Can you really put a price on the safety of your child?

Safe Start Baby childproofing company can. And that price is just shy of $2000.

As a Christmas present to us my mother-in-law is having our house babyproofed. It's right up her alley, because she is extremely careful about child safety. In fact, if she takes a look at my fireplace (which boasts genuine foam fireplace guards purchased from a well-respected childproofing catalog) and tells me one more time that when SHE was raising babies in this house she duct taped a comforter to the hearth just to be extra super careful and I should do the same thing, I am going to duct tape a comforter to her head. Nevertheless, the thought of spending days changing outlet covers and bolting bookcases to the wall myself makes me yawn in irritation, so last week we had a consultant come and write down every.single.thing that could be done to make our house 100% safe for a baby. They send an estimate after that, and you choose what things you'd like them to do and what things you think you can do without. I truly believe you could babyproof a lion's cave for less than $2000, so what does that say about the dangerous pit of despair we must live in?

I spent some time today crossing things off the list like "Swivel latch - 16 - $32.00" "Swivel latch labor - 16 - $104". Yes, they charge $6.50 to install a $2.00 piece of plastic...16 times. I am not a person to be free with someone else's money (unless it is a business' money, in which case I view it as the best way to travel), so I pared the list down to what I believe is a good balance between things I REALLY don't want to do and a cost that I don't see as being TOO exorbitant. But hey, I guess everybody gots ta get paid. And I'm sure their insurance is through the roof.

So tomorrow, the babyproofers will descend on my house and make it fit for baby habitation. I think I'll need to host a lot of playgroups here to make it worthwhile, but really, who can put a price on the safety of your child? I find that statement to be INCREDIBLY misleading. It insinuates that by not spending this money you are putting your child in direct danger, whereas what you're really doing is buying peace of mind. What are the chances that your child will ever try to insert his or her chubby little finger into the outlet in the master bathroom? You never know of course, but as we don't plan to allow Emily into the master bathroom unsupervised until she is old enough to know better (and after tomorrow we will have childproof doorguards on both the master bedroom and bathroom doors) I feel it is a "safe" risk to take. But based on the title of my post (which many people like to throw around when it suits their purpose) I am being cheap by trying to save money and making my child less safe.

It is a very nice thing that my mother-in-law is doing for us though, and necessary too, as Emily has made a mockery of our attempts at childproofing so far:






-Sara

Home Improvements 2

This is my kitchen (and I thought we'd had every square inch of that wallpaper eradicated from our house):


This is my holey family room ceiling:


This is my mailbox:


You wish you were this cool.

-Sara

Home Improvement

One of the biggest misconceptions I had about babies when I first became a mom was that once they started sleeping through the night they would continue to sleep through the night. So when little 10 week old Emily first slept for an 8 hour stretch I was ecstatic! I had heard horror stories of 3 year olds who had never yet slept through an entire night at one stretch, and my mom told me my sister didn't sleep through the night until they let her cry it out when she was 6 months old. 6 months! However did they manage? I couldn't believe they let that nonsense go on for that long.

Fast forward to weeks 18-26 or so, and Emily was back to her old tricks, getting up 2 or even 3 times a night. Since then she has gone through phases, she'll sleep through the night like a champ for a week or two, then it's back to getting up for at least one snack and visit at night.

I know I shouldn't complain. I have a friend whose 8.5 month old still wakes up 5-7 times a night and often screams for an hour or two while she's up. I don't know how this amazing woman is still alive, let alone coherent during the day.

The last two days Emily has awakened in the night, and at 5:00AM decided that sleep is for chumps and insistently declared that she is ready to start her day. Usually she eats at 5 but then goes back to sleep until 8, allowing me time to get breakfast and Will's lunch together and get the morning dishes under control. It makes a big difference, not having those couple hours baby-free. Going on less sleep than you're used to and being responsible for a baby for more waking hours than is customary is stressful, and stress breeds more stress.

Will is having his single most stressful time at work ever, with closing down the Job Shop, selling off the equipment, placing employees in new positions and moving into a new position himself in the new building. I have been very stressed recently, because every single day this week we've had construction workers tromping through our house, putting in overhead lights, installing microwaves, waking up Emily when I FINALLY get her down for a nap etc. I've made more trips than I care to think about to Home Depot, where they put products on display that are actually special order items but there's no way for a customer to tell that unless they track down an employee 5 aisles over who has no idea what's going on in the appliances department (but who you suspect would still be giving you that bovine stare even if you were in his area of "expertise") and 40 minutes later after contacting 3 other employees and paging a manager you find out you're out of luck.

Even as I write this, it was discovered that the microwave I ended up buying because it was the only one available right away had been returned by the previous purchaser not because it was "Too big", but because the idiots who tried to install it the first time stripped a screw on the back and pushed two lug nuts INTO the back of the microwave so it is completely useless. HOORAY, ANOTHER TRIP TO HOME DEPOT TODAY AND ANOTHER DAY WITH WORKMEN IN MY KITCHEN AT 8AM!

