Last Wednesday Bink stayed home sick from daycare.  We spent the entire day in bed, which is how I knew he really didn’t feel very good.  I don’t think Bink has stayed in one place so long since before he learned to crawl.

We watched Toy Story 3 FOUR TIMES IN A ROW.  And he ate two bowls of Cinnamon Toast Crunch with strawberries and blueberries.  Oddly enough, a few of my favorite memories of Bink are days we stayed home sick together.  It’s about the only time he’s very snuggly…or still.

On Saturday Bink decided he desperately wanted to eat an apple.  But under no circumstances was I to slice it up into bite size pieces.  He wanted to carry it around like a big boy and take bites.

Over the weekend Bink started to feel better.  I made him try on his snow boots to see if they fit (there is no snow anywhere in our forecast, but I was curious) and then he wanted to wear them all day.  With his PJ top and Batman sweatpants. He’s perched in his favorite spot, on top of our coffee table, getting ready to leap to the floor.

I took an old stroller of ours to a consignment shop to sell and found this tool bench.  We didn’t need it, nor do we really have room for it, but I knew Bink had to have it.  He has been showing such an interest in Hubby’s tools (like he “goo driver”) that I knew he’d love it.  He was very pleased trying to figure out how use the “goo driver”, working on his little cars, and leaving tools all around the house.

He did eventually chill out later in the day to watch…Toy Story, you guessed it!  (At least it was Toy Story 2 this time)  Snuggled on his little couch with Buzz and Jesse.

Saturday night Hubby’s sister came over to celebrate her birthday.  Bink mostly sat in the living room watching Toy Story (he was exhausted after all from fixing things with his new tools all day).  When he realized I had sparkling juice in my glass, he suddenly wanted to come hang out with us.  So he drank and entire glass of sparkling grape juice in about three swigs.  He also decided he liked wine glasses since they are so easy to hold by the stem.

This picture is from Monday.  K insisted on picking out Bink’s outfit for daycare…so he went as a pirate commando of some kind.  And apparently daycare is also exhausting, since he had to come relax on the floor for a while when he got home to recover.

This is how we spent most of Sunday.  Bink woke up not feeling great again and he spent almost the entire day on the couch napping and watching Cars.  And yelling at me.  For daring to do things like cover him with a blanket.

Nap and post-nap Bink.  He was in a charming mood most of the day.

We finally got a few days of warm-ish weather earlier this week.  Unfortunately I always get to Bink’s daycare right as they are getting ready to go outside for their afternoon free play.  So we’ve been trying to go home and get him right back outside to play.

He’s been trying to figure out his Big Wheels that Grandma and Granddad got him for Christmas.  He’s about two inches too short to actually peddle it, but he scoots around with his feet.  Doesn’t seem to slow him down much, he’d ride our entire neighborhood that way.

He also discovered K’s tennis racquet, but couldn’t figure out what it did.  So he beat a giant blue beach ball with it and chased after Hubby with it held over his head.

I sat on the porch steps and took pictures.

Most of that panic is internal.  I still plan my day to the minute, I still wear eye make up every day, but on the inside I’m kind of a mess.  Grayson is due in exactly five weeks.  In a little less than that, I’ll stop working at a job I’ve had for almost five years.

There are lots of changes coming in the next few weeks.  Adding another person to our family.  Adjusting to life on one income.  Learning how to be a stay at home Mom.   And my brain is responding with helpful things like “TILT! TILT!  Too much!  Sleep now.”

(Sometimes there is a great picture here of my giant pregnant belly and my feet.  Sometimes my blog is being cranky and won’t load it.  I’m working on fixing the issue.  My apologies in the mean time)

This picture was taken a month ago.  I’m not sure I’ve seen my feet since then.

I’ve reach the point in pregnancy where everything is uncomfortable.  I’m so giant that breathing, eating, sleeping, waddling to the car–they all take more effort than they should and sometimes more effort than I have in me.  When I add to that a sick toddler, a volatile teen, a Hubby who just started another long semester of college classes on top of working full-time, and an unreasonable but unwavering nesting instinct…I’m mostly just overwhelmed.

