Life Moves Pretty Fast

Ferris Beuller said it best: “Life moves pretty fast. If you don’t stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.”

Patrick and I watched that movie a week or two ago, and man does it make us laugh! I’m slightly embarrassed to say that I’ve probably watched that move fifteen times and have NEVER seen the end. I always always always fall asleep shortly after they pick Sloane up from school and the car gets stolen. I really wish I could stay awake to know what happens.

The dialogue, though... it’s golden. So many one-liners. And as cliché at that previously mentioned line is by now, it’s cliché because it’s true (even if it is grammatically incorrect). Writing is a way for me to slow down, and these sporadic blog posts are about all the writing I have the time and energy to do lately. Living with a toddler and working full time sure does keep me busy! Add illness, holidays, travel, and just plain ol’ real life and time goes by in a blink.

Honestly, the illnesses alone have kept us busy. Not long after the school year started, Patrick got slammed with a stomach bug. It was BAD. This man never gets sick, and this illness took him down hard. Then Benjamin got it. Let me tell you, babies and stomach bugs... all I remember is catching vomit and trying to wipe it up before he was throwing up in another area. So so gross. Then in October, Ben got some wonky upper respiratory bug and an ear infection. Then right as Thanksgiving break was about to start, I got a nasty upper respiratory bug and it knocked me out hard for a solid five days, and I limped my way through hosting Thanksgiving and the end of the break still somewhat icky. Oy. I spent the entire break sick. Over Christmas, we were counting our lucky stars that we weren’t sick, but my entire family in Texas had the stomach bug so we delayed our holiday visit there for a bit.

Despite the fact that January was seven years long, I was hoping to get through flu season unscathed; alas, both Benjamin and I came down with THE influenza. Oy. I haven’t felt that miserable since I was pregnant. I was so achey and fatigued (with no fever, mind you) that I was convinced that I was suffering from an iron deficiency. Benjamin tested positive about a week after I started feeling like garbage, so we got Patrick on some Tamiflu. After a few days of fever and laying low, Ben was doing much better, then took a turn for the worse. As I should have expected by now, our poor boy has an “angry” ear infection. It’s no wonder he has been so miserable. He is feeling so much better after a day of antibiotics, but the hives that initially sent us to the doctor got worse overnight; now Ben is on Benadryl on top of it all. This poor kid. Thankfully, we have had a set of snow days to buffer this literal weeklong ill-fest, but it hasn’t been nearly as enjoyable as my winter-loving heart desires.  

It was a bit of a rough fall, actually, when I sit down and think about it. In between all of those sick days:

1) We experimented with taking Ben off formula shortly after he turned one. After a literal shit show (poop explosions that included dripping diarrhea out of the car seat), we backed off and waited for a few months.

2) My mom massively threw out her back. Herniated a disc, actually. It was bad. She should have gone to the hospital but somehow managed not to. Thank heaven for physical therapists.

3) Two weeks later, my dad ended up in the emergency room after getting in a horrible accident at 70 mph. The beloved Green Machine went to car heaven, and it’s an absolute freaking miracle that my dad didn’t join the ranks in heaven himself. He has had quite the road to recovery, too. 

4) A couple of weeks after that, I slammed my thumb in the car door on our trip to the cabin during fall break. I was in so much pain that I couldn’t breathe and I almost threw up. It seems so silly, but I swear to you that I would rather give birth. At least there’s adrenaline helping with the pain! My thumbnail still looks absolutely disgusting... in February.

5) A couple of weeks later, I had to take a personal day after an incident at work. I don’t think I’ve spoken publicly about this, actually. Two of my students - BIG, strong young men - with whom I had good relationships - got into a fight just outside of my classroom. I was in the middle of them trying to stop it, and my work bestie pulled me out from between them literally right before they started swinging. I was shaking and crying and I couldn’t stop. For hours, I couldn’t stop. It was terrifying and traumatizing. It was on test day, so I stupidly stayed and administered my test for the rest of the day. Man. That was a rough one.

6) I almost forgot! We had a pipe burst and some minor flooding just after the new year. That was fun, too. The pipe burst while we were out of town and the water only started coming into the house maybe twenty minutes after we got home. Honestly, it could have been so much worse. We are so grateful for God’s timing and the ability to take care of the problem as soon as possible.

