Oh, and by the way, I apologize for the funky header...I messed with it for a bit but then lost interest. I might eventually fix it if I don't have anything else to do :-)
On the Emily front, Emily is using sentences more and more now. For example, as I was lifting her into the cart at Giant today, she said "Barf, Mommy". I didn't even realize she knew the word "barf", but when I looked at my shoulder, she had indeed barfed on mommy. Quite a blast from the past...I don't think I've gone to the grocery store with baby vomit on my shirt for months at least!
Now that she's doing so well with the talking, I think we need to focus on the sharing. She is definitely not fond of other kids, and REALLY not fond of sharing with other kids. If a kid runs up and grabs a ball that Emily was headed for at Little Gym class, she shrieks and stamps her feet and tries to grab the ball. She definitely gets a talking-to from mommy for doing things like that, but I don't know how to break her of it other than putting her in situations where she has to interact and share with other kids more often. At home, at Grammy's, at Nannas, pretty much everywhere she goes she's the one kid in a sea of adults who all play however she wants them to and get her whatever she wants. We certainly don't let her walk all over us, but it's pretty much impossible for adults to teach a kid how to interact with other kids. The drawback of being the only child of a stay at home mom, I guess.
So the only thing I can think to do is to expose her to other kids as often as possible. She does go to gym daycare fairly often, and she has Little Gym and storytime at the library, so I guess we'll just keep doing what we're doing and I'll stay on top of her when she acts selfish. She'll just be the screamy kid no one likes for awhile, but it's not like I can hire kids to come over to my house and teach her to share so we'll just have to teach her in public.
Friday, February 27, 2009
Monday, February 16, 2009
Explosions and Fires
Emily is going through what experts refer to as a "language explosion". I read somewhere that at this age, kids are learning a new word every 90 minutes, which is amazing to think about. I believe it though. Today alone she learned to say "heart", "fly", "circle", and "octagon" (we got a new talking shape puzzle). And those are just the ones she said a bunch of times. There were probably others she learned but just filed away for later. She also said "Shoe off", which is one of her first 2-word combos, if not THE first. She was a late starter, but she's definitely off and running now. And the best part is, she can now say "poopy", so she tells me when her diaper needs to be changed, although it's only actually poopy sometimes. Potty training here we come!
I like the talking thing so far. It's great to finally get to see a little bit of what's going on inside the mind of this person you've spent the last 21 months with, even if it's only what their simple vocabulary can express. She has become a bit more demanding now that she can talk more though. These last few days she's gone to bed willingly enough, but as soon as she's in the crib her eyes get all big and she says "Fish-eee?" (or "Hoppy?" or "Minnie?", or inevitably whatever stuffed animal I've forgotten to bring upstairs) and then I have to go find the requested toy. Once she has her toy, she needs to be tucked in with the correct blanket, which changes every night based on her mood, and sometimes several times a night. Tonight she even decided the pajamas she was wearing were unacceptable and made me change her into her Christmas pajamas that she had glimpsed in the closet, waiting to be packed away. But we eventually get things all figured out and arranged to her liking.
Oh yeah, and she learned the word "firetruck" too today, as there were three of them parked right outside our window this evening, along with a brush fire unit, a police car, and an ambulance. I was chatting with Will on the phone as we drove home from the gym (in separate cars...we don't use cell phones when we can see each other, I promise) and all of a sudden he said "I see a lot of smoke...Oh my God, there's a house on fire!" I got a bit alarmed because I knew he was close to home, and asked "Where?!?!?!" "Our neighbor's! I'm calling 911!" was his semi-comforting reply.
When I got home a couple minutes later, I saw clouds of sparks billowing out of our neighbor's chimney. Luckily the firetrucks were there quickly, plus the fire seemed to lessen instead of spreading, so it stayed confined in the chimney and it all seemed to work out fine in the end. I was a bit nervous looking at the third firetruck, which parked right by my front door. Was that one sent and positioned to put out the neighboring houses if the fire spread? I SO didn't even want to think about that. And I now see the leyland cypress border in our backyard less as a convenient privacy hedge, and a little more as a convenient conduit for fires approaching from neighboring houses, eek!
We live very close to a fire station, and I've always felt more happy than not about that. True, the sirens wake me up at night sometimes, but they sure got here fast! It also confirmed that those firetrucks are indeed the ones that would respond to our area if we need help. I remember going on a tour of our town as a kid and hearing stories about how there used to be several fire companies and each house had a plaque on the front to show what fire station they paid for service. If a house right next to a certain fire station was buring down, that fire station wouldn't do anything about it unless the house had that fire station's plaque on the front. I know it's completely mental, I KNOW 911 sends whoever's closest, but I always secretly worried that there might be some kind of districting issue that would mean we "belonged" to a different fire station or something crazy like that. Mental note: bake cookies, put my address on the platter, and deliver to close firestation.
And can I just say, no matter how many times it happens, I'm still shocked at how potently music can bring back memories? My Bombay Dreams CD went missing years ago, and Will just downloaded the album for me tonight. I started listening to it and WOW. It's just flashes...moments that aren't anything all that special, but for some reason the music you were listening to at the time becomes fused with the memories and they come back SO strongly and in such great detail when you hear it again. When I heard the first track, it was all of a sudden spring 2004, it's beautiful and warm out, the sun is setting, and I'm driving my Audi (GOD I miss that car) back from the gym to go home and make dinner. And there's also sitting in the Apollo Victoria theater in London a couple weeks later watching in astonishment as an older couple seemed to be randomly sitting in whatever two seats they could find, and being forced to move over and over as the real ticket-holders for those seats showed up, and they actually seemed to be arguing each time they were asked to move. Our astonishment turned to anger when they were still being asked to move after the show started, and their confused milling made us miss the entire first scene. Grrrr.
