Little Drummer Boy

Isaiah is doing all sorts of new things these days - I can barely keep up with documenting them! 

Like this...  What?   I have no idea how he learned to do this.

Catch Up

Things have been a little crazy here at the Briggs residence.  You might have guessed that by the absence of posts since October.  Maybe. 

So many things have been happening.  With the business, with Isaiah, with my heart.  I will perhaps write about them all, but not today. 

One of the things that have changed & severely hindered my ability to take awesome pictures of Isaiah is his newfound fascination with anything iPhone or iPad.  It happened overnight it seemed.  All of a sudden he could unlock our phones & the iPad, could open apps, close them open new ones, change to another screen, and PLAY the apps.  It's pretty crazy to watch.  If we let him, he would stay on them all day.  But we don't.  Mostly we keep him off the phones so we can actually use them, although it's not easy to use mine for pictures anymore because he just grabs & screams for it then.  And the iPad, we try & hide it and only let him play when he cleverly finds it or when he is fussy & we need to take a phone call, in a long car ride, or honestly when we need a short break. 

His Papa says we should take a video of him working on the iPad & send it to Apple because it's pretty awesome that he can do it all.  The other day I said I needed to buy another iPhone so I can take pics & videos of him playing on the iPhone.

This will be a continuous struggle for us because we use these gadgets a lot for work.

Recently he's discovered how to take pictures.  Here are his first photo shoots.  I just had to save these before I deleted all the pics from my computer.

When I tried to take a pic of him being really cute at church, he caught me & took over.

Uh oh, he's waking up from his nap, better go hide the iPad.

Happy Anniversary

I think I'm typing faster now than I used to.  Because I have to.  I just learned this week that the rest of the world has eliminated the double space after a period.  I learned it after realizing my double spaces weren't translating through HTML while editing my new site.  My world is rocked.  Almost as much as when I learned that there was no 3rd comma when typing a list.  I halfway do it the new way & halfway the old.  I wonder if I'll ever be able to stop double spacing. 

So my new website is going live as we speak.  My designer & I started working on it towards the middle of the summer.  Wow, it's been a long road full of lots of sleepless nights.  And money.  Even though I did most of the content (me & one of my employees that came in towards the end to help), it still cost the same amount as my original site.

Since last week I've seriously been considering changing my name.  I've been thinking about for over a year (pretty much since I started it), but it's been more on my mind lately with the new site coming out.  I want my blog to be respected among the foodie community as a source to find good restaurants, but who would want to go to CaterServe's food blog?  Ughh, not me.  I need a new name.  A perfect one. 

I need a new computer.  A new phone.  A headset.  A van.  New equipment.  A full time assistant.  A full time social media/marketing director.  I have the people, I just need the money to pay for them.  And I also need more time to spend with my son - I didn't take any pictures of him this weekend.  :(

It was our anniversary yesterday - we made it a year! 

We had an event that was a disaster (my first one yet).  And Isaiah's babysitter (Nana) couldn't keep him overnight.  We had to cancel our dinner reservations because of the disaster catering.  Then we had about 30 minutes to eat our anniversary dinner at another restaurant.  Then we had to drive to Sunnyvale to pick up Isaiah.  Happy Anniversary! 

But really we had some lovely moments surrounding the actual date, & it wouldn't be very like us if it weren't chaotic & unexpected so I think we're going to chalk this one up as a success. 

Shape Up

As you probably can imagine from my absence, things have been crazy busy since my last post almost a month ago.  I can't really tell monetarily that I'm busier yet, but I'm sure that will come in time.  Taking most of my time is this massive overhaul on my website.  I'm converting it to Wordpress so I can make updates on my end as needed with restaurant & menu changes.  I had no idea how big of a project it would be.

Isaiah is running & talking like crazy.  He says balloon, knock knock, chash (trash), no, bye bye, hiyo (hello), nana (for his grandmother & for a banana), choos (shoes), sky, ball, tanchoo (thank you), mo (more & he signs it too!, muk (milk), top (stop), ni ni (night night), at (hat), eat, mama, dada, & he tries really hard to say BB's name.  I should start keeping a list on my iPhone of everything he says or does that is extra cute because now I'm sure I'm missing a lot.  He tries to sing.  I will sing la la la la la la la la la (the scale).  And he will sing la la, occasionally correctly matching the tone. 

Marcus & I took this huge trip to Austin for a weekend.  Huge for us because that was our first trip together.  I wrote all about it, but I haven't gotten around to posting it yet.  Soon I hope.

One of my biggest concerns lately is getting my body back to a moderate version of what I want. 

A few months ago I tried the Paleo Diet.  I loved it.  BUT I got really overwhelmed with the massive cooking, planning & shopping it involved.  Feeding your family is like having another job.  I would start the weeks off well with lots of groceries in the fridge (that cost a lot of money) & then I would cook a meal or two, my crazy life would happen & then I would end the week with wasted food in the fridge.  And that's not even touching exercise.  Bottom line (& I don't apologize for this) is that if I have to choose between work & cooking (or cleaning), I'm going to choose work every time. 

So after evaluating many alternatives (cooking not so difficult & expensive food, counting on leftovers from catering events, continuing to eat out the longer I continued evaluating...), I decided to try out this meal program a dear friend of mine told me about called My Private Chef.  It is a local chef that has a passion for providing healthy, easy, & affordable food for everyone.  You can pickup or have delivered all of your meals for the week frozen.  You just pop each one (labeled with what it is) into the microwave for a few minutes & eat.  I figured there would be missed meals because of client meetings (had one tonight) & catering events & I could use those missed meals to feed Isaiah & get me through parts of the weekends (program is M-F 3 meals a day).  The monthly cost to do this will be less than what we were spending on groceries. 

After all of my evaluating - I realized 2 things:  I need a plan.  I can't just go get a bunch of stuff & wing it for the week.  And I don't think it's possible for me to plan & execute healthy fresh meals for my family at this point in my life.  So I am thrilled at the possibility that this program will work!  I'll let you know.  Maybe.

All Better

Does he look mad?  Because he totally is.  In the middle of our second & last night in the hospital, he started standing up in his jail crib refusing to sleep there any longer.  I put the rails up in my bed & let him sleep in my arms. 

He screamed bloody murder if I tried to put him back in the crib later.

As soon as the doctor told us we could leave, he started saying, "Bye." 

And as soon as I put his shoes on, he bolted to the door. 

Marcus left an event to come pick us up & we've been home ever since.  Isaiah's appetite & energy are back to normal.  And I have my giggling, mischevious loving son back. 

It was pretty sad seeing him all hooked up & trapped, & yes it really sucked being there for two days.  But being in that hospital, I couldn't stop thinking of how blessed we were that it wasn't worse.  I hold him tighter every time he lets me. 

We are blessed.