is it next month already?

This has been a pretty big month.

Let's see - since our last postings, we've been to Savannah and Hilton Head for a very strange wedding (VSW) and revamped our entire morning routine. Now that I'm a mom, I think the latter is more notable.

The VSW was VS (but lovely) for several reasons. First, the wedding and the reception were in precisely the same location, but not on the same day; one Saturday, and one Sunday. Frankly, my reception was on a different day, but that was because I was married in Hawaii but had a reception here in the midwest; the commute would've been prohibitive. This was at the very same place, a house on the beach. This leads to the second oddity - the bride and groom stayed in the house on the beach, which was gorgeous - makes total sense. However, they invited several other couples to stay there in the house with them, for their honeymoon. I wouldn't have reacted well had friends and/or family shown up on my honeymoon. We wanted to do things on our own time, sightsee what we wanted to see and generally spend two weeks playing together. Third, the speeches were interesting, in that the best man's speech centered around the small size of the groom's privates, and the groom's didn't mention the bride (though it did mention several tourist attractions in the area and the general advantages of Hilton Head). Hmmm.

Savannah's lovely, though - we took the trolley tour on a day that was so hot we melted, ate on the riverfront and enjoyed the plantation-style architecture. We'll definitely be going back there. Hilton Head was wonderful as always, and we have about a zillion pictures of Aidan being adorable on the beach. He loved being curious and digging in the world's biggest sandbox much more than he loved being in a hotel pool. Not excited about the pool. He also had a great time at putt-putt, carrying his red plastic club around the course and giving emphatic commentary.

Also last month my company won a contract for a large project that I'll be working on for a new client (NC). NC will be taking most of my time, though I'm still keeping Fridays free as much as possible. Because of wanting Fridays for Aidan Play Time, I need to be more prompt during the week to fit in as many hours as possible. This has led to the Great Morning Reshuffling. Now Daddy takes Aidan to school two days and I take him two days, which feels extremely luxurious so far. Aidan's trying to adjust to his new schedule that gets him up 1-2 hours earlier every day. Between that and cutting a bunch of molars (early), he's having a bit of a rough week. On the bright side, my little company is expanding faster than we'd thought.

One new development with Aidan is "uh-oh," a very useful word if you're 15 months old. He doesn't quite understand that "uh-oh" is for an accident; he uses it that way, but also in a way analogous to "fore!" If he's about to throw something, he'll say "uh-oh" and then throw it. He also uses it as, "Hey - I'm trying to tell you something here!" For example, earlier in the week Daddy forgot to put the car seat in the car ahead of time, so had to do it in the morning. Apparently he wasn't as alert as one might hope, because driving down the road, he heard the "uh-oh" and then the same but more urgently. He turned around to see what was going on, and Aidan's seat was slanted to 45 degrees or more, and Aidan was hanging precariously across the seat. He says that was a sight to see (and hilarious to hear), and we're still laughing about it.

Now our travels for the year are over, which is bittersweet. This girl loves to travel! However, I am happy to have a little more time, conceivably, to work on the house. I have to say that my house is not immaculate, as surprising as that may be, and that I can use the time to do some cleaning up of clutter or find the actual ground beneath the weeds in the back yard. Wish me luck on all counts.

ps - a word from recent experience: bang! If your sump pump has stopped working and it appears that your basement is going to flood, don't panic. When you call your dad at 4 am, he'll suggest that you bang on it, and it will go right back on, averting however narrowly all disaster. Seems that banging on sump pumps is well-known in some circles, but for those who aren't in the know like I wasn't, there's a helpful hint.