A hot mess of thoughts and happenings

Thank you for all the compliments on the kitchen. We still love it.
I made our first dinner Monday, spaghetti. I felt like I was on a cooking show, using ingredients that before were hidden in the back of our disgusting pantry. Now all my spices are in a cool spice drawer and I got all crazy and used spices that probably shouldn't have been used in spaghetti. Daniel has been running around the island like a nut. We are back to having dinner at a table and not on TV trays. Getting information out of Daniel about his days at school during dinner..., well that hasn't changed. He is tight lipped, a new kitchen didn't change that.
I think all that cooking has been making my heartburn worse though so I need to chill with the spices. Just sayin'.

The last 3 mornings I have set my alarm clock so I can get a walk in before everyone wakes up. I have listenend to that alarm clock twice and once I pounded it and covered my head with a blanket. I love morning walks. The air is crisp, it's just me and the sound of my shoes hitting the pavement, my belly leads the way. That last five minutes is tough, I may look like a lady going into labor because I start to make faces and rub my round belly and slow my pace but I feel great afterwards. I'm less tired all day, I love walking into the house when D is ready for breakfast and Ry is getting ready and my day officially begins. It's too bad I didn't make this routine when the freaking sun wasn't rising at 6:45am.

In other earth shattering news, D started his AM preschool today. This is our church preschool. He is super excited to go back. I think the hot, blond teacher may have something to do with it.
He will go there 3 times a week for 3 hours. 3 times a week for 3 hours with a 2 hour break before he goes to his PM preschool. He gets speech at his PM school. The speech therapist emailed me and said he has made such a huge improvement over the summer so he's off to a good start. I'm sure if she heard his smart mouth talking back to me she would have him in honors speech.

My calendar is filling up. Yesterday I spent most of my evening filling out paperwork for 2 schools and adding 'important dates' to the calendar. I have 3 calendars. Our calendar on the fridge (I gave up and attached that sucker to our stainless steal fridge and ruined the seamless look I posted the other day. I'm a mom and it just works), then my Outlook calendar and then my hardcover purse calendar. You should see my confusion when one calendar doesn't match the other two, it's a disaster. I need to find a way to consolidate better but I refuse to be squinting at my phone calendar. I haven't made that leap yet.
Where was I? My brain is just a mess today.
Ok, I think this post is long enough.

Tantrums and a milestone

Our weekend was fairly busy. D slept over my mom's house on Saturday while Ryan and I relaxed and watched the Social Network. Great movie.

Sunday, after church we had a birthday party for a 5 year old girl. It was at a play land place and D loved it. He loved it so much that he threw a tantrum when we were trying to leave. We're working on dealing with more tantrums lately. The word "No" that comes out of his cute little mouth is getting a little old.

We have a new time out place, in the living room, facing the wall. What is happening to my sweet little boy?! He's testing us, I know this is all phase...

He tested us during dinner so much that he ended up in his crib with a bib on him. Thankfully a little walk outdoors calmed him down.

Today Daniel officially was released from speech. His last session will be next Thursday with our sweet therapist Jamie. He's ready for new adventures.

He's doing great with the new sitter and her son. He has a good life.

Speaking of good life, we are in full party planning mode. Here is Daniel's invitation. More details about the party to come later but I will say I will need a part time job with the cost of everything adding up.

Catchy title?

I'm kinda getting tired of the title of all our weekends being 'Weekend Recap' but I honestly could not come up with anything better for this weekend because it was just boring. On Friday D woke up with croup but I think it's allergies because he sounded better Sunday but was constantly sneezing and his nose was running.
No projects were done, except for some weeds that I pulled while D was napping, no exciting trips, except to church where D was not on his best behavior but looked too cute in his shirt.
Dinner at my parents house was about the only thing exciting that happened to us, maybe that's because it involved food.

