I love my daddy.

I do. I am my daddy's girl. While I do have a good mix of each of my parents' attributes, I am largely my father. I have his personality. I have his sense of humor. I have his work ethic. I even ventured into a very similar profession.

I am 100% okay with that.

Every couple of weeks, my phone will ring sometime mid morning. It's my dad, calling to see if I can meet for lunch in a couple of hours. More often than not, I can. (When I can't, it bums me out.)

I was driving home from the chiropractor's office when my phone rang this morning. I saw that it was my dad, so I didn't answer. What? Didn't I just say I love my dad? He's recently gone on a kick against talking on cell phones while driving. So, I didn't answer, because I didn't want to lie and say I wasn't driving, and I didn't want to feel deceptive by answering and misleading him. But I knew he was likely calling to ask about my lunch plans.

I waited for the voice mail, then picked that up while driving. (Sorry dad!) I did wait until I got home to call him back and confirm lunch, though.

He had reason to be in my neck of the woods at lunchtime, so we met at Fatz. Yum!

Daddy-daughter-grandson time. :) It was sweet. And we laughed so hard at R that I nearly cried.

My sweet daddy meeting 

my sweet baby boy for the first time.

Random Musings from my Yesterday

• R slept until 7:30 yesterday morning!!!
• R has discovered how to -- and loves to -- open the glass shower door in our master bathroom. It is quite hard to shower one-handed while holding the door shut with the other hand...especially if you plan to shave your legs.
• Clean sheet night!!!
• R has a ride-on rocket toy. He rarely ever rides on it and prefers to push it around by its handlebars instead. He's gotten really fast and really dangerous with it. Yesterday, he jammed it full speed into my left ankle. Did I mention I was also cutting fruit? Yeah...that could have been disastrous. 
• While backing out of the garage yesterday, I noticed a big spider on my passenger side window. Thankfully, it was on the outside. At first, I was just going to drive off and hope he blew away. Then, I decided I didn't want another traveling companion. So, I got out of the car and smushed it with my shoe. Juicy. Ew.
•  Because of said spider, I decided to run my car through a gas station car wash yesterday. I haven't been terribly attentive to my car since R was born; poor car! So, it's been a while since we've been through a car wash, and I didn't know how R would react. He thought the initial spray was hilarious! Then, as the big -- umm...what do you call those things? As the big spinny things whacked the car, his eyes got really big. Then he cracked up. He thought the entire process was the greatest thing ever!
• R was still up for the beginning of the Miami Dolphins game. Fergie sang the national anthem (a capella, I believe). R headbanged to it! 
• I unintentionally cleaned the filter in my vacuum cleaner yesterday. Disgusting. But my vacuum sucks in a good way instead of in a bad way now.

Here's R being dangerous with his rocket toy.

Fall Unfavorites

As a follow-up to my previous post about my favorite fall things, I thought I'd be fair and post about what I don't like about fall. Here goes:

• Pumpkin spice lattes 

And, I wish I did. I'm just not into pumpkin stuff. I will certainly settle for knowing that whatever warm beverage I order, it won't make me break out into a sweat. 

I would add raking leaves to that list, but we just have a couple of really tiny trees. Jason can use the mower to take care of whatever leaves actually happen to fall in our yard.

Longest 30 Minutes of My Life

Jason and I went out of town for the weekend. Our favorite band played two back-to-back nights in Isle of Palms. They've done it every year for the last several years. We've only missed it once...last year when we had a brand new baby.

It was really nice to get away. R spent the weekend with grandparents, and we got to enjoy time with great friends, great music and no naptime or bedtime restrictions.

Friday morning, I began to get things ready for us to leave. I've learned that, with a child, it takes pretty much a whole day just to get out of town. I showered, got R dressed, put some laundry in and headed downstairs to get ready to take the dog to the kennel.

Since Piper (the dog) isn't playing nice with R anymore, I put her in the back yard so that R could play for a few more minutes. I grabbed her food and headed into the garage to put that and her bed into my car. I pulled the door shut behind me, because I didn't want R to pry it open and fall down the brick stairs.

