Always Looking on the Bright Side..

Me: Mase, [who was flushing and flushing and flushing the toilet] stop flushing, it's going to overflow!

Mase: What does 'overflow' mean?

Me: It means that the toilet is going to fill up with water and go over the edge and there'll be water all over the bathroom.

Mase: [hand still on the flusher] Lots of water?

Me: Yeah, lots. Probably. I don't know, just don't do it.

Mase: But.. if it overflows... we could go swimming! I love swimming, Mommy.

You Know You Better Do Laundry When...

your kid falls out of your bed, doesn't make a 'thump' because he's fallen onto the mounds of clothes covering every inch of the floor, curls up into a pile of shirts, and pulls a hoodie over his legs for a blanket - all without waking up because his fall was so cushioned.

Yeah. Time for laundry.

More Fun Central Fun

Again, With the Hamster

I promise this will not turn into a hamster blog. Really, I do. But the little thing is so freaking cute.

The only problem we've had so far is that when Hug Lovely hides, she really hides.

We've already lost her twice. And by "we" I really mean "Mason".

Everyone thinks hamsters aren't friendly and bite and just hide from everyone all day. Not ours! I don't think I'm a pet person, but after Mason goes to bed and it's really quiet and I sit down to read my book, Hug Lovely cuddles up with me.

Yes, I did buy Hug Lovely for Mason, not myself. I swear. And yes, I'm cuddling with a hamster. I know. Now when I start reading Infinite Jest out loud to her, then we'll call it a problem. For now though, it's kinda cute.

Mama Frog

Mason has been carrying around his frog ("Baby Frog", who unfortunately is not as creatively named as our new furry friend) for months now. Baby Frog seems to be the first thing that Mase has actually been attached to - he takes him pretty much everywhere and carries him around by the neck in a choking fashion.

Anyway, recently he's decided that since frogs come from eggs, his needs to hatch. On an almost daily basis. So the Legos get dumped out of their container and this is what we get:

Accessories

Since the underpaid college kid working at Petco didn't seem to know much about Chinese Dwarf Hamsters (understandably, I guess), Mason and I took a trip to the little pet store in town where the owner is always there and seems much more hamster-savvy. In the car, I'm telling Mason how we can get Hug Lovely (yes, I still chuckle every time I say/type it) something to sleep in and some stuff to climb on - hamster furniture, kind of.

And Mase says, "Yeah, a bed!"

"Yeah Mase," I say, "we can definitely get her a bed".

"Yeah! And a rocking chair and a little newspaper!"

Um?

Next project: Try to figure out how to build a mini hamster-sized rocking chair out of popsicle sticks. Then maybe teach Hug Lovely to read?

Hey, at least I can't ever say I'm bored.

First Pet

Lately, I've been having these strange thoughts about getting Mason a pet. Our house is WAY to small for a puppy (which would be my first choice). The landlord (my mother) says she doesn't want us to have a kitten in the house because it will destroy the new carpet and they want to rent the place out when we move out and blah blah blah. A goldfish is boring. Turtles smell bad.

The obvious choice is a hamster.

So Sunday night after retrieving Mason from his dad, we had dinner at Applebee's, which is located conveniently across the parking lot from Petco.

On the way into the pet store, I asked Mason what he thought he'd name his new hamster. His response was immediate, without any hesitation at all.

Meet "Hug Lovely".

She's a Chinese Dwarf Hamster who weighs about one ounce and is the friendliest rodent I've ever come across, flinching not even to the sometimes-a-little-rough advances of a three-year-old who doesn't know his own strength. She's only nibbled at him once and I'm pretty sure that's because he had granola bar remnants on his fingers.

Welcome to the family, Hug Lovely. May you live a long enough life that ensures I don't have to try to explain death until Mase is at least five.

Breakfast Beverage

Anyone who knows me knows I drink black coffee until noon every single day. It might be a problem, but it could definitely be worse, so I try not to worry about it. Apparently, Mase is catching on.

No, it's not coffee.. but he does want to drink his milk in a mug just like mine.

So refreshing.

Storage

Mason went with George this morning. It's only the second time they've seen each other in about 9 months. Mason did say he wanted to go, but I've been crying since three days ago. It sucks, sharing a kid. And it's not even like I have to do it that often. A couple times a year. One week, tops, out of the 52 weeks in a year. I'm sure it sucks for George even worse... it has to, because I know how much he loves Mason. It's just... Sometimes, when I get really frustrated and tired of doing everything by myself, I think, how nice must it be for some parents to be able to get a break once in awhile? And I think about all the things I'd do if I had an afternoon off... a day all to myself to do whatever I wanted. But now, here I sit. I've been kidless for three hours and I've done absolutely nothing but sit on the couch and cry or lay in bed and stare at the ceiling. Not only do I not know how to occupy myself for the afternoon (how fun is Candy Land, by yourself?) but I don't know how to occupy myself for the next five minutes without having a mental breakdown.

I guess it's pointless to sit around and wonder about how life would have turned out if you made different choices... but sometimes it's impossible not to think about. I think that, forever, I will wonder if I made the right decisions. Mason's a great kid and, at the very least, I'm fairly confident that I haven't screwed him up indefinitely, but the thoughts are always there and probably always will be. Maybe if George and I had been older and smarter and better equipped to deal with our problems, it could have worked out. Or maybe not. Maybe we were just not cut out to be together... but who really knows? The only thing I constantly hope is that Mase will never hold the decisions I made against me. That when he's 20, he won't look back and decide that I'm the one who screwed his life up. Because every decision I've made in the past 3.5 years has been with his best interest in mind.

