Flashback Friday

I graduated from 8th grade 16 years ago. Think about that. 16 years is the same amount of time it took me to go from 1st grade through getting my BACHELOR'S degree.

This is the part where I should be posting pictures of my 8th grade graduation. I can't find my album. I have a sickening feeling that Spencer put it in the recycle bin or the garbage. I'm reminding myself that he's just a baby and that I love him.

Chelsea, do you still have pictures of our graduation? I'm going to need copies. Soon. Before I start crying about the precious memories that the baby I love just casually tossed in the garbage along with his baby shoes that I was going to bronze.

Update: I have a picture! Thanks Karen!!!

Me and Jennifer at 8th grade graduation.

I can share this with you. My entry from my 8th grade year book. My career aspirations didn't really pan out, did they?

I went to the same school, St.Cyril's, for 1st through 8th grade. There were 14 of us that started school together on the first day of 1st grade and were still together on the last day of 8th grade. 11 of us went on to graduate from high school together. Isn't that incredible? Does that happen anymore?

I don't have a picture of it because it's at my parents house, but I still remember what I wore on the first day of 9th grade- a red lace-up shirt, purplish/blue jean shorts, white socks and white keds. Apparently I was going for an American flag look. My dad drove me to school and walked me in to help me find my locker and my homeroom. I had been going to the same school with a lot of the same people for 8 years and, while I was excited about high school, what I really wanted at that moment was to go back to St. Cyril's. High school was new. New is scary. I was actually crying a little bit, while trying my best to hide it, when we walked in. Sister Zita (I went to a Catholic high school), whom I had never met, stopped us in the hallway and gave me a hug and said some very kind words to me. I was 13 years old and will never forget that.

This was me the first day of 12th grade.......And the last day of 12th grade. Ginnie was a very good friend our senior year. I haven't spoken to her since we graduated. How does something like that happen? This is me at graduation. May 17, 1997. 12 years ago!My dad took this picture. He's obviously not a professional photographer. Nice shadow. These were my girls in High School. Well, except for Megan Breen. I don't know how she got in this picture. I have nothing against Megan, but she really wasn't part of our group. Here's a better picture of me and my girls. Jenni is in green, Chelsea is in red plaid, Karen is wearing Nike and Laura is next to Karen. I spent a lot of good times with these girls.This is the last picture ever taken of me with all 4 of my grandparents. Granddad died a little more than a year later. He was diagnosed with lung cancer 21 years after he quit smoking. All I can say is "don't smoke". Grandchildren that aren't even born yet will miss out on precious time with you if you do.
While writing this post I've been thinking about time and how strange it is. I've been out of school for as long as I was in it (although not counting college and grad school). I was in school for 12 years and in high school for just 4 short years of those 12, yet they feel like some of the most important years of my life.

I think about all the things that I've done since I graduated from high school- got a bachelor's degree, lived in New Hampshire, worked at the Senate, moved to Colorado, traveled to Europe 3 times, got married, got my Master's Degree, completed my Certificate of Clinical Competence, bought a house, had a baby- they're all the milestones that identify me as an adult.

But my childhood accomplishments- going to camp, writing book reports, doing swim team every summer, baby-sitting, going to Winter Formal, getting my driver's license on my 16th birthday, going to Prom, passing notes in class, staying up all night laughing with friends, obsessing about boys, walking aimlessly around the mall- that stuffs seems just as important in my mind. They're all the things that contribute to who we become as adults. Would I be the person I am now if I had changed elementary schools 4 times or if I had hung out with a vastly different group of friends? Maybe, but probably not.

If I ever find my 8th grade graduation album (please, please, please, please!!!!) I'll post some pictures from that. I got to carry the time capsule. It was a very big deal at the time.

Enjoy the "high school graduation soundtrack". Maybe Michael is right. Maybe I am too obsessed with the blog.

Ghetto Supastar

This summer will be the 4th one we have spent in our house. Our master bedroom has bay windows facing the west. By about 6 pm in July you could put a pot of water on the windowsill and cook pasta to a perfect al dente.

It's pretty ghetto, but we finally lined the windows with foil. It's cheaper than paying for fancy window film and actually an improvement from the dark sheets we've had hanging over the wood blinds for the last year.

