We are a closed-door family when it comes to the bathroom. I believe, even in marriage, that some things should be kept private, and really – there are just some things we do not need to know about one another.
That said, I just invited my son into the bathroom to “wave byebye to mommy’s pee pees.”
And he did, and I took probably too much enjoyment in watching him peep over the edge of the toilet to check out the swirling water and wave bye-bye.
I think I need some adult interaction, pronto. And I need to forget that I just shared a story about my pee with you. How about you forget that part too and just picture my cute son standing there saying byebye? Thanks.

So I’ve been tagged by Emily, whose sweet son, Gabriel, goes in for heart surgery tomorrow.
How this woman has her head on straight enough to be posting anything right now is beyond me.
So, in honor of Emily and Gabriel, I present to you the seven things you likely didn’t know about me:

1. I once hung out in the Black Crowes dressing room. I could lead you to believe that I hung out with the Black Crowes in their dressing room, but we all know what a goody-two-shoes I am, and besides, they were on-stage, performing. I, however, was working catering and was the one lucky enough to drop off their food in their room. (From what I could hear, the show sucked, so I wasn’t missing much anyway.) Besides, I was much more a Rob Thomas fan at that point, having been thisclose to him at a concert at a high school gym in Vermont before anyone really knew who he was.

2. I’ve ridden a motorcycle exactly once (sorry, mom). I was in college and my friend RC took me for a ride out in the hills by Dannemora prison in NY. Yes, he went a little fast for my taste, but I loved it. Unfortunately, I’m too scared of something happening – those things are dangerous, no matter how you cut it – to really ever ride again, let alone own one of my own.
3. I have never been in a fistfight. And no, fighting with my sister doesn’t count. I’ve never punched someone, never been in a “physical altercation”. This blows my students’ minds. I did, however, have this girl terrified of me in high school. I think she dated my ex and really hurt him and got wind that I wanted to kick her ass for it. Please – I wouldn’t have known what to do – but it was kind of fun knowing she took different routes to class to avoid me. I did, however, have this girl who threatened to kick MY ass, and she would follow me through the halls, saying nasty things and absolutely terrifying me, all because I said I’d rather work alone in class than do group work because people don’t do their work. I didn’t say her, and was it my fault if she felt she fell into that category? She was about 5′4″, a gymnast and all scary muscle. I was certain I was done for. She eventually left me alone, and by my junior year, we were actually friends.
4. I learned my alphabet backwards before I learned it forwards. To this day, I can still whip through it backwards pretty quickly. I’m also pretty good at writing backwards – one of my high school best friends and I used to write entire letters backwards. Another friend and I had an entire code that we would write in – the kind where one letter stands for another. I still remember pieces of it – really, like I couldn’t be using that room in my brain for something more productive?
5. I am a certified Rape Crisis Counselor in Massachusetts. I never volunteered for the hotline, but I did use a lot of the training in my work at the teen center. I still feel guilty that I never signed up for the hotline, but as much as I can handle the rough lives of the kids I work with, I think a panicked in-the-moment rape call may have been too much for me.
6. I briefly dated someone 10? 11? years older than me in grad school. It didn’t last long – mostly because he thought he was so much more mature than I was and therefore could tell me what I should and shouldn’t do with my time and life – and it turned out, my mom’s cousin was his 7th grade French teacher anyway, and that was weird. I’m not sure why, but it was. Oh, and he was still living with his ex-fiancee in the house they bought together. Yeah. He was nice enough otherwise, but yeah – not so much.
7. I once kicked my brother really, really hard where boys shouldn’t be kicked. It was totally his fault, though – he came up behind me in the grocery store and put his hand over my eyes and my mouth and started to pull me back. What else was I supposed to do? (Some of you may also recall that I broke my brother’s nose when I was about 6 and he was 3 or 4. I’m certain that was, in some way, his fault too. ) Naturally, I got in trouble, even though – hello! – I thought someone was kidnapping me!

