How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.

I know I haven't blogged in a while, mainly because I've just been too lazy or have been caught up with finishing my book, cooking dinner, taking Anthony here and there, drinking wine with my hubby on the weekend while the little one naps, grocery shopping...you get the idea.

But, something happened yesterday evening that made me stop and say to myself, "You have GOT to jot things like this down. They are the moments that made you want to start this blog; moments that you'll want to remember forever."

So here I am.

And here is what unfolded yesterday that motivated me to post this blog today. I was getting ready to head out to my yoga class (which I'm L-O-V-I-N-G, LOVING!) while Anthony was sitting at the table with Mark eating yogurt before heading up to bed. As I grabbed my keys, the sweetest little voice piped up and said, "Bu-bye Mama." I looked over at Anthony, yogurt literally dripping off his chin, and he was waving with a smile on his face. I died. Seriously. Life simply doesn't get any sweeter, my friends.

And so, in that moment I realized that it is "little" things like that that I take for granted and sometimes don't appreciate in the moment because of that crazy thing called LIFE that demands attention all the time. These little things though are life and I never want to forget them.

Here are a few more:

Anthony's speech and vocabulary is exploding. As his parent, it is so fun and exciting to watch. He is currently obsessed (and that is a mere understatement) with any mode of transportation. Buses ("bis"), cars ("broom broom"), trains ("cho cho"), Metro ("cho cho"), airplanes ("eemee"), trucks ("tus") - you name it, he flips out when he sees it. Who knew that at 30 years old, you could get that excited about spotting an airplane in the sky? Or waiting in anticipation like it's Christmas Eve for the next Metro to roll by the playground? Not me. But I tell you, I get excited because I know how excited it makes him.

To Anthony, all kids are "bee bees" (i.e., babies). It doesn't matter the true age of the child. Example: As we were driving to the store the other day, we had to wait for a group of kids to cross the road, as the middle school had just dismissed. When Anthony saw them, he waved at them from his car seat and said, "Bye bee bees. Bye bee bees." PLG. Not sure when he's going to get the memo that once kids reach a certain age, they're not "bee bees" anymore. I'm trying. But in the meantime, I quietly smile at the innocence.

Anthony adores books and adores reading. It is not uncommon to find him sitting in the middle of the floor reading for a good 15-20 minutes...alone. For those of you with kids, you know that doing any one thing for 15-20 minutes when you're 19 months old is practically unheard of. It is so fun to snoop on him when he's doing this though, as he remembers how Mark or I reads the story to him and tries to retell it. The funniest part about the whole situation is that he'll immediately flip to the one page that he knows how to "read" and go crazy with it. For example, on the last page in Chicka Chicka Boom Boom, all of the letters fall out of the coconut tree because they get too heavy for the tree to hold. When I read this story to him and we get to this part, I always say, "Oh no! All of the letters fell down! Chicka chicka boom boom!" So when Anthony reads this book alone, he picks up the book, turns to the last page, and declares, "OH NO!!!! OH NO!!! OH NO!!!" Then it's on to the next book. Makes me laugh!

And last, but certainly not least, some of the most precious moments that I forever want ingrained in my mind are those that I observe when Mark and Anthony interact together. The light in Mark's eyes when they are together is not one that I can describe. It touches my heart in such a way that nothing else has. Suffice it to say that I feel like the luckiest girl on the planet to have these two guys in my life. I love them both so much.