1. Move to Sublimity
2. Let’s elaborate: Move to 900 square foot, 2 bedroom apartment in Sublimity so Emerson can go to school there with her family
3. Build a house
4. Elect a president! I love election years

2012 is not for the faint of heart. I am currently putting together my board of inspiration on Pinterest (suggestions welcome!) and my physical board here at the house. I’m already overwhelmed, but very excited. Our floor plans are just about done, so this is truly the beginning of the actual process. Now we have to… wait for it… drill a well. Where the crap am I moving, you ask? Apparently way the heck out there. The real gem of the year, I think, is going to be the apartment dwelling. I anticipate that will be a treasure trove of content for le blog. Suppose I should update the photo and header since I’m no longer 24. DAMN! Alright, see you on Pinterest and see you later!

I feel like I’ve been freed from something; some combination of Little League, Football Camp, Basketball superstar complex I think we force on our kids these days. Excel at sports or don’t fit in. That’s it. It’s expected that we need to focus on the physical abilities of our sons if we want them to be an All American boy. Sure, its sad that Fin won’t be able to bond with his fellow kiddos through traditional team sports, but I find myself oddly excited by the possibilities. What will he do? Where will life take him? Perhaps we WILL end up at the paralympics someday, but what about the new emphasis on his mind? Where will that lead him?

Maybe he will enjoy music or theater. Perhaps he will be a world class Erector Set engineer and use his talents to become an architect – a disability-conscious one, of course. Maybe spending a little more time close to the ground will give him an appreciation for the grass and the bugs and he’ll gain a love for science. I just don’t know, but that’s what excites me. It’s an unknown future that I can’t plan for or predict. I’ll have to get creative and that excites me too. What kind of fun things can we do together? The possibilities are vast and endless. This is NOT the life I expected, but oh, what a beautiful life it is:). Vic was unexpected too… not to mention Emerson, so I guess planning has never really been my thing anyway.

I guess the thing I love about OI is that it has totally shaken up my world. I have no clue what is ahead and it challenges my soul in so many ways. Finley knows no other life and will know nothing else, but I can tell you that he will have a bad ass life. He will do everything conceivably possible and we will be right there with him, cheering him on just as if we were in a stadium and he just threw the winning touchdown.

One more thing about OI. It has caused me to totally fall in love with Vic all over again. His dedication to Finley totally turns me on:). Ok, but really, his confidence and love and tender holding of our Mr. Glass is beyond anything I could have imagined. I can’t wait to marry him…

I’ll take the OI… it comes with this:

S

It ends with warm fuzzies and lessons learned. And a picture attached.

Of my daughter.

I emailed the first “originator” I could find to lay the smack down on using my kid’s image without paying asking me permission first. We’ll see how far down the rabbit hole this goes.

Bottom line. Don’t take pictures of other people’s kids off of the internet and use them in your forward. No matter how damn cute they are.

(Picture in forward)

Have a wonderful holiday! We wish you lots of love…

-Emerson turned one – everyone got sick from her birthday party

-Vic left his office job to revive his own business – going well and kicking A

-I left (also called, “got laid off”) from my job and have a new, better one (boo yah old job)

-Emerson does hilarious things and is awesome

-I regressed in my literature taste and became frightfully obsessed with the Twilight series for approximately 2 weeks in which I read all four books and saw the movie. Ouch. (Spoiler: The movie isn’t that great)

Em in the back yard getting used to the sled idea

There are other things, but those are the highlights.  Emerson, Vic and I braved it outside the comfort of our space-heater toasty bedroom to enjoy the snow that we’ve been having. Oregon really is beautiful when it snows in a winter wonderland sort of way. And oh what an wonder it has been! We lost power for a night and got all “state of emergency” on it with flashlights and sleeping by a fireplace at Vic’s parents’ house. It was quite exciting, although it really did illuminate how not-prepared we are for an emergency. If any of those end of the world movies hold any truth from sub-zero temperatures to bombs—you name it, we’re not ready for it. It made me want to stockpile my canned food supply and invest in arctic gear and gas masks, but it was just a one night power outage so I’m sure I’ll forget about it soon. Phew… thank goodness.

The "Misfits"

On to more important topics like movies. Maybe I’ve seen it one too many times, or maybe I just have a new lense of adulthood on, but “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer” is quickly climbing my list of sexist, oppressive movies we commonly show our children. Example:

Donner (Rudolph’s Dad – I didn’t even know this) has been acting a fool and making Rudolph cover his red nose because it’s different (Reminder – this was made in 1964). After getting heat from Dear ol’ Dad and other Reindeer not letting him join in any games for long enough, Rudolph runs away with Hermey the Dentist-wannabe elf. Donner decides he should probably head out to find his son and goes to tell Mrs.Donner (that’s right, she has no name, just Mrs. Donner) his plan and here’s what goes down:

Narrator: Sam the Snowman: Now you can bet that Old Donner felt pretty bad about the way he had treated Rudolph, and he decided the only thing to do was to go out and look for his little buck. Mrs. Donner wanted to go along, naturally, but Donner said…
Donner: No! This is man’s work!
Narrator: Sam the Snowman: And no sooner did the man of the house leave when Mrs. Donner and Clarice decided to set out on their own. Now they were really taking their chances.

