R & R in Kansas

We just got back from a week in Kansas. It was so very nice to visit 90 degree weather and wear shorts and flip-flops without thinking twice about it. I'm pretty sure I'm not as pasty-white anymore, but definitely still white. I think it would take a few months to get rid of the pale glow I've acquired while living in San Francisco. Here, we where sweaters in July.

Dexter was a real trooper traveling. He had tantrums both times, but it was understandable. It's an all day affair. We had to get up at 4am to get to the SF airport for a 6:45am flight. That was a challenge. Luckily, Dexter caught up on his sleep and slept most of the 2.5 hour flight to Denver. Literally, he was excited to be in the plane one minute and right as we took off, his eyes closed. We all got a nap. That was the flight though that even though he slept for most of the trip, he occasionally kicked the seat in front of him and the guy got pissed about it. I took Dexter's shoes off when we got on and did my best to stop him, but he does get fidgety. I don't feel bad though, the guy was a bitch. He leaned back his seat and pinched Dexter's foot when we first got on the plane, made him cry and didn't apologize for it so he totally deserved it every little kick he got.

After 4 hours of plane travel, there's was a 2.5 hour drive - my parents live in the boonies - and Dex could only scream the last hour. That wasn't fun. He did really well coming back too except the last leg of the trip. He was cranky with a dirty diaper and teething pain, but after a change and the Tylenol kicked in, he wasn't too bad. He couldn't sit still and was up in my lap, then dad's lap, and then on the floor every two minutes Annoying, but tolerable. At least the kicking and screaming had stopped.

Dexter loved his grandparents' house. He got to ride and DRIVE a lawn mower. He ran around without any shoes one 90% of the time. He got so dirty every day that he NEEDED a bath and had 2-3 changes of clothes. He had two cute puppies from the neighbor's house to play with. One of them was chihuahua so he called him "like Squee". We all played soccer everyday. We bought Dexter a mini-ATV to ride on for something fun to do. That was great, except it didn't go on the grass, so we went on the street once. After that, it was in the house and on the deck only. He loved his "motorcycle". It's waiting for him there for Christmas. We also took Dexter to the swimming pool. He loved it. He kept jumping off the side of the pool into our arms. By the time we left, he was walking from the waist high shallow end to where the water was up to his chin - shadowed, but unassisted. He's a little daredevil through and through.

We had to work bit on various projects, so if Dexter was napping or asleep, we were working. It wasn't too bad, but it would be nice to get away from work. I doubt that will happen anytime soon. If there is an internet connection, work will be done.

The reason we went back to kansas was for a memorial for Mike's mother and brother as some of their ashes were buried in a cemetery. It was a sad day, but his whole family was there. We got to visit with everyone and everyone got to meet Dexter. There was a gathering after the memorial where we all sat and chatted, ate lunch and then released balloons. Dexter had a hard time with his balloon flying away. He ran after it so fast. I wasn't sure he was going to stop. Poor guy kept asking "Where'd white ballon go?"

In true Kansas style, Mike shot guns before we had to leave. I don't know why I find that so funny. It was almost as funny as watching him drive a lawnmower around in shorts and flip-flops with his sleeves rolled up to look like a sleeveless t-shirt. It was so uncharacteristic of urbanite Mike.

We took Dexter to the zoo, he ate ice cream several times, and pretty much just spoiled him as much as we could all week. It was awesome to be around family. We barely get to see them. Dexter is really latching onto Mike. The father/son bond is getting stronger. I'm not sure why its changed lately, but it has. Dexter asked for Mike to sing him to sleep the other night for the very first time. That made Mike a little teary eyed which was so touching.

We drove to see my grandma, Dexter's great grandma, the day before we left. That was nice to break up the trip a little for Dex. We drove the 2.5 hours to see her and stayed the night in Wichita. My brother and his family drove from Manhattan to see us as well. I also saw an uncle and a cousin. It was nice to chat and see everybody. We stayed the night at Mike's sister's house. That gave Dex the opportunity to play quite a bit before heading to the airport.

