Time flies when

you're having fun and even faster when you are really busy. So August has come and has almost gone without a post. This month has been really busy but also filled with a lot of fun.

August started out when Miss A turned one month older on the same day I turned one year older. The following day marked E as being officially 2 and a half. We attempted the celebrating the first events while E demonstrated how adventurous it can be going out to dinner with someone turning the age he was. I should give him more credit... We did actually have a nice dinner out at a real restaurant (that is after we finally got over the utter meltdown that occurred in the parking lot of the first restaurant we tried to go to).

Look at me! I'm 2 months old

What up! I'm 2 and a half. What do you have to say about that?

The next big event was when Br and I celebrated our 5th year of marriage. Our anniversary fell over our trip to Logan, UT. We went there to go to my friend Pfister's wedding. It was quite a whirlwind trip but we did have a little time to make her wedding cake, visit a few friends, hang out with my auntieM and enjoy some beautiful weather.

Above: Miss A at the reception

Below: E at the reception

Notice the difference

Above: a relative realistic family photo featuring E with a stick

Below: a more realistic family photo

The month was also filled with lots of visitor:

Playgroup at our house

visit with good friends from college

a visit from Grandma Tori

a fun night out with our good friend Kelly before staying up all night talking and watching Project Runway.

And somewhere between traveling, visits, trying to catch up on work, and all of us getting a cold we still managed to find some time for family.

Last weekend we stood in line for 3 hours to go to the Disney Christmas Carol train tour. It was a combination of E's favorite things trains, snow, Christmas, Disney and movies. It also taught him something about something I wish he loved, patience.

This weekend we went to a community back to school party. E swam, rode ponies, learned rope tricks with the Oklahoma Kid, ate two bags of cotton candy for dinner and got his groove on. Good times.

Above is an attempt to take a cute family picture

the only good pictures looked like this....

Just a random fact...The dude in the red shirt and white hat below used to be Ronald McDonald (we think).

What the boys did

So while A and I were off in CO. My boys stayed here in OK and were joined by my fantastic brother-in-law Chris, his son, and nephew (his nephew, not mine). Yes he was just here. I couldn't believe it when he volunteered to drive back out here to watch E while Br was at work especially since I made him work the whole time he was here at the beginning of the month. What a stud!

I was a little bummed because I'd bought tickets to the Coldplay concert in Dallas before I knew it would be during my work trip. I tried to make up for it by watching this video (click on the word "video) a couple times -- it helped a little.

Br and Chris drove down and back on Tuesday to go to the concert while my mom watched the boys. Thanks mom. Then Chris was crazy enough to head back down (and back up in the same day) to Dallas Wed alone to take the boys on a tour of the new Cowboys stadium and then met up with my mom to go to the Rangers, Red Sox game. The next day he headed back to ABQ. That was a lot of driving all so I didn't have to travel with a two and a half year-old and a 6-wk-old all by myself. What a guy! Thanks Chris and Br for making it work so that I could go on my trip.

Planes, trains, and automobiles (and a bus)

I came off maternity leave a few weeks ago just in time for a work trip/retreat. Little Miss A and I took off for some work and fun in the southern CO mountains. We decided to have Miss A's first airplane ride early in life. She even got to ride on a couple of the tiny commuter planes which is something some people never get to do. When we arrived in Durango I went to get my rental car and despite the fact that I had a reservation they had no cars.

Remember this Seinfeld episode?
"Agent: I'm sorry, we have no mid-size available at the moment.
Jerry: I don't understand, I made a reservation, do you have my reservation?
Agent: Yes, we do, unfortunately we ran out of cars.
Jerry: But the reservation keeps the car here. That's why you have the reservation.
Agent: I know why we have reservations.
Jerry: I don't think you do. If you did, I'd have a car. See, you know how to take the reservation, you just don't know how to *hold* the reservation and that's really the most important part of the reservation, the holding. Anybody can just take them."

That was me. Apparently they were just into the taking of the reservation not into the holding part. Luckily one of the twenty other people on my flight was a coworker so I caught a ride with him and his wife to Pagosa Springs to meet up with the rest of our group.

