if the whole world was a registry

I have found a number of things while wandering around during the day that cannot be registered for, and I must share them, they are fabulous baby items:

Coonskin Cap (I promise I won't let him wear it until he's 12 and carry a musket, Rollerskater :) )



The Driving Cap
Nothing says sophistacation like a drooling baby in a english wool cap.



MAMMUT wardobe from IKEA
It looks like it came straight out of Tiny Toons.



Jeero the Ugly Doll
Perfect doll for a boy.

the pregnancy "stupids" incident of the day

What do you get when you put a giant "lay flat to dry" chenille blanket in the dryer?

A marmot in your lint trap.


Never in my life have I seen so much fuzzy lint overflowing a dryer.

Baby Tuesday

This afternoon I thought I'd put on her ladybug costume and take photos for some halloween cards I'm gonna send out.
I put on her black shirt.
I put on her black pants.
And then when I put the bug part on, she freaked out!
It's really soft and light and loose. I have no idea why she hates it!
I had to film it, it was just too crazy...



She may look like her father, but that's pullin' a little Charlie right there.


To be fair, Franklin didn't like it either. I put it on him, I put it on my head-- nothing made her stop crying.  

I had to pick up my vitamins at the drug store and on the way to the pharmacy counter I saw that costumes were 50% off. And they had ones in her size. So I bought a little Tinkerbell costume, complete with wings.

She liked it, well for a little while at least. She even let me put the wings on her- for about 10 seconds. Not long enough for a photo.


what a pretty fairy I am 

what a very pretty fairy I am 


Baby C making bein' small and having short hair work for her. 

the snowboarder bear will have to take baby R's place until he arrives. 

I know I'm probably preachin' to the choir

I'm down on gender roles (mostly).

My exeptions are:
Men should propose marriage.
Men should have manners when it comes to women, like attempting to open doors and paying for dinner dates.
Women look bad with a shaved head, and men shouldn't shave their legs.
Men look silly in dresses.
A man should give up his seat for a woman.

And that's where it ends. I think men and women should cook, either can stay at home with the kids, either can fight in the military, be president, build a skyscraper, be a hairstylist, lift heavy objects, whatever!
We're all human beings.

With that said, I don't believe in girls and boys toys.

Girls can play with cars and boys can play with dolls. It's not gonna make them gay (even dr. phil said so).
I never thought about it because my mom, good ol' G-money, bought me matchbox cars and He-Man and microscope sets. I had dolls too and ponies. But kids should be able to play and learn with any toy they want.
In one of my philosophy classes in college, the professor told a story of a friend of hers who's little girl wanted the hot wheels toy in the happy meal. Without asking the person taking her order put a barbie happy meal on her tray.
The mom said "could I have the other kind for her?"
"But this is a girl's meal, she's a girl."
"Fine," holding her little girl in her arms "she's a boy."

I'm not implyng that's a completely outrageous story. But I think of that when I go to the toy section and they are laid out in boy's and girl's toys. Can't we squish them together? Maybe little Johnny wants a Dora the Explorer doll and maybe Sally wants a GI-Joe?

It might be a stretch, but if we encouraged nurturing qualities in boys and strength qualities in girls, might we have a better society? I like to believe so.

Power to the babies!

I waited two weeks to really get to down to business designing this playground, and of course I've been up for hours past my bedtime tonight, trying to make the deadline. I have mixed feelings about it, I mean the playground as it is, isn't terrible. But some dead guy left 20K that he wanted to go to the school, or maybe the playground, I dunno, it's very odd, but they have the means and the manpower to do it now, so I'm lending a hand. They wanted to put one of those new humongous playstructures next to the old one, but as you can see, I rejected that idea. I included the things I liked (tunnels and swings), and some cool new things that they make now (giant climbing rock and a mobius strip you can climb. Also I guess state regulations say that we have to use this certain kind of mulchy-chippy-fibery-pulp stuff, which requires a retaining wall of sorts. They are the Los Paseos Panthers, so I hope to make it look like fossilized panther tracks pressed into the wall. Here's hoping the "concrete finishers" they said they had can handle that. 

"un deux trois" while hopscotching sounds so much more exotic than "one two three," don't you think? 

Can they afford to put awnings up? Probably not. Are the meandering picnic tables pitifully left to roast out in the sun? Yes, and I thought I'd throw the idea out there. 

lots and lots of cement and stucco to work with 

so if you hadn't already figured it out

Henry- A bit too traditional, but it's my favorite old timey name.

