making the move

i am switching my blog to the tumblr site. it is way better-i hope- and will allow me to make my blog look like how i've wanted it to.
will you please oh please continue to follow me over there?

mollysueschwarz.tumblr.com

thanks for reading! tell your friends!

oedipus anyone?

so dane is now giving kisses which is quite possibly the most precious thing he's ever done. he leans in all slow-mo soap opera and opens his mouth ever so gently thus placing his mouth upon a predetermined area of your face and leaving it there for an undetermined amount of time. it's cripplingly adorable.
tonight he kissed nini (whom he adores tremendously-seriously, he calls for her daily) about 5 times and squealed with delight each time. to be fair, he was probably laughing just because we were but still....

yes, i open mouth kiss my son. what of it?

go spring go

spring is springing up all over the place in these here parts and i am LOVING it. dane's favorite new thing is to be outside. there is nothing he likes more than stumbling around our yard like a mini-drunk. i spent the better part of the whole day outside yesterday. unfortunately a lot of that day was spent picking up a combo of steaming and chalky piles of dog shit so dane wouldn't face plant in any of them. you'd be surprised at how much dog poop accumulates when you wait the whole winter before picking up any. yeah, i know, that is actually one of the most UNsurprising statements one can make. ever. that's like saying, "you know, you'd be surprised at how much i threw up after drinking that bottle of ipecac."

anyway, here's a springtime video of our little soccer player.
he just loves balls.

personality in progress

i was just in the kitchen not cooking when i heard dane wail. i ran to him thinking he had bonked his head for the thousandth time only to find him with the wooden ring stacker toy. he was pretty much kicking it in anger. so i slipped out of his sight to observe him a bit and saw that he was trying to stack the rings and when he couldn't he would get really pissed off. it was funny until i imagined him at age11 trying to do his math homework and breaking his pencil.
of course, that'll be in the future so kids probably won't use pencils. he'll be breaking his iPen.
here's hoping dane gets his daddy's aptitude for all things scholarly.
i hear those iPens are wicked expensive.

woe is me for a minute

i just read something kind of cliche but it hit a nerve. it said, "women are heroic in the face of calamity but it's the little things that bring us down".

that's kind of how i'm feeling right now...i mean, minus the calamity bit.

unless by "calamity" you mean facing the grating of 4 chunks of cheese, the chopping and steaming of veggies, folding yet ANOTHER pile of laundry whilst running yet ANOTHER load of laundry, unloading comically full dishwasher, vacuuming up the couscous off the table and floor (yes, i vacuum tables, so what?), blow drying some life into my lifeless hair before dane wakes, applying make up (this is ONLY because we are having guests for dinner), running to the ups store to mail something i should have weeks ago, and last but certainly worst having to call the new york state tax dept which will surely not involve a warm and fuzzy conversation.

all i want to do is crawl into bed with my "people".

that's the magazine, by the way.

too cute

oscar the grouch

do you have any idea how hard it is to avoid the oscars?
my neighbor jess recorded them but we couldn't watch them last night because her husband had a birthday so she was like, "oh molly. i'm sorry but it's kyle's birthday and i really don't think he wants to spend it with you, watching the oscars." i mean, come ON! how selfish can you be? I DO NOT HAVE CABLE, PEOPLE! DO YOU HEAR ME?

this time every year, i am reminded of the night halle berry won her oscar and how i never got to see her speech.
we were living in nyc and i was watching it with my roomie/cousin shane and my bestest boyfriend, david. we had tivo so we were watching it on a bit of a delay. the only award worth watching is best actress and if halle won it would be profound because she's kind of black and all. so we're watching and the anticipation is getting greater by the second with david and i feeding into each other's obsessive excitement. we could hardly even sit on the couch when the time came. the announcer read off the nominees, and david and i are surely holding hands at this point and shane has the remote and the announcer goes, "AND THE WINNER IS..." and shane pauses it, which would have been really brilliant and fun had he not accidentally CHANGED THE CHANNEL. we screamed a slow-motion-in-a-war-and-a-bullet-is-moving-towards-your-best-friend-but-there's-nothing-you-can-do-about-it-scream "NOOOOOOOOOOOOO" and by the time he turned back, the show was OVER. 0-V-E-R.
and we weren't recording it.
shane kept saying, "i'm sorry, i'm sorry, i got too excited, i pressed the wrong button, etc....." and i was so upset that i almost cried. my mom called me right after and said "oh honey! wasn't her speech AMAZING?? it was so PROFOUND, oh molly! i can't believe you didn't see it!"

wow, i'm glad my priorities have changed over the years.
i've had to avoid internet and phone calls from david for fear of finding out if sandra won.
on the positive side of this, i do get to go over to jess's in an hour and watch it commercial free, whilst eating ice cream cake til i puke.

i care, really i do.

i have a new way of feeding dane which goes like this:

1. affix suction bottom bowl to high chair tray.
2. fill bowl with kix.
3. dane pries bowl off tray and tosses it on the floor.
4. i get him out of the chair.
5. he eats off the floor for the rest of the afternoon, grazing like a cow.

still more blood

so maybe dane and i should've stayed home today, surrounded by foam.

