There ain't nothin' like some poppy seed

Aloha.

I haven't updated since Tuesday.  It is Friday.

Lamesauce.

I am sorry.

All I can tell you is I've been really busy cleaning and organizing and being incredibly productive watching a lot of NetFlix and eating a lot of blackberries that were on sale 10 for 10 bucks this week at the grocery store.  Although, I did clean my house down like DONKEY KONG yesterday. 

There is something euphoric about seeing those freshly raked tracks in the carpet where the vacuum recently traveled.  There's also something to walking by the entertainment center you haven't dusted in three weeks and NOT seeing a mountain of dust interrupted by tiny hand prints.  And I also LOVE me a clean toilet.  I'm just sayin'.

Also, blackberries are delicious.  This afternoon I committed the crime of making a summer salad in the middle of January.  Lettuce, mandarin oranges, pineapple, and blackberries, all smothered in a delightfully delicious poppy seed dressing.  Oh, sweet summer in a bowl, COME TO MAMA!

It was heavenly.

Newbie and I took an experimental batch of soup over to Miss L's this afternoon for a play date and had to make up for the soup recipe's mediocrity with a killer awesome salad.You can never go wrong with mandarin oranges and poppy seeds.

Newbie loves hanging out with his friend J, and he had a grand 'ol time slogging on all of J's books and big boy toys.  Bless Miss L's heart, she's too crazy into her pregnancy to care that my son was slobbering all the corners off her son's books.  You know you've got yourself a keeper of a friend when she doesn't care where your son's saliva ends up at her house.  For the record, Miss L is the least crazy pregnant lady I've ever known, and I'll be the first to tell you that I am the most crazy pregnant lady I've ever known.  I like to think we balance each other out. 

Mowing the lawn while riding a giraffe?  He's already showing excellent signs of being able to multitask.

I've been busy hacking through my New Year's "resolutions" that I'm not actually calling "resolutions" because nobody ever does their resolutions.  I'm calling them my "New Year's hopes and dreams".  There are many items on the list, one of them being to learn how to use my fancy schmancy camera.  So there's been a lot of this going on lately:

The mid-squeal I captured on my part in the picture above has me thinking perhaps the reason Newbie waves at everything is because I react with an enthusiastic, "OH GREAT JOB, BABY BOY!" screech any time he does. Noted.  

Another item on the list was to incorporate prayer into our family life and routine in a way that enables Newbie to see who and what we are praying for in a concrete way.  So I whipped up a "Prayer Page" with pictures of family and friends.  Each day I move the front page to the back, and we have a fresh set of people to pray for throughout the day.  I have it hung up in our dining room so we can pray together after we eat breakfast in the morning. It fits perfectly with my hodge-podge motif and my anything-goes interior decorating philosophy. The first page was full of pictures of Newbie's aunt and uncle and his grandparents.  When he saw it, he stood there and waved at the pictures while I prayed out loud.  I'm counting it as progress. =)

Not a 2011 resolution hope and dream, but still exciting, last night Newbie and I packed up and headed out to G-Mama and Grandad's house to bum some dinner while the Hubs worked late.  I had grand ambitions of finishing up a sewing project, but it never happened because Newbie was busy playing with Griffin, and Mama was busy eating cornbread. 

I love a good batch of cornbread.  I went back for seconds in a strategically bad move that left me whimpering to the Hubs when I got home about "oh my aching stomach and why did I eat such a load of cornbread at my mom's???"  When there's cornbread involved, I just can't hold myself back.

Which reminds me of a hope and dream I'd rather forget, involving a commitment to hit the gym and possibly even sign up for a mama/baby class this winter.  What was I thinking?  Didn't I remember how much more fun it is to hang out with blackberries and NetFlix all afternoon?  Apparently I did, in fact forget while hoping and dreaming last week, because this afternoon I find myself trying to finagle the schedule in a way that gets me and Newbie into a mama/baby class before the month is up.  Look out, world!  Here comes the most uncoordinated-exercise-hating mama you've ever seen!  Buckle up; it should be a good time.

Newbie is currently sawing logs over the baby monitor this afternoon. Gotta love a good car-to-crib transfer during nap time.  That boy went down at 1:30, woke up when we pulled into the driveway at 1:57, and fell right back asleep after I took off his mittens and laid him down in his crib. Awesome.  Also, he slept through the entire night last night, the first time in at least two weeks, and the Hubs and I have never felt better.  Newbie went sans-humidifier last night, and the Sherlock in me reasoned that perhaps those big air bubbles that float noisily to the top of the tank at night are what have been waking Newbie up at the ripe 'ol hours of 12 and 3 in the morning.  Then I made a mental note to put the humidifier just outside his door and to never get Newbie a goldfish or any other aquatic creature, as the bubbling is sure to wake him in the night.  This works out really well because I hate cleaning fish tanks.  The fish get all flippy and floppy when you put them in the net to clean their tank, and it just makes me frantic and jittery.

I am off to make an already relatively productive day more productive by tossing in a load of laundry.  It's those darn vacuum tracks in the carpet.  That kind of cleanliness just inspires me.

Y'all have a fabulous Friday night, and enjoy any big plans for me, seeing as how mine are currently limited to laundry, leftovers, and laundry.  Amen.