We Meet Again

We have just been so busy around here...but that's not always true because I have tons of time to blog, but my life with a toddler has just sorta been chaotic. If we stay at home all day, and I have goals to do the laundry and dishes, Miles' bedroom, and every other room gets trashed. So I have to prepare myself for that. If I make dinner, same sorta trade off. You trade off getting one thing done, only to have another thing to do when you are done with the other thing. I always say, "Oh my goodness thank you for helping me!" (As he picks up my pile of 40 folded shirts and hands it to me, unfolding every last one). Then under my breath I say, "not". Ha, he loves to help, he loves to bring you something and thinks he is helping. He brings me my laptop over the tile regularly, barely clinging to it, and I catch it right before it slips right out of his hands to its demise.

Brad is getting closer and closer to test day. That means he is getting more more more valuable. You know like those celebs that you never see come out of their house and the one picture the paparazzi has of them is all blurry and like 5 miles away. That's how I am starting to feel about Brad. Our moments together are fleeting and blurry. But we cherish them. The other night I paid a babysitter (which is like unheard of-come on trade groups for date night??? Be frugal Brittany come on). But seriously if my co-op falls through, I need that date. I look forward to getting out and doing fun things with my husband where one of us isn't wrangling our child. When we go out to eat, one of us is mostly engaged with Miles for the duration of the time. So its not really a date, its more of a decision to put ourselves in a stressful, draining situation for an hour, just for some hot pizza, spur of the moment. A date is pure and uninterrupted bliss of eating without wiping, cleaning, apologizing to the people around you, feeding, cleaning up spilled drink, asking for another for k, another cup, another spoon, another straw, more napkins. And eventually walking out with food all over you, sweating, probably have some claw marks on your face as you try to keep your child's limbs from hitting nearly every person at each table you walk by. I feel like I am also describing plane rides. Why is it that kids reach out and touch people at random? Is that just innate? Were we born like that? And some sicko taught us it was unacceptable and really its normal, and kids have it all right?

Well regardless, we hired a babysitter. It was pure joy. I get so happy on those dates. We went swimming at the Tech pool for a work out, then sat in the hot tub together. We pretended we were dating although any idiot could tell we were married if they really watched us, and people watched, well Brad tried to talk to me, and I never listen while I am enthralled in people watching.

Then, we got ready in the family bathroom-because we can. I realized as I was removing my swimsuit-I forgot my undies. My undergarments. My g-ments. As Brad and I call them. Shiiiiiiiii. If I go home thats a 20 minute detour in my already time crunched night. And we were ready to pass out from eating lunch at noon and it was almost 8 PM and we just swam for a workout. And we knew if we went somewhere nice we would have to wait....so I agreed to just go commando. Throughout the rest of the night, Brad would just say out loud-"commando" Pshh! I didn't mean to. He also would just randomly start laughing and say, "This is really funny, how do you forget everything?" He thinks its humorous how I can't remember movies, or anything really. I'm just forgetful and it has only gotten so much worse since I had Miles. So my underwear took the brunt on this one-or I guess I did, for having no undies.

Miles is a play mania, he loves to play-but it only lasts a few minutes at most, so I can go through like 15 activities in 20 minutes. Then I still have 2 hours left.

Brad is really good at playing-as you can see. He will play this game for hours. Get on back, fall off get back on.

We love IBC. I am sure I have like 30 different pictures of this.

Miles has this thing, that if you are on the computer or ipad, he climbs up and sits right on your lap, and he will climb up all over your face, and use any means to get there. Then he just plops down like you wanted him there, and he starts terrorizing you of course, slamming the keyboard and getting mad when you try to make him stop.

Miles LOVES watching videos of himself so we find ourselves taking videos just thinking he's going to love watching this later. Sometimes its our last resort, last defense for him.

I got this ball for him at Walmart after  him pointing to it like 15 times, I finally gave in. And he loves it, and we play with it all day long. Sometimes I get hit in the face with it, when I am not expecting it. Its so awesome.

We took a little trip to Arizona because Brad presented at a conference-two of my sisters live there-Hannah and Sally, it was way fun to see them and my mom and brothers (Shad and Ethan) came as well!

We stayed in the Westin Kierland Resort and it had an amazing pool and we asked for a pack and play and got this adorable fancy mini crib. I remembered how painful it is to sleep in the same room as Miles. He wakes up a lot and knows you are there and won't stop crying until you get him out and he is sleeping in between us. On our full bed because they ran out of King beds-and I would have got into the other full bed with him, but seriously I have zero brain function at 3 AM. 