And sadly, there's also the memory of going to see the Maryland Ensemble Theater's production of Lysistrata (which was terrible) and being blown away when the cast inexplicably burst into a rendition of Shakalaka Baby at the end. I wasn't aware that Bollywood even existed back when Aristophanes was writing his comedies. Shows how much I know.
Thanks for allowing me a trip down memory lane. Sometimes I have to remind myself that I used to drive an awesome car and go to see cultural performances while wearing clothing that was absolutely free of peanutbuttery handprints.
Of course hearing Emily yell "POOPY!" is just as good as all of that :-)
I like the talking thing so far. It's great to finally get to see a little bit of what's going on inside the mind of this person you've spent the last 21 months with, even if it's only what their simple vocabulary can express. She has become a bit more demanding now that she can talk more though. These last few days she's gone to bed willingly enough, but as soon as she's in the crib her eyes get all big and she says "Fish-eee?" (or "Hoppy?" or "Minnie?", or inevitably whatever stuffed animal I've forgotten to bring upstairs) and then I have to go find the requested toy. Once she has her toy, she needs to be tucked in with the correct blanket, which changes every night based on her mood, and sometimes several times a night. Tonight she even decided the pajamas she was wearing were unacceptable and made me change her into her Christmas pajamas that she had glimpsed in the closet, waiting to be packed away. But we eventually get things all figured out and arranged to her liking.
Oh yeah, and she learned the word "firetruck" too today, as there were three of them parked right outside our window this evening, along with a brush fire unit, a police car, and an ambulance. I was chatting with Will on the phone as we drove home from the gym (in separate cars...we don't use cell phones when we can see each other, I promise) and all of a sudden he said "I see a lot of smoke...Oh my God, there's a house on fire!" I got a bit alarmed because I knew he was close to home, and asked "Where?!?!?!" "Our neighbor's! I'm calling 911!" was his semi-comforting reply.
When I got home a couple minutes later, I saw clouds of sparks billowing out of our neighbor's chimney. Luckily the firetrucks were there quickly, plus the fire seemed to lessen instead of spreading, so it stayed confined in the chimney and it all seemed to work out fine in the end. I was a bit nervous looking at the third firetruck, which parked right by my front door. Was that one sent and positioned to put out the neighboring houses if the fire spread? I SO didn't even want to think about that. And I now see the leyland cypress border in our backyard less as a convenient privacy hedge, and a little more as a convenient conduit for fires approaching from neighboring houses, eek!
We live very close to a fire station, and I've always felt more happy than not about that. True, the sirens wake me up at night sometimes, but they sure got here fast! It also confirmed that those firetrucks are indeed the ones that would respond to our area if we need help. I remember going on a tour of our town as a kid and hearing stories about how there used to be several fire companies and each house had a plaque on the front to show what fire station they paid for service. If a house right next to a certain fire station was buring down, that fire station wouldn't do anything about it unless the house had that fire station's plaque on the front. I know it's completely mental, I KNOW 911 sends whoever's closest, but I always secretly worried that there might be some kind of districting issue that would mean we "belonged" to a different fire station or something crazy like that. Mental note: bake cookies, put my address on the platter, and deliver to close firestation.
And can I just say, no matter how many times it happens, I'm still shocked at how potently music can bring back memories? My Bombay Dreams CD went missing years ago, and Will just downloaded the album for me tonight. I started listening to it and WOW. It's just flashes...moments that aren't anything all that special, but for some reason the music you were listening to at the time becomes fused with the memories and they come back SO strongly and in such great detail when you hear it again. When I heard the first track, it was all of a sudden spring 2004, it's beautiful and warm out, the sun is setting, and I'm driving my Audi (GOD I miss that car) back from the gym to go home and make dinner. And there's also sitting in the Apollo Victoria theater in London a couple weeks later watching in astonishment as an older couple seemed to be randomly sitting in whatever two seats they could find, and being forced to move over and over as the real ticket-holders for those seats showed up, and they actually seemed to be arguing each time they were asked to move. Our astonishment turned to anger when they were still being asked to move after the show started, and their confused milling made us miss the entire first scene. Grrrr.
And sadly, there's also the memory of going to see the Maryland Ensemble Theater's production of Lysistrata (which was terrible) and being blown away when the cast inexplicably burst into a rendition of Shakalaka Baby at the end. I wasn't aware that Bollywood even existed back when Aristophanes was writing his comedies. Shows how much I know.
Thanks for allowing me a trip down memory lane. Sometimes I have to remind myself that I used to drive an awesome car and go to see cultural performances while wearing clothing that was absolutely free of peanutbuttery handprints.
Of course hearing Emily yell "POOPY!" is just as good as all of that :-)
Wednesday, February 11, 2009
Shakes fist at sky
Today was a glorious day. Mid-sixties, sunny, wonderful. I joyously flung open all the windows, saying "It'll be nice to air out the stuffy winterness...and we'll save on heat!" I enjoyed the lovely day.
