Not a real post

God- so tired. I'll post more tomorrow. There was viking-ness aplenty, and also Rick's birthday.

Milk and raspberry mousse

We had all kinds of A Day today, on this lazy Friday when I wasn't at the Naylor lecture like I might a' been. Ari woke up at her usual time this morning, and Papa was off to teach fifth-graders right after getting to give his girl good morning kisses. She was bright happy shiny in the morning (as is her wont- she's a natural morning person), but wouldn't go down for a nap at 10:30. Well, that is to say: she went to sleep, but refused to let me get up, and after 35 minutes of me trying to get her to let me unlatch, she decided she'd rather be awake than asleep if she wasn't going to have a nipple in her mouth.

So, she didn't nap at 10:30. She stayed up and played on the floor while her mama sat near her and graded papers. Then, about 1:30, she nursed to sleep in my arms- but she didn't stay asleep; she was awake again after about a half hour. Rick and Brooke came over in the afternoon to bring me my milk from the deep freeze, and Ari and I walked it over to the milk bank. After we got home (she was definitely acting fussy and tired), I laid down with her again and tried to get her to nap- no dice. About then, Grandpa Marcus called to let us know he was about half an hour away, and I went into cleaning-up-panic mode. :) I had thought that he would be arriving closer to the evening, and that I would therefore have Thad to help me, but no- I was on my own.

Anyway, I did the necessary cleaning while Ari hung out in her cosleeper (and taught me a lesson about leaving pencils too close to a standing-up baby's grasp) and Thad and Marcus arrived more or less simultaneously. We had a nice evening, including some fancy duck pizza, lobster bisque, and venison chili. Ari was still way tired when we went out. I was afraid that she'd be fussy, but she was a total sweetheart. I think it helped, too, that we sat outside (she loves outside).

She passed out with some difficulty after we got home, and has been sleeping like a log for the last hour and a half. On the morrow, we intend to go a-viking.

P.S.: The word of the day is "strip-pocolypse".

I thought you would go with the guys in the truck

Isn't this a pretty photo? Thad took it yesterday, as she was sitting on the floor in the evening, playing with a spare breastpump part. :)

Today was a really good day. I had my morphology class, which I didn't have to skip. I caught all my busses perfectly, and didn't have to wait for any significant length of time for any of them. Then I came home and put the girl down for a nap (she passed out on the bus) and cleaned the house. I even made a whole dinner, and even made it early on account of the Buffy game tonight.

The Buffy game actually happened, even! (*gasp!*) It almost didn't, because Cheri bailed on us last minute, and Ray almost forgot about it. Ray thought to ask if game was on, though, and made it over (albeit late). We had quite a good game. It was nice to be back in the Buffy saddle, as it were.

It's good that I had a pretty good day, though, because last night was horrific. Ari woke up about 3 AM, just crying and crying. Thad was working today, so I was on night duty. He actually got up and went to sleep in the spare room, because I couldn't calm her down and he needed to be able to rest. I ended up taking a bath with her (she was kind of congested and I thought it might help) but it was still nearly an hour and a half solid of screaming before I could get her back to sleep.

Speaking of sleep, I need to secure myself some of that now. Here's hoping she sleeps okay tonight!

Lost to history

Today is yet another boring day. I did review with my students for their midterm (handed out in class today) and today was an Irish/Mycenean day. Oh, and we talked about contact in the Socio seminar. Anyway, class was pretty good all things told, and I had fried chicken.

Ari was sweet as cream when I got home. She was on the floor playing with her daddy and when she saw me, she immediately started crawling over to me and crying to be picked up! She's really started going after things she wants like that. Oh, and we're starting to wonder if she might be starting to understand speech sounds. Sometimes it seems like when she says "mamamamama" she means me... hard to say, really. How do other parents pick out a first word? There's lots of stuff that could be words, and it's just hard to tell!