I’m hopped up on too many pregnancy hormones and exhausted just by having to get dressed in the morning.  I’m eager for Grayson to arrive so I can stop all the waiting, but terrified because I’m so not ready.  And then I’m diverted off-course from important tasks, like finishing the nursery, by the compulsive nesting need to organize the kitchen cabinets.  RIGHT NOW.

I’m fine with change once the change actually happens.  It’s the waiting.  It’s killing me.  I can’t visualize life with two babies.  I can’t even figure out how I’m going to grocery shop with two babies.  I know some days are going to be hard.  And some days are going to feel easier than I expect.  I know it is all going to be fine.

But couldn’t I just take a nap first?

Here goes…

Apparently, according to my photo stream, about all Bink does is eat. It was a big new food week for him- he tried Ramen noodles and Twinkies for the first time. He also got to sample some of his favorites while we went grocery shopping–salmon and frosted oatmeal cookies. He has interesting taste buds.

More food. Weekend breakfast treat of donuts. That’s the face I got when I told him he couldn’t have any more donuts ( after he ate both his and mine).

My Mom and I took Bink to the aquarium for a few hours. He was mostly a grump, but he did love seeing the sharks and then walking around the Inner Harbor in the freezing cold.

Getting ready for Grayson’s arrival–only 6 weeks to go. Hubby put together our new double stroller and Bink “helped”.

All that baby prep was exhausting to Bink. Then he needed to test out the new living room furniture arrangement for the quickest ways to hurt himself. Also, bath time (with a lovely necklace to make it a little fancier).

Bink’s new favorite seat since we rearranged the living room–smack dab in the middle of the coffee table.

This year, mostly because of Pinterest, I started seeing ideas for Valentine’s Day way earlier than I would have ever thought of them in the past.  And while there are lots of cute holiday arts and crafts activities that I want to try, I just had to make these cards.

Getting Bink to cooperate with that idea was harder than it needed to be.  It involved me getting all of the camera settings ready, Hubby wrangling Bink, eventually having to get Bink a lollipop to cooperate, and taking 25 shots to get one decent one.  And it still ended up like this:

I’d been hoping to get Bink with just the white door as the background.  However, no matter how long we tried, I just couldn’t get that shot.  Instead, I decided to erase the background in Photoshop and replace it with something less boring than the corner of our living room.

For the record, the smarter thing to do would have been to just get the background right in the first place.  Or wait until I could go outside and have a pretty natural background.  Or be less picky about the background.  Instead, I spent about a half hour removing the background (and lollipop) with the eraser tool in Photoshop, then adding a chevron pattern background that I found on Pinterest.  All in all, not as hard as it sounds, but more work than it should have been.

I took the picture above and made another Photoshop file with a border so I could add text.  The font is a free one called Marquee.

This part could be done in almost any software or using a free online editor like Picnik, or you could just print the picture and do some lettering by hand.

I had planned on uploading this to a photo site that was offering 24 free Valentines, but when I did that shipping was $9.  It seemed silly to spend $9 for my homemade Valentines, although I could have had them printed as actual 4×6 photo prints and they would have only cost about 20 cents each.

Instead I loaded up our printer with card stock, sized them to be 3×5 size (which seemed about right compared to the tiny classroom-style Valentines on sale everywhere) and printed a few sheets.  Four of the Valentine’s fit on one page of cardstock.

I used my paper cutter (yes, I own a paper cutter…I bought it when I was making wedding crafts five years ago for $10 and I use it way more than you’d think) to cute out the Valentines.  Then I used the paper cutter blade to make small slits above and below Bink’s hand to slip the lollipop through.  It would probably have been easier with an Exacto knife or something similar.

I didn’t have Valentine’s Day themed lollipops sitting around the house (are they even in stores yet?).  Especially because I didn’t think I’d get the overwhelming urge at 6 pm on Wednesday night to make Bink’s Valentines.  NOW.  I’ll buy some in a few weeks, but for illustration purposes, here’s the final card with a plain old non-Valentine’s Day lollipop.

They turned out pretty cute (it helps that I’m a sucker for the photo subject) and they were super cheap to make.

I’ve also discovered a new app, Diptic, that lets you make collages out of your Instagram photos.  So here you go, our week through Instagram collages (fancy, I know)…

Snuggling in bed watching our morning dose of Dora the Explorer.  Bink gets up somewhere around 5 am most days and my brain can’t handle much more than Dora.

