Pumpkin Chuckin'

Family

As happy as I always have been with our little family of just Mason and me, I couldn't be happier about having Tyler around.  He fits in with us perfectly.  <3

Little Drummer

Back in February (forever ago!) Tyler took Mason to a friends' house where he got to play the drums for the first time.

He loved them.  And it turns out, after we bought him his own little set for Easter, that he's got a real talent for them.  He's taking lessons now, after Tyler taught him the basics for a couple months, and he talks all the time about being in the band at school.

I Love Saturday Mornings

Hershey

Mason, Tyler, and I went to Hershey Park.  It was Mason's first trip there.  

I couldn't go on many rides, but Mase and Tyler went on the Comet.  Mason's first roller coaster!  The Comet is HUGE, I can't imagine what was going through his head going down that first hill.

And I'll never forget the look on his face when they got off the ride.

All in all, it was a perfect day with my perfect family.

These two make me so, so happy.

Penny Misses Mason, Too

The First Day

Mason's first day of Kindergarten was so hard.  And I don't mean for him.  He was as excited and happy as ever.  I mean for me. 

Even looking at the pictures gets me a little choked up.  He just looks so OLD.  I blamed my tears on pregnancy hormones, but the simple truth is that I just love my kid more than anything on this planet.  This house is too quiet, too boring, and too clean without him and it feels like I missing an actual part of myself when he's gone.  In any case, on that first day I laid in bed for about two hours and then realized I still had five more to wait until he got off the bus.  So I went shopping.  And even without Mason on my heels, asking for toys or candy or who-knows-what-else, I still came home with nothing but Legos and books.

So I wrapped them up.  A first day of school present.  And when Mason got off that bus, running across the road screaming "mamaaaa!", I swear I've never been happier to see him.  It was a rough seven hours.

Three weeks later, it's still hard.  It's getting easier, a little, but I still miss him all day long.  Maybe I'll play the lottery today.  If I win, I'm homeschooling.

New Years Goals

This was our New Years card.  We're 9 months into 2013 but we still work on this to do list every single day.  <3

Kindergarten Woes

Today is the day I've been dreading for years.  Mason's first day of Kindergarten.  He's been gone for exactly an hour and thirty-seven minutes.  I don't think either of us slept last night.  He was up, laying in bed with me, too excited to sleep, and I was up frantically trying to discover a way to stop the inevitable progression of time so that my baby would never have to grow up.  While we were having breakfast, he told me that he was excited to learn and make new friends but that he was sad that he had to leave me.  I cried buttering his toast, I cried making his lunch and cutting his peanut butter and jelly into dinosaur shapes, and I teared up taking his picture (twelve thousand times).  He got on the bus, looking so tiny with his huge back pack, and I managed to hold myself together until the bus pulled away and I knew he couldn't see me.  I've been crying ever since.

I am 99% sure that this was the most painful thing that I've ever had to do in my life.  I know every kid goes to school and that it isn't that big of a deal in the grand scheme of things, but it's an unwanted reminder that he's not going to be my little baby forever.  And that just sucks.