Even the dogs are stressed. Remy barfs if you look at him sideways, which means I have to wash the floor constantly lest Emily goes crawling through a pile of dog vomit. Heck, taking in the view that will be on display for our party guests on Sunday of the bare light bulbs hanging by wires from my ceiling and the gaping hole in my kitchen where a microwave used to be makes me want to barf. I am on day 2 of starting up Weight Watchers to lose this baby weight, which takes some time and planning, which stresses me out, which means I want to eat. Or barf. When your stomach's constantly in a knot it's hard to distinguish the two feelings.

Do you ever feel like your like will never be under control again? And if you chuckle to yourself and say "That's parenthood honey" then so help me I will drive over to your house with my dog and we'll both barf on your floor.


-Sara

Emily the celebrity

I think it's going to her head...she's not returning my calls anymore and she refuses her pureed pears unless I serve them to her in a crystal goblet.

Emily won the Goodmama photo contest this week! If you're wondering what Goodmamas are, they're ONLY the most fabulous diaper ever to grace a baby's bum. Emily's picture is up at www.thegoodmama.com We get to be the envy of the cloth diapering world for a week, and mommy gets to choose a free diaper for Emily! I was so excited when I got our congratulations email that I squealed and jumped around, scaring my husband who was in the other room at the time.

Well, it's a big deal to me!

-Sara

10 years

As of this Wednesday, January 30th, Will and I have been a couple for 10 years. It's hard to believe it's been that long since Will picked me up in his old Volvo after my all-county chorus practice and we went to Ruby Tuesday for dinner and saw Phantoms afterward. A lot has changed since then. We used to repeat our first date every year, but that movie theater is now super-ghetto and we don't go there anymore. We also don't go to Ruby Tuesday anymore, since they can't seem to make any food (including steamed broccoli) without dousing it in butter before serving it. We celebrate our anniversaries a little differently now.

First of all, we have to find a babysitter to celebrate these days. We left Emily with my mother...I guess that's one good thing about Emily deciding to almost completely wean herself early, it makes it easier to go away for any amount of time. This was my second night ever spent away from her, and it's still very hard.

We really enjoyed our stay at the Fairmont Mayakoba in Mexico last year, so we decided to stay at the Fairmont in DC and it was fantastic! Free breakfast buffet, afternoon tea, hot hors d'oeuvres in the evening, and even chocolate fondue at night, although we were out and about at that point so we missed it :-( The best part though was when we returned to our room after turn-down service had been there, and were greeted with rose petals in a heart shape on our bed:


and a bottle of champagne chilling in an ice bucket (and yes, I mean champagne, not sparkling white wine!) with a personalized and signed anniversary card.

Gotta love it!

We went to dinner at Zaytinya, which is a tapas-style Lebanese/Turkish/Greek restaurant and is rated as the #1 restaurant in DC on tripadvisor. It was really good...nothing to complain about at all, but I just expected more based on the fact that it was #1 out of thousands and the chef had lots of accented letters in his name.

After that we did a limo tour of the DC nightclubs. We hit Hudson first, where we got into an argument with the bartender. I ordered a "Lo-jito", which is an 80-calorie drink made with splenda syrup and low-cal rum. We watched him put 3 sugar cubes and Cruzan rum in my drink, and when we asked him about it and pointed out that it says on the menu that it has syrup and not sugar cubes in it he got defensive and said that the only difference was the rum. Funny, he put regular rum in my drink too. And besides, that would have to be one seriously weak drink, considering that each sugar cube is 25 calories, leaving for only 5 calories worth of rum. We eventually gave up, and I grudgingly drank the nastiest (and most expensive) Mojito I've ever had.

Next we went to Fly, which is a airplane-themed nightclub. Once again, my drink was messed up, but oh well. It was a neat place, probably my favorite of the night. After that was Ultrabar, which had a $20 cover and a line wrapping around the block but was actually a fairly unpleasant experience. It was hot, loud, packed and disorienting. They were playing Oceans 13 on a screen on the wall though, so I passed my time watching that. There was no sound, so all I know is that there's a blonde lady who is all about Matt Damon even though he has a huge fake nose.

Last was 1223, which was billed as a "Champagne and Caviar bar", but was fairly indistinguishable from any of the other places we went. We could have gone across the street to Club Five after that, but it was 1AM and for this mama whose bedtime is 9, that was late enough already!

I make it sound bad, but we did have a good time on the tour overall, the company was good and the price was totally worth it. I was just a little bit underwhelmed with the DC bar scene.

After messing with the metro again on the way home, a tasty lunch at Lebanese Taverna in Rockville and a quick stop at Whole Foods and Buy Buy Baby, we were home! A whirlwind tour, but we packed a lot in and I've actually never spent the night in DC before so that was neat.

So now we've officially celebrated our 10th anniversary in style...our 5th wedding anniversary happens this year too, so we'll have to think of something fun to do for that as well. By that point Emily should be completely off the milk and formula, so no lugging the breastpump along and limiting my number of drinks on our romantic weekend. I won't know what to do with myself :-)

-Sara

Uh oh, better call Graco

Today I thought to myself: "I'm sure Emily would behave for a really quick shopping trip to get mommy a dress". I don't know why I continue to convince myself of such ridiculous things, but I do. That is why I ended up in the parking lot of Ann Taylor Loft today juggling clothes, a couple bags of groceries and a screaming baby, a fashionable stream of baby barf trickling slowly down the shoulder of my coat. I was one of THOSE moms. You know, the ones you saw when you were young and childless and thought "I will never look that dishevelled and out of control when I'M a mom". Well maybe you won't you silly young childless people you, but I certainly did.

