Saw this and felt obligated to post! :o)

Thinking of Having Kids? Do this 11 step program first!

Lesson 1

1. Go to the grocery store.

2. Arrange to have your salary paid directly to their head office.

3. Go home.

4. Pick up the paper.

5. Read it for the last time.

Lesson 2

Before you finally go ahead and have children, find a couple who already are parents and berate them about their...

1. Methods of discipline.

2. Lack of patience.

3. Appallingly low tolerance levels.

4. Allowing their children to run wild.

5. Suggest ways in which they might improve their child's breastfeeding, sleep habits, toilet training, table manners, and overall behavior.

Enjoy it because it will be the last time in your life you will have all the answers.

Lesson 3

A really good way to discover how the nights might feel...

1. Get home from work and immediately begin walking around the living room from 5PM to 10PM carrying a wet bag weighing approximately 8-12 pounds, with a radio turned to static (or some other obnoxious sound) playing loudly. (Eat cold food with one hand for dinner)

2. At 10PM, put the bag gently down, set the alarm for midnight, and go to sleep.

3. Get up at 12 and walk around the living room again, with the bag, until 1AM.

4. Set the alarm for 3AM.

5. As you can't get back to sleep, get up at 2AM and make a drink and watch an infomercial.

6. Go to bed at 2:45AM.

7. Get up at 3AM when the alarm goes off.

8. Sing songs quietly in the dark until 4AM.

9. Get up. Make breakfast. Get ready for work and go to work (work hard and be productive)

Repeat steps 1-9 each night. Keep this up for 3-5 years. Look cheerful and together.

Lesson 4

Can you stand the mess children make? T o find out...

1. Smear peanut butter onto the sofa and jam onto the curtains.

2. Hide a piece of raw chicken behind the stereo and leave it there all summer.

3. Stick your fingers in the flower bed.

4. Then rub them on the clean walls.

5. Take your favorite book, photo album, etc. Wreck it.

6. Spill milk on your new pillows. Cover the stains with crayons. How does that look?

Lesson 5

Dressing small children is not as easy as it seems.

1. Buy an octopus and a small bag made out of loose mesh.

2. Attempt to put the octopus into the bag so that none of the arms hang out.

Time allowed for this - all morning.

Lesson 6

Forget the BMW and buy a mini-van. And don't think that you can leave it out in the driveway spotless and shining. Family cars don't look like that.

1. Buy a chocolate ice cream cone and put it in the glove compartment.

Leave it there.

2. Get a dime. Stick it in the CD player.

3. Take a family size package of chocolate cookies. Mash them into the back seat. Sprinkle cheerios all over the floor, then smash them with your foot.

4. Run a garden rake along both sides of the car.

Lesson 7

Go to the local grocery store. Take with you the closest thing you can find to a pre-school child. (A full-grown goat is an excellent choice). If you intend to have more than one child, then definitely take more than one goat. Buy your week's groceries without letting the goats out of your sight. Pay for everything the goat eats or destroys. Until you can easily accomplish this, do not even contemplate having children.

Lesson 8

1. Hollow out a melon.

2. Make a small hole in the side.

3. Suspend it from the ceiling and swing it from side to side.

4. Now get a bowl of soggy Cheerios and attempt to spoon them into the swaying melon by pretending to be an airplane.

5. Continue until half the Cheerios are gone.

6. Tip half into your lap. The other half, just throw up in the air.

You are now ready to feed a nine- month-old baby.

Lesson 9

Learn the names of every character from Sesame Street , Barney, Disney, the Teletubbies, and Pokemon. Watch nothing else on TV but PBS, the Disney channel or Noggin for at least five years. (I know, you're thinking What's 'Noggin'?) Exactly the point.

Lesson 10

Make a recording of Fran Drescher saying 'mommy' repeatedly. (Important: no more than a four second delay between each 'mommy'; occasional crescendo to the level of a supersonic jet is required). Play this tape in your car everywhere you go for the next four years. You are now ready to take a long trip with a toddler.

