Christmas

It all started on the 18th with my big family Christmas.  There were about 30 people at my parents' house.  We only buy presents for the kids and I had made a list on Target.com to help people with ideas on what to get for Hudson.  I realized there were only two things on his list that weren't online only when he got three of each of those two things.  Ooops!  Oh well, we had lots of fun and it was great to see Hudson more into it this year, even though he still didn't fully understand what was going on.

Christmas Eve we went up to Shawn's parents' house.  They bought him a few Thomas the Train toys and on top of that they had gotten some new toys to keep at their house for when he comes over.  He also got to see both of his Great-Grandmas from that side which was really special.  He had such a great time and when we left he was definitely over stimulated, but happy nonetheless.  When we got home he got to open his Christmas Eve present from Shawn and I which was a new pair of converse to match his cute Christmas outfit for the next day.

Christmas day started out with just the three of us exchanging gifts.  Hudson got an overflowing stocking, crayons and coloring books, lots of regular books, a couple of Elmo movies, a Puma outfit, and a Thomas the Train book that has buttons and songs on it.  From there we went to Vacaville to see my mom's cousins.  We have a themed gift exchange every year.  We've been doing this as long as I can remember.  The theme this year was green (environmentally friendly) items.  Right up my alley!!  Shawn wound up with a bunch of CFL light bulbs and I got a reusable water bottle.  From there we drove to Folsom to my parents' house where we did our small family Christmas with just my parents, brothers, and sister-in-law.  Hudson got ultra super spoiled and wound up with another overflowing stocking, a tiny recliner, and a fun contraption that has a slide, just to name a few.  He was only seven months old last Christmas so this one was so much more fun!  He loved ripping off the wrapping paper and pulling the tissue paper out of the bags.  He seriously has more stuff now than we all know what to do with and it's still just all over the house because the task of finding places for it all overwhelms me.  I could have a lot worse problems though. He is a very fortunate little boy!

Just Had To Share

So yesterday I was putting Hudson in his car seat and I always kiss him and say "I love you" as I do that.  This time, as I was getting out of the back seat, I head a smacking noise.  I looked at him and he was blowing me kisses!  It was the sweetest thing.  Of course I totally gushed over it and he continued to blow me kisses the entire way to the store.  I know I talk a lot of crap about all the tantrums and trials, but the sweetness and love this little boy brings to my life far outweighs all of that!!!  I mean how could you not love this face?!

Seriously?!

Several things lately have made me say "Seriously?!", often times out loud.  I thought I would share a few.

• I ALWAYS get a squeaky shopping cart when I go somewhere.  It doesn't matter where I am; I'm the one with the noisy cart walking down the aisles.  Then people look at me like I'm the one making it be so loud.  This is not my choice, people!
• Speaking of shopping, the other day Hudson and I were at Target and I was buying a toy for a family member that's about his age.  He was playing with it in the (noisy) cart and when it came time to pay for it I asked if I could have it.  He handed it to me nicely and then proceeded to flip out.  And I mean flip out.  He started screaming at the top of his lungs and thrashing around in the cart.  Of course it was crowded because it's Target in December and all these people turn to look.  Then the woman in front of me in line turns around and says "Oh good.  A child is screaming and it's not mine".  Yeah, super great, lady.  To make matters worse, I had grabbed an item that didn't have a tag on it so the cashier was trying to figure out how much it was.  It was taking a while so she suspends my transaction and starts helping the people behind me.  So now I'm just standing by a crowded register with my psychotic child and waiting.  And waiting.  Luckily, Hudson did calm down and started being really cute and saying "bye bye" to everyone that was behind us in line as they left.  Bi-freaking-polar.
• Speaking of Hudson, I put him in time out the other day because he violently shook the gate that blocks off the kitchen and it came off.  He's usually pretty good about time out and I can just tell him to go sit and he knows where to go and he sits.  He did it this time only as soon as I turned my back to fix the gate, he got right back up.  Lord help us, it has occurred to him that he can get up from time out.  I knew this day was coming, but I was not prepared for it.  I haven't gotten any further in my parenting book, but I have watched Supernanny a few times so I used her strategy.  I looked him in the eyes and told him he needed to stay in time out and I brought him back to the spot.  As soon as I turned around he got up again.  Let me inform you that each time he got up he ran right to me and was laughing hysterically.  Like, seriously hysterically.  And right in my face.  Each time after the initial put-back, I'll call it, I didn't say anything to him or look at him, I just put him back in time out.  I did this probably 8-10 times (all the while he's still laughing his head off) before I just got too frustrated so I put him in his crib, took everything out of it, and walked out of his room.  Oh, how quickly can laugher turn to tears.  I haven't had to put him in time out since then so I'm not sure if this is the new way time out is going to go.  But I do know I better crack open that parenting book.  Seriously.

