A Perfect Fall Day

We woke up verrry late this morning due to multiple awakenings during the night. Wiggle is cutting his two-year molars which has meant some extra clinginess and more than a few less than restful nights. When we finally got going, we went to the Fall for Fairfax Festival. It turned out to be a lot of health-related booths, some pay rides which were geared for older kids, and A LOT of firetrucks. The firetrucks were all lined up in a row and you could get in them and explore. As you can see above, we went in one of the hazmat trucks. The inside looked like an office; there were books on shelves, a few computers, a large flat-screen tv on the wall, a printer, file drawers. I guess it makes sense because each hazmat situation is probably unique in a lot of ways, so the most important part of handling it, is research, research, research. Wiggle mainly liked all the buttons he could press and the headphones.

Wiggle also liked the ambulance, but it might have had something to do with the cute EMT sitting in the back.

Wiggle pointing to the next firetruck he wants to see.

Me and Wiggle enjoying the sunny day.

We're thinking about becoming a crime fighting duo. (I would be the sidekick, obviously.)

This stylish boy is on the move.

My two handsome boys sporting their cool fall jackets.

Look at that face!

After a quick trip to Costco, we came home and Wiggle took a much needed nap. Then he got up and wanted to go to the playground to play with kids. We went outside and took the tricycle, but never made it to the playground because some of our neighbors were in the alley riding trikes and a play-kitchen. Wiggle just loves the 2 1/2 year old next door. He follows him around and mimics him constantly. He also has spontaneously learned his name; he doesn't even say the name of the boy we swap babysitting with, and we see him almost every day. 

When playing turned into a lot of quibbling and eye-rubbing, we brought him inside for dinner and some skyping with the grandparents. They sang some songs, he sang some songs, they danced, he danced. I think they all had a good time.

The big news.... At bath time, when his diaper was off, he went to sit on the potty and peed!!!! He pointed down too, to let me know. It was the first time. He sat sat on the potty lots of times, and we normally do it before he gets into the tub, but he has never successfully gone before. I think he has known what it's for though because sometimes when he sits on the potty, he strains a little, like he's trying to pee. I know that it could not happen again for a long time, but I still think it's pretty cool. I'm hoping this could be the beginning of potty-training. Well, this and the many other signs of elimination awareness he has been giving us. He now points or grabs his diaper when he pees a lot of the time. He also appears to hold it for longer. 

And when I read back on the last few sentences, I realized that I am now that mom. There will be tons more potty training talk on the blog to be sure, but I'm going to try to keep it to my frustrations or pride, and not the mechanics of the issue. Please forgive my earlier exuberance.

I'm hoping it's another beautiful fall day here in Eden tomorrow. Seriously, I never knew fall could be like this, and I feel a little cheated that I didn't get to experience it earlier. And the leaves are going to turn in a couple of weeks! All of the leaves on all of the many, many trees! I'm really beginning to fall in love with the East Coast.

Free Time

We have started a babysitting swap with a neighbor, so tomorrow I have four hours of free-time tomorrow morning. I still haven't decided what I'm going to do during the time. In some ways it feels like it will be an eternity, in other ways it feels like it's no time at all. Nothing seems like it's worth it. C is going to take Wiggle over in the morning, so I can sleep in a little bit.

Today we went to music class, and it was raining, so on the way home we had to stop and do a little splashing and some singing.

He insisted on holding the umbrella

C said this shirt was too preppy, but I think he looks great.
(That's also the New Yorker that he's reading)

Things Are Really Cooking

Tonight I cooked dinner for the first time since we moved here. For those of you tsk-tsk-tsk-ing, let me say that I have prepared and assembled many meals, but I had not yet cooked. I looked through a cookbook today, chose a couple of recipes, went shopping, and then made dinner. We've been doing a lot of shortcuts lately, and it felt really good to have multiple pots on the stove, to chop a variety of vegetables, to smell good cooking smells. I decided on Indian food because I have wanted to introduce more ethnic food into both our eating and cooking repertoire. Plus, C really loves it, and I wanted to have a nice dinner for him when he got home. I chose chicken in a sweet red pepper sauce, potatoes, peas, and carrots, and an aromatic rice dish, all from the same cookbook. Everything was delicious and there are plenty of leftovers for tomorrow.

It felt good to cook again, to move around my kitchen; I always feel more grounded when I cook regularly.
I also have been neglecting part of my stay-at-home mom duties by not cooking. C doesn't care if I have planned dinner, but I do feel that it is quite a luxury to be able to be at home with Wiggle, and that my "job" rightly includes a good deal of cooking and cleaning. Plus, after a day of taking out and putting away blocks a million times, or vacuuming in the morning only to have cat food spilled all over in the afternoon, preparing a nice meal gives me a not-insubstantial feeling of accomplishment. And C is very appreciative, and it makes tomorrow easier in that I generally either have lunch or another dinner taken care of. It's really a win-win-win-win-win... I don't understand why everyone doesn't love cooking.

