Wish you were here!

There are so many things that I wish D could see right now. So many little things, so many precious moments that make my heart swell with joy. (Not trying to make you feel bad, honey, I swear!) Raising a baby is one of the most joyful endeavors I've ever embarked upon, and there are no end to the things that make me smile.

I love this picture, even if Little Bug's eyes
are closed.

Sometimes I think I should be taking more videos of Little Bug during these long months of deployment. And then I remember that I don't have a video camera, and my regular camera doesn't seem to take videos, and even if I did have a good reliable way of taking videos, it wouldn't really work anyway. I can't even easily take pictures anymore; most of them have a little hand reaching intently toward the lens. And more than half of them are blurry anyway. I swear, Little Bug never stops moving. He's a very busy boy.

So since I don't have videos, I'll instead try to paint a picture with words.

~*~*~*~
Little toothy grins. As of now, Little Bug has two teeth on the bottom and three on the top, and I think a fourth might be on its way in up there. (Hard to get a good look though...) He has the cutest little smile, with all of his little teeth, and I love the way they flash when he laughs.
~*~*~*~
I still haven't succeeded in teaching Little Bug the sign for "milk," which I use interchangeably with "nurse." I'm hoping that eventually he will start signing when he wants a snack, rather than coming over and pulling my shirt down, since that's not exactly okay to do out in public. Within the last few days, though, he's started telling me he wants to nurse by grabbing the nursing pillow and doing his best to fling it at me. (He's not strong enough to actually throw it, but that doesn't stop him from trying!) I love how he knows what the pillow's for!

Buddies! ...kinda...

~*~*~*~
He has, however, approximated a sign for "bath." Every night, Little Bug has a bath at 1800, and woe be to me if I'm not ready on the dot. I've been trying to teach him the sign for "bath" for awhile now, and he seems to have modified the one I'm using into something of his own creation!
~*~*~*~
Blowing raspberries. Little Bug loves blowing raspberries at me, and he loves it when I blow them right back. Sometimes we wander around the store while shopping, Little Bug strapped to my chest in the Ergo, blowing raspberries back and forth.
~*~*~*~
First steps. He's getting better every day! He can walk all over the place so long as he's got something to hold on to, and can easily make it across the room on his own. I think he'd make it farther if he didn't get so excited about his abilities though; he just wants to go, go, go, as fast as possible, and then he ends up going too fast and falls over. Chubby legs, unsteady steps... heartwarming and amazing.

Dino pajamas!

~*~*~*~
Bananas are one of Little Bug's favorite foods. Bananas, blueberries, and sweet potatoes. And when we share a banana, I usually let him take his own bites. Which is a comical sight to behold, as he won't bite down until he's stuffed as much banana in as will fit. A Tremendous Mouthful of banana, as it were. And then he looks at me and mashes it with his gums and some dribbles down his chin. Sometimes he ends up spitting some out, if it's more than he can swallow on his own, but more often than not he gets it all down and then comes back, grinning, for more.

Ten Things for 2013

Pretty sure I'm not the only one who feels weird typing "2013."  It's hard to believe that it's a new year already; didn't the last one just start?

Anyway, stealing an idea from the wondrous Mrs. H here; last year, she posted a list of twelve specific things she wanted to accomplish in 2012.  I'm not quite that ambitious, so I'm only going with ten things for this year.

Little Bug's first time at the top of Cowles Mountain in San Diego.

So, without further ado:

Ten New Things for 2013

1.  Blog more.  I know, I know, I've been terribly neglectful of my little blog here.  But that's about to change!  Well, maybe.  Clearly, the Internet needs more of my opinions.  So I'm going to try to post something once a week, but you probably shouldn't get your hopes up too high.

