Archive: May, 2012

Today was a big day for various reasons.  It's the anniversary of me meeting Jeff (see his post here), I followed my heart and supported a dear friend in family court, and Simon started his first day of school. 

Saying that my life changed after meeting Jeff is an understatement.  Things seemed to happen so fast yet I feel like I've known Jeff much longer. We met in 2007, got engaged in 2008, married and then moved to Seattle in 2009, and had a baby in 2010, and moved back to Ohio in late 2011. I am very blessed to have Jeff as my best friend and partner in this amazing adventure.

Standing up for what you believe in isn't always easy and when it involves family versus friends, it becomes downright controversial.  Needless to say, I did what I thought was right and my conscience is clear. 

Lastly, Simon started his first day of Pre-preschool, at least that's what I'm calling it.  It's not exactly preschool and it's definitely not daycare.  It's a 2 hour structured classroom/playgroup 2 days a week. It's part of the federal Birth to 3 Intervention services provided by Medina County. It's for children 2-3 years of age who have shown a delay in some area of development.  In Simon's case, it's speech.  Don't misunderstand me, Simon's talking but his speech isn't up to par with various milestones and he tends to leave off beginning or ending sounds of many of the words he does use. This program is just a means to help catch him up. Since I was in court all morning Jeff took Simon for his first day. Simon has been going to the school for the last 2 months for speech therapy so he was already familiar with his new classroom.  He did very well for his first day. He said his goodbyes to daddy without tears but when I came to pick him up he took one look at me and started to cry. It wasn't the reaction I expected but his "school" is right in the middle of his normal naptime so I'm sure part of it was due to being very tired. The cutest part of picking him up was when he gave his teacher 3 kisses and a hug goodbye. It's definitely a milestone for both Simon and I, giving him a sense of independence and me some parenting downtime.

Well, after this weekend there's no doubt that we've hit the stage of the terrible twos. Tantrums are currently being perfected with screeching, stomping, kicking, and did I mention flailing on the floor?  It's frustrating and exhausting.  I know there are fun toddler moments interspersed with the tantrums but days like today when the tantrums outnumber the happy, it makes me wish that we could fast-forward to age 4.

There's nothing more motivating that a completed weekend project. Since our Ohio house sat unoccupied for 2 years it's not surprising that our landscaping was a bit overgrown.  Okay, that's an understatement.  It looked like a vacant lot.  But not anymore!  Don't get me wrong, there's still a TON to do yet, but I'm overjoyed at the flowerbed around our gas-lamp.  Here's what it used to look like:

This is overgrown lamb's ear.  It's extremely invasive and has made its way into the lawn in various places.  It was a pain in the butt to dig up but when we had some nice weather back in early April I got all of it dug out and put down some Roundup to kill the roots.  

Fast forward to this weekend and I finally couldn't stand the clumps of clay & dirt mixed with new weeds that had started to grow.  It needed its spring makeover now.  Saturday morning was spent digging up the new weeds and using a twist tiller to break up the soil.  I had quite the little helper when it came to watering down the dirt to soften it up.  Simon was also quite the trooper in staying close in the yard while I worked.  After lunch, it was a family trip to Home Depot to pick up some soil, mulch, and edging stones.  While Simon napped Jeff and I mixed in the soil, laid down landscaping fabric, and spread out the mulch.  On Sunday morning, I laid down the edging stones.  Here's what it looked like then:

After a family picnic lunch in the park, I went to Petitti's Garden Center while Simon napped and picked up some Silver Mound, Sweet William, and Neon Star Dianthus.  Here is the finished project!

There's still some finishing touches that I need to figure out but I'm very pleased with how it turned out.  I especially like the stones, they turned out really well.  Here's to more weekend gardening projects!

I've really been struggling being patient with Simon and this afternoon I finally hit a brick wall of frustration.  I'm loving the nice weather and I like getting out and about in the morning with a curious toddler. After naptime, though, it's just not very doable to leave the house since I need to get dinner ready. This is the time that I'd love for Simon to play independently in the house or even on the back deck or back yard but his obsession with the sliding doors has frayed my last nerve.  He pleads to go "out" but his definition of this is to stand on the deck opening & closing the doors non-stop.  If you try to close them or tell him to stop he's been having these epic meltdowns.  By 4:30 in the afternoon, I just lose all patience with this.  There's the potential for cats to escape (especially Cosmo) and Simon needs to learn that the doors aren't toys.  I've tried putting up a baby gate so that kitties don't get out but that only fuels the tantrums.  No amount of toys entice him to want to play outside. I feel like I'm at my wit's end and that it's going to be a long summer.