Happy Birthday to You

I can't believe that it has already been a year. It may be an old cliche', but time flies when you are having fun. The absolute hardest, and most enjoyable, thing I have ever done in my life was becoming a mother. In the time span of a year, I have learned so many things, most importantly, how to look at everything with wonder again. I have always been cynical, however, you seem to have placed a pair of rose-colored glasses upon me and I see things with a new appreciation.

In the last year, you have learned so many things and have most definitely become quite the independent little girl. You have learned to say dada, mama, what, what's that, who's that, duck (which refers to every animal you see and your brother), dog, ow, uh oh, stop and the horrid, horrid shit. That last word, you decided to say repeatedly and loudly, at your siblings church play the other night during the one and only prayer! You are also trying very hard to say fish, frog and tree. While I thought that you would say no, since you hear it so often, you still haven't said it. You do shake your little head quite vigorously in it's place though.

You can take a few steps on your own, before falling over and exclaiming "UH OH!" You take everything in stride until you decide that you want to do something specifically, and then you are very adamant about doing it. You are not a child who will be bullied into things and will very likely be a strong leader. You can often be found scurrying across the floor naked since you aren't about having me put a diaper on you once you have been freed from the previously soiled one. We are going to have to work on that one monkey, because you cannot run naked at will. It will get you into trouble in the future.

You are the love of my life. There is nothing that I won't do for you and there are no steps that I won't take to insure your happiness and safety. I can't wait to wake in the morning and look at your smiling face. It absolutely takes my breath away. The sweetest moments are when you reach for me, for your morning hug and snuggle your face into my neck and hair. You make every day full of laughter and you are the most precious gift.

Happy birthday Sage. Since you are too young to make a wish, I made one for you yesterday when we blew your candle out. I wished you a life full of happiness and love, surrounded my family and friends. A life filled with laughter, joy, and health. I wished for you, all of the things that I couldn't fit into that brief pause between the end of singing happy birthday and blowing out your candle. In one breath, I wished the world for you.

Love Thursday

Sage loves her Grandpa. So much so, that she let him PUT a hat on her head, and kept it on for a short time. A nasty-ass Washington Redskins santa hat at that. That's gotta be love. Right? If not for the love of her grandfather, why on earth would she allow such a thing on her head? We are going to have to show everyone who the boss is. We are going to go find an Oakland Raiders santa hat and hang out in that!!!

Gangsta!

My girl, she doesn't wear hats. She hates them. I had to buy a hooded coat specifically to keep something, anything on her head. If I put a hat on her, she pulls it off within seconds. It's kind of like socks. Last week, her grandpa stopped by and had a blasted Washington Redskins santa hat and he put it on her. She kept it on for a few minutes ... I was astounded. Once she had had enough, she was very quick to remove it from her head and promptly throw it to the ground. When her grandpa picked it up and tried to put it back on her head, she swatted at it and him like he was an annoying gnat buzzing around her head and there was NO way it was going back on her head.

Last night, her big brother came in the door and had on his skullcap. She immediately reached for him and he made a comment that she loves wearing his hat. What? Hat? Pshaw ... she won't keep that thing on. Not my girl. She doesn't WEAR hats. He put it on, and she laughed. AND. SHE. KEPT. IT. ON. What does it say for the future when the only hat my beautiful, almost one-year old daughter will wear is an INSANE CLOWN POSSE skullcap???


















While I think it is adorable as all get out right now, why does this also scare the beejeebus out of me? Seriously. She gave me a look last night that said "don't mess with me mom, I'll cut ya." The hat had to come off then!

Who am I kidding? My child is going to be a little bad ass ... it's in her genetics. I'm just hoping that she's rolling with mom and giving her father the hard time!

Welcome to the world little one

On Tuesday, December 5th at 6:15pm, little Kyler Jacob was born 3 weeks early to one of my dearest friends Stacy. He's so adorable! He is home with his Mom and Dad and big brother Mann and now his mommy doesn't have to worry about being in the hospital for Christmas since that was his due date.