Lesson 11

Start talking to an adult of your choice. Have someone else continually tug on your skirt hem, shirt- sleeve, or elbow while playing the 'mommy' tape made from Lesson 10 above. You are now ready to have a conversation with an adult while there is a child in the room.

This is all very tongue in cheek; anyone who is parent will say 'it's all worth it!' Share it with your friends, both those who do and don't have kids. I guarantee they'll get a chuckle out of it. Remember, a sense of humor is one of the most important things you'll need when you become a parent!

For anyone else reading this - I'm thrilled that you are all enjoying it, as I did - immensely. However, I DID NOT write it! It was sent in an email from a friend of mine... and I'm not sure who the original author is.

MY TWO CENTS:

They left out the part about rubbing sandpaper on your girlie feeding parts until they bleed.

Saving a college fund amount of money to spend on formula for when you run out of milk. (oh yes, I have learned that a $14 can of formula lasts exactly 3 days.)

OH and also the whole thing about purchase a high quality haz-mat suit for diaper changing time...which also takes part in saving money for expensive diapers cuz the cheap ones are junk. You will also need a lot of laundry detergent to wash the clothes that the cheap ones leak in-- because you WILL try the cheap ones, just to try them to see if they work, but they won't, but you will try anyway, and you will try at least four different cheapo's until you finally give up and admit that it's just better to get something more quality (luv's is good. pampers are good without their new "dry max" which causes babies welt-like rashes on their butts and I refuse to support that even though they don't seem to bother my little guy, Huggies are good....but not the new borns, those are BAD.) OOOOOR you will be absolutely crazy and use cloth diapers, but who wants to mess around in that stink? YUCK. And in that case, you will need to add about ten more bottles of stain remover to the already increased version of six, I'm sure.

The month of December

December is such a busy month! So much to blog, yet so little time! I will have to abbreviate.

Firstly, as promised, here are some happier pictures of Evan in his Halloween costume:

To start the month out, we went to visit Evan's Godfather down in Florida. We got to play on the playground in his subdivision, which he really enjoyed. The only thing better than just playing with Mommy & Daddy, is playing with more people, like Jason!

The neighborhood just happened to be having a garage sale that day, too, so on the way home we got a booster seat for him to sit on for $1. How lucky! It was an interesting trip being as he didn't have many places to sit and roll around on. This chair was probably a little old for him, but he was strapped in and always next to us. He felt like such a big boy!!
We also got to go swimming. The crazy Flordians thought it was cold....all running around in sweaters and coats and shivering. Wussies.
We also got to go to the beach for Evan's first time! Jason knows I like hunting for seashells, so he took us to a beach that he knew about that never combs the sand. It is literally COVERED in seashells!

Evan liked the seashells, too!

It was a lot of fun, and I had a ton of fun playing with my camera!!!

Since we've been home from Florida, I spent a lot of time cleaning my house so that we could do a progressive dinner with my neighborhood friends and their husbands. It was a lot of work, but worth it, because I had a lot of fun, and I got my house clean which has been a long time goal for me.

Just a few days ago, we took Evan's Godmother, Becky, and her husband, Jared, to the airport so that THEY could go to Florida :o) Apparently Evan really talked it up! :o) (and no, Jared is not related to Dustin- for the record. lol. Everyone was asking us that at our wedding.)



After dropping Becky & Jared off, we promised Evan he could tell Santa what he wanted for Christmas. Evan was really excited to see Santa. We've been talking about him for a while. He knows all about how he uses magic to go to every good little boys and girls' house and put presents under their trees while we are all sleeping. He's now officially a big Santa fan.
The following pictures look NOTHING like the ones when I first met Santa....

"Check it out, Mom! I'm hangin' with SANTA!"