Snuggling on the couch watching our evening dose of Dora.  At eight months pregnant by 7 pm my brain, once again, can’t handle much besides Dora.

The front of a card my Aunt sent me.  I like the saying and definitely needed to hear it last week.

Another picture from the Dora watching, just a close up of Bink’s cute face and his super cool tie-dye shirt that one of my girlfriends made him.

Chick-fil-a date with Bink and Hubby.  We went for the play area and stayed for “nugg-nuggs”, “fry-fries”, and “lemy-lemy”.

A delicious Chai tea latte on a freezing cold day.

Saturday night football playoffs.  Bink thinks he is quite the big boy when he watches football with Daddy, especially when there is pizza involved.

My lunch that went with the giant cup of tea.  An avocado, roasted red pepper, and caramelized onion panini with sweet potato fries and french fries.

Bink playing his Leapster game.  He loves anything flash card like and plays a quiz game about sea life.  Which may be why out of nowhere my son brings up things like river dolphins or lion fish.

At two Bink isn’t great at only doing one thing at a time.  So during the football game we were also playing Legos.

Speaking of not doing only one thing at a time, during the football game I was sorting through all of Bink’s old clothes to organize them by size for Grayson.  200 pounds of clothes later and we’re finally done.

We were out the door early on Sunday to take Bink to my parent’s house so Hubby and I could go to the Baltimore Ravens playoff game.  So we watched the sun rise from the car (and later the sun set, it was one of those days).

The high on Sunday was in the 30′s with windchills in the 20′s.  And I’m pretty wimpy about being cold.  Hubby was fine with Under Armour cold gear, a coat, hat, and gloves.  I had on cold gear too, a down coat, gloves, headband, scarve, fake Uggs, and those little warming packets in my gloves, boots, and pockets.  And a blanket.  And I was still cold.

Cold or not, it was a fun day–the Ravens won and it was the first playoff game Hubby has ever been to (or me, but since I only go to a game every few years even though we have season tickets, that’s not surprising).

Driving home the other night, I liked how the sky looked in the side mirror (and I suppose technically I was riding home, since Hubby was driving).

Bink’s new favorite place to play…in the cabinets under the kitchen counter.  I went into a cleaning frenzy (also known as nesting) Monday night, reorganizing our kitchen cabinets and putting together yet another box of stuff for the Goodwill.  Bink wanted to “help” by climbed into the cabinet.  It was actually pretty cute and he was really happy to be there, so he stayed and I organized around him.

Snuggling in bed last night to end our day with Dora.  Notice the Dora PJs, truck toy, cup of water, and Oreo.  The boy knows what he likes.

I decided to pick out way more, more easily achievable goals.  They seem to fall in to two major categories–photography and home life.

 Photography

• Do a newborn photo session with Grayson.  I did one of these with Bink, but at the time had no idea what I was doing.  I used a point and shoot and a fuzzy white blanket.  I love the pictures I got, but I want to be more intentional this time around.  Nothing fancy, but some snugly, cute, wee-tiny baby pictures from his first two weeks.
• Do a Project 52.  Project 365 was fun (and exhausting) this year.  I just don’t have the brain power to worry about that “one more thing” every single day this year.  So one picture a week, from my iPhone, that’s it.  As it stands, I’ve already posted a bunch to Facebook and Twitter.  Its nice to feel like an overachiever, since I always take more than one picture a week, instead of a slacker.
• Put together a few more photo books.  I have YEARS worth of digital albums living on my computer (and backed up in several places).  I’d like to have them someplace I can admire them.

