Boys Love Dirt

Liam standing King of the Hill on the 16 cubic yards of dirt we had dropped on our driveway to fill one of our ponds. He had the time of his life....for hours. If only we could lose ourselves in something so dirty mindfully.

Assertive Communication Tool

I got this very useful Assertive Communication wallet-sized card from my counselor over a year ago, yes I have one. I have kept it posted on my refrigerator since then and now have it internalized. When I'm angry or my needs are not being met with anyone, I use it and it works. It is a fantastic little tool. It helps me not feel horrible for the words that are about to come out of my mouth and not have them be the wrong ones that will be hurtful.

I feel ........................
(angry, scared, worried, sad, confused, lonely, concerned, etc.)
when you...................
(yell, drink, avoid, criticize, worry, leave, sleep, ignore, etc.)
I would appreciate it....like it....enjoy it....
It would mean a lot to me......
It would really help......
if you would....................
(talk, wait, listen, care, call, write, consider, help, etc.)

B. Heneberger, LMHC

Essence of Life Quote - Buddhist

The essence of life is that it is challenging.
To be fully alive, fully human,
and completely awake is
to be continually
thrown out of the nest.

Quote by: Pema Chodron, Buddhist Nun

Headbanging & Tantrums - Part 1

Headbanging? Huh.....That's what I would have said had we not experienced this horrific sight and sound coming from our toddler's head repetitively hitting our tile floor 42 times several times a day for a year and a half. So why are there not enough authoritative articles or parental anecdotes on the subject? I pride myself in having a Masters in Library & Information Science and being a good librarian, so I armed myself with resources and went on the hunt for information that must be out there. But there's nothing worse to a librarian than when something hasn't been written, therefore, cannot be found. If you are lucky to find it in an index of a book on child behavior, then you'll read one paragraph or less, with no information. If you go online, you'll find people who are asking the same question with no follow up answer. If you ask your doctor, they'll you to ignore it, that it will go away on it's own because it's an attention getting tactic - although children who suffer from Autism often display this behavior.

My son, Liam, had been a sensitive baby, but after year we knew what it took to calm him down, in most cases. When he was about 15 months old he started getting his molars and he is really sensitive to pain. He started slapping his cheeks a lot. As the quick learner that he is, he soon figured out that this got our attention very quickly. Well, when this stopped working, he moved on to headbanging - this in a matter of one week. Then he started doing it every time he was frustrated or upset. This came along with rolling around on the floor, screaming at the top of his lungs, kicking, turning purple, hitting, and biting for one hour and fifteen minutes. It was the most horrific thing we've ever witnessed as parents. No one would believe it unless they saw it. Naturally, we thought it was still because he was teething and often said, "Wow, it looks like it really hurts." So we waited for those molars and checked many times per day. But no sign of those pearly white sheers of pain. So what did we do? We gave him Tylenol and took him for a long car ride, as that had often called him down in the past.

That worked after a few minutes, but we thought, "Was it the Tylenol or the car ride, because if it's the car ride, then it can't really be pain." So what do good parents do when something is wrong with your child and it's persistent? We took him to the doctor. What did she say? "Welcome to the terrible 2s," followed by "Ignore it, and he will stop when he knows it doesn't work to get what he wants. He will not hurt himself." Well, she doesn't know my persistent, head strong, stubborn as hell child. When we ignored him head banging 10 times on the carpet in our bedroom, he moved on to headbanging on our living room floor, and when that didn't work, he'd bang on the glass sliding doors, and when that didn't work, he literally walked over to the tile floor in the kitchen and did it there until I couldn't bear it anymore. Surely, if the doctor had seen her child do this she couldn't have either.