Baby talons

I had an okay day today. It involved a lot of shopping and less getting stuff done than I should have liked. I did finally make myself the necklace I've been meaning to make myself (as you can see). I've gotten really tired of the constant pinching the girl's been doing lately. Did I say pinching? I meant grabbing big handfuls of flesh in her razor-sharp baby pincers and bearing down.

Anyway, the hope is that she'll want to play with the necklace instead of trying to rip my offside nipple off. I used one of the beads Theo gave me for Christmas a few years back, even, plus leftovers from the beads I got for the Blessingway.

We went on our big shopping trip to the Sam's Club and Walmart today also, on account of there being NO food in the house. Like, none. It was pretty sad. We also went to the Container Store, up at Easton (which is an abomination on the face of the land, but does contain an Apple Store). As a result, we now have some spice racks and little bins which will hopefully destroy the small, localized chaos phenomena previously known as our kitchen counter and desktop.

Oh, and I skipped class today. :P Catherine (the woman who's watching Ari) emailed me the night before and said that one of her boys had some diarrhea, so I shouldn't bring her over. I feel like a lousy student, but what can I do, y'know?

Back in the saddle

Hey, y'all! Well, here I am, back in one piece from Indiana. We had a really lovely visit with Uncle Karl and Aunt Rebecca. We spent most of the visit just hanging around, playing games and playing with the baby girl, although we did get out for some Bloomington window shopping and some really excellent Turkish food. Karl totally chatted the waitress at the Turkish restaurant up, too, and got us a loaf of that tasty bread to take home. :)

Here's some pics of Ari with her aunt and uncle. She had great fun playing with them, although I think she did really miss her papa.

We had several neat baby milestones on the trip:

1. The first real crawling! Ari has well and truly figured it out at last. Now we'll see how long it takes for her to figure out walking! We can tell that's what she really wants to do. ;)
2. Ari ate bunches of new foods- including avocado, strawberry, mango and potato. She just had tastes, but it was cool to share food with her!
3. Naw, that was it. I just felt the need to have a number three. It was... um... her first time sleeping in a King-sized bed?

Anyway, we had a good time. When we got home, Thad had mostly (but not quite) finished his book, and had set up her new high chair (which she loves, by the by). Today, in contrast, has sucked- but that's normal for Mondays.

Let's try this again!

Today was just another work day. School went okay, teaching went okay. I did get back my SEI's (student evals) from last quarter, and they were every bit as crap as I feared they might be, so that sucked. Otherwise, though, all was fine.

Ari had a busy day today, though! She is pulling herself up like crazy. She even pulled herself up using the bathroom wall today. Also, she is to the point of walking around while she's holding on to things! She's not truly crawling yet, either. I swear, that child will walk before she crawls.

She also used a high chair for the first time today. We ate at the Burger King for dinner, and we tried sitting her in one of their seats. She loved having her own seat. I'm going to call the Babies R Us as soon as we get home and find out if they've got our seat in yet; I want it now!!

Speaking of which, we're trying it one more time! Plans are for me and Ari to head to Indiana tomorrow. So far, nobody's throwing up, which is a good sign. :) Wish us luck and good speed.

Wins by attrition

Well, we just finished our Pendragon game. It was very eventful. ;) My character got betrothed to a land owning Frenchman, Andy's character had a baby boy, and Jaime's character proposed to his lady love. Oh, and Jeff's character discovered that he needs to stop playing the field (he's a notorious womanizer) and find somebody permanent, or we'll never find what we need to finish our quest. Exciting stuff. Thad is chuckling to himself about how easily pleased we all are. :)

In real-world exciting news, Ari ate her first real food today! The last few days, she's started to actually notice food and eating, and I've been trying stuff with her as she seemed to care. Today, I put some hummus on my finger and put it in front of her, and she totally went and sampled the hummus! She didn't like it, mind, and spat it right out, but she still tried it. I think we'll let her taste other stuff now and again now.