We spent most of the time trying to wrap up the loose ends of our big project, but we did spend one of the days in activities completely unrelated to business. I found out about a package deal where you could go rafting in the morning and then ride the Durango Silverton railroad in the afternoon. Unfortunately they don't make life jackets in A's size so while the rest of the group was on the river, the two of us rode a bus to Silverton. The bus ride was advertised as a "tour" which meant the driver spent the whole time filling my head with useless facts about trains, trees, and Southern CO history. Did you know we have the Roman horses rear ends to thank for the separation distance between standard train rails?

I caught up with my group just in time for lunch, a little window shopping and the long but beautiful and relaxing ride back to Durango on the steam powered train. Although the trip would have been more relaxing if I wasn't so sleep deprived, I was still glad to be able to have a little girls get away with my daughter so early in her life. I think I'm going to raise a world traveler.

A and Mommy on the streets of Silverton

The whole crazy group

Can you believe I'm more than a month old?

Family Fun

Last week we were graced with the presence of my sister Jess, her husband Chris, our nephew Parker and their niece (not my niece). Jess and I had fun shopping for home decor. The kids had fun hanging out and "swimming" in our blow up pool. Jess kept us fed and my house clean. I accidentally kept the husbands hard at work the whole time. I didn't realize that my request for them to build a swing set would take much longer than the 6 hr build time the brochure promised. After a few hot mornings, afternoons and evenings, Chris got a bunch of bug bites and I ... I mean E got a swing set. Are Br and Chris studs or what? Thanks guys.

Our guests left early on the fourth so the holiday ended up being just a Melton family celebration. My original hopes and dreams for the 4th was to have a big BBQ but since I wore my husband (and grill cook) out with my home improvement requests I happily settled for just a relaxing/recuperation day. We ended up having a little family picnic in our backyard and played on the new swing set. To be a little festive, right before bed we all hopped in the car and drove around trying to find some fireworks. All of the little neighborhoods north of ours were having their own displays so we were able to park in a bank parking lot and watch like 6 fireworks shows at the same time. Good times.

Just not my day or is it?

So I hope I didn't give anyone the idea by leaving my last post up for so long that I have crazy supermom powers. It actually turns out that "day 2" was the best day by far the three of us have had together. Since then we've had good days, okay days, and those days that I would just say we "survived". I knew it was inevitable but had high hopes it wouldn't... Today I finally crashed and burned.

I woke up this morning still very sleep deprived but determined to make it to play group for some much needed adult interaction and a change of scenery. E was happy when I got him out of bed but then the drama began. He had a huge meltdown when I tried to give him his morning drink. I guess I put the wrong drink in the wrong cup or something like that... I'm still not so sure what I did wrong... but there were many many minutes of very loud and dramatic crying. Of course it took longer than I wanted to get us all ready too leave the house and so I got really... hmmm lets just call it frazzled. Minutes after getting E changed into real clothes he spilled the aforementioned drink (which happened to be red juice) all over his clothes. Before I let this story get too long I'll just hit the highlight-- We got to play group 2 hrs late and A had her first blowout diaper shortly after we walked in the door and of course I didn't have a spare set of clothes, E sat on a dry couch with wet clothes at playgroup then got in a huge fight/yelling match with the hostess's son (thanks for helping us make new friends E), and an entire cup of apple juice got spilled all over the car on the way home. By this time it was only lunch time and I was ready for the day to be over.

I pulled our act together in time to get to A's dr's appointment (we were only 5 minutes late). Last week at her 2 wk appointment she hadn't gained enough weight so we had to follow up this week. I was nervous going in because I feared that I would have a very dramatic and embarrassing meltdown if it turned out I was still doing an insufficient job at feeding my little girl. Luckily for everyone involved she put on enough weight this week! Yipee! In the small exam room we were only in for just a few minutes, E took the opportunity to get into trouble while the doctor was talking to me. Somehow he got a hold of a bottle of liquid and helped himself. The doctor very nicely pointed out that he was pretty sure what E was getting all over was soap and not hand sanitizer so he'd probably need to wash it off. Before I put A down to deal with the mess the doctor had already picked E up and was washing his hand off for me. Instead of being annoyed about it (like I would have been) the doctor was really playful about it rubbing E's hands together so that they were splashing the water everywhere. What's a little water everywhere if it makes a bored little boy laugh? I realize now that my rocky morning wasn't all that bad. I was just so "frazzled" because I didn't deal with all the tiny little accidents this morning with a good attitude.