Of course, my son, smart as he is, learned the threshold very quickly and it became his method for getting what he wanted. And because he lived with a permanent black and blue Klingon (Star Wars reference) bump coming out of his forehead, we had to protect him physically before he gave himself a concussion the doctor was sure wouldn't happen. We had to hold him down on the floor and keep him from hitting us, kicking us, biting us, or himself, while holding on to his head so that he couldn't bang it forward or backwards. All the while he was strongly rolling to the sides, screaming at the top of his lungs for over an hour. This would happen anywhere from 2 to 8 times per day. And yes, I'm a stay at home mom, by choice. Yes, I wanted someone to shoot me most of these days. We read the book "The Happiest Toddler on The Block," by Dr. Karp, since we'd read the baby one and it had worked. And we instituted the techniques but it still was not that effectual for us. I went back to the doctor and she told me to read a couple of other books... or if I was at the end of my rope, to go see a child psychiatrist. Scary. For a two year old with angst, really? And I thought, "Well, I have angst, and I've seen a psychologist, she's helped, I've got nothing to lose but my sanity to gain here." So we went.

Mommy Dog Days - Part 2

I have been waking up early this whole week (yes I know we are only on Wednesday, but give me the benefit of the doubt here), and taking a shower and having coffee while blogging or something that will inspire me before Liam wakes up - I have not showered before Liam awakening since he was born in June 2006. Instead, I choose to delay that gratification as a decompressing exercise before every night with my glass of wine, yes, I do bring it into the shower with me.

So I got dressed and poured myself and my hubby a cup of tea this morning knowing that I would be writing at Panera with a large cup of coffee and a nice sandwich. Stomach turning from hunger would have to wait a while longer. I woke up Liam, and of course, immediately came his plea, "I not go to school today mommy." I got him dressed and fed and out the door 15 minutes early (I never thought I'd leave that early) and this only gets us to school 5 minutes early (his school is 10 miles and 25 minutes away. I peel him from me like a leech and hoping his crying and tears would subside soon, I am off to write.

I get my coffee and sandwich and sit down. I spend a few minutes rereading the last page I wrote and putting on the cloak of my protagonist and close my eyes to imagine the setting in Mendoza where my story is based. I write for 2 hours, freezing myself to death, changing the music on my ipod to better inspire my writing process. When I'm too cold I go outside to warm up under the sun, listening to Joni Mitchell's "Both Sides Now" and find a new inspiration bit for my story. I loved that one. Breaks are always good, they provide perception. I go back and finish another half hour and go to rummage the fun housing racks at Marshalls, something I haven't done in a year or more. I catch a mom I don't know perusing and we started a conversation, I wanted to get her contact info but didn't. I should have. I should do a personal card like my friend Harmany to hand out.

So far so good. I pick up Liam from school and wehead to the Post Office to do his passport card for the cruis. We stand in line for 30 minutes, while Liam is trying to pull the line marker down but mostly being very well behaved until the asshole attendant very annoying tells me that I have to have an appt. UUUGGGHHHH!!! Did I tell you I have a toddler and that we had waited for a half an hour?

So we headed to the downtown office, completely 10 miles the opposite direction towards downtown, with my little boy happy as could be saying, "We go down town mommy." We make a pit stop at the golden arches (McDonald's) knowing that this is going to take a while. Only to go to the wrong office, cross busy streets. But all the while Liam happy as can be at the many sights of police cars and policemen in uniform like the ones he only sees in books. We find the right place and see a very lovely woman who informs us we need two things we don't have. Again, UGGGHHH!

We head to Payne Park so that Liam can play and have lunch - I really wanted to reward him for being so good. But Payne Park sucked with hardly any playground under no shade on a very hot day. We drove all the way past our house, another 12 miles, to the brand new park whose opening we attended this weekend. Liam was happy, and also, was just starting to have a poopy accident in his underwear. Did I mention that we are also potty training and that we must take these precautions of asking potty questions and keeping in mind all of the places we will be going to and where and if there are bathroom, making provisions for all of the trees he will have to pee on if they don't?

Well, I got him cleaned up and on the playground, eating his nuggets and apples, where he was happy as can be, and I sat under a slide trying to get all the wind in the shade of a slide. We'd been at the part for almost 2 hours before I called it quits, to my child's astonishment because he still had tons of energy.