Things went just fine with the new sitter today; Ari seemed to be having fun with those little boys (the mom who is watching her has twins!) but it was a lot of walking around and taking busses. At least the weather was gorgeous for it!

The Ari what squeaks in the night

Ari was up at 5 in the morning again, but this time it wasn't my turn to get up with her! I had to be up for work today, so Thad got up. I'm going to make this short, though, because even with not having to be up at 5 AM, I'm still dead tired.

I think we have learned that she cannot be let to go to bed any earlier than 9 at night; anything earlier and we have happy awake ready to play baby in the wee hours. Other than that, she was pretty good for Thad today (or so I hear). We did have to kind of keep her awake tonight though; she was rubbing her little eyes by 8 o'clock.

Not much went on today, really- I worked, Thad vacuumed with Ari (apparently she likes it when he slings her and vacuums, and this means that our house is getting better dusted) and we watched a movie and ate ice cream after she went to bed.

Tomorrow, Ari starts going to a new sitter while I'm in my class. Thad's out of school right now, but we decided to go ahead and take her to the sitter anyhow so that Thad can spend the day writing. Besides; I like my days home with Ari alone as much as I get them.

Maple syrup and marshmallows

Today has just been gorgeous. We slept in this morning- well, Thad slept in. I did research about bike trailers and baby gates and high chairs on the internet. Incidentally, I think we've decided on the Wike trailer. My mum is sending us some money that will cover most of it, and it looks like a really nice trailer.

We cleaned up the house a bunch while Ari was having her afternoon nap, too. We installed the table we bought yesterday, and I cleared out the mess around the computer table. We also (as you can see here) went over to the park across the street from our house, and let Ari play in the grass, and on the swings. She loved the swings (as more than just a teether, even!) but was kinda dubious about the grass.

Jaime came over this evening, and he and Thad have mostly been playing Heroclix with each other, although we did get in a nice game of Munchkin Bites.

Some of them have star in their name

We had a busy day today! We went to breakfast and then a La Leche League meeting in the morning. It wasn't much of a meeting, really (it was just me and the leader, who is a mom I know from my mom's group) but I kinda hope more people start to come. It's at a very convenient time for me- while Thad is off at his clix tournament- and I like the concept of going to a LLL meeting.

After that, we came home and Ari had a nap. She slept until nearly 4, and then we went out shopping again. We have a whole list of stuff that we need to buy- a few items of furniture, some baby-proofing stuff, and a whole bunch of organizer stuff. There are a number of small areas of chaos about the house that would be much improved by a nice bin to toss them into! We also looked at high chairs, and found one we liked. It also happened to be the cheapest one in the store, which was a nice coincidence. We didn't buy it, because they didn't actually have any in the store save for the floor models! They said there were more on the way, though, and even gave us a whole piece of paper promising it to us when it came.

Come to think of it, we mostly struck out today. :) We did get a sturdier lamp table at the Goodwill (our current one is kinda rickety), but that was pretty much what we had to show for three hours of shopping. Well, that and some very tasty organic chocolate milk (purchased at the Whole Foods).

After the shopping expedition, me and Ari went over to Janessa's house for an evening. It ended up being just a few moms there, and it was very nice. Janessa's house is way fun for kids of all ages, and Ari had an absolute ball creepy-crawling all over the floor and playing with fun toys. Oh, and for those of you wondering- she's still not quite crawling per se. But she's pretty friggin' mobile regardless!

Little lemming

Wow, today has been exciting! Ari has been mobile today like never before. She's half-crawling, half scooting, and goes across the floor like a maniac. Also, she's been pulling herself to standing whenever possible (as you can see). I'm pretty sure this girl won't be crawling for long- she seems determined to be bipedal as soon as possible.