I can't wait to see him.

Doing good for others ...

I don't know if you have noticed those little ad thingies on the left there ... from BlogHer. If you haven't, take a look. BlogHer has been running public service announcements for organizations such as Doctors Without Borders and theFind.com has decided that in this season of giving and such, to donate to Doctors Without Borders. But they need your help. Click on the ad to the right for theFind.com and do a search for anything red ... red shoes, red wagon, red tights ... and for every search you do for something red, they will donate $1.00 to Doctors Without Borders. Their goal is to raise $10,000.00, which means 10,000 vaccinations for the people of the countries that are blessed to have this organizations' help. I'm sure you can think of something red to go and look for!!! So click on that link to the left and start searching.

I've been sick this week. Nasty viral infection that has been kicking my ample ass all over the place. So, not much in the mood for updating the blog. But I have these goodies for you ...

Tis the Season ...

To lose my goddamned mind! Dink is out of town and I am trying to prepare for the holidays without him. The first thing I did was take Sage to see the jolly fat man, and had my parents accompany me. She wasn't having it. Not. A. Chance! She clung to me like a little velcro monkey and whimpered when I thought to bend slightly to hand her to him. She looked at me with tears in her eyes as if I had betrayed her. We left without pictures, even though I had contemplated plopping her in his lap and getting a picture of her crying. But I couldn't do it. It would have broke my heart. Dink, later that evening, said I should have gotten a picture of Santa by himself, took a picture of her, and photoshopped her into his lap. I'm thinking that a nice picture in front of the tree ... or even with a plain background is just going to have to do.

Actually, the first thing I did was get our holiday tree (I technically celebrate Yule, Dink and the kids celebrate Christmas), since Sage fell asleep on the way to our unsuccessful picture taking adventure. I got a good sized tree this year, although it is no where near as large as last years. I really, really wanted a Fraser Fir. The guy at the stand said they were the "Cadillacs of Christmas trees." They can keep their "Cadillac" for the $200.00 they wanted for it. If it had a rootball, I may have actually gone for it. $200.00 for something that is going to die over the next three weeks in my living room ... well, people in hell, ice water ... get my drift? I got the "Honda" version.

The boys and I put the tree up Saturday evening. This is where I started to feel I was in one of those Chevy Chase movies and seriously thought about ditching the entire Christmas thing this year. Because, really? Who needs the freakin' hassle? We checked the strands of lights and strung them on the tree. We put the bows and balls on. We were half way through hanging the ornaments and every strand of lights, after the first strand, goes out. Eight strands. What the fuck? Gah! No biggie, we'll worry about it later, I thought. A few minutes later, I am looking at the tree, contemplating where to put the next ornament and in slow motion, my "Honda" starts falling towards me. Luckily, I am pretty quick in reacting and I stop it from falling on me or the kids. PJ, in his attempts to help hold the tree up, is pushing me further into it and I'm yelling, "dude, back the hell up." Ugh. It was horrible. I spent the next half hour under the tree to no avail. I eventually rigged a way to prevent it from falling for the night and their grandfather stopped by and stabilized it for us in the morning.

Last night, we took everything off of the tree, and started over again. It looks pretty good and I will post pictures of it later. Sage doesn't really know what to think about a tree in the house. She keeps looking at it, pointing, speaking gibberish ... but she hasn't attempted to go over to it yet. We have several animated Christmas type decorations that sing and she IS all about them. We have a Rudolph and his nose lights up when he sings. The nose ... must look appetizing because as soon as she saw it light up, it went into her mouth. She hugs Rudolph and kisses him, and then she chomps his nose again. She also likes to hug the two snowpeople we have when they sing. She isn't too sure about the Scoobie stocking. He's kind of loud and doesn't light up. She's fine with holding him if he isn't singing. She also loves looking at everything on the fireplace mantle. I'm hoping she remains only semi-interested in the tree because, I've got to tell you ... that think terrifies me. Babies/toddlers and trees. I just don't see them being a good combination, any way you look at it.