It was no surprise then, when I started to pull out of my parking spot and heard "Thunk!" from behind my car. I pulled back into my space, jumped out of my car and, casting casual sidelong glances to the right and left to see if there was anyone watching, sheepishly folded up my now broken Graco stroller and threw it in my trunk.

Now some people have said "At least Emily wasn't IN the stroller when you hit it". Yes, that is true. But do they really think I would've forgotten my BABY was sitting behind my car? A stroller is one thing, your very own flesh and blood is another. And maybe I'm just a little irritated already because I was informed while I was shopping that you would never see a baby in China dressed as scantily as Emily was during the winter (apparently this woman was so horrified by the tiny strip of skin showing where Emily's pants had pulled up above her socks that she failed to notice the baby sized fur-lined parka and earflap hat lovingly knit by her mother that she was also sporting) but I would hope that people don't see me as the type of person who would accidentally run over her own child because she left her sitting alone (and dressed in next to nothing!) in a chilly parking lot. Because the way Emily was yelling, only a deaf person could have forgotten her...

But the good news is that upon further inspection it appears only the wheel is broken, so I will be putting a call in to Graco tomorrow to try to wheedle a new wheel because those strollers ain't cheap.

My dress was though! $17 for a black satin evening dress at Ann Taylor Loft! Now I'm set for all the glamorous events I will be attending the next two weekends. I think that makes the trip totally worth it, stroller casualties and all.

-Sara

My first post here

I have found that in order to have a good blog that people want to read, you need at least 1 of 4 things:

#1 An interesting life

#2 Writing talent

#3 A unique world view

#4 A high post rate

I can't say that I have any of these things...and yet I have heard and heeded the call to blog nonetheless.  

I have taken stabs at blogging before, and if I can figure out how I will try to consolidate my other blogs into the archives here so that all of my loyal readers can follow the intermittent but still enthralling story of my life over the past few years.

I am 26 years old, married for 4 years to my high school sweetheart (the 10 year anniversary of our first date is next week!) and am living in the suburbs in Frederick County, MD.  We have a beautiful daughter Emily who is 8.5 months old, and she takes up most of my time right now.  We have two irritating dogs, an Australian Cattle Dog named Mingus and an Australian Shepherd/Beagle/who knows what else mix named Remy.  When I am not actively dealing with Emily or cleaning up after her, I like to knit, read, bum around the internet, and go to the gym.  In the grander scheme of things I love to travel, but I haven't been anywhere notable of late because I have been at home nesting and caring for my young.  

I am currently a stay-at-home mom, but in my former life I was an Analytical Chemist and I worked at an environmental water testing lab for the 3-year stretch between graduating from the University of Maryland/getting married and deciding to stay home with Emily.

I am writing this blog mostly for myself, but hopefully despite my lack of interesting blog writing qualifications readers will find it amusing if nothing else.

-Sara

Emily's Christmas List

My daughter is already disobeying me every chance she gets. She even deleted my post here while I was writing it, so this is my second shot. It makes me fear for her teenage years. If she is this bad now, when she's barely even mobile, how much worse will it get then?

Emily's Christmas list, if Emily could write, would look something like this:

-A 6-pack of Minguses
-Electrical wires, preferably plugged in to a power source
-Plastic grocery bags
-A plastic tape measurer (the kind with sharp edges and metal on either end)
-A broom

I take issue with all of these things. I have explained to Emily that none of them are good for babies to play with. Doggies don't like it when you try to bite them and pull on their hair (especially high-strung doggies like Mingus), electrical wires can electrocute you once you have more than two teeth to bite them with, plastic grocery bags can suffocate you, the tape measurer is a strangulation hazard and can cut you, and a broom is just nasty, but these items are her favorite things in the world. If any one of these things comes into her line of vision, her face lights up and she utters an earsplitting shriek of joy as she wiggles her way towards the object she's spotted.

Tomorrow I'm going to attempt to take her to see Santa, I am going to have to stay close by to make sure she doesn't ask him for an electrical plastic Mingus with a broom. A regular Mingus is more than enough Mingus for one household.

Speaking of Mingus, he's a pretty infected guy. We brought him home from the kennel, and he developed an eye infection like he always does after staying there. Luckily I had some leftover eye ointment and took care of that myself. Next, he started the telltale scratching-followed-by-yelping routine that signifies an ear infection. I just got him in to the vet, and it turns out it's a yeast infection, so I have to give him ungodly-expensive antifungal cream in his ear every night. I should've just bought a tube of Monistat at Safeway, probably would've saved me a bunch of money. The problem here is that Mingus is not a good enough dog to warrant me having to constantly medicate him and take tender care of him as I nurse him through his troubles. If he were a steadfast and devoted dog who loved me, that would be one thing. But he spends most of his time growling or whining at me, trying to push me to wherever he wants me to go, and nibbling on my baby (it must be the Dingo in him). He's much better than he was, and he was a rescue dog so I guess he's pretty good considering all that, but geez. If he's going to be so sickly, he should be a good dog and make it worth my while that I have to cram pills down his slimy throat and anoint his various infected body parts with ointment. Blech.

