Things I took for granted before having a 14 month old:

• Leaving the toilet paper in its proper spot, instead of behind the seat where it's awkward to get at. It's either that, or have a whole buncha' TP on the ground before I can finish washing my hands.

This isn't a TP shot, but you can get a good idea of the destruction this little guy can wreak in a moment. The laundry is an all-time favourite.

Is that too much information, knowing my boy hangs out in the bathroom with me while I, um, use it? It's either that or put him in his crib where he will scream his head off because Mommy you haven't done bedtime routine so it's not bedtime so what is going on I'm not impressed!!! Ahem. You get the idea.

• Sleeping in. Isaac woke up at 6:50 a.m. the other morning and I thought I just might have died and gone to Heaven. It was GLORIOUS!

• Eating garbage for meals and not caring (i.e. KD, ichiban - not actual garbage, obviously). Now I actually have to think about what we're going to eat so my boy has a fighting chance at a healthy body. (Given my propensity for chocolate and Justin's for salty foods though, he might be doomed).



• Going anywhere. Seriously, do you remember how easy it used to be to just grab your keys and wallet and get into the car? Phsaw to anyone without kids who is late for church. You have no excuses. Of course, that being said, we're sometimes late and friends of our with four kids never are, so they probably look at us with the same questioning wonder.

• Closet space. Now we have one bajillion items of clothing that don't fit Isaac anymore, but I must store in case we happen upon another baby to join our little fam. And somewhere I must find space for the baby swing, exercauser, play mat, baby toys, bumbo, infant car seat . . . You get the idea.

• The ability to get work done in my own home. Before, I could flip open my laptop, do some writing, enjoy a hot coffee and feel in no particular hurry to do anything else. Now, I either sandwich work between cleaning the kitchen from one meal and getting ready for the next while Isaac naps, or after he's gone to bed at night and all I want to do is curl up in my bed and not lift a finger. I have even resorted to working in a library kiosk to avoid the inevitable distractions at home.

• That love was only so deep. (Yeah I know, went from funny to serious. Totally losing momentum in the funny dept. but this point is true too!) I never knew love could encompass so much of me, that I would love this deeply. I took for granted that I had some idea of God's love for me. Now that I have seen how much deeper love can go – both with my husband and my son as we've journeyed this life as a family – it makes me realize that I still have no real idea of God's love for me. If my love could go that much deeper, how much deeper still is the Father's love for me?! Awesome.

• That my life was complete. I look at Isaac now, and I wonder how my life ever was anything before him. There is so much joy, happiness, contentment and wonder when I reflect on being a mommy. I can't imagine life without him and my former life seems like so much waste. Now, in playing, in cleaning, in lack of sleep and even in shared bathroom time, I am fulfilled, happy and full of the knowledge that I can't take any of these moments for granted.

Love you little man, even if you do wake up at 5:30 a.m. every day!

10 random thoughts

1. I love food. Unfortunately I'm not a snobby gourmand that only loves really good food, because then I wouldn't always eat whatever food jumps at me from the pantry or fridge. Sigh.

2. At least once a day I look at all of Isaac's toys scattered around the living room and I think of the bajillion kids around the world with none. There is such an imbalance in the world, how will I teach my son to have compassion and understanding and to do something about the imbalance instead of just playing with his toys in this western world's version of "normal"?

3. I really, really miss living in my own home. 'Nuf said.

4. If anyone ever, ever suggests I work on a book again, it's possible I might punch them in the face, delete their contact from my phone and never talk to them again. If I know it's a God-thing, I might just cry and run away myself.

5. I love my hubby so much. He is so perfect for me; in both of our imperfections we still manage to have one beautiful marriage together.

6. I wish I was a funny writer. I've come to realize it's something you either have or you don't have, and I definitely don't have. Not to say funny things don't happen to me, I just can't seem to convey them as well in person or on paper. And I'm OK with that.

7. I love being a mommy. Seriously, if I knew it was this amazing I might have started having kids at 20 and not stopped. That would mean I'd probably have at least four or five by now. Crazy to think how different my life would have been!

8. Isaac is so much fun, is growing so much, is such a great kid and I feel blessed to be raising him.

9. Trying to get fit really sucks. It just makes me more aware of the weight I'm not losing, the chubby belly I still have and the absolute lack of strength I have physically and mentally. At least when I'm not trying to get fit it's easy to ignore all these things. I've been going to the gym now for a month and I've lost about three pounds then gained back two. And no, it's not in muscle.

10. I am tired but have a POC meeting tomorrow and really should be working on that instead of killing time on my ol' blog. I have the worst self discipline in the world.

Stepping out

Monkey's almost starting to walk now. He has been kind of lunging forward from one item of furniture / wall / walker / whatever - to the next thing around him for a little while. But yesterday he actually moved his feet a bit forward to get from where Justin put him standing on the ground to his little car walker in front of him.

