in which i complain about my relatively great life.

i fell off the blogging train.
well actually i had a sucky month and i didn't really feel like talking about it.
not all of it was bad, but for the most part last month i have just felt really sad. not going to get into the dirty details, but travis and i have been having an epically long fight, like the longest ever about whether or not he is going to join the national guard. i'm not trying to travis-bash here for the record. it's not his fault i have issues with the people i love leaving me and that his wanting to join makes me think he wants to leave me and is bored with me. anyway, we are in a good place now and probably exciting things will be happening pretty soon here. i'm sure once they are all figured out i'll write it all down.

also, sex heals many marital wounds. it's magical. holding sex grudges isn't worth it.

anyway, here are the past month's phone pictures.

on rem's birthday i put out all the toys from his party so that when he woke up, they would be waiting for him. he was pretty amazed.

 bedhead.

on travis's 26th birthday. he was in hazmat school all day but we spoiled him the rest of the time.

remy got his first ear infection! amazing that his ears have been so good because trav and i both had to have tubes.

sunday nappers.

another sucky thing last month, my kitty of 15 years had to be put down. i said goodbye to my friend who was there for all the good and tough parts of my life. if i keep going, i'll probably cry all over the keyboard, so i'm going to move on and explain that this picture shows us picking out a new kitten. (to live at my mom's house.) we ended up picking another black and white that looks a lot like pepper did. every time i see him at my parents, for a split second, i think it's my kitty.
remy likes having a new fluffy friend though.

this winter we finished our basement so that my friend and old roommate could move in. she is just as badass in person as she is in this picture. roxanne miller, phd student at byu. it's been really nice to have another adult in the house, especially with how much travis is gone.

our gardener hard at work.

i'm growing my hair back out. i googled a butt ton of stuff about how to grow out a pixie cut without too much grief, but i think no matter what you just have to hunker down and embrace the mullet. it's actually not so bad with my naturally curly hair; i mostly look like i have an afro. which i've always wished to have. we'll see how awkward it all gets.

remington melts my heart. he has a very sensitive personality. he cries if you wrestle in front of him. he hugs little kids who are upset. he loves to kiss and snuggle his stuffed animals. and lately he really likes taking care of "babies."

my son has several dolls.
when we sing nursery rhymes, we switch up the words so that they are gender neutral and so that remy gets the idea that boys and girls are equal.
(seriously some nursery rhymes are pretty disturbing. who knew?)
it's incredible how we assign gender roles to these tiny humans. i hear it all the time from family, from strangers at walmart, from neighbors.

"oh he doesn't hold still. he's definitely a boy."
"oh he is playing with dirt. definitely a boy."

other things like that. shirts for boys tend to say things like, "tough like daddy."

i don't want to teach remy that because he's a boy he has to be tough. that because he's a boy he has to be anything. i want him to feel comfortable being any way that he is, whether it's a star athlete straight-as-an-arrow football star, or a boy who likes other boys, or a sensitive guy who writes poems.   i'm way too tired to go on about this very interesting topic, so google it if you want more about gender roles in children. also this was a cool article.

*stepping off soapbox and moving on

his favorite game to play right now, cooking and letting you taste it. and making a mess of every room in the house.

what a treat it's been to play outside every day.

visiting daddy at the fire station.

keepin' it real. for mother's day, i treated myself to a fancy in-office teeth whitening. i figured i'd earned it with the whole pregnancy ruining my teeth thing. they sent me home with some do it yourself whitening as well, so trav gets some pretty sexy pictures of my nightly brightening ritual.
isn't he lucky to come home to this.

some pretty spectacular men's shorts.

for mother's day, travis and remy got me a climbing harness! best gift ever.

my mama opening her gift from us kids, a fancy fossil purse and wallet.

mother's day.
i'm going to be totally honest and tell you that mother's day was kind of a let down.
trav was at the station, and he got switched to a different station at the last minute and they weren't doing any kind of mother's day dinner or anything like the station where he was supposed to be. so mother's day was pretty much like every other day being a single parent. more poops for you, no sleeping in.

trav definitely did his best by taking me for a massage saturday morning, and taking me to dinner and the fun gift.

basically i was a huge whiner in my head all day on mother's day.

yes i know i should just be thankful i am a mother.
yes i tried to make it all about my mother and travs mom.

sometimes being married to a firefighter just blows.
mostly i am so damn idealistic, so i pictured breakfast in bed and remington bringing me flowers he picked for me and travis waiting on me hand and foot.

maybe next year right?

the other day as i was pulling out of the driveway, two deer were standing there on the hill behind our house! if you look really hard in the middle of this picture right on the strip of yellow grass, you can see one of them running away. love where we live.

repotting our avocado tree. remy loves to "help."

home.

roxanne and remington have become best pals. he runs to her every time she comes home and as you can see from this picture, she enjoys being around him too.

at the library for wiggle worm time. oh mommyland. :)

double fist mowing action.

love the cuddles. the older he gets, the more he likes to snuggle me.

sweet pot belly.

i bought this beauty at the daybreak garage sale. $30 in quarters and dimes. i sat on the cement with remy counting change and i'm pretty sure everyone thought i was loony. a couple of young boys came up and asked, "wow! how do you have so much money!" my piles of quarters were impressive, i guess.

another sucky month event, catching some kind of terrible virus and spending a few nights in the ER.
completely losing it and thinking i was pregnant again. i'll probably write a post about this some time soon.

self medicating. these bad boys are each a quart. when the sales person rang me up, she said, "well these will last you at least a month!"
yeah, it's been five days and i'm almost done with one of them. ...

love this stinker.

baby brother zane played a set at art's fest so we went to watch. remy was entranced with the orchestra. (he may have been the only one.)

finally my dining room is coming together.

 bike rides every day.

remy petting slapping his new friend sebastian.

my big DIY project. (the new turquoise knobs i bought last night, not pictured.) all together, cost $50 for the furniture, paint and supplies, and new hardware.

ER croup visit with remington last week. we racked up some awesome ER bills with 3 visits in a week. also, remy and i fell down the stairs the day before this and the fire department came to our rescue. we had a medical filled week.

easily the best part of the month, finding remy's bike seat on ksl classifieds and going for daily rides. he loves "driving" the bike and i love that my legs are going to be pure muscle in a month.

a tough month, but it's over now.
i've probably whined about it long enough.

maybe in the next few days i will find time to post something that has actual writing in it, instead of a flimsy overview and low quality phone pictures.

love, the whiner weiner.

xo.