Other than trying to keep my baby from killing herself and medicating my dog, I am spending my time these days getting ready for Christmas. I have to take my car in for it's check-up tomorrow, so while I'm out I hope to finish my Christmas shopping and get stamps so that I can spend the rest of the week holed up at home wrapping presents and sending out Christmas cards. I don't know what I'm going to do next year when Emily will recognize her presents. Right now they're sitting in a box about 4 feet from where she usually hangs out and she's none the wiser. I think that's awesome. I don't have room in my house to hid presents everywhere, every nook and cranny is already filled with stuff we don't need but dang it we might one day so we're keeping it just in case. And we'll probably be getting another round of unusual gifts from Will's Grandma to pop in the closets this year.

I hope you all enjoy your respective goofy Grandmother gifts, Happy Holidays to everyone!

There, are you happy Will?

-Sara

Rude Awakening

This morning I awoke to the sound of shattering glass and my husband cursing. Well, in all fairness I ORIGINALLY awoke to the sound of my daughter fussing, but once I nursed her and went back to sleep, THAT'S when I heard the shattering glass. I went to investigate, and found Will standing in a sparkling sea of glass shards at the front door. Apparently our new storm door and the 18 degree cold didn't agree, and the minute Will touched the door this morning the glass shattered into a million pieces. It's ok, because the since the door is only a couple months old I'm sure it's still under warranty, and I had accidentally pulled the handle off of it a couple times already so it was a bad egg from the start. Now we are denied the use of our front door for a little while, but I'm sure we can manage. It got me up and vacuuming though, and I managed to get the whole downstairs done before Emily woke up, which was nice because I don't like to vacuum when she's awake and downstairs. It hurts her ears and I can't hear if she's calling for me. If you'd ever asked me before whether or not I'd be happy to be awake and vacuuming at 6:15AM, I would have laughed in your face, but time makes fools of us all I suppose.

Yesterday Emily and I braved the snow and went down to Gaithersburg for my Dad's federal gold medal ceremony. I'm so proud of my dad! I was worried however about how Emily would hold up through several long drives and sitting in a quiet auditorium for over an hour, but once again, she did beautifully. She lasted a full hour sitting in the auditorium without making noise, and she was fascinated by applause. Mom did have to take her out of the auditorium for the last 20 minutes of the ceremony, but that was only because she was squealing and talking loudly. Emily even got to meet the director of NIST, who has a 2-year old son and I think she made a great impression (networking already)! She slept all the way home, even though we were in bad traffic and it was past her dinner time. Yay Emily!

Once again, I've rewarded her good behavior with shots. We went in and got her Hib and IPV today, but she only cried until I picked her up, then she was fine, she was even good at the grocery store afterward. She's snoozing happily, and now she has a 2-month reprieve before her next shots are due.

So enjoy the Christmas (or Hanukka) season all of you, and I'll try to post again before it's all over!

-Sara

Turkey Trotting

I've been so busy since the last time I posted, it seems I've written a book! But don't worry Alice, this book has pictures in it. A lot, in fact, liberally sprinkled throughout to encourage you to keep reading!

I was just putting away laundry in Emily's room, and what do I find? A box of clothes I put away before she was born that I had totally forgotten were there! In those last days before she made her appearance, I put away everything that wasn't newborn size so that I didn't have to dig through all sorts of sizes to find her clothes. Well, I just came across one of the boxes, and it had a bunch of cute onesies and outfits....in 3 months size! She's too big for all of it now! I already had all this guilt because many of her outfits she only wore once, and now I find a box that she NEVER wore! She's still pretty small, so if I put a disposable diaper on her I can probably jam her in these outfits at least once or twice, because I can't stand the thought that we might not have another girl and these clothes will never be worn!

Anyway, as a Christmas gift to each other, Will and I have turned the breakfast nook into more kitchen space, since our kitchen is so small and we never use the breakfast nook. We put in cabinets and an island, and it looks really nice! I am trying to organize the rest of the house too, but I never get much further than buying containers, actually DOING the organizing is a different story.

Last weekend Emily and I went down to Mary Washington with Tina so that she could see the college and I could watch Krista's dance recital. It was a pretty day, and Emily did so well, the only issue was when she started to scream on the way home, but Aunt Tina saved the day by consenting to sit in the back and give her a bottle while we drove. Unfortunately, I had to get off the highway for Aunt Tina to switch seats, and due to the dark, some bad signage, and my own stupidity we ended up at the military checkpoint for the Quantico Marine base. I did a super-sketchy 3-point turn and took off, they probably thought I was carrying drugs and got scared away or something. Then traffic came to a complete stop on 270 because of an accident, but in a surprising fit of organization and cooperation, traffic was seamlessly diverted and we were only held up a total of about 10 minutes.

Thanksgiving was nice for us as well. We all ran the Turkey Trot on Thursday morning, and I did finish without stopping once! I was a bit irritated, because I did honestly run at a good clip the whole time (nothing like the guys who finished the race in 20 minutes of course) and some people who were running then walking then running then walking managed to beat us because we had to start WAY in the back because of the jogging stroller. We didn't even cross the starting line until about a minute after the race started, there were so many people. Oh well, I didn't expect to do magnificently.

