, but the Ls on BALL where overlapping and if you look at it sideways it looks like an F. So he read it as B-A-F. I said it's ball and he said no it's baf. So I asked him what's a baf and he said "where you get all nice and clean".

Then this morning we went to K-Mart. While we're walking through the store Brendan keeps telling me he wants to see the alligators. I couldn't figure out what he was talking about. When we walk outside the store he pulls me to the next store which is National Wholesale Liquidators and says "There it is, National Wholesale Alligators". lol!!!!

Big boy bed

Well tonight was the night. Goodbye crib and hello big boy bed. The bed is my old one from my parents house and it's been in his room since he was born and he loves to play on it but would never sleep there. I'd been talking to Brendan for awhile about how if the crib broke one day he'd have to sleep in the bed. He's been sleeping in a bed at my parents house for months so I know he's ready. Today I told him the crib was broken and I was going to try and fix it, i.e. I took the crib rail off while he was watching and told him that now it's broken forever.

So now he's in the bed. He was very excited about reading books in there and going to bed. He got a little teary at first and called for me to come back a few times. I went and gave him kisses and then left. And he lay on the pillow under the blankets. And he's barely moved since. It took him awhile to fall asleep, but he'd only said Mommy come back a few times. And he's been sleeping peacefully since. Fx, we have a good night.

At bedtime -



Sleeping boy -

Skinny jeans

I was right, yesterday's weight loss was fleeting at best as my weight zoomed back up today to where it was on Tuesday. But, and this is the important but, I don't care because today I fit into my SKINNY JEANS!!!!!!!!! Happy dance, happy dance!!!!! I haven't worn these since probably last spring. And they fit and I'm so happy today. As it happens I'm fitting back into my skinny jeans at a very interesting time. Tuesday the 19th will be the 5th anniversary of my big weight loss. (It's also free cone day at Ben & Jerry's, hmmmm.....). I just can't believe that even with having been pregnant since then and with some fluctuations, I've kept most of the weight off. So I happily ate my wheaties and skim milk for breakfast and my Smart Ones and navel orange for lunch as I showed off my slimmer tush and basked in the glory of it.

Scale junkies unite

I'm a scale junkie. I just can't help it. I keep saying that I'll stop and just do my weekly weigh-in, but it's like the scale has this inexorable pull for me. And if I don't weigh myself I spend the rest of the day thinking about it and wondering with every morsel of food what effect this will have, since I don't know my weight that day. I know it makes no sense. And knowing my weight doesn't help either. I lost 2 lbs with my weigh-in on Sunday after guzzling all the water and having alot of exercise. I was less active on Sunday but still ate very well, but woke up on Monday morning 1.4 lbs heavier, and was that same weight yesterday. Now I know logically that I didn't eat anything that would have caused a 1.4 lb gain and that it was just a fluctuation, but it was still depressing. And as soon as I see a gain I immediately get into that mindset that I'm not going to lose anymore, that I'm dieting and getting to no benefit, etc. I know it makes no sense. And this morning the 1.4 lbs had disappeared, along with another .8 for good measure. And you'd think I'd enjoy seeing that lower number, but then I say to myself, oh it's just a fluctuation, it will be back up higher tomorrow, don't get too excited.

So I need to break this scale addiction. But I'm scared too. I know me and that I do need a scale to help me regulate my food intake. One of the first things I do when I get into one of those out of control food spirals is to stop weighing myself regularly. But I also know that I can't torture myself like this. The sensible answer seems to be to stick to the weekly weigh-in and let the scale be damned otherwise. But then of course the voice of unreason says to me, what if I happen to weigh in on a fluid retention or higher weight fluctuation day and get depressed because I see a number that's not what I want to see?

I wish I had the fortitude to give up the scale altogether and just focus on eating well and being healthy but I think my body image is so tied into that number I see that it's too radical a change for me to make now.

Now if they could only invent a scale that says okay you weigh XXX lbs, but really you're XXX lbs.

The blue chair

Lesson for the day - we don't hit.
Second lesson for the day - if we hit, we have to sit in the blue chair.
Third lesson - Some two year olds will still hit despite having to do time in the blue chair.

When my mom went to pick up Brendan at preschool this morning she was greeted by a child who flung himself in her arms crying. His teacher Gina said that he'd hit two children, two of the littler ones. This is just so unlike him. He's never hit another child and is usually so well-behaved at school. He had to sit in the "blue chair" and he was very unhappy about it.

Even before I got home my mom had done alot of talking with him and he told me "No more hitting", "we don't hit", "hitting is bad". He also is going to tell Gina the same and he is supposed to say he's sorry to the kids he hit. But then while I was helping get him dressed after his bath the little bugger slapped me on my mouth. I immediately got very stern with him and asked if he wanted to back into the blue chair (conveniently I have a blue easy chair in my living room) and he slapped me again. He immediately got consigned to the chair and during his time there he alternately asked to get down and sit in my lap or squeezed his nipples saying "I have nipples". Finally I asked him why he was in the chair and he told me "no more hitting". I know he knows it's wrong to hit but I have no idea why he's suddenly doing this. I'm thinking he must have been hit by another child at school but it's always next to impossible to get him tot alk about what happens in school. I would like to nip this behavior in the bud though.