"Hey, Santa! Did you get my letter I sent about the toys? Mommy says I need clothes and practical things, like a cool mist humidifier for my bedroom...but really, I think I need toys....."
"...but seriously, Santa. Nothing but toys, toys and more toys! Or I will come to the North Pole and TRACK YOU DOWN and take away your cookies!!!"

(Santa gave him an ornament...he liked that, even though it wasn't a toy...well, I guess that depends on who you ask. ....Though, I wouldn't give an infant an ornament that just threatened to take MY cookies!)

After seeing Ol' St. Nick, we watched the Choo-choo train go around in a circle, that was SO COOL! :o)


Overall, we THINK he had a good time! :oD



Now onward to Christmas!

Trick-or-Treat!

This will probably be a brief entry-Evan is (once again) sleeping on me, and my nose is running like crazy....but to not post about trick-or-treat would be a crime! So here is the best (achooo! excuse me) that I've got! (one-handed)

Trick or treat in our city was on Halloween night. We decided to show Evan the fun of the festivities. We spent the day doing all kinds of fall stuff. We picked out a tree to plant in our back yard for him at our local nursery (which my parents are helping us pick up on Saturday), carved pumpkins (in a celebration theme of our vacation we just booked for our 5th anniversary back to our honeymoon location!), and of course went out on the town.

Here are our pumpkins....


....the sunset is mine, the little one is Evans...He designed it all by himself ;o) (and while we're at it, we'll say Dustin designed his by himself, lol...and I'll say he didn't gripe ONE SINGLE BIT about picking out the seeds to roast) ;o) ;o) ;o) (yum)

Of course I had to torture my little guy a LITTLE bit!! (now you see why I needed a large pumpkin!) He might not admit it out loud, but he had just as much fun as I did!
Unfortunately, he got payback. Just after our photo shoot we put him down for a little pre-trick-or-treat nap...which was short lived and ended with screaming.....and screaming, and screaming. I knew he had a little cold, but apparently in those few moments his little germs decided to explode throughout his whole body. :o( Things got especially ugly when the little people dressed in their costumes started ringing the doorbell, leaving Tango anything but speechless. His Barking lead to Evan's screaming, which lead to - well, our temporary loss of sanity. Needless to say, the rest of the evening went mostly like this:
But we tried to make the most of it. We couldn't NOT take him trick or treating for his first Halloween! What kind of parents would we be?!? (I mean, seriously, look how cute! We would have gypped our neighbors of this!!)
And even though he got both of us sick, too, it was worth how STINKIN' cute he was! (Though once we can all go a day without blowing our noses or crying about our sore throats, I totally plan on dressing him back up and getting his cute little Evan smile out of him!) Hope you all had a spook-tacular Halloween! Until next time, stay warm, eat soup, drink tea, and keep away from those fall time germs!

All kinds of fall fun!

We've continued having our picnics with Daddy (or eating at resturaunts on days that are too chilly). These pictures were taken on Evan's 6 month birthday.



I think he's getting cuter and cuter, of course, I could be a little biased! (I played photographer again since his outfit was just so AWESOME!)





As the weeks pass by, the trees are turning more and more colors...meaning one thing is for certain..........IT'S APPLE PICKING AND PUMPKIN PATCH TIME!


We packed up our car and met my parents to go to Lynds fruit farm for a little fall fun! We go every year for their fuji apples- yummo! They are our favorites, and we've taught Dustin that they should be his favorites now, too! hahaha. (and we've succeeded!)


I had done my research to find out which weekends were for the fuji's, and their website said that the last two weekends of October would be Fuji weekends. So we wanted to be among the first. The problem was that for some unknown reason, they switched the weekends on us and we ended up getting the second/last weekend. Boo. The apples weren't even on the trees anymore! They had all been picked on the bottom, so they had to have their people climb ladders to get the rest down and they were all in crates! What is apple picking if you are actually apple DIGGING?!?! I was sad that Evan's first experience was apple digging instead...so we cheated and took his picture next to another kind of apple that was still on the tree. And here I had dressed him in red to match the red apples on the tree! Boo, Lynds, I blame you! :o) Oh well, we still had fun, and still ate yummy apples as we dug through crates to find the good ones!




