Staycation 2012 Update

It's Day Five of My Great Big Summer Staycation -a week off, with the hubby-hubs having four days off.  It's been awesome.  Before Baby, I usually took staycations (we don't travel very often - we'd like to, we just don't have the money and it's hard for my husband to get time off) and filled them up with errands.  My post-baby staycation has thus-far been a satisfying mix of errands and play.  Just rambling around the house and yard with Hubs and Baby is supremely satisfying.  And cheap!  I love this stage Baby's in - everything is interesting.  A leaf, a flower, a baby monitor, a spoon, a newspaper.  Everything is something to inspect, wave in the air, tear apart, bang against something else.  I do have to wrangle him away from the computer and the dvd player about eight times a day, but so far no major damage has been done.

So what have I done in my four days off?  I have:
- Read Billy Bob Thornton's memoir - freaking hilarious and very insightful.  He's a strange dude, to be sure, but I think we're all strange and he's just not afraid to show his brand of weirdness.  It's a great read, but if you can't handle cursing, then DON'T READ IT.

- Cleaned my dish drainer by the kitchen sink.  It's something I forget about, and the other night I happened to notice that it was growing its own eco-system.  But now it's clean!

- Amended and mailed our tax return.  We forgot to pay something.  Oops!

- Made pesto with the basil we grow.  Didn't have pine nuts or walnuts, so I used pistachios.  Turned out yummy!

- Not looked at Facebook for two days straight.  Kind of nice.

-Ordered Little Man some shoes.  Boy doesn't have shoes!  Now that he's cruising the furniture, he needs them.

- Watched "True Grit" with Hubs - the newer version.  Pretty good.  Hubs had been wanting to see it.

 - Took naps along with Baby.  I am one of those people who would take a nap about 3pm every day if I could.

- Had some pals come over for dinner.  We've not entertained much post-baby, but now he's getting to an age where he can handle lots of people and also stay awake a bit later.  So we're going to have people over more often.

That's just some of the fun here at our house this week!  I needed this time off so very much. 

Finding Joy

Today was a day of celebration.  My first Mother's Day, my mom's and mother in law's first Mother's Day as grandmas.  It's a gift to see how much Baby J brightens up family gatherings.  Pretty much everything he does is met with delight, laughter, indulgence.  Look, he's playing with the camera cord!  Watch him hold that sippy cup!  Soak it up now, kid.  We should too - the challenging toddler years are not far away.  

My mission is to find happiness every day - to get back to feeling like myself.  Today I found joy in:

1) The ice cream cake my mother brought me for my birthday - I feel rich when I have something so decadent in my freezer!

2) J's TWO HOUR NAP this morning - I was able to lie down and read for quite a while and it was heavenly.  I'm reading Julia Glass's Three Junes - which is fantastic, by the way.  (I also had to really fight with J to get him to nap this afternoon - 30 minutes -  so don't be jealous.)

3) The cuteness of J saying "yocks" for "blocks."  (That $10.00 sorting block set was a great buy!)

4) Spending time with family - I am lucky enough to genuinely like my family - the one I was born into and the one into which I married.

5) My mom gave me a lily of the valley plant that was culled from one she has had for years.  It was originally my great-grandmother's plant.  And it's my birth month flower too.  What a special gift! 

Mother's Day can sometimes seem kind of cheesy and trumped up, but today was simply a very good day.