When life hands you doughnuts you eat them.

Parker and I drove seven and a half hours to Edmonton by ourselves last week. You may think I'm brave for road tripping with a baby by myself, but really I'm just reckless. I also needed a vacation. Having that long to just focus on the road and listen to an audiobook was actually very therapeutic. So were the hundreds of Skittles I ate.

We visited some dear friends and their trio of offspring and while I had a grand old time going to IKEA and eating dairy-free doughnuts from new favourite bakery, Parker found the whole thing to be a little much. I guess he's gotten used to the quiet life around here, and the energy of a preschooler and toddler kind of got to him. But the friend time, chunky baby snuggles, and baked goods more than made up for it. I didn't cry once!

There's a reason the Jews are God's chosen people, and I think it's because of these kosher and dairy-free beauties right here.

My dad flew into Edmonton and drove back to Regina with us. The drive out was uneventful, but the partied out baby certainly appreciated the grandfatherly distraction on the way home. And I did, too. There's only so much crying and whining one person can take before they're wishing they'd bought a dozen more doughnuts. And since Parker isn't allowed to eat doughnuts anyway, Grandpa really helped fill their void.

We put my dad back on a plane this morning and I decided that today was going to be another write off. Not in the sense that February 29th was, but in the sense that I needed to catch up on the Downton finale (I laughed, I cried, I cheered) and some other shows in my leggings all day while eating the random things I found in my fridge. The dishes and laundry will wait until tomorrow while Parker and I recover from a highly delightful week and a half of interacting with people all day every day. Even though I'm 51% introvert and 49% extrovert (or so the tests tell me), the introvert has definitely been feeling rejected and has taken over today.

Parker is getting very old all of a sudden. Someone asked me at church if I was back at work yet and I almost threw up on them. Ten more weeks to go and I will be. Ten weeks and I will have an official toddler. One that can't toddle to save his life but will, in all likelihood, be crawling within the hour. One that moved out of his bucket car seat this week and into a real big boy car seat and loves it.* Even though he hasn't actually watched any Star Trek or Firefly yet so he has no reference point, I'm fairly certain Parker thinks he's a spaceship captain in that seat. The way he puts his arms on the sides and sits there like a boss, you can tell he thinks he's the one running the (rear facing) show.

I realized yesterday that my time to hammer out those maternity leave projects I've been meaning to do is quickly coming to an end. Let's not dwell on it too much, but I see a lot of painting in my future. A LOT. Good thing my wrist is getting better and I've got some good audiobooks on hold at the library.

Right now, though, it's snowing,and my son is practicing his forward motion on the floor so I'm just going to soak it all up while I can and take a million videos of him, while eating leftovers for dinner.


*You know you're a mom when you start saying horrible things like "big boy car seat" and you get excited about things like standing in line for children's consignment sales. A couple weeks ago I stood outside in the freezing cold for an hour just to buy used onesies and board books. I brought coffee and friends and everything. A year ago I scoffed at the very thought.