I Love Me Some Rams!

Congratulations Rams on your 8-8 season! Can't wait until next year!

**Psst, in case you were wondering who to cheer for during the playoffs, the Kansas City Chiefs made it! Gotta give props to all my Missouri peeps! They play the Indianapolis Colts next Saturday at 1:30 p.m. PST on NBC in the first Wild Card game of the weekend. Go Chiefs!! (Sorry Kris, can't cheer for Indy in this one. But I guess I will relent and cheer for your Sea-chickens against Dallas during the other Wild Card game on Saturday. Go Hawks!)

Disregard...

Yeah, about my previous post? Nevermind. Tonight the Giants beat the Redskins so my Rams aren't going to the playoffs. We must still cheer for a Rams win tomorrow, though, because if they pull it off, they will finish with a .500 record (8-8)! Yahoo!

Go Rams!

O.K., People, This is What Has to Happen...

My beloved St. Louis Rams, as they stand right now with their 7-8 record, could actually make the playoffs after the League's final weekend of regular games this weekend. Granted, A LOT of things have to go in their favor, but it could happen! It could!! Here is what needs to happen, you know, in addition to the planets aligning and the gods smiling down on them:

• Washington Redskins must beat New York Giants (televised tonight on NFL Network at 5:00 p.m. PST).
• New Orleans Saints must beat Carolina Panthers (tomorrow at 10:00 a.m. PST).
• Philadelphia Eagles must beat Atlanta Falcons (tomorrow at 1:15 p.m. PST).

and, oh yeah, the most important part:

• St. Louis Rams must beat Minnesota Vikings (tomorrow at 10:00 a.m. PST).

Cross your fingers! Miracles do happen!

"This Machine Runs On Props"

One of my most favorite quotes from my beloved Dr. Cox on Scrubs also applies to my son. Recently, the only way we have been able to get Aaron to eat an amount of food suitable to us (he gets distracted very easily and often forgets what he's supposed to be doing while he's in his high chair) is to ask him to eat another piece then give him tremendous claps and praise afterwards. Whatever works, I guess! Check it out.

Well, We've Done It...

Today we enrolled Aaron in the Child Development Center (CDC) here on base. This has been a major source of anxiety for me since we have arrived here because I was so torn as to whether or not I should do it. I've had a mental list of Pro's and Con's going for the last month or so:

Pro's

• I need a designated amount of time every week to do things that are impossible or becoming impossible to do with a toddler i.e. working out, going to the grocery store, doctors' appointments, etc. If the rumors are true about TPS, my husband is essentially going to be unavailable during the work week to help me with this stuff.
• Aaron needs to become comfortable being taken care of by other people and being around kids his own age.
• I believe that the CDC can supplement and certainly build upon the concepts we are trying to teach him at home.

Con's

• I FEEL GUILTY!!! O.K., I don't work so why am I paying for child care? Will Aaron think I don't love him anymore because I'm taking him somewhere so someone else can take care of him?

For me, what it all comes down to is allowing him experiences that I feel I can't give him or enough of what he deserves. These include interaction with other kids his own age, benefits of caregivers trained in early education, a defined structured setting, etc.

Most importantly, though, it helps out in the fact that I cannot be the sole "on" person in Aaron's life anymore. By that I mean the person who plays with him, reads to him, sets up activities for him, etc.; basically, the person who tries to zap his seemingly boundless energy with playtime. I just don't have the energy to be that for him 24-7, especially now that he's entered into toddlerhood, and that's just not fair to him. My plan is to take him to the CDC three days a week for two and a half hours each day in the morning. I truly believe the time that remains for me will definitely be more fulfilling for both me and him as opposed to having him all day everyday and being exhausted just going through the motions. I look at it as pre-preschool. That is my hope anyway.

Thanks for allowing me to put my mental dilemma into words. Any thoughts or suggestions? Leave me a comment.

What Is It With Boys...

...and using your pants as a hand rest?

Aaron and His Dinosaur Posse

Santa Claus Was Here!

We had a great Christmas today! Santa Claus came to visit last night and he left Aaron a Cars pop-up play tent, a Fisher Price Little People Farm and a little table set with two chairs. So far Aaron has enjoyed everything, I think, except we keep having incidents with the little chairs. He's not tall enough to back up and sit down on the chair so he has to actually climb up on it and sit down. So far this has meant about four falls and a skinned chin because he's having problems with the sitting down part once he gets up on the chair. I look at it as a learning experience, though, because he needs to learn how to properly sit in a chair and that they're not mini jungle gyms! It's also a learning experience for me as I grow less and less fond of hardwood floors everyday we're in this house. I miss my carpet!!! Anyway, here are some pictures from Christmas morning.

