Dear Handsome,

Yesterday you turned three years old. I don’t know where the time has flown. It really does feel like yesterday that I was lying in that hospital bed waiting so anxiously and desperately to meet you, my sweet little angel. I vividly remember when I heard your first cry, and to this day it makes my heart beat fast and swell up with love.

I cannot tell you how happy I am to be your mama. I am honored and proud that you’re my son. You’ve grown and changed so much in the past year it’s been amazing to watch you grow from a baby boy into a toddler, who’s independence grows daily and who isn’t afraid to share his opinion with others.

I’m so proud of you and the strong-willed little boy you are becoming. I won’t lie, it is difficult at times when you demand to have your way and your father and I feel otherwise. You are by no means easy! It is definitely a challenge to be a parent, but I’m thrilled to be one of yours! Being your mama is also the most rewarding job I’ve ever had in my entire life.

Watching you grow, learn and be inspired by what’s around you, inspires me to be a better person, a better mother, and a better human being. You make me want to grow and learn with you! You inspire me daily and for that I am thankful, my love. You truly are a blessing to your dad and I.





It made us so happy to see how much you enjoyed your birthday party on Saturday, and how much you enjoyed playing with your cousins! We watched as your face lit up with joy as you laughed with them, and enjoyed your special day. There’s no doubt in my mind that we made the right decision in moving here.

Here, we have seen you blossom into a smart, energetic, and enthusiastic little boy. It made me so happy to know that your little cousins were excited for your party, not just for the party itself, but excited to celebrate it with you!





There were a lot of reasons why we chose to move across the country, but the biggest reason was you, my sweet angel. Daddy and I wanted to give you the best possible life that we are able to, and moving you here to be near family and friends makes all the difference.

As you continue to grow and learn and evolve, I’m amazed. To you, the world is fascinating, wonderful, and beautiful. I hope that you continue to hold onto those feelings and continue to see the world like you do now at three years old.

Right now is a time in your life when you love all things cars and trucks and trains. It makes me smile to know that your love of all things motorized is only rivaled by your love of books! You love to read even if it’s just a look at the pictures and it makes me so happy to see a book in your chubby little hands.

It makes me so happy when things are quiet, it’s raining outside, and your first instinct is to run to your room, grab a book, sit next to me on the couch and say “read mama read.”

I love you so much my sweet boy! Daddy and I look forward to another year of learning, growing and loving.

Happy birthday sweetheart!

I love you to the moon and back.

Love,
Mama

A colleague of mine has a beautiful daughter named Karrigan, with an even more beautiful idea to help make her mommy smile. I hope you’ll read this post and be inspired to give Karrigan her wish.

You see, Karrigan’s mommy is fighting a tough and sudden fight against colon cancer. She is well aware that mommy is sick. Being the sweetheart she is, she desperately wants to do something to make mommy smile and feel better again. She was wondering what she could do to make mommy feel better, and thought long and hard about what might make her smile.

She knows mommy loves sparkles, so she asked her daddy if they could figure out a way to give mommy more of them. Her amazing daddy, Rich (my colleague) came up with the idea of making a special tiara out of lights and hanging it outside the front door so it would shine at night. How brilliant (pun intended) is that?!

Rich also had the idea to ask EVERYONE they know to take a string of their Christmas lights and hang them up outside their front door (in whatever shape you want) from now until Mommy is feeling better. Keep them lit all night long – every night. This way Mommy will have more sparkles than she could ever wish for, and from all around the world!

Karrigan wants everyone to take a picture of their lights and post them on her mommy’s Facebook page so she can see them and smile.

To keep her privacy, please feel free to email me your photo of lights (use the contact me form in the navigation) or post the photo directly on Beautiful Spit Up’s Facebook page and I’ll share them with Karrigan and her mommy.

I know Christmas is over, but I really hope that you’ll take some time out of your day to help make Karrigan’s mommy feel better with sparkles.

Thanks guys! Trying to light up the world…..

Hugs,

Roses are red
Violets are blue

I wouldn’t want to sit on the couch and watch American Idol with anyone else, but you

Love you,
Evie

I’m going to try, really. Especially the relax part. How about you?

So I’m finally getting around to writing about our trip across the country from Boston to Seattle. It’s a miracle, I know! Since this story is wicked long, I’m going to break it out into four parts. Enjoy!

Part Two:

Our story left off with a broken down U-Haul truck in Indiana…


Stuck in Indiana and we were not even halfway there yet. We were only three days into the trip, you guys! Three!

