Christmas in California

First of all, thank you to all of you for your great advice regarding my mommy meltdown. Your words of comfort were greatly appreciated. It's so nice to have friends and family who have been through some of the ups and downs of parenthood!!

So I'm always a little behind on the blogging, but we had the best vacation over Christmas break. Instead of doing the whole present thing we decided to go on a trip instead. We were originally going to stay in a hotel, but decided it would be hard not to have a microwave to make Mason's food and a separate room for him to sleep in. Since it was last minute, we got a great deal on a little 2 bedroom vacation rental on the beach. The complex was called North Coast Village in Oceanside. We left the day after Christmas and drove to Primm, NV. I was afraid Mason would get fussy in the car but he did so great! We put on some movies for him and he was a little champ.

Mason's first time in a hotel room!

The condo was so cute! And it had the perfect sink for bath time!

The first night there we bundled up Mason and took him to the tide pools at Cardiff State Beach.

Pete found some new role models (65 year-old volleyball playing beach bums..) I think he finally found out what he wants to be when he grows up =p


We took Mason to the beach for the first time. He ate his first sand!! I thought it was hilarious but Pete was a little concerned (see video below)

We had the best New Year's Eve ever!! We BBQ'd some steaks, threw together a salad and ate it while listening to the ocean on our little balcony.

Afterwards, we tried our hand at chocolate dipped strawberries. It was kind of a disaster. Apparently you're not supposed to get the melted chocolate wet-- Wish we would have known that before we washed the strawberries!!

Pete's friend Chris took him surfing for the day.

We built an awesome sand castle- complete with a moat! I added our initials to the castle and then realized they spell PMS. Go figure...

I never wanted to be the mom who never lets her kid get dirty- but I'm so that mom. In an effort to be less anal, I gave Mason a little teething biscuit and let him go for it!!

It was such a great trip. It was especially awesome because it was our first vacation as a little family. We were so sad to come home! I think I was meant to be a California girl!!

Crisis

Okay all you mommies out there- I need some serious counseling. I'm having a total meltdown!! Yesterday I put Mason down for a nap and after about 15 minutes I had a feeling I should go check on him. This is what I found....

Okay- first of all he just barely started crawling a month ago. He's never pulled himself up to stand before so I was in absolute SHOCK!! He thought it was hilarious. He was laughing and gooing because he finally got to chew on the stuffed snail he's been staring up at for the last 9 months. Maybe I'm just emotional or something but when I saw him standing in his crib it totally hit me that my baby is gone forever. He is growing into a boy faster than I can believe. Tonight I gave him his bottle and then bawled my eyes out over how big he is. I just can't help feeling like I didn't cuddle/snuggle/hold him enough and now I can't ever get his tiny baby days back.

Here's me post-breakdown. See, he's HUGE!