The SUnday Post ~ Ten Years

It's hard to believe but I am on my way to my ten year reunion...from college. My how things change in a course of a decade.

Ten years ago I was a starry-eyed artist hoping to make my way into the advertising industry and planning to move to Philly or NYC to do it. Since then I have lost important people in my life and gained new ones. I got married, started a family and found a Buddy. We bought a house and now I have years of advertising experience under my belt.

Ten years ago 9/11 was still fresh in our minds and not even a year past. The world was changing but full of possibilities for me.

I wonder what another ten years will bring. In ten years Billy will be 11. What will his world be like?

June 29, 2012 ~ Who's the Boss?

Move over Tony Danza... there's a new boss in town. (Does anyone even remember the reference?)

Daddy: Billy, who's the boss?
Billy: Daddy!

Yep. I tried to convince Daddy who the real boss is (me!) but he's convinced that Daddy is the boss. Daddy didn't een teach him that and Billy doesn't know what it means, but he's sure Daddy is it. Ok, we'll let Daddy get away with it... this time!


Sorry for the late post. Between a bottle of wine and a raging storm I never made it to the computer.

Drawn In Thursdays: On Friday??? What the Fudge?

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Sorry to be a day late and a dollar short, but a sick kiddo takes precedent over a webcomic.

June 27, 2012 ~ First Jump

Leave it to Billy to prevent a yucky sickness from keeping him down-literally.

He loves to run around singing "up and down, up and down" while skip-hopping. He keeps trying to jump, but it ends up being a weird flailing of happy limbs without ever leaving the ground. But those days of super silly flailing Billy are over. He can jump.

And just to prove it to you, he did it twice for me this morning and again this afternoon for Daddy. Yep, he's my lil hopper. On  the mend and on the up and up. Pun intended.

June 26, 2012 ~ Pie-Duh Phobia

I'm sorry lil man, but it seems I have imparted my fear of spiders on you.

His spider woes begin way back on Friday.

After bathing I put his towel around him and mine around me. He has hooded towels, the kind that are popular for kids right now. Well, he freaked out and tossed the towel from his head as if it were on fire. When it landed on the floor a giant black spider crawled out from the hood. That would be a spider recently trapped bewteen the towel and my lil man's head. Pie-duh! Pie-duh!

Yeah, ok. That spider had to go. No one jumps on my lil man's head and freaks him out without paying for it. Down the drain. Byebye.

Then, there we are camping. Out in the woods, surrounded by nature. Billy noticed a spider hanging out outside of the tent but inside the fly (tent rain cover). It was right above his crib. He freaked out. FREAKED. It was a small spider. I tried to allay his fears and tell him it was just dirt. He wasn't buying it. There wasn't much I could do. I tried to ang the spider off of the tent from the inside, but it was happy taking a nap right where it was. He was NOT a fan.

Bring on Monday morning, T-minus 2 hours getting HFMD. (Hand Foot and Mouth Disease). We go to shower and I remove his lil bathtub and out scurries another big, black spider. Same size as before, larger than a quarter when you include the legs. He was not happy and screamed in the shower, afraid the spider was hiding somewhere, even though a handy shoe dispatched the little sucker.

Nope. Not a fan.

I'm pretty sure that spiders are the most vile creatures on Earth. Prove me wrong, but really, they are other-worldly with their eight-legged freakishness. I hate them. If they are inside, then they must die. Outside, we'll think about it.

Well, today we were outside- the only place he seemed happy, so there we stayed. On the window ledge he noticed a Daddy Long Legs. I thought it was dead. It had been there since the day before and hadn't moved. Well, he wanted me to poke it with a stick and move it away from the sofa. Not a problem. It was dead. Not that I'm afraid of DLL, since they rarely bite and don't mind being held. (Think they don't bite? Ask the Mythbusters on that urban legend!) So, I poked it and it skittered away.

I suppose Moses could have appeared witha burning bush in front of him  and scared him less. I chased that poor unhappy DLL to the other end of the porch and tried to convince Billy that it is the only friendly spider out there. o, he tried to feed it a cracker.

