This is Ari, learning about the correct way to care for babies. ;) She's very serious about it, as you can see.
She is currently on my lap, eating an apple (a current favorite food) and preventing me from typing. I think she's interested in the picture of her; she keeps pointing at it.
Aaah- she's gone off in search of toast.
Yesterday was me working and then Pendragon. We had a really good dinner- chicken and couscous, and these cheesy phyllo things I made (still using up the phyllo from Solstice!) that were incredibly delicious.
Ari has really been very verbal all of a sudden. She knows the word "ball" (video to follow), and she definitely knows the sign for "diaper". She was trying to do the sign for "ball", as well! And she was saying "dice" again, too.
As promised, Ari says "ball":
Since I'm thinking about it, Ari's current favorite foods:
Apples, but only in large chunks- halves or quarters. No slices.
Couscous (which is an incredible mess; but she loves it)
I have no pictures from today, so here's one that I meant to post a while ago and never did. :) This is her chasing her animals around and around the room in circles. It was pretty cute.
She's been using some new words today, which is exciting! She's said "ball" (well, "ba", but you know how it is) on three separate occasions. She also really clearly signed "diaper" tonight while we were changing her. Yay!
We went to meeting today. Ari loves the first day school room there. She had great fun playing with a Buckeye colored football.
Also, it snowed again. But only that really fluffy snow that melts really quick.
Wow, it's been a long time since I updated this. I'd like to be better at it again- it's just been hard for me to find a groove with it since I can no longer consistently count on having evening time to write.
Take this entry- I started it on Friday night by uploading pictures. Then, I managed to start writing it Saturday morning. Now, it's Saturday evening and I'm sitting down and writing again.
Ari is growing by leaps and bounds all the time. We're having some sleep problems lately- getting her on any reasonable kind of sleep schedule, mostly. It's very frustrating, because we'll finally get her to nap and go to bed on time for two days in a row, and then she'll randomly wake up in the middle of the night (and then stay up all night) and we'll be right back where we started, with a baby who won't nap till 6 pm and won't go to bed until 1 and is grumpy and tired all the time.
This is a picture of Miss Ari, having scarfed off with a chunk of blue cheese. :D I was making her some dinner, and she was acting really hungry, so I was trying to be quick about it. Next thing I knew, she'd snaked her little hand up to the table, yoinked the block of blue cheese, and had run off with it. Then, she proceeded to totally munch it down. Like, taking big bites and everything. I mean, I like blue cheese. I really, really do- but I don't know if I could eat that much straight blue cheese myself! Thad and I were laughing too hard to take it away from her right away, and then I had to take a picture. My baby is a hard-core cheese lover.
Here is Ari playing with her buddy Jaime. For whatever reason, some of our friends are Ari's favorites, and some aren't. Ari totally has Jaime (who, pre-Ari, didn't particularly like kids) wrapped around her pudgy little finger.
Ari is ?maybe? doing things like talking more. She says "up! up!" alot these days; sometimes in context. The other day, I think she said "bye". Also, I think she did the sign for "food" today! It was just once, though. She had come up asking for nursies ("milk! milk!") and I said, "Do you want some breakfast?" and made the sign for "food". Then she hesitated, and did the sign! Needless to say, she immediately got a plate of food.
Things she likes lately:
rolling dice (and getting grown-ups to read the results)
raising her arms in the air and squealing (and getting grown-ups to copy her)
playing "monster"- growling and roaring
having papa run down the stairs with her, making noises
playing the hiding-and-surprise game with papa
getting her teeth brushed, with the baby toothpaste
having her nails trimmed- this has always been true of her, but lately, she'll find the nail scissors and demand me to trim her nails!
And, as always, reading books. We've instituted a three-in-a-row rule on books- no more than three times through the same book in one sitting.
This is a sleepy baby, coming home from Rick and Brooke's house, totally passed out.
We ended up spending practically the whole day over there, as things happened. Ari and I woke up in the late morning, but we were letting Thad sleep after his early morning Target shift. Then, we went over to R&B's for waffles. Waffles and scrambled eggs started around 3:00 (bringing new meaning to the term "brunch").
