Fair

On Saturday we headed down to Seaside Park to hit up the Ventura County Fair. We ate a ton of really-bad-for-you-food, checked out the vendors, let Sully hand feed some goats and pigs and fawns and ducks and llama's and you name its, and ride his first ever pony.

I was really excited to get him on a "horse" and see how he would do. I use to horseback ride with my Papa and then later at an equestrian ranch in Moorpark after we moved. Its something I miss a lot and it brought back a lot of fun memories. It makes my heart melt a little when I see how excited Sully gets with animals, mainly because I was exactly the same way. Birds, rabbits, mice, fish, hamsters, cats, dogs - you name it, I had it. I was really fortunate to have parents that went along with it. My folks put up with more than their fair share of stray pets, and some that were not so stray pets ... but they don't know that. Well, until they read this at least. He was pointing and squealing and wanting to pet Tex the pony - that was until he actually got on Tex. He never cried, just did a lot of clawing at my arms and pointing at Daddy to save him from the crazy shit his mom makes him do.

The fair was one of the first places/events that we took Sully to last year. Its amazing to look back on those pictures and see how much he has grown.



Last year all he did was poop and sleep. This year he ate corndogs and called a llama a car. Okay so we still have a ways to go, but its progress.

We had a great time needless to say. Unfortunately I only had my shitty point and shoot camera with us because I didn't want to lug the Nikon around with us all day. Yeh, I was kicking myself in the ass for that one. The pictures needless to say leave a lot to be desired, but, its better than nothing!

Doors

Today I had the sad realization that my little baby boy isn't so much my little "baby" as much as he is my little boy.

A lot of time I'll just make nonsense chatter with Sully while I do stuff to keep him occupied while I finish whatever task at hand - in this case cutting up some fruit for breakfast. In a morning shuffle and daze, one of our three dogs got left outside after potty time. In passing I simply said "Sully can you let Murphy in please", never expecting him to actually comprehend or DO what I had actually said.

But my big 16 month old boy walked over to the back door, opened it (yes he's been able to reach for some time, he is 110th percentile height after all)and patted his knee while he said "Here, here" with the other hand on the handle still. Once Murphy was in he shut the door and signed "All done" and looked at me as if to say "Okay, now what do you want Mom?".

I smiled, and okay so I wanted to cry a little too because I realized just how quickly he's growing and learning and understanding. That he's soaking in everything like a sponge these days, and that new doors, whether I like it or not, are going to start opening - for both of us.

Number Eight

Two thousand nine hundred and twenty-one.

That is how many days Shaun and I have almost been married. This Wednesday marks our 8th wedding anniversary and our 10th year together.

My grandmother.

I know its a weird place to start with an anniversary post but it'll make sense in a moment, at least I think it will. Since I had Sullivan, I think about her more often than I have in a very long time. She would love the little guy to pieces. But that isn't where I'm really going with this right now. Back on track, Steph.

My fondest memories of my Grandma Alice were sitting on her red swing that was outside of her house. Its where she would share stories about my grandfather and her family. She really loved my grandfather who had passed away years prior, but that love was always really apparent in her stories. The way she would shake her head and laugh as she told these stories.

I'm learning there were life lessons that I took away then that would carry me through. Like the importance of embracing and passing down our stories. She would spend hours telling me these stories about her childhood, about my grandfather, the depression, growing up as a farmers daughter or about her mother that she never really knew. Over and over again I would hear these stories - most of them I can recount by heart, even now.

We all have a story.

Since Sullivan arrived into the picture, I'm realizing how important sharing these stories are. They are the foundation of who we were, who we are and who we will become. Late at night, when the world is sleeping and I'm cuddled in tight with my boy, I share these stories. And while in some obscure way they play into a bigger picture of his life, they are not his stories. His story begins with Shaun and I.

Ten years is a long ways to dig down and go back. Its time to start putting pen to paper, so one day, he can look back on how his story began.

Putting even a glimpse of "our" story out there is unsettling at times. Its hard sometimes for me even to articulate my thoughts to Shaun about how I feel. Its been the source of many-a-argument at times between us. But I want Sullivan to know how much I love Shaun, I want the world to know how much both of my boys mean to me.

