CLICK HERE FOR BLOGGER TEMPLATES AND MYSPACE LAYOUTS »

Wednesday, October 17, 2007

Love that baby!

I keep thinking that I should write down how sweet Ali G is and then I keep forgetting so here I am.

She grunts. A lot. She almost seems to be channeling the spirit of our old dog Thurber. He knew the pleasures of grunting and never held back. She doesn't either.

Her eyes are a beautiful blueberry blue. They are deep deep blue with just a little lighter blue frosting near the pupil. Really pretty.

She isn't too happy about being carried in a mei tai. That is a shame because I think it is the most comfortable carrier I've ever tried, but as soon as she wakes up in it she gets really mad.

She still loves her red lamp. At night she tends to have a little fussy time before she conks out which I suppose is normal since the Bunny used to do the same thing at this age. But when she catches sight of her red lamp boy does she calm right down!

She is the apple of her sister's eye. The Bunny got a wallet for her birthday and the first thing she put in it was a picture of Ali G. Awwwww!

I think she is almost big enough for her cloth diapers! Finally! I HATE buying disposables. It boggles my mind that anyone anywhere would use them for an entire babyhood. They are so freaking expensive! It just kills me. Seriously. So I can't wait until we can get her out of them and into cloth, and I think she'll like it too. And she'll be easier to hold with that big fluffy butt!

Okay, what else? I've been thinking about this postpartum body of mine. Of course I have! I'm a normal self-obsessed american adult woman, right? But the nice thing that I've realized is that I'm not feeling any real angst over the size and shape I'm in these days. I recently read an article in the NY Times about Mommy Jobs. I had to click on it because I couldn't think what a Mommy Job was, was someone offering to pay SAHMs? But no, it wasn't anything like that, it was the newest hot package in plastic surgery!
Okay, I'll admit, sometimes it sucks to have a big paunch of gooshy fat at the waistline. But Ali G loves that. It gives her a nice comfy place to rest. When I nurse her she can lie on it like a Boppy. When I hold her at my shoulder she likes to wiggle her toes into it. And I can still run three miles. That seems like a reasonable measure of okay fitness doesn't it? And I know from previous experience that eventually my goosh belt will start to disappear. And that will be cool too.

Tuesday, October 16, 2007

Chiara's 6th Birthday

Okay, so the formatting still doesn't quite do what I want it to but here are some pictures of the Bunny's actual birthday party, at least the little family style one we had yesterday. She had asked that we hide her presents to be discovered scavenger hunt style so we did that. It was fun listening to her running from room to room and shrieking with delight each time she discovered the next gift, and it was nice to get so much mileage out of so few (small) gifts. Then we had pizza from Domino's as specified in her birthday rider and then the cake. As specified the cake was decorated with the family, the Bunny, me, dh, Wendy, Ninj, Xoche, Beaker, Thurber and the Stewarts, her goldfish that froze almost two years ago. The heavenly four are in the upper left corner. I was happy not only that I managed to get everyone on the cake but that I used up nasty old pinata candy in the process. Go me!

Also, sharp eyed Dingos will notice Ali G sporting Shanti's awesome socks that she made (handknit! These knitters continue to amaze me!)






Chiara's 6th Birthday

For Chiara's birthday we thought we get her something really big, something that would keep us all busy for a long time. It probably wasn't really what she was hoping for as a birthday present but that's okay, we got her some other stuff too.
Her really big present was the house!!!!! Five months to the day of our initial offer, the bank decided to accept it wit no counters! Dh is suspicious of course that any offer they would take must have been too high but I'm going with my grandmother's old motto, "What's for you is for you." (There was always the menacing implication that that meant "you get what you deserve, but we won't go there in any negative sense.)

It's a lovely setting to raise a family! And maybe chickens? A horse? A sheep to help mow the lawn? Ah the possibilities are endless!



Although it does need a bit of work! But I can totally see myself bustling around this kitchen, watching out the window for kids getting off the school, doing Mom stuff.



The upstairs has four very obvious bedrooms plus two smaller rooms that are a little less easily defined though we are thinking, laundry room/closet space and a playroom for the girls.



This place even comes with pets/a security system! Hopefully they will warm up to us once we start settling in, they were pretty fiesty back in May!

Wednesday, October 10, 2007

Careful What you Wish For?

Hope springs eternal! Here's the place we originally fell in love with (warts and all) on SJI. Now we hear the bank might just take our old lowball offer seriously! We're going to give it another shot and we're keeping out fingers crossed that persistence pays off.

Monday, October 8, 2007

Back on track!