Thanksgiving day was spent up at the in-laws' farm which straddles the Maryland-Pennsylvania line. In fact, one of the day's activities included jumping on the old stone marker that shows where the Mason-Dixon line runs through the property. It is a great location for a Thanksgiving celebration, as it is secluded and woodsy and has a mean fireplace, complete with deer head. Next year though, I think we'll spend longer up there because it was stressful to have to make the food, pack it up, get up there, throw the dinner together, eat, clean up, and then have to get up early the next morning and leave. Having to sleep on inflatable beds that were basically glorified (or in Will's opinion, not even glorified) rafts didn't help. Also there was a wasp perched on the lid of the toilet upstairs, and the other two bathrooms were right outside my in-laws' bedroom and you know how I feel about bugs in the middle of the night, so the discomfort of the raft was compounded by the discomfort of my full bladder. Emily was an angel though, happily allowing me to help fix dinner, eat it, and even clean up before she started to get fussy. By that point we were all practically passed out on the couch (except Margaret who was entertaining us by acting out Guesstures words with great success) so I don't blame her for being tired at that point.

On to Friday, when we rose early (and in Will's case went jogging through the darkest, windey-est, most backwoods crickets-and-banjos area of Frederick there is) and went down to the Casa Loma meeting at Aunt Ruth's house, which is an official semi-annual meeting of all the family members in Will's generation who are part-owners of the paper. Emily LOVES little white dogs even more than she loves medium grey dogs (Mingus) so we played with Uncle Ed's dog Little Bear while the meeting was going on. After that we got a tour of the new building where the newspaper will be housed as of February 2008. It is truly amazing! I remember standing in a field at the groundbreaking ceremony a year and a half ago, and visiting the press in Tokyo last March, and now here it sits in Frederick, in that previously empty field except now it's in a building about 20 times the size of the current building. Pretty fantastic.

FINALLY, to rest and recuperate from this long week, Will and I spent the night at the Bavarian Inn thanks to a gift certificate that my sweet husband got me for Christmas 2005. This was our first night away from Emily! I was worried I'd miss her, and I did, but it was indescribably nice to take a bath, take a shower, put on makeup and lotion and get dressed without having to stop and attend to a crying baby. Our room was very charming, and the view from our balcony of the Potomac river was beautiful! The only problems were that there was a water main break in Shepherdstown, and while we DID have water, it wasn't drinkable so did the hotel provide bottled water, as I believe the law states they must if people are staying there and the water coming out of the tap is non-potable? They sure did...for $2 a bottle! That made me pretty mad, especially since we are big water drinkers. Also, at dinner, we splurged and ordered a fairly expensive half-bottle of Burgundy to go with our antelope and quail (we love eating interesting meats!). Well, the wine came out, and I sniffed it and thought "No....it can't possibly smell like....I've been spending too much time with Emily....I'll wait and see what Will says". Sure enough, Will took his first whif, and immediately announced "This smells like baby poop". We managed to finish it, but it's just a tad bit off-putting when your wine smells like something that you wash out of diapers day in and day out. I won't be ordering any more Burgundy for awhile.

So that's enough for now. I know, if I updated more often I wouldn't have to write novels each time, but that's the way it is for now! I'm enjoying this slightly slower week before I have to start gearing up for Christmas. Hope everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving!

-Sara

I got to jog!

I got to jog!
Current mood: awake

A series of circumstances aligned this morning, allowing me to jog outside for the first time in weeks! It was fantastic, even though it is super-dark at 6AM these days. The circumstances were:

1 I was not sick.
2 Emily slept from 9PM until the alarm went off at 5:15.
3 I remembered to sleep curled up in a ball, the only position that doesn't cause me to wake up with my back in an ungodly painful knot.
4 It was above 40 degrees outside, and therefore I didn't feel guilty taking Emily out.

A year ago, Will would have to drag me out of bed, whining most attractively (me not Will), but I would have jogged. Now, when I get the chance I jump on it because I rarely get the chance.

Also, back during the glorious 8-week stretch when Emily was sleeping through the night and I thought we had left the days of 2:30AM feedings behind us, I started training to run the Turkey Trot, a 5K race on Thanksgiving morning. I was doing very well, and then Emily decided she had allowed me a bit too much freedom, and around 18 weeks she started waking up in the middle of the night again. Her feedings are shorter now, but it's still absolutely detrimental to my energy level. Now, with only 3 weeks to go until the race, I am desperately hoping this equation will balance out:

x = y + a + b + c - d - e

where:
x = amount of effort required to run a 5k race
y = amount of effort required to run my average 2.5 miles around the neighborhood
a = with hills
b = while restraining dogs who think its their job to go investigate every leaf
c = while pushing a stroller the last 0.5 mile
d = with stops to let the dogs pee and pick up their poop
e = and brief stops to trade stroller and dogs with Will

If not, Will will have to jog back once he finishes and load my limp body into the stroller with Emily to get me over the finish line.

At the very least, I'll preemptively burn off some Thanksgiving calories.