There you go. I’m supposed to tag 7 people, but I’m leaving it up to you. Should you go ahead and share with the innanets, leave a comment and let me know and I’ll link to you right here -> **** <-.

I’ll admit, silly as it may be – I got a little choked up as we walked into Fenway with Sammy today. There was a time when I wasn’t sure we’d ever make it home with him, let alone to a Red Sox game with him – so this was extra special. (You all know how much we love our Red Sox in this family.) It was so fantastic watching him squeal away at everything from the backpack carrier – he was fascinated and thrilled with everything: the sights, the smells, the sounds, the people, the chaos, the energy, all of it. He wore his Varitek jersey and Red Sox hat and even shared a bite of a Fenway sausage with Jay. (No cheap beer for him, though – still got a few years before he can share that with Daddy.)
He refused to simply sit in our seats, so we took turns walking him through the concourse, alternately letting him walk and carrying him in the pack. He waved to everyone (do you KNOW how many people there are at a baseball game?) and smiled at everyone else. I had no idea what was even going on with the game – it was more the experience of being at the game that was important. Turns out, we were losing when we left in the 7th (we made it to the 7th! With a toddler! Three hours!) – and turned it around in the bottom of the 9th and won, going from 5-0 to 6-5. By then, Sammy was fast asleep in his carseat as we drove home. When he woke up, he showed us that he learned to climb on to his John Deere tractor and push himself around the living room. (Of course, he then pushed it next to the coffee table and was thisclose to using it as a ladder to climb up on the table…)
Wild man that he is, there are just no words to express the gratitude I feel for everything he does. I am truly so lucky to be his mother, and I am so lucky to be surrounded by amazing women who have shown me what it means to be a mom.
Happy Mother’s Day to all the mothers, to the mothers-to-be and to those trying – you are all fantastic. I hope you had a wonderful day celebrating all the wonderful things you are.
(P.S. This is my 3,500th post. How crazy is THAT?)

Two nights of Sammy sleep! Bring on the parade!
Sure, he was up at 5:30 this morning, but it’s okay! He slept through the night again!
He has, however, thrown up twice in the past 24 hours, once all over the floor of Kohl’s. We think it’s milk-related as we make the switch from bottles of formula to bottles of milk, and that his body can’t handle full-strength whole milk yet. Cross your fingers that it’s not a reaction or allergy.
So the point of starting this post really was this: Teen golfer Kline plays on despite heart defect.

ENCINITAS, Calif. — MacKinzie Kline knows all about climbing mountains.
Born with a complicated heart defect, heterotaxy syndrome, she’s missing a pumping chamber, the right ventricle. “She doesn’t have as much oxygen in her blood as a normal child, so she always feels as if she’s exercising at altitude,” says John Lamberti, her heart surgeon at Rady Children’s Hospital in San Diego.
Her parents introduced her to golf when she was 5½, figuring it was the most sedate sport. In 2006, she was the No. 1-ranked 14-year-old female golfer in the world, according to the Golfweek/Titleist Junior Amateur Rankings. Last summer, after the U.S. Golf Association allowed her access to oxygen on the course, she qualified for the U.S. Women’s Amateur, where the USGA also allowed her to use a cart rather than walk the course.

She’s missing the right ventricle, unlike Sammy, who is missing the left ventricle. (Technically, it’s about 60% the size of a normal ventricle, but his heart is rewired so that the right really does the pumping and the left is just a bit of added ooomph.)

LPGA Commissioner Carolyn Bivens says, “It’s very clear that, regardless of whatever challenges she has physically, she thinks she can do anything.”
…
Today, when she wears bikinis at the pool or the beach, Kline proudly displays the 9-inch scar from those surgeries that runs down the center of her chest.
She says in many ways her heart defect has empowered her.
“It can make you stronger or tougher, or it can just bring you down if you let it,” Kline says. “You can choose.”