When the blinds are closed you can barely even see it. As an added bonus, I have a stockpile readily available if I'm ever roasting a turkey and need to line the pan and find I'm fresh out of foil.

Train Table

Since he has had the ability to stand, Spencer has been pretty rough with the coffee table. At first he liked the sound of hard plastic toys bouncing off of it and now he likes to stand there and play with his toys- which seems to still involve a lot of throwing.

Spencer has also become obsessed with trains. The very first thing he says when he wakes up in the morning is "choo choo?" We live about a mile from the train tracks and hear trains all day, so he's just checking if he really heard one or not. He also thinks that any form of transportation is a train. Planes are choo choo's, the garbage truck is a choo choo, our neighbor's motorcycle is a choo choo and semi- trucks are choo choo's.

We recently bought a train set for Spencer to indulge his choo choo obsession, but we didn't have anywhere for him to play with it. What we really need is a train table, but they are expensive and we don't have space for one. What we do have is an increasingly beat-up and scratched coffee table. I decided to kill two birds with one stone- a way to protect the top of the coffee table while creating a train depot. I don't consider myself to be incredibly crafty, but I am all for saving a buck where I can.

First I took a $5 piece of plywood and painted the edges with leftover paint from the guest bathroom.

Then I used $5 spray adhesive to attach a city scene play mat that we already had (I bought it to display all those car shaped cakes I made for Spencer's first birthday).I used a $5 piece of fleece fabric to cushion the underside. For $15 dollars we got a pretty sweet train table that has become Spencer's favorite. The only problem is that he derails the train quite often and in his best "I'm almost 2 years old" way throws the trains on the ground and screams and cries. Oh boy- what's more fun? The 4 months of colic or what looks to be over a year of the terrible 2's?

Ginger's total psychological break down

These are my parents with Spencer at Christmas time.

They look pretty nice, don't they? Like normal, everyday, tax paying, law-abiding people. You'd never suspect they might be capable of great terror, would you?

As you know if you read my Mother's Day post, we spent the weekend in Tucson. I woke up on Sunday morning and found that Michael and Spencer were still asleep and my parents were out walking the dogs. I decided I'd take a shower while the house was empty and quiet.

So, I'm in the shower when I notice that the curtain is moving. I'm thinking, oh no- Spencer is awake and he's trying to get in here. Wrong- it's Ginger. Ginger who hates the bathtub. Ginger who has to be tricked into taking a bath. Ginger who doesn't even get close while we're bathing Spencer incase we decide to throw her in too.

She is obviously upset and is shaking and anxious. I pet her and tell her to get down and then go about my shower business. Thirty seconds later she actually jumped in with me. Into the shower! The shower that was on! I couldn't believe it.

I kicked her out of the tub and then did the best I could to calm her down without even knowing why she was so agitated. She was on edge the whole rest of the morning and up until we left to come home. She even chewed a bunch of holes in my parents kitchen mat. She's never chewed a hole in anything the entire time we've owned her.

The only conclusion that can be made from her erratic and unexplained behavior is that my parents subjected her to torture and aggresive interrogation that violates the Geneva Convention. They deny any wrongdoing, but what else could it be?

I fear that at some point during the walk Ginger was exposed to Chinese water torture, solitary confinement, electrical shock and public humiliation. I plan on getting at least 1 or 2 detectives from 1 or 2 versions of Law and Order to question my parents. That Detective Goren seems pretty reliable. I'll have him isolate my parents and see who turns on whom first.

In the meantime, Ginger is back to her normal lazy self. Her total psychological breakdown seems to be short lived. Good thing, because I don't think we could afford post-traumatic stress therapy for a beagle.

Mother's Day

Happy Mother's Day everyone. We had a busy weekend in Tucson celebrating with our moms.

Back in December my parents attended a charity event for the Newman Center at the U of A. They won a silent auction for Father Bart to cook a 5- course dinner at their house. The party was on Saturday night.

This is Fr. Bart prepping dessert- German chocolate cake- yummy!

My mom and dad with all their guests.

Nathan, Kendra, Michael, me and Spencer made up the kids table.
Even though it was the day before Mother's Day we celebrated that night since we were all there. Well, Nick was in New York living it up at Tavern on the Green- but that's another story entirely.

