runaway child

 

summer splash pad. oh yes. and the day i almost lost my son. we went to a farm playland place, totally inclosed. this particular day happened to be empty so we pretty much had the place to ourselves. i sat on a bench while grayon played on the playground. then we went and hung out at the splash pad. we were getting ready to go and i walked over to the stroller two feet away and had my back turned to him for a moment. a single moment! when i turned back he was't on the splashpad anymore. for those two seconds i couldn't find him i was in dire panic. might puke, going to cry, panic. then i see him running (!!!) away down the path. how in the world had he gotten so far so fast!? my back was turned for a moment. apparently that's all it took. so grateful that it was empty that day and no one else was there. i am pretty sure i am going to be one of those mothers who puts a leash on their kid in the future! 

did she just say leash!?

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a lost hobby

so many baby books are bursting with information in the beginning. then slowly they get thinner and thinner. i suppose an electronic baby book is no different. i was so good for a year and then in the last month and a half i have fizzled out. thinking about the blog often but never motivated to get to it. i don't want to give up on it though because i love having a place where i can share all the wonderful parts of grayson growing up. 

it truly amazes me at the person he has become. he is not a baby but a person with a huge personality. he makes me happier then anything in the world, while driving me totally insane. 

he runs from place to place bouncing off furniture and laughing and screaming the whole time. he wants to touch everything and learn how it all works. he doesn't act like a one year old. he talks back constantly. always wants to have the last word. has a temper like a mad hornet and knows how to manipulate you to get what he wants. he is not afraid to let you know how he feels. 

his favorite thing in the world is getting reactions. he is horrible to my poor mother because he loves getting a rise out of her. i swear he is a mini clone of my brother and dad. not that they are horrible to my mom or anyone else but they love to get a rise out of people. the boy looks right into your eyes and does something he is not supposed to do all the while waiting to see what you are going to do about it. he is usually meanest to the people who care for him and nicest to the people who play wild with him. absolutely hands down prefers men over women. the only people who can get kisses every time they ask are my dad and my brother. i have to beg for weeks and maybe if i am lucky i will get a once a month kiss. 

his favorite new word is "stop". he puts his little hand out in front and yells it all day long. don't clean up his toys, don't kiss him, don't take something away. it all ends in "stop". his second favorite word is "hi" this is a new one. we walk in the door to great him and he says, "hi, hi, hi, hi". he also picks up phones and says hi.

i have never seen a child climb as much as he does. he will learn how to climb up anything. and he thinks it is the greatest thing in the world. one hundred percent boy. and beyond his years. he is so mischievous but i love it. he tests boundaries like no one else i have ever met. grayson just loves to learn how things work. and he picks up on them so fast. show him once or twice and he's got it. 

he use to fight me like crazy to clean his ears but i showed him the q-tip one time and said "ew" and ever since he sits there still and lets me clean them, just as long as i show him after. it is the strangest thing in the world. today we said to him "clean your ears" and he put the q-tip up to his ear. maybe he has heard that expression 10 times. i was blown away. he is so much smarter then we realize. pays attention to everything. 

the child who could out eat his adult parents and ate anything has become a very selective eater. some days he eats and other days he prefers not to. his favorite foods are carbs. pizza, pasta, tomatoes, goldfish, pancakes. the child could live off that menu. 

i love it. all of it. it's exhausting and tough but so wonderful. that smile gets me every time. so with all of that random information shared, i need to get back to my little hobby of sharing all his photos and telling the stories of his crazy days. if i stop i will regret it so i will try and find the motivation among the housework and side businesses. and i will write. for grayson. 

 one of his new things, he holds his hand out in the air very concerned. it's his "huh" pose.

life with an 11 month old

yes, i said it. 11 months old! that's only one month from him being a one year old. how did this happen so fast!? i look at him and really cannot believe who he has become, or that such a small person can have such a large distinct personality. 

i have to be on my toes at all times, he is into eeeeeverything. 