Mommy Dog Days - Part 1

Today is one of those mommy dog days where it starts off well and then slowly nose dives into an unseen abyss. I will preface this redactation by saying that yes, I CHOSE to stay home and raise my son, and that I do love it and wouldn't trade any of these days for anything. But I will follow that with saying that after two degrees, an advanced degree, working in engineering and then in libraries (will go back), this is the hardest job I will ever do in my life. Not only is it exhausting, but it comes with caveats you didn't anticipate. What are they? Well, you knew about feeding a baby, clothing a baby, and all of the other baby tending things - well, you knew what they were, not necessarily how much out of you it would really take. You also kind of knew, my husband and I had discussed, what our roles would be inside the home and out as far as chores, cooking, cleaning, landscape maintenance, etc. What no one told you though, was that you would also have to run every single errand (go to the bank, the post office, the car maintenance thingy, etc.) that needed to be taken care of Monday through Friday 8 - 5 with your child while you did everything else - grocery shopped, cooked 3 meals and 5 snacks per day (healthy if you're me, take longer), make sure the house doesn't come down on you from piles of laundry and dust, put up with your child's demands and whining while you are trying to discipline him so he doesn't grow up to be a heathen and try to teach him things through play that now seem necessary before you send them to pre K, try to have yourself, your child and the house in some presentable shape so when your husband walks in the door at 6 o'clock from a hard day you don't hear him sigh that disgusting sigh implying "What did yo do today?" with still 1/3rd of the day to go. And no matter how much you have thus far on this job you've learned to anticipate, plan and organize, the inevitable still holds true, shit happens.

Go to Part 2 for a sample, random day of what this entails.

Autism Awareness Month

I feel bad that this whole month has gone by and I haven't done anything, not even donate a measly $5 towards Autism research. So I will at least dedicate some time here. I came too close to the subject on Autism from my own anxiety ridden neurosis when Liam was an infant. I was aware of it in high school because I knew a friend who had a sibling that had Autism. I became really intrigued by it and for some reason thought that the day I had a child he would have it. Stupid I know. So when I had my first son, a preemie and then the vaccination days came by, I started to get a very nervous feeling.

Being the type of person who thinks something must be wrong for the world to still keep functioning (yes, I believe it's fucked up as much as I am), I started looking for signs very early. I even asked the doctor at the first vaccination session, and left very uneasy. Then the next round came and I pulled out my librarian hat and started researching. I read a wonderful book on the subject by Stephanie Kay and learned the history of vaccines, how they get passed (extremely dangerously), grouped (dangerous) and the dangers of each of them on these young children.

No, there has been no official link between Autism and vaccines, but I believe in my heart that if there was a link, it would never reach the public. Too much is at stake. So while my husband the scientist says there is no link, he also agrees that the debate is not over and will not be for some time.

One little boy at my son's preschool has Autism, I could tell right away. I already knew all the signs, I had the 22 criteria memorized by the time Liam was 6 months old. And my heart breaks for this beautiful little boy. Luckily his mom is doing the work. I have a 25 year old cousin who lives in my native Argentina who has Autism, low functioning and non-verbal. But there the resources are so limited he's never even been diagnosed or treated. He regressed, or was seen at the age of 2 when he wasn't talking. My husband has a cousin who had Asperger Syndrome and with a lot of intervention in school, now is a double major in Math and Astrophysics on his way to working at NASA with a lot of potential. And by looking at him you would never know it. I watch all the families on TV, I cannot miss a show about Autism and I hope to someday do something, even if it's volunteering at a school or center for children with Autism. I know too much about it and can't just turn a blind eye because my child doesn't have it. I am encouraged by all of the amazing people who are working so hard to find a cause, link to something, and a cure. With love and compassion to those who are afflicted. Adriana.