Then, as I was reading Oh The Places You'll Go to Emily before bed, I heard what sounded like rain outside. "Funny" I thought, "I remember the weather people mentioning wind, but not rain. It must just be that the wind kicked up because no way is it raining hard enough to make a roar like that."
But alas, it was. And the rain was pouring right in through all my open windows.
So I hurriedly put Emily in the crib, blew some quick kisses and ran out of the room. And when I looked out the front window, rain was POURING down in sheets.
What the hell? When it rains in January here, it's just a wimpy depressing drizzle. I have NEVER seen a summer-quality downpour like this in the winter. Sure, it was unseasonably warm today, but it's not unheard of to have nice days here and there sprinkled throughout the winter to keep our skin from falling completely off from the cold and dryness. They've never come complete with authentic summer monsoon before though.
My house has a lot of windows, and stupid panicked me, the first ones I closed were the ones that open onto the front porch. The ones with the least chance of the rain reaching in. Oh well.
The damage is minimal. But I'm still so confused. My windowsills and wood floor and Emily's toddler-sized chair and table set were pretty soaked, but all of those are hard surfaces I easily dried off. The problem was in the dining room, where it rained all over the carpet and an upholstered chair. I'm not sure what to do about that. I feel like pressing a towel onto it will absorb some moisture, but will probably also mash water deeper into the under-layers. I guess the best thing to do would be to get a fan set up and open the windows and let the moisture evaporate that way, but now it's all humid outside and it's supposed to get cold again.
And of course, it only rained for like, 5 minutes and then stopped. It just had to teach me a lesson for trying to enjoy the rare gift of a warm day in February.
Also I just had to go running upstairs to pull my daughter's leg back out from between the crib slats. Last night she awoke at 11 screaming and confused and when I rushed in to see what was the matter I found that she had thrust her foot out of the crib in her sleep, then rolled over, wedging and painfully twisting her foot. Luckily tonight she made a noise when she poked her leg out in her sleep so I checked the video monitor and was able to avert another leg-twisting incident. Thank goodness that girl inherited her mother's ability to never ever bruise, In the last 4 days alone she's taken a face dive from the breakfast area down into our sunken family room (on the wood floor), smashed her face while she was crawling around under the dining room table and fell on the leg of a chair, bonked her head spectacularly when she slipped on a blanket on the family room floor and then pinched and twisted her foot last night in her sleep. If she bruised easily the gym daycare would be reporting me to child services. And I wanted to take her crib bumper off yesterday. Without it she'd probably be wedging her entire torso through the side of the crib in her sleep.
At least it seems I made the right decision there. About the windows though? Not so much.
Then, as I was reading Oh The Places You'll Go to Emily before bed, I heard what sounded like rain outside. "Funny" I thought, "I remember the weather people mentioning wind, but not rain. It must just be that the wind kicked up because no way is it raining hard enough to make a roar like that."
But alas, it was. And the rain was pouring right in through all my open windows.
So I hurriedly put Emily in the crib, blew some quick kisses and ran out of the room. And when I looked out the front window, rain was POURING down in sheets.
What the hell? When it rains in January here, it's just a wimpy depressing drizzle. I have NEVER seen a summer-quality downpour like this in the winter. Sure, it was unseasonably warm today, but it's not unheard of to have nice days here and there sprinkled throughout the winter to keep our skin from falling completely off from the cold and dryness. They've never come complete with authentic summer monsoon before though.
My house has a lot of windows, and stupid panicked me, the first ones I closed were the ones that open onto the front porch. The ones with the least chance of the rain reaching in. Oh well.
The damage is minimal. But I'm still so confused. My windowsills and wood floor and Emily's toddler-sized chair and table set were pretty soaked, but all of those are hard surfaces I easily dried off. The problem was in the dining room, where it rained all over the carpet and an upholstered chair. I'm not sure what to do about that. I feel like pressing a towel onto it will absorb some moisture, but will probably also mash water deeper into the under-layers. I guess the best thing to do would be to get a fan set up and open the windows and let the moisture evaporate that way, but now it's all humid outside and it's supposed to get cold again.
And of course, it only rained for like, 5 minutes and then stopped. It just had to teach me a lesson for trying to enjoy the rare gift of a warm day in February.
Also I just had to go running upstairs to pull my daughter's leg back out from between the crib slats. Last night she awoke at 11 screaming and confused and when I rushed in to see what was the matter I found that she had thrust her foot out of the crib in her sleep, then rolled over, wedging and painfully twisting her foot. Luckily tonight she made a noise when she poked her leg out in her sleep so I checked the video monitor and was able to avert another leg-twisting incident. Thank goodness that girl inherited her mother's ability to never ever bruise, In the last 4 days alone she's taken a face dive from the breakfast area down into our sunken family room (on the wood floor), smashed her face while she was crawling around under the dining room table and fell on the leg of a chair, bonked her head spectacularly when she slipped on a blanket on the family room floor and then pinched and twisted her foot last night in her sleep. If she bruised easily the gym daycare would be reporting me to child services. And I wanted to take her crib bumper off yesterday. Without it she'd probably be wedging her entire torso through the side of the crib in her sleep.
At least it seems I made the right decision there. About the windows though? Not so much.
Preschool!?!?!?!