Joy! I went for an actual run yesterday! It wasn't huge, just 2 miles, but hey, 2 miles isn't bad! Not after 10 months of being mostly sedentary and having a baby. I feel good about it, and what else matters? I just had such a rush of joy being out on the track, listening to my music, dh and Xoche jogging around too, lapping me every now and then. Joan came to look after baby and when I finished she walked some too. What a great way to start the day! I still get a giddy thrill thinking about how different I am from the high school girl who willingly failed a grading period of PE rather than compete with the soccer team in a mile and a half run. That girl is gone. And good riddance too. It's a shame that I felt so sure that I couldn't do both music and sports in high school. There is the question of available time of course. That is a valid excuse for focusing exclusively on one interest but it would have been nice to feel like making an effort in both worlds would not have been seen simply as wannabe behavior but instead as a normal well-roundedness. I know other students managed to pull that off, but I was not one of them.

Sunday we had a very nice day out in the country. We swam in the pond, picked cukes, had a lazy cookout (read, grilled meat and ate it plain on bolillos, nothing on the side). It was really relaxing. As always the end of the day was the hardest when we got home and the Bunny still needed to finish homework and practice the piano. But it all worked out. We just need to remember that part next weekend!

Thursday, October 4, 2007

Joan and Ali G

Our good friend Joan came back for the winter this week and she came by for dinner the other night. She is the coolest person. She is turning 73 in a couple weeks and she's already talking about which sprint tri she's going to do next summer. Since a sprint tri is on my goal list too for next summer I'm now thinking about the logistics of doing one with her in New England.

Here she is with Alison.




Wednesday, October 3, 2007

There is nothing more frustrating that having your computer work but without internet. It’s like being stranded on some desert island. It’s actually worse, at least there you could swim. I’m drawn back to my desk repeatedly because this is where I hang out. This is where I catch up with friends, chat with the dingos, pay bills, research whatever random thought that pops into my head, make calls to the States, buy plane tickets, whatever. When the internet isn’t available (as it just so happens not to be) my computer still looks normal but it’s like having a friend with amnesia, it can’t tell me anything I want to know. But I still keep finding myself sitting down and clicking the mouse expectantly.

Oh well. At least I can vent into Microsoft Word and then transfer my bitching to my blog when we finally get our router fixed or replaced.

Enough of that.

Ali G update time.

She was pretty snotty for a while and at first we assumed it was the same cold that Chiara had brought home for everyone else. It may have been that in part but one night after we’d essentially had cheese steaks for dinner Alison was miserable! She was super congested and gassy and she had those little whiteheads popping out all over her body. In the morning I poked around online to see what I could cut out of my diet to help her and it seemed pretty clear that dairy (and all cow products) were the likely culprits. So, now it’s been a week without dairy and last night we had our first ever cry-free night. She snuffled around to nurse pretty much all night long but not once did she get bloated or sad. So that’s cool.

She still likes to have the light on. If she is not completely dead asleep when I turn off my lamp she immediately growls a warning that if I don’t turn it back on in 1.4 seconds she’s going to go full volume. So we’ve been sleeping with the light on pretty much all night. Whether it is a testament to the effective dampening of the glare that my sarong is accomplishing or to our collective exhaustion that we all sleep soundly (when we sleep) despite the light I don't rightly know. But as that is really one of the few demands she makes of us it seems like a small price to pay for a night’s sleep.

Other than sleeping through the night (more or less) Alison is awake more and more frequently throughout the day. She’s getting better control of her head and is starting to check out things a little farther afield. Today I think she actually got Ninj in focus for the first time.

Her eyes are still blue so I think I may have managed to sneak in one little piece of genetic evidence that she’s mine!

She gained a kilo in her first month (2.2 lbs). That made the doctor happy although he seemed a little concerned about the sounds he was hearing in her belly. He thinks that her digestive system is still just immature and that in another month or two it will be up to speed. He also put us back on a schedule of thirty minute sunbaths each day since she is still a little jaundiced. He didn’t seem too worried about that so I’ll try not to be either. Anyway, she seems to enjoy getting nudie in a sunny spot each day and the cat joins her too, a little solar time for each of them.

Despite her good weight gain all her clothes are still majorly baggy on her. I feel sorry that I didn’t go ahead and buy a couple preemie outfits, the poor kid would probably be more comfortable in clothes that fit. Oh well.

The Bunny is doing really well with her little sister. She is head over heels and loves to show off her baby holding abilities to grownup friends. She’s fascinated with diaper changing though she has no interest in getting too close to a poopy dipe. This afternoon she managed to scare herself (and me a little) though. Alison had just finished nursing and the Bunny was kissing her when Alison tried to suck on her nose. The Bunny thought it was super funny and she wanted to show me so she started to just put her nose into Alison’s mouth. By the time I leaned in to see what she was doing Alison was gagging and her eyes were bugging out. I got the Bunny’s nose away and Alison proceeded to throw up everything she had just eaten over the last 30 minutes. Grrrrr. For a second I feared that she had really choked and wasn’t breathing because she’d gone sort of glassy eyed, but as soon as I picked her up and patted her on the back she started blinking and grunting again. Overall Alison didn’t seem to mind but sheesh! The Bunny looked scared so I tried to look calmer about it than I felt.