Lately

When I first started this blog, for some reason I though I would have a lot to talk about.  This has proven to be untrue.  My daily life is pretty routine and scheduled because that is how Hudson likes it.  Nothing out of the ordinary or exciting really ever happens.  Therefore, the rest of the blog is likely to be pretty boring.  Full disclosure.

• Actually, something rather exciting did happen yesterday.  My brother and sister-in-law found out that they are having a boy!  I'm very excited about having another baby in the family.  The due date is, strangely, the same due date as Hudson's was which is April 28.  I see many joint birthday parties in the future.
• Hudson went up a diaper size.  This always makes me unnaturally sad for usually an entire day.  It means he is growing up and getting bigger.  I don't necessarily want this to happen.  I mean look at the changes in him in just the last 6 months.  It's all happening too fast!

• Speaking of Hudson growing up, he is finally starting to enjoy storytime at the library.  It has never really captured his interest before, but yesterday he was totally into it.  In addition to reading a couple of books, they sing some songs and he loved them!  Every time a song was finished he would say "Gain!  Gain!", which translates into "Again! Again!".  Not letting this knowledge go to waste, I now burst into song whenever he is about to throw a fit and it's worked pretty well so far!
• I bought a parenting book a week or two ago.  I bought it because I'm a parent.  But being a parent so often means I don't have time to read it.  What a cruel cycle.  When Hudson is acting out or throwing a tantrum I think "I wonder what my parenting book would say to do in this situation.  I should really try to read it".  I am about half way through it now but to get there it has required me to stay up way later than I want to.  Just something I have to get used to I guess.

See, nothing too exciting (except for the first one).  But, thus is my life.  I expect most of my blogs will contain similar useless information to your life.  I'm warning you now.

Daylight Savings Time

Ok, so "fall back" used to be my favorite day of the year.  As an expert in sleeping, getting an extra hour of it is an amazing gift.  However, this year I realized that since I haven't taught Hudson how to tell time, I will not be receiving this gift.  As a stay at home mom I am on Hudson's schedule, no matter what it is.  He had previously been waking up in the 8 o'clock hour and, while that's still a little early for my liking, I was ok with it.  Now he wakes up in the 7 o'clock hour and it's throwing everything off.  I no longer understand why people get all excited over the extra hour of sleep because everyone with kids doesn't get it.  And a freakin' lot of people have kids.  I like the extra sunlight in the summer too, so why can't it just always be daylight savings time?  Why do we have to toggle back and forth screwing with the equilibrium of people's schedules?  I mean, I was still trying to get over the guilt and shame of contributing to the childhood obesity epidemic by shoving pounds of candy into the hands of a hundred children on Halloween and then this comes and messes things up for me even more.  Needless to say, I am no longer a fan of the "fall back" idea.  But I guess all I can do is try to teach Hudson to tell time by this time next year so maybe I won't feel so jipped and write a bitter blog for who knows how many people to see.