We were out to lunch on Saturday with my in-laws and Will's old boss and his wife (at Volt! Yum! But their lunch-sized wine pairing is much much smaller than its dinner counterpart. Boo.) and my mother-in-law mentioned preschools. She has this way of mentioning things that I should be used to by now but I'm not. She'll say "I was talking to my friend at church last Sunday, and she asked me "So when are Will and Sara going to pick a college/So when are Will and Sara going to have a baby/So when are Will and Sara going to have another baby/So are Will and Sara all moved into their new house yet/What preschool is Emily going to because you know there are 2 year waiting lists for some of them" and I said "Oh they have plenty of time/Oh they have plenty of time/Oh they have plenty of time/Oh they have plenty of time/Oh they have plenty of time"."
I'll start a new paragraph here because I'm sure your head is spinning from all the ""quotations within quotations"".".
Then she waits for me to respond. And there are only two ways to respond. #1 is to tell her what our plans actually are, which is what she's really asking in a roundabout way by telling these little "stories", and #2 is to just smile and nod. And I usually do #2.
So this method takes the focus off the actual question, and puts the focus on figuring out what she really means and finding a nebulous answer, if needed. In my mind I'm trying to figure out if this "concerned friend" was a complete fabrication invented to bring up the subject, or if the conversation actually did happen, with very fortuitous timing.
So that is why I had this conversation last weekend, but it was only today that I actually thought about it and realized "2 year waiting lists?!?!?! I have to start calling preschools, like, today".
But I have some issues, and they are:
-Emily is still my teeny tiny baby and will always be this way and surely won't be leaving me to go to school for another 10 years at least so it's silly to even think about preschool in the first place.
-I have to pick my child's preschool? Where in the manual do they tell you how to do that?
-How do I even find out what preschools I have to choose from?
I started, as usual, with my beloved internet. A quick google search brings up some yahoo listings, but how do I know whether that's an exhaustive list or not? Maybe it's just the preschools who paid to be listed on yahoo. Do I (gasp!) have to look in the yellow pages? I always tease my mom for turning first to the yellow pages, but do I even remember how to use them myself? Am I going to have to actually call people? On the phone? And some of these preschools actually look like they are daycare, so what's the difference between a preschool program and daycare?
I tried to sign up for a community of local moms online so that I can figure out my area's "preschool hierarchy of desirability", but they take up to 48 hours to process your joining request. Don't they know I need advice NOW? The waiting lists could be approaching 3 years by the time I'm approved!
In the meantime, I'm trying to think of the preschools I already know about. There's the Lucy School, which is a picturesque little barn-turned-school where I took Emily for Sing and Sign class last fall. It's all very outdoorsy and granola with a focus on music and art, and the kids have an organic garden. But lord is it pricey. Also, they do preschool through 2nd grade there, and it's not very close to our school district. So if I send Emily to preschool there, will I be the meanest mommy ever if I pull her away from her friends to put her into public school or a different private school for Kindergarten? If I send her there all the way through 2nd grade, then she and her friends will have to split up anyway at that point, but she'll be joining a class at a different school in 3rd grade...a class that has probably been at the same school together since Kindergarten, so will she be the new kid coming to the party 3 years too late, doomed to be an outsider for all eternity? And music and art are good and all, but hopefully there's science and math aplenty too? Lucy School just makes my head spin.
Then there's the preschool Will and I went to, which is at my mother-in-law's church. I liked it there well enough, and I don't really recall getting any religious lessons with my preschool, but doesn't it seem weird to go to preschool at a church, especially if it's not YOUR church? A lot of the preschools I saw online have "philosophies" and "teaching methods"...a preschool at a church might have a loose cirriculum, but is it really school or just like glorified daycare? All I can really remember of my own preschool days was playing with dinosaur toys and finger painting with paint that the teachers were foolish enough to mention was edible. Yum.
Then there's the school downtown that my mom enrolled Krista (my middle sister) in at the last minute when she was 3 because she was going to wait to put her into preschool until she was 4 (another dilema! Enroll at 3 or wait until 4?) but Mom decided she'd like to have some time at home alone with my youngest sister (since Krista did and still kinda does demand attention, usually loudly). So she enrolled Krista in the last place that had spaces left. Damn, that's harsh. Compared to places with 2 year waiting lists, I'm thinking no.
And which are the places with 2 year waiting lists? Do they even exist? If I call KinderKare and ask for a tour because I'm scouting preschools for my 21 month old daughter, are they going to laugh at me and tell me to come back in 2 years when she's actually old enough to go to school?
And the big question in the back of my mind the whole time...does which preschool Emily goes to really matter that much? I barely remember my own preschool experience, but even if you don't remember it, isn't the point of it to lay the groundwork for the rest of your school career? That sounds pretty important. But is it?
I don't think I'm ready for this yet. Maybe I'll bury my head in the sand and just keep nodding at my mother-in-law for another year.
I'll start a new paragraph here because I'm sure your head is spinning from all the ""quotations within quotations"".".
Then she waits for me to respond. And there are only two ways to respond. #1 is to tell her what our plans actually are, which is what she's really asking in a roundabout way by telling these little "stories", and #2 is to just smile and nod. And I usually do #2.
