more!

This is the only one I have of me in it, thankfully. I looked pretty tor' up, it was hot and I'm pregnant, so I dressed like caca.



I like this photo because Kevin's making the 'are you taking the picture' face. He insists that he wasn't but, clearly that's the face.


Oh man, the goat interaction was cute enough to make me want to cry. Those goats were so small and she loved them!!












She was a little tired on the way home from the zoo. All those goats and guinea pigs will wear a baby out.


Check out the cake. I thought I was getting a "small" one when I ordered 7 inch, but dang, that thing wasn't half gone by the time we had all had our pieces. Kevin took this shot, which I was thinking was of the cake, but it's like a thanksgiving style pic of "this is what we ate."
BTW, notice that I own TWO super-kitchen-utensils. They are the best, you can get them at Bed Bath & Beyond. Your food will never be the same.

we can't wait a week

Yesterday was her birthday! Yippee!
We started the morning by turning her car seat around, as is fitting now that she's 1 yr and over 20 lbs. She was much happier that way.
We drove down to Capitola in the morning and fetched her purple "princess" cake from Gayles.
Key equation for a harmonious car ride:
Dixie Chicks + teething ring + forward facing seat = happy bug.

Then Auntie Sandi, the Grandparents Thayer, her dad and I took her to Happy Hollow. She loved it!...




She was helping make the fruit salad-- alright she was gnawing on strawberries while I cooked.


Who doesn't love a petting zoo? Maybe the animals, but they did like the little pay-for-pellets that we fed them.




Meerkats! They were very accomidating and still so she could see them. I think she might have mistaken this guy for Mojito.

poor little butt

Poor little bug has diaper rash on her birthday, she's not happy about it.

I blame myself for her sensitive skin and for feeding her grapes on accident which brings it on.

I'm sorry!

Baby Tuesday

I was considering postponing the B.T. until tommorrow which is her birthday, but then I realized I'd be too tired by the end of the day to want to post anything, then it would roll to thursday, the masses would riot-- it'd get ugly.
Here are just a few morsels to tide you over until the big Happy Hollow baby-fest.



Don't you get a depression era feel from this?  

excellent pic, daddy-o! 

this one looked better in blue for some reason. 






A few days ago her father insisted that she kicks the big soccer ball. I was dubious. "I think she's just trying to pick it up and she runs into it," I said to which he made a face. So here is proof, I saw it and now you cacn too, that she is actually kicking the ball. I guess some good has come from him kicking the ball in the house.

I think I know why you're single

Over the years, various friends of mine have been on Match.com looking for men.

Something has struck me about most of the men on there and I need to share it with the hopes that someone is listening.

The 90% of the men fall into these two categories:

A. I Am A Man's Man.
That's fine if you are. Fine.
But when your screen name is MustangMan or ilikebeer it's like you're trying to be cool to other men. Women don't care that you're obsessed with Mustangs, shhh keep a secret and don't make it your screen name. And the best way you can market yourself with is your love of beer? That's not gonna make the women swarm to your door, dude.
One guy I saw had as his very first photo, y'know the one you see when you click his profile, a picture of him covered in a dozen dead ducks he'd just shot. Sir, that was a bad decision. Women, in general, don't like hunting. Write that down.
Lots of self portrait, grainy photos with the up-the-nostril point of view. Not flattering on anyone. Or they look like beastly angry mugshots. Do you want a date or not?

or

B. I Think I Know What Women Want
They have names like natural_charmer and nice_guy_27. I don't know who wants that business. Their photos are trying to be the cover of Teen Beat, I can almost see them bat their lashes. Creepy! "Women tell me I have nice eyes..." Blech! Stop it already, I can't take it.


So gentlemen, let some women you know edit your profile. If you're not shopping for man-love or a soap opera role, change your ways.

wikipedia really does have everything

My high school (and also Allison's, Lacy's and Aurora's) is on Wikipedia!

Richardson High School

Finally now I have black and white proof that the Pearl Jam "Jeremy" song is about the guy from RHS. Thank you!

And holy moley, Anne Rice, Robert Tilton and Bill Engvall are alumni! Amazing!

Talons up, people!

in Brazil, even baby chicks are festive

Allow yourself to meditate on this Flickr find...

Baby Wednesday

I really thought yesterday was Monday.
It didn't occur to me all day that it was in fact Tuesday and I should post baby stuff.

Oopsie.

Two videos this week, no pics...