Yes, my lil man tried to feed the spider a cracker. I got him to leave it alone since it was napping, but he really wanted to welcome it with a Ritz. No joke. When I explined that it only ate bugs, he cried. No really, tears. I told you spiders are scary. THEY EAT BUGS!!!

If that's not enough, we watched Tangled today (again). I explained that the bad lady was a meanie- a term I use for bugs and other living things he shouldn't go near. "Meanie? Like a pie-duh?" he asked. Yes, a meanie, like a spider. "Oh. She bites," he declared. Because meanie bugs bite.

Pie-duh phobia. Because they bite- those big meanies.

June 25, 2012 It's the Big "I'm Back" Blog Post

Well, after a nutty week at work and a crazy week in the rest of my life I am back at this blogging thing. Here goes:

This weekend we drove Billy out to the mountains to try out camping for the first time in 2012. We went with some very awesome people and had a wonderful time. The weather was nice. We had some hijinks, had to mount a 2am search party and there may have been a manpile, but everybody made it home safe and sound.

Billy's only problem with camping is sleeping. Why wold you want to sleep when you are surrounded by super cool adventures at every turn. I mean, really... a nap? Seriously? When there's a mountain to be climbed?

You can go ahead and caption this picture anyway you like. Daddy decided to get his native on, since he has at least one drop of Native American blood in him. Mind you, not from a tribe in West Virginia, but apparently being up in the mountains just brings it out. Behind my boys is Seneca Rocks.

Billy also made some canine friends on our trip, specifically the two living in camp with us. I think his favorite was Leo, who Billy called Lay-low. I'm pretty sure he thought the dog's name was "yellow" since he pronounced the name close to how he calls the color. Either way, Leo was a perfect Billy size and they are definitely friends now.

And that brings us to poor Buddy who didn't get to go. We had epic meltdown when Buddy went on his own adventure to Grandma's. Billy was sure BudBud was gone. No amount of convincing could get him to stop screaming for his favorite dog. Of course, once he got into the whole camping thing I asked him if he wanted to go home and see BudBud and he responded..."no."

Highlights from our trip:
Billy putting his sunglasses on, taking a dramatic pause... "Cool."

"Billy, what are mountains made of?"
"Big rocks."

And let's not forget his first melon:

Yum! Yum!

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And now on to today...

Every day is an adventure. Who needs to drive to the highest point in West Virginia to find one? Not me.

We got to daycare and there were only two kids in his class there and the teachers had out thermometers. Uh oh. They told me the school was having an outbreak of Hand, Foot and Mouth disease. Um, ok... slowly back out towards the door. I had just bathed Billy and he was perfectly spotless. Uninfected. The first kid to show symptoms got sick on Friday and Billy wasn't in school on Friday. Bullet dodged. Phew!

So, I decided not to leave him there and expose him to the disease. Nope. I drove home and packed up everything I needed to take Billy to work with me for the day. I had non-noisy toys and books, food, and since we had just been camping, I grabbed that super awesome Go Crib and his naptime necessaries and packed him into the car. I suspected I wasn't going to get much work done, but it was worth a shot, right?

Well, I had him all strapped in to the carseat and decided to take one last look at him while he was strapped down. Hands? Clean. Mouth? Clean. Feet? Removing shoes, then socks and... damn. That dodged bullet sung right back around and hit the target right in the bulls eye. Crap.

So, I unpack the car and hoof him back inside and call out of work. At least he wasn't sick up on a mountain. Thank God for that. And he wasn't acting sick this morning. But, I knew it was coming.

By this afternoon he was one very unhappy former camper (insert rim shot for extremely lame joke).

Poor lil man. He's so unhappy and the rash is all over his body- more like chicken pox than HFMD. But, it's HFMD and he's suffering through the best he can.

June 24, 2012

Checking out the world from on high- well, at the top of the slide, anyway.

