Sunday, February 25, 2007

Mixed feelings

Ugh. This weekend sucks. Working on an abstract and a handout.

A few Ari things-
  • Ari's all into dancing lately. And spinning around. She'll do it at random, but more often if there's music. It's adorable.
  • Ari's been eating like crazy- growth spurt maybe? We've been getting free dept. food the last few days, and she's munched it down. Crab rangoon? Egg rolls? Blackberries? Chicken kebabs? Turkish bread? All munched like crazy. Tonight, she ate two big chunks of chicken, most of a Turkish bread and some veggies. And then, when we got home, she declared she was still hungry and ate an entire plate of noodles.
  • Ari's had a dog sort of day. We walked past a man with a dog today, and she said "cat!" I said, "No, honey, it's a dog," and she immediately said "dok? dok!" Later, when we went to the department party, she saw the host's dog, and immediately said "dok!" She was really scared of the dog at first, but by the end of the evening she was at least tolerating his presence. She kept following him around going "dok! dok! dok!", but every time he'd turn around to check her out, she'd squeal and run away.
  • Thad and Rick inadvertently taught Ari to say "sucks" today. We think. It might be "socks", or possibly "fox".

Thursday, February 22, 2007

Fitting it all in

Augh, when it rains it pours. I've ended up hosting someone for prospectives weekend (damn you, spare bedroom!). Which is this weekend. Which is the last weekend before my presentation. :( I'm going to be spending every spare minute- after we clean up our house for the incoming guest- working on aforementioned presentation. Wish me luck. I have to have a version of it done by Monday... Oh, and my ICHL abstract. Mustn't forget my ICHL abstract.

Ari is a sweet little snuggle girl. She didn't nap this afternoon for her papa, and thus had kind of a rough evening. She did pass out right when I got home, and I have to admit, I just loved having her all passed out and snuggly in my arms for a while. I always miss her when I'm gone, and I love having a chance to hold my chubbly, snuggly little girl when I come home.

Today, Ari said "please" and "bye bye". I think she thinks "please" means "read me a book!", but it's hard to tell.

Monday, February 19, 2007

Sweet pies

Since tonight is Changeling night, I'm probably not going to get a chance to post later on, so I'll just post now. I'm still at school. Ari was asleep last I checked, so I'm having to wait to get a ride home. Roads and sidewalks in our neck of the woods are still so bad that it's not practical to bike, so I'm dependent on my monkeys to ferry me around. Oh, and plus, I had to bring pies to school today :D

The pies went over really well at school today. Angelo liked both of them. We had them for snacks at Changelings (the historical linguistics study group, not to be confused with Changeling the roleplaying game), and no one even realized they were gluten-free till I mentioned it.

I haven't seen Ari much today- not since the morning- so I can't speak about her. We had a really sweet waking-up this morning, though. She was all snuggled up next to me and looking like such a sleeping angel. I'm looking forward to seeing her in person again soon.

Don't forget the beans

This is me trying to make gluten-free pie for a friend of mine who may or may not be but probably is celiac (he's not man enough to actually take the definitive test, but eating wheat makes him sick). One of his chief loves in life has been pies and pastries (followed swiftly along by pasta, poor man- have I mentioned he's Sicilian?) and I decided to try to encourage in adjusting to his new diet by making him pie. These pies have a sweetened goat cheese base, with orange curd and whipped cream on top. Thank god, he's not showing signs of dairy intolerance.

This, on the other hand, is the rare two-headed monkey, from (I am told) the wilds of Borneo. Or something like that. It ambushed me this morning, and this was the best picture I was able to get before it leaped upon me!

I spent today trying to get work done. I have two weeks until a major presentation, and I still have this class to teach, and I've been feeling pretty sick for most of a week- which has made it difficult to work. Anyway, I'd best get my nose to the freakin' grindstone.

Ari has been her sweet self today. She's definitely teething, and her sleep/napping has been unfortunately disrupted.

Saturday, February 17, 2007

Consistent crashing

It's been a rough day here at Casa de Papke. I've not been feeling well for a few days (although I'm starting to feel much better now!) and Ari is showing signs of teething again. Poor Thad was up until 6 AM with her, and got back up with her at 10 AM, because I wasn't feeling well enough to care for her. Have I ever mentioned on this blog that I have the best husband ever?