Laryngitis, Please Return My Voice

Laryngitis, please return my voice. You've absconded with my only ability to get my child to listen to me, and while yes, it doesn't work all the time, trying to talk come out in yelps that leaves him saying, "Mommy's funny," and running from me. I lost my voice on Friday and have only recovered it in bits and spurts, only lasting to midday and then disappearing again. At first I felt bad because he didn't understand and he thought I was mad at him, since my voice drops a couple of octaves when I discipline his bad behavior. Poor little guy. Even my husband is making jokes at my expense, and they are not funny.

"Some may say you are the perfect wife, beautiful, sexy, and can't talk," he said yesterday.
Today he said I sounded sexy right before I lost it again. All I know is that it hurts and I'm frustrated. You can't take a voice away from a talker......I guess I'll wait. People are all concerned about the Swine Flu and I could care less, my voice is my tool, let the pigs roll in the mud.

I've been walking around for days with a bear jar of honey, which is the only thing that has helped my throat. It really works. But with a cold and a husband with a cold, too, it's been a bad week. We feel like we've been sick for ever, since last September really, when Liam started school. Then it's been one cold per month for each of us, and I was a person who only got one cold per year. I can't wait to restore my YMCA membership and start juicing (real fruits and veggies with a juicer) to get healthier.

Mommy Playdates

After almost three years of trying to find, finding, partaking in, falling out of, and finding enduring friendships through mommy playdates, I can say that I've graduated to the next level. What is that level and why? I am still redefining what that level is for me and as to the second part of that question - it never really worked for me or to put it in another way - the positives never outweighed the negatives. This is my story.

When you think of all of the groups or clicks one can or has joined in their lifetime - be it in elementary school, high school, college, work groups, hobbies acquired, etc., I've begun to think that non are as elemental, in one way or another, as mommy groups. To understand why it didn't work for me, I would have to bring it back to my early years. I could never really fit into any groups during my adolescent years in school, especially groups dominated by women. Why? I don't know but think that bits and parts of me lay everywhere and not all in one place. Clicks in school were too exclusive - the artists (I drew), the druggies (I smoked pot), the straight A students (never), the class clowns (lacked standard humor), the ones who kept creating new groups trying to place themselves somewhere (I couldn't be too narrow minded or limited in my likings), the athletes (no athletic bone in this small body). So if I tried to join, they didn't let me in and I just wondered by myself or with a friend or two. But girls just didn't like me. Fast forward to pregnancy.

When I was pregnant, my sister and a friend were pregnant at the same time. I had just miscarried (where they hadn't) and I was a bit anxious to say the least. Then I met a woman whose husband worked with mine and she was pregnant with her 4th child. But that wasn't until I was already bedridden due to having no cervix and dilated at 17 weeks. We all went through our pregnancies together, sharing our stories, and sometimes in very intimate details, but it was different for me. I was confined to a bed for 120 days, 60 of them in a hospital bed no bigger than a 8x10 room. The only group that I could have belonged to were the women in the adjacent rooms that I never got to meet. And behind it all was the fear of how early our son would come. Fast forward to the birth.

Liam was born at 34 1/2 weeks and directly into the NICU. We were lucky that his health was great and that we could bring him home after 10 days (10 long days of looking at the empty blue-yellow plaid bassinet that Jay had bought and placed right next to my side of the bed, waiting. Going to the hospital every moment that I wasn't sleeping and waking up several times during the night to call and check up on him. This compared to all of the healthy perfect bringing home baby stories I heard all around us and had watched on TV during my whole pregnancy. The only great thing about this was the beautiful birthing experience I had, with no Lamaze and living mindfully in the moment of every movement he made in my belly. I was lucky. This should have been a preparation for the mindfulness required in raising a child who cannot see past this very instant and this very desire. Fast forward to Liam's personality.