So this method takes the focus off the actual question, and puts the focus on figuring out what she really means and finding a nebulous answer, if needed. In my mind I'm trying to figure out if this "concerned friend" was a complete fabrication invented to bring up the subject, or if the conversation actually did happen, with very fortuitous timing.
So that is why I had this conversation last weekend, but it was only today that I actually thought about it and realized "2 year waiting lists?!?!?! I have to start calling preschools, like, today".
But I have some issues, and they are:
-Emily is still my teeny tiny baby and will always be this way and surely won't be leaving me to go to school for another 10 years at least so it's silly to even think about preschool in the first place.
-I have to pick my child's preschool? Where in the manual do they tell you how to do that?
-How do I even find out what preschools I have to choose from?
I started, as usual, with my beloved internet. A quick google search brings up some yahoo listings, but how do I know whether that's an exhaustive list or not? Maybe it's just the preschools who paid to be listed on yahoo. Do I (gasp!) have to look in the yellow pages? I always tease my mom for turning first to the yellow pages, but do I even remember how to use them myself? Am I going to have to actually call people? On the phone? And some of these preschools actually look like they are daycare, so what's the difference between a preschool program and daycare?
I tried to sign up for a community of local moms online so that I can figure out my area's "preschool hierarchy of desirability", but they take up to 48 hours to process your joining request. Don't they know I need advice NOW? The waiting lists could be approaching 3 years by the time I'm approved!
In the meantime, I'm trying to think of the preschools I already know about. There's the Lucy School, which is a picturesque little barn-turned-school where I took Emily for Sing and Sign class last fall. It's all very outdoorsy and granola with a focus on music and art, and the kids have an organic garden. But lord is it pricey. Also, they do preschool through 2nd grade there, and it's not very close to our school district. So if I send Emily to preschool there, will I be the meanest mommy ever if I pull her away from her friends to put her into public school or a different private school for Kindergarten? If I send her there all the way through 2nd grade, then she and her friends will have to split up anyway at that point, but she'll be joining a class at a different school in 3rd grade...a class that has probably been at the same school together since Kindergarten, so will she be the new kid coming to the party 3 years too late, doomed to be an outsider for all eternity? And music and art are good and all, but hopefully there's science and math aplenty too? Lucy School just makes my head spin.
Then there's the preschool Will and I went to, which is at my mother-in-law's church. I liked it there well enough, and I don't really recall getting any religious lessons with my preschool, but doesn't it seem weird to go to preschool at a church, especially if it's not YOUR church? A lot of the preschools I saw online have "philosophies" and "teaching methods"...a preschool at a church might have a loose cirriculum, but is it really school or just like glorified daycare? All I can really remember of my own preschool days was playing with dinosaur toys and finger painting with paint that the teachers were foolish enough to mention was edible. Yum.
Then there's the school downtown that my mom enrolled Krista (my middle sister) in at the last minute when she was 3 because she was going to wait to put her into preschool until she was 4 (another dilema! Enroll at 3 or wait until 4?) but Mom decided she'd like to have some time at home alone with my youngest sister (since Krista did and still kinda does demand attention, usually loudly). So she enrolled Krista in the last place that had spaces left. Damn, that's harsh. Compared to places with 2 year waiting lists, I'm thinking no.
And which are the places with 2 year waiting lists? Do they even exist? If I call KinderKare and ask for a tour because I'm scouting preschools for my 21 month old daughter, are they going to laugh at me and tell me to come back in 2 years when she's actually old enough to go to school?
And the big question in the back of my mind the whole time...does which preschool Emily goes to really matter that much? I barely remember my own preschool experience, but even if you don't remember it, isn't the point of it to lay the groundwork for the rest of your school career? That sounds pretty important. But is it?
I don't think I'm ready for this yet. Maybe I'll bury my head in the sand and just keep nodding at my mother-in-law for another year.
Monday, February 9, 2009
Random thoughts
Today, as Will and I came inside from our jog/walk (respectively), I took off my shoes and put them on the shoe rack where Will usually puts his. It was the closest spot to the door, and it was open. A little while ago I walked by the shoe rack and noticed that he moved my shoes to the middle rack, and put his shoes in the "good" spot. I wonder why I am not allowed to put my shoes there?
My child is the total opposite of other children when it comes to eating. While most other moms are pureeing spinach to put in their childrens' dinners, I am pureeing meat to hide in her vegetables because I know she'll eat the vegetables.
I should've walked to the grocery store today instead of driving, because it is very nice outside. I knew this, and yet I still drove 1/2 a mile to go there. Habit, I suppose.
Even though my frozen veggie coupon expired January 10th, it was accepted at Giant today, and it doubled, resulting in a free bag of frozen veggies. Awesome.
Not doing Body Pump for 2 weeks + doing Body Pump again = ouch.
I have a weird thing that may be a burn on my outer forearm. I have no clue how I got it. The problem is, it's about the same size as my birthmark, which is located approximately 2 inches below it, so now that I have 2 similarly-sized skin abnormalities near each other it looks kind of like I am developing a skin disease on my arm, and will probably be ostracized as a leper before too long.
Flesh-colored, skintight thermal pants are not acceptable gym attire on anyone, especially not on the lady who wore them tonight. She totally reminded me of that butt-thing that dances around at the end of Pink Floyd's The Wall, and that movies scares the ever-loving crap out of me.