Justin tries more than me to get him to walk. Most of the time if we try planting Isaac down on the ground without any support, he doesn't put his feet down solid, he just dangles them until we sit him on the ground instead. But occasionally we trick him into standing all by himself!

The funny thing about these milestones is how gradually they appear. I always thought it would be like, "Oh, today Isaac can sit up." But you know, they kind of come in small increments. He's sitting up with some pillows, he's sitting up all propped forward, he's sitting up holding onto something and then it kind of works its way into, hey, he's sitting up on his own. When the heck did that happen?!

So standing on his own / walking / whatever this is seems to be taking the same meandering, small stepped journey. But I think we both agreed that yesterday's little one step two step shuffle forward could possibly count as a first step. Hurrah Isaac!

Almost 14 months

People often ask me when we're out how old Isaac is. I always have to check myself before saying "one year old," and instead now say 13 months. However, even that is incorrect as he's only five days shy of 14 months now!

And boy, do I love having a 14 month old around! He is so much fun, getting into mischief about a million times a day and cute as a button every time he does. So just what does Isaac like to do these days?

He thinks pulling stuff out of the exposed garbage can in the kitchen is fun. Other "yuck" places that look interesting are his diaper garbage, the bathroom garbage and the wood bin by the fireplace. Whenever he goes to touch one of those, I say "yuck", with an emphasis on the "ckkk" sound at the end, tell him "no," and pull him away or slap his hand depending on how many times in a row I've told him. So now, whenever Isaac is headed to one of his dirty destinations, I can hear him going "ckkk, ckkk" as he heads there. He's not too sneaky yet, that little monkey of mine! And I am starting to see how moms can be accused of having eyes in the back of their heads : )

Other trouble spots for Isaac are pulling off his bib at the table (still! Ever since he started eating solids this has been a battle ground.) And yes, we believe in discipline, it's just trying to figure out what will work for Isaac as he seems to forget the bib rule at least 57 times a day.

He likes to open the stove drawer and play with doors, both things that I allowed him to do until I thought through the danger he could get himself into with playing around hot stoves or locking himself in a room or getting his fingers squished under a door (yup, that one has happened). Those are harder to discipline him on as they were once OK and now they're a no-no. Makes me really try to think through new actions of his for whether they'll be safe in the long run for him or not.

Speaking of safety, Isaac is figuring out how to open drawers now. We have many drawers in the basement suite and he's slammed his fingers in a few of them already. Poor guy : ( Luckily, cuddles from Mommy usually make him feel better.

Isaac is still calling me 'Mama', more often 'Mamamamama', and sometimes just 'Mom', which is pretty funny to us. He is failing miserably in the Daddy department though. Justin has been 'Baba' occasionally, 'Mama' often and quite often just smiles and laughs at Justin when he practices 'Daddy' with him. Lots of stuff Daddy does with Isaac is for giggles, so maybe he thinks this is a game too! And unfortunatley when I try to practice saying Dada with Isaac, he starts to look for Justin. One day I said something about Daddy coming home and Isaac crawled from the kitchen to the living room, thinking Justin must be hiding in there. It makes me sad to have him looking for his daddy when he won't be home for hours.

But when Justin does get home, it's the best part of all our days. Isaac gets super excited, crawls faster than you can say Baba and grabs onto Justin's leg. So sweet. And it allows me to get dinner finished up while my favourite guys spend some time together catching up on their days : )

Speaking of my boy, I can hear him waking up from his nap. Love my boy!

Dinner party

Aw heck, I've gone and left the blog to rot again. Why do I bother with it at all if it's going to lose momentum so quickly?!

Oh well.

Just saw an interesting post on another blog and thought I'd steal the idea.

It's a list of who I would invite to a dinner party if I could invite anyone. So I think that should be people who would keep the conversation going, something I always feel like I'm doing when we have company over.
Ugh. I hate trying to come up with a topic people will find fascinating. Especially since my life basically revolves around cleaning dirty bums, dirty bathrooms, and dirtying the kitchen making meals that will inevitably lead to more dirty bums and bathrooms. Ugh.

1. Preston Manning. (I know, I am such a dork.)
2. George Stombolopolous

3. Rick Mercer
4. Rainn Wilson
5. Jen from CakeWrecks / Epbot
6. Tracey Hogg. Actually, she's dead. But if she wasn't I'd invite her so I could get tips on what to do now that Isaac is a crazy kid
7. Peter Jackson
8. Mark Driscoll
9. Jack Johnson. Though less because I want to talk to him and more because maybe he'd bring his guitar and play some light dinner music while we eat : )
10. ...?
I should think of another girl to invite. This is horribly imbalanced.