So, not much to report. I've mostly been lying around the house, going "glagh", not eating, and watching movies about transvestites. Ari has been reading books with me, and playing with dice. Oh, tonight, as we were getting her ready for bed, I told her to say goodnight to her papa. She waved at him and said "papa!" She said it two or three times even. Awwww....

Speaking of "awww....", here's a video of Miss Ari helping her papa make pancakes for a poor sick mama.

Friday, February 16, 2007

Too many piggies

Hey, guess what? It's like to snow again this weekend! Yay! :)

We finally made it out of the house today, which was very exciting. Thad walked up to the comic shop early today, and then we went out in the car later. I'm told that walking was totally no fun- too many chunks of snow to climb over and too much ice.

Fortunately, there's relatively little ice- mostly because it's never gotten above freezing since the big storm, so the snow's not doing that melting/refreezing thing it tends to do.

This is Ari, wearing her papa's hat and playing with her paper dolls. The picture above is of me lying on the vent on the floor. She apparently decided that it looked like Good Times, and she wanted to join me, so she came over and sat there with me reading a book for a good long while. She was babbling up a storm, really loudly, and pointing at things in her book. Every now and again, she'd laugh. It was awesome listening to her "read" to herself.

I'm not entirely sure what Ari gets out of print books, but she's all into them. Is it just because we like them? She'll sit there for ages- 10, 15, 20 minutes sometimes- turning pages and pointing at things and leaning in to look closer at certain things, and babbling and laughing. She totally looks for all the world like she's reading them... I can only assume she's picked up behavior from watching us read.

This is the map from tonight's Carcassonne game. Our trip in the car was to go to the gaming store for Valentine's Day, get gas, and stop by the store (since we've been trapped at home for days). We picked up the Traders and Builders expansion for the two of us, and a big, purple d8 for Miss Ariadne (she loves it).

At one point, Ari grabbed my builder meeple, and ran off with it across the room. Then, she proceeded to roll it as if it were a die- apparently, all our game pieces look the same to her! I had to trade her for an elven d6 to get it back. :D

P.S. Ari definitely knows Batman's name. She consistently points and says "Bats!" When she sees images of him, or her action figure. She doesn't know "mama" or "papa", but by golly, she knows who Batman is!

Wednesday, February 14, 2007

Like I had the flu

Guess what? We had another snow day! The university was closed again, so all my classes were canceled. Which was just as well, because I would have had to cancel my class anyhow- we're snowed in, right and proper. No one's bothered to plow or salt our dinky little street, and our car is actually pretty stuck. We briefly tried to leave, to go to a nearby friend's house, and discovered that we couldn't even pull onto the street.

Anyway, so it was another day stuck at home. It was fun the first day, but was less fun today... and we can't even walk anywhere easily; the sidewalks are all deep with snow. To make it worse, it's not even regular snow- it's about 5 or 6 inches of snow, then about a 1/2 inch layer of ice, covered with another 1/2 inch to an inch of snow. So if you try to walk on it, you go "*step* SHUNK *step* SHUNK" as you break through the ice. Slow going. I'm not sure what we'll do tomorrow- Thad hasn't gotten a job yet, but we don't know if they're going to close the schools again tomorrow. Or, even if he does get a job, whether he can actually get to it safely.

In the meantime, here is a video of Ari rolling dice. She likes to raise her hands in the air whenever anyone rolls dice (which is pretty often in this house).



P.S. Happy Valentine's Day! We didn't get to go the Guardtower as we had planned. I hope your V-Day plans worked out better!

Tuesday, February 13, 2007

In suspense

This is what it looked like outside today. We got... well... alot of snow. I don't know how much. Then, it proceeded to sleet the rest of the day, so all the snow is covered by a thick crust of ice. Even the university closed today, which is exceedingly rare. I keep hoping I'll get a snow day tomorrow, too- but that's not likely. Mostly, I'm concerned about having to make Thad drive me on icy roads- since there's no way I'm biking through inches thick snow topped with ice on a day where the high is supposed to be 20 degrees.