Here is D in all of his cute glory.
Ready to say Amen!
Gotta take the truck to church
Sneaking in some play time
If I haven't written enough about this I need to just clarify...D is just talking so much. He's putting phrases together and I could not be happier! He has really turned the corner. Now to get him off of all the hot dogs that he requests for lunch. He always asks for "ten hot dogs". Yeah like that will ever happen.

Weekend memories

We started the weekend off with painting our family room. I wanted some fun colors for the room that we would be spending a lot of time in so 'Tea Bag' and 'Spiced Plum' went on the walls and I love it!

That darn plasma still has to go up but it's coming along. I will only post another picture of the family room AFTER the TV goes up, maybe it will go up faster that way.
Saturday, we did... well not a whole lot besides food shopping and a visit to "Kaka" (my sister Kathy). My family is officially obsessed with D, they lived further away before (a whole 30 minutes!!!) and now they just can't get enough of him. Now, that D is talking more I do have to admit he's even cuter than before. He is putting 2-3 word phrases together and is just repeating everything! It's music to my ears. Over the last month he has made such progress I sometimes look at him and just cry, because I'm so proud of him. I remember people telling me "it will just happen over night, you'll see" and I would think "it just doesn't happen over night" BUT for him it really did. It just clicked. My sugar plum dumpling found his voice and has gotten pretty vocal lately. He has therapy twice a week. He has a great new therapist that is young and "perky" (as my mom in law says). She is impressed with D's improvement as well.

On to other weekend events, Sunday we had Ryan's family come for a small bbq. His Aunt Georgene flew in from CA for a marathon with Ryan's other aunt Bonnie (she lives close but we just don't see her enough). We had polish sausage (of course), chicken with veggies, corn, potatoes and great chips and dip and dessert (both which my in-laws provided which were great!). It was fun to spend time together in our new home.
Here are some pics, not much, I was lazy with picture taking and of course as I write this I regret I didn't make everyone pose like I usually do.
D showing aunt Bonnie his water table.
Ready to eat
Smelling flowers
Aunt Bonnie playing bags...by herself
she got everyone else involved
The biggest annoying thing of the party....D dragging anyone that would follow him to any car that was open so he could do this
Ryan and I are so sick of hearing "Mama's Car" "Dada's Car". A black car in 90 degree weather is not our idea of fun. He knows every button and compartment in our cars. It's exhausting. No, he will not be a race car driver, like everyone says...like that's supposed to make me feel better! After every dish was washed and left overs put away I day dreamed of this...
a nice claw-foot tub that I would love to take a bath in, soak my tired legs and have a glass of wine. Our bathroom only has a shower and D's bathroom looks like a showroom bathroom, only problem, the showroom is from the 1950's!
We have tons of other projects to do before we demolish that bathroom but doesn't this tub just look fantastic?
I can picture myself soaking in there and getting pruned and Ry calling after me to make sure I was still alive. Friday evening I would walk in there with my bath bubbles, a good book, a glass of wine and leave all my worries outside the bathroom door. Oh it would be heaven. My grandma used to have a tub like this on her farm and I remember feeling so small in it and my mom having to get me out of it because it was too darn tall. Maybe soon I can share a beauty like this with D, although not sure how he would feel about that as a teenager. It's either that or busting through his closet to gain more bathroom space in ours. Hmmmm, the possibilities.
And tomorrow is yet another Monday. I hope the week goes by fast.

One dinner, one playdate, 9 homes and a funeral

This weekend was pretty busy. Friday night we went to TGI Friday's for dinner. D ate a lot of mac n cheese and was quite happy but after he wanted to drop plates on the floor we flew out of there!

Saturday morning we hosted a play date with 2 cute little girls. D had a lot of fun. D was excited to have ladies in the house but then the excitement wore out and they all played on their own.

Here is D trying to show "A" how to bounce on his turtle toy. She knew how and didn't need any help from a boy. :) Some screaming followed.

Daniel took "A2" phone away.

And here is the #1 hunk all by himself without the ladies. Maybe next time Casanova.Sunday, D has speech therapy. He's doing really well. He's starting to say different words and makeup ones on his own if he doesn't know how to say them.

