Seriously?!

What's wrong with me?

Really.  I opened blogspot--for the first time in almost two years--this morning to set up a new page for my book club.  I spent the next hour reading old posts and "remembering" funny/sad/heartfelt moments from years past and wondering why I quit writing these things down.  

I will regret it.  I already do.

Case in point: the kids have now been up for less than 5 minutes and they've all already made me smile and sigh.  

Lucy instantly complained that someone messed up Crystal's bed (her tiny stuffed pink wolf)... "I don't know who it was.  Maybe the L-U-C-Y ghost??"  Where does she get this stuff?!

Jonah and Jackson went immediately to the glass door to see if there was snow and whispered their shouts of excitement to each other, so they wouldn't wake up Lucy (who was already up, but they didn't know that).  When Jackson turned around and saw me in the living room chair (I'm usually in the kitchen and/or laundry room when they get up), he squealed and ran toward me in his most excited fashion: with one arm spinning around bicycle-style... then he jumped over the chair arm and onto my lap.

Jonah, grinning ear-to-ear, climbed on top of both of us and said he just loved foggy, snowy days and hoped it would stay this way all day.  "It's just beautiful outside!"

Smile.  Sigh.

Since I haven't checked in for a looong time, I have a million things to say--like usual--but I'll stop here because I know the main reason I never write is because it takes too long.  Well.  Normal people don't spend two hours writing a few paragraphs, like I do.  Their posts might not always be perfect, but they're entertaining and informative and they have wonderful chronicles of their good times and stories.  I don't.

Maybe my resolution this year will be writing/updating once a month?  Even if no one reads blogs anymore (see??  Facebook really is the devil!), I'll have the stories later on for myself and the kids.

Okay... so if anyone is actually reading this, Merry Christmas!  You might get a card from me in a few weeks... or I'll quit halfway through, like I usually do, and end up wondering what to do with the 50 leftover cards next December.  Isn't the suspense thrilling??

Happy Snow Day!!

Finally, Some News!!

If you’re reading this, there’s a good chance you received a Christmas card from us this year. There’s also a good chance you were surprised to discover that we still didn’t know where Brad planned to get a “real” job in July, when he reaches the end of his journey to become a physician. The process included four years of undergrad, four years of medical school, one year of internship, four years of active duty in the Air Force, three years of ophthalmology residency, and one year of cornea fellowship.

Yep, folks, that’s 17 years. Time to get a job. I’m sure Brad would maintain that there were phases of his training that were possibly more grueling than the experience of finding a job, but from my perspective this last year has been the worst. Here’s a recap:

January 2010

Brad finalizes his vita and begins to narrow down his focus.

We realize that he doesn’t know

(1) what kind of work he’d like to do… general or cornea specialist

(2) whether he’s looking for a private or academic position

(3) what size of group…solo, 2 or 3…8-10…40… university

(4) oh, and where our family should try to settle. 50 states.

February

Brad applies for an advertised cornea specialist position at a huge group in Albuquerque and cold-calls a medium-sized group in Boise (our first choice, by far).

March

He hears back from Albuquerque. “You seem like a good fit, but we want to hire before July 2011.” He hears from Boise, “Oh wow! We’ve been thinking of adding a cornea specialist! We’ll get you out here for an interview, just to make sure, but…great!”

April

May

June

Brad graduates from residency. The family moves to Baltimore. Serious discussions begin. Tension begins to mount. Where to go? What do I want to do???? If only our families weren’t so far from each other… and in sucky states. He sends a second, larger batch of resumes, mostly to advertised openings.

July

August

He is offered interviews in

Kalamazoo, MI (solo, wanting to retire)

Portland, Maine, (multispecialty private group of 8)

Eugene, OR (solo, wanting to retire)

Albuquerque (huge group, where no one apparently has filled that cornea spot)

A few others around the country start recruiting him, including

St. Louis (private practice with 2 or 3)

Detroit (University Cornea Specialist)

There are academic cornea spots open in

Oklahoma City (near my family) and

Morgantown, WV (near Brad’s family)

September

He gets a surprising email from the program director at Penn State. “Brad, I’m not sure I can make it happen, but you would come back to Penn Sate if we offered you a position??”

He goes to Eugene, OR, for his first official interview. That’s a story for another post altogether… let’s just say for now…. Weird, weird, weird, freaky, creaky, bizarre. No.

