The Red One

My mom came down last week to spend time with her grandson and help me out as Alex was on a "holiday" skiing with his friends. That phrase was repeated by Zach all. weekend. long. "My Daddy is on a holiday." "My Daddy is skiing with his friends". Yes Zachary, I am well aware of both those facts. That is why your Granny Marsh is here, to save me from going insane this weekend. Which she did and then some. I don't remember the last time I was so well rested going into the week!!

My mom sent ahead of her 3 chairs for Zachary that are just like the ones we rented for his birthday party, which he loved. They are light enough so that he can move them around and just his right size. He was devastated when the rented ones left. It has been on my list to get him a nice set of chairs and a table that match our furniture, but due to my aforementioned condition it had fallen to the back of my list.

Luckily here arrive in the mail, 3 chairs perfect for Zach and his friends. Of course he only wants to sit in the red one. He says that his cousin Baby Charlotte can sit in the blue one. But not the red one.

Right now he loves to sit in the chairs and watch Barney after dinner. He pulls the foot stool over and uses that for his snack. We are so classy I can barely stand it. Whenever he would go "silent" when my mom was here we would find him sitting in his chair, usually with a snack and some apple juice.

Cowboys and Horses

Today is Go Texan day here in Houston and I was determined to see the trail riders like we did last year. I told Zach last night that tomorrow we would see cowboys and horses. He seemed marginally excited, he does still really like horses but was more interested in drinking milk and watching Barney. Well this morning, guess who popped up talking (very loudly) about cowboys and horses. 'Horses' is crystal clear...'cowboys' on the other hand took me a while to figure out. But all morning was cowboys and horses, cowboys and horses.

So imagine my anxiety when at 8:30 we went looking for the trail riders only to find no trail riders. Well, crap. Zach and I drove up and down the street for 30 minutes, me trying to remain calm and wondering how I am going to get myself out of this, stopping at Shipley's got some donuts, stopped at Starbucks, got Mommy a coffee and finally ended up at the park that faces the street they should come down. I decided to give the riders until 9:15 to show up then. I was still going to work after all. Luckily I met a very nice mom at the park (who, turns out was in one of my Junior League placements) and she said they came through at 9:30 last year.

And sure enough, 9:45 on the dot they were walking past us. We stood with my new friend and a bunch of SAHM moms with their kiddos and waved at the horses and cowboys. I think Zach liked it. He did a lot of waving and saying of "Good morning!"

Watching the port-a-potties bring up the rear

Here we go again

As you, my 4 loyal blog readers have undoubtedly noticed, I have been very behind in my posting, since December it has been pitiful. I would like to say it was the holidays and phew they just took it out of me (which they did) or that it was Zach who has become a hell-on-wheels toddler (which he has) but it really was neither of those things keeping me from the biting wit you have come to know and love (and heavy sarcasm).

Turns out that come July 11^th Zach is going to be a big brother. Yep, we are expecting a new Little Wall and are very excited! This little Wall really took it out of me the first trimester. It was all I could do to take moderately competent care of Zachary long enough to get him to bed so I could go lay down. For the remainder of the evening. Rising only to eat cereal or yogurt and to let in/out the dog.  And maybe talk to my husband. But that was asking A LOT.

So that is my excuse. I would like to say that I am not one for excuses but that would be a total and complete lie. I LOVE excuses and am taking this one as far as it will get me. As a matter of fact I think I have been sitting in this position for too long and need to go elevate my feet and have some more cereal.

Here are the stats:

• 19 Weeks (almost 5 months)
• We are not finding out (again) what we are having
• It will be a scheduled C-section as that is what I had last time, on or around July 11^th
• Zach does not really understand that there is a baby in my belly but keeps saying he has a baby sister as that is what his friend Sophie has so he thinks he will have one too.
• He also tries to peer through my belly button to see the baby.
• And since his belly is about as big as mine right now he sometimes points to it and says "baby?".

I was blinded by love

I am just going to start by saying that every mother thinks their baby is the cutest in the whole wide world. Most might be more rational than to enter them in contests...but they still all secretly believe that they have the most precious baby ever.

So I obviously compare my baby to other babies. Since he is almost 2 I have forgotten what he looked like as a baby and went back to check and make sure he was still the cutest thing ever.

Summary - yes I still pick him any day but turns out he was f.a.t. fat. Who knew? I remember him being chubby, but looking back he is giant. The rolls, the cheeks, the belly. HUGE.

Ummm seriously, how did I not see the hugeness that was my child? And he was not even eating solid food for a lot of that time. Alex and I just laugh to see these pictures now. Especially since this is what our formerly chubby baby looks like now:

Necessary Precaution

As I think I have mentioned Zach loves to "shoot". All. The. Time. I had put away his baby hoop in his closet but he spotted it once when his father was in charge. I was initially annoyed as I try to keep a rotation of the plastic junk toys that keep him happy so that they are not ALL in my living room. But the mini hoop has actually kept him busy when he can't go outside and shoot at his big hoop. Which he wants to do every day.

