A day in the life...

Today was a great and tiring day.

First I got up and went to the gym for my saturday morning ritual: Zumba at the YMCA. It is a class of approximately 120 folks shaking it and getting down to loud latin and hip hop music while sweating profusely but generally smiling.

I got home to quick shower and then head out with Terry and Liam to drop Liam off at the house of another mom from my mom's club. We have a babysitting coop in the club, so we can swap free babysitting with each other. Although he is sometimes showing a bit of separation anxiety, he was immediately in love with the whole family. He's met Lauren (the mom) and Lottie (the daughter) and Lem (baby) before, but this was his first time meeting Hank (the dad) and Liam had an immediate man crush. He made a goofy grin, crawled right to Hank, and just started playing.

Then Terry and I went off for a nice relaxing couples massage. An hour later I felt almost drunk I was so peaced out. Blissful and more relaxed, we went out for lunch. I've been plotting this lunch for seriously months and months. As part of my ongoing "lose the baby weight" campaign (yes yes, it has been too long. I don't want to hear it) I decided I would get a Five Guys Burger when I lost half the weight and kept it off for a set period of time. So today was the day to celebrate that halfway point (actually more than halfway now). So Terry and I got Five Guys, and split a coke and cajun fries. It was a near religious experience. I have never eaten a burger so slowly, eyes rolling back in my head from total joy. It felt a little strange to get a massage at a wholistic healing spa with scented oils and a vegan yogi giving the massage, and then transition to high fat fast food burger, but man, divine.

Then we went to pick up Liam who was up from his nap and playing with Lauren, Lem and Hank. Liam was sitting in Hanks lap happy as a clam knocking down block towers. We wound up hanging out at their house and talking for more than an hour. Turns out they are both also graduated Wahoos (University of Virginia) so of course Terry was immediately bonded. They are just fun wonderful people who are easy to talk to. It made for a wonderful way to pass the early afternoon.

We got home and poor tired Liam went down for nap #3 of the day. He has been down to two, or sometimes one, naps daily. but he only took a short mini-nap while at Lauren's, so he went down for a third. It was a beautiful afternoon, seemingly the first true spring day in Nashville.

So Terry fired up the baby monitor, mixed two margaritas, and we went outside to sit on our deck in the sunshine and soak in the 50 plus degree day. I put my feet in his lap and we talked for a while. it was just slow and nice. Then he got the genius idea to play bocce ball in our clover-overgrown lawn...so we did. We have a sort of bumpy, uneven, sometimes soft lawn that is a thicket of clover that is probably 4 inches high in places right now. It has random hills and small valleys all over the place, so half the time you couldn't even see where the little yellow ball landed. Terry was beating me early on, I made a dramatic come back, got within one point of winning, then he came back and took the game in the end. It was fantastic.

Then the baby woke up, and it was still sunny, though a bit cooler, so we decided to take him to the playground. While I was putting his shoes on, he got impatient and slammed his head back into my jaw while trying to squirm off my lap. As I write this six hours later it still hurts like heck. So after some ice and Ibuprofen, we took him to the playground near our house for about 45 minutes of swinging, sliding, climbing, and chasing the older kids. Liam is enamored of older kids, especially older boys. He likes nothing better than chasing after them and trying to do what they are doing. So he crawled up to the stairs where some kindergarteners were running around. I explained to the kids that he came over because he really likes older kids. One of the boys was particularly interested, and fully of questions: why did he like school kids? why did he want to do what they were doing? And he took a little liking to Liam as well, making fun faces at him and seeming quite pleased when Liam smiled and goooed at him.

We got home and I made Liam a little baby version of Indian curry (thats what Terry and I were having for dinner later on, but ours was spicy and not remotely ready to eat yet). I mixed up steamed carrot, red pepper, peas, and potatoes with brown rice, mixed curry powder, ginger powder, garlic and garam masal together with plain yogurt, and stirred it all together. He's been practicing more and more with using a spoon, but he doesnt yet understand the concept of balancing it upright, so I try to offer him things that are thick enough that they are easy to get onto the spoon (eg by dipping rather than scooping), and hard to get off of it (eg by flinging or tipping upside down en route to his mouth).

After dinner he was a terrible mess. But I've made peace with the idea that in order for him to have room to practice and learn life skills, there will be some mess involved.

So I took him into the bathroom to wash his hands (and face...and ears...and hair). And on the way out he started squirming towards the wall. I stopped walking, and he reached out...and turned off the light. WooHOO!

Months ago, after he showed such interest in turning the water faucet on and off, I tried for a while to teach him about turning the lights on and off. But at the time he didn't seem interested. While I was trying to hand-over-hand him into turning the lights, he was turned around looking at the faucet and trying to reach out for it still. So I call out to Terry excited to tell him about the lights thing. And he calls back "Oh yeah, I was showing him that and he started doing it yesterday or today." All casual he says it. And I just smile, while the lights phase on and off, on and off. The baby just goes in slowly and carefully with his little pincher grip out, grabs the switch, and carefully flipping it up and down. Can we say ADORABLE?!