He slept as soon as we took off and slept the first leg of the trip. The second leg of the trip from Denver to SF wasn't so great, but we got here. Since Dexter's bedtime was so messed up and he was so excited to get home to see Squee we decided to try and catch the fireworks. It started at 9:30 instead of 9 which made it a challenge for Dex to stay awake, but as soon as they started he was happy. He hasn't stopped talking about the "BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! Like fireworks!" He did stay up long enough to make it home. He said "I missed you Squee!" as soon as he got in the door. It was very cute. I couldn't think of a better end to a vacation.

Teething Dreams

I really need some sleep. I detest teething. A new tooth appeared this week. This coincides with Dexter not sleeping well and starting to remember his dreams. He has been dreaming about a statue. I think it's the one from the playground, but I'm not sure. He said it was in the hallway, which is so creepy. I'd scream too if I saw a statue standing in the hallway. I can't explain to him that it's not real. How do you explain what a dream is to a not-yet 2 year old? It has to be frightening.

We have just entered a new phase which is the beginning of explaining everything. This isn't limited to dreams. He has started asking "What's that?" over and over and over again. I haven't heard anybody ever mention the "What's that?" phase. I'm guessing it's the precursor to the "Why?" phase. It's cute, but already getting annoying. We went to Walgreens to fill my prescription. In the half hour we waited, he walked around saying "What's that?" every two feet. I'm pretty sure he said it at least fifty times. I did my best to tell him what each item was, but I think that has just made it worse. It's awesome that he's curious. There is so much for him to learn about and he's so open to learning about everything. I've been starting to counter his question with "What do you think it is?" It doesn't stop him from asking, but at least he can answer it himself sometimes.

Work & Life

It's the bane of motherhood, the "balance" of working and home life. It's never in balance, it's never equal, and it never will be. It's been a tough realization, but one that I'm comfortable with. I'm very happy working and feeling productive, but my son is my priority. I can do the occasional late night, but I won't be working full time again for a few years. Unfortunately, that dynamic is a particularly difficult one with a husband/wife owned company. This means that Mr. Cobra is the one who takes on more of the stress and responsibility for the company we equally started. He misses out on various nibbles of Dexter's childhood. He is around most of the time, but when things get difficult, he's the one to pick up the slack. It's a tough situation for us to be in a constant struggle to balance between us the duties of home and work. There's guilt on my end because I can't devote the same amount of time to the company and an unbelievable amount of pressure on his end to be accountable for both of ours' and our employees' livelihoods at the cost of having time at home. I find the balance of our relationship much harder than balancing work and motherhood. Mr. Cobra has let me be in a comfortable place at the cost of his own stress level. With his recent health problems, it has become a boiling pot of emotion. We will work through it, but it's a test of our entrepreneurial spirit and our personal perseverance.

Owning a business isn't easy; mix in health and family issues, and it is so much harder to find a happy balance of all of them without one of them suffering in some way. People who own a business that becomes successful, they truly deserve respect, maybe even a medal of some sort. We started our company without any seed money, loans or investors. It continues to this day to run under it's own steam. We are working on some of the most creative and challenging projects to date. We love what we do and it's often hard to get our heads above water enough to realize how awesome it is to "get paid to play". We aren't in business to become billionaires. We chose the wrong field for that. We just want to be able to live comfortably in one of the most expensive cities to live in. If we can do that, do great work, and employ some sick talent, and raise a happy/healthy family then we've been successful. I think we are almost there.

Gender Bender

Dexter is identifying the differences in gender. He knows that boys have penises, but last night he said "mommies have buttons". There is a blonde joke in there somewhere.

The Weekend

Friday, Mike and I went to see NIN. It was in a big outdoor venue, so it wasn't quite as enveloping as when we saw them at the Oracle Arena where we had floor tickets and were only 20 feet from the band. The set was better at the Friday show though. I have been fighting a cold for a while though,so sitting out in the cold made my cold much worse. We didn't stay for Jane's Addiction. From what people have said, they were really amazing. I'm a little bummed about not having stuck around to see Perry Farrell jump around, but my cold is punishing me for even going to an outdoor concert to begin with. We did have the best garlic fries I've ever had in my life there though. YUM!