Honestly, there have been some really good, amazingly wonderful things going on, too. There has to be for me to not even realize how difficult that semester was until I sat down to write about it!

There was a really big milestone moment over the past few months. In December, Patrick and I celebrated 10 years of marriage! That means we’ve been together for 14 years. We have been a couple for almost as long as my students have been alive. That is a really odd thing to wrap my brain around. Talk about life moving quickly! Didn’t we just go on our honeymoon to Saint Lucia and get stuck in Dallas during the first Oklahoma Snowpocalypse? Alas, long gone are the days when we lived in a cardboard box and it was so cold that we could see our breath inside the house... ha! Those are some solid memories right there.

On another note, I haven’t written a blog post since our precious boy turned one, and he has been keeping us so beautifully busy!

Benjamin started walking right before he turned 14 months old, and this kid hit the ground running once he figured it out! It’s amazing to look back at the videos of just a few months ago and see just how much he has changed. 

First of all, this kid is BIG. He has officially graduated to size 5 diapers (moved him in the off-brand a couple of months ago), solidly wears size 2T in everything, weighs a solid 25 pounds, and is in size 5 shoes. He has been off of formula for a little while (that transition took way longer because I was scarred by the poop-splosions) and would be nearly off all the bottles if he hadn’t gotten so sick (it’s the only way he has wanted to drink anything aside from a gargantuan adult cup).

Ben’s vocabulary is incredible. This boy only stops talking when he is asleep. About a month ago, we counted up the words that we knew he was saying and we could pretty clearly understand - we got to 45 words and stopped. Now, some of those words only we understand, like airplane, but many of them are clear as day. He even has started calling people by name - both family members and his little bitty classmates. Ben understands the concept of shapes and can identify several different shapes - hearts and stars are his favorites. He loves pointing those two out any time he sees them! He has also started learning his colors. He knows blue (and then wants to call everything else blue when it pleases him), but then he surprised us yesterday by seeing the snow and telling us it is white. He also recognizes the number one. He’s a little sponge, I tell you. Ben loves animals and is a champ at identifying the animal and it’s sound. He surprises me every so often with an animal that I didn’t even know he knew. Toddler speech is just the cutest!

He’s in love with airplanes and has been able to identify them by both sight and sound since the first time he saw one. He communicates very well, still loves to read, and is positively OBSESSED with the orchestra. I cannot even make this stuff up. Back in October, I was suckered and bought a book with batteries because it was called “My First Book About the Orchestra” or something like that. He wore the batteries down in an impressive amount of time and I haven’t been able to get them replaced yet. That’s no matter to Ben, though; he just demands that we read the book and watch videos of the orchestra instead. Ha! He even points out instruments in other books. Last night, he saw monkeys playing violins, held up the book to Patrick, and proclaimed, “Och!” Which is his word for orchestra. The goofball. He loves the way “Mommy” sounds, so he repeats “MomMEE” over and over just to get me to respond. I’m not mad about that one bit. 

Honestly, Ben is just so much fun. He loves to laugh and play and read and be outside. He loves cheese like you wouldn’t believe. All the girls just adore him, and he loves loves loves watching big kids. My future self is probably in trouble for how much he loves to be with them. At daycare, he’ll straight up leave the kids in his class to go play with the big kids!

I think the only major event I’ve not covered from the last few months was Christmas. It was a busy, lovely day and wasn’t nearly as eventful as last year (I’ll forever be grateful for every Christmas Eve Eve that I don’t have to take my kid to the emergency room). On Christmas morning, we busted out our camcorder and Ben was in perfect “child on Christmas morning” form. Gah, it was just so cute and I’m infinitely glad that we got it all on film. Did I mention that he was adorable and perfect?

Life with a toddler while teaching full time is definitely keeping me busy, but I try really hard to keep work at work so I can enjoy every minute of this little boy who won’t be little for very long. Before I know it, we’ll arrive at summer break and he’ll be blowing our minds in even more new and exciting ways. I can’t wait to see what our sweet boy surprises us with next!