After finding and stuffing enough apples into our bags, we made our way to the pumpkin patch. We didn't actually buy our pumpkins there, though my parents found a few- I had other plans in mind for us. But it was still fun to see where the pumpkins came from!




For our pumpkins we go to a place here in town that has all kinds of really nice pumpkins, little to big for super cheap! I wanted a big one for a particular reason, but you will have to wait for that one! We let Evan help pick out his first pumpkin and he got to ride in a wagon for his first time. He still can't sit up very well on his own, so it was made possible by the pumpkins surrounding him and the high back to the wagon! He loved it, but it made me a little nervous when they went from the grass to the gravel, so I kinda felt a need to take him out! What a great fall weekend! We can't wait for halloween!!

Fall is starting to Fall into place! :o)

I know a lot of people LOVE fall. Me, not so much. I see the colors of the leaves, and while some people think that is beautiful...I think it looks like things are dying. I see the flowers that I love (I'm a sucker for bright, saturated colors if you've ever picked up on that in my artwork) all coming to the end of their cycle and I find it depressing. Paired with that, is the thought that it is about to become really freaking cold outside!! Ew. Let's face it, the only great thing that come from coldness is Christmas. Around these parts, however, we don't even get snow on Christmas, we get bitter to the bones cold...and then we get snowed in later when we are so done with winter we could cry.

There are a few things I do appreciate about Fall, however.

#1. I get to bust out my hoodies and comfy pants!
#2. We get to "fall back" an hour, gaining an extra hour of sleep. Well.... I guess I don't really necessarily get that anymore. Bummer...LOL

But most of all, this year, my favorite thing about the fact that it's been cooling down and mostly pleasant outside, is the fact that Evan and I have been able to meet Dustin for family picnics in the park by Dustin's office.

We've all really enjoyed that and have made it a weekly event. I love that Dustin gets bonus time to spend with Evan, since he doesn't get a lot of time with him on a typical business day (let alone the days/weekends he's got class and barely gets to see him at all). It has been a challenge to manage time to maximize their time together as well as ours, but I think we are starting to finally make things happen. I'm so proud of how hard he is working at balancing work, school and family time, but graduation day can't come soon enough! :o)

Another thing we've enjoyed doing together is going to our county fair. It was Evan's first fair experience. The goats were really friendly, and he was just on cloud 9 looking at all of the animals!

Other exciting things have also happened. For example, Evan had his first taste of real food for his 5 month birthday-pears. Since he's also enjoyed sweet potatoes and carrots.

He also got his first piece of real mail from Aunt Kendra-

And started learning how to read on his own looking stellar in his comfy outfit that Aunt Tonya gave him. (I love this outfit, not just because it's totally something I would wear, but also because it looks fabulous with his eyes!)

I've successfully survived my first "real" month of being a stay at home Mommy. I love it. The hardest time I had was the first week of school...but since, I've been really embracing it. I've gone through my school boxes and taken out things that I will be able to use with Evan as he gets older, and officially stored away the rest. It was a big step, but I'm so happy that we are able to afford to do this. I've really enjoyed watching Evan grow- and he is growing SO FAST!

Happy Birthday, Dustin!

Last weekend we celebrated Dustin's 28th anniversary of being alive! :o) I had a lot of fun making his birthday "non-cake". Now that I have a little more time on my hands, I am able to do things like that. I called it a non-cake because he didn't want cake for his birthday, he wanted brownies. Brownies alone seemed so uninspired, so I used one of his other favorite treats, scotcheroos, to make a helmet, which sat on a brownie decorated as grass. It was yummy, and that is what mattered!