On a down note, today is also the first time she fell off the bed. Well, technically, last night is the first time she fell off the bed. I had put down a whole bunch of pillows on my side of the bed anticipation of that possibility, though, so it was no big deal. She apparently fell off in her sleep, and didn't even wake up. I didn't know she had fallen off until a little while later when she bopped into the bottom of the cosleeper and started crying.

Today, however, she fell off the unpadded side. Thad was changing her diaper on the bed, and got up to drop the diaper in the pail, leaving her in the middle of the bed. In the space of time it took him to drop the diaper in and turn back around, she had crawled to the edge of the bed and hurled herself off onto the floor! Poor little bean. But she seemed okay, once we got her to stop screaming. We have since laid down our big fluffy comforter on the floor on that side, should it happen again.

In any case, it's both exciting and frightening. I think we're going to go shopping tomorrow for some more furniture and baby-proofing devices.

Indiana update

No Indiana for me. I'm feeling fine when I'm lying or sitting, but I'm weak and hurty if I try to be up and walking. Not a good idea to go for a long drive now. :(

The grossness which shall not be named...

Guess what? I'm not in Indiana. Last night at bedtime, Ari started spitting up crazy amounts- not really vomiting (no retching, or vomit smell) but her tummy was definitely unsettled. And then in the morning, I started to feel really ill. I kept hoping it would clear up in time for us to go, but it just didn't. Neither of us has had a fever, but we've both had this nausea and a touch of diarrhea, which was really gross, in Ari's case. Let's just say that it involed a thorough cleaning of her exersaucer afterwards... and most of the area around the exersaucer, and the floor where we changed her after the incident....

Yeah. I'm hoping that I'll be able to go to Indiana in the morning. I'm feeling much better than I was earlier in the day, but we'll just have to see...

So happy a baby

Ari was nothin' but a little sweetheart today. Just before I left this morning, I was making playing with her toes, and she was giggling up a storm. And Thad tells me that she was happy and babbly and giggly as anything for him during the day. This evening, she's also been just super giggly and happy for me.

Now, she is sweetly asleep in the bed upstairs. I came down to write in this journal and try to finish up some other stuff. I'm having a hard time remembering what it was, though, and I'm gonna go me to bed pretty soon. I'm insanely sleep deprived right now, and it's making me very fuzzy. Mostly, I know that I have to get ready to leave for Indiana tomorrow- me and the girl are going to R & K's so that Thad can have the weekend to write. He's hoping to have a draft of his book finished by the end of the weekend, which would be really good.

Anyway, you may not hear from me for some days; I don't know if I'll get any chance to write while I'm there. I shall take some pictures to show when I get back, though, and I'm really looking forward to the time away!

Staked by Seward

This is a picture of Ari, coming back from a walk with her papa. You can see the new sun hat we bought her, in honor of the onset of spring and bright, shiny sunshine. It has a pocket in the side, and initially, Thad was commenting on the utter uselessness of pockets in baby clothes. Today, however, he discovered their purpose- holding pretty flowers for his baby to wear!

The weather's been insanely lovely today. Warm and so pretty. I didn't go out as much as I should have liked, but I did get to bike back and forth from my class, at least. I don't have much else to say about today, really. It's all passed in a sleep-deprived haze...

Ari is creeping like anything, but still not quite crawling. Sometimes I wish I could just strap pillows all over her body! She can get herself to sitting up, and she's always toppling over. Dr. Sears says to lay pillows around so she doesn't bonk herself, but he's smokin' ye olde crack(e) pipe. I've tried that, and she a) tries to eat the pillows or b) clambers over the pillows and falls onto the floor from the even greater height of atop the pillow. Or both.

Oh, and she broke our phone. She pulled it to the ground, causing the bell inside to break off and move a bit. As a result, there's a wire against the bell and it makes this highly annoying rattly sound now. I think we're going to try to replace it (it's pretty broke-ass, even from before the girl got hold of it), probably with a cordless variety. That will solve the problem of "what do I do with this long phone cord?"

