A Very 'Rad Weekend

Since 'Rad started crawling, the amount of time I have to update even myself has started to erode.  It's not all bad, though.  It's amazing to see him truck it from one side of the room to another.  Even if I can't see him, I can hear him padding across the room or down the hallway like a baby bear headed toward a berry bush.  It's like hearing thunder before you see its cute, squishy face.  He is truly an unstoppable force, in baby terms.  He is awesome.

Now that he's a baby on the move, we've kept the momentum going by trying to take him out as much as possible.  Last weekend we went out for dinner with some friends where Connor angelically slept in the stroller while we caught up and had some adult time.  The next day we packed a picnic, some bags, and the family up and headed for the capitol where we strolled down a subdued post-graduation State Street, had a picnic on the square, and picked up some Starbucks on the way home (thank you, Michele!).

It was a beautiful weekend, my birthday weekend in fact, and it couldn't have been more perfect.  I know, gag.  But it really was picturesque.

Rad-a-Dude proved himself to be a mature 9-month old this weekend, and at the matter-of-fact suggestion of his nurse we dove into feeding him "adult food" for dinner tonight.  Now, by "adult food" I don't mean boobie cupcakes or penis-shaped after-dinner mints.  The boy had chicken parmesan with spinach and spaghetti and it was just as messy and you would imagine.

He did pretty well with the noodles and chicken 

 And seemed to enjoy himself

This is one is totally blackmail-worthy

In a funny way, with all of us sitting at the kitchen table feeding ourselves, I felt like I was playing house.  Messy, slightly not big enough, coated in dog hair house.  I know that feeling will wear off and I'll start to feel like I'm trying to run the house more than I'm playing it, but tonight it was novel.  My baby is getting bigger, starting to feed himself, and we can all sit down to our own plates of food at the same time.

However, the pressure of getting us all to the table with food to sit down to has already made itself known; last night I prepped 3 dinners so that a night like tonight could happen with minimal hiccups.  No wonder there are so many magazine headlines advertising dinner in 30, 20, 15 minutes.  Because really, when you have kids that need to eat and go to bed and you want to eat with them, that's all the time you have to nourish your family.  Listen to me, talking like I have a "kid" and not a "baby."  My baby will be a kid soon enough, and I'm all about prepping.

Feeling somewhat guilty about being a terrible record-keeper of my first kid's first year (no baby book, relatively few photos in the past couple of months, and missing marking milestones down for weeks on end), I asked Z to take a picture of Connor and I in koala mode:

He was fussy from not having taken a good afternoon nap, but we were in that gray zone where he was going to have dinner and go to bed in less than two hours so we didn't want to put him down for a full-on nap.  He wasn't this smiley the entire time I had him in the sling, but a little game of "I'm gonna getch you!" brought out a little giggle.  I'm proud of this picture because 1) I actually had the presence of mind to ask Z to take it, 2) I was feeling very motherly with 'Rad contently slung against me and 3) I'm feeling pretty confident these days.  Like an honest to goodness, I-don't-know-what-I'm-doing-but-I-love-it-anyway mother.  That's not to say that work life is great and I'm ruling the roost there, but being a confident mother is more important that being a confident Order Services Manager.  If I had to choose.