Yup, that's MY child!

Does every mother start out this journey imagining that her home will continuously be a place of peace, cleanliness, and harmony?

Not to mention things like basically sanitary and halfway normal?

Maybe it was just me.

Lately, I've just been laughing at how far off my expectations were sometimes - maybe its because I have a boy, maybe its because he's a toddler now, maybe its because we're off our rockers, or maybe its because we're totally normal… but we've been enjoying the unexpected, the off-the-beaten-path, the …clearing throat… creative moments … that have been happening around here lately.

And things that I never thought would happen to me … played in the toilet water?  check.  melted down over having to give up the bottle of teriyaki sauce at the grocery store check-out? check.  ran around the house with shorts on his head instead of his bottom thinking he was utterly hilarious? check.  in learning a new word, continually mispronounces it as an awful curse word?  been there, done that.

And these are just the things i don't have pictures of!

Choo-choo!

He loves trains (this must be an innate boy thing) but doesn't have any toy ones.  So in a moment of desperate creativity, he dumped out his toy bin, climbed right in, and insisted on being pulled around the house while he sang out, "CHOO CHOO!"

Why are you lookin' at me?  This one's totally on Momma!

Will and I were going out that night, and I hadn't done my hair and make-up yet … so yes, that is MY child, eating his snack out of a pot with his booster seat pulled up to bathroom door.  Hey, this momma will try just about anything if it means she can enjoy an evening with her husband once in a while!

Truck!  Beep-beep!  Wow!

When we got home from Wal-mart, there were trash men (complete with diggers and dump trucks to get people's yard trash) as well as the mail truck, outside our window.  Benjamin usually "helps" me unpack the sacks - meaning its not unusual to find various goods stashed in random places around our home - so i didn't think anything of it when, out of the corner of my eye, I saw him toting the package of tissue boxes around.  But then I didn't see him for a while…  it seems he needed a better view of all the excitement going on outside!

Yup, that's MY child!  and I love him so much I can hardly stand it … and can't wait to add his little brother to the mix!