Baby kisses up my nose

Well, I'm about ready to pass out right here at the computer, I'm so tired. I'm hoping the girl will sleep well tonight so I can get some rest, too. She was up alot last night, and I didn't get to bed till late, either.

Baby moments from today:

When I called in the middle of the day (there's a phone in each of the stations in the pump room), the girl was fussing and crying. Thad gave her the phone, and I started talking to her and she quieted right down. Granted, it may well have been the fact that she loves playing with the phone, but it made me feel good anyhow.

A friend gave us one of these noisy plastic toys, with buttons to press, y'know? Well, she likes the toy, but when given the option to a) play with the noisy plastic toy, or b) play with her stuffed lamby, guess which one she picks consistently? That's right- the stuffed lamby. My little girl kicks ass.

Oh, and she was totally giving me kisses today! Well, hurling her face at my cheek/nose/mouth, making little sucky motions with her mouth and then pulling off and grinning at me. I choose to consider them kisses, however. :D

Thank *you*, Peter.

Here's the promised Cute Picture of My Baby. :) She's looking at the envelope that Grandma and Grandpa Papke sent us. She says, "Thanks, Grandma Grandpa, for sending me such a fun toy!"

The weather has been really nice of late, and I'm enjoying it. And taking the opportunity to dress my baby in cute little sundresses, ala the photo. They show off her sweet baby chub, which I'm totally enamoured of. Oh, and on the topic of sweet baby, chub, we went to the doctor on Friday.

They didn't tell me a weight in pounds, so I've only got what I remembered from the scale. What I remember was 7.91 kilograms, although running that through a converter yields me nearly 17-1/2 pounds, which seems way too much! That would mean she's gained more than 2-1/2 pounds since her last visit. In any case, though, she's certainly gaining weight just fine and healthy and happy.

You'd think that would forestall the doctors from lecturing me, but alas, not. One of the doctors nearly went pale when I mentioned that I sleep with my baby. She said "Well, you know, we can't recommend that." I said, "I know. And I disagree. Fortunately for me and my baby, I'm the one who gets to make that decision." Then they proceeded to lecture me about how I needed to give my baby vitamin D (and this is the third time I've declined the vitamin drops) because breastmilk is "deficient"- actual wording, I might add. Oh, and since she's over the six month mark, I had to argue with them about why she's not on solids yet. They're convinced that she'll get an iron deficiency.

Now, my baby isn't going to get rickets. We don't live that far North, and she's my daughter, which means she's white as all hell. Furthermore, she goes out for a walk near every day, so it's not like she doesn't get sunshine (which is how the body synthesizes D, as you may or may not recall). And there's plenty enough iron in my breastmilk for my baby girl, thank you much. Besides which, she's blatantly not ready for solids. She's just now able to sit up, she has no teeth, and, most importantly, she's not interested. At all. I'm pretty sure she hasn't figured out what eating is. And they're insisting that I give her solids?

So I told them all this, and they told me that I should make her some rice cereal, mixed with breastmilk and feed it to her. First of all, I'm not giving her rice cereal. That stuff is so processed, and such a simple carbohydrate that it's nearly as bad as feeding her granulated table sugar. With a history of blood sugar issues in the family, I don't want to start off her experience with food teaching her to eat things that have a high glycemic load like that.

Second, we can't get Ari to take breastmilk alone from a spoon or a bottle or a washcloth or a cup. I'm highly dubious that she'd take it adulturated. Besides which, of course, the times that we've tried letting her lick some mashed food off of a finger, she utterly refused it. So, yeah- not starting solids at this time, thanks. They seem to feel that she has to get going, or what, she'll never learn to eat?

Anyway, that was the doctor's visit. That and the shots (poor little bean).

It's a bat card!

I should be in bed; I really need more sleep than this. We started playing Fury of Dracula about 9:00 this evening. FoD is this game that we used to play with Pete back when we lived in Phoenix. It took us about 4 years to even figure out what the name was; we just remembered it was a really fun game. About, y'know, Dracula. Well, recently, Thad found out that the company that owned the rights to the game was re-releasing it in an updated version.

