Confession

It’s 30 days into January and I am yet to write a blog post (not a confession). That includes not yet having blogged about Christmas or my birthday January 4^th for anyone who wanted to send me a belated gift—and by gift, I mean cash (also, not a confession). I will post about those amaze-tacular events (probably), but not today. No, today, I am making a maternal confession that I probably shouldn’t but am hoping that I look back on in 20 years and laugh at.

Confession: There is a small child who is currently residing at the corner of my uterus and bladder. He is 28 weeks old and I am afraid of him. And if he were my first child I don’t think being afraid of him would be anything abnormal or anything I would expect others to judge me about, but he’s not. He’s my second. And everybody knows that by the time you’ve already had one, you should be able to figure the next one out pretty easy-peasy.

My fears are these: Kiddo number one has been so easy and healthy. She’s hardly been sick. Never had an ear infection. Slept through the night by four-weeks-old. She’s pretty much been spectacular since the womb. You know I’m not going to have it that easy with this next one. No one is that lucky.

I’m afraid I’ve forgotten how to be a mom to a newborn. That may seem completely ridiculous because the most awesome kid in the history of life, aka Evie, isn’t even two, yet. So, it’s not like I haven’t already been a newbie’s mom pretty recently. But! That’s exactly where the (irrational?) fear comes from. I’m afraid that I will have forgotten when certain milestones are supposed to happen, when something is normal and when it isn’t, and what I’m supposed to do when the inevitable emergency happens. Everyone is really sweet and quick to dole out advice to a rookie mom, but shouldn’t I (the mother of one already) know this stuff by now?! those well-intentioned moms think to themselves and snicker. The answer is yes I should, and I’m secretly hoping that it’ll all come back to me once the little dude is here. But who knows.

Oh, Natalie, you are thinking to yourself as you read this. Of course it’ll all come back to you. You’ll do great.

Lovely thoughts. And maybe you’re right. But my ultimate fear and the pinnacle of this confession is that I am most afraid of how hard it is to have a newborn. The first time around everyone tells you how difficult it is to wake up for all those nighttime feedings, but the dreamy-eyed first time mom is too excited about the prospect of being a mom—of having a baby of her very own—to worry too much about it. And let’s face it, you don’t really know just how hard it is until you’ve lived it.

But that’s just the thing. I have lived it. This time around I really do know just how hard it’s going to be. And there’s no “sleeping when the baby sleeps” this time since I’ve got a toddler who will be demanding my attention.

So that’s it. My confession as a soon-to-be-mother-of-two. I’m nervous.

But.

I am also completely in love with this boy I haven’t even met yet. He terrifies me, and I can’t wait to meet him.

Secret Santa

It's after 11 pm and I've got an emergency dentist appointment at 8 am tomorrow morning, so the last thing I should be doing right now is writing a new blog post, but I HAD to write about tonight while it still is tonight.

Just after we had put Evie down for bed and were getting ready to start a movie Brant and I heard a knock at our door. We were both a bit confused as we get very few unexpected visitors, and NEVER get them at 9 o'clock at night. Brant threw on a sweatshirt and went to the door to answer it. There was no one outside, but there was a gift bag sitting on our porch. We removed the tissue paper from the bag to find a roll of Nestle chocolate chip cookie dough and a note. Upon first seeing the cookie dough I assumed it had been left by a visiting teacher or neighbor (though the latter is unlikely as our neighbors are all 90+ and wouldn't have been able to run away from our door unseen).

We opened the note which read:

It never hurts to
have A Little Extra
"DOUGH"
At Christmas
time!

Happy Holiday!

We then found an envelope in the bag and opened it to find $83 of cash inside. We both looked at each other in complete shock! Neither of us have any clue as to who would have left this on our doorstep. Brant then went outside (in socks) to go find our Secret Santa(s?) but came in after five minutes of searching and me telling him that they probably meant for it to be a secret.