Ransom
Our favorite singer/songwriter/rocker is Rhett Miller. But his given name is Stuart Ransom Miller. He mentions it in one of his songs and while we were listening to it one day I said "that's it! Ransom! that's the coolest name I can think of!" Kevin agreed and it stuck. And yes, it is a real name.

soon this garbage room will be gone

The pink flowers and the butterflies might get ditched, but little baby boy's room wall will look something like this. More a of a green theme y'know, and a llama here and there. But I'm excited for it to be done. Not excited to paint it, but excited for it to be done.

hey

Judah- We still both like this name. There's nothing wrong with it, we just like the other name better.

it kinda sounds like the bad kid

Silas- One of the cool, simple and yet rarely used names in the New Testament. But Kevin said "no."

some people wish they were in the NFL, I wish I were a facepainter

The best part about going to the state fair when I was a kid was getting my face painted. I wouldn't wash my face for days. I love face painting.
And since I've been a "big girl" and a painter, I've wanted to be a face painter. It's like my dream job.
So this year I, work-for-free-Charlie, have volunteered my myself to do facepainting our church's little halloween ho-down. A couple of times in the past I last minute volunteered to do it and I just used the bad supplies they gave me and was totally unprepared (as was my M.O. in college). This year will be different!...well only if they'll let me run it myself, I don't think otherwise they were gonna have it.

And I plan to bring these examples, it makes life easier.

what could be Better Than

Ezra- We liked this one in the beginning, but I soon realized that it's almost like naming your kid "Ed." It's alot to deal with.

alright, I'll keep to the sunny side, people

Malachi- It's cool name, but eventually I realized, it's a little, as I like to say "tree-in-the-wind." Too deep, too many syllables.

another name bites the dust

Keith- Kevin said he always liked this name. I said it's an ugly word to say*, plus too many "th's"! I said "no."


*Other ugly word names**: Celeste, Seth, Glen, Ruth, Gretchen, Chelsea...


**If you are or know anyone with these names, hush.

Baby Tuesday

Got one! I finally took a picture of Kevin in which he looks fatter than he is! It's usually me who gets that honor. Btw, this is her bathroom game of sticking her little fingers into the drawers that have safety latches on them to see what she can pull out. It's usually hair ties, bobby pins or makeup. 


Bottom teeth brushing, fun. Upper teeth brushing, torturous. 


Since I can't say no to these things, another church contacted me to redesign a local elementary's playground. I had to go back to take some photos and the family came with me. Here she is making a mad dash for the playground equipment. She loves swings and slides-- alot.

one more that didn't make the cut

Wyatt- Wyatt Earp, rogue of the old west, once married to a Ms. Blaylock! But Kevin said "no." I think it's too western for him.

by popular demand

...okay, mostly because Aurora's been on my back about it-- I have created a registry, actually two: BabiesRUs and Target.

You can search by my name at either website or store.

oops, skipped a day

My intention had been to reveal an incorrect baby name each day, but I missed yesterday, so I'll do two today.

Clive- CS (Clive Staples) Lewis is my favorite author. It's a intelligent English name. But Kevin said "no way."

Lucky- It's cute right? And how can you not like a guy named Lucky? But Kevin said "no." I wasn't surprised.

and

Today's booty!:

I love having a legitimate reason to shop! I had to sift through all the baseball, yu gi-o and oakland raiders boys stuff to find these little jewels. Note the velvet blazer!

at least I'm telling you it's a boy.

But Kevin said we should draw out the name game for a few more days. (He has a frustrated inner blogger.)

So here are all the reasons the girls names weren't picked, and the name we would have used if it had been a girl. (which it's not, it's a boy, did I mention it was a boy? I did, it's a boy):

Ruby- I asked Kevin about 5 times if he was sure he didn't like this name, over the past few months. He insists that he doesn't like it. I think it's cute, especially if she has red hair.

Cora- Kevin has a distant relative named Cora, and he liked it. Sorry, I think it's a frumpy girls name. 'Makes me think of spinning yarn and making porridge.

Pascale- I liked this name alot, because it's a name that means Easter in French. It's also a science reference. But she would have to repeat it and spell it everytime she met someone. I know what that's like. Plus, it's French. And we're not.