All excited, we finally bought the game off of E-Bay last month. Alas, Thad failed to notice that the last time he bought anything off E-Bay was the month when we were homeless and camping on his parents' couch, right before we moved here. All this to say, the game got shipped to Florida! At least his parents' address was the one in there, and not our old Vizcaya number. Which, I might add, probably no longer exists as they've ripped up and redone those apartments.

Anyway, we didn't get it until Theo brought it up with him, and we haven't had a chance to play it until tonight. It was a little different, but still had the same feel to the gameplay. I think the changes were largely for the better. It took a really long time to play, though, between me running upstairs to settle the baby (we put her down for bed at nine) and trying to figure out the rules. Hence the it-being-two-in-the-morning thing.

So, no sleep for me. I really will sit down tomorrow and write a proper report about Friday's well baby visit, and I promise to include a cute picture of my baby then. :) In the meantime, check it out- my baby's famous!

I HATE computers.

Grah!

My computer has been preventing me from finishing this @#$%#^& project for over 4 hours now. It crashes. It takes 8 minutes to think every time I click. I want to kick the #$*@-ing monitor in.

I'm extending the feeling to all computers in honor of my dear friend Darren's computer, which has become so much molten slag (okay, perhaps I'm exaggerating somewhat) and is thus preventing me from talking to him.

What I really want, of course, is a new shiny computer that does everything I want it to smoothly. All I want is to send baby pictures and movies to my parents. Is that so much to ask of a 2003 iMac running Panther? Evidently so.

I have baby talk, but I think I shall write about it tomorrow, when I'm not feeling quite so vindictive. And when, y'know, it's not 3 in the #$@&-in' morning.

My little go-go dancer

I actually sat down last night to write, but Blogger was down for the only 45-minute span that I had to write in!

I was late at school yesterday- the meeting with the professor did indeed go later than I should have liked. At Theodore's suggestion, Jaime came over and we spent the evening playing games. We stayed up too late, and got up too early. Thad took Theo to the airport while I was at school. Unfortunately, Thad only budgeted 30 minutes to get Theo on to his flight, and it was consequently missed. Theo was able to get a later flight that still got him to his connection, though, so all was well.



I have finally got 'round to uploading a picture of our new bedroom layout. I was worried about Ari being able to get trapped in a few spaces around our bed, so we changed it. There's a round tube pillow stuffed in at the head of the bed, and we put our pillow pile on the floor on my side of the bed. I like the new layout; if nothing else, it feels kind of invigorating to have a change.

We also separated the cosleeper so it's a free-standing bassinet. Right now it's just a sometimes baby container sort of thing, but there is the concept that she may sleep in there eventually. We'll believe when we see it, right?

An imp named Tad

Today's been kinda disjointed. I hate these Tuesdays and Thursdays. I woke up late and just had to run around. This is a picture of Uncle Theo holding Ari while I ran around like a crazy woman this morning.

Theo and me had a good time playing games together in the afternoon, and in the evening we had a chaotic Pendragon session that I mostly didn't get to play in.

I didn't get to play in it partly because Ari was a fussy britches, and partly because a bunch of problems with my students' online quiz cropped up. My university has just switched to a new system for online course materials, and it's really frustrating. I can't figure out how to do anything. Plus, I had one of the trained tech support people here, at my house (my friend Rick) and he didn't know what to do either.

Well, I'm off to bed. I have a really, really long day ahead of me tomorrow. Class till 5:30 and then I have a meeting with a professor. He has a reputation for rambling on, and I shall be quite testy if he keeps me too late...

My eyeballs are melted in my head

Aaah, Daylight Saving time*. Ari, you see, doesn't know how to read a clock. She doesn't know that we screw around with our time measurement system at this time of year. Therefore, Ari's mama didn't get to go to bed until 2:00 AM last night, even though she had to be up at 7:30 to make an appointment with her advisor.