This is me and Ari reading the Valentine's Day book that her Grandma and Grandpa Porter sent. :D She totally loves turning the flaps!

In any case, we stayed home today. Thad had a job, but CPS was closed (of course. We did successfully de-Death-ify our desk. Some, at least- and I found the charger and the fresh battery for the camera, as you can see.

Ari had a good time having mama and papa both home... she had a good nap, and was really fun and cute today. New words: "box" (as in, the box I have my coin collection in that she dumped all over the floor :D) and "bats" (pointing at the picture of Batman on the desktop).

And here's my baby, dancing with toast:

A woman of quality

Today, I have no pictures for you, because I can't find the battery charger for my camera! We have a terrible Stuff accumulation problem on our desk (our version of the Shelf of Death, Marcus. Doesn't everyone have a Shelf of Death somewhere?) and I know it's somewhere in there. There is a very cute video of Ari dancing in circles with toast that you can't see, and there would have been some nice stills of her playing with her new, improved paper fairy dolls, had there been a charged battery to pop into the camera at the appropriate moment.

Goal #1 for this weekend: Well, finish my next handout revise for Brian, really. But after that, I want to try to de-Death our desk.

Erm... Thad got Ari's fairies laminated today, so they're more durable. And waterproof, which is necessary. She totally loves them. She had a big breakfast of scrambled eggs and toast this morning, and ate all of it. She also had an almost grown-up slice of papa's pizza for dinner.

Cute things Ari does lately:
  • When we get her undressed next to the mirror in the bedroom, she'll sit there and preen and pat her nekked chest and make faces at the mirror.
  • Every time she rolls a die ("DAISSS!"), she raises both hands up in the air in celebration! Our friends are trying to teach her only to do this for sevens or higher, since less than that isn't a success.
  • She likes to play a game with papa where he says "Yeeeess..." and nods, and she shakes her little head vigorously.
  • I've started ending nursing sessions by counting down from 5... for some reason, Ari gets very enthusiastic and excited every time I do this, and is totally jazzed about stopping nursing and switching to something else! I don't get it, but it's kind of nice.

Saturday, February 10, 2007

Dragon Den

This is me and Ari, a few nights ago, sitting on the warm vent. We do that a lot lately; our house is pretty cold. Because it's really cold outside, and we're kind of poor, so we just pop on sweaters and deal. Note me also in my thermal tights and snow-stompin' boots- my constant companions these days.

There's still lots of snow on the ground. And ice. And it being really, really cold out. At least it's now in the teens in the mornings, rather than the naughts.

Today, we played alot. It was Viking Cthulhu day, so we had breakfast and game. Then, we went over to R&B's for dinner (pizza ala Rick) and game playing. We played John's uber-expansioned Carcassonne... to be honest, it was a bit much. But it was nice to try out the expansions, since we've been thinking of picking some up.

Ari had great fun over at R&B's, wandering around and playing with things... pulling books off of shelves, pointing at cats, y'know. The usual. She kept shrieking "DAT! DAT! DAT!" every time a cat showed itself. She wasn't sure whether she wanted to chase them, or run away.

Here's a less exciting video... Ari sits in a chair, and says "ball" some more. What the hell, it's 20 seconds of your life, right?

Chicken Dijon

Whew! It's three in the morning. I'm going to pay for this tomorrow.

Jaime came over tonight, and we had dinner and played games- 10 Days in the USA (Jaime won), then Pinochle (Jaime won), then King's Gate (I won) and finally, Carcassonne (I won). Come to think of it, it wasn't a very great game night for Thad as far as winning went. :)

I made dinner from a recipe from a book I picked up from the library this afternoon. I really like it, actually, because the recipes are like, normal recipes that normal people without an hour and a half to cook and capers and quinoa and shit in their kitchen might be able to produce. God knows I love to get a little gourmet now and again, but I kinda needed new things to put in the normal dinner rotation, so it's pretty awesome. I marked about 20 recipes that looked promising!