To our Secret Santa: you have no idea how much your love, kindness and generosity meant to me tonight. Your selfless good deed answered prayers I'm sure you had no idea you were answering. Even as I type this I have to continually stop to wipe the tears that are streaming down my face. Thank you! Thank you! THANK YOU!

Merry Christmas everyone!

Evie the Fabulous

My baby bear, Evie, is 18 months old now (and thirty-two days, but I originally drafted this post about one month ago). Since this blog is supposed to be a substitute of sorts for a journal I am taking it upon myself to write down a few of the things Evie does--right now--that make her so ridiculously awesome.

Evie the Fabulous: 1 1/2 years old

• At her 18-month well visit my girl (who measured in the 50th percentile in both height and weight at her one year visit) had skyrocketed to 33 inches tall (95%) and 27.8 lbs. (106%!).
• She has ten teeth. Six on the top, four on the bottom.
  
• Best kisses ever!--big, sloppy, wet, open-mouthed, and pretty much the best things in the world. Ask for a kiss and she'll come at you with her little mouth open as far as it can, and her tongue sticking out. If she's too busy, she'll still oblige but then her kisses are quick, tight-lipped ones that she gives without ever making eye contact.
  
• She has started twirling. Randomly she begins doing 360's around the room, then falls over when she gets dizzy.
• Sometime in the last two weeks, she apparently decided she needed to tone up because she has started doing toe touches. Up, down, and REPEAT.
• She is miss Chatty Cathy--minus the actual words. Evie is crazy verbal. She's always talking, but the only real words she says are mom, dad, dog, shoe, hot, cute, look [at] that and uh-oh. She also gives the occasional "love you" but she's a bit stingy with that one. In the last couple of weeks, however, she has started to repeat more and more of what she hears. I say cracker--she says cracker, but only if I say it.
  
• The Dancing Queen!!! She dances ANY and EVERY time she hears music. It doesn't matter if we're in the car, at church, listening to Rhapsody on the computer, or if music is on a commercial on TV. The chick dances!
• More. More. MORE. This little one learned the sign for "more" along time ago, but she has started to use it now to let us know that she's hungry for something. She apparently adapted ASL to suit her own needs. The family thinks it's ADORABLE every time she does it, but Mom and Dad have seen it enough that the cuteness has worn off (a little, anyway).

I love my little baby bear more than I can stand. She is squishy, squeezy, and oh, so cute! Love this kiddo to the moon!

Check Me Out: I'm Crafty

I finally finished my overhaul of Evie's two dressers. And I've got to be honest--they look pretty damn cute.

I am not crafty by any stretch of the imagination. I am a stay-at-home mom with Internet access, though, and I felt inspired by the many, many, MANY revamps I've seen on various blogs of various furniture items. I started out with two old, brown dressers that used to belong to my Granny Pectol (GP are ya wit me?!).



I forgot to take a "before" shot of the second, tall dresser but rest assured it looked almost identical to the other one. Now, I know what you must be thinking. Natalie, that dresser is beyond spectacular as is. How on Earth did you get so lucky as to find a dresser that boasts such a sassy color of brown veneer and ornate gold(ish) handles? How can you mess with such perfection? What can I say? I'm a gamblin' man.

Anyhoo, I once saw on a blog a dresser that had been repainted and finished by mod-podging scrapbook paper on the top. I figured, if that chick could mod-podge the top, why couldn't I mod-podge the dresser fronts. And that is precisely what I did. Behold the finished product...

I'm sure there are other chicks out there who could have done more impressive things with these two old dressers, but that's okay. I'm pretty tickled with how these turned out!