Getting to know Liam has been such a wonderful, yet anxious experience (for me). While Jay trusted that the universe would know where to place Liam or where he would fall, I couldn't. My controlling nature got the best of the first 2 years of Liam's life, sadly to say. With his preemie status all I could think of what could go wrong. You name it, it crossed my mind. At first I was obsessed with SIDS. I dreaded that every time he went to sleep he wouldn't wake up. Then my mind centered on the Autism spectrum since he was 6 months old. I read books on vaccinations (which I still hold on the knowledge conveyed in them), I looked online and did tons of research. Being a librarian can sometimes be a curse. It brought so much anxiety about the delusions I was seeing that were not there, I ended up in counseling and on anti-anxiety medication. I worked daily on raising Liam and trying to not get anxious when he rubbed a shoe string for too long, padded his blanky for a while, didn't respond when I called his name every time, and later when his speech was delayed because of his confusion with the Spanish/English dynamic we had in our home.

During all this time, I tried to go to mommy groups, but Liam was too shy, too afraid of the other children, and his tantrums were fierce. He would cry and scream the minute he heard another baby cry and it took him so long to reset that we'd have to leave (a library book baby event, hospital group, coffee house meeting). Then he started head banging and it was over. His head banging drew in the rolling eyes and the "What's the matter with your son, is he okay?" Meaning, is he normal and make him stop before he gives himself a concussion. Yes, the pounding of a skull on a tile floor of a gymnasium can be resoundingly loud. And going back they just remembered who we were and stayed away. This seemed to happen everywhere. Now we didn't fit in. And it was quite lonely.

Then there were the comparisons that didn't help. Mothers are an obsessive bunch, let me tell you. We can size up a child in no time. There is the initial phrase, "You're son/daughter is so cute," followed by the inevitable question, "How old is he/she?" This serves two purposes:

1. To compare that child to yours,
2. To see if you make a connection with this other person whom you know nothing about but could in 2 seconds be exchanging the most gruesome mucus exchange of the birth story.

Before you know it, you have already learned the pregnancy and birth story, sized up where your child is advanced/behind theirs (and decided that you will worry about that later, right now you are having a much needed moment of adult conversation) and learning all about how motherhood has changed them, their careers, dreams, and marriages. You then walk away, sometimes with a phone number or email, promising to call to schedule a playdate, all the while you are comparing them to yourself as a mother: breastfeeding v. formula, Gerber v. home made, cry out method v. holding them all night, great marriage that will make it v. this one will last a year, etc. Are you a better mother or a worse mother? Will calling them make you feel better or worse about yourself. But you do call. Because nontheless, you need this to go on. Nobody but they understand what it's like. Not even the man of your dreams who helped you, in a moment of passion to create this perfect little person you are so in love with, can understand exactly.

And while you may say that I am bitter or cynical, you are right about the cynical, realistic I think. But not bitter. Just think back. You could call it sharing, but was it really? Are you still sharing past your child's second birthday and maybe have been lucky enough to make a friendship out of other similar interests that you have together? Otherwise, you keep getting together because staying home all day with a child will wreck your mind and you need an adult conversation about anything, including yes, mostly revolving around your child. All this while your child runs around and you have to just make sure they don't hurt themselves while you keep your sanity. If you don't agree with me, please let me know how you did it better so I can learn and then club myself over the head with my son's baseball bat.

If the play date is small enough and you attend it often, the dynamic is different. You share more. Very quickly - after you have sized up all the children - you start learning about the women's marriages, divorces, prior careers, if they plan to return to work, their parenting styles, the way they were raised, their dreams (if they can remember them and plan to carry them out v. defecting now that they are a mommy) etc. We share more with these women in a short period of time than we do ever again in our lifetimes, and do so desperately. We crave this contact. More so than at any other point in our lives - before and after. It gets us through the sleepless nights, the cracked nipples, the what did you do to get your child to keep nursing?. And yes, it gets you through the day and night because you know at the end of the day while you could share this with the love of your life he doesn't quite feel the same way you do and really doesn't want to know the minutia of how you were pumping and when you stood up the milk (that is as precious as gold) spilled all over the floor. And with your crazy hormones you cried for an hour about it. All they want to know is when will you be over the baby enough to remember to take them off the back burner, which is now cold, or be in the mood to have sex again, without excuses of tiredness, hormones that haven't come back to normal, dirty because you haven't showered in three days, etc. And we can't blame them, they went along this roller coaster with us, but one of us rode in the front and the other in the back and we didn't share the same thrill.

