He Crawls!!!

At last he has figured out how to crawl forward (kinda like a drunken sailor, but still).

Look out, world.

Ben vs. the Rug

Sunday at the Park

Things I'm Looking Forward To

So I've had some serious senior-itis lately. I'm very ready for school to be out. I love my job, but I'm tired and I just want to hang out with my little guy. Last year I had my first work-free teacher summer; the first few weeks I was very pregnant, and the remaining weeks I had a newborn. So there was very little summer funning. But this year is different. This year I don't have to work AND I have a buddy to play with. AND I have a few super fun things planned. So to get me through the next eight weeks, I'm going to think about all of the things I'm excited about.

1. Knott's Berry Farm (May 8). Every year the top service point earners at my school go on a field trip to Knott's, and there is a lottery for who gets to chaperone. I won! Now, before you laugh and wonder why on Earth I would want to chaperone thirty twelve-year-olds at an amusement park, you should know that I don't actually have to hang out with them--they just have to check in with me a couple of times throughout the day. Score. And last year I went on the seventh grade class trip to Knotts, but I was seven months pregnant and couldn't actually do anything (and was hot and achy and miserable most of the time). So this time I actually get to enjoy the trip.

2. Memorial Day Weekend (May 22-25). Okay, I don't actually have any plans besides getting my eye hives checked. But because I had to schedule an appointment that Friday, I ended up with a four-day weekend. THAT's something to look forward to.

3. Matt's family visits (May 27-31). Matt's mom and step-dad are coming down from Nor Cal for the weekend, and since I just found out I get two personal days a year, we get to spend the whole weekend with them in San Diego and Carlsbad. We'll also be taking Ben to the zoo for the first time. Very exciting.

4. Ben's Dedication (May 30). I've been looking forward to this one since he was born. We missed the last couple, and we just barely got squeezed into this one. We also got the service we wanted, which we weren't going to be able to do. So I'm crazy excited. So save the date: Saturday, May 30 at 6:00pm at Rock Harbor. Be there or be the armpit hair of that lady on Wife Swap a couple of weeks ago.

5. Knott's Berry Farm (June 12). Yep. I get to go AGAIN with all the seventh graders.

6. Fourth of July (July 4). Don't know what we're going to do yet, but it's one of my favorite holidays. I think I want to go up to Arrowhead this year. I haven't been since I went off to college, and I miss it. Or maybe we'll do the beach. I don't know...we'll see.

7. Lake Tahoe (July 6-11). This will be our first major trip with Ben, and we get to be with Matt's family, whom we don't get to see very often. Also, I LOVE playing in the forest and lakes. It's where I grew up, and I miss it loads. So I'm really excited to finally have a vacation where we get to stay in a cabin and be amongst nature. And I'm super excited that Ben will be able to play with his cousins.

8. Ben's first birthday (July 17). That's a whole other blog...maybe even several. Can't believe it's already almost here. :/

9. The OC Fair (July). I LOVE the fair. And this time we'll be doing it with Ben.

10. Matt's and my two year anniversary (August 17). Not sure what we'll be doing...but whatever it is, I love you baby, and I can't wait to celebrate. :)

Other Stuff

11. Going to the Beach. I've lived in the OC for 11 years now, and every year I say "I'm going to go to the beach more," but I never do. This time...look out, Newport, here I come.
12. Swimming lessons with Ben
13. Going to the pool
14. Repainting Ben's bookcase and re-staining our cedar chest.
15. Going to the park
16. Taking walks
17. Reading
18. Spending oodles of time with my boys
19. Hanging out with my girlfriends
20. Not grading papers

So there it is. And I'm sure we'll be adding to this list as we go.

Eight more weeks...

A Swing and a Hit

First attempt at the swing last month:

And take two, today at the park:

Can I Take my Ten?

Today wasn't a bad day...it was actually a rather good day. But it felt long, and by the end I was tired. It could be the Benedril and the unicorn tear eye drops. Or it could be my twenty full-time jobs. But I was tired. And when I came home, I was nostalgic for the days when I could come home after work, put on my sweats, grab the Triscuits, and park myself in front of the TV.

So I did.

Ben and I had a snack, then I set him up on the floor with some toys while I watched ER.

And I refuse to feel bad about it.

What kind of mom are you?

Artistic? Gourmet? Healthy? New? Romantic? Spiritual? Vampire? Do you (apparently unlike the aforementioned) deserve the best?

Thanks, Barnes and Noble. Thank you for the implication that because I'm a mom, I'm interested in cooking, trashy romance novels, and knitting. I love gender pigeon holes. I love that all the Mother's Day gifts and ideas out there appeal to my place in the kitchen and my love for home-made clothing. Because that's what it means to be a mom...cooking and crochet. Moms don't read Dostoevsky--they read Nicholas Sparks and The Barefoot Contessa. Just like because I'm a teacher I love figurines of bears holding apples and alphabet blocks.

Shannon's Eyes Strike Again

If you have known me for any length of time, you are aware of the blessing/curse combo that is my pair of eyes. The blessing: they are a killer shade of blue that has been wowing viewers since 1979. The curse: everything else.

