Hey, Y'all!

Disney...On Ice!

Last night was a very worthwhile splurge for our little family.  A couple of weeks ago, Marcus heard a radio ad for Disney On Ice and decided we should take Dean.  Never one to turn down a night out or anything with the word DISNEY in the title, I wholeheartedly agreed.  He poked around online a bit and found that there was a 20% opening night discount.  Then he bought front row tickets, declaring, "If we're gonna do it, let's do it right." And boy howdy, did we.

"Mama, what's gonna HAPPEN?"

(Also, LOOK! Actual photographic evidence that I go places with my family! Who knew you could just hand the camera to your husband and make that happen?)

Dean really didn't understand what we were going to see prior to the event.  He just knew he was wearing special clothes, big boy shoes and getting to eat dinner in a restaurant.  He enjoyed his cheesey pizza, declaring it "kinda good."  In true Disney form, you were immediately bombarded with souvenier options, most of which were astronomical in price.  We settled for the least expensive, but definitely the cutest, option:

Flounder hat and cotton candy combo for the win!

When the show started, Dean was very quiet.  He didn't really react at first, unless you count the fact that his eyes grew to the size of saucers when Mickey and Minnie entered the rink.  However, even Mr. Cool couldn't resist a squeal of delight when these guys appeared:

TIMON AND PUMBA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Dean said, "Daddy, you see that?"  We enjoyed the Lion King portion of the show, except for the fact that adult Simba looked more like a Jellicle Cat than a lion.  We loved The Little Mermaid and Lilo and Stitch.  I realized around 3pm the day of the show that Dean had no idea who Lilo and Stitch were, so we watched some YouTube clips so he would recognize him.  Their rendition of "Burning Love" brought the house down. 

At intermission, we watched the zamboni:

I'm a sucker for a zamboni.  When I was in college, we hosted a Russian production of Swan Lake on ice, for which our students served as crew.  One thing they asked for were volunteers to stay overnight and make the ice stage.  I was ALL OVER that, mostly because I thought the job would involve driving a zamboni in the wee hours of the morning. Imagine my surprise when I was handed a pair of rubber boots and a garden hose and told to "walk the ice" every half hour. LAME. But I digress.

The second act was all Peter Pan.  Dean absolutely loves Captain Hook and Mr. Smee, so it was nice that they happened to spend a lot of their time addressing our side of the arena.

Overall, it was an awesome night and certainly money well-spent. I hope he remembers it forever.

When The Ordinary Turns Extraordinary

Yesterday was just a normal day.  I went in to work to wrap a few things up from my show that just closed and attend a meeting. Dean went to preschool. Marcus taught his classes.  When I picked Dean up, he had just finished making a mask on a stick. (SURPRISE! It's name is Dean.)

The third eyeball atop the forehead is my favorite part, I think.

Dean "proper" told me a sordid tale of Dean the Masks's past as a circus performer. But then he got scared of the clowns (LIKE YOU, MAMA!) and decided to come live with us.  It's make-believe week at preschool, you see.  I kind of want to go to class...

We got home, sorted our Halloween candy, since somebody was too sleepy to do it on Halloween night, and played with all our plastic bats and skeletons. Marcus called and asked me to preheat the oven.  He arrived a few minutes later with some lovely steaks, baking potatoes and fixin's for a caesar salad.  We are foodies, you see, so if we're going to splurge on something, it's usually going to be a nice meal, and it's usually going to be prepared by one of us.  Dean took one look and said, "YUK!" so I made him some turkey meatballs, macaroni and cheese and broccoli, which he dipped in A-1 sauce.

While we were getting ready to grill, which for some reason, happened in the driveway, our neighbors came over.  Their son is almost 3 and loves to play with Dean.  We had tricycle races up and down the driveway as the sun set, then once it got dark and we lit the grill, Dean said, "Let's camp!"  He sat down in front of the flaming grill (at a very safe distance, mind you, lest his paranoid parents stroke out right there in the yard) and had himself a campout.  In a rare moment of mommy genius, I ran inside, grabbed a couple of bamboo skewers I'd previously soaked in water and some marshmallows and we roasted ourselves some appetizers.

 

It was a fine campout and the best part was that I didn't have to sleep in a tent.

Anything extraordinary happen during your ordinary day?

 

Good Morning, Baltimore

 
I've been to BlogHer. I've even met and talked to a few of my blog friends on my own, without the aid of  conference. I know the excitement.  I know how much fun it is to see the people you know only from their written words and pictures come to life right before your eyes.  I knew I'd be ecstatic to see Alissa today.  What I didn't know was how cool it would be to see our kids meet.

 
Um, mom, we're kind of on a conference call here. Could you check back later?