My parents raised us with the belief that if we try hard enough, we could do anything. I still believe that, and I hope to raise Sammy the same way. I’ve got a whole post brewing about the changes we’re seeing in him (and us) as he makes the move from infant to little boy. Maybe tonight. For now, I’m off to work!

I think it might be possible. I’ve heard stories of it happening, but I didn’t believe them. But now? Now… I think they might be true. I think it might actually be possible.
I think Sammy may be learning to sleep through the night.
Do you have ANY idea how fantastic this is?
Let’s do the math. Sammy’s 14 months and 2 weeks. I spent the previous 10 months pregnant – that puts us at just about 2 years with little to no real, solid, deep sleep. TWO YEARS, people.
This is slightly horrible to admit, but I was spoiled last week. It’s horrible because the spoiling had to do with Sammy needing Benadryl at night. It knocked him out, and in turn, we got some sleep. Of course, I was still up at 2am each night waiting for him to wake up, and when he didn’t, I spent every 15 minutes between 2 and 4 tiptoeing in and checking to make sure he was still breathing. But still – there was no fighting with him to get him back to sleep. There was no stumbling down the steps in the dark to get a bottle. There was no giving up and bringing him to bed with us or plopping him in his swing and putting on Dora in desperation.
Sammy loves books. LOVES them. He now very clearly says book, completely with the k sound on the end. (It’s so cute – he’ll go grab a book and come over and try to hand it up to me, or if I’m sitting on the floor, he’ll crawl into my lap with a book and want to read.) The other morning, I went into his room and he was standing in his crib, pointing at his dresser and squealing. As soon as I handed him the book he was pointing to, he sat back down and read it long enough for me to get a few things done. Yay!
So we put a few books in his crib yesterday, and wouldn’t you know it? When he woke at 3 last night, I let him fuss a little… and then I heard him settle down and talk to himself a little bit. AND THEN HE WENT TO SLEEP. By himself. No bottle. No rocking. No curling up in bed next to us (which, admittedly, I do like, but I like sleep, too). He did this again around 5 – woke, fussed, settled down, read a book, went back to sleep.
Sleep. SLEEP! My son went back to sleep TWICE on his own! He’s learning how to put himself back to sleep! This is HUGE, people. HUGE!
Now I just need to learn how to put myself back to sleep again – or better yet, how not to wake every hour in the early morning wondering why he’s not waking up.
There is a light at the end of the tunnel! I can see it, and oh, it is full of dreams and dark-circleless eyes and just beautiful!

So I’m in the kitchen, getting Sammy’s naptime bottle ready (half-formula, half-milk – YAY! We’re moving towards all milk, all the time, finally. Yay! Now if only I could get him to take milk out of the cup instead…).
Anyway, I digress. So I’m in the kitchen, getting Sammy’s naptime bottle ready when I realize I don’t hear him. At all.
Complete silence.
I peek my head around the corner, knowing that silence with a toddler rarely means anything good.
No Sammy.
My heartrate jumps a bit, but I try to rationalize – he’s just hiding in the corner by the couch, reading a book. He’s lying on the floor of the tent, just kicking his legs up to the ceiling.
No Sammy next to the couch. No Sammy in his tent.
I race into the foyer and see that the gate to the porch is still closed, and the makeshift gate to the steps is still in place. Well, pretty much in place.
(We don’t have a regular gate because our house is a thousand years old and nothing is even and we have yet to find a real gate that fits the steps, so we have a couple of panels from his playyard wrapped around the bottom of the steps and tucked in – safe enough, I thought.)
I jump the gate like I’ve been a hurdling champ since high school and race up the steps and hear a door opening and closing and opening and closing.
Sammy’s bedroom door.
Upstairs.
Sammy. Upstairs. By himself. Sammy went up the steps by himself. He’s gone up the steps dozens of times, but always with me a very nervous one step behind.
Now – he’s upstairs, the not-very childproofed upstairs, by himself. Up three steps, across the landing, up another ten. That he could have fallen down. By himself. He must have crawled over the toys blocking the “gate” and pulled it away from the wall and squeezed in between – and up he went. Up the stairs.
He was fine – actually quite proud of himself and enjoying his little game of opening and closing his bedroom door. He saw me – oblivious to the panic and rising vomit in my throat – squealed and raced away from me across his bedroom.
Did I mention that he was upstairs, that he went up the stairs, the stairs he could have fallen down, by himself?
Oh, the awful images racing through my brain. I’m going to go throw up now. (Again.)