in a matter of two weeks he went from sorta walking to practically running. he is all over the place like a little drunk man, and so very proud of himself. it is amazing how smart this child is. he watches you do something a few times and boom, he's doing it to. this weekend he walked over to the back door, opened it, and let himself out into the backyard. i just sort of stood there stunned at the fact that a child who is not even one years old figured out how to escape like that! 

he has a temper like a mad hornet. he knows what he wants and he wants it when he wants it and how he wants it. if he doesn't get his way (which i don't always let him) he lets you know he is pissed. he knows right from wrong and that "no" means he better not. he will test you and wait for your reaction every time though. he's not allowed to play with certain things and he will go up to it, very slowly move his hand towards it, all the while watching you. he waits for a reaction and laughs. so bad. 

























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pinching is his new favorite thing. he doesn't do it to hurt, he just thinks it's funny. he attacked poor mark the other day, he has the bruises to show it. this child is rough and wild, a total boy. i joke that i am going to be the mother always getting the phone calls "excuse me mrs. constantine, we had a bit of an incident with grayson today", but it just might be the truth. he has an endless amount of energy. 


he is also the sweetest little boy though. he adores animals. no one gets kissed as much as the dogs do. cherrio runs like a madman to avoid him but pancake (who up until recently was not at all a fan) will lay there and let him pull on her legs and "pet" her belly. 


he eats like a teenager. full adult size meals- all day long. baby food is a fight, he wants solid food that he can feed himself. he doesn't know how just yet to get the food onto the fork and into his mouth but he tries and one day in the not so far future he will get it. almost all of my meals are shared these days. sometimes i don't even get a meal because he eats all of it! poor boy also ended up with his mama's sweet-tooth. 


when he is tired he tucks him arms into you and rolls his body onto yours so that his face is burrowed into your chest. it's one of my favorite things. we finally seem to have a bit of a napping schedule. he is up by 6am most days but will sometimes lay in bed with me till 7. around 10 he will take a nap for me. a crib nap (as opposed to having to hold him like i did before)! i never know how long it will last so during that time i am like a woman on speed. i try and get as many things done as fast as i can because once he is up he probably won't nap again, unless it's a late afternoon car nap. 


i must say though, i kind of love who is turning into. he keeps me very busy and i cannot look away for even a moment (the other day i walked into the kitchen for a split second and when i came back he had climbed onto a pillow, onto the couch, onto the end table!) but most days that's okay. i enjoy watching him learn and discover things. it's so much more fun now that he is walking. everything is so much more fun for him now. 

beer, burgers & babies

for the last year mark has been pursuing his masters degree. he loaded up semesters and took classes non stop till he graduated. to celebrate we invited all of our favorite people over for a barbeque. 

when you have a baby your life changes drastically. priorities shift, free-time activities change (lets be serious- free-time disappears), and life is just never what it was before. i actually asked mark the other day what it was we did with all our time before grayson. i truly cannot remember. for some maybe they miss their pre-baby lives. for me i wouldn't got back to it for anything in the world. 

we may be getting less sleep and making less money. we don't always get to do the things we use to but we get so much more. kisses and laughs and smiles and pure joy (cheesy? absolutely. but it's also the total truth). it can be hard at times, no doubt about that, but at the end of the day when i go in and look over g's crib before i go to bed i cannot remember any of that. i just feel love, and lots of it. 

even more, we are so lucky to have such wonderful friends. we are the first in the group to have a child. no one can possibly know how different things are now then before but somehow they get it. they accommodate. they understand. they still make us part of their lives. best of all, they love grayson, and for that i love them all even more. 

i think grayson is the best thing in the whole world but it warms my heart so much to see how much he is loved by others as well. i think it's impossible not to love him. 

but back to the barbeque. 

grayson's new bib, meant for catching food, has proven to be the best waterice cup holder ever

 

a few new friends were made. although i am not sure they were wanted in some cases. 