It's now almost nap time. I resolve that all of us are going to wake up from our naps a little less sleep deprived and with the goal to deal with the typical adventures of being a mom with a 2-year-old more like the fun loving pediatrician and less like the psychotic hormonal tired mommy.

Day 2

Today was the second day it was just the three of us. I have to say it went quite well.

• E, and therefore I, slept in til 10:45
• I got showered and dressed before the end of the lunch hour
• I finally started and finished a piece of wall art that was originally supposed to go in E's room in the old house but never made it past buying the supplies (pictures of it to come)
• E took a nap and I got to rest (unfortunately not actually sleep)
• Did a load of laundry
• Emptied then loaded the dishwasher
• We had a homemade meal ready for dinner by the time Br came home (I warmed it but all the credit really goes to Kelly for preparing it and putting it in my freezer)
• The house was relatively picked up by that point.
• I baked some cookies (not from scratch and burned half of them) while Brad mowed the lawn.
• We had a tender moment when E held A for the first time and actually posed for a picture (seen above)
• E and A are both asleep
• Wrote a blog post

It feels good to do something besides sit around. Overall I think it was a success.

They make me smile...

... every time I walk past them in my kitchen. Thanks mom.

(btw, the cute little bottles say "bundle", "of" and "joy"

It starts already

Last week all four of us were in the car when we decided to swing by Sonic on our way home. E immediately started yelling that he wanted a "wa-tar" (his word for any drink). Right as we were about to pull in I noticed a familiar smell in the car and asked E if he had poopy pants. He kept screaming "No. Wa-tar!" and I kept saying "I know you want a drink but do you have poopy pants". After going back and forth this way a few times his reply to whether or not he'd pooped his pants was finally "No. Baby." Poor little A. Her brother is already passing blame on her.

We're so glad that Daddy stayed home

One of the best things about this past week (besides finally being able to walk from one end of my house to the other without shooting pains) was being spoiled by having Br at home to hang out with us. E loved waking up every morning to daddy. I loved that too so that I could sleep in after being up all night long--A. still hasn't flipped her days and nights. Halfway through the week Br came up with the brilliant idea to help my case of cabin fever by getting us all to go see Up! E sat in his chair the whole time and A slept. It was perfect. Br was also a great sport about the fact that we didn't really do anything for his birthday. At least we gave him an excuse not to go to work that day since it was his last day of unofficial paternity leave. We sure did miss him on Friday morning when he went back to work, although the three of us did survive alone. Thanks Br for taking such good care of us. We sure enjoy your company.

Birthday

I guess it all started happening a week ago (we’ll technically it all started 39 and a half weeks ago but let’s fast forward a little). A week ago I woke up and decided that my water had broken. No there was no gush, no slow leak, no “water” actually involved in my theory. There was just this increased and constant feeling that I had to pee. I know that isn’t uncommon for a pregnant woman and really isn’t an indication that someone’s water has broken. The thing was two and a quarter years ago when I was doing all of this for the first time I woke up one morning with that same sensation and passed it off as my baby deciding his new favorite place to lay was directly on my bladder. I passed off the ever so slight “leaking” as being due to that same thing. In fact I passed it off as my bladder giving out on me pretty much all day long. It wasn’t until that night that I finally went to the hospital just to “make sure” and was introduced to the concept of having your water break and not having the “water” go anywhere. In any event I woke up Tues with that same full feeling. Because we still had extended family in town helping around the house, and because I was still not finished with everything I wanted to get done before going on maternity leave, and just because I decided that the feeling was just due to being paranoid because I ignored my rupture for so long last time and because I felt really really stupid calling the Dr. and trying to explain that I thought my water had broken even though there was no water, no contractions, nothing more than just because I thought it had, I did nothing. Fast forward to Wed late morning (after Br had already gone to work, come home from work to take his family to the airport and gone back to work again) when I still couldn’t shake the feeling and couldn’t focus on work because I was distracted I finally called the Dr. and asked if I could just come in and get tested just for peace of mind. They humored me and let me come in just before everyone left for lunch.