That same night, my husband called U-Haul and they apologized greatly and promised we would have a brand-new U-Haul truck in the morning, and we’d be on our way. That turned out to be a big fat, stinking lie. But on the bright side, we did not have to pack up the truck ourselves.

U-Haul hired movers to pack up the truck for us, which sounded awesome in theory. Unfortunately they hired two guys for ONE day, to do a job that took four people THREE days to do. We knew that there was no way we were going to get out of there in 24 hours.

Two days later…

We were back on the road with a new truck.

I have to say, those were some of the longest three days of my life. I was tired, stressed out, and desperately in need of a facial.

Once we were on the road again, Handsome calmed down so long as we stopped every 2-3 hours. If you have ever taken a long road trip you know that stopping every 2 to 3 hours is not the best idea to make good time. But with a toddler in the car you would do just about anything to keep your sanity. Trust me!

I’m not proud of the parenting decisions I made on the road. I admit that. I gave that boy candy, toys, potato chips, pretty much everything that I would normally say no to I said yes to on this godforsaken road trip.

Parenting fail, for sure.

But when this happened?

It was like Christmas morning!

The rest of the trip gets better, I promise. Stay tuned!

So I’m finally getting around to writing about our trip across the country from Boston to Seattle. It’s a miracle, I know! Since this story is wicked long, I’m going to break it out into four parts. Enjoy!

Part One:

The trip started out great. We got to Pennsylvania by the end of the first day, and decided to stop for the night. The next morning we continued on to the lovely state of Indiana. (That was sarcasm in case you didn’t notice.)

When we arrived in Indiana we were exhausted and had been driving all day. The boy had had just about enough. And so had mom and dad. Handsome had been screaming for, I kid you not, two hours. Yeah, 120 minutes. 3,600 seconds. Do you know what it’s like to listen to a toddler scream at the top of his lungs for two whole hours? I pray you never have to find out.

At that point, we were exhausted. We just wanted to stop, shower, and relax. We decided to stop at a well-known hotel chain, which one, I will not share.

We get there and we think, hey this is great, it’s gotta be a good deal since the university is nearby. The rate was indeed reasonable, so we booked two rooms, one for the guys and one for us.

As we’re unloading the truck, we start to see that maybe this isn’t the hotel for us. There seemed to be a lot of unsavory characters in the area, to say the least.

The husband and the guys decided to go and get some ice and some snacks for us to eat before we decide where to get dinner from. My husband comes back not 10 minutes later, looks at me seriously, says, “I’ll be right back” and goes outside. I’m thinking,”What the hell. Is something going on?”

WTF?

Just then, my brother comes in and says “Hey I know you guys got a reasonable rate and everything but I don’t think we should be staying in this hotel.”

My response to him was, “Why, what’s going on?”

He looked at me and said, “Your husband just got propositioned by a prostitute.”

What? OMG.

While they were unloading the truck, my brother noticed that they were being watched by a group of what appeared to be gangsters or drug dealers or something of that nature. They were watching and whispering. One of them even pointed in the direction of our truck. So we realized that that hotel probably wasn’t the place to park our U-Haul with all of our belongings inside.

My husband came back into the room and told me that we needed to find another hotel. I asked him what was going on and he told me we’d talk about it later and we should just get out of there.

Oh yeah, that didn’t freak me out one bit!

We loaded up the truck again and the husband went inside to ask for a refund. He told the woman at the desk what happened and she was visibly shaken and looked almost embarrassed about the whole thing. I mean, this is a very popular hotel chain. She apologized profusely and gave us a full refund.

We left Hotel Hooker and went to another popular chain that was a little further down the road. The new hotel was much nicer, and was probably going to be about twice the cost of the other hotel, but at that point we wanted somewhere nice and somewhere somewhere safe. Cost be damned.

We get to the new hotel as the woman behind the desk was having difficulty unlocking her office door. She told my husband, if he jumped over the counter to open the door from the inside, that she’d go ahead and give us a really discounted rate for helping her out.

My husband, always one to help and me always up for a good deal, agree that he should go ahead and jump the counter to help her out. We ended up staying in a beautiful big suite, which costed us the same price as Hotel Hooker, sans hookers!

What a blessing!

After settling in, my husband decided to finally break the news to me. Just as they were pulling the U-Haul into the new hotel, it sputtered and died.

I freaked out, to say the least.

Exhaustion, a screaming toddler, hookers and bad hotels. Now the freaking U-Haul died. Seriously? Ugh…

The next installment will be published tomorrow. Stay tuned, kids!

Curly is easier, but I kinda prefer straight.

What do you think?

My little Mario Andretti wishes you all a Happy Halloween!