I Need Counseling

Or, rather, a degree in counseling. Tonight I went to the info session for the MSW program at Mason. It seems fine, and I will definitely apply, but I am also toying with the idea of applying to PhD programs in counseling psych. From what I've seen so far though, I doubt I'd be accepted. For the relatives in the audience, I am not being self-deprecating, rather I am being lower-GPA, who will I get for letters, no research experience realistic. I just thought I should try to have a couple of options.

Ugh, this would all be so much easier if I knew where we were going to live.

Up All Night, PB & J

Then we went to a fellow faculty member's house to meet-n-greet C's graduate students. Wiggle insisted on wearing his argyle sweater because C was wearing one. I didn't get a pic, but trust me, it was exceptionally cute.

Howdy, Neighbor!

Today was the Masonvale meet-n-greet barbecue. Other than the blinding sun and scorching heat, it was quite a bit of fun. We had seen most of the neighbors last night at the potluck, but you can't really have too much of a good thing, can you? Wiggle ate a hot dog, played with the other kids, and looked apprehensively at the world's most depressing clown. Not only did I never see him smile, but I tried to get a picture of him for 20 minutes, and he never even looked up enough to get a full-on shot. Also, the Masonvale representative looked like someone that some neighborhoods would form a watch-group about.

The barbecue also brings up a new blogging problem I am running into. While my blog is basically anonymous, I obviously do let family and friends know about it. There have been several things that I would have liked to blog about, but I wasn't sure if the people I would be blogging about would eventually be reading the blog. It's not that I want to trash anyone, but if something frustrating or unusual happens, I might want to write about it. I have seen other bloggers talk fairly freely about their reactions to situations in their lives, but, of course, I don't know what the reactions of those in their lives are. I guess I'll just take it on a case-by-case basis.

For your viewing pleasure -

Trying to put my creation on as a hat

Still trying...

This was seriously my best shot of the clown. I guess, this is why people are afraid of clowns.

Out with the Old...

Today, I threw out old and bought new underwear. It sort of got me thinking about other stuff that I have been holding onto that could use some updating. Thing-wise, we are doing well because I did a lot of purging before the move, but I have a lot of ideas and attitudes that I should really try to put out with the weekly trash.

This week I have been coming to terms with our new budget. Although moving here means we have more job stability than ever, it also means some belt-tightening. I don't mind living cheaply, but I hate trying to live with a specific budget. Keeping track of each and every item we buy and categorizing it, gives me a stress headache just thinking about it. More importantly, when I get stressed about things, especially money, I tend to catastrophize. One minute I'm going over the bank statement,  looking for where we can make cuts, the next I'm telling C that we will be homeless living under a bridge if he continues to buy coffee on campus. I need to learn to take a deep breath and take more responsibility for what's making me nervous about a situation. In this case, after the move I hadn't been paying as much attention to our spending habits as I normally do, so that when I looked over our monthly spending, I felt ambushed by a month's worth of purchases all in one sitting. It wasn't, in reality, a bad situation, but it felt out of my control, so I felt like my whole life was out of control.

The weird thing is, I am really good at feeling out of control where Wiggle is concerned. One day a few weeks ago, we were at the library, and he kept running away from me up and down the aisles. I was having trouble catching him without making a big commotion, so in effect, we were playing peek-a-boo, with him at one end of an aisle and me at the other. Then I popped my head around the next aisle, and he wasn't there. I tried the next few aisles, the last few, I hurried to the end where he had been. I didn't see him. My heart started to pound, and I was beginning to feel frantic because I wanted to yell, but I was in the library. Instead of totally freaking out and yelling his name as I ran around like a freak, I was able to calm myself down by remembering that a lot of people had seen us playing and were therefore aware of him and could help me if needed. Also there were a ton of families there; I felt pretty sure that if an unattended little boy was wandering around, a concerned mother would probably look after him until I could find him. Plus, if I decided I did need to yell his name, since it was a library, everyone would hear me, so everyone would look up from whatever they were doing. It would not be a proud parenting moment, but he would be safe. All of this went through my head in a matter of seconds as I looked around the unfamiliar library. I found him after maybe a full minute; he was "hiding" under a computer station. He had felt nature call and was taking a minute alone to complete his business, which seems like a perfectly reasonable explanation for abandoning our "game" in the stacks.

Why can't I do the same thing with our budget? Or thinking about going back to school? Why can't I see a frivolous purchase and think "that was not the best way to spend that money, but all I can do is change how I spend our money from now on" ? Why can't I realize that even if that latte pushes us over our budget, if we change our behavior the next month, we will only be over budget by one latte, which even I can see will not cause us to live in a refrigerator box under the freeway?

I still need to make that penny-pinching budget this weekend, but I'm feeling less overwhelmed by it. Now I need to sign up for the GREs, make sure I have done everything I can to establish Virginia residency, study for the GREs, and start looking at application deadlines. Perhaps my money stressing has just been masking my going back to school stressing.

So many things to stress about, so little time. Scratch that. So little time, so few things worth stressing about.

Who knew new underwear could say so much?

Painting on the porch

Hamming it up for the camera

Strutting his stuff while putting a crayon in his "button"

Just a guy starting his day by taking off his pants, putting on his hat, sitting in his chair, and drinking his milk. You know, a regular guy.