I need a babysitter to make me go to bed. Will has been working crazy hours for the past 2 weeks, and he is my structure. Without him here at night, and with Emily asleep, I aimlessly read my book, do some internetting, and just basically waste time until 1 when I am exhausted and crawl to bed. I SHOULD just go to bed as soon as he leaves and get a fabulous 11 hours of sleep in before Emily starts cooing good morning, but I never do.
Maybe I should make tonight the night. I guess that means this post is finished.
Even though my frozen veggie coupon expired January 10th, it was accepted at Giant today, and it doubled, resulting in a free bag of frozen veggies. Awesome.
Not doing Body Pump for 2 weeks + doing Body Pump again = ouch.
I have a weird thing that may be a burn on my outer forearm. I have no clue how I got it. The problem is, it's about the same size as my birthmark, which is located approximately 2 inches below it, so now that I have 2 similarly-sized skin abnormalities near each other it looks kind of like I am developing a skin disease on my arm, and will probably be ostracized as a leper before too long.
Flesh-colored, skintight thermal pants are not acceptable gym attire on anyone, especially not on the lady who wore them tonight. She totally reminded me of that butt-thing that dances around at the end of Pink Floyd's The Wall, and that movies scares the ever-loving crap out of me.
I need a babysitter to make me go to bed. Will has been working crazy hours for the past 2 weeks, and he is my structure. Without him here at night, and with Emily asleep, I aimlessly read my book, do some internetting, and just basically waste time until 1 when I am exhausted and crawl to bed. I SHOULD just go to bed as soon as he leaves and get a fabulous 11 hours of sleep in before Emily starts cooing good morning, but I never do.
Maybe I should make tonight the night. I guess that means this post is finished.
Sunday, February 8, 2009
Love that super-rapidity
Why on earth does the regular cycle on my bread machine exist? I've always assumed that the regular 4 hour bread cycle gave better results, and that you should only use the super rapid cycle if you find yourself in a bread emergency and need a loaf right now. Well I was in just such an emergency tonight, and let me tell you, my results using the super-rapid cycle were far superior to the results I get with the regular cycle! None of this top-of-the-loaf-falling-down-into-a-sad-little-concave-puddle business that I've been battling with...when I opened the lid this evening I was treated to the sight of a glorious loaf of bread, standing tall and proud.
So in my opinion, the super-rapid cycle should just be the regular cycle, and the regular cycle should be called "the cycle you use if you want to wait a long time and still end up with crappy bread".
This post would be better with pictures, but my droopy loaves of bread are just too sad-looking to photograph, and my super-rapid success tonight was also consumed super-rapidly so you just get yammerings with no pictures. Sorry.
Friday, February 6, 2009
Dogged
Finally, a reason to keep the dogs.
Whenever I leave the house, I close the dogs in the laundry room so they can't wreak havoc on my house while I'm gone. They don't especially like this, but they're mostly resigned to it at this point.
Recently, Mingus has started expressing his frustration at being closed in the laundry room by asserting his dominance over Remy. This means, the last thing I see as I close the door and walk out to my car is Mingus, frantically speed-humping Remy. He always has a crazed gleam in his eye, as if to say "I don't know if we'll ever make it back out of this room, and I am NOT going to die a virgin!".
I always leave the house sniggering and hoping that Mingus will've calmed down by the time Emily is old enough to notice and question such things. If he doesn't, there's a good chance her first sex talk might be about how sometimes male dogs hump each other to show that one is better than the other, and I shudder to think how her impressionable young mind might apply such knowledge to males of other species. "Oh yeah? Well MY dad can hump YOUR dad!"
That could make for some uncomfortable silences.
Thursday, February 5, 2009
Our newest additions
Because of Emily's obsession with the words "fish" (pronounced fwish) and "fishy" (pronounced fish-EEEEEEE), I decided it would be fun to get her a little fish for Valentine's Day. Something simple that can live in an unheated, unfiltered bowl because I don't want to fall into the trap of having an aquarium again. I've decided twice before to take a foray into the rewarding field of tropical fish ownership, and twice before I have ended up just wishing the things would die already. I was sick of dealing with fish getting sucked up into the filter, heaters on the fritz, algea overgrowth, skyrocketing ammonia levels, sucker catfish getting gigantic, tiger barbs eating each other, dalmation mollies having babies, and even once my freshly flea-powdered cat falling into the aquarium and poisoning all of my fish. I always knew fish and cats didn't get along, but who would've ever guessed poison would've been the cat's chosen method of dispatch? Also, Will is no longer my brand-new boyfriend trying to impress me and my parents, so I don't think he'd consent to helping me clean out a 10-gallon aquarium again for fear of getting another splash of dirty green fish water to the face.
So where was I? Oh yes. A fish, but a simple one.
Bettas seemed a good bet. And as is usually the case with me, once I got the idea in my head I just got more and more excited about it, so instead of 1 Betta for Valentine's Day, we now have 2 Bettas for 10 days before Valentine's Day.
Meet Emily's Betta, Dasha:
and my Betta Jasper:
Please forgive the crappy pictures, my photography skills do not extend to taking excellent pictures of tiny moving targets who are underwater and inside a convex reflective container.
I chose Jasper because he matched my kitchen decor (:-P) and he's named after a vampire in Twilight whose name I liked but would not use on one of my own children. I chose Dasha because Emily had no interest in chosing a fish so I grabbed a pretty one so we could get out of there before anyone noticed that Emily had knocked over several test tubes of aquarium water. Boy that girl has a reach, even when she's buckled into a stroller. Emily chose his name.