And even though I know he knows ... I want Shaun to know how much Shaun means to me.

Three thousand six hundred and fifty-two days, give or take some days.

That is how long ago this story began.

Just 19 years old, but even then, I knew. He kissed the top of my forehead, and I knew. Every girl knows when they've found the one. Ten years later, and I still get the butterflies.

Ten years ago, he gave up everything to move back to Cali, on nothing more than a hunch and a crush on a nineteen year old girl for the sake of a chance after a whirlwind two week vacation. An honest-to-god chance to make it work. I guess it worked.

He was the cute, svelte boy with the Cheshire grin and his daddy's beat up Ford Ranger that towered over me. He had a goatee, played the guitar and could make me laugh. He still can make me laugh like nobody else. (By the way, that truck eventually caught fire on the side of the freeway and I don't think he's picked up that guitar since we got married. Well played Mr. Curtis, well played.)

A year later we found ourselves in a little apartment with our cat Pacha and a dinky pink futon couch. We ate ramen, counted pennies and listened to our Grateful-Dead lovin' roomate try to be the next big thing with his guitar singing songs about rainbows and friendship. Smoking the reefer every day will do that to you. I think back to that Shaun and Stephanie and I smile. I smile because there is something beautiful in the art of being young, struggling and making it to the other side.

The fact that I made it to the other side with him makes it all that more beautiful.

It seems like forever ago and yesterday all at once.

And a lifetime of memories have started to fill up all the spaces in between. Some good, some bad, but better for all of them regardless.

We've worked to get to where we are - in so many more ways than anyone will ever understand. We've battled and dug our heels down deep to keep this whole thing from diving over a cliff. We've changed, but we've done it together and we're better for it.

Shaun -

I think about "us" and I think about the time you took me up to the mountains in Utah and we hiked and saw my first moose and was assaulted by that chip-loving-semi-possessed chipmunk. I think about Vegas penny slots and free booze or the time we took off on a whim and ended up in San Fransisco. I think about that time we ate lunch in the back of the pickup truck along the shoreline in Malibu as the sun was settling in the sky and watched the abalone fisherman dive in the crashing waves. I think about walking along the streets of New Orleans as jazz music blazed out the bars and giving those kids a buck who tap danced for us in the middle of the road.

I think about mirror messages, midnight grocery shopping, and 10 hour lines in Hollywood to meet your idle. I think about sunsets at the beach, talking the nights away and watching countless sunrises because of it. I think about Smith's ice cream, the Dark Crystal and bringing Murphy home as a puppy. I think about the first time I stepped off that plane into a new country and you squeezed my hand, because you knew it was a long awaited dream coming true for me. I think about movie hopping and laughter and Denny's pancakes after concerts we're probably too old to still be going too. I think about landing in Tokyo and squeezing your hand because I knew it was a long awaited dream coming true for you.

I think about us and my mind goes back to that walk and the pouring rain that started down in Ireland and you standing there on the rocks of a creek - and when everyone turned around to go back and I stepped forward you smiled, held your hand out and said "That's my girl. You ain't 'gonna let a little rain stop us." And we walked and walked and walked in the rain - completely soaked as we trekked along the countryside on that little one car road talking about life and dreams and babies and we laughed and wiped the rain from our faces and laughed some more. And we laughed and cried two months later when we came home and found out that life and dreams and babies were happening, in 9 months to be exact.

And you. Shaun. You.

You've survived my short hair (like one step away from playing for the other teams short), indecisive nature, corny jokes and mental outbursts.

