Sometimes you just need your mom

The whole family (plus my mom) are all back in Seattle. Whew! It was a great trip to Michigan, but it took a lot out of us. Flying home by myself with the baby was the grand finale. He was fussy a few times, but overall he was a star on both 3ish-hour legs of the journey, which the other passengers noted appreciatively. Except one. As we were boarding the plane, one particularly smarmy guy standing in front of us commented loudly, "Man, my wife must hate me! This is the second time in a row she's booked me the middle seat." A lady laughed politely, "Yes, she must be mad at you." Lucky me and Bean, we were in the row directly behind him. As we were getting settled into the seat, Bean started to cry. Mr. Smarmy was on his cell phone with his wife, presumably to complain about her choice of seats. He held up the phone and pointed it back at Bean so she could hear how ever-suffering he was.

I guarantee your wife hates you, jerk.

I briefly considered letting Bean cry for the next 3 hours and 45 minutes, but out of respect for the other 285 passengers, I soothed him to sleep. (Yeah, that sounds a lot easier than it was.) But eventually we landed at Seatac, to be greeted by DH, my mom (who had hopped a direct flight earlier that day), and eventually the pooch. It's good to be home.

Except it's an utter, absolute mess.

My dream to be surprised by "While You Were Out" turned out to be just that -- all those stupid boxes waited patiently for my return. I think some of the boxes I previously unpacked had actually repacked themselves while I was gone.

This is where my mom comes in. She has been a life saver, not only unpacking and organizing while I am occupied by Bean, but lending her keen design eye to each room. She's staying for another week, and I intend to make the most of it! It will probably take me and DH a few years to finish the entire vision, but hopefully we can complete Bean's nursery before he hits middle school.

One of my mother's genius finds was a new kitchen table set to replace our 1980s atrocity. She called me on Friday from her cell phone when she was out walking the dog, as the neighborhood garage sale was this past weekend. It turns out this couple had only eaten on the table 10 times since they bought it several years ago. Seems they couldn't see the television from it, so they just ate on the couch. They finally decided to replace it with one that had taller chairs to solve the problem. A family after my own heart! They were very nice -- the husband made three trips to deliver all the parts to our house, as DH was at work -- and they also have a two month old son who shares his name with a certain Republican former president. DH remarked that if they don't like camping, they could be my ideal friends. And to make the purchase even more perfect, we were able to donate our old table and 5 chairs to a man who wanted it for a needy family of 5 who attend his church. Can I get an amen?

Speaking of television, when we moved into this house, I decided to upgrade our cable box to a DVR, since the cable guy had to come out anyway. My father-in-law had been after us for a while to do this, even suggesting that I forgo Netflix in favor of the DVR (as if!). Everyone who has one has insisted that it will change our lives. Verdict so far: not impressed. It has totally interrupted the viewing style I had perfected. Commercials, not only a source of fun little jingles for me to sing to Bean during diaper changes ("There ain't no bugs on me, no there ain't no bugs on me..."), are also the perfect opportunity to empty the dishwasher, get the mail, or start a load of laundry. I have no need to skip past them -- with a 4 month old, I don't have a solid 20 or 40 minutes without interruption in my day anyway. The other supposed benefit is that you never have to miss your favorite show. Well, that never really bothered me... until now! For example, I am now obsessed with catching every episode of The Soup, which I rarely got to watch before. But because they are never marked "repeat" on the guide for some reason, my record-only-new-episodes setting also catches 20 reruns of each week's show, and I am forced to frequently manage my DVR queue. Also, as the queue fills up with shows that I don't have time to watch, I have to decide what to delete if I want to record anything else. While I wouldn't have been upset to miss the newest episode of "Property Virgins" before, now I'm brokenhearted to erase it unseen. My heart belongs to Netflix.

Meanwhile, Bean has been changing and growing so much. He now not only recognizes me as a familiar face ("Hey, it's you again!"), but he has realized that it is my sole purpose in life to attend to his every need. He gazes at me lovingly like I have rainbows shining out of my ears, and I'm his number one choice when he's upset. Which both turns my heart to mush and makes me sigh with frustration, depending on whether it's 2 pm or 2 am. We have also started transitioning him into his crib. It started off pretty well, he slept for an hour and a half. But then he caught on to the plan, and he now wakes up immediately when set down in it, with screaming soon to follow. From what my mother-in-law says, Bean takes after his father in his general refusal to do anything that would be convenient for his exhausted new parents, such as nap. Someone else made the necessary observation about payback. But this is where I have a problem. According to my mother, I was an easy baby. Never cried. She actually said I never cried. While this may be an exaggeration, I'm wondering where in my vows I agreed to pay for the torture that my husband heaped on his mother when he was an infant. I don't call that payback, I call that injustice. Nevertheless, I fall deeper in love with Bean each day as his personality emerges. Here are a few of my little man's recent developments:

• He can roll over, back to tummy and tummy to back.
• He can sit up for a bit when propped, before doing a face plant into the carpet.
• He reaches very purposefully and grabs objects, which then immediately go to his mouth.
• He carries on meaningful conversations with his toys and the baby in the mirror.
• He is teething big time.
• He is 25 1/4 inches tall (51st percentile) and 14 lbs 15 oz (50th percentile).
• And he reads at a 2nd grade level.