Happy Halloween

Happy Halloween! We had an easy peasy Halloween holiday this year since little one is still to small to care about it. Miss Evie dressed up as the cutest Eeyore in the history of life. Brant and I wanted to dress up in theme with her, so the plan was for me to go as Christopher Robin and Brant to go as Tigger. Easier said than done. I had my costume ready to go, but (word to the wise) finding orange sweats is all but impossible. I officially exhausted every search engine known to man trying to find an orange-hued top and bottom for my honey, but to no avail.
So....we scrapped the whole idea, and opted not to dress up at all. Costumes for adults are ridiculously expensive and we'd had our hearts set on our Hundred Acre themed ensembles anyway. However, in the grand Boyer tradition, we felt like weenies at the last minute for not dressing up and came up with some costumes on the fly...Elders Cheech and Chong. Easy peasy and 100% free!

We only went trick or treating to Grandma and Grandpa Boyer's and Grandma and Grandpa Ruesch's, but still had a blast. All the grandparents made a fuss over how cute Evie looked, and isn't that what Halloween is really about--proving your kid is cuter than someone else's? I'm glad you agree.

Date Night

Just had such a fabulous date night with my B! Started off a little shaky, but we pulled it out. Just like we always do--cause we're awesome like that.

Mom and Dad made an offer to watch the wee one, which we were quick to take them up on. We dropped her off at their house, and made our way to Red Robin (Yummm). I was a little skeptical about the night we had in store for ourselves when we were sat at our table and greeted by our server--a chick Brant recently had fired from Target. Dun dun dunnnnnn. However, after a few shaky moments at the beginning of the meal (like her accusing Brant of replying "same" in reference to my "water" order, rather than the coke I heard him ask for, then bringing him diet coke, THEN telling him regular coke was out and he'd have to pick something else) she ended up being fine, and mostly leaving us alone. The meal itself was fabulous! Whiskey River Burger for Brant/California Chicken Burger for me. Totally hit the spot for this preggo.

After dinner we hit up the movie Sarah's Key at the Red Cliffs Theatres. Fantastic movie. Made me want to sob my eyes out the entire time. Less fantastic was the incessant narration we had to endure from our fellow moviegoers. Despite that, though, we had a fabulous time.

But...
The highlight of the evening had to be walking into my parents' living room to pick up Evie. There is nothing like seeing her face light up when she sees us after being apart for a few hours. That is something that this mama will never, ever get tired of.

Surprise Family Time = Good Times

Had some fabulous family fun during the last couple of weeks. No big vacations or trips to amusement parks, but fun nonetheless. My sister, Reginald (not her real name), and her family moved down to Phoenix last week. Definitely NOT the fun part of this post (nothing more than a poor life decision if you ask me, which they didn't). But she and the fam DID surprise us by making a visit down here first.

I love hanging out with my family even when we don't do much. We always talk, laugh, and game, which are three of my favorite things in life. Combined with my favorite people in life makes for some pretty good times.

It was hard to say goodbye to Reg and her family (I won't get to see her again until November), but it was helped by the fact that one week later my only brother came down here for is own surprise visit.

I have never felt like I get to see Garrett enough. Even though he only lives 300 miles away, we have never been able to hang out with him as much as Reg, due to work conflicts, mostly. And Incubus concerts. His, not mine. So every time, I do get to see him it's always fun. He always makes us laugh, and he has a calming presence for the rest of our sometimes high-stressed family.

LOVE when my family is together,even though Holly didn't come around enough. (That's right, Simmons. I'm calling you out via blog. Who lives in Hurricane? Really?!) Good times all around. Rook games galore. And, of course, desserts abundant when the brother is around (courtesy of our Pectol mother). Which is what makes it even worse that my sister has moved.

I heart me some Reg time. Her moving is really the worst. news. EVER. Word on the street is that she flies for free so we'll still get to see them, but I'm not buying it (yet). My sister isn't what you would call the world's greatest flier. Sub-par flier or not, though, all I've got to say is that she better START flying cause you KNOW I'm not driving eight hours, with a bambino who doesn't sleep in the car, to a city that's even hotter than the one I already live in.
Well, probably not anyway.