Family/Home Life

• Transition into life as as a stay-at-home Mom.  In about eight weeks (give or take), we’ll have a brand new baby boy entering our lives.  I made the decision early in this pregnancy that it was best for me and our family if I didn’t continue to work.  Blah, blah, blah, childcare costs, missing stuff at home.  I’m sure I’ll do a full post on it at some point.  Regardless, I know it will feel like a big change for everyone.
• Set up a house work system at home.  Right now between Hubby and I both working full time, me being pregnant, Hubby taking a full-time college class load, and having two kids are home is messy at best.  Honestly, it will never look magazine perfect, even if we had no children and I didn’t work.  We’re both messy people.  But I’d like to try to come up with a system to manage the mess since I’ll be home all day.  I’ve found an iPhone app that is supposed to help set a cleaning schedule with reminders (every third Thursday, don’t forget to mop or whatever), but I’m open to suggestions. How do you manage a household?
• Create a pre-school like environment for Bink.  My biggest fear pulling Bink out of daycare is that he’ll miss out on the social interactions and educational components.  His daycare runs like a mini-preschool and I love the constant arts-and-crafts and “letter of the day” stuff.  I want to recreate something similar for him at home, and try to find a playgroup or two to keep him in contact with other kids his age.  I’m hoping to put him in a real pre-school in Fall for a few hours a week as well.
• Detox a little from all the technology.  We love technology in our house and most of the time, it’s great.  But I want to get better at putting the computer/iPad/phone away and just enjoying my family.  I’ve honestly thought about quitting blogging, not because of the blogging itself, but because of the extra commitments of Facebook and Twitter and all the work that goes into running a blog like this.  I doubt I’ll give it up entirely, but I bet I’ll be seeing less and less of the other social media outlets.

So that’s it.  Seven things.  But honestly, if we all make it to 2013 and are happy and healthy, even if the house is in shambles, I haven’t posted a picture in weeks, and we never did find a playgroup routine, I’ll be OK with it.

What are your goals for 2012?

What that means in reality is that I’ll probably never reach a point where I can schedule posts more than a day or two in advance.  Unfortunately, it also means that when I have something on my mind that I feel like I can’t blog about, I can’t seem to find any words at all.

What often happens in this situation is that I wait a few days.  I don’t post anything at all, because I just can’t get unstuck.  And eventually I end up talking about that thing that I thought I couldn’t in the first place because I had to.  For my own sanity.  For the knot in my stomach to loosen.  For me.

I seem to stuck in one of those awkward places again.  I need an outlet and I just don’t think I can air it here because it really isn’t mine to air.  I hate to even write things like that because there is nothing I hate more than seeing vague, attention-seeking status updates on Facebook.  Just enough to get you to ask what’s wrong, but never telling you what the actual problem is.

When I had my miscarriage, I never doubted for a moment that I needed to write about it.  Not just for myself but because it was one of those issues that people are afraid to talk about.  I couldn’t sit in silence and hurt when I knew others had experienced or would someday in their lives experience something similar.  I found such solace in the people who didn’t feel the need to speak in hushed voices about it and in knowing I wasn’t alone.

The hardest part now is that this situation isn’t just my problem.  I’m not particularly modest and I don’t mind bearing my soul to the world through internet.  I can share my mistakes and successes as a parent because I feel like that is what connects us to other parents.  And it helps to know others face trudged the same tired path and survived.

But what now?  When the intensely personal issue isn’t mine, it’s my child’s.  How much of that struggle do I share to find ways as a parent to cope?  How much do I silently absorb or only share with my closest confidants?  I’m floundering being in a situation where my main method of working through problems doesn’t feel like an option.

I feel stuck.  I can’t find a way to work around what I need to say.  To just share the happy bits, the ones that aren’t messy, that ones that don’t keep me up at night.  The past six weeks have been some of the most challenging of my life as a parent, and it is blatantly reflected in my absence here.

And I just don’t know the right answer.

Oh how jealous I’ve been of those with Instagram.  And its finally mine.  MINE!  Love.

So here’s what a random weekend looks like in our house, through the eyes of Instagram…

Hubby and I had a date night, which hardly ever happens.  For Christmas his sister gave us a Restaurant.com gift card and told us she’d come watch the kids so we could use it.  We went for a dive Mexican/Salvadorian place.  I had pupusas for the first time (Salvadorian stuffed corn tortillas–mine are stuffed with beans and cheese).  Yummy.

We saw a movie.  In the theater!  Together!  Which marks the first time in TWO YEARS that’s happened.

We got to the movies late and Hubby dropped me off to print the tickets while he parked the car.  Then I remembered that my fancy new phone had a front camera so I could take stupid self portraits while waiting for Hubby.   This is my waiting for my date face apparently.