Turned out that “I know my body” (that’s one of my favorite quotes from Olivia on the Cosby Show). So at that point Br had to leave work one more time. I came home and put the sheets from the previous visitors in the wash so they’d be clean for Jojo when she finally got into town (don’t tell on me, when the nurse practitioner told me I could leave and come back she specifically used the example of “don’t catch up on the laundry" to encourage me to come back quickly). We found a place for E to hang out for the afternoon (thanks Julia) and finally made it back to the hospital. Funny side note, it was my Dr's birthday so she wasn't working that day. So much for my stressed out search to find an OB in OK. For one reason or another it took almost four hours to reconfirm my water broke (long story) but by 5:34 we had our little girl. 7 lbs 12 oz. Tons of dark black hair. 5 days later and we finally had a name for her – A (sorry, I don’t want to post her full name). We are really excited about having some extra spice added to the Melton Pot.

Here she is (more pics to be added in the slide show)

It's a beautiful day in the neighborhood...

... A beautiful day for a neighbor.

Beware, I am currently BUI, blogging under the influence (of pain killers). The past few weeks have been nonstop. I've had lots of things I've thought about blogging about but never a spare moment to actually type.

First of all let me just say I live in an unreal neighborhood. I mean we had at least four different neighbors bring over goodies and introduce themselves. One neighbor even made a huge coffee cake but was then concerned we were allergic to nuts and made about 2 dozen sugar cookies to go with it. There was even a little welcome wagon woman (I honestly didn't think those really existed). I think this means I'm going to have to be a good neighbor now.

Thanks to lots of family (we consider the Kelly's family) we've been pulling this house together. Over Memorial Day weekend my mom came up and helped me scrape wallpaper off the walls of the hall bathroom and Br spent an entire day unpacking the garage. What a mess. I also finished my first nesting project -- appropriately it was a bird mobile for the baby's room (pics to follow once I get it hung up).

Wallpaper AHHHHHH!

That week I fit in more than double my hours for work and got a lot more help around the house when Kelly and her fam came up to visit. She cleaned my house, made me freezer meals that will last us months, played with my poor neglected son, helped me finish getting wallpaper off my bathroom (I say mine because the master bedroom has two bathrooms in it one for me and one for Br), taped trim to prepare rooms for painting, and gave me much needed girl talk and adult female contact. She even forgave me for my freak out when I finally hit my stress breaking point the last night she was staying with us. I know, I don't deserve to have such a great friend, but I'm sure grateful I do. Thanks to all Kelly's hard work (since it definitely had nothing to do with me) my house was put together enough to welcome a few of Br's uncles and aunt who flew up from Houston to help us paint. Thanks to all of them for their help. The house looks great.

A previously wallpapered bathroom-- now just a clean blue

The second day I was in the hospital Br's mom came to help watch E. By the time I came home my house was perfectly clean again.

Thank you Thank you Thank you to all my neighbors (friends, family, loved ones) old and new for helping me pull things together.

The calm before the storm

Yes this is old news, but I've started and stopped this post about a billion times over the past two months and I've decided it deserves to be finished.

So before all this finding a house, selling a house, moving, crashing a car, getting ready to have a baby stress, our family had the nicest get a way to our favorite place-- Disney World (Yes, we've been there A LOT in the last year and a half. We're not in denial-- we know we have a problem.) This trip's focus was E. After E's birthday party in Feb. I asked Br if he had fun and he said, "yeah but if you would have asked me to plan his birthday party we would have just gone to Disney World." So, even though it was a couple weeks late we still used his birthday as our excuse to celebrate. Here are some highlights and as usual, if for some reason you want to see more pics you can check out the slide show to the right.

Despite most kids his age being weirded out by meeting their full sized friends (after only knowing them as 2 inch tall cartoons characters), E loved meeting so many of his friends.

We knew E liked the more adventurous rides made for all ages, Malstrom, Pirates of the Caribbean, and the tea cups, we decided to let him try out his first roller coaster since he was finally tall enough. He had the funniest look on his face the whole time that said "I'm not scared but I don't know how I feel about going this fast." He at one point even let out a weak "Weeee?" (yes it was in the form of a question). We only rode it once.