I should really preface this post with the following: no, I did NOT get paid to review or advertise or even mention Steep and Cheap. Really – even though it might seem like it.
Essentially, it’s all sorts of gear – hiking, surfing, skiing, camping, etc – at a ridiculously low price. As soon as one deal sells out, another pops up – and so it goes, day and night. The other day, I managed to snag two Sigg 0.6L Lifestyle bottles for $8.99 each. We’d been eyeing them at LL Bean, but just didn’t feel like shelling out almost $20 a bottle. That same day, I got Jay a KICKASS early Father’s Day present – Reef Fanning Flip-Flops – sandals with a bottle opener in the sole! My price? $14. Retail? $39.99 – $45.00. Insane!
Most deals are anywhere from 40% off to 85% off retail – and they’re not close-outs. They’re real, current products. And while the shipping might seem a little much (I think the bottles were $7 for both) – I’ve had both purchases within two days and it still works out to about 33% to 50% off retail.
The best purchase yet? We’ve been trying to figure out how we’re going to do the Miles for Miracles walk with Sammy – as well as getting him around festivals and zoos and other outdoor fun this summer. Deb gave us this fantastic carrier (THANK YOU, Deb!) – it’s great for local walks to the park and such, but a bit tougher for all-day events. (Where, oh where, in all these backpack carriers, do you store all the baby gear like diapers and juice – as well as your wallet and phone?) So sure enough, I refreshed my Steep and Cheap page and up popped the current deal – the Deuter KangaKid Child Carrier Backpack for $56! (Amazon has it for $130!) So we snagged one – it’s gotten fantastic reviews and even with the need to buy a sunshade separately, it was still considerably cheaper than anywhere else for retail. And even if it doesn’t work out for us, the craigslist-resale on it is higher than I paid for it – with shipping!
I swear, this is not a paid promotional advertisement thing. I just think this site rocks! Go! Go check it out – keep it up and refresh regularly!

We are a bit of a mess over here.
Me: I think he’s caught my cold. He’s got a really runny nose.
Jay: Maybe it’s just teething… he gets a runny nose when he’s teething.
Me: He just sneezed and he’s got a string of snot swinging from his nose to the second button on his shirt.. I think it’s a cold.
He’s got spaghetti sauce all over his sweats (Sammy, that is. Jay’s at work and safe from the two of us), sweats that don’t match his shirt – which is covered in drool and snot. I found enough energy to take a shower, but I still feel fuzzy. I bitched that Dayquil didn’t do anything to touch this cold and then read the symptoms on the box – stuffy head, nope, sore throat, nope, coughing, nope. So in a fit of you’d-think-a-cold-would-slow-down-my-toddler, right? desperation, I raided the medicine cabinet and three hours after the Dayquil decided to pop some Benadryl – sneezing, check. Itchy, watery eyes, check, runny nose, triple-check. Now I need something to cover up the koolaid-mustache from the constant nose-blowing and pray that the combination of the Dayquil and Benadryl doesn’t knock me on my ass. I’ve engaged Sammy is some whining wars, and while I’m winning, this kid is getting pretty damned good.
Send reinforcements, please. And please make sure they’re armed with chicken soup and soft, fuzzy Kleenex and anything – ANYTHING – but Diego or Dora. Thanks.