The saddest thing said to me in awhile.

"Mateo needs to learn I'm the lady who takes care of him during the day, and you're his mommy."

- Miss Joanne, Mateo's daycare teacher lady who takes care of him during the day and spends more time with him than I will - beginning next week.

And I'm paying them to do this? They should be so lucky for the privilege.

Oh yes, I was verry surprised.

I was putting cans of cat food in our kitchen cabinet this morning when I saw this weird creature in a plastic bag in the corner back of the cabinet. At first my heart stopped because I wasn't sure if it was a living thing or not since it didn't resemble anything I would have put in the cabinet. Then I realized it was in a plastic bag, so if anything, I could grab it by the bag and not the thing itself. And if it ended up moving, I could just throw it as hard as I could and scream really loudly. Low and behold, this is what it was:

















It was in a Safeway.com plastic bag, which means it's about a month or month and a half old. I was really impressed with its growth although a bit grossed out from the moldy spot on the side. Who knew I could grow such wonderous things in my cabinets??

My new favorite thing to do.

Finding funny homemade videos because someday I will make one with Mateo in it that's similar to Will Ferrell's "Landlord."

Here's one I just found:

How we parent

Okay, this really isn't a post about how my husband and I parent, but more about how we are similar in thought when certain things happen with Mateo.

This morning Mateo woke up about 6am, so I went into his room, fed him, changed him, changed his clothes because he spit up on his pjs, and then took him into our room to wake up my husband. While Mateo was chattering away and smiling like the smiley boy he is, he started his morning poo. His morning poo soon turned into the brink of a morning poo explosion, so I scooped him up and took him back into his room for a diaper change.

While I was getting a fresh diaper from the drawer, Mateo pooed even more, so I knew the poo had to of leaked out at this point. I flipped his legs up and by doing so, all the excess poo that hadn't been soaked up yet dribbled out the top of his diaper and pooled in his onesie.

"Oh NO!!!" I said a bit loudly. Mateo looked at me like he wasn't sure if I was really yelling or just being silly, so I smiled and said, "Oh NO!"

Then I realized since so much poo had pooled in his onesie, it was going to be hard getting the onesie off without getting poo all over him. I started yelling for help, and soon help (aka my husband) walked into the room. I told him to get a plastic bag so I could put the onesie in it (yes, it was that bad), and then spray it with Oxiclean (thanks, sis) in the bathroom.

"I'm not sure how to do this," I said. "No matter how I try to get this off of him, he's going to get poo all over himself."

My husband said, "Cut it off of him."

This is how we think the same.

I grabbed the scissors from the drawer and started cutting from the bottom to the top. After the onesie was split, I took Mateo's arms out of the sleeves, lifted him up, and pulled the onesie out from under him. I threw the onesie into the plastic bag my husband held, cleaned Mateo up, and put another onesie on him.

When under pressure, it's just easier for us to throw out stuff than try to save it. Yes, I know, not good for the environment and it's like throwing money away, but too bad, I say. When the poop has pooled in the onesie, the onesie's outta there.

Gotta worry about something.

My husband approached me tonight with his Men's Health magazine. He said that he never knew what Crone's disease was, and there was an ad in his magazine for medication to treat it, so he decided to read the ad. Now, we're both big on making fun of the ads on TV for prescription medication that lists every possible side effect and both think it's silly for these ads to even be allowed on television because it makes people get all worried about what may be wrong with them. I was surprised he would take the time to read the ad.

"Read this part -- right here," he told me as he pointed to a section about cancer.

It said something about people who have been treated for this and that and this and that and then listed psoriatic arthritis, which is something he does have, and how if you were treated for these various ailments, you could possibly get lymphoma.

I looked up at him. He looked dead serious.

"I wouldn't worry about it," I told him.

"But why didn't anyone tell me about it? Why didn't someone tell me I could get cancer???" he asked.

"Oh my god," I said as I got up and went to our bathroom sinks. I reached under and got the info on my birth control pills.

"Okay...," and I began reading the possible side effects, "...confusion," and I began to look up and sway, "pain in the groin / calf area," and I grabbed my calf then groin and moaned. I went on, and as I did, my husband kept telling me he when he got cancer, I'd be sorry for making fun of him.

"Why didn't anyone tell me I'd get dizzy and faint?" I asked as I turned in circles and then fell into his arms.

Sudden increase in "free" time.

So I'm trying to get Mateo more used to sleeping in his crib during the day, something he's never really done without a ton of fuss or by a fluke, in hopes when he goes to Kindercare, he'll be able to adjust to not being held as much and being able to sleep in his crib there. I started this two days ago; sometimes we've been successful and sometimes we haven't been, but one thing it's definitely doing is giving me more "free" time.

I say "free" lightly because it's not like I can just run off and leave the little guy (nor would I), and I do have to have the two baby monitors on at all times even though our walls are kinda thin and I can hear him crying regardless of where I am, but I can actually sit in front of the computer and mess around with things without having to stop every 10 seconds to pay attention to Mateo or I can cook dinner without wondering if he's going to start crying or I can actually get ready for the day without trying to get him to sleep first.

I find myself wondering what I should do during this time because I've been on constant baby watch 24 hours a day for the past 3 months. Mateo is also going to sleep earlier at night, around 7:30 pm instead of anywhere between 8 and 10pm, and he's even doing so without much fuss. It used to take us a good hour to get him to the point of sleeping, now it's like 5 minutes. This leaves more "free" time at night for my husband and I to be alone or for me to run off and hide in the bedroom with my laptop while my husband watches boxing or MMA.

He's also sleeping later in the mornings, so I no longer have to take him to bed with me at 4am -- he now continues to sleep in his crib until almost 7am. Which means, ultimately, more consistent sleep for me. Do I love it? Yes! Am I still dead tired by 4pm? Yes!

This sudden change in our routine is odd, but it's also good for all of us. Maybe I'll finish that book now!

If I had a dime for every time...

"How old is she?"
"What's her name?"
"She's so cute!"
"She has a lot of hair!"

Why is it that babies with hair are automatically girls and bald babies are boys? Why do I want to punch people who automatically assume Mateo is a girl? I don't really hear anything else except the pronouns.

And his hair is fine, not thick!

For those of you who have noticed...

I am still reading the book off to the right. Some day, probably when I go back to work, I will finish it. I think this is the longest it's ever taken me to finish a book. Hey, but I have watched seasons 1 and 2 of Lost, season 1 of 4400, half of season 1 of Big Love and just putting a tiny dent in Grey's Anatomy. While I'm tired of regular TV and listen to music mostly during the day, I have be watching TV shows I never watched before because of borrowing or renting the DVDs. I am now completely hooked on Lost, thanks to my maternity leave. How could I have not watched this show before??

The worst thing about being a parent.

So there we were, watching The Departed, which features a bazillion gunshots because it's a cop/irish mob movie, and Mateo was sleeping off and on during the movie. Mateo finally woke up and was in a smiley good mood. I was playing with him while he sat in his vibratey chair when right at the end of the movie there was a single gun shot (did I ruin the movie? NO! Gun shots galore!). Mateo's face bunched up, his lower lip stuck out and he started crying like someone screamed "Boo!" right behind him. Thanks to The Departed, the bejesus was scared out of him.

I'm still not used to the reality that Mateo can get scared. I don't mind the crying because he's tired, the goofy smiles cause he's happy, the looks away because he's bored, the grunts and body slams because he's frustrated, but I'm not ready and probably will never be ready to watch my baby cry like that because he's scared.

I promptly scooped him up, teared up and hugged him until my smiley boy came back.