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I was asked to guest post over at my friend Mila’s blog Free Bird Train on how I balance work and school with being a single mom. Go over to her blog and check it out!

Adventures in Parenting

Oliver and I woke up this morning and as I changed his diaper I realized that he was now wearing his last diaper, which meant I needed to go buy some. By time I got us breakfast, got some stuff down around the house and was ready to go, his diaper was a little wet so Uly told me to just put his pants on and we’ll hurry to buy the diapers. I figured why not and grabbed an extra pair of pants and out the door we went. We were debating which diapers were the best deal (Oh, the joys of being poor!) when Oliver started freaking out. He kept pointing at something on the ground and yelling “EW! UCKY! EW MOM YUCKY!” We look and what is sitting there on the floor of TARGET FOR EVERYONE TO SEE? Yup. Poop. He had pooped his pants – something that never even OCCURRED to us that would happen! – and it fell out on the floor of Target. I grabbed Oliver and took him several rows down so that he would stop his yelling of “MOMMY UCKY! EW MOMMY EWWWW!”and Uly followed me frantically searching through my purse for something to pick up the poop in. Why? Cuz I was awesome and forgot wipes at home. Yup, again. Poop in hand, we grabbed some diapers and booked it to the cash register, paid for our diapers and stuck one on Oliver as quickly as we could!

                             

Summertime and the living's easy ♪

We're alive and we're crazy busy! Our weather's been heating up so we've been escaping to Uly's parent's house pretty much every day to beat the heat and swim in their pool. I'm sure my landlord isn't complaining since that means I'm not running his AC during the days! It's still at the point where it cools down nicely by 11 pm so I'm not dying...Yet!
Now that I'm out of school I'm only working, but I think that makes working even less appealing! I certainly do cherish my days off, and my manager is nice enough to give me a few days off in a row without cutting into my hours...Or that's just a happy coincidence, but I'll take it either way! :)
Uly and I are super excited to be taking our first long road trip together to visit my parents in Washington for two weeks!! I've always invited people I know to visit Washington with me and Uly is the first person to have taken me up on it! We'll be there for 2 weeks, which sounds like a long time, but is definitely not going to be enough time!
Not much has been going on, so I'll just leave you with a TON of pictures that we've taken over the last few months, in no particular order of course!




I threw Uly a surprise birthday party and I snapped this adorable picture during it.



I got to visit my friend Morgan in Mission Viejo and we did a quick trip to the beach



My little helper!



Oliver and the cupcake: A Standoff



Oliver during Uly's party



My boys being boys :)



Oliver getting wet. My camera died RIGHT after this picture, otherwise you would have pictures of his first time in a sprinkler. Oh well!



Again, getting wet. This kid LOVES water, especially if he can run through it.



Can you spot the famous person we saw at Disneyland?











We splurged on our first year anniversary and went to all you can eat sushi! Sooooo good!



Uly let Oliver get behind the wheel of a car. Needless to say, it was a mistake.

Hope this post finds you all well and happy! Enjoy your summertime!

School's out for summer!!!I

I took my last final for this semester a few hours ago and it feels great to be off for a few months! It's crazy to think that I'm already done with a semester of school and I seriously wonder why I hard such a hard time seeing a semester through the last time I was in school! I've got a lost more drive now and while it was a crazy semester, I'm looking forward to the next one. I've got TONS of room for improvement, but I'm still so proud of myself for finishing the semester and not getting discouraged or wanting to quit. It was a good start and I can only go up from here!!



This is the Quad, where all of my classes were. It's such a beautiful building!



This is the outside of the library. I didn't get to spend much time there but hopefully I will next semester!

All is Well (Pictureless post)

Nothing much has really been going on here. Just the same old school and work routine. Oliver is getting so big and talking so much more every day! I love having conversations with him, even though they don't really get anywhere it's still adorable and brightens my day. He has a hard time with "s" and "r" so "Dora" comes out "Dowa", "Boots" comes out "Bootf" and "snake" is "nake". He LOVES Dora the Explorer and is starting to understand what she's saying more and more. He now will say "map!" and "backpack!"when Dora asks for help and the other day pointed at the stars on the tv and said "estrella" (Spanish for star). He can't quite get the "l" sound yet, but since estrella is pronounced "es-trey-a" it is easier for him. Too cute!
We're looking forward to a fun summer full of trips and beach days!

Oliver's Birthday

This guy...



turned 2 in March! We celebrated with frosting taste testing...



Lessons on how to be patient...



and lots of hugs and love!





His piñata was as tall as he was. It was awesome!



The boloches (party favors)



This is how interested Oliver was in the piñata! Once the candy came out, though, he sure got interested again!



Wait, why am I hitting this bear?



I TRIED to make him a bear cake. I learned that I'm not a great decorator!



Blowing out the candles!











Nana and Poppie Rencher bought Oliver the cutest push along motorcycle so I sat down and figured out how to put it together and he loves it!




We had so much fun celebrating his birthday! He is such a joy to have around and is such a good kiddo!

Oliver at 2 years (Well, 2 years and 2 months):
* He has a great vocabulary. He is starting to put sentences together and can understand SO much now, which is great!
* He LOVES water! There's a toddler "swimming" class at the community center during the summers so I'm going to try and enroll him this summer!
* He's turned into such a boy! He makes everything growl, even my hair when I'm playing with it. He loves cars and balls and one of his favorite things is wrestling with Uly while Mommy's at work.
* He's 37 inches, which is really tall for his age! We're hoping he continues to be tall for his age.
* He's started being a lot more lovey, and gives hugs, loves, and kisses when you ask for them.
* He knows how to "pound it" and gives high-5's, and Uly taught him to give wet willies, which they're both very proud of.

That's all I can think of for now! :)

Valentine's Day!

Valentine's Day was pretty fun, with a lot of adventure mixed in! Uly had the awesome idea of going whale watching in Long Beach and then to the aquarium. GREAT ideas, but they did not mix with almost 2 year old Oliver! Whale watching was fun, but he just wanted to run around the whole time and I just was terrified that he would some how run off of the boat, haha. We saw a few whales which was cool, but then on our way back in we were SURROUNDED by what had to be 3 or 4 pods of dolphins, just hundreds of them swimming alongside our boat, it was SO COOL. I tried to get some pictures but my camera was just too slow. :( The aquarium was really neat, and Oliver was captivated by the fish! Uly and I got to pet a few sting rays, and some other fish, and got to see some pretty cool tide pools with huge starfish in them! Here's some pictures from our day!



This is the weirdest picture to date of Oliver and it cracks Uly up every time he sees it. It's a combination between him just waking up and a weird angle which equals awesomeness!



"Helping" in the kitchen



What's Valentine's Day without pink waffles??



Waiting to board the boat. Uly was such a good sport! He was sick, but still insisted that we go and put up with my crazy hyper kid the whole boat ride!





This is right about where we realized this was not going to be the idyllic, romantic whale watching trip we had imagined, lol.



We still manged to get some really cute pictures, though.



And of course, gave lots of sympathy to poor, poor Oliver who wasn't allowed to run around the boat. What mean parents!



This is the best-ish picture I got of the dolphins.



Yup, we're mean.