Sidenote, unrelated to upcoming post: BSM to left, and lots more BSM goodies at Mother May I!———–I love weekends. Love them. Adore them. Fixate on them.Sunday evenings, then are the times I look back longingly on what I’ll be missing during the week, namely time spent communing with a book during naps and recliner-lounging with silly movies like this weekend’s chick flick, Bridget Jones’ Diary. (Am I the only one who still gets a little flutter-flutter when Bridget kisses Mark Darcy in her cruddy leopard-print undies in the middle of a snowy sidewalk?)And, of course, there are the child-based antics of my main toddler, J, especially his dramatic work in scream-based tantrums. Yesterday afternoon while the main man in my life, T, tried to clean the living room, J insisted his toys were just fine where they were, thank-you-very-much and emphasized his point with a loud shrillness only rivaled by a car alarm.He was much happier after we spent fifteen minutes stuffing his feet, clad with thick socks, into suddenly too-small books and the rest of him into snow pants, mittens, hats, scarves and jacket sleeves. Well, actually, he was happier after I took him outside and set him in the snow.I’m not so sure why, since he can’t walk in the stuff. He was happy to try to explore the yellow snow, though. I was grossed out enough to walk through three-foot-high drifts in mules, dragging the child with me, just so we could go play on the nice deck.Until I realized that T had disposed of a box filled with the dog’s accident from a month ago on the deck. Can I not be free of the dog’s number one or number two anywhere? I disposed of the box via a shovel in an area T will NOT be happy about. Oh, well.

Can you see why weekends are so special and cherished for me? I have re-runs, trashy hand-me-down novels, dog elimination and tantrums to deal with the entire time—the entire time! How wonderful!I can’t wait for Saturday!

I’m kind of liking the idea behind daycare.

J goes there for the day and gets his tantrums out of the way while I work, completely ignorant of the fact that he’s going hoarse out there somewhere.

J comes home, tired of tantruming, and becomes the jolliest toddler I’ve ever seen.  He speedwalks after the dog, giggling when the dog tried to get away from the ear-pulling maniac that’s pursing him.  He lopes up and down the hall with his new vacuum cleaner, screaming with glee.  He trots up to me with his arms out, looking for quick hugs and giving sweet little kisses.

He chants the dog’s name, repeats Ma, ma, ma, ma, ma over and over and says “Uh-oh, Spaghettios” when appropriate.

He blows kisses and stays up later just to blow more kisses.

Being J’s mom is the best job I’ve ever held.

Note #2 on the post below.  This is the look of wonder I get to see every day, and it’s precious.  Not in that cute, smarmy way…not that precious.  

It’s precious in the way that if you could hold it in your hand, you’d cup it between both hands, bend your head low over it and gaze at it awhile, appreciating it and keeping it safe.

J’s getting hard to get shots of…he’s so mobile.  Instead of sitting in one place or slowly stepping carefully as he makes his way from chair to chair, he’s speedwalking, afraid of nothing, not even the dog’s wild ways.  Now, during those few times he wants to be cuddled before he goes to bed, we cradle him in our arms like a baby, watching his eyes go heavy and knowing that these moments are getting fewer and farther between.   

I often tell J how much I love him, holding my arms straight out at my sides and saying “this much!”

He really doesn’t get that at all.

Maybe even sooner he’ll get this:  I love him so much that I’m making a felt stocking for the little drooler, complete with sequins, stuffing and embroidery.  I hate craftiness dealing with needles.  They just TAKE SO LONG.

And, I’m always making all these mistakes.  For example, I just sewed on eight sequins only to realize that despite there being dots printed on the stupid piece of felt, dots that were supposed to represent sequins, the sequins didn’t belong there.  Do you know how long it takes me to sew on eight sequins?  Like an eon.  An eon.

Anyway, if anyone ever needs any proof of my love for that little man, all I need to do is whip out that damn stocking, whether it actually gets finished or not.

If I get it finished, there will pictures.  How couldn’t there be?