She loves to pull the CD's off their shelf and put them in a big pile. I only let her do it once because I thought she was going to do something with them after she pulled all of them out. She didn't she just tried to use the pile as a stepstool to reach higher objects on the shelf.
During this little flick I thought maybe she was going to pull them one by one and hand them to me. But after the camera stopped because the memory was full, she went back to her old CD-dumpin' ways.



Did I mention she walks now?
And when the dogs bark, she hits the deck!


In other baby news, I ordered her birthday cake this morning from Gayle's Bakery in Capitola. I've always wanted to get one of their princess cakes but never had a good reason to until now. It'll look just like that spherical purple one in the photo. :)

Also regarding the pregnancy, last night I unknowingly made myself a heartburn cocktail of a dinner last. I woke up at 1:30AM and rumaged through our medicine basket for a remedy. I found some Milk of Magnesia that had been given to me in Africa, four years ago. I took some, although I don't think it did anything. After two hours of watching TV upright on the couch, I got on the internet and found that bananas are a natural antacid. So I went to bed, stared at the ceiling, contemplated life and ate my banana.

One other thing, I have just realized that I have baby poop on my shirt. And doing the math, I'm pretty sure it's been there for about two hours.
Good times.

big house people don't have these problems

The "office" I am currently blogging from will soon be no more. It will be a green kids' room and all this stuff is getting evicted.
Our oddly laid out dining room is the only logical destination for our officey stuff but we're once again going to need the help our our friend the Swede, IKEA.

After a very thorough investigation of their many wonderful storage solutions, I have deicded there are only two configurations that will function in our 54" x 66" corner.

I have taped them out onto the carpet thusly:



Basically, one way involves only utilizing the longer wall so that the filing cabinet will still function.
And the other way nixes the filling cabinet altogether and incorporates a dandy "corner cabinet."

Both options would go all the way up to the ceiling, mind you.

I was thinking that I only really currently use 2 of our 4 drawered file cabinet, and the rest could be boxed up right? Right. We have a little "jr. size" two drawer cabinet that is presently filled with unimportant stuff that could also be boxed up and put in the garage. That was my thought for "option 2" w/the corner cabinet.

Thoughts?

why take a cab when you can take a limo?

A few people's first response to "I'm pregnant again" was "Oh, you're gonna need one of those double strollers."

They're right, I need one.

There's a mod brit plaid one on craigslist for 50 bucks that I want really bad, but I can only wait for her email reply and bite my nails in anticipation.

If money was no object, I'd get this Ferrari of double strollers:


It's like 900 dollars before shipping. Is that really necessary?



This one is only 500 dollars, and it's cool looking, but it sets up a kind of baby hiarchy. Somebody gets the bad seat.



This one is "reasonably" priced at 250 and I like it alot. If I don't get the craigslist one, maybe I'll have everyone I've ever met in my life pitch in to buy it for me, heh.

Baby Tuesday

I'll be frank, this week's baby tue is meager compared to other weeks. I only have one video and one photo.
But! In the news, she's walking pretty darn good. Also, this morning she went to the playground for the first time and loved the swing. She cracked up. Sorry, I didn't bring the camera. However, when she wasn't on the swing, all she wanted to do was go back to the stroller (and the dogs that were tied to it) and pull everything out of it.





This was after her bath this morning. It was kinda hard to hold her and take a photo of her at the same time. She also apparently found it difficult to pose.

if this were 50 years ago, it would be totally normal

A few years back I was wasting time watching some random 60's teen beach movie and in the particular scene, this girl comes home from her date and takes off her wig. She puts it neatly on its stand next to another wig on her dressing table, both blonde wigs and pretty similar to her actual hair.

And I was amazed.

What a great idea! Pre-done hair, as thick as you can afford, never needs re-dying and unless someone spills a slurpee on your head- no shampooing.

Brilliant.

Ever since then I've wanted a wig or two. I would use them just like the actress in the movie. They would be sorta like my hair but better for when I was short on time, or hair. But I would never go into a creepy wig shop.

Ebay, however is much less creepy.
Unless of course, maniquin heads scare you.

So over the past couple of years, I've clicked around for hours looking at the various wigs from around the world.
But I can't commit to buying one. Especially when I'm pretty sure everyone would make fun of me, because it's not socially acceptable to wear a wig unless you're on chemo or from Sudan.

But I still want one...

Oprah's unmentionables

Achtung: Men, you will not find this post interesting at all, despite that it concerns boobs.


Many of my readers don't watch Oprah, but even if you don't, you've probably heard about the episode that flooded "undies departments" across the nation: The Bra Show.

The moral of the show?
Ladies, go get measured, you're wearing the wrong size.

So last month, I walked in Nordstroms (where I NEVER shop, but they didn't need to know that) and got measured. Aurora was also there for moral support, but she refused to play the game too.

