It's Our Anniversary

Eight years ago today, I woke up with a hang over from the countless rounds of shots downed at our rehearsal dinner the night before, and began preparing for the day that I married my best friend.

This marriage is a second time for both of us; Bill's first ending after bringing a son into their relationship and perhaps a general moving in different directions, amongst other reasons and mine...in retrospect, I would normally say that mine ended due to marrying too young, but considering I married Bill at the age of 25, most might argue that I was still pretty young. (What can I say? I accomplished a lot in a short period of time!) I think that my first ended mainly due to the other party not being fully vested and I was too young and naive to make it work for the both of us.

Bill and I met while I was living in Nashville, having moved there less than a year prior to get away from things that had recently failed up north. I was a corporate travel agent and he was one of my clients who happened to travel quite frequently with a local colleague. We laughed a lot and harrassed each other for about 6 months on the phone before we finally met face to face. I'd like to say that it was love at first sight but I think it probably took me an entire week before that happened. (Again, that doing things in a short period of time...). What I can say for sure was that after our first official date I knew, without a doubt, that even if things didn't work out for our long distance relationship, that I had a new perspective on the kind of relationship I wanted to be in.

I said goodby to him at the Nashville airport on Sunday morning and then I left there...waiting for him to not call. Anticipating the akward phone conversations that were sure to follow at the office when we tried to remain business like and act like the date was nothing. I figured a best case scenario might be one where we decided to give a long distance relationship a shot but struggled to figure out how to make it work over time.

What I got instead was a phone call that very afternoon after he landed and was back in CT. What followed were endless phone calls lasting until the wee-hours of the morning, bi-weekly visits (on weekends he didn't have his son) and a three months later, a cruise to the Caribbean over my 24th birthday when we decided to get engaged. (Again with the short time period thing...)

Two months later I was on the move again and this time it was to CT to be with him. The following year flew by with settling in to a new job, fixing up and selling a home, moving to a temporary home, a new job oh...and wedding plans of course. And before I knew it, May 27, 2000 had arrived and I was about to become a "Baker".

I couldn't have asked for a nicer evening. We were married at sunset, overlooking the ocean and as I walked out to stand next to him, the wedding reception on the floor below us was bellowing out "Beer Barrell Polka". How fitting.... We danced all evening and then moved the party on to Bill's college roommate's bar for more dancing (some on the bar, some involving $20 bills) and partying into the wee hours. The next day was spent with family and friends and finally on Monday, we were off on our honeymoon to Turks and Caicos.

Since then we've bought and sold homes and welcomed three more children into what started out as a ready-made family of three. We've had some obstacles to overcome over the years; some were pretty funny, like psycho ex's, (we both had one of those) and others were not, such as sudden deaths in the family and a mammoth sinkhole in our back yard. But we've never faltered in moving through these as we both travel on the same path to an ultimate goal... Growing old together.

Happy anniverary Bill - I love you more today than ever before!

Punishments

Honestly, I love Matt unconditionally. But recently he's been pushing me to the end of my rope. It could be because I'm home with him 24/7 now. Or it could just be the age. Who knows. But when he makes me mad, he inevitably makes me love him a little more with those big, sad, brown eyes.

He's taken to doing things to Robert that I would have expected to see from him after we brought Robert home from the hospital. You know, that whole adjustment to another human being taking up space in Mom and Dad's arms. But c'mon kid...it's been almost an entire year. Why now?

Today, for instance, Robert was sitting on the floor, innocently playing with a toy and Matt walked over to him, stepped on his ankle and as soon as Robert began to yelp, he walked away as though nothing had happened.

After his time out, I make him hug Robert and tell him he's sorry. When I spoke to him about his actions the other day, his eyes filled with tears and his lip began quivering. This is very unlike Matt because after a punishment is doled out, he gets over it and moves on rather quickly. So I asked him why he was sad and he replied, "he was sad that he hurt Robert." (Insert heart melting.)

Unfortunately it hasn't stopped the behind the scenes torture. Recently a similar event occurred and as I mentioned before, Robert can be quite whiney. So when I hear the whine, I tend to ignore it figuring he's probably just stuck standing up and will eventually figure out how to plop down on his hiney. This time, however, the whine grew to a frantic cry and when I turned around, I found Matt sitting AND bouncing on top of Robert.

I immediately reprimanded him and made him sit on the couch while the rest of us went about our business. About 5 (ok, maybe 10) minutes later I realized that I had forgotten to tell him he could get up. I also realized that it was awfully quiet over on that couch. I snuck around the corner and found this...