Overall this kid was a good sport about waking up early, taking really short naps, going to bed late and standing in line but he did have a few moments where he demonstrated he's 2. This was my favorite. It was as we were waiting for out table to be called for our lunch with Pooh and friends. Yes he is on the ground, and no he wouldn't get up, and yes I was too tired to fight with him so I left him there right in the middle of the crowd.

We ate a lot while we were there. We took JoJo to one of our favorites, the SciFi drive in which is just that, and in door drive in where you eat in little cars and watch old drive in clips. E's staple while we were there was popcorn. I'm pretty sure he ate an entire box every day.

One of the biggest highlight on this particular trip was meeting up with my Aunt and cousin who live in FL. I'm so glad we connected up. We went out to the beach where we saw an actual rocket out on the launch pad, E played in the sand and chased seagulls, and down a little ways we say actual manatees in their habitat.

Another nice addition was that JoJo joined us for a few days. It was nice to have another set of adult arms (even if E demanded I be the one that held him the whole time). She was also kind enough to watch E a few nights in a row so Br and I could go on some Disney dates. One night we ate at Chefs de France at a table that overlooked the lagoon at Epcot during the fireworks show (that's as close to romantic as we get). The next night we just had a relaxed night of window shopping at Downtown Disney after eating at my favorite Sandwich place Earl of Sandwich (I have to go all the way to Orlando to get an All American now that we don't live in Houston anymore.)

A quick note about this picture. This was the beginning of E's current obsession with pirates. I'm not sure where he became familiar with pirates since the only pirate movie he's watched is Peter Pan (which ranks high on his list of favorites right now). He thought the Vikings at the Norway pavilion were pirates. I'm pretty sure if you asked him which ride was the pirate ride he'd say that one even though he did ride Pirates of the Caribbean. To be honest he thinks that any big boat or man with a beard is a pirate. When ever he sees either he repeats very loudly "Arrrr pirate, arrrrr, arrrr, arrrr, pirate". That gets a little a little embarrassing when its the latter that he identifies.

In any event I'm glad we took this nice break from reality. I'm pretty sure if we hadn't I would have kept my sanity this long. Thanks Br for the good idea.

Almost settled

After a whole lot of drama over appraisals, and a few meltdowns over the many rescheduling of the closing, we finally closed on a house in OK on the 1st. Unfortunately the people living in the house didn't want to really move their stuff, or pack for that matter, until they knew for sure we would close, they weren't able to get out of the house until late last Sunday. Being overly hormonal and desperately wanting to get settled in my new place (I'm pretty sure I'm on the verge of nesting if I'm not already) I thought not having that weekend to unpack was going to kill me. I was also a little (okay, a lot) peeved that we got rid of our tickets for the DMB concert in Dallas because we thought we'd be moving in and instead spent my Saturday just trying to find ways to keep my mind off the fact that I was homeowner with no home.

Turns out I survived long enough for the movers to bring our stuff on Monday. Although we are still partially buried in boxes we've managed to unpack the kitchen, bathrooms, playroom, and living room over the past few days. I even squeezed in waiting around for the cable guy, working, signing E up for Gymboree (I miss the $11 classes at the Rec center and weekly playgroup at the park), going to music time at the library, and taking a little break to do something creative by making some cupcakes for Br's work bake sale to raise money for the food bank. This weekend I also made chocolate dipped rice crispy treats for our church Cinco de Mayo party (on Nueve de Mayo). It's sure nice to have all my kitchen stuff unpacked.

So in short, despite a lot of crying while uttering words like "I never wanted to move here", "I'm never going to find a house I like", "All this stress would maybe be worth it if I loved the house, but I don't", now that the dust is settling (not completely settled... but settling), I'm glad we are here to have some new experiences and I do like my house (I think I might love it once I'm finally unpacked and I finish the projects I want to do to make it "mine"). I have to admit that I'm pretty excited about it's great potential as a party house. It's definitely build for entertaining. I just need to find some friends here. I'll take some pictures soon as soon as I'm either over the emotional trauma of living in a house that isn't together or I actually get the house together.