  

i love these people

as for my dogs- lazy and enjoying all the extra food hanging around. not to mention the belly rubs. i love them too. 

grayson helped himself to the plate of brownies in-front of him. somehow when is auntie is around he gets very spoiled. 

thank you to all of our friends who came. lots of them somehow dodged the camera but we love them just the same. and please come back soon because we still have a fridge full of beer that needs drinking!

oh! and let's not forget the most important part of the evening. chris got a lesson in poop checking. a necessary life skill. 

off track

I've been pretty terrible about updating recently. Grayson is getting into everything, one second I am cleaning up a mess he just made and two seconds later he is already into something else. He is all over the place, he fell and hit his head twice last week- both falls were under my watch! I am pretty sure I cried about it way more then he did. 

I feel like I need two days squished into one. I cannot get a single thing done when he is around, we literally just sit on the floor and play all day. Errands have become almost impossible, he won't sit nicely anymore. Don't get me wrong, I love spending my days with him. I am just so spent and he keeps getting up 10 minutes earlier each day. So my days have been starting super early, and with a child who does not take naps that makes for one seriously sleep deprived mother.

I put him to bed at 8, then I spend the next two hours making/having dinner, cleaning up, getting ready for the next day. THEN my day can start. I have a million projects going on right now and it's all kind of starting to take a toll. I am exhausted, sobbingly cannot control myself, exhausted.

This week we decided to join my parents down the shore for a couple days, kind of a break. I realized how stressful this summer is going to be though. I need to be by his side at all times in that house, there are way too many stairs (that cannot be blocked off), and pointy things, and glass things, and rocks. There is not one safe spot in that house where i can just plop him. Regardless of the constant hawk eye i had to keep on him it was nice to be there. I didn't have all my housework looming over me, I had some help during the day with Grayson. I felt like I was able to catch my breath for a moment.

The weather was nice enough for a late afternoon trip to the beach. We took Grayson to the beach once last summer but he was too little to really get what was going on. This time though he got it. And loved it! The child who at home looses his cool if he is more then a foot away from me took off down the beach and didn't look back. He picked up every shell along the way and inspected it. He also ate lots and lots of sand, despite my efforts to keep it out of his mouth.

Of course I did not bring either of my good cameras but I did have my phone! They are not the prettiest photos but they capture how much he loved it, and that's pretty much all that matters anyway.

 

 

It's going to be a good summer.

bad parenting

we took our son to a bar. 

i really felt like everyone there must have thought we were the worst parents in the world. it was an honest mistake though. 

i'm sure you are confused by that statement but let me explain. i got a call from a friend of ours asking if we wanted to check out a restaurant with them that they had seen on the food network. according to the show this place had the best wings in the country. mark is a huge wings fan so we decided to check it out. 

the place is called the jug handle inn, nothing about that name made me think it was a bar. 

the first clue should have been when we walked up and there was a bouncer at the door. he asked for all out our IDs. we brought my brother along because like mark, he loves wings. i explained to the guy that we had a minor with us and that we had just come for dinner. after talking to the manager he told us we could come in but that no one could drink (this should have been my second clue). we enter the "restaurant", baby in tow. there was a giant bar in the center of the room and a few bar rounds surrounding it. i walked around looking for the restaurant portion of the bar. turns out it was JUST the bar. 

we ended up having to move some tables around but with some help we finally found a place to sit down. we where honestly just there for the wings. i was so embarrassed though that we were in a straight up bar with an eight month old. 

he didn't seem to mind though. i don't eat wings, but according to everyone else, they were totally worth it. so if you ever find yourself near cinaminson i would suggest checking the place out. but leave the baby at home!

mark's babysitting skills

mark is awesome and often on the weekends he takes grayson downstairs and they hang out while the dogs and i hang in bed. the other morning i couldn't help but laugh hysterically at this scene as i came downstairs. 

mark is playing video games and grayson is passed out on the floor. 

*this may look bad (you might even be wondering if there was more then just milk in g's morning bottle) but i assure you mark is really great at taking care of grayson. his explanation for this amusing scene was that grayson fell asleep on his lap and he didn't want to just lay him on the floor so he put him on the pillow. it's actually rather sweet.