In baby news, Emily has 2 teeth now, was adorable as a butterfly at halloween (I will post pictures) and is days away from starting to crawl. As of now, she still thinks the most likely way to move forward is to kick her legs wildly out behind her. Good for swimming, not so good for land movement. She is starting to get up on her knees now and then, so it's only a matter of time. Then I'll REALLY be burning the calories, chasing a little Em around!

-Sara

Chicago loves Emily...

...and the feeling is mutual!

But first, a sidenote about my dog.

We had to board the dogs while we went to Chicago, and we don't usually like to board them at the Buckeystown vet because they always come back with some sort of illness (Bordatella, eye infections, ear infections etc.) I think it's a racket, they infect your dogs with a disease so that you'll have to come back and pay them to fix it. Jokes on them though, because I use a different vet! I'm still out hundreds of bucks though, so maybe the joke is on me :-(

Anyway, this time we had to board them at the vet because I have been putting off their shots and they were due for a bunch, so it was board them at a vet where the shots could be given, or don't board them at all. This brought our total from hundreds of bucks to millions of bucks.

Now when I dropped Remy off, his tail was in good working order. When I picked him up yesterday, he was cleaner and had shorter nails, but his tail was certainly not functioning correctly. Whereas it usually stands out at a jaunty angle, waving proudly like a fluffy flag, it now droops down like wilted celery. I have felt it and I don't think it hurts him, but it just hangs there, and when it is called upon to wag, it does so from it's depressingly limp position. I'm not sure what to do, because he doesn't seem to be in pain, but my dog is undeniably different. If I called the vet and said "my dog's tail isn't working", they would probably just laugh at me. So I guess I'll watch him the next couple of days and hope it returns to its previous glory soon.

So back to our trip. It was great! We went up to Chicago on Thursday for one of Will's annual newspaper conferences, and we took Emily along for the ride. She was fantastic on the plane, eating at all the right times (so her ears would pop) and eagerly looking around at all the new people in the meantime. She continued to be great through dinner, allowing Will and I to celebrate our 4th anniversary at Sushi Samba (although I think she is probably the first baby who has ever been to that restaurant), and afterward when we went to get our favorite fat free frozen yogurt at the Maple St. Market.

I had figured that I wouldn't be able to take my usual approach to Chicago with a baby in tow (that is, walk every day until I drop), but once again, Emily was great and happily hung in the Bjorn or sat in her stroller for hours while Tina and I went to all my favorite places. Along the way, we were CONSTANTLY told how good and cute Emily was by complete strangers. Gotta love Chicago! She won over the snooty clerk at the Vosges haut chocolate boutique, and even got a smile from the male sales assistant at Sephora who seemed to really enjoy his employee discount. I know what you're thinking, yes I love to shop at Sephora even though I usually look like hell...I have a thing for buying makeup to keep under my bathroom sink.

We even got to go check out the "Men's Health Urbanathalon" in Grant Park, which is like a marathon but the competitors also jump taxis and climb walls. Poor Will wanted to go SO badly, but he was in conferences all day. I got him a T-shirt and a do-rag though, so that he can be a poser and make people think he was there.

On Saturday, we left the babe with the mother-in-law and went out with the other young conference-goers. It was really nice to be able to do that, and we saw Jack McBrayer while we were out! Yeah, I had to look up his name, but he is in Talladega Nights and 30 Rock, so he counts as a celebrity :-)

The only wrench in our plans came as we were leaving. With a baby and no carseat, it was not a good idea to take a taxi or a hired car (although in retrospect we probably could have gotten one with a carseat) so we relied on the "L" to get around. On the way to the airport, our train got to within 7 stops of O'Hare, then had some technical difficulties. We sat for 20 minutes, but because the doors were open and traffic was screaming by on either side, we couldn't hear the announcements about what was wrong. Finally we got going again, and we made it 2 stops. Then they announced that because of construction, everyone had to get off, exit the station, board shuttle busses, get bussed to the next station, and then board another train and continue from there. With a baby and luggage? When you're anxiously trying to get to an airport in time to catch a plane? When there had been no warning or sign explaining this situation at any previous station? Were they joking?

Sadly they were not.

So we dutifully dragged everything off the train, up the stairs, got crammed onto the bus, dragged it back down the stairs where we were assured a train was waiting for us (by "waiting", they meant "would be here in 8-ish minutes") and then completed our journey at a peppy 6 mph due to the construction on the lines. When we finally dashed into the airport, 2 hours after leaving the city (it usually takes 45 minutes), checked in, got through security, and found our gate, we had time to bold down half a sandwich and then it was time to board. Needless to say, we were fairly beside ourselves. And there's no room to be beside yourself on a plane.

The unfortunate Randalls, who had hired a car and left before us, were actually still in line at the ticketing counter when we got checked in, because United had taken the liberty of cancelling their tickets.

We all made it onto the plane though, the only bad side effect being that we were in terrible moods, and Emily was being whiney and shouty. We finally figured out that it was because she had a soaking wet diaper (we of course hadn't had time to change her before the flight) and once we changed her she just laid there like an angel, looking in wonder at her hands and the underside of the tray table. This gave me a chance to recover from my stress-induced headache as I watched out the window with relief as the land went from flat to wrinkly to mountainy. I even got to see the new FNP building from the air. Our landing was smooth, and our exit of the airport was expeditious, and all in all, things worked out quite well.

