Moving, 1st birthdays...what else?

So..for those of you that don't know..we're moving back to the States next Thursday. It's a really quick move..(4 weeks !!)..and I have a really active 1 yr old on top of that. Speaking of our 1 yr old, birthday pics will follow in about a week or so when we get back to the US and I have some stability in my life again.
We're moving to Socorro,NM. Matt will be working on the Very Large Array observatory there...(for reference much of the footage of the movie Contact with Jodie Foster was shot there).
It'll be great to be closer to family and not have to deal with a 10 hr flight to see them.

In the meantime...I'm still down here in Chile, trying to deal with all of the details, paperwork, movers, etc.
That being said, last week, we had a small birthday party with Wyatt and some his friends at the park. Although there were no air castles or pony rides, Wyatt enjoyed it just the same and I even managed to create my first birthday cake. It was a monkey shaped cake and even though I wanted to buy a cake really bad...I felt I had to earn my mom badge by making the cake. I guess the art of decorating is one that gets better over time..b/c I started at 10:30 the night before..and finished at 4 am in the morning..! Hopefully by party #2, I will have a better grasp of it all.
Fast forward to today..and I'll just take a quick snapshot of what days are like around here..And no, I'm not making any of this up to evoke sympathy.
- I'm in Santiago alone with Wyatt..(Matt is still working up north)..and so I am dealing with a lot of the bureaucratic details on my own...closing accounts, dealing with the house, etc. On top of that, Wyatt has been cranky lately b/c he hasn't been taking the usual naps due to the house being shown constantly to potential tenants.
Today, my nerves were already raw b/c I had to say goodbye to some dear friends who were with me in the crazy time of being a new mom in a new country. Our kids were all born around the same time, we all experienced a massive earthquake together...(you know..it's a unique situation).
I then had to try to go purchase a document for the car..(which I was told would be a simple process)..all while Wyatt was throwing a fit complete with arched back and crying. This is coupled with my mediocre (horrible) Spanish and a woman behind the desk looking annoyed and telling me that my documents that I am presenting to her..are incorrect. I go back to my husband's company and they tell me that the other woman is incorrect and that I have what I need. Keep in mind, that we are flying out of the country next week (!) and we still have not sold our car..and we can't do it without this document that I can't get. I ended up bursting into tears and demanding that someone go with me to the other location and sort it out with me. This is all going on with Wyatt still on my hip. A woman from my husband's company goes, and in the end...I did in fact have incorrect documents and would have never been able to get what I needed without someone's intervention. What a pain!
Our moving company came to the house later to go over customs documents and so I have to put Wyatt down to play while I concentrate on what's going on. I forgot to shut the bathroom door, and caught him just as we were going over Custom Form 3699, trying to eat toilet paper. I needed to retrieve a vet certificate for them for our dogs..(yes, our 90 lb dogs are coming back with us of course...FYI..it's so much more difficult getting the dogs out of the country with their size. They have to go as cargo)...while I was going downstairs with Wyatt on hip, I realized that he had a dirty diaper...SO, while the people were waiting upstairs on me, I changed Wyatt super quick and as soon as the diaper came off, I didn't get a hold of his hands in time..and he reached and got poo all over his fingers...(!)...
Later, as I'm still talking to the movers, I see Wyatt take off every book on the lower shelf of the bookshelf..and then he tries to crawl into the lap of one of the women that is sitting at the table.
(The nana mentioned that out of all of the children of the families that she has worked with in 17 yrs..Wyatt is the most active). Great.

Tomorrow..there are more goodbyes to say and a trip to the notary...with Wyatt. Any place where you have to take a number and sit in a tiny lobby and try to understand and speak Spanish is a recipe for disaster. Wish me luck!

Yes...I do exist.

So...I realize that I rarely have any pics of myself with Wyatt b/c I am always on the other side of the camera. Seriously..in the course of a year, I only have a handful of pictures with just the two of us. This already puts me in the horrible mother category, right? Darn..I thought there was some way I could avoid that. Oh well...for year #2, I have a goal of taking tons more pics. Can I redeem myself?
This was taken the other day after bath time...What a cutie!