We had our nanny watch Dex overnight. It was our first overnight without Dexter. We slept like rocks. Seriously, I'm not sure I moved after I fell asleep. We woke up around 7:30am. That's our version of sleeping in. We had breakfast at a spot called Buck's. It was great to sit, eat and have an uninterrupted conversation for half an hour. We don't get to do that anymore. I'm sure we will get the opportunity again, but life as a couple is so different with kids. We do have the benefit of working together, so we regularly get to eat lunch together, but 99% of the time we talk about work. IF we didn't work together, I'd really be missing my best friend.

Sunday afternoon we decided to have a playdate. It was great to have people over and have a bunch of little kids running around. Dexter did a really great job of sharing all of his toys. He only had one bad spot in which he didn't want to give back a little pink stroller back to his girl friend. He really liked pushing it around and had a hard time giving it back to her to play with it. I told him he could play with it for a little bit longer, but he had to give it back when he was ready. After a couple minutes, he pushed it over to her, handed it to her and said "thank you". He has good manners for a not-quite 2 year old.

We drank wine and beer, ate some yummy coffee cake from Arizmundi, pork rinds, chips and fruit (mostly Dex ate the fruit). We had five kids that were 2 and under and one 5 year old. Everybody played well together and there wasn't any trouble at all. It was a lot of fun. I hope to make it more of a regular thing to have people over now that we have some room.

Screaming Tantrums

Dexter has gotten into screaming lately, especially at 2am. It seems that his separation anxiety has picked up quite a bit lately. It becomes painful when he wakes in the middle of the night because he screams "mommy, mommy, mommy, UP!". I'm glad whoever sleeps in the room below him snores right through it. Dex is so extremely loud. I've heard him screaming in the morning after I leave all the way at the corner of the street about a 100 feet or more from the house.

When I get up to try to get him to calm down, I tell him to lay down and go back to sleep. I consistently get yelled a "No!" in response. He has such attitudea and defiance in his emphatic "NO!" I try hard not to laugh at him. It's much easier not to laugh at 2am. He officially has a time out chair or a place where he goes if he's in trouble which we refer to as "The Green Chair". Luckily, he usually cooperates if we threaten him with the dreaded Green Chair. He usually says "No Green Chair! No green Chair!" It's silly, but it works. We put the fear of the Green Chair in him - LOL.

I went to the doctor today. I've been meaning to go for months, but it's just a check-up and blood work. I've felt so well that I've gone down and stayed down to a bare minimum of one of my prescriptions for my arthritis since November of last year. It's the prescription that doesn't agree with drinking alcohol or getting pregnant without planning months ahead of time. It's the one that requires me to get blood drawn every six months to make sure it isn't making my liver toxic. It's the one I am going to stop taking. Yep, gonna see how I do if I stop taking it altogether. I am so stoked to drink some beer without a second thought. With the terrible two's right around the corner, the timing is impeccable.

Mother's Deserve A Day Off

Last Sunday was Mother's Day. We started with a beautiful breekfast with pancakes, eggs, sausage and tiny fruit tarts. It was perfect. Dexter had handed me a bouquet of roses the night before and we used it as a centerpiece at the dinner table. Mike did all the cooking and all the cleanup afterwards. He is too sweet.

Originally, I wanted to go shopping… alone. Oh the horror of wanting time away for myself on Mother's Day. The day started out nicely and the day previous had been wonderful, so I thought it would just continue that way. Instead of spending the day by myself, the whole family came along. It went okay for a while. We drove to Corte Madera which is a few miles north of San Francisco. We went to a small shopping center that had a little playground. Dex could play while I shopped, and Mike would look after him. We got there early and everything was fine until lunchtime. Then it started getting worse and worse as time went on.

Mike took Dex out for a drive so he could take a nap because he started getting super cranky during lunch. I went off on my own for a couple of hours. When I saw Mike again, he was under attack from his allergies. He felt so bad, that I took Dex while he went to get some allergy medicine at a Rite Aid a couple miles away.

