come one come all to my new etsy store, baby come back!

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i’m starting to feel like a negligent mother. first my child escapes from his crib and could have fallen to his death while i slept in. then i lock him in the car. and next?

i took elliott for a walk right before this monster storm started up. we have 3 steps leading up to our house so naturally i unlock and open the door before i drag the stroller up the steps when we get back home. as i turn around after unlocking the door i see the stroller rolling backwards like everything is in slow motion. unfortunately i apparently was also in slow motion because even though i took a flying leap off our stoop at maximum speed i didn’t get there in time to catch my boy before he and stroller fell backwards off the curb into the street. argh. i swear i put the break on.

elliott freaked out, i think it scared him more than it hurt him, and thank goodness he was actually well buckled into the stroller (’cause he isn’t always), but you better believe i was checking his pupil dilation for signs of a concussion for the next couple of hours.

mothering FAIL.

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happy birthday to my wonderful husband!

i’m so glad you were born.

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while we were in utah we had a little spare time in between familial obligations so we went and spent and afternoon with our friend ashley thalman, and as she is a photographer by trade it was inevitable that the camera would come out. lucky me!

look at that sweet furrowed brow! (and there are some more at ashley’s photo blog as well!)

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i’m starting to worry that my child is a troublemaker. or maybe this is how all boys are and i just never knew? all i do know is that elliott locked himself in the car on friday afternoon.

we finally bought elliott a new carseat after a couple months of his being too large for his infant one and i wanted to install it on friday before justin came home from work. instead of leaving elliott in the house to scream in his playpen i decided to do him a good turn and let him stand in the backseat while i installed it (mistake #1). i got the carseat in and i got out of the car and instinctively closed my door, leaving elliott in the backseat. i wanted to go get my purse and my phone, both of which were still in the house, so that we could go for a ride. as i walked back up to the house i heard the unmistakeable click of the car lock. and just like that a million expletives ran through my mind as i ran back to the car and saw elliott just lounging in the backseat playing with my keys. somehow they had fallen out of my pocket and elliott, being an enterprising young man, had retrieved them and immediately gone for the big red door lock button.

i sat there watching him through the car window (he was playing happily with my keys, not a care in the world. geesh.) for a split second while my brain started to go into panic mode thinking “my baby’s going to die…i’m a negligent mother…” along with crazy thoughts of smashing in my windows to get him out. i gained enough presence of mind to run towards the house to get my phone to call the police and tried to open my front door. which was locked. why i had locked the door on my way out of the house i have no idea, but i now had no phone, no keys, and my neighbors weren’t home. more crazy thoughts of breaking my house window. i ran back to the car to check on elliott - still chilling in the backseat, still playing with my keys. i started praying to heavenly father that elliott would magically decide to push the (blue, smaller, generally less appealing) door open button. i watched him chomp happily on my grocery store rewards card and then get bored with the whole key ring and drop it into the nether-regions of the back seat. NOOOOOOO. so much for divine intervention.

i looked back at the house and with a stroke of inspiration i remembered that we had had the front window open the day before and we probably hadn’t locked it. bingo, through the window i went and ran straight for my phone. 5 minutes later a sheriff’s deputy was prying open my door and i pulled a very sweaty, but mostly unphased little boy out of my backseat, along with the keys. (but not before a fire truck pulled up lights and siren ablazing. so embarrassing.)

now i’m sure i’m not the first mom in the history of the world who has had this happen (in fact when the deputy pulled up i said “i’m so embarrassed” and he said “don’t worry, this has probably happened to me 50 times.” and i thought to myself “you’ve locked your kids and keys in the car 50 times?!” but i digress), however a crib escape and locking himself in the car all before 10 months old?! it’s going to be a long 18 years…

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you know how they say disasters come in threes? well, that definitely has been proven at the bytheway household this past week.

i came home from a lovely trip to utah where i got to see lots of family, show off elliott, with the only downside being that justin had to stay behind. justin picked me up after a fairly decent flight and we made it home without a hitch.

thursday night justin was on his way home from a meeting around 9ish when our car’s thermometer needle went from its seemingly permanent home right between hot and cold to all the way on the hot side of the dial. and then it started spewing out smoke. yikes. luckily he made it home, going on slowly as he could, with smoke pouring our of the hood just like in a sitcom. when he opened the hood he found a crack all the way from one side to the other of the radiator. with the scooter as our only means of transportation we’ve been pretty homebound ever since. needless to say we’re hoping to get a radiator asap.

saturday i woke up by myself around 9:30, which is very very weird. elliott has woken me up without fail between 7:30 and 8:30 pretty much every day since he was born. justin woke up at the same time and we commented on the fact that elliott still seemed to be asleep. with jet lag and the fact that he refused to go to sleep until 10:30 the night before it wasn’t inconceivable that he slept in, but we both still felt kind of uneasy.  justin got up to check on him, opened his door, and said “sarah, you’ve got to see this.” i walked into elliott’s room and there was elliott, on the floor, OUT OF HIS CRIB, rolling around like it was no thing. also, he had a huge grin on his face that said “mommy look what i did!” while i had a look on my face that said “how in the…”. needless to say elliott’s crib is now lowered.

