Ch-Ch-Ch-Ch-Changes

I have to come right out and say that it's been a bumpy summer and most of the things I've tried to accomplish haven't turned out like I thought they would. It's humbling and disappointing and I feel like I spend a lot of time right now not being discouraged. I'm not going to list all the things that didn't work well or didn't work at all because at this point, there's so many I don't think it would be helpful when the ultimate goal is to keep trying. Sometimes it's better not to pay attention to the score.
Plans for our wedding our going OK and I will be receiving my dress by Friday. I'm excited to see it and get it dyed and tried on and all that. I have to make a list of the things that we still need to do and calls to make. Luckily, we have a lot of help and I'm excited to have our day and visit with family & friends.

Leo is doing so well and growing up so fast! He learns new words everyday and seems to make these leaps in conceptual knowledge. He pretends to be dead sometimes and wants me to 'fix' him and make him better. I oblige, of course, working his legs and turning my pretend tools at his joints and he gets up and runs away only to 'die' again in a few minutes. We are starting to have to deal with shooting already. I struggle to figure out how to deal with this because we are not a family that approves of gun-play, especially if he is shooting at people. It's really challenging because he shoots strangers when he gets uncomfortable in a crowd and men especially think this is funny and shoot him back. So he gets a lot of reinforcement for the behavior and I'm not really sure how to address it. I look forward to getting back to ECFE so I can talk with some other parents about it.

BREAKING NEWS
My refinancer just called me and told me we are FINALLY ready to close today after 4 months of screwing around and messing up my chances for trading in my car on the cash for clunkers program. I'll hope for the best. Then perhaps I can get a more reliable car and not have to worry I'm going to get stranded all the time.

Also, my mom has been diagnosed with cancer again on her tongue. She already has had half of it removed 6 years ago, so she is pretty scared that they will take the rest of it. In the last few weeks we have purposefully taken some time away from each other in order to hopefully investigate our complex and often challenging relationship and ways we can better it and ourselves. So this upcoming surgery (scheduled 2 days before our wedding) is creating questions for me I don't have answers for about how I can respond best to this and what my place should be.

That's it for now. I hope by the next time I write I will have some better news and some pictures, too.