Oh Boy.

My baby boy has turned into a kid.

A rowdy one.

I blame preschool.

E goes to preschool 3 days a week, and there is a kid there who he calls his best friend. This kid's mother and I grew up in church together so we know each other pretty well. Our boys were attending a small Mother's Day Out program together and loving every minute of it. In December, we were informed that the program's funding had been cut and they were shutting it down. Because we wanted our boys to continue preschool together, we made sure to move them to the same new Mother's Day Out program on the same days.

Oh boy.

Other than being E's "best fwiend" he has taught my sweet baby boy the following:

*Candy can be shoved in your mouth up to the point that your lips no longer close and rainbow colored spit pours out the sides.

*Anything, and I mean ANYTHING, can be used to "shoot a deer." My sweet little boy now goes around aiming rolls of wrapping paper, remote controls, and dinner forks at the dog hollering, "I'm going to shoot a deer....chi, chi, BAM!"

The phrase "what the hell" is appropriate to say when the dog knocks over one of your trains. Obviously, the appropriate response after the aforementioned derailing of the train, is to pick up said train, aim it at the dog and yell "Chi, Chi, BAM!"

I guess it was too much to hope that he would simply learn to wipe himself and write his name.

I know everything he's experiencing right now is par for the course when you have a little boy. However, he's growing up WAY. TOO. FAST. While I'm excited about each new phase of development, I am finding myself missing the baby in him. He's all into wanting to help me, and he actually PLAYS now instead of just tossing toys about. He has his own little agenda, and when things don't go according to it, he responds with some form of loud protest. Everything about him now is a bit more pronounced than it once was: his love, his dismay, his frustration, his joy, his sense of humor, his sadness, his excitement, his energy, and his precious little spirit.

I miss him being a baby. I miss holding him and smelling his sweet little head. I miss rocking him to sleep at night while singing songs. I miss being able to lay him down on a blanket in the floor and leaving the room only to come back and him be in the same exact spot, smiling at me. I miss cuddling on the couch with him sleeping beside me. I miss my baby.

But I love this kid. I love grabbing him and hugging him tight as I smell the little boy smell from his hair. I love laying in bed with him and reading stories as he stops me mid sentence to count all of the bears in the picture. I love listening to him to sing songs in the car to the radio, only to get shy when he catches me looking at him in the rear view mirror. I love leaving the room with him watching tv and coming back in to an empty room and a little voice in the house hollering, "I bet you can't find me Momma!" I love laying with my son on the couch to watch cartoons while he throws the blanket over his head and says, "get under the tent wif me!"

Even if I never get to be the mommy of another baby, I get to be "Momma" to this precious kid.

Thank you, God, for picking me. Oh Boy.

A Therapy Blog

This morning I saw something that caught my attention. I had just dropped E off at the gas station for the weekly swap with his dad, and on my way back, I passed a BMW. It's not that strange to pass a BMW...people do it on a daily basis, I'm sure of it. But this one was different. This wasn't just any BMW.

This was a BMW with a Pizza Hut magnetic sign perched on top. Yeah, really.

My first thought after, ok...not something you see every day, was what kind of choices did that guy make to put himself in the position of BMW owner and pizza delivery guy in the same season of his life? I can't help but think that his story must be some kind of flirtation between "sometimes life hands you lemons" and "holy, sh*t...wish I hadn't done that."

Lately I've been sorting through a pile of choices in my life, trying to distinguish the good from the bad, the lucky from the unlucky, the "sometimes life hands you lemons" and the "holy sh*t...wish I hadn't done that." I'm on a personal quest to figure out why I do the things I do....a much bigger initiative than I'm actually comfortable with, because it requires me to dive into the dark corners of my psyche and air out whatever might have set up residence there. And so far, the only conclusion that I've come to is that these aforementioned shortcomings and inadequacies have been shoved into the dark corners for a good reason...they kind of suck.

But, in the spirit of "airing out", this is what I've uncovered so far:

I live life in victim mode. It's very easy for me to take any lemons life might hand me and hurl them in someone else's direction. I try very hard to never be "at fault"....not because I'm never actually a key player in whatever heartache may be going on....but because the admission of such a role would mean that I'm not perfect. And while I KNOW I'm not perfect, I have nearly 29 years invested in getting others to believe that I'm pretty darn close....even though, rationally, I know they never do. (A realization that only serves to make me even MORE disappointed in my inability to live up to my incredibly unrealistic expectations of myself.) Wow...it was exhausting just typing that....no wonder I'm so tired all the time.

I'm never quite as happy where I'm at as I need to be. It seems that I'm always looking for the NEXT thing in life to bring excitement or happiness. It's hard for me to just. settle. in. I used to think I did this because life is supposed to one of those "the sky's the limit, take the bull by the horns, ride like the wind" kind of experiences. But in the process of airing out the dark corners, I've realized that I do this because I have an unhealthy ideal that life should be perfect, happy, rosy, uplifting, satisfying, gratifying, and splendid ALL THE TIME. Obviously, a mindset like this leads a girl to a wealth of absolutely nothing but disappointment on semi-regular basis. I haven't quite figured out WHY I do this yet...just that I do it. Stay tuned for the details...I'm sure it will be a humdinger.

There's tons more...but we'll call it a night there.

Suddenly, for some reason, being a BMW Pizza Delivery driver doesn't seem so bad.

(For anyone still reading this thing...I promise to blog about something completely comical and free of therapeutic references as soon as possible. Fart blog, anyone???)

Well, crap.

Hello Blog. Remember me? I'm the girl who promised to love you forever and then just one day stopped typing. Sorry about that. I'm back now, because

A. I am a good blogger

B. I miss you.

and

C. When all this crazy is trapped in my head, life gets ugly. So I figured I'd return and release all the crazy back into the blogdom. Oh yes. You're welcome.

Here it comes...

I think I may have possibly said this before, but apparently it warrants repeating. I have issues. Not just the kind of issues that require the occasional threesome with Ben and Jerry, but REAL issues....the kind that call for serious processing and visits with my inner child and, ugh, honesty.

I wish that I could say that during my extended blog absence life has been all sunshine and roses. I wish I could say that I was the model of joy and happiness. I wish I could say that I had learned how to go all Bewitched on the things that haunt me. But I haven't. Life since marrying OS has had its ups and downs. We've done the expected laughing and crying, but recently found ourselves at a crossroads, probably the first of many, where a decision had to be made. It wasn't painless and it wasn't easy, but at the end of the day we found ourselves taking each other's hand and walking in the same direction. However, during this little journey, I looked at myself in a new light. Unfortunately, it was a cheap dressing room kind of light instead of an upscale salon light....and, well, let's just say it....all my crap was right there for the whole world to see.

The result of this experience has been me realizing that I am long overdue at dealing with my issues. So far in my life, it's been rather convenient to blame my shortcomings on others in my life. It's my parents fault, my sister's fault, my ex husband's fault, or OS's fault. Never mine though....never mine. Sadly, this isn't quite the case. I've realized that I have been experiencing the same problems over and over for years now, and this cross roads experience with OS has made me decide that it's time to tackle the things that haunt me like a ghostbuster with a new proton pack. I have a feeling it's not going to be an easy journey, but LUCKY YOU....you'll get to read about it...because guess what Blog....

I'm back.