He receives an email from Traverse City Michigan (where?!) inviting him for a phone interview with another solo guy wanting to retire. Agrees to talk, but only because the Eugene experience, while quite strange, showed him that solo might be doable under the right circumstances.

October

He interviews with a few places and entertains the possibility of various positions. Narrows them down to Albuquerque (awesome practice, cornea specialist, lots of money) and Traverse City, MI (WHERE?!), with some hope remaining that he could also return to Penn State.

End of October

Brad and I visit Traverse City and absolutely fall in love with the area and the practice.

November

TC sends a contract!!!

We freak out because the contract is a bit strange and confusing and goes into detail about Brad buying the practice. We decide to turn them down and focus on Albuquerque.

December

TC offers to delete 2/3 of contract and bring Brad on as an associate, with no obligation to purchase the practice.

Brad interviews in Albuquerque. Loves the practice, thinks the people are great, decides he wants the security of a large group, chooses being a cornea specialist. Plans to accept the job.

Albuquerque calls!! With…not a job offer, as expected, but a decision to change the job into a LASEK spot (corrective laser "surgery") rather than a cornea job.

5 minutes later (literally!!!)

Traverse City calls.

Instead of politely declining the job, Brad agrees to a second interview.

January 2011

Penn State gets back to him, “hey Brad! We’re still working on getting that position. Would love to have you here!”

He goes on a second interview in Traverse City. Loves the area even more in winter and begins to get used to the idea of possibly running his own multi-million dollar practice with 30 employees.

February

Negotiations continue with Traverse City. More bumps in the road. More confusion and frustration.

Penn State calls, “Brad! I’ve got a meeting this week to see if we have the funding! I’ll let you know!”

Middle of February

He hears nothing from Penn State.

Traverse City finally works out all of the kinks and we reach an agreement that is satisfactory to all involved. Our lawyer signs off on it.

February 18

Brad formally accepts the position in Traverse City.

Today

A paper contract should arrive in the mail. Once Brad signs it, we are officially

MOVING TO TRAVERSE CITY MICHIGAN!!!!

Thank you a million times to all of you who have given advice, support, information, encouragement, etc, over the years and this last year in particular. When I get around to posting another entry, I’ll tell you a bit more about Traverse City and why we love it.

Ahhhhhhhhhhhh.

Feels good.

Facebook is the Devil

So I'm quitting Facebook.

I mean, doesn't it annoy you, too? I thought all of the social networking was great when I first discovered it. Who wouldn't want to stay in touch more easily with more friends and have more people interested in your goings-on? Especially for those of us who move frequently or travel often, which is pretty much everyone I know, Facebook seems like a great thing. And it was. At first.

But now I feel it has gone over to the dark side, at least for me. I should take a moment to assure my faithful readers that I have absolutely no judgment whatsoever toward people who continue to use Facebook, even extensively. It's fun! It's neat to be in touch with tons of people, both near and far. It's validating to find out that everyone in America is experiencing that same stomach virus. And there are people who I really liked at one time, but out of laziness, busy-ness, or just the reality of the passing of time, have lost touch with and now I have a way of tracking them down and vice-versa.

Case in point: I recently connected with an acquaintance from the school where I taught from 1997-2001. (Wow. Has a decade really gone by since I pulled out of Houston in a yellow truck, a newlywed, heading for Cleveland?) It was really great to catch up with this girl from my old school and hear a bit of gossip from down south. She's even, like me, married to a doctor and has preschool-aged children, which means we probably have a lot in common. Now, the two of us were never BFF and even had our differences sometimes, but I respected and admired her and enjoyed hearing how her life has continued since we parted ways. I looked forward to being back in touch with that part of my life.

At this point, you're probably thinking, "So what's the problem? Sounds great to reconnect. You're so fortunate to have people in your life whom you enjoy spending virtual time with!" And you're right, I am fortunate. VERY. And please don't think for a moment that that is lost on me or that I'm ungrateful for the dozens of amazing people who take time to communicate with me. I love it. I enjoy it. I'm entertained by it. I'm kept from being lonely and it's made it seem reasonable that I have no actual friends in my one-year, transitional residence in Baltimore. In fact, if anyone is actually reading this post, it's someone important from my history (or a nosey random stranger spying on my blog... if that's you, bug off!). Hello there--good to "see" you.

