Love, Love, Love

Having a child has reinvigorated my own excitement about holidays --- even Valentine's Day. Benjamin is my ultimate valentine, and it was fun celebrating with him.

Last Sunday, we all congregated at my parents' house to celebrate my dad's birthday and eat a heart-shaped, half-coconut cake my mom made for Valentine's Day. (My crazy siblings don't like coconut. Weirdos.) After the sugar kicked in, Benjamin and my niece Maia ran around pretending to be cheetahs, while the rest of us carried on and cheered and clapped when my younger niece, Vera, said the word "purple" for the first time.

Before the party, Benjamin painted his own valentines for his cousins, aunts, uncles and grandparents. The one on the bottom right is my favorite. It looks like Mr. Peanut holding a giant spoon.

Although I didn't have the chance to decorate and be as crafty as I wanted, I did make these chocolate pretzel buttons with Hershey's Hugs and Valentine's Day–colored M&Ms. So easy, and totally addictive.

These were a Pinterest find, and they could not have been easier. I lined a baking sheet with parchment paper. On square pretzel bites, place one Hug (or Kiss --- I like the stripes on the Hugs). I think there were about 80 Hugs in one regular-sized bag, so prepared to make quite a few. Bake them in a 200-degree oven for 4 to 5 minutes, until the chocolate gets shiny and just starts to melt. Pull them out of the oven, and gently place one M&M in the middle, pushing down ever so slightly. I let them rest for about 15 minutes and then I wrapped the entire baking sheet with foil and stuck it in the fridge to cool.

One thing I wish I would've done and only thought to do after it was too late was to drag a toothpick through the melty stripes to make zigzags. I'll save that for next time.

Scott and I are having our grown-up date on Friday night. (We going here. Can. Not. Wait.) Last night, we took Benjamin to a Japanese place for dinner so he could try hibachi for the first time. The big flames scared him, and he burst into tears right away. Oops. It didn't bode well for the rest of dinner, but he got into after a while and loved all the chopping, flipping and squirting of sake into his parents' mouths. (We liked that part, too.) Normally, I would not be into all the theatrics of a hibachi place, but with a kid, it's pretty fun. Dinner and a show!

He scarfed down his dinner and then proclaimed on the way home: "I don't like fire and I also don't like fire hydrants, but I do like fire trucks and ambulances and police cars."

Alrighty. Glad we cleared that up.

Bring the Spring

Yesterday in central Pennsylvania we had a tease of warm(er) weather, and now I am officially over winter and ready for spring. The groundhog didn't see his shadow for the first time in forever, the ice is slowly starting to retreat from our patio, and our yard is looking more and more piebald as the snow begins to melt and the brown earth starts to peek through. I'm ready for long walks with my son, for getting my hands in the dirt again, for opening the windows in my house and my car to let the breeze come in, for the farmers' market to open again, for post-bedtime beers with my husband on the patio.

There's a whole lotta No Fun going on in this picture.The past month has been a little rough, with the start of school in mid-January and Benjamin's sundry illnesses (hence the lack of writing here). One of his colds settled in his lungs, morphing into pneumonia, and when antibiotics weren't working, he had to be hospitalized for a very long 24-plus hours. It's challenging, to say the least, keeping an almost-2-year-old confined to a bed for that long, but he was such a champ about the whole thing. The only tantrums came when the nurses tried to draw blood in the emergency room. It was just one more exercise in ineptitude in what felt like an hours-long episode of a not-funny "Three Stooges." No one seemed to know what anyone else was doing, which is made worse by the fact that every little thing takes FOREVER in a hospital.

At one point, at about Hour 5 of our visit, a tech poked Benjamin's foot and attempted to "milk" (his term, not mine) the blood out of it. (This was after no fewer than three unsuccessful tries to get blood the old-fashioned way -- with a needle in a vein.) He squeezed and squeezed my son's little foot over and over again in attempt to fill not one but THREE vials with his blood, drip by drip. Benjamin was screaming and trying to wriggle free, and I was thinking seriously murderous thoughts and imagining very unpleasant ways to milk him.

Finally, the tech got his three vials from my son's foot. Except --- OOPS! --- the milking had taken too long and the blood was useless for their tests. Geniuses.

I only consented to this insanity because a nurse had come in earlier to explain how important it was that they get blood from Benjamin because (and I quote): "He could have an infection in his blood, and that would be REALLY BAD," after which she turned and walked out of the room without any further explanation.

Cue tears. Cue foul language. Cue an up to that point very calm, well-mannered woman about to go all Mama Bear on someone's ass. But mostly, cue fear.

There is nothing worse than seeing your child sick or hurt, and there's nothing a parent won't do to make them feel better. I let Benjamin drink a ton of juice and eat whatever he wanted and watch way too much TV in the hospital because I just wanted him to get better, routine and rules be damned. Fortunately, after an ambulance ride and an overnight stay in a pediatric unit at a different hospital (thank goodness), Benjamin was back to his old self by the next afternoon. It took a solid week to get back on track as far as eating and TV withdrawal go, but that's a minor hiccup in the grand scheme of things.

After those couple weeks of Benjamin being sick, culminating in most of a weekend spent in a hospital with him, I am so, so ready to shake off the chill and gloom of post-holiday winter and get on with spring.

But there have been some great things, too:

• My feature story in Better Homes & Gardens came out this week in the March 2011 issue. I'm thrilled with it and excited to see where it may lead.
• I've started a book club! Our first gathering is this Friday at my house, and I'm in the midst of brainstorming about cocktails and snacks. I'm thinking these Pink Ladies as an appropriate right-after-Valentine's Day signature cocktail. Cocktails are necessary, as I've dubbed us the Carlisle Area Reading & Drinking Society (or CARDS, for short).
• My husband came through with flowers and gorgeous chocolates on Valentine's Day from Helena's Chocolate Cafe & Creperie, a new spot in town that is just killer. (I can't stop thinking about the hot chocolate, which they make with dark Belgian chocolate and brown sugar and top with homemade whipped cream dusted with cinnamon. A-ma-zing.)