Several years ago, I want to say 2004-ish, I woke up one morning and my right eye was a bit blurry. I changed my contacts, but that didn't help. The next day my peripheral vision seemed a bit different. The next morning I no longer had peripheral vision. So I went to an ophthalmologist, who said "How long will it take you to get to Hoag? Have any plans today? When was the last time you ate?" Soon after I was in surgery getting my retina reattached. Lucky Matt had been dating me for three weeks. A month or so later I found out that my insurance, which I had called and confirmed the morning of my appointment, had been retroactively canceled. So my surgery wasn't covered, and I was suddenly $15,000 in medical debt.

My eye healed, I moved on. I've periodically had my retinas checked, and so far both are firmly in place. Today I had an ophthalmology appointment for my regular checkup. Never one to say nay to a break and a chance to spend the day with my guy, I took the whole day off.

This morning I played with my little man and did some cleaning. I tried to do my Billy Blanks Taebo Funk video, but after 10 minutes I almost passed out (yep--7:45 and it was already 80 degrees), so I quit. I got the kitchen clean, and when I got started on the bathroom I discovered that the water had been precipitously shut off. Thanks, Newport Village Apartments. Let's add this to the happy face list. I also had to call around to find out where I actually had my appointment. I kind of have two eye doctors, and since I scheduled this appointment several months ago, I couldn't remember where it was supposed to be. Fortunately, it was the one farther away from where I live.

So I had to wake Ben up from his nap to go to the doctor, and of course I couldn't wash the comet off my hands because the water was shut off. So after a baby wipe/hand sanitizer cleaning, I gently picked Ben up and headed out the door, hoping he'd sleep a little more in the car (of course he didn't). Nonetheless, he was really great at the ophthalmologist's. So good, in fact, that some strange woman came up to us and talked our ear off about him and how he compares to her grandson. The best part? She kept calling Ben (and her grandson, Ryan) "it". "Does IT crawl? Does IT eat baby food? Does IT sit up?" Now, I'm very blessed with a REALLY good kid. He behaves so well in public...for a reasonable amount of time. After 45 minutes in the waiting room, he got antsy (I don't understand why...45 minutes in a waiting room is loads of fun for adults--I can't imagine how infinitely more fun it is for a nine-month-old.). So my squirrely guy and I finally got seen by Dr. Nguyen. The good news: retinas are still attached. The bad news: I HAVE HIVES UNDER MY EYELIDS. Sick. So he gave me a prescription for some super special eye drops and sent me on my way.

I headed to Kaiser on the off-chance they will fill this prescription. (I have Kaiser for insurance, but my ophthalmologist isn't Kaiser--I have vision insurance through VSP.) Nope. I had to go to Target. So I got to Target and handed over my prescription, praying that it wouldn't cost much. I strolled through Target for 30 minutes waiting for my drops to be filled (which is great, because it's not like Ben has been confined to a stroller, car seat, and/or grocery cart for an hour and a half...oh wait). Side note: it's never a good thing for the bank account to have a half an hour to kill in Target. I didn't get much, though, which was good because the drops cost $104. Are you freaking kidding me? They had better be made of pheonix tears and permanently cure all diseases I ever have forever. Especially considering the size of the bottle (shown right).

I loaded the pheonix tears and my son in the car and headed home, deciding to go through a drive-through and get a cherry coke. I'm not a soda drinker--but I do like cherry coke from a soda fountain on a hot day. And heck, I just threw down 100 bucks on eyedrops...what's another dollar and 200 calories? So I ordered a medium soda because I'm pretty parched--it is, after all, 90 degrees. Apparently a medium soda is a trillion ounces. Many would be happy by this unexpected deal. Not me; I have this thing where I can't waste, so I had to drink the whole thing, which I didn't want to do.

A million dollars, thousands of grams of unnecessary sugar, and two hours later, I got home.

I'm going to go ahead and put this morning in the win column.

Pool Day, Take 2

Since it's 94 degrees, why the heck not?

The Millers Take Newport

As this weekend is a scorcher, we decided to be all kinds of outdoorsy and whatnot. Since today was supposed to be the least scorching day (at a cool 80 degrees), we hit the beach. It was Ben's first time. We decided to get a beach umbrella...soooooo wish we had made that decision a long time ago. It was a perfect beach day. Warm, but not too hot; nice breeze; gorgeous sky. And Ben LOVED it. He laughed and sang and squealed...so did Matt, which was a little more awkward, but hey...the guy loves the beach. The water was FREEZING...needless to say swimming was not on the agenda.

All in all--fantastic day. :)

Nine Months!

I can't believe we're three quarters of the way through with his first year! Time is flying by.

Not a lot of new things accomplished this month. He's still not crawling...although he can push himself backwards a bit. He also cut three more teeth just last week.

This morning his doctor said he's 20 pounds on the nose and 28 1/4 inches. His plagiocephaly (retarded head shape) is also improving, so he won't have to wear a helmet.

Happy nine months, little monkey!