We essentially spent the rest of the day hanging out at their place and playing games. And not- as I should have been- working. Ah, well. I will work a great deal tomorrow, and it's a long weekend anyhow, right? I should get one day of doing nothing useful.
Ari had grand fun over there, exploring the room and playing with people and cats. Cute things:
Ari kept coming up and petting one of the cats as he was sitting in Brooke's lap. He was very tolerant, but she was pretty gentle (if a little poky)
Ari was merrily following the cat around at one point, and later found him under a chair and was bent over, looking at the cat and blurbling away happily at him.
She discovered a new game- the wave! She would throw both arms up in the air and squeal, and watch as all the adults at the table did it too. Hilarious! :D
Lastly, here's the video I mentioned earlier. This is Ari, saying "Boo!" Does "boo" count as a word?
You get lots of pictures today. :) There's also a video that I think I'll save for a time when I have fewer nice pictures to post.
Thaddeus decided to put her in a pretty dress, today, and boy, does she make that dress look adorable. Well, what have I missed talking about? Yesterday, I took Ari to class with me. It was a session of my Gothic study group, and Brian kept saying it was okay to bring her, so I figured I would give it a try. It actually turned out just great! She decided that one of the first-year grad students was Her Person for the afternoon, and plopped herself down on this girl's lap and read books all through the class. Fortunately, aforementioned grad student didn't seem to mind. :)
Then, during the evening, Jaime and then Kelly and then Brooke and then Rick all sort of independently (more or less) wandered over here, and we stayed up too late hanging out. Thad owned us as Dracula again in a game of Fury of Dracula.
Today, Rick and Brooke came over, and we started the Viking Cthulhu game that Rick's been threating to run since ever. Our ship got dragged into the depths by a nameless tentacled horror, so that was a pretty good start to the game. No one's lost any sanity yet, though- but I'm sure the metaphorical first blood will be drawn soon! It just wouldn't be Cthulhu if we weren't slowly (or very quickly) going mad.
This is a picture of Ari reading the magazine she got in the mail. It's actually a "board-book format" magazine meant for toddler-aged babies. She loves it! She's had great fun carrying it around and reading it. Or (as in this case) making adults point at things in it. Ari is way into pointing at things these days. It's practically her favorite thing.
This is her stuffing popcorn into her mouth two-fisted. You'll also notice her very first temporary tattoo there on her hand- it's a skull, with, like, a snake... and a knife...
Guess whose idea that was? I'll give you a hint: it was one of her parents, and it was NOT ME. :) I'm just shocked that he managed to get her to hold still long enough for him to apply it.
Well, lastly, check us out trying to prevent Ari from getting more popcorn. She's wily, that baby is.
I woke us up at 9:30 this morning (well, that's when the alarm was set for. It might have been closer to 10...) in the hopes that it might convince Ari to be on a more normal schedule. We'll see how that goes.
Other than that, we didn't do much today. We went to the bank to iron out some issues. May I just say how much I hate banks? They're just waiting for chances to screw you over. And then they have the gall to claim that they're serving you, the customer. No they aren't, they're serving nothing but their stockholders and their own bottom line. :P
This is Ari eating dinner. I've been experimenting with filo/phyllo/fillo ever since I bought dramatically too much of it for my Solstice dinner.Tonight, I made phyllo packets full of shrimp and bacon and cheese. I figured it was not the sort of thing Ari would be inclined to eat, but boy, was I wrong. She walked up and grabbed my last roll off my plate- I had barely started eating it, too. And then she proceeded to eat the whole thing, shrimp and blue cheese and all. :D
She was totally covered with butter and crispy pastry by the end. It was impressive use of her new teeth! A few months ago, she couldn't have managed big ol' chunks of shrimp like that.
Well, as always, Ari started sleeping like crap, and bam, no blogging for me. I think I'm going to start trying to have a different blogging routine, because this is getting a bit ridiculous.
