The month got away from me once again and I didn't even begin to scratch the surface of what I'm thankful for. However, little Phin is sick again and I think he did it on purpose right when his Daddy needs to leave town and I'm feeling overwhelmed and scared about the next week and the extreme lack of sleep.

Deep breath. My life is so, so good.

It's good because I have amazing parents. Amazing, beautiful parents.


Crazy siblings. Crazy good.





And the most perfect little family at home. I can't even believe how lucky I am to have these two boys to call my own. My biggest dream is to be home more with this perfect little baby boy and hopefully it will happen in the next year.

While raising a monster you sometimes have the misfortune of running into competitive and obnoxious parents of normal children. I have encountered this a bit in the past at work with parents insisting their five years olds are advanced enough to be in the high school level summer camp, but it’s worse when your toting around a real live monster. This happened to me while buying diapers the other day. It started off innocent enough.

“Oh your baby is so cute! How old?”

“Thank you, he’s seven ½ months.”

“Wow, he’s a huge baby! So much bigger than my nine month old.”

What I wanted to say is, no he’s not you weirdo. My baby has big fat misleading cheeks but he’s barely made it on the growth chart. He is a small baby and while I shouldn’t care that you think he’s some oversized jumbo babe, which would be fine, it annoys me that you are comparing our children. Really though, I just say,

“Really? He’s only in the 5th percentile. Hmmm.”

“Oh well maybe it’s just the car seat. Is he crawling yet.”

“Just starting.”

“My baby started crawling at six months. She’s pretty advanced.”

“Oh, yup, mines not crawling yet, but he’s been cruising around furniture for a while now. And surfing. Did I mention my baby surfs? He loves it so much, just a little less than rock climbing. Loooves rock climbing. They’re doing a spread on him next month in Outside magazine. Rock climbing and surfing, it’s all I ever hear about. Oh yeah, did I tell you he talks? He’s been doing that since he was in utero. Soo hard to sleep when your baby is yelling at you from the inside about all that Mexican you just had. Can’t even use the restroom in peace. These days I just pass him a Russian novel to keep him quiet for a couple of hours. He loves his Turgenev! But yeah, not crawling yet. Can I get the receipt in the bag?”

Dear Monster Monster,

Today was your very first Pieday. Before you ever existed your Daddy and I tried to get everyone over for the holidays (when I say holidays, I wasn't picky. I would have taken Flag day!) but no one would come. They all had long standing plans else where. So we did what any logical people would do, we made up our own. Nobody can claim tradition elsewhere on a made up holiday. Well, they can, but we'll talk about liars when your older.

We decided the most important factor in creating a holiday was the food. Obvious, right? We chose pie. Pieday. What do you do on Pieday? You eat. lots and lots and lots more pie. We made 23 this year. Even with a monster rolling around our feet and demanding to fed and cuddled and occasionally wanting a superman to eat. Monster, please learn to respect your superheros. He didn't save our planet just to have a monster eat his head in between Cheerios.

I didn't burn any pies this year. I didn't yell at your daddy until at least 30 hours into the bake fest. And I didn't poison anyone. Total success.



You preferred mac and cheese.

Thankful, even for the cat.

Catching up on things I'm thankful for.

My Liza.
This dog is a pretty pretty princess. Seriously, she's more devious than a Disney channel star and is my bestest little girlfriend. When I was pregnant I had a major fibroid that caused quite a few growing pains and kept me confined to the couch. This girl never left my side. True, she is convinced she is the most important person in the house, digs rocks more than dog toys and as no idea why we all love the loud little human that moved it, but she is a perfect doggy. I'm so thankful for my Liza Dog. Even if she did eat all my croutons. And hogged the bed last night. And sometimes gets totally jeally-jeal if I kiss Lesco. I love her.




My garden.
At old job I once spent a month giving my coworkers daily updates on how massive my melons were getting. Apparently the group a few cubicles over found my giant melon updates hilarious and inappropriate. Especially when I would declare, "Check out my melons today!" and open a beautiful, fabulous picture of.....cantaloupe. They could not see the picture and they didn't know about my garden. Or maybe they did but it was too hard not to laugh when they heard someone ask if my grandma had seen my melons. A perfectly acceptable question as she is an avid gardener herself. Ahem.

I love to garden with lesco. It's so fun to eat homegrown food and I miss it over the winter.



My co-workers.

The gratitude might not be mutual as I threaten them daily with letter openers and fatal paper cuts, but I love them. Seriously, have you ever told anyone you didn't like that you would superglue their eyelids shut if they didn't leave you alone. Didn't think so. Why waste your breath? Plus I'm already listening to holiday music and no one has thrown anything at me yet.