Alissa and I have speculated for quite some time that Dean and Liam would likely be great friends, two peas in a pod, and all such as that.  For two days leading up to our meet-up at the Maryland Science Center, these guys couldn't stop talking about each other.  Dean kept asking, "When we seeing my buddy? Wiam?"  When they first spotted each other, they made a run for it, crashing together in the cutest three-year-old hug ever.  Along with my four-year-old nephew, Adam, they were quite the fun bunch of boys. 

 
Whenever I read blogs, I always think, MAN! I wish I lived near THEM so our kids could play! But it's never been a reality before now.  I have to tell you--I'd happily forego any and all blogging conferences in the future if it meant I could spend that time and money hanging out with some of my blog friends and their families.  I think we sometimes forget how deep these friendships are, how much these people mean to us and how many things they get us through, even if we've never laid eyes on each other in real life. It was extremely cool to see one of these friends from this uber-important aspect of my life interact with my family.  Alissa and I talked about how much fun it would be to get the boys together every year on our annual trip to visit my in-laws in DC.  I hope that's a tradition that will stick.

 
The little guys had a blast in the kids' area of the museum where they caught fish and played in a submarine. They ran wild in the dinosaur hall and ate lunch at the Beaker Cafe.  After lunch, we walked down to a cute splash fountain where they managed to soak themselves.  It was great fun.  Alissa got to meet Marcus and his mom and dad, and we got a good amount of time to talk about Blogs and life in general.  I always feel so rejuvinated when I've seen one of my girlfriends and today was certianly one of those times. I feel as though my social battery has been recharged.  (Too bad I had to break out my "mean mom" voice when my child started acting a fool and tried to jump into the Inner Harbor.)

Super huge thanks to Alissa for making time to meet up with us and for taking us to the very cool museum.  I hope it's the first of many fun times together...for us and the little buddies.

 

 

Rockin' The Baby

Shell over at Things I Can't Say is hosting a fun link-up called Rockin' The Baby.  I went through my photos and selected a few of my favorites from Dean's baby days to share with all of you.

Here we see Dean in an adorable hat made especially for him by my friend Angelina:

 
Don't you wish you could sleep like that?

Or this?

 
How 'bout that hat?  Marcus insisted that Dean wear a hat at all times when we brought him home from the hospital. Sure it was January, but our apartment was about 400 degrees, hence the short-sleeved onesie.  This hat earned him the nickname "Gangsta Dean."

Speaking of Marcus, he just glanced over and asked why I'd chosen 2 pictures of Dean sleeping, since, honestly, these may be the only moments Dean slept somewhere other than on one of us during his first 4 months of life. Touche', Marcus Lane, touche'.

Here's one of him in an adorable onesie that reads "Everyone's Favorite."

 
Tiny muffin.

And finally, what very well may be the all-time greatest baby picture ever taken:

 
CHUBBEH!  On the left is my nephew, Adam, who was about 16 months at the time; on the right is Dean, 4 months.  Everyone in our family has framed copies of this shot, and we lovingly call them the Buddah Babies.

Got any cute pictures of your babies?  Link up at Shell's blog!

 

 

Easter

 Admit it.  It's my catchy titles that keep you coming back.

It's been a while since my little family of three had (more or less) an entire weekend with just the three of us.  We had originally planned to go out of town for Easter, but those plans fell through, so I got to work filling our Saturday and Sunday with fun activities to do as a famiy.

Saturday morning, we headed to our favorite park for our town's Easter Egg Hunt.  Dean had a great time hunting eggs, seeing the extremely creepy life-sized Easter Bunny and playing on the playground.

 

 
After the egg hunt, we stopped by Panera to grab a quick lunch.  Dean was in kids' meal Heaven. He ordered macaroni and cheese (which is GREAT there), a fruit cup and juice and they threw in a yogurt as part of his meal. He ate and ate and ate.  After lunch, we headed to the movies to see HOP. This was only Dean's second time at the movies and he did pretty well.

 
Our movie theatre provides these dreamy booster seats. Dean tolerated it during the previews while he was enjoying his gummi bears, then stood up (on my foot) the second the movie started. He only tried to escape once, which I counted as Success!  The movie was cute, but had a bit too much live action and not enough bunny rabbit for Dean's liking.

Saturday night, Marcus grilled some amazingly good ribs and we played outside until the sun went down.

Sunday morning, Dean woke up and we went down to check out his loot from the Easter Bunny.

 
Kid racked up!  Not all that is from the bunny, though.  Some of it was sent by his Nana and Pop Pop, some by his GG. He also got a pre-Easter basket from my mom and dad last weekend when we visited them.  (Forgive the clutter behind the table.  It's our old pack n play and a Huggies box full of baby stuff for a friend who's having a little boy next month.)