Oh, and Emily has a tooth now! What a good teether she is, we've had one or two bouts of fussiness over the issue, but all in all she's been amazing, and it's even more amazing that we were travelling when it came in and she was still her usual happy self the whole time.

So now we have to figure out whether we want to tempt fate again and take her to the conference in Aruba in February. I'd love to go, but it is a longer flight.

I'll post some pictures in a couple minutes when I get them loaded onto the computer. Right now Emily is trying to eat my face and kick the laptop to the floor so I think she's hungry.

-Sara

On Babies, Enchanted Ropes and Rats

As of tomorrow, Emily will officially be 4 months old! She'll be almost 18 weeks though, so that's confusing. I never really cared that a month has more than 28 days (except for February, and then only 3/4 of the time) until this whole pregnancy/childrearing thing. For the past year I have been measuring time in weeks instead of months, and that just confuses everyone. If someone tells you they're 27 weeks pregnant, do you know off the top of your head how many months that is? I think that every month should have exactly 4 weeks, and then with the extra days we're left with at the end of the year we can just party for a month. I think there was some society in the past that actually did that, but I can't remember who. Probably because they're not around anymore. I guess that doesn't bode well for my partying idea.

But Emily is doing well, for her 4-month birthday we are getting her...3 shots! Poor baby. I'm not quite as beside myself as I was in the days leading up to her 2 month vaccinations, but I worry because she's so much more aware of her surroundings now. I am anxious to see how much she weighs now though, and to see what the pediatrician thinks about starting her on solid foods. I don't plan to start her until she's 5 months, but all summer I've been making and freezing baby food for her and I'm excited that soon I'll be able to feed it to her and see her reactions to different flavors.

Also I've been playing around with cloth diapers, and it's actually really fun! I know most of you won't believe me, but it can be very addictive (researching diapers, finding good deals on pretty ones to add to your "stash", figuring out which fabrics are the nicest) so that's kind of my hobby now. Being a stay-at-home mom is keeping me super busy, and I don't actually do all that much staying at home.

Last week was Will's birthday, so we went to the new sushi restaurant that is on Carroll Creek on Thursday night, Hinode. It was tasty, but you can tell it just opened. The service was slow and the servers not very knowledgable, plus they don't yet have the rope that will allow them to serve alcohol to their outside diners. That is so weird to me, is it a miraculous enchanted rope that will keep out would-be underage drinkers? Will people who drink too much inside the roped-off area automatically become sober and not bother anyone else once they cross back over the rope? I'll have to ask the mayor the next time I see him.

On Saturday we went to the Lebanese Taverna in Baltimore. It was excellent as always, big thanks to Michelle for introducing us to our new favorite restaurant! After dinner we all walked to Oliver the Wharf Rat (a bar) and actually SAW a wharf rat on the way there! I don't think I've ever seen a wild rat before. We also saw a giant cockroach (the likes of which I HAVE seen before, in our old College Park apartment, yick!), and while we were sitting outside the bar we saw a poor pregnant lady's car break down in the middle of Pratt street. The guy behind her laid on his horn for a minute and a half straight (seriously, it was almost an entire light cycle) and strangely enough, all that honking didn't fix her car. Eventually some chivalrous gentlemen braved the Pratt street traffic to push her over to the side of the road. In the meantime, the gentlemen we were with took a break from gawking at the traffic disaster and went to get more beer. I can't complain though, Will did bring me another diet coke. And they say chivalry is dead.

-Sara

I traded my pipette for a basinett

Ok, so since I last posted there have been 3 more wall shrimp incidents, but they all occurred in that same week and Will took care of the last 3 :-* There must have been some sort of migration (the week of the centipede) and if so, I hope they were migrating further away from me! But this post won't be all about wall shrimp, one post dedicated to the subject was more than enough.

This post will be about my new job as a stay at home mom! Yes, I officially quit last week after putting it off for quite some time. My boss was very sad, and that made me sad so for the first day or so I just kinda felt down which was a surprise to me. But then I came to my senses and have been excited about it since then. I would still be on maternity leave now though, so it probably won't feel REAL until July 30th which would have been my first day back. The decision was A LOT harder than I thought it would be considering how much I didn't like my job. My boss offered to let me come back just 1 or 2 days a week with the understanding being that I would only run the metals analyses, but I KNEW that as soon as someone went on vacation it would be "Sara, you know how to do BODs, would you mind doing them just while Trish is gone?". And I, being completely incapable of saying no to anyone (I once gave my number to a Latin American construction worker in Rockville because I felt bad saying no...poor Walter) would do it, and then it would become my job, and then things would get stressful again. So I just cut the cord completely and said "no" once to avoid having to say it a bunch of times in the future.