I took Ari with me to school today. She was awesomely sweet in Gothic- she actually spent most of the time (15 minutes straight) reading my Gothic textbook. There are no pictures in my textbook, just printed word- but she spent 15 minutes flipping through the pages and pointing at things and peering closer at them and making "hm... ooooh..." sort of noises. :D

She also said some words for the people at school, which was sort of cool. Brian commented that she was giving the English, and not the Gothic pronunciation of "fish", so she must not be picking it up yet. ;)

Thursday, February 08, 2007

It's a tie!

This is a picture of Ari. She was inexplicably walking around with her hands behind her head for a while, but this was the best picture I was able to snap. :)

It's been an interesting week this week, full of snow. And coldness. :P Have I mentioned how much I hate the cold? Monday and Tuesday, school was canceled because of sub-zero windchill. Then, on Tuesday afternoon, we all of a sudden got four inches of snow.

It was particularly exciting for me, because I was way the hell across town when the storm started, at a playgroup with Ari. It was snowing when I left, but I expected it to be a light snow and then stop- but no. It snowed hard from about 1:30 until 10 at night! I ended up leaving my car at the playgroup and getting a ride home from someone more used to driving with an inch and a half of snow on the road (and a van with an extra carseat).

Anyway, school got canceled for the third day in a row- Thad ended up only missing one day of work (because I work Monday-Wednesday) but, as you might imagine, three days off at the beginning of the week plays hob with teachers' willingness to take off days at the end of the week.


This is a picture of our contribution to last Friday's Imbolc dinner at Rick and Brooke's. They made braised lamb and potatoes and something else delicious that escapes me at the moment. But it was all delicious, anyhow. We stayed up late playing games and had a grand time, but we inadvertently screwed up Ari's sleep doing it, and ended up paying for it later.

This is a picture of Ari, eating her very favorite of foods. She looks like some sort of hunchedy gnome here.

You'll note that she's in a sweater... our house is pretty cold, what with the temperatures in the teens and lower. We'd turn the heat up, but, y'know, we're poor. So we just all wear sweaters and socks around the house. We also put that saran wrap stuff on some of our windows, which has helped a great deal, but 65 degrees is 65 degrees.

This is Ari playing with paper dolls. Someone on one of our Changeling boards mentioned this site where you can create fairy avatars, and Thad printed some out on cardstock and cut them out for Ari to play with. She totally loves them! Several of them she's loved right to death, so we're going to print them again and laminate a few for her, I think.

Ari's just exploded with the talking- I think she's got well over a dozen words, and you can tell she's trying other ones. I can't remember all of them.

Cool stuff from today:
  • Ari was learning to beep noses today- she kept pushing our noses and going "eep". She even did it to her baby doll!
  • I was playing with a dragon toy, making it roar at her, and she picked it up and started chasing Thad with it and going "rawrrr!"
  • Thad got home just before she woke up for her nap, so he was there when she got up. She staggered over towards him, and when he asked her for a hug, she totally understood and gave him one. :D
We've been having issues the last few days with Ari trying to claw the bejeezus out of me when she nurses. We had a really horrible night where she was in a constant tantrum and I wouldn't let her nurse if she was trying to knead me... but it seems to be getting better. She's clawing me less and tantruming less when she does claw me and I pull her off.

Thursday, February 01, 2007

Bacon in my tummy

Sorry; no pictures today. :) Today was a work day for me, and Thad only thinks to pull out the camera if she was exceptionally cute.

Let's see...

I had an exciting time with the copier this morning. I was supposed to meet Brian across campus (15 min walk) at 11:00. At 10:40, I set my students' midterm up to copy and went and packed my stuff up to leave. I returned to the copier a few minutes later only to discover that it was broke six ways from Sunday... it took me 25 minutes to fix it- which put me (at a fast trot) 15 minutes late to my appointment. Fortunately for me, Brian was late, also, so we just rescheduled.

Then this evening, Ari and I went to another mom's house to hang out while Thad and Jaime got their Heroclix fix. There were a bunch of other kids there, and Ari had great fun. It was really cool to see her actually playing with other kids instead of just playing alongside them. She particularly enjoyed playing with a little 10-month-old girl. She was actually sitting there going "Boo!" to her. :D