And actually, this dinner party probably wouldn't go very well. There's not a lot of overlap between interests. Well, the first three people would talk politics. Peter Jackson and Rainn Wilson could discuss film. Jen would totally love to talk to Peter Jackson, and he'd probably find her fascinating too. Tracy Hogg really doesn't fit into this party, I should just remove her. Especially since, you know, she's dead.

Mark Driscoll is awesome and would probably end up having a deep discussion with the dudes and hopefully get them to rethink their lives. How cool would it be if Rainn Wilson or Rick Mercer became Christians? Oh yeah, Mark and Preston could have lots to talk about too.

Maybe it would be a good dinner party after all. Now I just need to fill up spots #6 and #10.

6. Why didn't I think of this one earlier? Definitely have to invite Johnny Depp. I'm not much of a celebrity fan, but Johhny's the exception. I think he's a great actor and is probably a stand-up guy too. Would be fun to enjoy some appies before dinner with him and chat about life.
10. Obviously my hubby and my baby. Cop-out? Nah, no dinner party would be as much fun without them : )

Isaac's first birthday!

Today my baby turned one year old! It's hard to believe my tiny little scrunchy monkey is now a busy, noisy, crawling one year old.

Today was a good day. We are having a crazy big party on Saturday, so today was lovely in its low-key, relaxed type way. Didn't make a big deal out of anything, just relaxed and enjoyed the day together. Isaac gave us a bit of a gift this morning by just laying in bed cuddling after he had his bottle. He never cuddles and is always on the move, so that was a nice treat. If Justin didn't have to head off to work, Isaac might have even fallen asleep again!

We played for a bit, then I made Isaac blueberry pancakes for breakfast - I think that's his favourite. There was a little bit of orange juice in the fridge so he got to have that too. He's only had a bit of orange juice before but he sure likes it!

After his morning nap we played again, then went to Renfrew Park for a bit to go on the swings and the slide. The sun was out but it sure was cold. Isaac got a bit wind-burnt and we were only out for maybe half an hour to 45 minutes.

We had grilled cheese for lunch - definitely one of his favourites - then played a bit more before his afternoon nap. Unfortunately his nap wasn't long enough and he was clingy in the later afternoon. But it just meant dinner wasn't quite ready when Justin got home.

We had lasagna (frozen leftovers from my massive lasagna I made last month), and I pan fried butternut squash - a definite veggie fave for our boy!

After dinner we got ready for Isaac's smash cake. Oh boy, what a production that was! Good thing it was just us, the kitchen was filled with the vinyl sheet, and I was basically in the way of Justin shooting photos because the space is so small. But it was definitely worth it! Isaac had so much fun, ate some cake, got thoroughly messy and now we will have some fun first birthday pictures to treasure.

He got dropped right into a bath, then got to open his presents after. We gave him a book that will be better when he's older and doesn't rip pages, a dish set from Ikea with a suction-cup bowl and a sippy cup that he picked up right away and tried drinking out of! And we gave him a jungle puzzle. I love the Melissa and Doug brand stuff, they are all very cool designs and I love that it's wood too. Isaac had fun playing with the three puzzle pieces and I think that will be a good toy.

We ended the day as we always do, reading a couple stories, praying over him then singing a couple songs. All in all, it was a day mostly like any other - except the smash cake and presents! - and it was a good day. Happy 1st birthday Isaac!

Stocking stuffer ideas

It's always a toss-up with stockings. I love getting stockings, but it's sometimes hard shopping for them. And Justin gets discouraged trying to figure out what to buy me that won't tip our cheapo-Christmas into a spend-a-thon.

But when I walk around the malls, I could buy about five stockings worth for myself. Isn't that awful? Here's some of the things I might buy if I was doing my own stocking:




scarves, pashminas

gloves and toques

hats

pjs

cute socks

slippers



earrings

necklaces

lip gloss

Body Shop stuff like body butter, fragrance oils, tea tree skin products

gum

chocolate

gift cards



yummy smelling candles or Scentsy diffuser and variety of oil cubes

fun kitchen stuff: cool straws, cookie cutters, cake decorating stuff, new spices / seasonings, special flavoured oils, cupcake liners, wooden spoons

specialty teas or hot chocolates

small filled picture frame

crafty stuff: cute ribbon / fabric for a sewing project plus a pattern, craft supplies to do with Isaac when he's older

pretty home decor stuff: mantle knick knacks, vinyl wall art, outdoor decor

nice pens

journal

dish cloths / tea towels

fridge magnets

stuff for my boy: leggings / arm warmers, onesies, sleepers, bath toys, harmonica, tambourine, other fun toys or games

I could go on and on. But I won't : )

I am so excited to fill Isaac's stocking this year, and have some ideas to get me started. Before I know it, Christmas will be here!!