we had a lovely evening walk and as we were back in our front yard, dane tried his hand at navigating the front walk. it was VERY cute to see his big, proud, beaming face toddling to my outstretched arms. he was supposed to fall into my arms for a big "YAAAAAY!" and mommy hug but instead of falling into my arms, he fell and smacked his already battered face into the concrete step.
he screamed as i shuffled him inside to assess the damage. i noticed a ding in his chin and as he gathered his breath for the next wail, his mouth opened and out came a pool of bloody drool. lot's of it. i did not like this part of the day.
turns out he had "only" bitten his tongue and the damage was fairly minimal. his darling chiclet teeth are still there.
phew!

where was my human babyproofer when i needed her?

first blood

so dane and i walked into town for story time this morning and he tripped and fell into the stroller. poor baby. as a result, he clung to me like a baby chimp to his mama the whole story time.

more florida

here are some florida pics

yay for me! i'm blogging again!

so we are back from our florida vacation where we had an awesome fun family filled festival. dane stared walking almost immediately upon our arrival and continued to absorb things like a sponge. his cousins were way more entertaining to him than the millions of toys, books, and puzzles in the house. he grew leaps and bounds and has started saying lots more words. my favorite is "grampa". every time he would see grampa his face would light up and he's say "BAM-PAH!!!!!!!" with great emphasis on the second syllable.
not only was he walking and talking, he was napping and sleeping like a champ. he transitioned into the one nap a day and doesn't require a bottle to help the process.
the florida time was filled with food, wine and kids' shenanigans. very fun. it was also where grandma became a human baby-proofer. she would magically materialize to buffer edges of stairs, edges of walls, bath faucets, pool tables, counter tops and pretty much any object that would pose as a potential threat to a wobbly toddler. all the while saying, "i'm sorry, i'm sorry, i didn't used to be this way!" to which i would reply, "how DARE you woman. how DARE you care about the health and well-being of your grandchildren." and i swear on my life, the ONE time she wasn't right there (but his mommy was) he slammed his forehead right into -wouldn't you just know it!- the EDGE OF THE WALL. as he was crying, his poor forehead sprouted a bump the likes of pinocchio's lying nose.
what was once a house of peace and quiet, no tv, no kids, everything sparkling fresh and clean, everything in its place is now a house of ebbing and flowing chaos and general messiness thanks to the next generation of schwarzes. i have a feeling that while it was a total joy for us to be there, the in-laws breathed a sigh of relief once we were gone.

here is a video of the early walking.

lazy

i promise i will write more stuff when i get back next week. i am being lazy bones in rainy florida and loving it.

it's sticking

so we are in florida with the whole family and having an awesome time. it is especially fun to see the cousins interact. but the best part of all is that danny's brother pete has been calling me "crazy aunt molly" ever since his son andrew was born and it has finally caught on. he has taken a particular liking to me (which is adorable) and he'll say things like , "crazy aunt molly, will you come into the hot tub with me?" or "crazy aunt molly, would you like to play a game with me?" and my personal favorite was when i was in the bathroom drying my hair and he shuffled up to me offering an us weekly and said "this is for you, crazy aunt molly."

when did nighttime become my enemy?

and this has nothing at all to do with having a one year old.
i just cannot sleep.
i can fall asleep but it is a herculean task to remain asleep. my heart starts racing and it becomes the nightly struggle of me against my brain. i KNOW i'm tired. i look after dane all day, i don't nap, i do mountains of housework blah blah blah it's a mundane list that only other moms take an interest in.
i remember having a solid night's sleep about 3 weeks ago where it was uninterrupted. what the hell is wrong?

makes me sleepy just watching this

this is one of a million things i love about dane.

warning...

what you are about to see is graphic in its cuteness. it make make you do something you might not be ready for like getting knocked up.

don't hate me

we are leaving for florida friday crack of dawn early and i am really looking forward to it. duh. of COURSE i am. it's FEBRUARY in OREGON.
by the way, WHY is february spelled like that? it makes no sense. does anyone pronounce it the way it's spelled? lose the "r". the one in the middle, not at the end. that would just be weird.
and wednesday. i'm spelling it wensday. from here on out.

he REALLY likes spoons

dane and i went to target today for some unnecessary cardigans and a VERY necessary mop. while we were there, we sat at the in-store starbucks so i could feed him some lunch. these days dane is all about trying to feed himself with a spoon which is an important lesson and one he must learn but NOT in a public place with flimsy paper napkins.

i tried to explain as he is reaching furiously for the spoon that "mommy will feed dane. MOMMY will feed dane. no NO dane MOMMY will do it." he is getting progressively more and more upset as i practically maim him to get the food in his mouth that finally he did something i have never NOR DO I EVER want to see again.

he leans way back in his high chair so that the top of his head is almost facing the floor below him and lets out a BARBARIC yell. i mean, it is LOUD. it started kind of normal like "oh here comes a little tantrum of his" which i actually think are really funny and then oh my lord it gained momentum like a cartoon snowball that rolls down the hill and gets bigger and bigger as it gathers more snow and i SWEAR it went on for 10 seconds. that may not sound long but when an entire target storefront of checkout lines turns in your direction, it feels REAL long.

in the distance i saw a flock of birds flee their trees in fear.
it was like wild kingdom.