You are the guy who brings me home flowers just because, buys me a book instead of jewelry because you know I won't wear it anyways, messages nearly daily just to see how I am and lets me sleep in every Sunday. You're the guy who attempts to do laundry even though you know its probably "the wrong way", got me to finally kick the smoking habit and says its the sexiest thing ever when I name off the hockey players on the Kings. You're the guy who eats my crappy cooking and knows when I need a stiff drink. You're the guy who tells me I'm beautiful and asks for kisses even when I haven't showered in a day and my hair is a rats nest on top of my head with day old makeup smeared on my eyes and I'm wearing sweat pants with chalk stains all over them and that shirt you hate with all the holes in it that also happens to have the afternoon's lunch on it and my feet are black because I just spent the last 45 minutes sitting in a dirt pile with our toddler ... and you just smile, and say shut up, and demand and hug and say "I'll take you however I can get you."

Butterflies.

You're the kind of guy who sits outside my office at 9 at night because you don't want me there alone. The kind of guy that says "we" and "our" instead of "mine" and "yours" - like when you assured me through tears my infertility issues were really our infertility issues. You're my number one advocate and have supported every single decision I've made, right or wrong, over the years. You push me to toe the line, and remind me there isn't anything wrong with staying in touch with my inner child. You love attributes most would see as a hindrance in people, like my stubborn or "scrappy" nature as you put it.

And loving you only got easier during and after Sully.

For every pregnancy appointment you never missed; for every song you sang to my belly; for every night you ran out in your pj's at 3 am to feed a hungry beast awaiting at home; for agreeing that my hippo feet were indeed actually terrifying. For coming out in your tight scrubs and dancing to calm my nerves, whispering a song in my ear moments before our son arrived - for seeing that look on your face the first time you saw your son's face.

The face of joy, and excitement, and fear, and happiness and wonder - and love. For every diaper you've happily changed, every bath you've ever given and the majority of nights to do bedtimes so I can have a few moments of peace.

And when you scoop Sully up into your arms and tip him upside down and kiss him - and he lets out a ginormous belly laugh - and you proudly declare "I FREAKIN' LOVE THIS KID! He's the BEST thing ever!" ...

There is no place I could or would imagine being other than here.

Here -

Here listening to you sing children songs while he dances, naming off his hot wheel cars or demanding he eats his banana as he throws it as you.

And I want you to know it was worth it. It was all worth it. To be here in these moments, with you, after all this time. To have shared all these experiences with you, to be sharing all these moments with you now. This is his story, and one day he'll make his own because of us.

I think back to where I was almost 8 years ago, and for the most part, that day is a blur. But I can hear myself telling my dad I have to pee as we round the corner and him telling me I'll just have to pee myself then - because the bagpiper in front of us has started to wail away already, and its marching us down that path. A unknown path of unmarked territory, and I'm scared shitless, and I'm weak in the knees and I'm not sure if I want to cry or run.

And then I see you standing there. And I see your face. And I can see us.

And two thousand nine hundred and twenty-one days later my feet continue to carry me down a unknown path of unmarked territories, head first with you, working and struggling and changing and supporting and creating this thing we call our life.

It's our story.

And I love our story.

We learned to speak whale this weekend

So Shaun and I decided to pack our bags for a little summer family vacation get away to San Diego. This meant 5 hours sitting in traffic on a vacation weekend with a not very thrilled one year old in the back seat. Did he not get the happy good fun time memo? Its pretty much every California kids right of passage to go to two places when you're little; one being the happiest place on earth ... and then the happiest place on earth's distant, twice removed aquatic cousin. Thats right baby, we're talking about Sea World.


















It was a bit of a whirlwind weekend but we had a lot of fun. We learned a lot too; like, its nearly impossible to keep a one year old who wants to run everywhere still and that when contained, will scream at pitches I'm sure only the whales could hear. Needless to say, we didn't sit through any shows, and never got to actually see Shamu. I know, right? Oh well, we have free passes to go back before the end of the year. Second time better be a charm because I ain't making that trip a third time any time soon!

Bubble wrap my world, Baby.

So last night I did what most parents/friends/books tell you to not do. I picked up my child, comfortably sleeping sound in his own bed, and brought him into mine.

I needed to be able to hold him. To snuggle him. To kiss him. To trace his features with my finger while he slept. To tell him how much he means to me. To just love him.