Halloween

Hudson's second Halloween has come and gone.  Halloween was my favorite holiday as a kid and I want to create great memories for him to.  The day started with him sleeping until 10, which was more of a great memory for me.  We kinda took it easy in the morning.  I made pancakes and we took our time getting ready.  We had decided a few days earlier to take Hudson to a pumkin patch because, well, that's what we did last year.  I found out that there were two in Chico so we got in the car and headed out.  We got to the first one and it was pretty lame.  There were only like five people there and it was just a field of pick your own pumkins.  I wanted a big 'ol pile of pumkins to take pictures with and a field where the pumkins were all five feet apart was not going to work.  So we drove right on by and decided to go to the second one.  It was even lamer.  There was no one there and once again, it was just a big field.  The only people there were the FFA students selling the pumkins and since we weren't actually going to buy any, it might have been kind of awkward if we had stopped.  So we drove right on by that one too.  I was sad for a few minutes thinking we'd never have pictures of Hudson as an 18 month old at a pumkin patch, but then I got over it.

Hudson was asleep most of this time and when we got home we put him in bed and he continued to sleep until 4 (for those of you getting jealous of my child's sleep patters, let me assure you this is NOT normal).  We had a Halloween party to go to at 5 so I shoved some food down his throat, put him in his adorable scarecrow costume, and out the door we went again.  The party was being thrown by a mom of a friend of Shawn.  It was mostly a family thing but we were invited too.  The house and front yard were all totally decked out in Halloween decorations.  There was this zombie type thing on the lawn and smoke was coming out of its mouth.  Hudson decided this was the scariest thing he had ever seen and, long story short, we left the party about an hour later because he just couldn't get over it.

On our drive back home we noticed there were already a lot of trick-or-treaters in our neighborhood.  I mentioned to Shawn that I hoped I had enough candy.  When I told him I only bought one bag of 50 lollipops he immediately re-routed us to the nearest grocery store all the while questioning my thought process on only getting one bag of candy.  Whatever.  We finally got home after spending an outrageous $20 on two bags of candy.  But boy did we need them.  We got so many trick-or-treaters and Hudson was so cute every time someone came to the door.  He would say "hi" to everybody and then say "thank you" as they did and then yell "bye bye" as they walked away.  Time after time after time.  He even started to get anxious when no one had come to the door for a few minutes.  It was adorable.  My only problem was that 90% of the trick-or-treaters were teenagers.  I mean, really?  Once you're in high school, and probably even junior high, you should not be trick-or-treating anymore.  Some of the kids weren't even dressed up.  I only gave them my expensive candy because we won't eat it and I wanted to get rid of it.  We ended the night with only about eight pieces of candy left so I guess it turned out to be a win-win for the candy sucking teenagers and I.

All in all, it was a really great day and Hudson had tons of fun.  Though he'll probably be feeling different in 13 years when I won't let him go trick-or-treating.

The First One

It was actually my husband's idea to start this.  He knows our situation is unique and only other families that have someone working at Enterprise can really understand.  This is my attempt to share our unique life with others and hopefully capture some memories I would otherwise lose years from now.

For those of you who don't know, we have moved back to Chico.  You guessed it; for Enterprise.  There was a really great promotion opportunity up here and we decided to take it.  If you want to move up quickly at Enterprise you have to be willing to move wherever there is an opening.  Shawn obviously wants to move up quickly.  And since I don't have a career, I fully support his.  We know living in Chico is temporary.  He is promotable again in a couple weeks and then we'll go wherever the next spot opens up that he thinks is a good fit for him.  I've kept all of our boxes and have no other choice but to look at is an adventure.  I'm suprisingly happy here in Chico, thanks, in large part, to the mom's group I've joined.  They are such great ladies and our activities give me a reason to put on make up in the morning.  I will definitely miss them when it comes time to continue our adventure.  I also miss parts of Sacramento.  Mostly the shopping.  There are things I am used to buying that I can't get in Chico and that stresses me out.  Luckily my parents have an obession with Hudson and either I go down there or they come up here every other week.  So either way I either have brought to me or go buy the things I need.  That is really my only complaint about living here and it's really not so bad.

Shawn has the weekend off and we are hoping to get to the pumkin patch.  It's supposed to rain today so tomorrow might be our last hope.  We were talking last night about how last year when we took Hudson to the pumkin patch he could barely sit up.  We had to prop him up against big pumkins then take the picture really fast so he didn't fall over.  Now he's walking around everywere and we'll probably have a hard time getting him to sit still for a picture.  What a difference a year makes.