So he cuddled with us all night. Such a stinker. Not to mention he had croup on Sunday night and we left Wednesday-he had to get a steriod shot and needed to go to the ER but it was earlier enough in the morning that I just stayed up with him all night until the doc opened (we have learned our lesson and after a scolding from the doc-we will now visit the ER if our child isn't breathing). So he was still recovering from that, and when he is sick I am just a pushover and let him sleep on me.

Uncle Greg is the best for playing-he helped Miles hang from this bar and Miles was so strong and hung for so long!

His cousins would carry him when he needed to be carried and it cracked me up because Halle would carry him all the time and he would just succumb to her carrying, and she is just a tad bigger so it looked hilarious. One time at the splash pad he went on the playground and Halle brought him back and he was saying "hot" "hot" "hot" And Halle said, "Its burning his feet" Haha! So cute.

We got to meet uncle Shad for the first time! And for some reason Miles had the worst gas, so he kept ripping farts and Shad thought it was hilarious!

Jeremy and Hannah have a massive lawn mower and Miles got to ride on it and that meant that was all he wanted to do the rest of the time we were there, he would go running to it as soon as we let him outside.

Uncle Jeremy and Miles riding together! I'm jealous of their gorgeous backyard. 

We picked up aunt Sally who is getting her PHD in Chemistry at ASU, and Miles is finally starting to like her :)

Sally lived with me when I was pregnant and was the first one to find out I was pregnant besides Brad of course. She witnessed the miracle of pregnancy. IE: Peeing my pants while vomiting my guts out every hour every day for 22 weeks. Pure bliss and joy. If you ever want to know why I'm not pregnant yet, you know expanding my family more yet, ask Sally. It was rough on me, and although I know the child is so worth it. I need more time to regenerate. Or as I have pleaded in my prayers every night: hopefully the next one won't hurt as bad. 

My mom and I eating the day she was flying home.

Hazel and Miles were so cute together, Hazel took care of him like she has since he was little. So precious.

I think Hazel wore that dress everyday we were there. LOL. Talk about getting use out of laundry.

Swimming with Hannah and her girls at our pool. It was not heated so we hit up the hot tub afterwards.

Splash pad fun! I am mad at myself for not taking a cousins picture, but this was during the time Miles was supposed to be sleeping so he was pretty much a zombie. We had to wake him up to go to the splash pad, in the 15 minute drive in the car, he completely konked out. Because Brad had taken him swimming all morning while I went shopping, so he was just pooped.

As he has gotten older I have become more relaxed, oh we don't have a dry swimsuit so we will just wear our shorts.

We hung out at the hotel together, and Miles took showers for like 45 minutes because he played with all the different bottles in the shower. He loves playing bowling with bottles. His hand acts as the bowling ball.

These are snap chat pictures-that I save to remember our little cuddles together.

Miles is cuddleable, you just have to get him in the right moment, sometimes in the middle of the night he wakes up crying and I go in and hold him and sit on our big chair with a foot rest and we both fall asleep like we used to when we were nursing. Sometimes I put him in a show and I cuddle with him on the couch and I fall asleep. Sometimes he just comes over and gives me a hug and a kiss and we have a fleeting cuddle.

Here is Brad right after his presentation-he said it went well and we were so blessed to have this opportunity!

Stella, chubbiest baby ever.

Splash pad portrait.

We went out to eat and got a babysitter, it was this hipster place, where it said "grass fed bison burger". So I got tacos, and the burger was delicious-I had a few bites of Brad's in a trade off for a taco.

Here we are altogether, Sally is married but Greg had a test he needed to prepare for, medical school-I know the feeling. Jeremy and Hannah are married and have 5 little girls. Crazy at their house!

Miles took a little spin on this motorcycle. 5 girls and a motorcycle!

We had such a blast with our cousins, and Maddie is at school so she is missing from this picture. I always ache when I am around family because I wish we lived closer. I wish Miles could play with these girls everyday, but reality has it that we live thousands of miles away.

Airport fun, we found a macho fan that could blow your clothes off.

We had such a fun time in Arizona and it was a good vacation to venture on. I am excited to spend the month of May at home, and hoping that we can prepare for the crazy month of June, where we will be going to 4 different countries, and 3 different states!!! All in time for Brad to start his 3rd year of medical school on July 1st. Time is flying, and I was thinking about leaving Lubbock in two years and I got so sad, this is our home now, this is where all of our friends are (minus a few besties scattered around) and this is what I know. But, if residency takes us somewhere new we will be excited and ready for the new adventure. I just cannot believe there are only 2 years left of Medical school at Texas Tech, and then we are starting a real life-away from student life. So absolutely crazy. I will savor these last 2 years here!