For quite a few months I've been following some bloggers that are linked up to one of my friends whose child was diagnosed with a CHD. I don't know why, but last night reading one really got to me. And when I say got to me, I mean it really shook my core. Maybe because I saw so much of my own son in hers. Maybe because her postings about life and death really spoke to me. For whatever reason, it affected me. I did what this mother couldn't do with her own son. And so, yes, I took my son, out of his own bed, and put him into mine for a major mommy-needed-snuggle-session. Selfish, yah, probably. But do I really care? No, not really.

Shaun has told me numerous times throughout our relationship that I live my life waiting for that other shoe to drop. I don't know why I do it, but its not something that has passed me by without notice over the years, or my life really.

With Sullivan it was no different. Early on in Shaun and I's relationship I told him I didn't know how easy it would be for me to have children - I think that even then I knew. Its never been a secret that my mom had struggled for years with her own infertility and that fertility issues flank both sides of my family.

It took us 3 years to get pregnant with Sullivan, the last year of which we actively pursued with vitamins, medication and monthly charting. My entire pregnancy I was anxious. I remember spotting late in my first trimester and almost having a damn near panic attack. (It obviously worked out.) But that fear that I might lose him after trying for so long never left.

I can't explain to people who get pregnant easily or by mistake what its like to not be able to. I spent a long, long time feeling wrecked with guilt about our infertility (since Shaun came back with a clear bill of health) and the amount of stress it had placed on both of us. Right before I became pregnant with Sullivan, I made peace with whatever the situation was going to let itself be. I decided that short of us doing what we already were, it was out of our hands, and if we were meant to be parents by this path, we would be. But that fear, that fear that it was all just too good to be true, it never left. In some ways it still hasn't.

But I also guess thats the risk you run when you become a parent. You become vulnerable in a way that you never have before, because you love in a way you never have before. And to love, I mean really, truly, love - we have to be willing to accept all the risks that come attached with that love.

I carried Sullivan for 9 months, and for 9 months I held my breath. I told Shaun I wasn't going to be able to breathe again until he was here. And now, well - now. Now I still find myself holding my breath and I'm realizing I can't live my life that way. My wise husband told me the other night that living with this kind of trepidation isn't always the worst thing, by recognizing it I open myself to live each day to the fullest, because I don't take our son for granted, like so many people tend to do sometimes. That I understand life is not a guarantee. That it is not a promise. But that we have the guarantee and promise to live each day to our full capability, and love with it as well.

I wonder if he even realizes the things that come out of his mouth sometimes. I'm thankful he's able to take my jumbled and quite often irrational ramblings and make sense out of them. Make me feel better and not so, well - like that bat shit crazy mom who make her son wear a helmet and bubble wrap everywhere he goes.

I guess I'm learning that living with fear just comes with the territory of learning to become a parent. I worry that he'll fall down the stairs when he insists walking down them instead of crawling. I worry about the food he puts in his mouth, immunizations, that he watches TV, is allergic to grass, bites or that he thinks he's a dog. (I mean he really thinks he's an actual dog.) I worry that he'll fail a class or think I'm a horrible parent - that he'll drive his car too fast or get his heart broken one day. I worry. But I guess as a parent thats just part of the job description that I signed on for.

But I can't let that define my life, or his. Theres not enough bubble wrap in the world to protect him from everything I want to anyways.

I guess we'll just take our chances.

My heart aches for these parents, because I get it. I get what its like to love somebody so much that you can't imagine your life without them, to feel like your world will cease to be if they aren't there. And I can't imagine what is must be like to walk in their shoes and I am so unbelievably disheartened that any parent would ever have to experience that. I guess I felt like I owed it to them, to myself, to hold on a little bit tighter to my son last night, sing to him a little bit longer, to love him a little bit deeper.

My girlfriends son is preparing to go in for surgery in the next couple of days. Shaun and I were talking it. My husband is a man of few words, he's not the type of guy that lives with his heart on his sleeve. But its affected him too. I'm not sure if I'm more surprised by that fact or the fact that I'm surprised at all. I shouldn't be. He knows what its like too to have that fear of loss, he's suffered a taste of it himself. He told me this whole situation has made him try and look at things a little different, and that he's working on being more understanding with Sully and less stern. I thought it was really sweet, and made me a little choked up. He gets it too.