On Saturday my Mom came down to help me work on Grayson’s closet.  It is about the only part of the nursery we are revamped from Bink’s tenure there.  We took Bink along while picking out closet supplies and bribed him with popcorn and lemonade.

This is the (mostly finished) version of the closet.  I’ll do another post on the specifics, since we managed to fit a TON of baby stuff in there.  The rest of the room…still in shambles.  But at least his clothes are organized.

Sunday morning was my morning to sleep in while Hubby got up with Bink.  I woke up and heard Bink, looked at the clock and was thoroughly convinced it was only 2 am.  I poked up Hubby about Bink being up and the lights on the downstairs and waaaah, I’m so tired, why were the children up at 2 am?!  When Hubby got up to check out the situation he pointed out that the closet did not say 2 am.  It said 5 am.  Apparently I just can’t tell time while I’m half asleep.

This is what I came down to around 8 am.  Notice Bink playing piano in the background.

Instead of continuing the living room destruction, we settled in to watch Toy Story 3 for the 400th time this week.

And steal my iPad to concurrently watch Toy Story 3 on it AND the TV.

We eventually make Bink put pants on and went out for lunch.  A new Sonic opened (kind of) nearby and I have an addiction to Diet Cherry Limeades.  I posted to Twitter about how thrilled I was for my limeaid…

And then someone stole that too.

During the football games that afternoon, Bink continued his Toy Story 3 viewing and Hubby kept getting distracted by the movie.

And finally, tub time.  Bink got colored foam soap for Christmas, which he finds hysterical.  He also will tell anyone who will listen to him about how he’s “stinky” if I tell him to take a bath.  I made the mistake once of telling that he was stinky so he was going to take a bath…and it stuck.  Now any time anyone takes a bath or shower he asks them if they are “stinky”.  At least when I get out of the shower he says “Mommy’s not stinky anymore!”.

What I did manage to accomplish (or at least got pretty close):

Photography Goals

6.     Take a picture every day (Project 365)–almost.  I did really well, only missing a few days up until December.  There was just too much else going on and I gave up.  And I’m OK with that.

9.     Take an Advanced Photography Class

Crafty Goals

11. Finish knitting the pair of socks I started before Bink was born by August–Not by August, but I did finish them this year.  They were a gift for my Aunt that I’d hoped to give her while we were in California visiting.  That didn’t happen, but I did finish them in time to send them for Christmas.

13. Make a photo book of Bink’s first birthday

16. Clean out of my craft supplies–This happened my by necessity than by design.  I needed the dresser I’d been keeping my craft supplies in for years to use in Bink’s big boy room.  So out went the craft supplies and I gave away anything I wouldn’t really use or moved the kid-friendly stuff to Bink’s room.

Family Goals

18. Go away for a weekend with Hubby to celebrate my birthday–We spent the night at a resort in Pennsylvania, way out in the middle of nowhere.  We hiked, went to dinner, and just had some quiet time as a couple.  It was lovely (and apparently I never wrote a blog post about it, bad me).

19. Take the kids to California to visit my Aunt–Oh boy, did we!

20. Go to Disneyland—Get better pictures of Bink with Mickey.  The “better pictures” is questionable (this was my comparison–our visit to Epcot in July 2010).

I got a lot of this face:

But I also got these:

Sadly, I didn’t even take the picture of Bink with Mickey.  I was in the bathroom when he walked by and my Aunt snapped it.  We met a few characters while there, but never got a close up with Mickey.  Oh, well.  Gives us an excuse to go back.

21. Visit the Grand Canyon

22. Take Bink to meet Elmo for his birthday–Well, kind of.  We changed our birthday plans when we decided to take Bink to Sea World, since he’d meet Elmo there.  I didn’t actually get to go on this leg of the trip, since I was at BlogHer.  But I did get adorable cell phone picture updates of their fun.

23. Visit the Zoo 10 times–Not so much. I think we made it 6 times.  But since we paid $45 for a family membership (to place that’s normally $14 a person), I’m still feeling pretty good about it.

25. Visit the Aquarium so I can hear Bink yell “wa-wa” every time he turns around (hehe)–We did visit the aquarium (on December 31st!), but Bink was looooong out of his “wa-wa” stage.  Makes me kind of sad actually.  Bink loved seeing all the animals and we received a family membership as a Christmas gift this year, so we’ll back plenty more times.