Dean LOVED everything in his basket, with the dinosaurs taking a slight edge for first place in his heart.  We read all the books, stuck stickers all over ourselves and sorted through the edible things.  Then this happened:

 
This child done decided he LOVES the chocolate bunnies.  In fact, he talked about this one (which he devoured before breakfast) so much that Marcus bought him another one on Tuesday.

The rest of Easter Sunday was spent around the house painting, playing outside and eating a tasty brunch.  That evening, we went out on the boat. This was Dean's first trip out and he had an absolute blast!  He grabbed the little emergency paddle that you use if your motor gives out, declared it his Diego paddle and proceeded to sing the "rescue pack" song from Go Diego Go. Then he let the paddle go in the water and that was pretty much the end of that.

 
Marcus caught a couple of small bass while we were out and, as usual, Dean was stoked. He held the fish and told them they were cute.

 

All was dandy until we had to let the fish go back to his watery home.

 
Tears. GIANT SAD TEARS.  Marcus tried to gently explain how the fish couldn't breathe if he was out of the water and that he probably needed to get home for dinner anyway or his fish mom would worry about him, but still. Tears.  We had to go home shortly after this picture was taken.

Once everyone got home and calmed down, we spread out on the hood of my car, looked at the stars and talked about our favorite things we'd done over the weekend.  If it wasn't a perfect weekend, it was pretty darn close.

 

Thankful

For nearly 12 years of loving this guy:

 
For the best little boy a mom could ever want:

 
For an amazing family:

 
 
 
For friends far and near.  For enough food  and good shelter.  For a job I love.  For all my "kids" and for the fact that I didn't have to give birth to all of them.

For all these things and so much more, I am thankful.

Happy Thanksgiving, y'all.

Be sure to pop by and visit Alissa at Have Stroller Will Travel for 25  posts of thankfulness in 24 hours!

Every Little Thing's Gonna Be Alright

There has been so much ick and sickness in my house this week that I haven't been the commenting fool I usually am on the blogs.  I'm finally catching up on my reading and feeling able (meaning "not too doped up on codeine") to leave coherent comments.  Several of us have had rough weeks, some much rougher than others.  I think we all need a little virtual hug as we begin this new week.

I'd planned to use this song as the background for Dean's 2nd birthday video montage, but my video editing program had other ideas.  If you're a parent who watches Nick Jr.(formerly Noggin), you may have seen this song's video during a "Move To The Music" break between shows.  I love the little cartoon they've got set to this song.  It shows nothing but happiness and pure, absolute love. We could all use a hug so sweet it makes a heart pop up, don't you think?

It's the little things

In the fabulous musical COMPANY, Sondheim gives us these lyrics:

It's the little things you do together that make (clap) perfect relationships.

It's so true. 

Saturday night I made dinner, then we got bundled up and headed out shopping. We didn't need much, just a print-out of Marcus's headshot for an audition he had on Sunday and some more Coke and Coke Zero.  We came home, played with Dean, then got ready to put him to bed.  As I was gathering up Stu the monkey and Dean's pants to take them upstairs (yep, still not wearing pants), I said "Oh, I need to put some Coke Zero in the fridge."  Marcus replied "Already did it." I thanked him and kissed him on the head and he said "Thank you for noticing little things like that.  A lot of people wouldn't." 

We talk a lot in our house about how other people do things. Don't get me wrong--we're not necessarily going to change the way we do things just because someone else does them a different way.  Part of it is a character study of sorts.  Theatre people like us are fascinated by human behavior, especially behavior that is vastly different from our own.  I think that's part of the reason I like reading blogs so much--it gives me insight into how other people live and handle situations. We were talking recently about yelling. I had been to the park with Dean that day and watched as a mother of 3 spent the entire time yelling at her kids. And when I say yelling, I mean top of her voice screaming at them for everything from trying to climb up the slide the wrong way to asking for too many sips of water.  Marcus and I are not yellers, never have been.  My mom even mentioned over Christmas that she'd never seen us fight.  We have certainly had our fair share of disagreements, like any couple does, and we bicker from time to time, we just don't choose to yell.  I'm sure there will come a time, probably when we're raising a teenager (especially if he hasn't decided he likes to wear pants by then) when yelling will happen, but for now, we choose to keep even our disagreements a little more low-key.

Wow. I just went off on a tangent about yelling.  So sorry. If you're a yeller, yell away!  Sometimes I wish I was, but I'm just not. I sound like a dork when I yell. I do talk kind of loud, though. Before I go back to my original train of thought, however, I should mention that yelling at referees for bonehead calls during football games OR yelling at teams we don't like (Auburn) is TOTALLY allowed and encouraged in our home. Just sayin'.