All I know for sure is, next time Mason's gone for the weekend, I won't assign myself the task of cleaning out the basement and going through boxes that have been closed for the past 4-10 years. Ugh. Not a good idea.

Can tomorrow come any quicker? Please?

He Must Love Me

(Mase picked out the card and signed his name himself. Aww.)

27th

or the 2nd [of many] 26ths.

Oy. Time just goes too, too fast.

Birthday Cookies

Why would I ever need a cake when I have this cute kid to make me Birthday-Chocolate-Chip-Peanut Butter-Oatmeal Cookies?

Okay, I did get a cake too, but still.

And hey, we only ate half the batter before we baked them.

I Think You Might Mean a Birthday Card?

Tomorrow is my birthday. I had to work at the bar all day today, and when I picked Mason up from my mom's he had an envelope in his hand. He told me, very seriously, that he was not going to give it to me until tomorrow and that he wasn't telling me what was in it.

We went home and I told him he should put the card somewhere where I wouldn't be able to peek at it. He "hid" it under a couch cushion and then just stood there, looking at the couch, then back at me, then back at the couch, all while giggling.

I didn't say anything, I just watched him. Then, he says, as if I'd been prying him relentlessly about the contents of his mysterious envelope and it's this huge relief to get it out, "okay, Mommy, it's for your birthday tomorrow and there's a credit card in there".

Gosh I hope so.

(Oh, and you're horrible at keeping secrets.)

Say Cheese! ...18,472 Times

I got myself a new computer for Christmas and I love it. The only problem with getting a new computer is that my old computer is full of stuff that needs to be taken care of. Like, really full. I have thousands of songs and years of old school stuff... but what takes up the most room is the pictures.

Namely, the pictures of Mason.

18,472 of them, to be exact.

No, I'm not kidding. I'm thinking it's a form of hoarding, except instead of Disney Collectables or McDonalds Happy Meal toys, I'm hoarding enough pictures that, if I printed them all out and made a flip book, would allow me to watch my child go from birth to age 3.5 for a second time.

Those pictures take up 32 gigabytes of space on that computer. 32 GIGS! Obviously I'm not going to put them on my new one, so I'm going to get a giant flash drive and call it a day. But first, I need to go through them. Because most likely, those 18,000+ pictures include at least 500 blurry ones, 800 of the back of Mason's head, and 2,000 more that are pretty much identical to the one taken a millisecond before it.

So yeah, I have a lot of deleting to do. The problem is, I can barely bring myself to do it. So far I've gone through Mason's first year. It's awesome to look at those pictures, because it's so easy to forget what he looked like and the things we did together. Memories are so fleeting and no matter how hard you want to hold on to exactly how things are, they fade way too fast. It's so strange, because I do tend to forget things like the way Mason's big toothless smile looked, but as soon as I start looking at those pictures I remember EXACTLY what I felt when he smiled it at me three years ago.

I only deleted about 500 pictures out of the 5,000ish that I took during his first year. It might not sound like a ton, but man, it was painful. Pushing that 'empty trash' button was pretty tough. All those back-of-the-head pictures suddenly seemed like something I really, really needed to hold on to.

Next up is scrapbooking that first year, and I can promise I won't be printing and scrapping the remaining 4,500 pictures. But I will definitely be holding onto them.

Cheeeeeeese!

I could watch this all day.

Fun Central

I always knew Fun Central existed, but we had never been there until Mason and I got bored on a particularly cold day over break and decided to check it out. It was awesome.


Not only was the play place HUGE, but it only cost $4.99 (!!) for Mason to play. I fully intended to watch Mase and read my book.


But once I saw how much fun he was having,




and that there were 8-year-olds in there that were almost as big as me,


I tried it out for myself.







I walked away with more than a couple scrapes and bruises but it was so worth it and SO much fun.



Now I just have to worry that the Fun Central people will start charging me to play, too, when they realize I'm having more fun than Mase.

Goals

I always make New Year's Resolutions.. they're usually ten or so things that I come up with randomly that sound like they'd be good resolutions to make or things I want to do throughout the year. But then, either I forget what they are and don't even know if I did them or not (note to self, check this blog on December 31st of 2012), or they're way too debatable (like, "worry less". Yeah, it sounds nice, but less than what? How do I decide whether or not I accomplished that for 365 days?).

My other issue is that they're called resolutions, which implies that you SWEAR you are going to do, which implies that if you don't do them you LIED and FAILED. That's why I'm calling these goals, which is much more friendly and fluffy and non-urgent and if I don't do some or any of them it won't be a big deal at all. Anyway...

1. Take Mason to three new states he hasn't already visited yet (he's already been to ([not including just driving through] Maryland, New Jersey, Delaware, California, and Michigan). I'm thinking Virginia, one of the Carolinas, and Alaska. :)

2. Read more. I'd like to shoot for 50 books, but considering I'm starting the year out with Infinite Jest and I'll have plenty of grad school stuff to keep me busy (oh, and parenting my kid and whatnot), I'll go for 36 this year.

3. Write the book I've been thinking about forever that, in its current state, is only 4.5 pages long.

4. Get Mason's scrapbook up to date. Seeing that the poor kid has been alive for 43 months and I only have 3 months of his life scrapbooked (I know my math is bad but I think that equates to about .07%), I better get started on that right this second.

5. Pay off ALL my credit cards and start a savings account for Mason with all that extra money I'll be saving every month.

There. Five very tangible, very doable things.

I asked Mason what his resolutions were and he just said, "what?" like he usually says when I ask him something absurd. I suppose three-year-olds don't need to have goals or resolutions. Lucky duck.