Of course, the most spoiled puppy on Earth also got a visit from Santa Claus!



For Christmas dinner, Daddy fried a turkey for the very first time in his life (and he didn't burn the house down, thank you very much!) and I made yummy potato casserole and broccoli casserole (staples in my house growing up. Stop gagging, Dad!). It all turned out really well!

P.S. Check out this post from exactly a year ago today:

Baby's First Christmas

I came across that Santa hat just a couple days ago! We couldn't get it on his big 'ole head! He's getting so big!

P.P.S. A few words for everyone at Fisher Price, Playskool, Mattel, etc. Why do we need a freakin' jackhammer in order to break into the boxes which contain your toys?!? Holy crap, it took Santa 45 minutes to set out Aaron's Little People Farm last night! Honestly. I get the whole make-it-look-awesome-in-the-box thing so that kids will see it in the stores and make their parents buy it for them, but still! Why must it be such a pain?!?

My Sweeties on Christmas Eve

They both had on nice shirts over their white T-shirts, but those quickly came off as soon as we came home from Christmas Eve Mass. Aren't they pretty, though?

Merry Christmas Eve!!

Baby's First Hair Cut

Last Thursday, I left the boy with his daddy for a few hours so that I could "go into town" to do a little Christmas shopping (It takes about 45 minutes to get down to where the decent shopping is at. Toto, we're not in Washington anymore. Sigh...). When I got back, Bill had trimmed Aaron's hair and he looked like the son of a Marine. Poor little guy didn't have much hair to cut in the first place; it just really needed to be shaped more than anything. Here are some pictures of his new 'do.

I tried to find a "before" picture of his scraggly hair but I couldn't find one; however, those of you that have seen Aaron in the past few months know what I mean by "scraggly." Miscellaneous hairs sticking out everywhere and that one gigantic curl in the back that started to look dangerously close to a fool's tail. None of that in this hiz-ouse!

By the way, check out this shot of my handsome boy. With that smirk, is he not the next George Clooney? And you know this!!!

So Wrong!

Here is a picture of the 7-day weather forecast that I took during tonight's news broadcast.

It's supposed to be partly cloudy with a high of 72 degrees on Christmas Day!! Isn't that like sacrilegious or something? Crazy So Cal!!!!!

Remembering...

Four years without you. We love you, Mom.

Go Ahead...Pat Yourself on the Back, Fellow Internet Addicts

Person of the Year: You by Lev Grossman

From the December 25, 2006 issue of TIME Magazine

Praise God for the Little Things

I finally got my Flickr badge to work like I wanted it to! Yahoo! It is to your right in the "Bonus Pictures" box. Just click on "what is this?" then "Aaron's Mom" and it will take you to my photos. I will be uploading more photos to it in the coming months. Also, look for the Classic Cox Quote of the Day to be updated on a regular basis too, now that I've got my beloved TiVo back up and working again. Six episodes of Scrubs a day, baby!

He He He...It's Still Giving Me the Giggles

This is from last Thursday's kickin' one hour Christmas episode of The Office. I counted six ho's...too funny.

Our New Home!

Well, new to us, anyway. We have finally moved into our new home here in California and have actually been able to sleep in our own beds for two nights in a row! So sweet! Here are some pictures of our house.

This is the front of our house.


The kitchen.

The living room. We still have a lot of work to do in here but we've got the most important thing set up - the T.V. complete with Directv and TiVo, baby! Heck, yeah!

Our gigantic backyard. There's hardly any grass in it but, you know, whatever! The kids are going to get lost forever back here!


The view from our back door. You can't tell right now but the view is really pretty in the morning with the sun coming up.


I'm not sure if it's just my profound inexperience concerning living in the desert, since we've been here a grand total of two weeks, but I actually really kind of like our house. We have been inundated with horror stories from previous TPS classes about old, rickety houses that have been besieged with spiders, mice, scorpions and other lovely wildlife, but, so far, we have not come across any of these things. We have taken the necessary precautions, such as spraying the crap out of both the inside and outside of the house for bugs and cleaning everything in sight before we use it. I think we have gotten pretty lucky with the house we were able to snag. It seems to be extremely clean compared to the others we looked at and it backs up against a road in the middle of base instead of the desert, which should hopefully keep the wildlife situation under control. We are about five houses down from the playground on our street, so we should be able to frequent that quite a bit.

So far this living on base thing hasn't been too shabby!

My Dear, Sweet, Beloved Internet...