Anywho, I DO appreciate the little things Marcus does.  Every morning he pours my coffee for me, always giving me the first cup because I have this thing where I'm convinced the first cup from the pot is better than all the other cups. I know, I'm weird. He loves me anyway. Usually he just shakes his head and mutters "Weirdo"  under his breath and goes with it.  He also makes my grilled cheese sandwiches the way I like them (which is the CORRECT way), even though he is adamantly against eating them this way.  See, I like my grilled cheese squished as flat as it can possibly be squished. I'm talking flat like a sheet of paper. Marcus likes his fluffy and browned juuust right. No. Squish it. I don't care if that means it's browner than it should be, SQUISH IT.  And he does. And he shakes his head while I eat it as if I'm committing some kind of grilled cheese sin. But he loves me anyway. He also lets me open any and all mail addressed to both of us AND most packages addressed to anyone who lives here. Because MAIL IS FUN, people!

I try to do little things for him, too, like giving him a small spoon to eat his soup, even though you're really supposed to use the big ones, leaving him post-its to remind him to take the trash to the street on Thursday nights and never taking the good body wash with me if I'm gone overnight without him.

Are all couples quirky like this?  I hope so.

To balance out all the sappiness, I feel like I should tell you that I do talk at him sternly and roll my eyes a lot when he tracks mud on the carpet or leaves his cereal bowl in the family room and he gets really annoyed when I get the bathroom rug wet after I've showered. Hey, it can't be all sunshine and rainbows, right?

Before she was your mom

...she was a college theatre major. (She did other stuff before that, but this is where I came into her life, so this is where we'll start.)  She worked her tail off, as many of us did, in classes and shows, learning her craft and fine-tuning her skills. 

...she became an Alabama football fan.  Because we are the best. (don't let your dad tell you differently)

...she loved crazy adventures, especially ones which took place late in the evening.  She once convinced 12 people to pile into cars and go on what is now known as The Great Tuscaloosa Ghost Hunt of 2000. Naturally, she drove. 

...she made people who felt a little out of place smile with a joke, or in my case, a cheesy jingle and a green bean casserole.

...she loved me enough to skip class and eat lunch with me at Alabama Grill, just so I could have some caramel cake. (Because she would NEVER voluntarily skip class.  No siree.)

...she followed her dreams and moved to New York.  There, she worked for a Broadway theatre, rubbed elbows with stars, played tour guide to many friends and family members and gave me a place to stay my very first night as a New Yorker.  She knew the best places to have brunch and which restaurants to go to for maximum celebrity sightings.  She also walked really, really fast. Like, REALLY fast.

...she moved back to Alabama and met your dad, a swell guy that all her friends instantly liked.

...she married your dad over what turned out to be one of the most fun weekends ever. She was a calm, collected bride who truly enjoyed every moment of her special day, especially the part where she and I giggled through the entire ceremony.

...she dreamed of you.

...she endured countless medical procedures, pills, shots and other rough times to make you her reality.

...she called to tell me you were on the way. (I cried.) (So did she.) (We do that a lot.)

...she planned every detail from your nursery to your crib, your wardrobe to your name, keeping the latter a special secret between your dad and her, only to be revealed to the rest of us when you made your grand debut. (totally worth the wait)

Before she was your mom, she was my best friend (still is).  I probably know her better than almost anyone, except your daddy, and I can already tell you that YOU are her greatest dream come true.  Your eyes are brighter than all the big city lights combined, you're better company that any celebrity, your tiny cries are the perfect music to her ears (even better than show tunes!), and she's now got the best job she's ever had--being your mom. 

Welcome to the world, sweet boy.  There is so much love here for you.

Henry Charles Robert Agan

born December 28, 2009

weighing in at 8 lbs. 2 oz. (which I TOTALLY predicted moments before he was born)

Perfect, beautiful son of Dave and Meredith

It's Official

After 11 years, I finally believe Marcus loves me wholeheartedly. (Ok, so I pretty much believed this when he MARRIED me and then we had a BABY, but go with me here.)  He was cleaning up his computer yesterday, deleting files that no one has looked at for years, and we came across a couple of plays I wrote for my playwriting class my senior year of college.  I didn't have my own computer then, so Marcus would let me type my plays on his.  And he saved them.  For 11 years.  And transferred them whenever he bought new computers.  He doesn't save things HE wrote for 11 years.  I asked him why he still had them and he said "I thought you might need them.  Plus I like to read this one every year or so."  Dude.  He also lets my theatre books intermingle with his on the shelves.  If that ain't love, nothing is.