After that we dropped him off at my mom's and went to see homes. Not one winner, not one possibility.

Saturday I also found out that the president of Poland with his wife and others died in a plane crash. His funeral will be on Tuesday. My home country is in mourning as is my mom who has been glued to the TV all weekend giving me all the details of who is who. (Sigh).

That's about all for our weekend.

Weekend Update

Well, it was an eventful last few days.
Thursday, I said "goodbye" to my dear friend who was leaving our company. We had a great time at Uncle Julio's. With a good sangria and some queso (that's Spanish for cheese) things were cheerful but today is a different day. I'm realizing I can't instant message her and it sucks!!!
Friday, R, D and I went to Friday's to get some dinner. We need to do that more often on a Friday night, just the three of us. After that we went to Toys R Us since it was pay day for daddy and it has become tradition for daddy to buy D a car or two that he doesn't need. $50 and an embarrassing breakdown later, we were home.
The thing that caused the breakdown.... pulling D away from the pink Barbie car! He runs to this car every time.
A mom standing next to us with a boy slightly older than D told me her son just stopped doing that his last two trips. :)
Saturday, D had his therapy, after not having it for a month he did great. I have been in another room the last few sessions and he does great with "Dee Dee" by himself. He even said "Dee Dee" (nickname for Denise). Once in a while he'll run away and look for me. We're trying to make up for the sessions that he missed while homeless and squeeze many sessions in but when Dee Dee showed up on Sunday, D waved her goodbye and shook his head no. Eventually he did OK with her.
After therapy we went to a b-day party at Chuckie Cheese. It was a fun time!
D getting ready to leave to the party.
D enjoying some pizza and fruit punch,
playing a game or two with mommy and daddy since he refused to ride any rides, we had to use up our tokens. We decided not cash in our tickets and collect them over time so we can get something decent (we'll need around 3000 tickets for that to happen, only about 2,950 to go).
After the party we were pooped and D took a nap. We cuddled after as it takes D about an hour to "wake up" from a nap. I appreciate every minute of it.
Sunday, D had speech therapy again and afterwards we went food shopping where we sampled good food and bought $20 worth of corned beef. Here it is cooking today. I cannot wait!!!
We enjoyed a walk to the park and around the neighborhood later, but it was a bit windy. We ended the day with playing some bowling on Wii and dancing in the basement/playroom.

Today is back to work and reality. With losing one hour of sleep it feels like a whole day was lost.

I'm exhausted

Today was the start of Daniel's speech playgroup.
We got up early, I took half a day off, packed his bag with his breakfast (to be fed in the car), water, diapers, etc and we were ready to make the long trip to Lake Barrington. The ride felt like forever but finally after 45 minutes we finally arrived. It started off really well with Daniel playing with another boy in the waiting room with a house and a school bus BUT it was short lived as soon as 4 therapists (speech and occupational) opened the door to "the room".
There were 4 boys all together (all boys, shocker, isn't it?) and 4 therapists (1 speech, 3 occupational (one of which was a student)).
Once he was in that room it was all over, he wanted nothing to do with any activities, well, one activity he did really well in.....snack time! He whined and bolted for the door numerous times. I stayed in there and kept leaving to see how he would do and every time he noticed I was gone he would call for me. They all tried their best but he is a hefty little kid so it took my mean muscles to control him. It was funny because one of the therapists said "he's probably the best we've seen in a first session". WOW!
Anyways, I'm debating if we should continue the sessions since the drive is so long or whether we should just add a private session for him during the week. He was only there for speech so the other stuff just bored him.
After all that, I had to go to work, then after work I dropped off the deposit for our new rental. It's a town home with 2 bedrooms, a loft, 2 and 1/2 bath and an attached 2 car garage with a basement. It's in great shape and we hope it all works out until we find a house.
I'm just exhausted today so don't ask me why I'm updating the blog, it's a stress reliever, I guess.