Darn you child! Why must you be all innocent like when Mommy is still trying to be mad at you!?!

Word Play

A thunder storm rolled through last evening and since Bill was working late I used it as an excuse to get the kids into the shower early telling them that if the electricity went out they'd already be ready for bed.

I finished up some things downstairs while Megan and Matt went upstairs to shower. A few minutes later I went up to round them up and to see if either of them needed help. I toweled Matt off first and sent him into the bedroom to get dressed. Megan followed and as I was helping her brush the tangles from her wet hair we listened to Matt talking in the next room.

"Mommy, what's light chicadee?" he asked.

Megan and I both looked at each other kind of funny as we tried to decipher not only what he was asking but why he was asking it. Unable to figure it out I asked what he meant.

"You said that when it thunders and lightnings that we might not have light chicadee," he replied.

I couldn't help but laugh when I realized he meant "electricity". Maybe my enunciation needs some work...

Update on Fat Baby

Robert has got to be the whiniest kid that I've raised so far (God love the child) but when he's happy and smiling it's absolutely the best ever. He's still living up to his nickname(s) of Fat Baby, Fat Boy, Chubbers, and any other tubby nickname we come up with. But even with all that chub, he hauls ass through the house like you wouldn't believe.

He's a major ham for the camera too as you can see from the pictures posted. As soon as he sees the flash light up he's gets a huge smile on his face. He usually crawls towards me at that point and of course ruins a perfectly good shot, but occassionally I can sneak in a few good ones.

Along with that whine usually comes his least favorite situation to be in these days. He constantly pulls himself up on things and plays around for a while but then begins to whine/squeal/fuss/out-right scream because he's petrified to sit down. We've tried showing him how to do it all nice like, but recently I've taken to just plopping him down on his rear end in the hopes that it will prove to him that all that padding down there is going to protect him. So far, no luck.

Yes, I had to help him sit down after this picture was taken.

On the development side of things he still only has two teeth but he'd figure out a way to eat a porter house steak if you'd sit it in front of him. (Marshmallow Peeps not excluded. See below.) The only word in his vocabulary is Da-Da. But Da-Da can mean a lot of things depending on the tone in which he says it. My favorite is when he sounds like he's ticked off about something, with his face all scrunched up and pissy while chanting it.

So while I know I shouldn't be wishing his life away, I honestly can not WAIT until he finally starts walking. Maybe that will eliminate the whine. In the mean time, I'll just enjoy carrying that little bundle of chub around, stealing kisses any time I want and wondering how we managed to have one child with the bluest eyes...

Sports

We've finally gotten motivated enough to sign the kids up for sports this year. Megan decided she wanted to give soccer a try and Matt is in the Pebbles and Bam-Bam T-ball league.

After several rain-outs for both of them, they've both had a few practices and scrimmages too. We've come to the conclusion that Megan will never be the next Mia Ham-Garciaparra but if she actually pays attention she's not too bad. The problem seems to be that the coaches are volunteer parents. They're doing it because their kids are playing too; not because they necessarily want to teach 5 and 6 year olds the ins/outs of soccer. While I would NEVER complain about the things they teach the kids or how they are teaching them, I really wish that they would keep them a little more occupied throughout the hour and a half that they are there. I find that during the many lulls in practice, I go looking for Megan and find her twirling around the field with her friends. Oh well - as Bill said, we just paid $40 for her to socialize a bit more.

Matt isn't much better. And unfortunately it appears that the coaching style there is about the same as on Megan's soccer team. But he's having a blast running the drills. They are teaching them to throw, catch, fielding, running bases and hitting the ball off of the tee. After his first practice I asked Matt if he liked it. He said no because "it was hard work". But we know better by the fact that he always wants to know when it's Saturday so he can go to baseball. And by the way that he takes off for the field when we are there and we have to pry him away at the end.

Ummm - guess I've been slacking

So, Megan had a birthday a little bit ago. Ok, back in March. March 19th to be exact, but it sort of got pushed to the back burner due to the death of my Grandfather that same day. But we didn't forget it and we did celebrate with her that day. It just turns out that she had a very low key birthday this year. Nothing wrong that, right? So happy 6th birthday Megan!

Easter was back there too...sometime in March...just after Megan's birthday I think. And I found out that getting all 3 kids to cooperate so that I could get our annual Easter picture of them was difficult to do at best. Here's what I ended up with:

The kids had fun hunting for eggs at Aunt Alicia's and it was a nice day overall.