2.  Exercise more.  I used to be a total fitness nerd, but for the past eleven months I've been using Little Bug for a convenient excuse not to.  Don't get me wrong here; running around after a baby means I rarely stop moving, and we go for a walk of some sort pretty much every day, but I've decided it's time to get in better shape again.  That picture above of us at the top of San Diego's tallest "mountain?"  I was pathetically winded the entire hike.  Time to change that.  (And I won't lie; I want to look good for my honey when he gets home from deployment!)  So, inspired by a recent post by Mama Birth, here are my rules:  at least 20 minutes per day, six days per week, Sundays are free.  If all I do is walk, it must be at least 30 minutes.  And walks totally don't count if they involve Starbucks.  Ideally, I will be doing more strenuous things than walking (hiking, weight training), but so long as I'm active, then I'm happy.

3.  Create "In Case of Emergency" binder.  Stealing this idea from my friend Noël, shared on one of her many lovely blogs.  It's hard to go against the conventional wisdom of DON'T EVER WRITE DOWN YOUR PASSWORDS EVER OR THEY'LL GET STOLEN AND THEN YOU'LL BE SORRY, but it's harder to argue with her logic of keeping control of your own information.  So this year, hopefully sooner rather than later, I'm going to create an "In Case of Emergency" binder and then buy a bigger fireproof safe to store it in (since my current safe is entirely too small to store anything useful in).  Go read her post if you want more details on this wonderful idea.

4.  Make some of my own "beauty" products.  Any by that, I really mean just things like body wash and face wash.  I recently picked up (figuratively speaking) a copy of the new ebook DIY Organic Beauty Recipes, written by Heather Dessinger of The Mommypotamus.  I've perused it a little, and I'm especially interested in making some new baby wash for Little Bug and dabbling in things like tooth powder.

5.  Start Little Bug's baby scrapbook.  That's right, he's coming up on his first birthday and I haven't started any kind of baby book for him yet.  (This may qualify me as a "bad" mommy by some standards.)  My intention has been to create a scrapbook for him covering at least the first ten years of his life, full of mostly pictures because I'm not sentimental enough to add things like locks of hair.  Time to go on Shutterfly and create some scrapbook pages and get this party started.

Little Bug is always trying new things.

6.  Knit a few pairs of baby socks.  I haven't completed a single knitting project since Little Bug was born.  Honestly, while I miss knitting sometimes, it's kind of at the bottom of my priority list of things to do during nap time.  So I'm thinking that I'll try to get back into the swing of things with small projects.  Thus, my aspiration to knit some baby socks.  Little projects = sense of accomplishment.  Plus, I LOVE HIS FEET!  The only way they could possibly be cuter would be if they were clad in homemade socks.

7.  Make jelly.  Late last summer, a good friend and I dabbled in learning how to can stuff; we made jams and pumpkin butter and had all kinds of fun, and I have a small stockpile of interesting things in my cupboard that I refuse to open until D returns home from deployment.  My primary resource is the book Food in Jars by Marisa McClellan.  Next on my list of recipes to try: jelly.  There are a couple of jelly recipes that start with juice of some sort, which is always accessible.

8.  Renovate my personal file system.  Inspired by Mrs. H's goal to organize her finances, I've decided my paper filing system needs an overhaul.  I frequently pull documents to shred (I keep everything for thirteen months, except tax-related documents which are retained for five years), but so much has changed in the last few years that my folders are kind of in shambles.  I have folders for things I no longer have, extra folders crammed into places where they don't really belong, and a need to create new folders for some things life has recently thrown our way.  I will purge documents and folders, relabel things, and reorganize until I'm happy with my "important papers" box again.

9.  Participate in Vegan MoFo.  Once upon a time, I dreamed of starting a blog purely so that I could participate in the Vegan Month of Food.  Well, I have a blog, so this year I will finally do it.  What is Vegan MoFo?  As the website says, "The idea is to write as much as you can all month, about vegan food."  Goodness knows I'm not actually completely vegan (and I probably never will be), but I do eat vegan a lot.  So this October, it's on!

10.  Participate in NaNoWriMo.  I've tried to get myself to write during National Novel Writing Month twice in the past two years, but never lasted longer than a few days.  If you've never heard of NaNoWriMo before, the idea is to write an entire novel during the thirty days of November, at least 50,000 words in length.  I shall try again this year, and hopefully I shall be victorious!