Outsourcing AND blogging break

Aside from more packing and planning out this crazy upcoming week nothing really has been going on if you consider nothing closing on our house on Friday and signing our lease on "purple lady" the same evening.
As I planned the week out I realized there is only 5 days remaining before our big move and I needed help, help with getting "purple lady" up to my standards of cleanliness. Anyone that knows me knows that I can be anal about a clean house and although "purple lady" is temporary it will be our home and it must be clean. My co-workers convinced me to get a cleaning lady for the rental so that I wouldn't waste a vacation day scrubbing and cleaning and I agreed completely. Not only will I not have to wear rubber gloves and smell like bleach but I'm helping someone else at the same time to earn a few bucks.
Aside from leaving the rental in not so great condition and 2 broken toilets in the back yard the house looked decent.
I'll be taking a blogging break all week but next week I'll post pictures of our crib.
WISH ME LUCK!
Oh and Daniel said "dada". I can die now! I'll be reminding him who gave birth to him until he makes it up to me.
He tends to say "dada" when Ryan offers him a chip and asks him "who am I?" before giving him the chip. Evil!

Weekend

I guess fall is over because in one day all the trees on our street are bare. With the wind howling on Friday and Saturday we spent our Saturday afternoon cleaning up the driveway. It was beautiful and depressing all at the same time. "Where did all the leaves go?"

"You guys go ahead and work I'll run around"

This tiny orange ball entertained him for quite some time as he rolled it down the driveway about a million times.

Until, he fell straight on his face and scraped his little nose. I couldn't get a close up of the injury as it was too traumatic for picture taking.

Daniel loves his new vacuum cleaner we got him a week ago. It's love or he'll do anything to get out of speech therapy.

He's doing well in it, no big updates just a couple of new signs, juice and light. He does say "uuu" for number two and "eeee" for number three. He's learned "ooo" for the letter O and "E" for...well...E, that's about it. I'm still working on my patience with all of this. It's a slow process and anyone that knows me knows I want instant results.

His therapist assures us he will TALK just when he's ready. I just don't get it, he knows all the numbers up to 10, ask him any number...really I'm not kidding, he also knows over half the letters of the alphabet. I always tell everyone he'll write a novel soon before he talks and the first sentence of his book will read "My mom drives me nuts trying to make me talk, I think it's overrated and I have nothing to say..."

Saturday night I went to my friend's B-Day party (no pics, sorry). It was a great time. I left the men at home and enjoyed dancing, pizza and great company. Happy Birthday DEE!!

Sunday after Daniel's therapy we hit the road to look for apartments and homes. I'm going to see an apartment next week but I'm still hopeful we'll find a home soon and won't have to rent. Althought, the inventory out there says otherwise. There is a lot of patience I have to be working on this month. Someone throw me a bone!

Weekend thus far!

Ahhh the long weekend! It's Sunday and we still have one more day off. Now, if I could just explain to Daniel that waking up at 4:30 am is really not fun on the weekends or any of the other past 4 days I would be much happier.
Yesterday, Daniel had therapy and things are improving, slowly but improving. He has learned the sign for "please". He is really starting to babble sounds more such as BA, DA, PA, TA, WA, HA and just overall making more sounds. He even put the darn whistles in his mouth, he hasn't done anything with them but it's an improvement from not even wanting to look at them.
We also had our cedar siding replaced and the hole is GONE! I also found out the guy repairing it went to high school with me for a couple of years. Small world!
Today, we had a bbq for Ryan's family. Although Ryan has no cousins having Daniel around is loud enough. We played games, ate lots of food and overall had a lot of fun. Tomorrow we are planning to go to the Schaumburg Fest! Although we'll miss the parade because the therapist is coming again to make up for a session next week I'm sure we'll still enjoy it as long as the weather stays nice.
Here are some pics from today.
Daniel trying to convince Grandpa to get him the heck "outta here" in his cool black car. He recognizes this car as the "fun mobile" since he pretty much goes to either Chuckie Cheese, Enchanted Castle, the library or fun classes in this car. He was trying for a good 15 minutes.
No cigar.
An exhausting game of hide and seek with Grandma
Mowing the lawn while daddy plays
Cheering Grandma on as she tosses bean bags
Aren't I cute with my nerdy outfit mommy had to put me in because she figured I'll never wear this outfit again.
Having a talk with Great Aunt Bonnie - GAB

To Do List...does it ever end?