I was out there 30 seconds.

When I returned to the door, I found it locked.

Locked?!? Yes...my 13-month-old son locked the garage door on me.

I kind of laughed it off and thought, "It's a good thing I just let the dog out back. At least I can still get in through the unlocked back door."

I got to the back door, and I couldn't get the knob to turn. Sometimes the back door knob gets a little stuck, so I gave it an extra hard twist. It still didn't budge. That's when panic set in.

My 13-month-old son locked me out of the house.

Of course, my cell phone was locked in the house with him. So, I sprinted to our next door neighbor's house. I rang the doorbell and tried to wait patiently. It's the most unnatural thing to be standing on another person's property, knowing that your small child is at home unattended. I rang the doorbell again. Nothing.

I sprinted back across my front yard and to my other next door neighbor's house. All the while, I was frantically trying to figure out where I'd go if she wasn't home, because I knew all of our other neighbors in the cul-de-sac were at work. I wasted no time and rang her doorbell four times right off the bat.

Thankfully, she was home.

She came to the door, even in her nightgown and peeked through the window at me like I was crazy. I said, "I just need your phone," and put my hand to my ear to make the international symbol for "phone."

She let me in and tried to small talk with me. I frantically told her what had just happened, and began to dial Jason's cell phone number on her phone. I had to dial it four or five separate times to actually get it to go through. Once it started ringing, I thought, "Uh-oh. This number is not going to be in Jason's phone, and he might not answer. Then what?"

Thank goodness my husband answers calls from strangers daily.

He answered. Our four second conversation went like this:
     Jason: This is Jason.
     Me: R LOCKED ME OUT OF THE HOUSE!!! HE'S INSIDE!
     Jason: I'm on my way!!!
     Click.

I thanked the neighbor and ran back to my house. I rattled the garage door knob again. Then I ran back to the back yard to try the back door again...just in case. It was then that I got my first glimpse of my captive, yet oh-so-free toddler. He'd heard me rattling the doorknob in the garage, so he was busy toddling away from me and toward the noise he'd heard.

I went back to the front of the house. We have windows down both sides of our front door. I squatted down and started tapping on the glass and making funny faces at R. He thought we were playing an awesome game. That kept him entertained for a little while, and then he lost interest. He probably wondered why I wouldn't come back inside.

I continued to make a fool of myself as I followed him from window to window. It's a good thing that kid love his mama. He never ventured more than about four feet from the front of the house. He just kept looking at me, giggling, smiling and being completely unaware of the real situation.

Finally, Jason pulled into the driveway and ran to unlock the door. It should have taken him much longer, but he said he drove about 70 in a 45 to get home to us.

I ran inside behind Jason. He scooped R up, then handed him to me for a great big hug. It was a nice, sweet ending to the longest 30 minutes of my life.

Fall Favorites

A friend of mine posted this:

People who don't like fall have some serious problems, how could you not like fall?!

Agreed. In honor of her post, I thought I'd post some of my favorite things about fall.

• A much-needed break from the oppressive summer heat
• Wear whatever and be comfortable weather (specifically jeans, t-shirts and flip-flops weather)
• Open windows (and turning the air/heat completely off)
• Crisp air
• The colors of the changing leaves
• Football (I have a love/hate relationship with football; but there's just something great about having the windows open, plopping down on the couch and zoning in on a football game.)
• Munchies (I love an excuse to make and/or consume all kinds of football-watching food.)
• Concert season (It seems like every band goes on tour in the fall. Though it's not the concert-hopping fest it used to be for us, at least we'll get to catch a show here or there...because bands are actually coming to town.)
• General busy-ness (fall brings all kinds of fun stuff)
• Fall for Greenville (which, sadly, I will miss this year)
• Getting back in my car after it's been parked for a bit and not burning my buns on the seat
• Thanksgiving (I. love. comfort. food.)

Since fall isn't even remotely here yet, I'm sure this is just a short list. Maybe I'll amend it once fall is in full swing! Or maybe I'll be too busy enjoying all the perks of fall!