horn of plenty

So I'm squeezing into this chair after having squeezed into my pants and squeezed through the doorway of the office. How did I ever gain so much weight, I might ask myself. I think it can be traced back to the end of nursing, though there may have been some cookies, Mexican food, office snacks, and goldfish that had something to do with it too.

But that didn't stop me and the rest of the team here from celebrating St. Patrick's Day (or excuse me, St. Patrick's Season as it has turned into) in fine style, with a multi-faceted parade (marching bands! bagpipes! cloggers! clowns! people throwing candy! crazy people doing line dances with hand-trucks full of cases of beer!) and a fine corned beef and cabbage dinner at Suzi and Boom-Boom's house. Luke was a little worse for wear by the end of the day yesterday, which is possibly what resulted in him sleeping until 8:35 this morning.

Luke has had a lot of new stimulation in the last two days. Dave finally got tired of the slow trickle of second-rate books that I brought home from the $1 store, so he went all out and just ordered a whole bunch of cool books and music and one DVD from Amazon. It's basically been the "horn of plenty" since it arrived because every time there's a dull moment we can pull out a new book or put on Dan Zanes. Another fave new toy is the $3 green shamrock trumpet from the parade. Funny, while we were at the parade I thought to myself, "These horns are really cool and they aren't all that loud." Then you take away the open air and the crowd of thousands, and you get back in the house, and let me tell you, it is pretty darned loud. ("Mommy say, 'too youd!'")

Today we added to the stimulation by going back down to the beach to see the continuation of the St. Pat's festival and to join in the drum circle. I didn't think it was possible but even Luke finally had his fill of drumming, in just about one hour, when he said, "Bye, drum circle," and headed off in the direction of some construction equipment.

I'm not so happy about traveling tomorrow, particularly because the arrangements and logistics have kind of bled into my long weekend, but I made my decision so I'm headed out of town. I feel even weirder about it now because Luke is in a hyper-mommy mode at the moment (more so than usual) and I know he's going to be thrown off when I'm not there tomorrow for the first time EVER. (Did I mention that already?) Luke now wants me to put him to sleep rather than Dave, though I was able to pinpoint one possible reason last night when I discovered a very large difference in our sleep-putting-down methods: Dave sits on the floor next to the bed and pats him and leaves the room, whereas I climb into the bed and curl up with him and he falls asleep holding my hand. Hmmmm, is all I can say. We'll see how it goes tomorrow. I just can't wait until the next time I have an opportunity to hear, "I yuv you, Mommy!"