Well this weekend flew by with me realizing our house is falling down around us.

Friday, Daniel turned 17 months! I can't believe it. He's been so vocal lately and I love it. He's still very laid back and loves being outside. He's been into cheerios and puffs lately and is becoming picky with his food. He's doing so well with his shapes and puzzles, it's amazing that overnight I notice he can do so many new things. I love him to pieces.

Saturday, was a very busy day. It stared with a dentist appointment, food shopping and we finished it with going to a wedding.

My friend Colette got married to a guy that she met while "clubbing" with me. We're talking 12+ years ago people. They finally became husband and wife. She looked great and we had a wonderful time at the reception.
Sunday, Daniel had speech therapy. I taught Daniel two new signs. "Help" and "Drink". You wouldn't believe how much he uses them now. He has started using the B sound as well, which is exciting. The therapist told me that she really feels once Daniel starts he will catch on quickly. I hope so!

Later on we had a real estate agent come to sign paperwork to put our house on the market. We started walking around the house and things started appearing "broken". Take a look at what was behind our drink table.

Our cedar siding is literally breaking away from our house.I called a few handymen and we'll get quotes for it this week. The agent won't put it on the market till it's fixed. To add to our list, one of our stair railings broke in half, our coat hook in the foyer broke off the wall and our third burner on our grill is not working. I think it might be a sign that this house does not want us to leave. We have a week to get things in gear!

Until then we are enjoying some moon watching, taking strolls and eating good guacamole (that Ryan just realized he likes)!

Little Duck

NO IDEA what went wrong with the spacing.

This weekend was typical for the Marron Clan, BUSY. Saturday Daniel had speech and then we spent some time together as daddy went to see District 9. A man needs some time to himself and his aliens, especially when he brought me a beautiful bouquet of roses afterwards. I mean really, how good was this movie?!

Speech went well, Daniel is teething so his attention span wasn't all too great. One thing that the therapist noticed is that it takes a lot of effort for Daniel to make sounds. It seems like he doesn't know what to do with his breathing when he tries to speak. We'll be working on that with some whistle exercises. He is making many new noises and facial expressions including trying to blow bubbles. It may not sound like much but to me it's progress. He's also attempting to jump, it's really cute. He bends his knees and then tries to jump. I'll have to get it on video.

Here he is lovin his Elmo ride on. After speech I put Daniel's sandals on to go outside and noticed that his shoes were way too small on him! I have no idea when that happened. I dragged him to Target in hopes of getting a $3 pair of sandals for the rest of the summer, no cigar. I did find him some cute gym shoes. The thing is he has wide feet and these are not wide but if I have to spend $50 at Stride Rite vs. $14.99 at Target what's a little discomfort.

Reward for his suffering. Sunday, we went to Cosley zoo with my friend and her family. It is a small zoo that is FREE (which I love).The kids enjoyed themselves. Daniel had an incident with some duck food. My girlfriend's son handed him some food to feed the ducks and Daniel helped himself to some of it. It was so quick there was no time to take it away. After some digging in his mouth we recovered the pebbles. By this time he was very upset, thank God I had some cheerios to occupy him for a little while.

Out of all the animals he saw I would have to say the pigs were his favorite.

Here are some photos from our visit.

A fun day!

Right as we were leaving for our car it started to POUR. Our drive home was nerve wrecking. D slept all the way home and then slept another 2 hours at home. Maybe something in the duck food, I should invest in pounds of it. I took a well deserved nap as well. After that we went to Toys R us to get D some new toys. We bought stacking cups and a shake and go car. This car is a batman mobile that you shake and then put on the ground to go. NEAT!