Evan and I, of course, went out and got him some gifts, among them were cozy adidas pants to lounge around the house in (those were Evans idea since Daddy told him how jealous he was of his comfy pants), a video game, a bears t-shirt, and a wooden box picture frame that spins that I painted, of course, in true Chicago bears style and filled with photos of Dustin at Soldier field when we went in 2008.

The one major thing, however, that Dustin wanted for his birthday was just ONE DAY of not having to do ANYTHING. He didn't want deadlines, or specific places he needed to be, or projects he had to think about. So, we granted him that as well! It was a nice weekend so we blew up Evans pool and chilled out with him....but we got a little toasty and decided to blow up our pool as well. That's where this activity turned sour...all we had was a foot pump. Apparently you can use a wet/dry vac. but we didn't think about this until our very nice neighbor offered to let us use his, but at this point we were already halfway done so Dustin said thanks, but no thanks. Well, we should have taken him up on it....but as it turns out it wouldn't have mattered. We started filling it with water and the sides seemed low, so we pumped some more. By the time we got in, the sides buckled out and started to spill the water out. We had to hold the sides up to keep the water in....not really very relaxing, so we were forced to give up. We never bothered to release the air and by an hour or two later, it was laying on our patio as flat as a pancake. Hmm...we're guessing there's a hole in it. Call it a hunch. The neighbors were outside watching this whole thing, so we were a bit embarrassed and decided to run inside and hide. Fortunately for him, Evan slept through this whole thing and when he woke up, we were going inside, anyway. I was in charge of bringing everything in while Dustin gave Evan a bath. As if we weren't embarrassed enough, I had to make matters worse. As I was loading things back into the house I had to dump the water out of the glass bowl that Dustin had put out for Tango....I grabbed the bowl by the bottom and went to toss the water into the vegetable garden. Not really thinking about how it being wet, and my hand being wet would create a bit of a slippery situation, the bowl went flying into the air and literally BOUNCED on the patio making the most ear piercing sound I have ever heard in my life. In fact, I found out later that Dustin heard it from upstairs in the bathroom. Oy. I don't think we can ever go outside again! The good news is that somehow the bowl lived to tell the story. Impressive. Apparently Pyrex makes a very sturdy product. LOL

(Evan showing off that he knows how to chill "pool-side", no doubt the result of good parenting!)

The best part about Dustin's birthday celebrations for me, is that I win too! We always go out to eat for each others birthday, and we both really love the same places. Dustin picked out Molly Woo's (which is our favorite Chinese restaurant) for his birthday dinner. Yummmm!!! For those of you who have never heard of this place, it's part of the Cameron Mitchel line, so I guess you could call it "high end", but it's really reasonable to go there for an occasional dinner, and it is SO good. I love that I always have leftovers, too, so I get lunch the next day out of the same meal.

Evan also gave Daddy the gift of sleeping in his crib! It was quite the monumental moment after all of the *unique* things we've tried to make him not be afraid of it. Now, getting him to take a nap in there is a totally different subject, but for now, we'll take what we can get!(This picture taken August 7, 2010)

Overall, (aside from the part were we make ourselves look like big doofus') it turned out to be a nice relaxing birthday celebration. Best of all, it was great quality time with our little family! :o)

seriously, I've got to get more consistant!

It's been three months since my last post! Wow. I'm really bad at this, aren't I? I get so tied up with Evan that I lose track of time. He is so captivating! Growing so fast, too. A few things have happened since my last post. For example, in May, I had my first mothers day! Evan and Dustin bought my new plants for the front garden. Then, Dustin ripped out the ugly, overgrown spirea's and helped me replace them with my pretty, new rose bushes. We also planted two new evergreen bushes to accent the front doorway, but something is eating all of my plants out there and one already needs replaced.

JUNE:
Dustin had his first fathers day, also. Evan and I got him a gift card to get a massage since he's been so stressed out between working, getting his executive MBA, and trying to learn how to be a Daddy. I am so proud of how hard he's been working!