So where is your mommy group now? Do you see them regularly? Do keep in touch via email, phone, or have you gone in separate ways after returning to work, having another child (which happens much too quickly after the first one)? Have you made a life long friendship with these other women who at one point were your lifeline? Or are you sad to see them go, but know that the only common interest that held you together is now growing up and you have moved on? I think about this all the time and wish that I could have made more friends and miss one dearly that moved away. I still have three who keep me sane and am lucky as hell to be able to call on them, day or night, with a question or a bitch session about anything, and they will listen. And then there's my sister, who goes along for the ride with me every time, holding my hand, even when she doesn't agree with me or when she has to put my anxiety to rest. No judgment, just love and compassion.

Liam's Eating (or lack of)

I am so tired of dealing with an almost 3 year old picky eater. I know I'm not alone. I am starting to give up on his decision not to eat when he's not hungry (I read the chapter on picky eating in the Momma Zen book). But I refuse to give him his choice of 5 bottles of milk a day instead of his meals, which is what he'd prefer - yes I know,the bottle should have long been buried.

This morning I made him a pastry/egg pastry my sister, who shares this agony with me, gave me - rolling out Pillsbury Dough Boy thinner and making a separate frittata with egg and zucchini. Then roll them into the pastry and put in the oven for 11 minutes. They turned out great - except that Liam only took 2 bites.

For lunch I made him pizza (cut out whole wheat flat bread, added turkey slices, pizza sauce and cheese). As soon as it was done, he said, "No pizza. I want apple with peanut butter." UGGGGGHHHH!!! So I do that. Then he wanted a piece of bread with peanut butter and jelly, which I am now eating. And nap time is next. I'm exhausted and can't wait what challenge that will bring.

Characters

I love my characters, especially the protagonist. Her name will probably Maria del Carmen, named after the Virgin of Mendoza, Argentina. She is a 56 year old woman who is trapped in a lifeless marriage to a viticulturalist, owner of a vineyard and winery who has cheated on her. She will go through a journey of rediscovery to find out what she really wants out of life, looking back at who she was and moving forward through various people who will help her find her way. She gave up working as a teacher because her husband wanted her to raise her kids in their mountain home in Vistalba. Now 25 or so years later she is depressed and doesn't know why. But the affair discovery serves as a catalyst, albeit, before she's ready, to take another look at her life and what she wants to do with the rest of it.

The husband, whose name will be Serafin, is a quiet intellectual type who is so involved in his life outside the home he sees nothing else. He has doted on his daughter and she is the only one with whom he's conversed in the house for the past decade. He always carried the wish that his children would follow his footsteps and sad they didn't. He contributes to a newspaper weekly for his wine expertise and he teaches at the university (a class on viticuluralism), plays chess with his high society friends, and is having an affair with another professor.

The daughter, whose name will be Valentina, is a teacher like her mother had been, but of science. She had gotten a scholarship to the most prestigious university in BA but her father did not allow her to go because it was too far away from home, typical of Argenting and Hispanic cultures. She has settled into a teaching job she's not passionate about and the only thing that keeps her semi-happy is her boyfriend. She has seen her father as her protector, daddy's little girl, even after she got over the disappointment of not being able to follow her career as a geneticist in BA.

The son, whose name will be Marcelo, is a lover of animals who will be graduating soon from high school and will go on to Veterinarian school for large animals: horse, cows, lamas, guanacos. He is a boy happy on the mountain, tending to the horses in a neighbor's farm. He loves and has a great relationship with his mother.

My Hero

When Jay emptied out the large fish pond to build Liam's play set, he had to fish out the baby fish one by one. It was sweetest thing ever, it took him two hours of going in the mucky water with his new tennis shoes rescuing them and throwing them in the pond. Any other person would have just let them drown in the muck, but he didn't. He even captured and released a huge frog that kept jumping around the pond while he tried to catch it.

