Visiting My Nephews



Jonathan



Joshua



Mason

We spent the day with Joshua and Jonathan today and had a great time. Mason loves spending time with them. He is all about Joshua. He calls "Joshu" all of the time. He also loves to play with all of their cool toys. I am looking forward to these boys growing up together and being very close. With Mason being an only child, we will make sure he gets to spend lots of time with his cousins. Thanks Tay Tay and Eh-hic for letting up spend Saturday with you. We love all of you!

Until next time......

Being an Only Child

Today while I was at my MD's office, the head OB nurse asked me if I was planning to have another baby any time in the near future. I quickly told her that while I would love to have another baby, I would have to do it by myself because Dawn wasn't at all interested in another child. Dawn feels that we are too old to have another and that it wouldn't be fair to the child for us to be "older" parents. We are 40 and 42 so I don't feel like we are too old but I get what she is saying to a degree. So as we continued our conversation, I told her that Mason would have to be an only child and that we would just have to spoil him rotten. She said she had several children and couldn't imagine having only one child. I told her that I had always wanted several children but life didn't deal me the right cards for that to happen. Our road to being parents took us a lot longer than I anticipated so while I would love to have another baby, it just wasn't going to happen! While this makes a little sad, I am very thankful that we were blessed with the most adorable little boy in the world. He is healthy, happy and just down right amazing!

Throughout the day, I have been thinking about him being an only child. I don't know what that is like since I grew up with 3 siblings. Are children that grow up without siblings any different than those that have siblings? Is it fair to him that he won't have a brother to pal around with or a little sister to protect? Both Dawn and I grew up with siblings so neither of us will be able to relate. What are your thoughts?

Until next time......

Valentine's Day

Mason's Valentine's Goodies

Look at that excitement!

We had a wonderful Valentine's Day. Mason was very excited about all of the goodies that he got. We haven't given him much "junk" food like candy and chocolate so not sure why he was so excited but he was. Now don't get me wrong, even though he doesn't get chocolate very often doesn't mean he doesn't like it. He does!! He loves M-mees and knows where we hide the stash. He will stand on the stool near the cabinets and will point and say M-mees until we give him some. He is so cute when he says it too! :-)

Mommy and Momma's Valentine's Dinner

I grilled filets and had salad and baked potatos with a nice bottle of wine for us for our Valentine's dinner. It was a great dinner if I must say so myself. That was probably the best filet I have ever grilled! The wine was a nice red from Iron Gate Winery and it too was delicious! We haven't had many date nights out since Mason came along so a nice romantic dinner at home was just what we needed.

Hope each of you had a wonderful Valentine's Day as well.

Until next time......

Work, Work, Work

Wow, the past week was a tough week. I think I put in at least 65 hours with the time that I was in the office and the time that I had to work at home just to get caught up. This was the most I have worked outside of my normal work week since before I got pregnant which was almost 3 years ago.
Why the increase in workload? Well there are a couple reasons for that. One is that I had to unfortunately let one of my staff go this past week. Long story and not appropriate to discuss publicly but it was a tough thing to do. And given that I am down a staff, I had to do her job as well as mine.

Another reason is my YMCA is the lead agency in a community initiative to spread awareness about the prevention of child sexual abuse. I am the lead staff member on this project and our first set of community trainings is Monday - Wednesday of this coming week so I have spent a crazy amount of time getting everything ready for that. For those of you that are interested the program is called Stewards of Children and is a program that was developed by the organization Darkness to Light out of Charleston, SC.

At any rate, I am exhausted after working so much this past week. I am too old to work long hours like that. Hoping things settle down a bit after these trainings. I keep reminding myself of the phrase, "This Too Shall Pass!".  What has been keeping you busy these days?

Until next time......

18 Month Well Toddler Checkup

Mason had his 18 month check up yesterday. He weighed 27.7 pounds and was 34 1/4 inches tall. That puts him in the 50th percentile for weight and the 95th percentile for height. Looks like we may have us a tall one on our hands if he keeps this rate of growth up! Doctor says he is growing on schedule and is doing really well. He was impressed with the list of words he is saying and all of the great things he has learned already. So, while I am a bit sad that he is already 18 months old, I am very happy that we have a healthy, thriving, handsome little guy.

Until next time......