June 23, 2012

Forget Joe Cool. This is Billy Cool.

June 22, 2012

Perfecting the pout. This one is about waiting for Grandpop to arrive.

June 21, 2012

Billy eating dinner at the table like a big boy.

June 20, 2012

Sailabration highlights:

Crying: Mommy, I wanna ship!

"Just remember, stay straight on Gay Street."

After the Blue Angels finished: "More???"

Yelling at the ducks to get out of the water because it was a "no swimming" weekend.

Everybody Needs a Vacation

Everyone needs a vacation, including me. Well, I'm not actually going on vacation, but I am going to be so freakin' busy with work that I need to minimize my daily requirements on my time so that I can hope to get some decent sleep.

For that reason, Becoming Billy will be going on vacation until June 24th. If something really cute happens, I'll be sure to post. No worries, there will be a daily Billy picture post to check in on. Then, check back in on the 24th for regular posting to resume.

Stay sane!

Sailabrate Good Times, C'Mon!

Billy woke up Sunday morning. "Mommy, Nee-yowm!" (Nee-yowms are airplanes). He demonstrated the flying by maneuver and repeated "Nee-yowm!" Boy, was he excited about getting to see the Blue Angels the day before. He was jumping up and down in his crib way earlier than his normal wake up time. Blue Angels are Awesome. That's with a capital A.

So, we decided to take him down to see them again. Only this time, we went to Locust Point to see the Angels. They were so much louder and so much closer than in Fells Point the day before.

Well, we decided to see everything. So we walked from the Kojima to Fort McHenry and back- several miles in all. Then we drove over to downtown and walked from the Power Plant to the Rusty Scupper (aka the entire harbor loop) and back again.

Billy waved at every boat on the water and tried to say hi to all of the people, but there were a lot of people. Too many people to get on the boats- the wait was just too long. So we walked around and looked at them. Billy saw the people out in the dragon boats (paddle boats, not Chinese sailing vessels). "No! No!" he shouted at them. We had had some discussions about not going in the water. Apparently, they were too low in the water and he thought they were swimming, which was a big nono. No swimming in the harbor- ever.

We stopped to eat some festival food. Funnel cakes and fried oreos. Yum! Billy got to try both for the first time. Funnel cakes were yummy, but move over for the oreos. He tried it and you know what he thought? He grabbed mine out of my hand and shoved it in his face. Yep. That good. No worries. I got another one.

We had a fabulous time Sailabrating and look forward to 2014, sure to be an even bigger hit. We're sorry to see the ships go, and I miss the Blue Angels practicing over my office already, but wow was it fun while it lasted!

Posting Postponed!

Yesterday was Father's Day and Daddy wanted to play his computer game, so I couldn't very well kick him off of the computer to blog on his day. Full posting about the weekend will commence tonight. Pictures and all! Check back later!

Sorry for the delay.

The Sunday Post- Sailabrating!

Why I love Sailabration:

On the first day of Sailabration this is what I saw:
12 Sailors singing
11 Pennants flying
10 Bombs a bursting
9 Reenactors acting
8 Tall ships sailing
7 Food stands cooking
6 Captains saluting
5 BLUE ANGELS!!! (well, really 6!)
4 Gray hulls
3 Warships
2 Pirates
And one tour of the Iroquois!

Billy watching the Blue Angels

The Sigsbee and Lady Maryland from the deck of the USCG Eagle

Visiting Ships

You should come Sailabrate too!

June 15, 2012 ~ Learning To Spit

According to Billy, the ability to spit is not innate. Well, on command. Or no...

Actually, let me correct that. He's been able to spit food and water for, oh, about a year now- probably longer. If you count dribbling peas down his chin, then definitely longer. Like, today, when he was purposefully spitting water on Grandma to be silly. I don't think Grandma thought it was all that silly, Billy.

