Glass half full or half empty... at least it's got beer!

We are just full of unusual days, today being no exception. Nate drove down to Miami for the day to number cases, while X and I went down to the splashpad for a fun morning with our Mom's group. Xander has been in love with water for the last week, even attacking us with the hose during an impromptu car washing. But, today was cloudy and even a bit chilly. He didn't last long, whimpering for the car. 30 minutes later... he was still awake and stayed that way until 4pm when he suddenly fell asleep. I have no doubt I am now in for a late night!

Saturday we popped down to Animal Kingdom and had a really great day full of drumming and gorilla's, I'm starting to think X has a deep and true love of animals. His love of his dog, Inca, and the cats were natural since he spends every day with them... but then his adoration of Bolt came along... and now he seems to want to hug, kiss, and observe with delight every animal (real or fake) that comes into his sight. I think Animal Kingdom is going to be seeing a lot of us this summer!

Aside from my adorable child, our unusual days have mostly been concentrated around the ever evolving state of our 'new' lives. This is the kind of stuff I would normally NEVER write about, but our therapist has pointed out to me that I need to learn to share more... so while it may be sloppy from time to time, or awkward, or out of the blue, I am using this blog as ONE of my new ways of sharing information and letting the hard times have as much time in the spotlight as the good. I am proud of Nate for finding the courage to finally be his own person, but it is a very hard journey involving healing very old wounds, coming to terms with the fact that you cannot always get what you expect, the past is painful, but it is in the past, and that you are in charge of your own future. I say this because as his wife I have to go along on the journey by proxy, so when he has a hard couple of weeks so do I.

As tends to happen when you flip your life around, there are big ups and huge downs. The last two weeks were huge downs. It seems to be the way of learning new things. Each time Xander is about to learn something new he seems to revert back to old ways of doing things. Crawling more before he took his first steps, crying more before he suddenly learns a bunch of new words. And so it was this way with Nate, falling back on bad habits of video games, not communicating his troubles... but we were rewarded with a great breakthrough. And while I still want to give a few people a piece of my mind, I am greatful to be in a better place than we were a few weeks ago.

Growing, again!

This weekend was spent with my family at home in Cape Coral. The sun was plentiful, the air was warm, and family was everywhere. The moment we set foot inside the house Xander took off to play with the dogs and locate his toys, totally at home. I quickly had delusions of copious alone time... silly me! While he did play endlessly all weekend, he was surprisingly glued to me most of Saturday.. a typical and sure sign that something was afoot. Teething being the usual suspect I assumed all was generally normal... but tonight after a very.... long.... bedtime.... it became clear that it wasn't just X's teeth, the poor kid is having some serious growing pains.

Bedtime has been a long journey the last couple of weeks. It hasn't been that he didn't want to go to bed, he just couldn't drift off into dreamland! When he has trouble falling asleep I usually give him a quick leg massage. I must have been picking up on his troubles without realizing it because tonight I gave him a nice long massage with bedtime lotion. I was convinced he would hop into bed and drift right off.... but that was not the case. After fidgeting and pulling he legs into his chest I started rubbing them some more. Sure enough, I could feel him start to relax almost immediately. The one time I stopped, his sleepy hand sought out mine and placed it back on his calf. My growing little man! I can't believe he is getting even bigger!

The picture above is from this past weekend. I just love how it captured X contentedly playing tractor with Papa. For whatever reason, X is completely comfortable with men and not women. He instantly took to Papa and happily showed off his toys, much to Papa's joy.

I must have lost my mind.. or found it... hmmm...

So, I have spent the last month working on my application to graduate school. It is a torturous process clearly designed to weed out the faint of heart. I now remember running to the post office in Tallahassee to overnight my application for my master's degree... funny how the mind forgets. Well, here I am YEARS later doing it again, and remembering all too well what a pain in the buttocks it is to get all this stuff in! Asking for recommendations is painful, nerve racking, and surprisingly time consuming, tracking down your test scores (and praying that they will still accept them even though they somehow got to be 9 years old... what!), and the worst of all.... writing my statement of purpose. Finding some way to say in two pages: this is who I am, what I've done, what I want to do, and you should totally love me because I say so. Easy, right... ummm, no!

So I sit here, late on a Wednesday night, son sound asleep, and I'm trying desperately to finish this stupid letter and get it off my plate...

But, in the end I'm so excited. I'm applying to the History department, hopping fields from Anthropology. I'm looking forward to being back in the Ivory Tower. I'm just keeping my blinders on and pretending that it's not going to a gut-wrenching pile of exhausting work ... if they accept me!

A Crummy Day!

It is only 3:30 and I have already declared today a crummy day! We went out for a St. Patty's day lunch. I got there a few minutes early and immediately ordered the X-man some pasta so he could get to eating ASAP.... TWO hours later he finally got his food! There is along story in there about how I even ended up being there that long, but I just don't have the energy left to tell it!

On top of that, I am in the midst of the madness of applying to graduate school, and one of my top 3 recommender's decided to be bit less than helpful. I knew it was coming, but was still disappointed when it happened. Bummer day! Hopefully tomorrow will be better!!

Spring is SO here!

This weekend we were able to jump start our journey into Spring! Herbs were planted, pools were blown up, gardens were planned, and running around naked was fun!

New Blog

New times call for new things. A LOT has gone in my life in the past few months, so I have decided to start a new blog. Same name, new address, new me. Looking forward to continuing to reshape my future and having you all along for the ride.

Lexy