Low and behold, I was off on both number and letter.

However, the downside is that cheap stores do not carry my true size. Victoria's Secret.com had four. Just four!

And that, is why I believe most women wear the wrong size. Because they don't sell the right ones!

uh oh

Before baby #1 was born, I consulted this Chinese calendar of gender prediction and was happy to see that it predicted a girl.
It turned out to be correct, too.

But--

I just consulted the chart for this peanut, and it says boy. :<




(Son, if you read this some day, I still love you.)

((hahaha))

my first present outing

I had to fill our vitamin prescriptions at the drug store and while I was looking for fabric dye, I saw the toy aisle.
Baby's 1st birthday is right around the corner so I picked out her gifts with her right there in the stroller. And it occurred to me that this is last time I will be able to shop for her gifts with her watching me and they'll still be a surprise when she opens them. :)

I bought some bright-make-baby-happy wrapping paper instead of gift bags. Normally I I don't use bags (because I'm a gift wrap snob), but then I thought "hmm she does like taking stuff out of bags...wait, what am I going to do with those bags after the gifts come out?"
So I bought the paper and wrapped them cleverly with "pull rings" so she can easily yank on the rings to tear open the paper! [curtsey]

I was all over the place on the age recommendations. The GlowWorm I bought said "Birth+", the My Little Pony said "3+" and the little ambulance said "12mo+."
And for those concerned, before I wrapped it I took out the little pony hairbrush which is the "small part" that made it baby-inappropriate. I don't think she can fit the whole pony in her mouth. And she likes things that light up and play music, that's why I bought the 'worm. :)
(I had a My Little Pony and a GlowWorn 20 years ago, that's weird don't ya' think?)

don't thank me, thank the staple gun

A while back we got a couple of Home Depot gift cards and I said "ooh I can get a staple gun!" and he said "what are you going to do with a staple gun?"
"Upholster things, of course."
He was dubious, but now check out the before and after dining room [Craigslist bargain stained up] chairs!



It's hard to tell from the photo, but the new fabric is a chocolate brown faux velvet, from my favorite Chinese fabric store on the "east side."

you can only have microwave meatballs so many times

We have no oven or stove.
I'm not sure if everyone knew that, but we don't.
It is indeed the very last step in our kitchen renovation.
Kevin is rebuilding (much like you would an old car) an old Chambers stove that we pulled from a dank San Franicsco basesment for $100, two years ago.
It is incredibly heavy because it's mostly made of cast iron, and I have affectionately named it the Lusitania.
We learned that Rachel Ray uses our stove on her cooking shows. And if you've seen her use that freaky flame throwing broiler, you'll remember it.

Anyway, Kevin's still working on it. It was basicly a bucket of rust when we got it, so it's a long-termer and I knew that from the beginning. I hated our old electric one so much that I had them throw it out during demolition. I was willing to not have a stove at all for a while than look at that piece of crap any longer.

But man, it's hard to cook anything decent without a stove/oven.
Here is what I can make:

Salads
Fajitas (single burner hot plate)
Nachos (in microwave)
steaks (george forman)
corn dogs (deep fryer)

And that's about it. I can only boil water in the tiniest pot we have, because that's all the hot plate can muster. So I guess I can add to the list: deviled eggs, about 3 at a time, and two servings of pasta.

Now I'm currently looking up camping recipes because I think I might be able to do those...mmm smores for dinner...

Baby Tuesday

To answer Randy's question from last week:
I think when baby #2 comes along, I'll prob have two separate baby blog days unless s/he too is born on a Tuesday.




This is from like a month ago but I forgot I had it, then Youtube was down, etc, etc.
Gripping baby action!





So like I said before, her former crib bumper met a distasteful end and I thought she'd be okay without one now. That was until the other day 5 minutes after she fell asleep, I hear screaming-fear-crying coming from her room. I open the door and find that she had got her ankle caught in between the slats.
Alright so she still needs a bumper after all. So in my grinchy way, I bougth up some clearance fabric (which is 70's fabulous) and some ribbon on Ebay and sewed up a new one for her. I love it. Love love love it. I think she likes it too. It's very soft.


This isn't the most well photographed image, but she looks like a little baby seal.


This has an early REM quality, does it not? This photo needed some spice, or some HUGE black-eyed-susans rather. She loves Daddy...alot.


This one is also a lil' old. But I don't think I showed it before.
She likes to feed us. It's her way of helping out.


The only babies in this video are of the four legged kind.
You might need some aspirin after this clip, it's so cute it hurts.