sunday night we were watching the last episode of ken burns’ civil war (why john wilkes booth? why?) while elliott was crawling around and playing on the floor. for some reason i decided to pick elliott up and while i was doing so i looked up at our wall to see a giant black spider. i’m not deathly afraid of spiders, although i don’t like them a ton, but since elliott came along i’ve become pretty vigilant about killing anything that could potentially be a threat to him that is in my house - just call me momma bear. something about this spider looked weird so i called justin in to kill it. when he said “whoa, it’s a black widow,” i got kind of hysterical at something potentially deadly to my child being right in my LIVING ROOM, only a couple of feet from where he was crawling. i kept imagining if i hadn’t picked him up when i did and if he had noticed it first and crawled towards it. thank you divine inspiration. justin killed it, i calmed down a little, and needless to say we’re going to be bug spraying the baseboards. when we have a car again and can go buy some.

so far this week has been much calmer, thank goodness, and now i’m left hoping that we’ve had our quotient mishaps for the month.

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how to make your child go from this:

to this (in 10 seconds):

answer: whistle.

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we have lovely orange curtains in our living room and that combined with me using the sling every day while justin was away at camp school led to this picture.

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so i’m not really one for jumping on baby trends or for going too outside the box, unless it makes sense to me. organic baby clothes? no. cloth diapers? yes (although now that we’re back east and paying our water bill they make significantly less sense). when i read this article back in november it just clicked. so many things about baby food didn’t make sense to me - why start kids off eating food that tastes terrible and/or is super bland? of course they’re going to hate vegetables and other food that’s good for them later in life if that is their first introduction. and of course kids are going to develop a sweet tooth if they’re given fruit puree (which is delicious) and vegetable puree (which is very very not delicious). i mean, really, how many of us adults would eat salted pureed peas much less the unsalted version?

and so justin and i discussed it and we decided that this was what we wanted to do with elliott. elliott LOVES it. mealtime comes around and i hand elliott a bagel, wheat toast, cauliflower, asparagus, chicken, carrots, green beans, broccoli, peaches, banana, cheese…and he goes to town. it’s been really fun watching him discover food and flavors and to see what he likes and to see how much better he’s gotten at feeding himself. so far there isn’t something that he doesn’t like, although there are definitely things he likes more than others. he loves loves loves broccoli, but not so much zucchini, for example. we haven’t been militant about not feeding him baby food - living in the scout office and then in someone’s basement meant that he was going to have to eat the puree for a little while. this was the only time he ever pushed food away or made a face as he ate, and i couldn’t say that i blamed him. as a show of solidarity i tried a bite of everything he ate (ok, less solidarity and more curiousity) and it was really pretty gross - flavorless, texture-less, blech.

i don’t delude myself that elliott is always going to be a good eater, i’m happy that he is now, and the longer i can prolong the pickiness the better. my main wish in all of this, as juvenile diabetes is on the rise and as someone who has struggled with negative attitudes towards food all her life, is that elliott will develop a healthy attitude towards food and eating that will last the rest of his life. only time will tell.

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last monday justin, elliott, and i went to mt. vernon in honor of george washington’s birthday. every year on president’s day mt. vernon is free to the public and justin’s aunt, holly, works for the mt. vernon chamber of commerce so she was able to get us free parking within the gates of the estate.

we got there around 9:30 and there was already a line around the block of people waiting to get in when they opened. holly had promised us free parking, but she said that we would still have to wait in line to tour the house if we so desired. well, we parked, walked inside and holly said she would show us around a little bit before she had to go meet up with her co-workers. there we were standing in front of the house saying goodbye to holly when a woman came up to us and said “oh, they opened the gates already! well, come on inside!” so we were officially the first tour of the day at mt. vernon on president’s day and we didn’t have to wait in line at all - i felt like such a celebrity. the tour guides kept saying to us “wow, you must have gotten here pretty early to be the first in line.” yep, a whole 10 minutes ago.

being at mt. vernon it’s hard not to feel a renewed reverence for george washington and all that he did for the founding of this country. i learned much about him that i didn’t know - that he lost his father at an early age and that as a result he had to learn everything himself through extensive reading and study, that his dentures were actually made of a combination of human teeth, animal teeth, and lead, and that he died of a throatache (essentially). the thing that i was most curious about was the relationship that he had with martha, but because martha was so private she burned all of their personal correspondence after george died. part of me really admires her for that.

anyway, we had lots of fun wandering the grounds and admiring what remained of the 400 acres he once owned and the gorgeous view of the potomac he had from his porch. we also had fun with an impromptu photo session with elliott where we tried every trick in the book to get a picture of his two teeth (which he’s had a month and a half now, oh how time flies).

i think this one showcases them pretty well.

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