I was so tired today. This is not really a new thing, though, so I think I'll try not to belabor it.

Ari had a bad day, too. She wouldn't sleep for Thad and was just tired and fussy as anything. We had kind of a cute if sad moment this morning. I had to get out early to make my aforementioned appointment with my advisor, and I was just about to pack up and go, when I remembered that I had forgotten a book upstairs (I keep reading material in the cosleeper there, for reading while nursing) and so I went to get it. Ari had just woken up, and when she saw me, she was all giggles and smiles and tongue stickin' out. You know, adorable babyness from my little girl. So I smiled at her, and said good morning and told her I had to go. I picked up my book, and walked out the door. She immediately started bawling. I turned around and looked at my little girl and I couldn't leave. I ended up being a little late for my meeting (although he was a little late, too, so it was alright) and I went in there and gave my little girl cuddles and nursies. After just a few minutes, she was okay when I left. I guess all she wanted was a few hugs from mama before I went.

I had a long day at school, but it went okay, I guess. I got to hug and cuddle my girl after I came home, at least. :) Oh, and we redid our bedroom to be a little safer with a more mobile little girl. Pictures to follow.
________
*Apparently, this is the correct term- not Daylight Savings time, as most people say it. I learned this from a student last quarter

Dear world: I kick ass!

I have been kicking some major ass today. :D

On the baby front, Ari took two decent naps today, all by herself. I only had to go to her once in the combined six hours of her two naps. She's been totally sweet and happy. I had almost forgotten how sweet-natured my baby actually is- it's been a while since she was napping properly, and it put her out of sorts. She is babbling like crazy and blowing raspberries. She's also been doing that cute baby dance where they flail their arms up and down.

Another exciting thing is that it sounded like she was singing along with a song today. It's hard to tell, but we were listening to the B-52's Hot Pants Explosion. There's a bit in the chorus that goes "Aaoooh, aaoooh, aaooh". There were at least two times where, right after the chorus, she started going "aaooh". Coincidence, maybe, but it's an indication that she might notice music. She loves having someone (especially me) sing to her but she's never seemed to care at all about music on the radio.

As far as my kicking butt goes, I made myself a proper hot breakfast today. And I did a ton of stuff I've been needing to do- bills, updating the ledger, even taxes (e-filed and everything!). I also went to school and did a bunch of school stuff that I needed to do. All in all, I've checked nine major things off my personal to-do list. Oh, and we're making ice cream and playing games with Theo this evening.

On a side note, I had no idea how much having a child affects your taxes. I did my whole federal return without Ari listed because I couldn't remember her SSN (it was upstairs under the bed she was sleeping in). Without her, our return was about 600$. With her, our return was nearly 3000$.

Anyway, today's been a really lovely day.

Taking a moment

I highly suspect this will be my only chance to write this evening. Thad is at the store, and has just picked his brother up from the airport (hopefully! I'm told if the handoff doesn't go well, they ship him straight back to Gainesville). We appear to be having an impromptu party/fish fry. R & B are at their house, picking up the aforementioned fish, but they'll be coming back in a bit. So, it'll be Rick, Brooke, John, us and maybe Jaime.

The girl is napping sweetly for the second!! time today. All by herself, with minimal support from me. When we started trying to get her to sleep alone, I had to bolt up there every few minutes and cuddle her back down. Now, she'll need me only once or twice in two hours. Or not at all! And even for that once or twice, I really only have to go in there for a moment now- I used to have to lie down with her for quite a long time before she'd settle.

I had a good time at the Blessingway last night. We took a belly cast of one of the women who's nearly due, and we made them necklaces (everyone brought a bead) for them to have with them in labor. The necklaces came out very nicely, I thought.

Anyway, I'm off to make bread for dinner and get my baby up. :)