Click on the photo for the full view.

Have I ever mentioned that J could truly eat us out of house and home? I didn’t realize it until my current daycare provider confirmed what my mother had mentioned a month ago–J eats more than any kid either of them have seen.

He gets a lot of different things–yogurt, oatmeal, applesauce, fruits, veggies, and meat at meal times, but every hour or so I’ve resorted to feeding him Cheerios or crackers to keep him from loudly complaining about his needs while clinging to the seat of his highchair, looking for stray Cheerios.

And normally, I’d be worried about it since I’ve struggled with my weight since I was 5 or so. J? I’m not so sure there’s a problem, at least not yet. He hardly can put on weight–and he’s so little.

So, I keep stockpiling Cheerios, wondering what we’re going to do when he actually hits a growth spurt and needs more food. I’m thinking maybe we should start raising chickens and doubling the size of the garden.

Can you buy Cheerio trees?

This is completely nuts.  Nuts, I tell you.

So, T’s finally feeling perky enough to return to work, but J’s daycare provider has a pre-planned closure (which, I love.  pre-planning.  what a concept), so grandma was planning on spending quality time with the J-man tomorrow.

Uh.  Not so fast.

It seems that my younger sister, her husband and 10-month old are all violently ill with an apparently more virulent strain of whatever it was T had.  They’re so bad that my mom has my niece overnight.

I’m not exposing J to this…just in case it’s something different than what he already had.  There’s no way I’m exposing me to this.

Sooooo…I get to play hooky tomorrow.  Thank god I have quite the impressive sick day bank since I wasn’t able to use all my built-up sick days last year for adoption leave.  By the way, it’s the FIFTH day since school started.  I feel absolutely guilty, and I’m not a guilt-feeler when it comes to work since I do work my ass off the entire time I’m there and then for hours when I get home many nights.

I’m thinking we’ll be stopping in at the Social Security office to apply for a card for the little man (since it’s too far away to visit after school and I’d rather not send my driver’s license and all of J’s important documents via the post office) and…drum roll, please…the CHILDREN’s MUSEUM (if it’s open and he’s feeling better).  I’m all excited, and I don’t even know if we get to go, yet.

Whoo-hoo!  Wish me luck ;)

Excuse me, but this is going to be a disgusting post, rife with mentions of feces and vomit.   Move along if you have a sensitive stomach, please.

J’s had some odd elimination for the last few weeks, so I’ve begun to be a bit immune to new scents in the area of his stinky, little heinie.  Instead, robotically, I’ve been dumping the giggling, wiggly mass of boy on the changing table, wrestling his legs into submission, swabbing the privits with a billion and a half wipes and slapping on a new diaper.  Every few days, they change size, color and scent and I try to ignore that I know so much about another human’s excrement.

This morning, though, I became a real mom.

J’s never had the incredible shooting poo, and I don’t have any stories about being in a restaurant when he shot it out the armholes of his onesie.  Mostly, he’s stayed within the bounds…mostly.

I wiped off J’s high chair with a sponge after T left for work and slipped J into the still-damp seat with a sippy and some breakfast and quickly dressed for work. Not long after he’s left, T called me to tell me he had turned around after setting out for work and finding that he wasn’t going to be keeping down his breakfast again today (for the fourth day in a row).

Running late, I picked up the smiley boy who had begun to smell a bit off.  Thinking it was a normal change, I started the short walk to the changing pad, noticing his bottom seemed a little damp.  Huh.  I guessed I’d left the seat damper than I thought.

Ahhh…no, no such luck.  As I walked further down the hall, I realized that bottom was much squishier and wet than it should have been.  He’d had an accident, and it coated the entire backside of his sleeper, from neck to toes.

Ish.

When T arrived home, I handed him off the now-clean child, changed my clothes  and slunk off to T’s car, the car he’d recently christened after some nausea.  I was never more thankful to get to school.

Thank god my sisters are giving me a weekend with them at a spa in a few weeks.  I might deserve it by then.