Those crazy women… they were really taking their chances now since they didn’t have Dad-of-the-year Donner with them…

That’s just one of the more interesting themes in this tale. I have other theories regarding other lead characters, but that’s a little taste for you. Clearly I’ve seen that too many times this holiday season.

Well, that’s all for now.

See you soon… or in a year:).

My Dad got Emerson a horse-in-the-box for Christmas and she’s literally in love with it. These are the first deliberate kisses I’ve seen:). So cute.

So, my work out habit is like my blogging habit—sporadic at best. I go up and down in terms of getting in shape post baby because honestly, picking up a fun size Snickers is far easier than driving to the gym. How celebrities get back into bikinis weeks after the body trauma that is birth is beyond me. Thankfully I am at pre-baby weight, but I don’t feel like I am at my ultimate and frankly, at 24, I should be.

When I first signed up for my membership to the local gym I was bright-eyed and ambitious. I couldn’t wait to get in and sculpt myself into a Maxim-worthy mama. It hasn’t worked out quite that way as I have navigated my way through the first year of motherhood. The young man who helped me get my gym membership was nothing short of a car salesman in a muscle shirt, flirting relentlessly despite the child laying in the stroller next to me. He probably saw that the potential was there… if only I would commit myself to being just as hot as he thought he was.

From that first meeting on, he has been “motivating” me to come in more frequently with little pep talks like, “haven’t seen YOU in a while…” and “this girl pays a membership fee and comes in once every couple of weeks…” Clearly he has taken many a course in motivating women.

His intentions are obtuse to me, so I try to ignore him, but usually when he makes these remarks I feel my blood begin to rise in temperature and my face flush. I want to whip around and say, “Look jackass, the next time you push 8.5 pounds of flesh out of your body and spend the next 6 months barely sleeping and have no time to yourself you tell me how eager you are to spend your lunch hour pumping iron… must be nice to WORK at a gym… alas, my biceps are NOT my #1 priority.”

Instead I usually provide a little chuckle with, “yeah, I’ve been busy.”

But last week I took a turn. I got up 4 out of 5 weekday mornings in a row at 5:15am and went to the gym. I ate like a champ and I was feeling pretty good about myself. Curiously, I never saw the grim reaper of guilt during my sunrise visits to the gym.

Thursday rolled around and Pilates was at my lunch hour, so I did a quick morning cardio and made my way back to the gym at noon. On the way there I thought about how nice it had been to NOT run into the gym Nazi in the mornings. I’d encountered such nice workers who just smiled and said “have a good workout” – that’s all I wanted to hear. No guilt about how frequently or infrequently I visited.

Naturally, when Pilates was over and I was running out the door to get back to work on time I heard his voice: “What is this, the second time this month? You’re doing well!” his tone dripping with sarcasm. I knew just how to handle this one. I turned around to see his royal jackassness standing next to one of the AM workers who had a befuddled look on his face as this was now the second time I had seen him today—one of five visits so far this week.

I looked from him back to gym Nazi and said, “Funny you should say that – I’ve been seeing your friend here before the sun rises every morning this week before my baby wakes up and before I have to go to work… but I haven’t seen you around… Who’s lazy now?” With that I promptly turned on my high heels and strutted out of there knowing I had said exactly what I wanted to.

I saw him at the gym the next day and not only did he say nothing… he barely even glanced my way – but I knew he had seen me. I guess all he needed to leave me alone was a little pep talk.

I would like to defend the Bumbo/Bimbo chair a little and say that if you’re going to put your kid in anything and on a table, you probably had a skull fracture yourself when you were little. Ok, that’s bad, I know. But really… when we’re talking about child safety, any time a kid is elevated above God’s green Earth itself danger lurks.

Emerson only uses the Bumbo on the ground and when I’m close by.

Apparently this recall will only change the packaging to make it even more clear (since apparently the warning on the side wasn’t enough) that it shouldn’t be used on tables… and that you shouldn’t leave your kid alone… and while they’re at it, the makers of Bumbo will throw in a few other tips like “don’t leave your child alone next to an open oven” and “don’t let your baby play with marbles” because apparently common sense is in rare form.

Thankfully if you currently own a Bumbo, the manufacturer will be happy to send you a warning label that you can paste on the side of the box that you probably recycled after you opened the thing. In case all the hype didn’t get to you enough to ensure your child is never left in a Bumbo on a table.

I hesitate to even put this up, but it is simply too hilarious to avoid.

Most recent strange search that led someone to my blog:

“my boss pinched my nipples”

I reckon this had something to do with My Milkshake Brings All the Boys to the STORE ROOM…