He and Evan took me to Franklin Park conservatory for my birthday. Aside from when he fussed because of the heat, Evan slept through most of it, while mommy played photographer. So many cool things to take pictures of there! Dustin also gave me the day off of diaper duty, which really presented the short end of the stick on his end. Sorry sweetie! But thank you!

JULY:
We survived Dustin's trip to China by way of lots of people coming to stay with us to keep our minds off of it and get some things done. I was the most productive with Dustin's Mom and my Mom being here. I got a LOT of work in the front room done which was so badly needing attention! And it was nice to have some friends visit also. We were so happy to have him arrive back home safely. He was so thoughtful and picked out some great gifts for us! My favorite was the onesie that he got for Evan that had his name written in Chinese, well, not exactly, they wrote out what his name meant in Chinese "Handsome Cloud". What a thoughtful gift! Truely unique. It's unfortunate that one of the snaps already broke :o( But I'm going to frame it and hang it in his room. He's also got a nice silk Chinese outfit that I can't wait for him to fit into! I also received a Chinese style t-shirt that I'm excited about, it's really pretty...but still a little small yet, even though I'm back down to my pre-Evan weight. But it gives me another goal to work towards!Then following all of that, I decided to leave my job to stay home with our little man. I loved my job, but I love Evan way more. The decision was a difficult one, but I'm glad I did it. However, for some reason, I'm having a difficult time dealing with it. I just wish I could be in both places at once. Evan made it a little easier yesterday. Yesterday was the first day of school, so to keep my mind off of it, he decided it would be a great day to roll over for the first time all by himself! Now see!! I would have missed that had I been at school!!! Oh little man, you are growing sooo fast!

BRINGING ME TO AUGUST:
So why am I still having difficulty accepting the fact that I'm not teaching? That's what woke me up this morning (let's rephrase, Evan woke me up....this is what KEPT me up). The only logical thing I can think of is that realization is finally settling in that I left my job. I LIKED my job; and I feel like I was pretty darn good at it, too! I knew what I was doing, I had a plan for every day (OK, most days).....and I left it to be a Mommy! What do I know about being a Mommy?!? I'm not even sure I'm good at this whole Mommy thing. I mean, I've kept him alive thus far. But I'm a teacher- I've seen a lot of parents who aren't so good at the being a parent thing, but have somehow managed to keep their kid alive, so I don't think that stands for much. I mean, the doctor is mad at me because he still gets up every three hours most nights to eat. What am I supposed to do, starve my kid? Or, let's examine the fact that I can no longer get him to nap without putting him in his swing. That's not good! He's a BIG boy, he's going to out grow that swing much sooner than later, I'm sure of it. And when that day comes, he's STILL going to need to take naps! He's terrified of his crib...I try the crying it out method, but he gets so worked up that when I go to calm him down every 5-10 minutes like the paper says to do- he's dripping (literally) with sweat, screaming as if he's hurt, and absolutely will not calm down. It's a nightmare. I know some day he will have to adjust to it, but why is it so difficult and why do I feel so alone? I really have no clue what I'm doing....so eventually, I forfeit thinking "enough for today, we'll try again tomorrow" and put him in his swing, because if I don't, he stays awake until bedtime (with maybe one or two 20 minute naps) and by then he's so overtired he doesn't know what to do with himself. Oh my goodness. I don't know when he's supposed to nap, how long he's supposed to nap, how often he's supposed to nap...I'm not sure if, or when, or how I'm supposed to try to push feedings further apart....I just want what's best for him! How am I supposed to know if I'm doing it right or if I'm really screwing up? He's spoiled me soooo bad up until now. And honestly, he still is probably the best behaved, most smiley little baby ever. Mommy just has a slight insecurity problem, and I think this is what is leading me to question my choice of staying at home.

Regardless, it's been a great summer, and I'm looking forward to watching Evan grow and learn new things (but, with that being said, sweetie, please don't hurry! I love my little baby cuddles with you!)

I guess that's all for now. With any luck, 3 months won't slip by before my next post!