Okay, I'll get on with my diatribe already. Here's the problem: my brain is already pretty full with personal stuff. Maybe it's not exciting or even interesting in there, but there are a million decisions and thoughts about my 3 active young children; memories of my family, who are all far away; thoughts of my family-in-law, who are also far away; worries about The Job (that's another blog altogether); concerns about money; guilt about a messy house and an uncooked dinner; confusion about how to make it to the grocery store with 3 kids, since I (still) have an absentee husband; worry about my kids' development, etc etc etc. Every mom out there is nodding and agreeing that there's a lot to think about all day every day, even if you're not really doing anything at all. Like I said, it's not big stuff, but it's pretty consuming.

So what am I doing adding guilt to the mix for not writing back to the girl in Houston and catching her up on MY life for the last decade? And why do I find myself wanting to send her an email and ask her opinion on the search for a physician job, even though I haven't talked to her in 10 years and she knows nothing about me or my husband? Along those lines, why do I care that the girl I knew in youth group is having a bad Monday? Like she does every Monday. Is it worth giving up the brain-bytes to process the knowledge that a friend of a friend who I met once at a party is on their way to Starbucks?

REALLY?????? THIS is how I'm using my left-over thoughts and time?? That can't be right. Are there really 276 people whose weekends I need to know about? Should I really spend the spare 3 minutes I have between changing a diaper and starting a load of laundry commenting on the fact that so-and-so in such-and-such country thought the Daily Show last night was funny? (It was, but that's beside the point.) Furthermore, should I entertain myself while driving by mentally composing my new status to include something about how ridiculous it is that school was cancelled today even though there was barely a light dusting of snow on the grass? Furthermore, should the girl whose brother was in my brother's high school class CARE about MY irritation today??

No. Pure and simple. No. They shouldn't. I shouldn't. It's too much!!!!! Stop the madness!

Here's my proposal: How about starting another site called Monthbook. Or Yearbook (course that already has another meaning...) or Tenminutebook? People are allowed to log in up to once a month, for up to ten minutes, to find out what everyone in their conscious memory is doing. Or they can check in for an hour once a year to find out the big stuff like new babies, moves, new professions, etc. We used to do that in Christmas cards, you know. I noticed this year, though, that update letters were much more uncommon than they were during the years after mass computer-generated paper messages, but before social networking. I assume it's because everyone is on Facebook now and they know that everyone already knows what they've been up to, so why annoy people with even more factoids about how they spent their (mostly uninteresting) year?

I'm done ranting. But I felt I needed to explain why I've gone inactive on Facebook. To the few people who take time to read my thoughts on the matter, even though their brains are already full of their own, possibly very important thoughts. And then we're back to the beginning. Why are we all doing this to ourselves?? And why are you still reading this???

If you are happily doing the Facebook thing, great. I hope it's a wonderful blessing for you, as it is for millions and millions of people. It just isn't working for me anymore because of my personality and who I am. (It's me, not you...) When people can tune in occasionally when they really do have some free time, it's a fantastic way to keep up with people they really care about, even if it does mean managing all of the extra annoyances that come along with that, like hoping your potential employer doesn't find those pics of you falling-down drunk at your nephew's Bar Mitzvah.

And I've now exceeded, by far, my own 10-minute limit of ignoring my children in order to post my random, uninteresting, and possibly controversial thoughts about the world of virtual communication.

Ironic, don't you think?!

Thanks for tuning in. Comments are welcome, but please don't make a comment on my Facebook page so the entire world (my entire world) knows what you think of me.

Trust me: they don't care.

Not Really Back., but Feeling Guilty

Hey all!

I haven't written in months and months and now it's been so long that I feel like I have to write something fabulous and post wonderful pics to make up for my ridiculous absence.

It's not going to happen, though (partly because the computer with all the photos is in the shop for a while) so I'm just going to bite the bullet and post a few sentences, sans-photos, sans-humor. It's faster that way and maybe I'll get back in the saddle without all the pressure of posting something grand. Maybe???