He is not satisfied with throwing the ball up towards the hoop (to be fair it goes up about 2 inches) he wants you to hold him so he can shoot. My patience with that is highly limited so I came up with the idea of letting him climb on his stool and shoot from up there. The downside is that he is a 2 year old, climbing, carrying 1-2 balls with concrete under him. I actually thought none of it (my under-parenting is highly documented) but my friend KK mentioned something about her son wanting to climb too and she thought he would fall off. That was literally the first time it occurred to me that he could fall off. Onto the concrete. Bad, bad parenting.

My solution? He now has to wear his bike helmet while shooting. No, I am still not standing out there, the helmet is parenting for me. I am glancing at him from the kitchen window while I make dinner.

Oddly enough he loves it. So much that he wears it while collecting leaves, running around the driveway and being chased by his dad. Safety first my friends, safety first.

Note the death stool in the background

2 years

My baby is two. My BABY is two. Now that he is technically 2 years and one month I am handling it much better. While I did not get as emotional as last year, there were some tears shed about how big and little he is all at the same time. I decided to create a Top 8 list for my new 2 year old. My 8 favorite things about him right this second.

1. His talking. While I do love/hate all the talking that happens, his language just astounds me. Right now he is huge on talking about playing basketball. Requests to "shoot! shoot" and "I play basketball. Mommy play basketball. Norman shoot!" are constant in the house right now. The best part of my day is when he greets me with a "Hi Mommy" at school, the part I don't really enjoy are the "Mommy play me!" requests. They way he says "please" has changed from "peas" to "prEEse" and "cheese" is so enunciated you think he is teaching someone else how to say it.

2. His singing. I swear it is the sweetest thing in my world right now. He still sings Jesus loves me but has added Row, Row, Row Your Boat - during which it is required for you to rock back and forth. Don't try to stand still and sing, that is highly unacceptable behavior. He sings Wheels on the Bus and when he did the "shh, shh, shh" for the babies I almost fell out of my chair. He nailed the cadence perfectly.

3. His growing independence. I know, I know. I will hate this shortly, but right now watching him playing with his trains or puzzles or reading books on his own makes me smile. He puts on his "working face" which is Alex to the core - tongue sticking out of his mouth and everything - and plays for about 20 minutes on his own. Heaven.

4. His chubby cheeks. The part of my baby that is still a baby are his cheeks and belly. When he lays next to me to read books in the big bed (aka our bed), I love to stare at his precious profile; those round cheeks and double chin. I can't help but kissing him. Which annoys him. And I don't care.

5. His smile. As my mom says Zach smiles with his entire face. His big brown eyes shrink to about 1/3 of their size when he smiles and laughs. Which he does often. Now when he laughs I can see all his teeth (and I give thanks that he has them now, I was really questioning that for a while) and it makes his cheeks even chubbier. See #4.

6. His friendships. Given how social Alex and I are I am so glad that Zach is very similar. He really has some friends and not just because we force them to be together. You can tell when he sees his close buddies Ben, Abby, Sophie and Miles that he loves being with them. He then talks about them for days afterwards. 

7. His dad. I am just going to give a special shout out to Alex because I usually don't. I like to poke fun of Alex for not being able to keep up with Jesus, encouraging excessive ball playing with Zach and whatever else he does that makes me laugh. But he is a wonderful dad and Zachary just adores him. (Plus he is OK with me writing whatever I want on this blog and has only given me grief once about the picture of Zach in bunny ears I posted on Facebook. And we KNOW I have done worse). Anyway, when Zach is mad at me he will cry, "My Daddy, my Daddy" and when that man walks in the door Zach runs full speed ahead shrieking with joy to see him. I can't tell you the joy it brings ME that Alex scoops him up and away they go, away from me, Alex still in his work clothes. That is the 2nd best part of my day.  

8. His happiness. I am guessing this too will change, but I feel so blessed that my baby is generally very happy go lucky. That is not like me. Not. At. All. You know who that is like? Please reference #7 above. The only caveat to that rule is when Zach is hungry. Oh girl, watch yourself he becomes a bear. But keep him fed on his diet of Oldfish and milk and he is smiling, talking and giggling about.

Chugga Chugga

I finally put Zachary's train table together and wow, is it a huge hit. I would like to state that it no longer looks anything like the below pictures as the main thing that happens on the table is him "working" rather than driving. Working means taking apart and putting back together all the tracks. I routinely hear loud banging coming from the table - but I don't care as the table also keeps him occupied for a little bit. I did try to drive a train down one small connected section of the track yesterday and though he allowed it, he preferred I help him "fix" the tracks that are strewn across the table. I see this as just one step in his play with the table (as he will have it for a good long while). Eventually he will figure out that it is fun to drive the trains around and use the crane to load things in and out.

His buddy Ben (aka his mom) gave away conductor hats at Ben's train theme party and Zach does like to wear it to fix his trains. He can't quite figure out the whistle that she sent as well but his face just lights up whenever someone else blows it for him.