One Week to a Year!

The baby birthday countdown is in full swing around here - or at the very least cranked up to 11 inside my head. Next week is GO Time around here; the culmination of everything we've been working on for the past year. My calendar is a blurry smear of blue ballpoint pen and increasingly tiny letters trying to fit it all in. Vince turns 1 and Matt finally graduates. He's graduating!! He's graduating! Fa la la la! (Spritly dances through the living room tossing out daisies and pansies.)

It's also EVERYTHING ELSE IN THE WHOLE WORLD HAPPENING WEEK!! Okay, maybe not quite so bad, but Matt's also starting his new job in his chosen field (he gets paid to look at dirt.) The new job does not have healthcare and we've got some issues there, so I have a meeting at the crack of dawn on Wednesday that will hopefully help me get that resolved and I might have to take the baby to because we haven't got much for daytime day care options. (Fun.)

Then there's his birthday. Yaaaay. I have no idea what we're doing for that. Just this week it seems he's learned all kinds of new things. He waves Bye-bye and gives kisses. He's just more and more aware of the world around him and how to interact with it. But he's still not going to know his birthday from a Thursday. I haven't planned a thing and might possibly be a horrible mother for it. I didn't dress him up in a Halloween costume either. We've never sat for a professional photograph together and I'm still trying to convince myself I should buy him more toys instead of just handing him more wooden kitchen utensils.

So, his birthday? What do I do? Make his favorite dinner? We don't know what that is yet. He eats anything and everything. He ate part of a tamale from La Loma yesterday and loved the hot sauce. (Again, that was not an accident... who knew? Seems like a bad idea to give it to him, though.) Make a cake? I don't know. I'm open to suggestions.

The next day Matt's officially completely not a student anymore. Then we have his graduation. My mom is coming into town and I think part of his family is going with us to the ceremony. It's at night and again, no sitter. I don't think I'm allowed to stay home for that... Some of us might just be bawling through the ceremony. We'll figure it out.

Also in there I've got an appointment for his first year well baby check up. There's a very good chance that I'll be paying cash for that. (weee! Cobra screw ups can be fun! ) Oy.

Saturday will be a baby's first birthday party with the family for the little feller. There will be cake and all that jazz then. I'm going to make some food - maybe even buy him a balloon or something. Super messy baby eating cake picture will be taken.

Maybe it's just me, but I'm still pretty sure that I have no idea what I'm doing as a mom in most departments. (Shh... don't tell :)

Thankfully, he's happy, so smart and adorable. And maybe the best part of all is that I get to dress him up however I want.


Which sometimes means making him up to look a lot like the rapper Brother Ali.