So, if anyone is tuning in... you might wonder what's up with us...here's what's been going on:

• All chaos, all the time
• Jackson's 3rd birthday was 2 weeks ago!!!
• Lucy's birthday is this Saturday!!! Can't believe it!
• I'm more than a little depressed to say goodbye to the baby days. I'll shake it eventually, but it's been a rough few weeks, emotionally.
• Jonah's 5th birthday is in two weeks!!
• (yep, in case you weren't already aware, we have birthdays every-other-week in nov/early dec)
• Brad has been crazy busy on the interview trail, but he's finally done
• Match Day is December 8 and we'll find out then if/where he'll complete a fellowship year (starting in July)
• I know I'll sound like a stupid whiner for saying this, but Brad has been working, traveling, or on call for the better part of 2 months and we're ready for a break.
• We are excited to move on, but are already sad to leave our friends here in central PA
• We are fairly self-absorbed (as usual) and really excited/worried/confused about where to pursue a "real" job and start our (hopeful) permanent life. What pressure!! We would LOVE some advice!!! Where would you go if you could pick anywhere in the USA? (Not that we can take our pick, but we have to start somewhere, so why not shoot for the stars??)

That's it in a nutshell! The kids are all amazing: Jonah is intense and funny and smart, Jackson is a sweetie pie and the class clown, and Lucy is chubby and laughy and adorable and sweet. Love them!!!!

Okay... now the pressure's off... I can post when I want and whatever I want because it hasn't been 8 months, right?

Hope everyone is doing GREAT!!!!!

Thanks for tuning in...

A Perfect Day... For Reals!

I know it's been a while since I've updated my blog, and I apologize to the one person who actually logs on from time to time (JH). It's not that I haven't had anything to say and not even that I haven't had time. Really, I waste hours every day. I don't even know what I do with my time. But I don't do anything productive, like updating my blog. That's not what this entry is about, though, so I'll move on.

We had a Perfect Day a couple of weeks ago. We really did. Don't brace yourself for the punchline: there's none.

Brad spent about a week in Philadelphia for a review course and my awesome brother Tod came to visit during that time. He was overdue for a visit anyway, so I talked him into coming while I could use an extra hand around the house. Since I had an extra person to help, we decided to head over to Philly for the day. I had heard there was a great children's museum there and I thought we might actually get to see Brad while we were there, too.

Now, most of my stories have something to do with how everything goes wrong, how I can't believe the crazy antics of my kiddos--especially the two bigger ones--or how my life is completely spinning out of control. It seems to be entertaining to everyone, so I will continue with my typical self-deprecating style next entry. I'm almost always good for a laugh and an "at-least-I'm-not-HER" now and then, right?!

But this isn't that kind of story. In fact, I hesitate to go into much detail because anyone who reads this will be jealous and think I've somehow gotten my act together. NOT TRUE! I'll preview the story by saying this: everything went exactly the way it was supposed to. Really. I'm not making it up. If you're not interested in reading about our amazing experience (because you're not going to end this with a feeling of supperiority as you realize your stories are never as embarrassing as ours), stop reading now.

Here it is:

We were able to get out of the house without anyone shedding tears. We left a mere 20 minutes late (anyone with kids knows this is HUGE). There was no line at Starbucks. The address of the children's museum didn't come up on the GPS, but when I searched for it by name, it did. Even better! We made it onto the turnpike and all the way into Philly without incident. Until we drove up in front of the "museum." It was a run-down, apparently abandoned building with a faded sign that read "Please Touch Museum." Since this isn't a typical Hochstetler story, you won't be surprised that I had a vague memory of a random checkout clerk at a grocery store telling me sometime last year that the museum had moved into a new building. I called the museum (yes, I remembered to write the number down and I even remembered to bring it with me) and found out they changed the name of the road it's on and I was able to bring it up on the GPS after all.

Here's the part of the story when I would usually go into great detail about how I drove around in circles while yelling at the GPS and begging Jonah to just be quiet for ONE MINUTE of his LIFE while I figured out how to maneuver out of the horrible traffic jam/accidient/construction/confusing roads in order to get where we were going. That didn't happen. None of it. We changed our course and arrived without confusion at the new and improved museum about 10 minutes later. There was free on-the-street parking right in front of the building. Jonah made it all the way into the restroom before he pottied. Jackson, Jonah AND Lucy sat patiently while I didn't wait in line--because there wasn't one. They accepted credit cards (no one carries that much cash, believe me), we got our tickets, and walked right in.