Our Mother's Day gift to our mom was having new photos taken of all us "kids". This was the whole group shot.

All the boys
And the original siblings. We haven't had a group picture like this (other than our weddings) since I was 12.
Back to Saturday night....

Nathan and his mini-me.
Nathan read a rousing version of "What's Wrong Little Pookie?" to Spencer

Spencer stayed up until after 11 pm on Saturday night. Then, because the guest room at my parent's house lights up like the surface of the sun in the morning, he was up by 7:30 am.

This is what happened while we drove home today. Unfortunately it only lasted for 20 minutes.

Remember, this was last year.

Here is this year.

I don't know who grew more- the tree or the baby.

Video

My friend Michelle sent me this video. I couldn't figure out how to actually save the video into the blog, but you can open this link to see it. It absolutely made my day. Thanks Michelle!

http://news.cnnbcvideo.com/?nid=P4cZex5droBcwNoxWBIBczEyMzUxNTM4&referred_by=16029553-Ja8Pylx&p=moveon

Flashback Friday

This was my first Mother's Day. Obviously it was just last year.

What I really wanted was for Michael to plant a tree in front of the back porch. My wonderful husband did just that. We still refer to it as my Mother's Day tree. As in, "you need to water my Mother's Day tree." Planting a tree is hard work. He must really love me.

Spencer and the tree have both grown a lot over the last year. I'll try to remember to take a picture on Sunday to compare.

I look tired in this picture. Is any mother not tired for their baby's whole first year? For their whole first 18 years?
Me and my mommy and son

Happy Mother's Day to all the moms out there!

20 months

Spencer turned 20 months old today. I realized this morning this means he is closer to 2 than he is to 1. I guess he has been for a month now, but math has never really been my strength.

Here he is last May when he was 9 months.

He's just a little different this year. It took me 56 pictures (no-seriously) to get a photo good enough to be considered the 20 month shot. Spencer was cranky all afternoon- it was a bad day for photos in our house.

Spencer's new trick. Last weekend we moved the side table out from next to the couch and moved the ottoman into its place. It frees up a lot of space, but now Spencer spends a lot of time crawling back and forth between the two. We live too too far away from an ER for this type of shenanigan.
I bought this trio of ducks when we first moved into the house. They were cheap and aren't particularly pretty, but there's something about them that I really like. I moved them into the corner of the dining room when Spencer was a newborn because Ginger was always knocking them over with her tail. Somehow we've made it through 10 months of Spencer being mobile without him finding them.
I was cooking last week when Spencer came into the kitchen holding the smallest duck. He had a HUGE grin and with delight said "mommy....ack ack ack ack" (that's quack to you and me). It was too cute for me to be upset.

Now he visits the ducks at least once a day.ack ack ack ackSince I worked so hard taking them, I thought I'd share some of the pictures that didn't make the 20 month photo cut.

Storage

I have to re-do the way we store Spencer's toys every 3-4 months. It's not that the previous set-up didn't work or was poorly planned out- it's that his interests, abilities and toys change every 3-4 months and with them, the way things are put away.

We have drawers in our living room coffee table and for the first 3 months of Spencer's life I could fit just about everything (except books) in those drawers. After that we moved on to baskets. Then there was a combo of baskets and bins.

Here is my newest storage solution. This should last until he turns 2. I bought these stacking bins at IKEA. They are nice because Spencer can take the lids off by himself. I just unstack them in the morning and he can get to all his toys. They are big enough to hold most of his stuff, but still small enough that I can tuck them away in the corner.

I used to have all of Spencer's books in big baskets in this nook in the entertainment center. Then we realized that the dimensions were perfect for stacking his big blocks. I don't know if HGTV would approve of this from a design point of view, but it certainly works well.

Sprinklers

I'm back! I took the doctor's advice and really rested for the last 3 days. That, combined with some good medication, and I'm on my way back to being healthy.

The weather is really heating up in Arizona. I saw a 104 as the projected high on the 5 day forecast. Yikes! With this in mind we bought Spencer a new toy- the Banzai Wigglin' Water Sprinkler. It's a long hose with these little attachments that wiggle and spray water all over.

He seemed intrigued by it.

For about a minute.
We turned off the wiggles and got out the good old fashioned sprinkler head.

It was much more to his liking.