i almost forgot.

Recent photos of my boy!

Here mom-mom, have a leaf.  As my friend pointed out, so meta.

I love this shirt.  Here's the back.

sad happy. happy sad.

Today I had lunch with some very close friends and their young daughter.  Henry didn't join us, he was busy sleeping.  Must be nice.  Anyway, I had a blast and we laughed and talked and played and it was wonderful.  And it made me really really sad because today I realized that I don't have any close friends in Lansing.  Shit, I barely have friends in Lansing.  I would give anything to have friends like this to hang out with on a regular basis.  Logistically, this would most likely not happen very much anyway since Henry goes to bed at 7 which makes socializing difficult, especially when he isn't with me every other weekend.  But the idea of having close friends with kids close by makes my heart ache. 

Instead, I struggle to have the confidence to meet new people.  I am embarrassed that they might find out I am living with my parents and I shudder to think they will find out why.  Things that I find hilarious and make me feel happy and funny, other moms find offensive and weird.  This is the one thing I feel hasn't changed since having Henry.  I still find really inappropriate shit really funny.  Apparently this isn't okay with other mothers.

When I do get to see my friends, I still get tinges of sadness and jealousy watching them with their children.  I don't have any single parent friends.  I thought I would be able to connect with other single mothers but I quickly realized that most of them are busy working and aren't as lucky as me to get to be a stay-at-home mom.  Instead, I hang out with all the married moms whose husbands are at work.  These feelings of sadness and jealousy definitely don't keep me from hanging out with my friends as much as possible.  It just means a lot of planning and a lot of driving.

I know I shouldn't complain because I have amazing people in my life.  My friends stood by me and up for me and around me during the most difficult time of my life and made sure I was safe and healthy and felt loved.  Truthfully, these are things that I don't really think about all that often.  Just every once in a while.  And definitely after such a wonderful afternoon with friends that I miss so much and rarely get to enjoy.     

reunited and it feels so...

Exhausting.

Henry and I went to our family reunion today.  He had a blast which makes all the hard work on my plate worth it.  I guess. 

I've been struggling with a lot of things lately:
Mistakes I've made and lessons learned, if any.
Finding a balance between not wanting Henry to miss out on anything because I'm a single mom and saying no to doing things that just aren't realistic as a single parent family. 

I have more to say about these things but tonight I'm really tired.  I'm not even sure I'm making sense because I might have washed down some Benadryl with a bloody mary a while ago.  Huh. Who knows.

Henry and I went to the county fair this past week.  I was kind of sad the license plate selection was waaaaaaay bigger than the belt buckle selection.  

Henry got to see the baby chicks but the big sign said, "DON'T TOUCH" so I didn't let him touch.

 Henry loved the petting zoo.  They actually had a really nice setup this year.  Lots of room to run around and lots of different animals.  Henry and I especially liked the alpaca.  So soft!  Too bad I didn't get a picture of it.  Henry isn't afraid of the animals which I think is good.  Oh.  Another thing I've been struggling with lately is that balance of wanting Henry to have a healthy fear of things, like strangers and strange animals and weird relatives and water, but not be afraid all the time of these things.  I don't know if I'm making sense anymore.  Time to read and pass out...