So now here I am, at home with Emily, and I am happy as can be but not sure what to do to be GOOD at my new job. If you work at a place outside the home you tend to have bosses or coworkers who you can watch and learn from, but I don't have other moms raising kids at my house who I can watch and learn from. Sure I clean the house and play with her and take care of her, but I feel like to be a real stay at home mom I need to find a playgroup or some sort of activity for her. I looked into Gymboree, but the location in Frederick is closing in 2 weeks. I'm "...more than welcome to attend classes at the Silver Spring location" though. No thanks. A weekly 2 hour roundtrip car ride with an infant just to lay her on the floor and clap at her doesn't sound like a great idea to me, even if it does get her some social interaction. She's too young to go play on a playground yet, and I doubt she'd hold still for a storytime at the library or a bookstore, but she doesn't have any cousins (and none forthcoming in the foreseeable future) so I feel like I need to find some kids her age for her to play with. Maybe it's too early to be worrying about that but oh God, if she doesn't get social stimulation she won't join clubs or teams in high school and no ivy league school will accept her! I'm ruining her life already!

Seriously though, as a parent of a very young child, it's all on you and playmates seem to be hard to find. I know there are babies out there somewhere, I saw them at the hospital! If only she had exchanged numbers with some of the other kids in the nursery.

I also have realized that I tend to view Emily as a special circumstance when it comes to going out. By that I mean when friends go out to do something social, I tend to decline because I have a baby, the same way you would decline if you had out of town relatives staying at your house, or if you were sick. You know, special circumstances. Well I have come to a realization that Emily is now the new normal, so if I want to go out I should because I'll need to figure it out eventually. It helps that Emily has 2 grandmas and several aunts in the area who are all scrambling to take care of her as often as possible, but I just feel bad leaving her. I love being a mommy, Emily and I are buddies and she is the only person in the world other than Will who I can spend 24 hours a day with and not get sick of. However it isn't healthy to stay penned up in the house with the baby all the time, so to avoid becoming a hopeless bore I need to learn to wrangle her in public better so that I can go out and do more stuff, and I need to learn to leave her more often so that I can maintain some semblance of a social life.

Well, I was going to tell my fabulous story of having to get my new car (yes, we got a FAMILY car to hold all of Emily's stuff...a Toyota Highlander Hybrid) jump-started while it was sitting in my garage, but that's kind of a long story and this post is pretty long already. Just trust that it is hilarious, and maybe I'll tell it later :-)

-Sara

Horrible Wall Shrimp

Wow, has it really been a month since my last post? I guess I've just been sleeping too well at night and not had time to post (yeah right). Emily is doing pretty well though, she usually goes to sleep at 9:30-10:30PM, wakes up to eat between 1:30-3:30AM, and then I have to get her up when we wake up for the day at 5:30AM. My biggest complaint about the night these days are the wall shrimp! I think they're actually called house centipedes and they're mostly harmless, but I just know that if one ever got on me I would probably die.

The last two nights I have slept in the guest bedroom because Will has been sick and that way he can sleep and not be awakened by Emily grunting over the baby monitor. Also our guest bed kicks ass and I love it! Thanks to Josh and Brad!

Anyway, two nights ago I woke up and in the semi-dark I noticed a diagonal, 3" long blur on the wall. I thought to myself "Brad just painted in here a year ago, there shouldn't be large smudges on the wall, it must be a huge wall shrimp, aaaaaaaaaaaah!" Unfortunately I was right. (As a sidenote, I have the uncanny ability to detect horrible insects with just the slightest of clues...I once discovered a 3" cockroach hiding in our blinds just because I saw what looked like cockroach legs on top of the blinds. Will laughed at me, but he wasn't laughing as he ran to get a rusty knife to get rid of the huge cockroach he found there!)

So I steeled my nerve and smashed the bug, terrified that it would fall into my bed unharmed and exact revenge on me later. It did fall perilously close to the bed, but I smashed it again, and then a third time when I realized with a shudder that the top inch of its body was still sticking out of the wadded up tissue and wiggling at me.

So last night, I was lying in bed, trying to convince myself that I don't see wall shrimp all that often, it was probably a fluke and I wouldn't see one for another year or more, when Emily started squalling so I left the room to go feed her and there was another one on the wall, just as big as the first! I couldn't take the stress of "what if I miss with a tissue, will it fall on my arm and cause me to have to run around screaming?" so I ran to the office to get my purple Old Navy flip flop that has been under the desk for centuries. I knew I had left it there for a reason. With a smack like a gunshot (that Will miraculously slept through) I smacked the hell out of him, but he only left a small smudge on the wall and on my sandal, and none of the usual mess of legs that are usually left behind. I convinced myself that it was enough of a smudge that there had to be something vital in there and he was surely dead, although I hadn't confirmed it with a body. Later though, I found his body lying on the floor half-smashed, and my wonderful husband picked it up and threw it away for me, even though our unspoken wedding vows only included the dispatch of spiders and not specifically wall shrimp <3

I can only conclude that the wall shrimp in my house have decided to grow to monstrous proportions so that they can kill me and carry away my baby. I might have to get Matt over here, because as legend has it, he once lived in a house where all of a sudden millions of wall shrimp came pouring out of a hole in the wall above his bed, and he matter-of-factly covered it with duct tape and went on living his life as normal. I would have moved out in a heartbeat and probably needed to spend some time recovering in a padded cell.

So lets hope that tonight the wall shrimp will stay in their nests and not come out to creep the hell out of me. Or better yet they'll take the murder of two of their oldest and hugest community members as the warning it was intended to be and MOVE THE FECK OUT OF MY HOUSE!

-Sara