Her sleep is a bit ridiculous, as well. I hope that it's because of the new molars she has coming in (for a grand total of four molars and seven incisors, no canines or premolars) and that she'll cut it the hell out soon. She keeps staying up all night and it sucks.
This is a picture from right before we went over to Jeff's house to watch the big game on Monday. Boy, did that not go how we expected it to go. :) My poor Buckeye friends were very, very sad. Ever since, everyone just keeps repeating "we had a great season, and we beat Michigan."
Ah, yes. This is why I have heretofore tried to write in the blog when my girl is asleep. This is my fourth go at starting this paragraph; she keeps "helping" me.
Hm... what else have you missed? School started, and it's going pretty well. I'm teaching the undergrad language change course again, and it's going much better than last time I taught it. I'm doing a Gothic study group this quarter, which is fun.
Oh, exciting news- tonight is Thad's last time on overnight for a while. He's switching down to just working a few hours on Sunday mornings, which is great! He'll go back to overnight in the summer, when he needs the work, and not have to compete for scarce springtime hours. Also, we'll get to start going to meeting again, since Thad should get off work an hour or two before meeting starts.
Here's Ari playing with her blocks. It's very cute. :D
Ari's driving me a bit crazy lately, even besides the not sleeping (although, I'm sure that's not helping either one of us). She's seeming increasingly frustrated about not being able to communicate. She's also getting very demanding about nursing alot, which is getting on my nerves. Neither of us are ready for her to wean, but I'm really ready for her to stop trying to be on the boob 24/7. Especially because it's difficult to get her to sit still and not twist around and not grab my shirt/other breast/nose etc. Ah, well. I know this is a phase, and will pass. I'd just rather it pass sooner than later.
There's no pictures from today, so I thought I'd give you a movie from the other day, of Ari learning to roll dice. She's been playing with dice for ages (we got them to distract her from our dice when we roleplay) but not rolling them. It's an exciting turning point. :)
Today was my first day of school. It went okay. I think it was nice for Ari and Thad to have time together again- although I think she missed me. Since my new computer has a built-in iSight, I took our old iSight into work with me, and Ari seemed really happy to see and hear me on the video chat.
Hurrah for a baby who sleeps! Last night, I relaxed to the fact that Ari was just not going to sleep by herself at all, and brought her into bed with me around midnight. She slept all night, and woke up at a normal hour (around 9:30). Then, she napped around noon for two whole hours, and went to bed tonight at a fairly reasonable hour. We're all much happier. :D
We spent today cleaning up and getting ready for school to start back tomorrow. We set up my office upstairs (that's where Yggdrasil- the old computer- has moved) and put away a whole bunch of laundry. Oh, and I finally finished my backpack.
Check out Ari and Thad, all ready to go work at the Target. Thad says he doesn't think she could work there, though, because they wouldn't let her have a box cutter.
This is a picture from our New Years party. We just had a few friends over, and had gaming and tasty tasty food. Lynda and Jeff brought their traditional sausage rolls with mango chutney (they also brought the champagne). I experimented with fillo some more.
This is from the Munchkin game where we mixed all the sets together Munchkin, all four expansions for basic munchkin, Super Munchkin, Munchkin Impossible, Munchkin Bites (and the "Pants Macabre" expansion), a Munchkin Fu expansion and the Blender. It was pretty crazy.
We also played a game of Arkham Horror, from about 1 AM to around 4:30 AM. We made Ithaqua our prison buddy, so to speak. He had three tokens on his doom track when we finished, and one of our players had an Elder Sign she didn't even bother using.
Anyway, here's Ari in the "Level 1 Human" shirt we gave her for Christmas, playing with her crayons. She has taken to coloring things lately. She also likes them because she can sort them and rearrange them, which is also a popular hobby lately.
Ari's had another spate of sleeping badly. We had a few nights where we were up till dawn... anyhow, no babyfree time to blog. Or do much of anything else *grumble grumble*.
This is Ari, learning about the correct way to care for babies. ;) She's very serious about it, as you can see.