Home Adequate Home

So a while back I wrote about our search for a home. We are O-V-E-R living in an apartment, particularly this one, and spent some time looking for a new living arrangement. Our lease was up March 31, and we wanted out. And thanks to Ben, we had a sizable tax return begging to be spent on a deposit (I say deposit and not down payment because it wasn't THAT sizable). So we searched Orange County for a HOUSE to rent. Thanks to the mortgage crisis and everyone losing their homes, homes to buy are found every couple of blocks, but homes to rent are nowhere. And the sprinkling we did find were either way out of our price range or four walls of crap. So we sadly signed a new 6-month lease.

In order to mitigate the inevitable subsequent spiral of depression, we decided to spend a little of said refund pile on making our current abode livable. We have hitherto not spent much money or effort on this place because we weren't planning on staying that long. We're still going to try to get out in September, but until then, I needed to spruice it up a little so I don't lose my mind.

This process actually started several weeks ago, and I was waiting to post until I had lots of pictures to wow you with. But the projects are being done one at a time with looooong periods of time in between, so I'm giving up and posting now.

We finally broke down and got a new end table for our living room. We've been searching for a good one pretty much since we got married, and Ikea finally got around to making the perfect one.


We also got a basket to hold the random things like my purse, the diaper bag, the grocery cart seat thing for Ben, etc. that would normally go in a hall closet. I'm not going to show you a picture of that, though, because it's still not may favorite corner.

We also got a few paintings and shelves to put on the naked, ugly walls. I'm a big snob, so I like fine art, which is very hard to find in stores. I found a website, though, that sells prints for reasonable prices, so I nabbed a few, put them in some Ikea frames, and voila, one is on the wall and the others are on the floor waiting for Matt to put them up.


One of the shelves has made its way to the wall above the computer desk. The others are next to the two remaining paintings.


We also got a little something for Ben's room. I've been wanting a little "reading corner" in his room since before he was even conceived. We've got an old, ugly bookcase full of books, and it was time for a little chair. I fell in love with Pottery Barn's "anywhere chair," but I couldn't justify spending over $100 on a chair for a baby (who tends to be a bit messy). We looked everywhere for a cheaper alternative, but nothing came close. Pottery Barn ended up having a sale, and we still had a bit of money left on a Pottery Barn gift card from our wedding, so we splurged and got it. It's wonderful and I love it and Ben loves it and it was totally worth it.


Our poorly insulated, poorly situated apartment is, indeed, much more liveable now with those few little touches. My next goal is to replace some of our bookcases. I have, literally, thousands of books, and they live in whatever random bookcases I have managed to scrounge up over the years. Some of them are rather cheap and/or icky, and Ikea now makes Billys in the nice, dark espresso color that we love. So I'm looking to make the switch. Ben's bookcase is perfect for his room. It's the perfect height and width, the shelves are perfectly spaced and non-removeable (important quality in a child's bookcase)...it's ALMOST perfect. The one downside: it's an awful, dirty white. I'm loathe to get rid of it because of its many wonderful qualities. But it's really ugly. Anyone have any ideas on how I can "refinish" it? I'm not a DIY-er, and we have no space for a big project. But I really want to try to make it work.

That's all for now. I have to go because the guy in the apartment across from us is apparently building an ark, and someone else is cutting down trees with a chainsaw (I so wish I was kidding), so Ben got woken up and is now screaming.

Five and a half more months...

How to Get from Here to There without Crawling

He is Risen!

Sunday marked the Resurrection of our Lord! That was the good thing. The not so good thing: last day of Spring Break. Boo.

Matt, Ben, and I met up with my dad, brother, mom, step-dad, step-sister, and her friend at the Orange County Fairgrounds, which is where my church, Rock Harbor, does Easter. The service was, as always, amazing. The dancers were wonderful, the message (or at least what I heard of it), was powerful, and the baptisms were moving. Speaking of moving, that's what Ben spent the service doing. I didn't put him in the nursery because he was falling asleep in my arms on the way there. Well, he perked up when we got into the amphitheater. He was climbing all over me, squealing, and babbling. So I ended up going to the back where he could climb, squeal, and babble freely without disturbing too many people. He passed out when the service was almost over. Nevertheless, I enjoyed the celebration and the time with my family.

For the rest of the day Matt, Ben and I relaxed. Since Ben skipped his morning nap, he was especially fun. After an exhausting morning of wrestling with a 20 pound monkey, I was looking forward to napping with said monkey. Sadly, our downstairs neighbors were partying hard with their dominoes, marbles, and booze, so nap I did not. I finished my Easter tired and crabby.

But He is still risen. :)

Happy Birthday, Miss Emily!

On Saturday we went to sweet Miss Emily Clements's first birthday party in the park. We had loads of fun. Hard to believe we will be doing this for Ben in just three short months...

Sweet Birthday Girl

She wasn't entirely sure what to do with her cake

She was a little reticent in digging in

Ben was ready to show her how.

Ben won the Easter egg hunt.

He also seems to have a propensity for shiny balloons.

Anyone surprised he'd rather chew on his hat than wear it? No?

Happy One Year, Emily!