Chaser,

For serious? Six months old? How is that even possible. It truly does seem like just yesterday that I brought you home from the hospital all pink yellow and new.

You have changed so much in a month. Everyday, it seems, you do something new, and usually terribly cute. This month you sat in a high chair and took your first ride in a shopping card without your infant seat. You rolled completely over, voluntarily. (Let me be clear, you have rolled over before just not without lots of prompting and maybe some help) You figured out how to maneuver your bottle and your pacifier by yourself. Can I just add that I LOVE that you hold your own bottle now. I can plop you in your high chair, recline the seat and let you do it yourself so I can clean chat on Skype.

Everyday you become more and more your own person. You have a lot of personality. I see so much of myself in you from your quick temper to the silent laugh you do when you get excited. Sometimes you do this thing where you look at me and raise your eyebrows and then you laugh at me. It doesn’t matter if you’ve kept me up all night for a week I always smile back at you. It’s nearly impossible not to.

You spent a week at your Grandma’s house this month and my lord it was hard to be separated from you for EIGHT DAYS. Your first Halloween was the day I returned. I had been awake since 2 am and spent 6 hours traveling. You had been away from home for over a week. We were a hot mess that night, but we had fun. We went trick-or-treating with friends in their neighborhood. You were so charming at each house, you smiled and giggled at everyone. By the time we reached the end of the street and turned to head back you were asleep in my arms (good thing we had the stroller with us). We were barely home for a week or so before we packed up and left again to go stay with Grandma while she recovered from knee replacement surgery. You were quite the little charmer at the hospital (even if you weren’t supposed to be there)

The day I took your “Look at Me Grow” pictures I uploaded them to the computer and started comparing all 6 sets. It’s hard to believe how much you have changed in such a short amount of time. I can’t imagine how different you will be 6 months from now when you are a year old. This month was the first month I had trouble with this photo shoot. You are becoming more and more mobile and active. I can’t imagine how hard this will be when you learn to crawl.

If you look at the date you will notice that this month’s letter was written well into your 7th month. What can I say, I’m just not as on top of things as I used to be. Perhaps it’s because we spend so much time cuddling on the couch or sleeping in. Trust me I’m taking advantage of all your cuddly time now so that hopefully I don’t embarrass you too much once you’ve grown out of it.

Always
Love Mama

December 4th, 2009 | Category: It's Chase | Comments (6)

Please consider this your first, last and only warning. You are hereby on notice. You need to get your shit together. I’m tired of watching you struggle every day to simply function.

You are better than this.

I know that the past few months have been tough.

I know that you keep a lot bottled up.

I know that most days you feel so full you wonder how you don’t explode.

You are stronger than this.

Pull yourself together and shake out the cobwebs.

Plant your feet on the ground and get your balance back.

Figure out how to move forward instead of in circles.

You are better than this.

December 1st, 2009 | Category: The hard stuff | Comments (6)

She took me in and she held my hand. She’s offered her heart and her ear more times than I can count. She mocks me on twitter and she fires me daily. She has been a better friend to me in the past 6 months than friends I’ve had for years.

She’s Anissa.

She’s MY Anissa.

She’s OUR Anissa.

Anissa had a stroke yesterday and is in the ICU. I wish with all of my heart that I could be THERE with her right now. These are the times that I wish my closest friends didn’t live in my computer. Sitting here staring at the little blinking cursor, I wish I could find the words, instead all I have are tears.

I’m not the praying kind and I don’t always have faith, but today I will send every good thought I have to Miss Anissa and her family.

Please visit Aiming Low for information on how you can help. You can also go here to leave you name and contact info. If you have written a post for Anissa, please leave it in the Linky.

November 18th, 2009 | Category: The hard stuff | Comments (10)

I am a total technology NERD. New electronics make me giddy. Like a two year old boy getting a box full of matchbox cars giddy.

I almost kissed the UPS man when he dropped this at my house.

I dropped every thing I was doing in order to get it set up, including my baby. I mean it took me almost 20 minutes to realize he was crying not because I wasn’t paying attention to him but because he had kicked his toy over. What? At least it wasn’t on top of him, and I totally put something heavy on the base when I set it back up so he couldn’t kick it over again.

Even Kitty got in on the action. She was totally excited about the new printer, or maybe just the snazzy bag it came in. Whatever.

I can’t tell you how easy the set up was. The printer itself walked me through virtually every step once it was plugged in. See that little button there that says “Show Me”? If you clicked on that at any point in the set up it would show you an animation demonstrating the step you were on. DUDE.

One of the things I miss the most about my office job, besides the paycheck of course, is access to the copy and fax machines. It was so easy to take everything to work. For several years we didn’t even have a functioning printer set up in our house. My husband spends his days at the top of a 40 foot electric pole so asking him to take stuff to work and make copies or send faxes is like asking Brittney Spears to actually perform…live..it could happen but chances are it wouldn’t be pretty. Scanning is a total breeze on this thing. You put the paper in, you hit scan, tell it where to send it and off it goes. I don’t even have to my computer anywhere near the printer to scan to it.

A few nights ago I was baffled when I realized that I had to fax something. There was no other option. The company specifically stated that only faxes were accepted. How can this even be? Anywho, I asked all the other girls if they had set up the fax option because quite honestly it was 10:30 at night and I didn’t want to mess with the set-up. Well none of those other slackers had it set up, so I put on my big girl panties and dove in. Let me tell you the hardest part of setting the printer up to fax was finding shoes to put on to trek to the basement for a phone cord. (I’m pretty sure the printer comes with a phone cord but I needed my super extra long one because my living room only has one phone outlet)

I plugged the phone cord into the back and opened up the utility on my computer. I plugged in my name and phone number where noted. I figured there had to be more to the process but just for fun I clicked to “test the device for fax set-up” button. I am not even kidding when I tell you it was 100% ready to send and receive faxes at that point. Oh it gets better, I got my letter all ready to fax and I faxed it FROM MY COMPUTER! No printing required. Hello paper saver!

I could go on and on about all the cool stuff this printer does. I mean I didn’t even tell you about any of the cool web apps, or how the printer sends messages to my computer when it is low on ink (even when I’m not actively printing). Or how about that time I forgot I was going to a scrapbook crop and had no pictures printed out, I printed 20 4×6 photos in less than 15 minutes. I didn’t tell you how I printed coupons for grocery shopping on my way out the door, while holding the baby in his car sear. Clearly when I can teach my kid to fetch me things I’ve printed and bring them to me on my throne the couch I will be one step closer to complete domination (of my home).

**This printer was provided by HP for me to test out and review, but the opinions you see here are 100% mine.

November 14th, 2009 | Tags: Cool Stuff, HP Printer, Reviews | Category: I reviewed it | Comments (6)