After doing extensive internet research, I have realized that Bettas can survive in stagnant water down to 60-ish degrees and don't need a whole lot of room to swim around, but that somehow I am a horrible, sadistic person for keeping a Betta in a goldfish bowl (so named because it is apparently far too small for a golfish too...hmmm) without a heater and a filter. Grrr. Apparently Bettas can survive harsh conditions but they don't necessarily like them, and I'm an idiot for thinking "Hey, at least it's better than the little cups they live in at the pet store". And here I thought fwish didn't have enough room in their mushy little brains to have many preferences one way or the other.
So now I've gotten tiny little heaters to tuck into each bowl, and I've ordered Jasper a fetching little rectangular vase that will hold over a gallon of water but fit nicely on the shelf so he can still be my decorative buddy while I'm washing dishes. Things have gotten more complicated, as they always tend to do, but Emily freakin' loves the fish-EEEEEEEs and I like the little guys too. And if they're too much of a pain, at least we can only expect them to live a couple years, right?
So where was I? Oh yes. A fish, but a simple one.
Bettas seemed a good bet. And as is usually the case with me, once I got the idea in my head I just got more and more excited about it, so instead of 1 Betta for Valentine's Day, we now have 2 Bettas for 10 days before Valentine's Day.
Meet Emily's Betta, Dasha:
and my Betta Jasper:
Please forgive the crappy pictures, my photography skills do not extend to taking excellent pictures of tiny moving targets who are underwater and inside a convex reflective container.
I chose Jasper because he matched my kitchen decor (:-P) and he's named after a vampire in Twilight whose name I liked but would not use on one of my own children. I chose Dasha because Emily had no interest in chosing a fish so I grabbed a pretty one so we could get out of there before anyone noticed that Emily had knocked over several test tubes of aquarium water. Boy that girl has a reach, even when she's buckled into a stroller. Emily chose his name.
After doing extensive internet research, I have realized that Bettas can survive in stagnant water down to 60-ish degrees and don't need a whole lot of room to swim around, but that somehow I am a horrible, sadistic person for keeping a Betta in a goldfish bowl (so named because it is apparently far too small for a golfish too...hmmm) without a heater and a filter. Grrr. Apparently Bettas can survive harsh conditions but they don't necessarily like them, and I'm an idiot for thinking "Hey, at least it's better than the little cups they live in at the pet store". And here I thought fwish didn't have enough room in their mushy little brains to have many preferences one way or the other.
So now I've gotten tiny little heaters to tuck into each bowl, and I've ordered Jasper a fetching little rectangular vase that will hold over a gallon of water but fit nicely on the shelf so he can still be my decorative buddy while I'm washing dishes. Things have gotten more complicated, as they always tend to do, but Emily freakin' loves the fish-EEEEEEEs and I like the little guys too. And if they're too much of a pain, at least we can only expect them to live a couple years, right?
Tuesday, February 3, 2009
There's no place like home
I just took a quiz about my preferences in climate, activities, geography etc. to find out where in the US I would enjoy living the most. #4 on my top 24 results? Where I'm living right now.
Guess we won't be moving anytime soon! Although it says we get 21" of snow per year and I don't think we've gotten 21" the past 5 years put together.
If you have the time, take the quiz. It's fun. And if you're so inclined, let me know where your perfect spots are. I'm interested.
The beans were good, but dinner kinda sucked
Well, the casserole turned out pretty well last night. It certainly didn't look much better once it was finished:
but it did taste good. It was actually pretty amazing how much flavor there was, considering the short and simple ingredient list.
but it did taste good. It was actually pretty amazing how much flavor there was, considering the short and simple ingredient list.
However getting a chance to eat it was another matter entirely. Our gym schedule causes us to have pretty late dinners, and usually Emily can't wait that long. She gets hungry while I'm still making dinner, so I have to scrape something together to feed her while I'm finishing dinner. This means that by the time Will and I sit down to a lovely meal, Emily is already fueled up and ready to go. As we try to sit and eat and have a conversation, Emily is walking around whining about one thing or another, periodically pausing near me to raise her arms up and say "Uh-ee?", which translates to "Up, please?". Some nights I give in and just hold her in my lap while I eat one-handed. After a long day, neither Will nor I are in the mood to listen to all the whining. Last night, Emily's issue was her shoes. She wanted me to take them off, and fool that I am, I obliged. The problem with taking any article of clothing off of Emily at night is that she will then demand to have the rest of her clothes taken off, all the way down to her necklace and even her hairbow. When night falls, it's naked time, and while it sometimes slips her mind, all it takes is the removal of a shoe or jacket to remind her.
It's good for kids to have naked time, and I absolutely love watching her dance around naked every night, but I do not love cleaning up her pee. We usually have about 15-30 min of pee-free naked time, so we try to have a diaper back on before our time is up. Last night though, almost as soon as I had removed her clothes for her and turned back to my dinner, she had peed on the floor, and by the time I got over to her, she had walked through it. As I cleaned up the puddle and footprints, Emily was busily unrolling the entire toilet paper roll in the powder room.