My Writing

I started writing a novel in Sept. 2008, the very first day that I started Liam in preschool. My first idea, which had been ruminating through my mind for a couple of years, was to write a book of short stories that encompassed the lives of people in Argentina, with their daily problems and the culture behind them. I had them each lined up in a neat outline. They were supposed to be short novellas, ranging from 20-60 pages each. However, when I started writing the first one, and got to page 50, I realized my protagonist was not done going through her rediscovery journey. I struggled with this for a while because not only did I not want this to be a book on it's own, but because I was equally passionate about the other stories I had to write.

So I thought about it, turned to my husband, who is a good guide for me. He just said, "You have a good story, just write it. Don't worry about the page numbers. If your protagonist is taking you places, just follow her." So after much reluctance, I finally just let go and wrote. It felt good to make that decision and so I started working on a detailed outline for as long as I could see the story. And then the writing flowed easier, knowing where the story was headed.

My love's love of wood

I am so happy that Jay continues to be passionate about his woodworking. I am also so impressed with Jay's ability to create things, like the table, trivet, and now the play set for Liam he is about to build. I know that people sometimes have dreams and goals but not the discipline to see it through to completion. His table is almost complete and it's absolutely beautiful. I can't wait for the play set to be done so that we can have a fire pit and some chairs with a table to sit outside and enjoy some nice wine while Liam plays.

Liam's Marvels

Liam has developed exponentially more than we had expected in the past 2 months. His talking has increased as has his phrases. Yesterday Jay asked him how old he would be on his birthday and for the first time he said, "Three." People at the grocery store just laughed. Then a man at the register bought him a pack of peanut M&Ms because he stopped crying when he saw them from a fall he'd just taken off the shopping cart.

Simple things I have taken pleasure to lately:

• Watching Liam in the 16 cubic yards of dirt dumped on our driveway the other day. He climbed it, played on it, threw dirt and peed on it.
• Watching Liam put on gloves and help daddy put in yard waste into a bucket on a day of weeding.
• Watching Liam put rocks into a red bucket and carry it (as heavy as it was) to dump it far quicker than it took to put them in there and carry it off of the next door neighbor's dock.
• Taking Liam to the bathroom knowing that he will be fully potty trained soon. He's done so well with this new elemental milestone.
• Transitioning him to his big boy bed at 2 1/2 very easily.
• His playing with school friends very well and partaking of the activities, including at their birthday parties. His social skills have increased tremendously this past month, far more than I had expected. The other day he played at Sue's house on the playset and he was so proud of all the things he did (climbing on the rock wall, going up on the slide, etc.) saying "Ta-daa, I did it, horay for me!" over and over. When Sophia got there he was happy and very playful with her.
  
• His independence in "I do it myself" for everything. Even if it takes longer to accomplish a task.
• His helping me wash his hair completely under the shower.
• His discovering his sexual orientation different from girls. He's been obsessed lately by "boobies" telling me all the time that I have some. Then the other day he started naming the girls in his class and asking me if they had "boobies." When he got to Karlee Beth he said, "I like Karlee a lot mommy." I couldn't believe it. I've never even seen him with her or heard him talk about the kids in his class. Now he knows them all by name and talks about them at home.
• He peed on his teacher Amber on Friday by accident.
  

Book Club

I joined a book club in late March 2009 and attended the first meeting on April 18th. It was much more animated than I thought it'd be. The book title was "The Myth of You & Me" about two friends who had a falling out (hard) because of a boy. Easy read and created a very lively discussions among women who have been in the club for a while and some new ones like myself. We all thought back to our best friends from when we were young and shred very intimate details. Far more than I'd expected. We laughed a lot and the mix in ages (34-60) made for a great discussion. I will go back in May even if the book is not something I would normally read. Although it's about happiness and it's definition by an NPR correspondent.