364 Days Into the Journey

My GOSH....1st birthday eve, and all I can think about is, what happened?  Didn't I used to like to fish?  It sure was nice not getting up at 5:00 am every morning!  Time sure has flown by, as many of you already know.  The biggest thing that sticks out in my mind for the year is how much Junior has changed!  There were mornings where I thought he looked different from the night before.  It's so much fun and cool and very weird at the same time.

Seems like the Good Lord planned out Junior's birthday perfect too...it's probably going to fall on spring break week every year!  Not to mention it's Pi Day and Hot Momma is a math teacher.  So far Junior is saying "momma" "Dada" "Uh Oh" "Wow" "No" and his definite favorite, "Ball"  He's definitely from the south because he pronounces it "Bawl"  HA! Oh and he's walking already! Seems like it's nothing for him to walk...he walks around the house for fun.

One of the things I'll never forget this past year is baby proofing the house.  Oh my...I do believe I used my share or wordy dirds while I was doing that!  It seems simple, right?  Put that double sided sticky tape on the bottom of the latch piece and stick it to the door.  Yeah, whatever engineer thought of that was a pure genius....there's not enough surface on that latch piece to stick!  So what happens?  It doesn't stay stuck on the cabinet door...however, (picture a light bulb over my head) I was able to figure out how to get it to stick for a minute or 2 on about my second to last cabinet of 30....yeah, victory can still come with some choice words, and I'm glad Hot Momma wasn't in the house when I was doing all this.

Was the sticky thing the only problem you ask?  Well let me answer that fer ya....negative!  Picture this, I'm holding the piece in place, with one hand, having the screw driver and sometimes power screwdriver in the other hand with the screw...You have to apply pressure to a door that moves and is unstable to tap the screw in the wood, but somehow the pressure you apply is not perfect and you slam the screwdriver on the cabinet door while the screw goes shooting across the floor so Junior can find and eat....brilliant!  So, let's recap, we're trying to use a rounded tool (screwdriver) on a rounded screw, and squarely drill the screw in the cabinet...I will confess that this was epic frustration to me!  Reminded me of baseball....you've got a round ball and a round bat and you try to hit it square...makes sense, right? 

Hot Mamma had it easy, she helped me install the electrical outlet plug protectors....that took a total of 5 minutes.....ppffftttt.  The cabinets took literally HOURS and I am still suffering from it....BY THE WAY....tip for all you new parents out there, DO NOT wait to baby proof your home, before you know it, boom, the baby is crawling and then BAM, walking, and poof, they are getting into everything.

One thing that was so funny to me and Hot Mamma was that Junior LOVES getting into our fireplace insert that has the small rocks for looks.  We were thinking about what we were going to have to buy to keep him outta there and for the interim, we had moved our chairs in front so he couldn't get to it, but he always found a way.  Meanwhile, we visited a friend of ours that has some kiddos and I noticed their fireplace had no rocks in it, and (light bulb going off over head) I turned to Hot Mamma and said, "Look, they took the rocks out of their fireplace."  She looked at me and we both had this feeling of, "now why didn't we think of that?"  It's amazing what you can learn from other fokes if you pay attention to details.  Thanks JH & DH for tipping us off on that great idea!  BTW, the Dyson ball vacuum cleaner won't die if you use it to suck up rocks, and that thing is worth every penny!  ;-)

I'm really looking forward to Junior's birthday party this weekend and watching him get his face all smeared in cake and icing, gonna be totally priceless seeing that!  So here I am at the end of the first year and I went back to reread what I had written the night before Junior was born "Anxiety Sets In."  Still a lot of things unanswered about Junior so far, but Papaw [my dad] says he's smart, athletic AND good lookin'...to which I like to pick on dad and say, "Yeah, there's so few of us."  LOL  Poor kid, looks like he's got my toes too, but even big toes are cute on a baby, right?  It's amazing to me how you can be so frustrated with your child for not sleeping or eating, but then he'll look up and smile and laugh and even say "dada" or "momma!"  Geeze, how can you get mad about that?  I Love that stinker and am looking forward to many more years of QT with him!