The kids played. They investigated. They cooperated. They shared (except when a little girl got ahold of Henry a couple of times: Jackson freaked out and I had to intervene). They remained pleasant in spite of skipping naps. We ate lunch there and didn't drop any slices of pizza on the floor and we didn't even spill milk all over our clothes. I expected everyone to lose it by 3 at the latest, but they were still having fun at 4, so we headed over to Brad's hotel.

When we got there, we went swimming. I even remembered to pack ALL of our bathing suits! There was a kiddy pool. What hotel has a kiddy pool?! When Brad finished for the day, he joined us and we all swam for a while. Jackson, who absolutely hates swimming, jumped in over and over, including one time when Brad wasn't even looking, but that's another story.

After we swam, we cleaned up and got dressed for dinner. We found an On the Border online (our favorite chain restaurant!). We called ahead to reserve a table and waited only about 20 minutes to be seated. The food was awesome and there was--get this--a girl walking around making balloon shapes. I'm not kidding! Jonah got a Spiderman and Jackson got a penguin. We finished dinner, headed back to the hotel to drop Brad off, found our way out of Philly in the dark and all the way back to Harrisburg without a flat tire, traffic jam, or getting lost. We finally arrived home around 12:30 am and the kids all got their pjs on and went back to sleep without a fuss.

I'm serious. That was our day. I couldn't possibly make this up.

There were only two dark spots (that's the opposite of bright spots, right? Even though no one says it) in our day. The first was at the restaurant, when we heard a loud POP and looked over to see the most painful look of horror a 4-year-old is capable of on Jonah's face. Fortunately, Tod had tipped the balloon girl really well, so when she heard the POP and ensuing wail coming from our table, she was there in about 30 seconds to replace Spiderman's destroyed head.

And when we were headed back to the hotel to drop Brad off, we were suprised to come suddenly upon a toll booth as we re-entered Pennsylvania. The toll was four dollars and we absolutely could not scrape it together, mostly because Tod spent his last five bucks on getting a new head for Spiderman. The booth attendant was completely unsympathetic and really had no solution for us. We finally talked her into taking our license number and letting us through so we could get some money and return to pay.

That's it: there's no twist or surprise ending. That was our Perfect Day.

But you might log in next week to see if there's a photo of Brad in handcuffs when he's arrested for failure to pay a toll. We could be in serious trouble if they had secret cameras and tracked us down even though we gave the wrong license number and most certainly did not return to pay the lousy toll. Oops!

I guess if that happens, you can all laugh at us and celebrate that little bit of Karma that headed our way because we rejoiced over our Perfect Day. And you can all go back to thinking your life isn't so bad compared to ours.

Til then, safe travels, everyone!

Christmas Gift

Brad's office gave him a Christmas gift of $100. I thought that was very nice and mentioned to my mom that we were adding it to our other money gifts and trying to decide how to spend our little pot of cash.

She said I should let Brad spend the $100 on anything he wanted. I agreed and brought it up this morning. Here's how the conversation went:

Tara: My mom said you should get to keep your $100 and spend it on whatever you want.
Brad: Okay. (smiles)
Tara: I mean, you're the one who puts up with all their crap every day, so you should get to keep the money.
Brad: Cool. (chuckles)
Tara: Of course, WE put up with a lot of crap because of them, too...
Brad: Yeah, you do! Maybe you should keep the money and spend it on whatever YOU want.
Tara: Awesome! Thanks.

Happy New Year, Faithful Readers!!

"Don't you just love New York in the fall?

It makes me want to buy school supplies.
If I knew your address, I'd send you
a bouquet of freshly sharpened pencils."

--Tom Hanks (as Joe Fox) in You've Got Mail

Who doesn't love fall, right? It almost seems like a cliche' to extol its virtues. So I find that I'm one of those people who goes around saying--as if can can somehow convince everyone--no, I REALLY love fall!

I don't usually go into all the reasons why I like fall so much, partly because they're mostly very obvious, but for some reason I feel compelled today to explain myself. I always felt richest and happiest in the cooling, crisp, leaves-turning-brilliant autumn, but in the fall of 2000, September and October earned their places in my personal history as Best Months Ever.

You see, I fell in love that fall. And not just a little bit in love, but in the kind of love you read about in books and see in movies. The kind of love that takes your breath away and makes you stay up all night just so you can keep experiencing it. The kind of love that makes you want to become immortal so you can spend eternity with your vampire boyfriend. (Okay, that last part was just to see if you're still reading... and to admit that I'm just a bit over the top with the Twilight series.)