Dexter and shopping mix about as well as oil and water. He's okay until he sees something he likes, and then he's nearly impossible to get him away from it. I bribed him with the playground a couple times, and then he learned that the playground was just outside. This started him darting for the door to go outside every chance he got. The mall is set up for walking, so there aren't any cars around. It's just an outside path from store to store, so it was relatively safe for him to run outside, luckily. It was just annoying to be running after him with unpaid merchandise in hand, looking like I'm a crazy shoplifter busting out of the door.

Once Mike returned, he took over. He felt so badfrom the allergies, that he couldn't keep up with Dex taking off. He is so fast running now. He's gotten a lot of practice in our new place and it shows. It used to be a fast-paced walk to keep up with him and now it's a jog. At one point, we were at the back of a store, I let my guard down for a second and told him to stand there. Next thing I know, the little booger is hightailing it for the door. By the time I caught up with him, he was about 5 feet away from running out the door. All in all, he covered about 40 feet of distance in about 10 seconds. That was the last straw. We left and Mike has been sick since. It's certainly not intentional, or any fault of his that his allergies are acting up. It's just brilliant timing.

Next year, I'm sticking to my guns and spending at least a good chunk of the day by myself. I love being a mother, but it would be nice to get a day off once a year to celebrate the other 364 days I'm on duty.

21 Months

Happy 21 months Dexter! I can't believe that we will be celebrating birthday number 2 in just a few short months. I'm hoping the terrible twos are halfway over since he's been a tantrum-beast for a few months now. Lucky for us, he can speak well enough to get his point across. At the same time, that means he makes requests. His current favorite is "hot chocolate". He's cute, funny, loving, and fun to play with 85% of the time. That remaining little sliver of pure hell isn't fun, but it's all worth it when he gives me big hugs and says "I love you".

On Monday, Dexter had a scary accident. Lauren, our nanny, had just come in and we were chatting as she was settling in to take over. Dexter climbed up on a chair like he always does. We both were just inches away when he decided to sit down on the arm of the chair. I think he thought he was sitting in the seat adn not on the arm. I saw it all play out. He sat down and he just flipped backwards off the arm. There was no warning that he was going to sit; no warning that he was going to lean back; no warning even that he had lost his balance. He just plopped down, flipped backwards and was on the floor in less than a second. I saw him clearly fall and hit the back of his head with all of his body weight on the hardwood floor. I knew it was a bad fall, so I immediately went and picked him up.

He screamed just as I expected him too. That was a good sign. I figured it was just going to be about calming him down until his cry thinned out. I looked at him and all the color had left his face. He was pale and he had broken into a cold sweat. His cry wasn't nearly as piercing and he started going limp. He never lost consciousness, but his demeanor changed dramatically. We called the pediatric urgent care nurse who told us to go to the Emergency Room immediately to have him checked out.

Dexter was dazed and not himself. His color was off, but he could walk and was talking. I almost didn't go to the ER, but I remembered that woman who had the head injury who was walking and talking and later died from a bump in the head while skiing. That's not a risk worth taking.

By the time we got to the triage nurse Dexter was acting a little more normal, so she sent us to the Pediatric Urgent Care to get checked out since it didn't seem to be life threatening. Due to some misunderstandings, we had to wait for an hour and a half to see the doctor. By that time Dex was pretty much back to normal. It had taken about 2 hours for him to get back to normal. The doctor said he definitely had a concussion. I had to make sure he rested. He couldn't go to any playgrounds or horse around for a couple days. I had to check on him while he slept, but he should be fine.

He was fine. He bounced back like a rubber ball. He wasn't 100% for the first 24 hours, but he's back to his normal stunts again. I asked him about the experience. He said "boctor, green chair, go boom, owie". That pretty much sums it up.

Moved

It has been a lot of work packing, moving, unpacking. A lot has happened in the whirlwind as well.

Mike's brother passed away while we were hurriedly packing. He had been ill for some time. We knew he would pass away sometime soon, but soon is never long enough. He was in his early forties–so young to die. Mike was unable to fly back for the memorial on such short notice. It has been a very sad time for us.