I wonder if another color chair would work better?

Monday ramblings

I saw an article today about how almost all salmon that's billed as "fresh atlantic" is actually farm-raised. They had tested salmon from 18 different places and only one actually had real fresh atlantic. Damn. First it was the fat-free (or flat-free as Brendan says) frozen yogurt that's really teeming with fat, or those new low-sugar versions of the cereals with just as much calories. Why can't there just be good tasty food that's labeled properly? That said, damnit I love my PCB mercury-laden salmon. The stuffed salmon at BJs, mmmmm....... Can I just pretend I'm not poisoning my body?

Is there something about me that makes some of the men in my office drawn to me like flies to, well you know. Understand, it's not like this is an inappropriate type of attention, one of the men is more than old enough to be my father, but still they are always there. It wouldn't be so bad if it was just brief little visits, but they'll come over and park themselves to chat for like half an hour at a time. And they're always the same ones who are complaining that they can never get their work done. Well get your @#%#ing butts out of my rather cramped cubicle and get on with it already. After awhile I just turn around and continue with work and they still talk. And if one of my regulars isn't in, one of the others takes up the slack for him. The one guy who I really enjoy chatting with (he has 2 boys of his own and I swear I have better mommy conversations with him than I do with any of the women in my office) was out today and my older gentleman obviously didn't want me to feel the void and I was in my cube 6 times today for a total of about 2 hours. But I guess that's the price I have to pay for being the amazing person that I am, lol.

Oh, and after my 2 lb weight loss yesterday, I put back on 1.4 lbs this morning. Yes, I know I'm not supposed to weigh myself everyday, but I admit it, I'm a scale whore. Here's hoping for a more cooperative scale tomorrow.

Sunscreen is a good idea

And this is why.



Brendan has a little bit of pink on his cheeks and one of his ears is a little red. I'm the lobster woman from Mars. Sunscreen is your friend.

Nature abhors a vacuum

And I think my child is living proof of this. Okay, the tubes are in, the adenoids are out, and he's been infection free for several weeks. So what do I wake up to hearing this morning - croup!! It's been over a year since he had a croup attack. Although I have to say this wasn't nearly as bad as they used to be. In addition to the barky cough, he did have a little trouble breathing, but not like before when he literally couldn't get one breath. And taking him out in the cool air seemed to help, when that hadn't worked the last few times. And a good dose of steroid and a breathing treatment and I swear you'd never know he'd had the attack this morning. And I have to say that he at least was nice enough to wait until about 5:50am to have the attack. Almost all of his previous attacks were either late night or middle of the night. This was actually later in the morning than he'd awoken for the day yesterday. And he has no fever.

But I truly believe that my child's body is just incapable of not harboring either a bacterial or viral infection constantly, lol.

First time blogging

It seemed about time that I entered the world of blogging, so here we go.

Today was a really good day. It started alot earlier than I would have liked with Mr. B awake and chatting away at 5:30am. This a regression since he'd been waking between 6:00-7:00 for quite awhile. When I went to get him I reminded him that when it's dark it's still time to sleep, but he just laughed at me, the little bugger.

We trekked out to Trader Joes, where Brendan refused to ride in the wagon and had a grand time checking out every item in the store. We stopped for frozen yogurt at a little shop nearby called the Rainbow Eatery. They have this fabulous fat free yogurt that tastes sooooo good. Brendan and I shared a cup so hopefully I didn't blow my diet. And speaking of diets, my damned weight has not shifted since last Saturday. I've been the queen of bloat despite guzzling water like I was traversing the Sahara. Today, I managed at least 110-120 oz. This bloat had better be gone tomorrow for my official weekly weigh-in. And I ate really well today and got tons of physical activity so I will be pretty darned pissed off if the scale doesn't show me what I want to see.

Brendan slept about 20 minutes on the way home so I didn't even bother trying for a nap for him. I decided it might be a nice time to take him to Marine Park. This involved a trip on the bus and alot of walking. He had a blast. He ran himself silly and enjoyed everything except for going to the field house to use the potty, "skanky and ooky" was how I believed he characterized it. And I have to say that despite being up so early, not really having a nap, not eating that much (he's in a picky, anti-food, anti-milk phase right now) and getting tons of exercise, he wasn't cranky at all. I didn't even have to put him down early to sleep and he's been sleeping like a log.

Oh, and Mr. B's mommy is not the brightest crayon in the box. About an hour after we got home I noticed my face felt tight. I went to the mirror and y'egads the sunburn was unreal. I had a lobster face and interesting red triangle on my chest that screams "wore a v-neck shirt today". I took a good look at Brendan and he was sunburned too, although having a much better skin tone than me, not nearly as bad. Uh, you think spending 4 hours out in the sun should have merited some sunscreen? I swear it never occurred. Hence, the dim crayon.

Here are a couple of pics of Mr. B on our adventures today -





Off to bed now. Yawn.........