Brad and I met in late July because of a wedding. I was living in Houston and he was in Cleveland. I traveled to Ohio for a friend's wedding... she was from Ohio, but we taught at the same school in Houston. I won't go into great detail here, but it was definitely love at first sight. I actually had one of those epiphany-like moments when I first looked at him and thought something along the lines of "This could be the first glimpse of the rest of my life." No kidding.

We didn't start dating immediately, but it was pretty obvious--to us and everyone else--that we hit it off. We were like silly teenagers, laughing uncontrollably and tuning out everyone else. We were giddy. I saw Brad twice that weekend and somehow knew that we would become best friends. He came to visit Houston about a month later and I decided then that I was falling head-over-heels in love with him and that I wanted to be more than friends. He later told me of the exact moment that he decided (during that weekend) I was The One.

We spent the next six weeks talking on the phone as much as possible and e-mailing nearly every day. We never actually established that it was a courtship, but it was about as old-fashioned (if you can call talking on the phone and e-mailing old-fashioned) of a courtship as possible. Within those six weeks, we covered every imaginable topic except, of course, whether we were actually interested in each other romantically. I finally got up the nerve to ask if I could visit him during my fall break and we spent the last couple of weeks before then making plans.

I've never been so nervous in my life! Here I was, completely, hopelessly, ridiculously in love with a guy who never even told me if he was interested in more than friendship. Just before I left for my trip, my 6th grade students were giving me advice on how to let him know I LIKED him. My favorite was Shannette, who said I should "Put on a nice dress--not a hoochie mama dress or nothin--and take him out to a romantic dinner."

When he picked me up at the airport, I had a pretty strong indication that he was feeling the same way. He handed me a bouquet of freshly sharpened pencils and I knew he was just as smitten:

Of course I would like to go on and on about that wonderful weekend, but my purpose in writing this was to share my extra-special love for this season. In addition to all the other things that I enjoy about this time of year, I have the precious memories of falling in love with my best friend. The best part: he fell in love with me too.

More Random Trivia from Jonah

Jonah (at the park... no apparent context involved):

Daddy! Did you know female praying mantises eat their husbands?!?

A New Low

So... I forgot to feed one of my kids lunch today. The worst part--other than the forgetting-to-feed-my-kid part--is... I didn't even realize it until about 9 pm, when Brad and I were about to sit down to our dinner after putting the kids to bed. A quick aside: We ate that late because Jonah had soccer practice tonight. I was so proud of myself for getting supper in the oven beforehand and setting the timer, so we could arrive back home to a pre-prepared, home-cooked meal. Unfortunately, I must have set the timer wrong, because it was all still uncooked when we got home! So we fed the kids (Brad did it, so I'm pretty sure they both got food that time) and put them to bed while our supper was cooking. Brad opened the freezer to get ice for his drink and wondered aloud, "Whoa, whose corndogs are these?!"

Yeah. A perfect end to a perfect day. I was thinking of writing about my day anyway, but didn't have the energy and, well, it's not really that good of a story; just one of those nothing-went-right kind of days. It was just a crappy day.

But when I realized that I actually FORGOT to feed one of my kids, I thought I should take the time to make that information public. Maybe it will make someone laugh, or at least feel better about herself as a mom. In that case, it's worth the humiliation of revealing yet another Worst Mom story.

Evidently, I microwaved his nasty, processed, frozen corndogs in the microwave and stuck them in the freezer to cool off before giving them to him--like I do every meal (with variations on the type of frozen food, of course). Who knows what happened after that to distract me--I can only imagine--but I do remember commenting, "Boy! You sure scarfed those down! Do you want a cheese stick?!" He ate it--maybe--and then asked for grapes, like usual. He ate a lot and kept asking for more, but I didn't think much of it since he really likes grapes. Poor thing was probably wishing he could yell at me, "Seriously?! Cheese and grapes for lunch? What is this, Italy?! I'm starving over here!" But, being his sweet Jackson self, he just smiled, laughed, and played like normal. He didn't go to sleep right away at nap time and I wondered if he had reflux. Turns out that wasn't really an option, since I FORGOT to FEED him!!! Poor thing. He was probably too hungry to sleep!

So here's my "You're Welcome!" in advance for every other mother who takes a look at this entry. Once again, I've earned the Worst Mom title.

At least I'm good at something, right?!