Spring break is just over two weeks away. Bring. It.

So Cute, I Could Just Die

I dropped Benjamin off at daycare this morning. I'm interested to see how today went for him, as he hasn't been there in a week because of Snowpocalypse 2010. In addition, we're in the process of decreasing the amount of formula he gets and now give him just two bottles a day instead of four. Methinks I may have a troubled baby on my hands when I pick him up.

Anyway ... As I was filling his cubby with his food and such this morning, I found a little blue gift bag inside. The tag read, "Happy Valentine's Day! Love, Benjamin xox" and THIS was inside. My first piece of kid art! Yay!!

Smitten With … Being Smitten!

Here we are in 2006, on my 30th birthday, pre-marriage, pre-baby. Look how well-rested we look!In honor of Valentine's Day, I thought I'd share the story of how my husband and I met. (I do this in spite of the fact that Scott refers to Valentine's Day as a "made-up holiday" and treats it with a level of disdain most people reserve for a trip to the dentist.)

The story of how we met is so-so, as meeting-your-future-spouse stories go. I'll cut to the chase: It was at a bar. What's really good, though, is how we did NOT meet --- but should have.

1. Fairview Street (1976–1986)

He grew up at 289. I grew up at 309. Becky, one of my neighbors and good friends, was four years older and was in the same grade in school as Scott. But we never met.

2. Becky's Birthday Party (1985?)

One year, Becky had a 1950s-themed birthday party. My mom made me a poodle skirt, and I was so excited to hang out with Becky and her older friends. And who else was in attendance, with slicked hair, pegged jeans and a white t-shirt with the sleeves rolled up? That's right—a preteen James Dean/my future husband. After we got together, we recalled both being at the party, though neither of us remembered the other.

Apparently, some photographic evidence of our being in the same place at the same time existed at one time. Becky's dad was an amateur photographer and documented every party, holiday and neighborhood gathering. But alas, a bunch of his old photographs were ruined when their basement flooded years ago, and Becky's parents suspect the photo of the young bobby-socksers was one of them.

3. High School (1990–1994)

Scott graduated high school in 1991, when I was a freshman, but our school was so tiny that it's sort of remarkable we never met. I knew a lot of his friends and he knew a lot of mine, and we joke that we must have been the only two people in the school who didn't know each other.

4. Post-College Bar Scene (1998–2005)

Yes, we did meet in a bar, but it was a full seven-plus years after I turned 21. That seven-year stretch provided ample opportunity for us to meet, even though I lived in Montana for a bit after college, he lived in Vermont for a while, and then I moved away for three years for grad school. Our small town has just a handful of bars, and there was a time in our lives when both of us socialized quite a bit more than we do know. In fact, I remember seeing him out now and then (I knew who he was) and thinking he seemed interesting, but it was only until the next entry that something actually happened.

5. The Dream (June 2005)

In early June 2005, I had finished grad school and come home, unsure about my next step. In my head, I was all set to go to New York to write, edit, teach ... or something. I saw Scott one night when I was out for cocktails with my girlfriends. That night, I had a very vivid dream about him, in which we were standing in a yard in front of a house next to a large tree, just talking (about what, I don't remember). It was so real that when I woke up, I thought for a moment that it had actually happened. I told my best friend, Sarah, about the dream, and she insisted we needed to meet. Her then-boyfriend/now-husband was a good friend of his, and the two of them planned an elaborate scheme for us to meet.

And we did, a few days later, completely by accident. We were in a bar, sitting amongst a bunch of friends, and we were finally introduced. We started talking. We talked and talked and kept on talking long after everyone else had left. We left each other that night with only a few hours' worth of conversation and a hug between us. There was no exchange of phone numbers, no plans to meet up again. It was as if we just knew we would.

And so we did. We ran into each other at a party a week or so later, where he invited me to a July 4th gathering at his house the next day. I went to the party with Sarah and her then-boyfriend/now-husband. At some point in the evening, at about dusk, Scott and I stood talking in his front yard next to a huge old oak — exactly the way I had dreamed it weeks before.

From then on, it was only ever us again, never just me or just him. I moved into his house at the end of October, just four months after we met. We were engaged the following December and married the November after that, in 2007. In August 2008, I got pregnant. Benjamin was born on May 12, 2009, nine months ago today, and our love story grew to make room for one more.

Sometimes I think about all the years I spent dating the wrong guy (and, of course, thinking he was the right one—or knowing he was the wrong one and not caring). I'd had this image in my brain of the sort of man I'd marry and the sort of life I'd lead. Everything that has happened since has been a complete surprise. I did not expect to marry a guy who'd lived on my same street and gone to my same high school. I did not expect to be living in my hometown again. All of this has been unexpected—and better than I imagined.

And our son? God, I look at him sometimes and cannot believe we have this incredibly fun, funny, smart and sweet little person living with us. Just today he figured out how to wave and crawled farther across the living room than he ever has. He discovered the stairs, the glass door leading to the downstairs through which he could peek at our lazy dog lounging on the floor, and I watched him as he realized the world was much bigger than what he thought. It was incredible. At that moment, this was the thought that popped into my head:

"Oh crap. Now I've got more floor to clean."

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Happy Valentine's Day to all (whether you celebrate it or not)! If anyone else is reading, post how you met your (or a) significant other in the comments section. I'd love to read it!