Once I had gotten all of that fixed, I returned to my dinner again, only to hear "Uh-ee?". I lifted her into my lap, and got in a few more bites before she peed all over me. Nasty. So then I went around and closed the blinds so that I could toss my urine-soaked pants into the washer and complete my meal partially clothed. I realized when I was putting leftovers in the fridge and I saw headlights sitting in front of the house across the street that I had forgotten to close the blinds on the other side of the house. I'm not used to having people close enough to see in my back windows, and I'm not used to having any windows at all on the sides of my house, and for that, I apologize to my neighbors.
Then it was time to give Emily her bath, but over the last week she has gone from a bath-loving kinda girl to a girl who runs from a bath like a rabid animal. Showers are fine though for some reason, even eagerly anticipated, so these days I have to shower while holding her. Let me tell you my friends, trying to shower while holding a soapy, slippery toddler is incredibly difficult.
SO. I had cleaned up a puddle of pee, re-rolled an entire roll of toilet paper, cleaned up the fallout from the pee bomb that went off in my lap, gave my neighbors a show, made it through a shower without dropping the slippery wiggling Emily, and we were both dried, moisturized, and pajama-ed. It was time to read a story, tuck her in, and be relieved of my parental duties for the night.
Of course that's when she threw up.
Monday, February 2, 2009
The Bean Solution
Well, I've joined the world of "couponing"*, and there's no turning back. I admit, I get a kick out of figuring out ways to buy a $4.50 box of cereal for less than $1.00. I was seen yesterday glaring at a Safeway clerk because she didn't want to give me a raincheck for the incredible soda deal that had already left the drinks aisle barren. But I've spent most of the day feeling sorry for myself about it. You see, around here, sugar and refined carbs are unacceptable. Fats have to be "good", calories have to be low, and everything has to have nutritional value (except for diet sodas, which I don't drink very often and only buy if they're super-cheap). I prefer to buy organic food for Emily, too. These are all good things, but they make getting good deals on food extremely difficult. If we ate nothing but frozen meatballs and Pillsbury rolls, I could feed us on next to nothing. But we eat only real food, and unfortunately there are rarely coupons for flank steaks or broccoli in the newspaper. It hurts when I have to pass up $0.17 boxes of pasta because they are not 100% whole wheat.
I've been wandering around online today, searching for inspiration from blogs, trying to find others who share my plight, and it's quite difficult. That's a lot of food-related restrictions to try to balance. But after extensive research, the answer, it seems, is beans.
They're cheap (even organic), they're healthy, and even better, Emily will eat them (the girl won't touch most meat...at least that means I can buy the $1.59/pound chicken breasts instead of the $8.99/pound organic chicken breasts). I always feel like I should incorporate them into my cooking more, but the problem is that they take planning. You have to soak them overnight, and cook them all day. I could always buy canned beans, and I sometimes do, but they're more expensive, don't taste as good, and are not as good for you.
So today, motivated by a blog I came across where the writer ate mostly organic for a month on a food stamp budget, I am trying a lima bean cassserole (Fassoulia Fourno) for dinner. This is what it looks like right now:
Mmmmm....nothing like pasty, scummy beans to whet the appetite.
It's supposed to be really tasty once it's finished, so I am cautiously optimistic. I am not against trying vegetarian meals, but it just seems wrong that I haven't put any meat in it.
I'll let you know how it turns out.
*No, I do not use this term in day to day conversation, and yes, I hate the way it sounds too.
*No, I do not use this term in day to day conversation, and yes, I hate the way it sounds too.
Sunday, February 1, 2009
Penetration in the Tight End
Yeesh, if I hear the name Roethlisberger one more time, I think I'm going to barf. And something else that really nauseates me is the fact that he's younger than I am. Oh boy. Better start using the wrinkle cream in earnest, there are people younger than me who have won two Superbowls. I'm ancient.
I'm not a huge football fan; as much as I have tried to sit through an entire football game I usually just spend the first two quarters giggling about football double entendres and then wander away to go do something else. This was a good game though. Even though I live closer to Pittsburgh than Arizona, and even though I own my very own Terrible Towel (the result of spending most recent Superbowls in the company of the Pennsylvania Newspaper Association) I was rooting for the Cardinals, and boy was that a heartbreaker.
The best part was the fact that I actually got to watch the commercials this year! Last year I didn't get much of a chance to sit and watch as I had a 9 month old baby and was also hosting a party with very little seating. Before that, as I've mentioned, I was always out of the country at the PNA yearly meeting so I always saw the game, but the commercials were usually in Spanish as they were broadcast out of Puerto Rico. I would've been in St. Croix this year...I'll bet they would've had commercials in English. I won't think about that though. The temperature here climbed into the 60's today, that's just as good isn't it?!?!?!
It was actually more of an ordeal to be able to watch the commercials than one would think, since we don't have cable. Will made it his mission to find it online for me though, so when kickoff started, I settled in to watch. I quickly noticed though that while there were commercials, they were for the Royal Bank of Montreal, and Ice Hockey featured prominently. The kicker was the recruitment commercial for the Canadian Forces. We were watching the Superbowl being broadcast out of Canada. Will finally found another feed, and I was finally able to watch the commercials, although there were an awful lot of commercials that seemed pretty specific to Connecticut. Did anyone else see commercials for the Connecticut Lottery and elementary schools?
Meh, I saw Clydesdales. That means we're getting closer. Maybe next year we'll get cable for the month of February.
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