He also told me not to feel bad about putting Sully in bed with us. I laughed and said I thought he would get pissed that I did it. (Our son sleeps like he's practicing Kung Fu and somebody usually ends up with some bruised ribs or black eye in the morning.) "No way." He said sometimes, you just got to snuggle with your baby. That and I "read way too many books about how other people think we should be raising our son."

I was sitting on the floor while we were talking about it, and out of nowhere Sully walked over and gave me the biggest kiss on the mouth, then wrapped his arms around my neck and squeezed the crap out of me and said "Mama, Mama, Mama!" then walked away and went back to putting all of his trucks in a row.

I cried. (And I'd like to clarify I'm not a crier but damn if I haven't shed some major tears this past year.) Because I love him. Because he's made me vulnerable. Because that little boy is my world. Because he teaches me everyday. Because Sully Kisses squash trepidation out any day.

Because this is my life. This is our life. And I must have done something right to deserve all this.

And I'll live it with my full capability.

I'll live it with love.

Happy Thursday

I've decided I'm going to start (trying) to dedicate a certain amount of time per week for my blog. Its not that I think a lot of people follow it and feel the need to update it often, but I'm just less stressed when I get everything out of my head and onto paper, even if its virtual paper. I've been having some pretty serious meltdowns as of lately, so its time for me to shake things up, set aside some time to do the things I need to do, but also remember set aside time for the things I want to do.

I really love the idea of daily/weekly blog photo journals, and I follow a handful fairly regularly. I think its a great way to track what went on during our families year. This means that I'm aiming to start taking more pictures too, just as a way for us to be able to look back and remember all the happenings we had going on. Plus, I really want to start getting more serious about my photography. Shaun bought me a book for mother's day that I've been trying to read whenever I have a few minutes, so I can be more savvy with our camera. I also need to learn how to edit my photos better, so this will provide some much needed practice for me.

I never said it would be good though, or pretty. This is just purely for me. If you're along for the ride, even better. So don't expect any money back.

These days I've been purely fueled by one thing, and one thing alone.

I was never a coffee drinker before Sullivan, but these days, it seems to be the only thing that can get me through the mornings. This morning Sully and I headed out early this morning in our pj's and flip flops in the overcast marine layer for some Vente Iced Carmel Macchiato's. Okay so he actually ended up with the Naked Mango juice he picked out. But there was another reason we were there. I let Sully pick out a special treat for his Nini since its her birthday today (Happy Birthday Mom!) and surprisingly he went for the mini pink "Birthday Cake" donuts they have. Perfect if I do say so myself son. Sold.

As I watched him navigate through the shop in his little shoes with my keys in one hand and clutching his juice he proudly picked up tucked under the other, I couldn't help but smile (along with a handful of other customers) and wonder where that little baby I brought home just 15 short months ago went. It made me happy and sad all at the same time.

Work has been crazy. Its the end of our year fiscal year which means a crazy amount of things for me and my program. I've spent the days juggling a teething toddler who doesn't like to sleep or keep his diaper on, mountains of laundry and the ever growing list of to-do items with end of the year reports, workshop planning, committee meeting plans and the personal thorn-in-my-side data entry forms. After a pretty decent complete mental meltdown yesterday, I'm back on track, slowly attacking it all one step at a time. After weeks of staring at stacks of files, I'm starting to finally see glimpses of my desk at home and at my office.

Less of those means a heck of a lot more getting to see this little hambone. Which makes for a happier and less crazed Mama on the home front.

Happy Thursday everyone!

Threats

Every parent shovels them out to try and get the response they want out of their children. Bless my husband for trying.

Sully: In the middle of throwing a rolling-on-the-floor-like-I'm-on-fire-tantrum.

Shaun: "You want to cry, because I'll give you something to scream about. SOCIAL SECURITY, there won't be any when you're old. THINK ABOUT IT!"

Sully: SCREAM

Shaun: "I know, its terrifying isn't it. ISN'T IT!"