...oh, how I have missed you. We have made it to California in one piece! The drive down here from Washington actually wasn't as bad as I had imagined, thanks to my best friends, the Little Einsteins. We bought Aaron a portable DVD player for Christmas and I'm pretty sure it's the best money we have ever spent. We drove for a total of three days with only an occasional whimper, just to let us know he was feeling a little out of his element, and some general crankiness. He has been fairly temperamental since we've been in CA but I think it's getting better now that we're getting him back on his normal schedule. Anyhoo, here are some pictures of our journey down here.

Getting ready to shove off from Kris' house in Washington. Can you see Aaron peaking out from the window? Maybe he was afraid we weren't planning on taking him with us?

The kids making themselves comfortable in the hotel in Medford, OR - the place we stopped the first night.

The second day of driving, including views of Mt. Shasta in northern California and a sleepy, cranky boy.





We reached our destination in southern California after a third day of driving. Check out the TLFs on base! They are super-nice and a lot better than I was expecting (No more TLF nightmare stories from Illinois, Lis!). By the way, it was bathtime, in case you're wondering about the nakedness.

We are staying in the TLFs until our things are delivered to our house next Friday (Growl...almost two weeks without my own stuff). We are moving into a house on base for the first year (mandatory for TPS students), then will move off base afterwards. The housing on base here is, shall we say, less than desirable (I'm talking like 65-years-old with lead paint, asbestos and wildlife concerns) but we are trying to make the best of the situation. We plan on painting the walls (the same color as in our house in WA. So lame, but comfortable in the familiarity) and I think we can definitely make the house livable once all of our stuff is in it and we make it our own. Stay tuned. Those pictures will be coming in the next few weeks!

So lame, I know...

...but this is the last day of NaBloPoMo and I want to make sure I get somewhat of a post in before another crazy day of packing and wondering when I'm going to get to log in to my beloved Internet again. I'm actually rather proud of myself that I stuck with this all month. I don't usually follow through with anything unless it involves the well-being of another living thing. Anyway, I'm sure I'll have more interesting posts as we travel down to California.

Do As My Daddy Does

"What was that, Mommy, about not climbing on the furniture?"

Tired...So Very Tired

Well, we are back home in Washington after a very long day of traveling back west from Missouri. Aaron did not do so well coming back. It started to snow during our layover in Denver, so we had to spend an extra hour on the airplane after boarding so that we could be de-iced. This meant three and a half hours on the plane instead of two and a half. Not fun. We finally made it to Sea-Tac and found that there was snow here as well. What the heck? Plus, Aaron has this green goo coming out of his eyeballs, so that's no fun either. Anyway, gotta go to bed because the packers are coming tomorrow at 8:00 a.m. Is this move over yet? Oh, wait, it hasn't even begun.

I ♥ Celebrities

Pamela Anderson, Kid Rock to Divorce

I think he just missed me too much.

How 'Bout Those Rams, Baby!

O.K., so what if they have lost their last five games in a row. THEY WON TODAY! And you want to know why? 'Cause I was there to cheer them on! OH YEAH! They beat the San Francisco 49ers by a score of 20-17. It was such a good game and it was so much fun going with my dad and Bill. My sister kept the boy for the day (Thanks, Aunt B!) and I guess I had forgotten what it was like to go do things on our own. I kept having mini panic attacks thinking I had left him somewhere because he wasn't with us! So lame, I know. Here are a few pics that I took today.

Oh My Goodness!

So many pictures, such a cranky, cranky Blogger. Today was the day of my sister Bethanie's wedding to Paul and I've got so many great pictures that my head's about to pop off from the excitement. My Aaron did so well for being a seventeen-month-old forced into a monkey suit and pushed in front of an audience. He mostly went around and entertained everyone with his curiosity about everything. At the beginning of the ceremony, though, he allowed my niece Emilie to drag him down the aisle and then sat quietly on his Daddy's lap during the rest. I was so impressed! Here are some of the pictures from our day.

Bethanie and Emilie getting their hair done.



Aaron and his daddy before the ceremony.


Aaron, up close and personal.


Aaron being tortured with squeezies from me.


Emilie and Papa.


Emilie and her momma.


My nephew Stiehl and his daddy waiting for the ceremony to start.


We have re-learned "Touchdown" in the past few days.


Aaron stuffing about five french fries into his mouth. He's turning into such a boy!


Preparing for his debut. Let's get this show on the road already!


Self-portrait.


First picture (at least on my camera) as husband and wife.


Papa and Aaron.


The Remembrance Candle lit for my mom.


The head table at the reception (Emilie looks so pleased).

Congratulations Paul and Bethanie! We love you!