Well, we're learning to brush teeth. I'm not. I know how to brush my teeth. But he's learning. It involves his toothbrush, a stolen toothbrush of mine (lucky I have another one, and yes, it's clean) and a lot of trial and error. The brushing is more like sucking water out of the brush and asking for more water. Then I attack him with a brush while he squirms and then relents, because we're going no where until he molars are at least glanced by a brush. He's got the whole sticking the brush under the running water part down. Now he's working on spitting.

This morning he leaned his head over the sink when I did. Then he made a spitting noise. But... no spit. Just the noise. Hmm. I guess spitting is a work in progress.

June 14, 2012 ~ Cake

(I did not foget to post. Daddy had to beat his game, so I had to wait to use the computer. Better late than never.)

Well, the other day was a big birthday for someone important. Someone that doesn't really like cake, but when she does eat cake it needs to be the good stuff. So, I drove myself through baseball traffic. I drove myself through Sailabration traffic. Just to pick up the tastiest cake available in our fine city- Sugarbaker's raspberry amaretto cake with buttercream icing. Look, if you're going to have a milestone, you might as well celebrate in style.

This special someone came over on her birthday and had the cake presented to her here. She was kind enough to share some with a lil guy.

Billy has not had cake in a long time. Either early winter or late fall. Sometime in that range, which, given his age, is a very long time ago to him. So, I doubt that he really remembers what cake is like. He's had cupcakes at school. Not the same.

Well, the cake was so tall that one of the icing flowers was crushed against the inside of the box lid. This gave him the perfect opportunity to try some purple icing. At first he was unsure. Here's this blob of periwinkle goo sitting on cardboard and the adults are saying... "Try it!"

I put some on my finger and showed him that Mommy thought it was yum. (OMG yum!) So, he timidly stuck a finger into the goo. Then he examined it and took a small sample. You know what he did next? He stuck it in his ear! Just kidding. (see the post Going Strawberry Blonde). No. He tried to stick his whole hand into the top of the cake for more. I had to grab him quick before he ruined the cake. It was all I could do to keep him from attacking the actual cake as he devoured every last morsel of purple sugar on the lid.

Well, this special someone doesn't want to acknowledge the passage of time. So I won't talk about that. I'll just post some pictures of Billy and the cake!

Purple icing mayhem!

Getting that last morsel from the lid.

Birthday hijinks!

After dinner Billy got a slice of cake. He smushed all of it into his face. And when he was done? Well, in the great words of Great Aunt Peggy, "That tastes like some more!"

How could we turn him down? He actually said, "More, please?" Manners like that need rewarding, right? ;)

Drawn In Thursdays: Things Kids Do #8

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Fad du jour: The Dinner Hug

June 12, 2012 ~ Happy Birthday!

This is a personal message, going out to an awesome lady from one awesome little kiddo (and me!). Here's wishing you a wonderful birthday, a wonderful year and many happy more to come.

(Just a hint, I mention her sometimes here on the blog!)

Have an awesome birthday!

June 11, 2012 ~ Inundated With Helicopters

It has been the day of helicopters. No joke. I'm inundated, and frankly, tired of hearing them. It started just after lunch. Three helicopters buzzing overhead for hours. It's hard to concentrate in those conditions. Here's what was up:

That would be the massive 5 alarm fire burning right by my work. As I write they are still trying to put the fire out, and we're talking about lunchtime today that it started. I walked down toward the end of the day to have a look.

So just before bedtime I took Billy outside to look at the fireflies. They were out early in the shadow of our tree, which was lucky for him to get to see them. As we were pointing them out to each other (he's an excellent firefly spotter) a police helicopter flew by. Then it started circling right by our house.

I have no idea why they are circling. But they've been out there for about 45 minutes now. Billy got to see a real one in person, which was super cool for him. He loves his toy helicopters, but the real mccoy is always better.

I'm pretty sure it followed me home like a lost puppy from the fire. Dude, there's no room at the inn. Go on home and stop buzzing me!

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Oh yeah. Billy has changed the lyrics to his Pie-Duh song.

"Pie-duh itsy pie-duh pie-duh pie-duh sun pie-duh."