26. Go to our neighborhood beach 5 times this summer–Even though this summer was ridiculously hot, we still managed this.  And I ended up with adorable pictures like this:

27. See the New Kids in the Block in concert–Loved it!

Personal Goals

28. Join Weight Watchers and lose 15 pounds by my birthday–I lost a total of 20 pounds in six months.  And then I got pregnant and gained it all back.

29. Run a 5K–Rocked it–a personal best on time!  I’d like to try another one sometime after Grayson is born.

30. Read (not listen to) six books–I did!  I was a little nervous about this, since the book I was half finished last January is still have finished by my bed.  But I did read some other great ones–Run Like A Mother, a few old Charlaine Harris Mysteries, High Heels and Tractor Wheels, and the newest from some of my favorites series–Sookie Stackhouse, Undead, and Anita Blake series.

31. Stop biting my nails– I think I mostly just have prenatal vitamins to thank for this.  But at least I have pretty nails.

32. Figure out the notification sound settings on my Droid–Wasn’t easy, but I figured it out (with a lot of help from Google and Hubby)

33. Watch a movie in the theater–Uh, so it totally took me 12 months to accomplish this.  I went to see the latest Twilight movie with a girlfriend in December.  Good thing I didn’t specify go see a movie with Hubby in the theater.

34. Watch the entire Angel series in order–Hubby bought us a super-cool blu-ray player for our bedroom that also does amazing internet things like Hulu Plus and Pandora.  I made it through all of Angel and even watched all of Dollhouse.

36. Dye/highlight my hair–Well, I did do this.  Last January.  And it looked lovely.  Unfortunately right around the time I meant to do it again, I got pregnant.  So no more hair dye for me for a few more months.  Until then, dark brown natural color it is.

Home Goals

39. Clean out my closet–I’ve actually done this a few times, once on my birthday to make room for a bunch of new outlet goodies and a few times since being pregnant to make room for maternity clothes.

Blogging Goals

43. Create a Project 365 space in my sidebar–It’s over there —->  Go check it out.

44. Redesign my blog theme–I’ve done this a few times too.  I’m always torn between investing some money into having someone who knows what they are doing do it and just continuing to muddle through myself.  I bet you can guess which one I chose.

45. Attend BlogHer–Loved it!  So much in fact that I was entirely too exhausted afterwards to post about it.

46. Set up some columns in Tweet Deck so I’m not drowning in unread tweets–Done!  Sorting folks was a bit of a pain, but I love being able to find the people I’m looking for quickly and not missing tweets from my real-life friends and family.

50. Figure out how to use a custom font for post titles–Done…if you are using Safari or Firefox.  They apparently don’t show up in Internet Explorer.  But for figuring out the solution myself, I can live with that.

51. Update my About Me page twice–Yup!  It even includes a little “coming soon” section for Grayson.

52. Change the page layout so I can add more pages–See all those buttons on the right hand side.  Those go to all those pages I wanted to make.

 I managed to complete 30 out of 52 goals.  Better than half…but not by much.

How did you do on your 2011 goals?

To wrap up 2011, I decided to take part in the Top 11 of 2011 link up.  Here are my favorite 11 pictures of Bink from this year (I’m sure at least some of them will look familiar):

January–Bink taking a bath at Grandma’s house.  He loves playing with the water as it comes out of the faucet.

February–Bink showing his artistic side.  At least chalk comes off the wooden floors easily.

April–Bink, K and I took a walk through a neighborhood.  I loved the balance between “big boy” (ripped jeans, Chucks) and “baby” (carrying his sippy cup around).

May–Bink loooooves my bracelets.

June–Bink’s second birthday.  We’ve done a quick photo shoot at our neighborhood beach each year.

July–Juice box break while swimming at our beach.

August–Grand Canyon.  We were checking out a museum right on the rim of the canyon, so the kids were able to get a close up view from behind the window.

September–Bink’s handsome smile while we were walking around a craft fair.

October–picking out pumpkins at the pumpkin patch.

November–Potty training = naked Bink on his potty seat with Mater socks for good luck.

December–Christmas morning playing with his Cars toys.