The cat of justice.

I hate this cat. Really a lot at first and now not as much. I came home a year ago late night and there were three little kittens on my doorstep. Liza ran up to them barking and they didn't move. Poor Lize didn't know what she was supposed to do at that point because cats have always moved in the past. Except for the one cut out of plywood and painted black down the street but Liza refuses to talk about that incident.

It was supposed to dip below freezing that night so I let them in. I called them little black, little grey and calico. I just don’t like cats. I don’t know why. That’s a lie. I know why. I don’t like them because they jump up on counters and that’s gross. Because they use a litter box and don’t go outside and that’s gross. Because they get all pissy when you dress them up and try to make them pose for a family photo and that's annoying because if you want to be a part of this family you better act like it!

No one wanted little black and so she stayed. And now she hangs out on a chair in the dining room and jumps out at people when they walk by. Jared insists that she is a cat of justice and only attacks those who deserve it. I must let evil, evil humans in because she goes after everybody.

Dear Monster,

Today I am grateful for your daddy. I swore, SWORE, in my head to no one out loud, that I would wait until the very end to use this one because things that happen at the end are almost always important. End of the week = paycheck, end of semester = grades, end of dinner = dessert, end of level = level boss. But I couldn't wait. I am impatient just like you. Plus I am grateful every single day.

He poses on a rock like a lands end model.

He is amazing and knows how to do everything. He loves to surprise me all the time. He will build me a wall that doesn't need to be built or let me buy seven different cans of paint for the same room. He covered my ceiling with fabric in the middle of the night once because I was so excited to see it. He will go to the store in a snowstorm, drop me off at my office door if it's raining and give me a haircut if I can't wait to go to a professional. He will cook a fab dinner and then leave for work at two in the morning rather than 5 pm the night before so he can spend a few more hours with me when he has to go out of town. He wakes up Christmas morning at three so he can decorate the living room with lights before I get up.

He falls asleep in weir d places.

He feeds and bathes you every single night he's home. When I started a new job he packed me lunch every day. He lets me get the mail and hold the remote.

He is learning ancient Greek for fun.
He thinks cars will fly someday and complains loudly in traffic about it not happening yet.
He commissioned a blanket made for himself when he first moved out.
He once fasted for a week and ate nothing but volcanic ash.
He bought and restored a classic car then sold it when we were broke newlyweds.
He is an archaeologist.
He loves children.
He once broke his own lawn mower so our neighbor wouldn't mow our lawn while he was out of town. ( I totally supported this by the way.)
He has a black belt in Kung Fu.
He left me in a restaurant on our first dating anniversary because he saw a woman walking in the rain outside and wanted to give her a ride.
He is the most amazing human ever and he is all mine. And yours too lucky lucky!

He is number one.

Thankful

I remember looking at some sort of sleep article when Phinny was six or seven weeks old that said by 8 months babies typically sleep around 11 to 12 hours a night. I quickly calculated and determined this would be right around Thanksgiving. I think I cried a bit thinking how far away that was. Or maybe I was crying because Jared ate the last bite of peanut butter or because I couldn't find the remote. Pretty much cried all the time the first little bit. As special and glowy and wonderful as first new baby time is, NOTHING can prepare you for how hard and life changing those first couple of months are. Hard, hard, hard. So I just knew I would be so grateful this Thanksgiving.

Tired Lesco who just can't see the turkey at the end of the tunnel.

Well I happen to be mother to a cute as a button monster baby. He does not sleep 11 to 12 hours a night. Not even close. Not even far away. He'll go for three straight hours on a really good night and then it might take hours to get him down again. And then sometimes it's only for half an hour. Pure monster.

Scary babies throw gang signs

But I am thankful for so many, many things. And I want to list them because it helps me remember and because I want to acknowledge how friggen amazing I have it. Like, scared 24/7 the other shoe is going to drop amazing. That good.

(Look at those boys. LOOK!)

So my Lesco and I have been sharing each day what we’re thankful for and I’ll try to post it here as well.

November 1)

Fall colors. There is something in me that gets plain giddy when the leaves start to change. This usually leads to me inhaling all things pumpkin flavored for the next twenty four hours until I puke all things pumpkin colored for the next three days. It’s a vicious tradition. I’ve been driving by this tree on purpose every time I’ve left the house for the last few days.

Wonder how the owners of the house would feel if I arranged a fall photo shoot for Phin-bin in their front yard? Is there some sort of imminent domain I could claim? Would it be worth it to go to law school to find out? Is anyone else craving pie all of a sudden?

Halloween was spooky. My monster let his horns out and we carved a pumpkin we grew ourselves. Some people objected to his cage. These are not people who live with him. Can't wait til next year!