Mike also had 2 trips to the emergency room for mysterious pain that was near where his appendix was. While it isn't directly related, it seems to be something that has made life miserable for him over the last few weeks. I can't really get into details since it's a private issue, but he's been doubled over in pain a lot. The doctors keep telling him to take Vicodin, but he refuses. He's been scanned up and down and the cause hasn't been pinpointed. They do know that it isn't serious… yet. That's reassuring and worth a couple thousand dollars.

We turned in the keys from our old place. I had tears in my eyes. A lot of life changing events happened there. It was the first time we ever stayed in one place for more than 2 years. We lived there for 5 years. Thankfully we kept the same phone number.

We started Cobra Creative in the back room. It's an addition with a horrible slope and required a space heater blasting us 24/7. We sat side-by-side in a space about 8' x 6'. That's probably smaller than most people's cubicles and there was two of us. It wasn't even big enough to fit 2 full size desks. We got by, and it was tolerable until there was an earthquake. Then we decided it would be better to turn the living room into our office. That lasted 4 months until we finally got our first office to work out of. Hello work/life separation.

We had many health issues pop-up. I was diagnosed with Rhuematoid Arthritis which I will deal with for the rest of my life. Mike had a heart condition diagnosed and ultimately had it fixed with a special surgery. The latest was Mike's appendectomy. Many colds, sniffles, flus, and allergies were dealt with in those 5 years. I lost 30 lbs, gained 50 lbs with pregnancy and lost another 43 lbs afterwards (20lbs were lost after giving birth). Mike gained, lost, gained and recently lost 35 lbs or so himself. We are both the thinnest we've been for many, many years.

Dexter was conceived in that apartment. I spent many hours with morning sickness. I learned that the kitchen sink was the best place to get sick in. I spent hours on my laptop, propped up in bed reading about babies and shopping for what I thought I might need. We had his baby shower there. He grew in my belly and my last picture of me being pregnant with him was taken in front of my favorite wall by my favorite window. The very same wall and window we took the first pictures of Dexter coming home in his carseat.

It also saw the greatest loss – Mike's mother who passed away just days before Mike and I were married and just weeks before hearing the big news that we were about to have our first child. Mike's brother passed away just days before we left.

That apartment was our home through life, death, sickness and in health and even when we said those very same vows to each other. I cried a bit when I left for the last time. It's like saying goodbye to a friend you will never see again. We have made a new friend, however, and I can only hope we have as many memories to make in our new home.

Freckles

San Francisco is having a heat wave. It's nice to feel real warmth for a few days. I don't even own any shorts because these days are so rare. Dexter has 2 pairs of shorts, one of which I bought for him a year ago and he can still wear. We don't have air-conditioning or even a fan. We are getting by. It's just a little uncomfortable.

We've been spending a lot of time outside because it's much nicer outside than inside. Even with a lot of sunblock, Dexter's fair complexion sprouted his first freckles on his nose. I thought he was dirty, so I tried to scrub them off before realizing that they were permanent.

Moving is going slowly. Mr. Cobra had another visit to the ER last Saturday due to some pain near his incision. It was severe enough that they put him on a morphine drip and did all the tests they could to figure out what it was. It luckily wasn't an infection, but his digestive system just isn't running normally. It hasn't since his appendectomy. We don't know why, but all his tests are pointing to nothing serious. It's a frustrating situation to be in.

We did get the bedrooms painted. We hired someone and they had both rooms done in 3.5 hours. There's no way it would've gotten done otherwise. Dexter's room turned out awesome in gray and orange. Our room is a little less exciting in an off-white. I would've liked a tiny bit more color, but it's just enough to warm it up.

It's going to be so weird to not have Dexter in the same room. In some ways, I'm so happy to have some distance. I know it's gonna be a big pain in the ass at first because he's gonna freak out, but in other ways, it's another milestone of him growing up. He's getting so big now, I can't cradle him like a baby very easily anymore. It's a vivid reminder that he's a toddler now, not a baby. It does go by so fast.