Zipper(Zipporah)- If Kevin had said yes, I think I really would have gone with this one. It's both Biblical (Moses' wife's name) and cute at the same time. Kevin said it sounded like Sapporo (as in the Japanese beer).

Honeybee- The only problem with this name is that, along with her sister, we would have two girls named after insects. And it's not like we're entmologists or anything. It's a bit too much. Plus, if she wanted to be serious lawyer or kick-fighter, she'd have to go by "Bee," I guess. But dang, isn't that a cute name?

Adenine- I've covered why this name didn't make my cut. (No molecules!)

Elka- Can she be anything but tall and pretty with a name like that? Problem is, we're not Scandanavian.

Indigo- Also a little "tree-in-the-wind" for me. This was almost Baby C's middle name.

June- This is the counterpart to Henry, as in too traditional. I like it. BUT if the baby was due in June, I might have done it. (I know there are plenty of Aprils, May's, June's and Autumn's out there whose birthday's don't fall during those months, but that never made sense to me.)

Tigerlily- I always thought my daughter would be named Tigerlily, ever since I heard of the late Michael Hutchins (of INXS fame) naming his daughter that, after the indian princess in Peter Pan. But it's FOUR syllables and I don't like the name Lily on it's own. And people would probably call her that. So it got cut, despite years of determination that I would use it.

Echo
Although she doesn't remember, I think my mom suggested this name during the last pregnancy and then I thought it was too "tree-in-the-wind." However with this pregancy, I was determined to have the girl's name end in "o." I didn't like Cleo, or Rosario, or Sappho, or any other I found except Echo. And it started growing on me. It's unique, it's actually a name from Greek Mythology, and it's easy to spell and say. I even found a 21yr old (very normal and intelligent and not a hussy) with that name on MySpace and asked her how she liked it, did it ever bring her grief growing up? And she exclaimed "no! I love my name. I have never wanted to change it. There was always someone who said 'hey, Echo Echo,' but that's it."

p.s. Our sonogram guy like a comedian. He cracks jokes the whole time. He's been doing it for like 20 years, and he's never been wrong (so I have no fear buying blue). Poor Baby C fell and skinned her shin minutes before it was our turn to go in, so Kevin had to hold her outside until we were ready with a verdict.

tomorrow, we'll know

As promised, here are the 10 boy's names that we considered:


Clive
Lucky
Wyatt
Keith
Malachi
Ezra
Ransom
Silas
Judah
Henry

3 day countdown, or is it 2?

On Friday we find out whether it's a boy or a girl.

To add to the festivities, I thought I'd make a little game out of guessing the name.

Today, I will list, in no particular order, 10 of the names that were up for consideration for a girl, and tomorrow I'll list 10 boy names. And then people can guess, or be horrified, but no telling if you already know the answer!

nombres de las chicas

Ruby
Cora
Pascale
Zipper(Zipporah)
Echo
Honeybee
Adenine
Elka
Indigo
June
Tigerlily

hello, old friends

Until yessterday, I had been sorrowfully without cupcakes for many moons.
Thankfully, I had the use of an oven this week and we were reunited- me and the 'cakes.



They are no ordinary cupcakes...


[harp strumming!]
...they have sprinkles!

They will be served tonight for our guesties, but I confess I have already eaten three.

Baby Tuesday

Sorry it's late, she wouldn't nap.




I got this little sparkley mini skirt from a mommies' clothing swap. Except I didn't bring any to swap, like a jerk. But they said they didn't care, so I filled up a bag!


She refuses to look at the camera long enough. 


This pic totally reminds me of Mini-Charlie. (I also got that puppy blankie from the swap, score!) 

Almost done designing the houses

It's 1AM and I've been up for the past 3 hours doing these...


Before. This poor little old lady has a dirt lawn in front and back. (She has super surviving Iceplant between the sidewalk and the street, though) Her fancy pants neighbors turned her in to the city because they are trying to sell their house next door, to the right. I still think they should have just been nice and offered to sod her front yard for her. We'll do it better, anyway, but jinkies, people can be mean. 

after. Yes, a fountain. If they nix that, it'll be a bird bath. 

before 

after. (well the porch needs help, but I don't know if they'll let me touch this porch) 

This is the vietnam vet with Miss Piggie out back. He likes stuff. Alot of stuff. His dirveway is filled to capacity. Also, he uses old toilets as flower planters. Resouceful! 

after