Cordon bleu rolls in puff pastry

I'm here, trying to remember what in hell I've been doing for the last two weeks. Teaching... working on the dissertation. Trying to read French (a whole long article; too long to try to impose on Rebecca to translate for me), and hoping to get a computer thing going to help gather some data for my dissertation. Everything is going slower than expected, which is- as I understand it- the nature of the beast.

This weekend, we went to the Viking Festival, now an annual favorite (Ari's been every year she's been alive, thus far). Miss Ariadne had the Good, Good Times there, as you can see.

The Viking Festival is pretty low-key and relaxed, and not terribly crowded, so it was easy for Miss Ari to run around. Everyone was pretty nice about it, too, on the occasions on which she went running into someone's booth or tent or whatever. :)

She also had loads of fun with the music. We listened to this band composed of a dude playing a German bagpipe (did you know that the Germans had bagpipes? Apparently, most of Europe did) and another dude playing various kinds of drums. Ari, as you can see, had a good time dancing.

Then, they asked if anyone in the audience wanted to come play drums, since they had alot of drums. We got Rick up there playing, and Ari and I danced until I was too tired. Then, as the next number was starting, Ari ran up and started playing with a free drum. The guys in the band didn't mind her messing with it, so Thad came up and held it for her while she played. :D

Then we went home and ate pamcakes and played Munchkin and watched a little Doctor Who.

Flopping around like a pig with his head cut off

I can't believe that it's already nearly half-way through April. We've been amusing ourselves right enough. The weather's been lovely (save for the last few days that have been rainy and cold and miserable). Last weekend we had Cookbook Party Club, but I haven't managed to write it up yet. The food was really lovely, though.

This is Ari, making her dinosaur drink from her cup. Ari had good times at Cookbook Party Club. Thad took her to parks and whatnot while we cooked, and then she got to play with Jeff and "Book" and "Tabbus", three of her very favoritest people.

This is Ari in our new papasan. Our last papasan crumpled one day and is currently being used as a pillow nest/landing pad by a little miss upstairs. Rick saw one at a thrift store, though, and got it for us as a replacement. Ari approved it.

She's been a bit more verbal now. She parrots alot, but also talks about things. She asks for "Sammy Hooogs" alot (her way of pronouncing "family hugs", which is when we all three get in a group hug-and-kiss session).

Oh, and she is way into "nopples". Comes of being a breastfed baby, I suppose.

She also likes to play dress up, which she comes by honestly. Lately, she really digs wearing other people's clothes- especially mine. She keeps stealing my shoes from my room upstairs, and walking around in them. Here, she's wearing my leather gloves and the swimsuit top I just bought.

She wandered around in it, saying "my nopples!" for a while, which cracked me up. She clearly knows what that top is about.

Tonight, we played UnMet again. I very dig that game. For dinner, I roasted a chicken, and made mashed potatoes and steamed asparagus (asparagus was on cheap at the store). Then, for dessert, I made this fantastic devil's food cake, and put strawberries in the middle, and cream cheese frosting on top. It was fairly phenomenal, in my opinion.

I don't have balls to slow me down.

This is Ari, eating cereal. I did a lot of house cleaning yesterday and the day before. By house cleaning, read, playing HoMMV and picking stuff up in the in betweens. Anyway, so, as you can see, things look relatively picked up.

Ari is much better with her spoon use. Also, she came up to me after cereal today with a cloth to help her wipe the wayward milk off. :D

So, last night, we played a game called Scheherezade. Last fall, when I was in my not-blogging funk (to be fair, it was a funk that affected all my life, not just the blogging), we went to Con on the Cob. We had a fantastic time, I sold almost all of my weird critters, and we had some really phenomenal gaming. Including, but not limited to, this game Scheherezade. It's a cooperative storytelling game where you draw characters out of a hat, and everyone works together to make a cool story.


Alas, I cannot link to a place where you could buy this game, because it isn't on the market. The fine gentleman who made it ran it for us at the Con, but isn't selling it yet. He did send us his materials to play with, though, so we totally made an evening of it, with themed food and a costume box for all the character changes. And, as you can see above, fake mustaches.

It was good times for all, really. There's more pictures here, if you're interested.

Not for me. Only Gileta!

Tonight was our Gary Gygax Memorial Dungeon Crawl.

For those of you who don't know, or weren't aware, Gary Gygax- the man behind Dungeons and Dragons- died last week. The geek community has gone into mourning. Seriously. And, while it's true that Thad and I don't actually like Dungeons and Dragons, the fact remains that we would not be who we are or where we are if Gary Gygax had not lived his life as he did. The least we could do was buy some pizza, some Cheetos, and some Mountain Dew, and play his freakin' game for one night.

So, Thad dug out the infamous Red Box (retrieved from his 'rents over Christmas), and we rolled up characters by the most old school of RPG rules. 3d6 6 times in order, no rerolls or dropping ones or nothing! Then, we went into a dungeon, and crawled all over it. PC's died. Jeff alone went through three. We killed goblins, and skeletons, and rats. And more skeletons. One of our number popped his RPG cherry on the Red Box tonight, just like so many of us have in the past. It was a glorious game night, TPK or no.

We even rolled to see if we were getting drunk.

PS: Ari asked for something today. She put the bag of bagels in my hand, and- quite clearly- said, "I want a bagel, please". Well, it might have sounded more like "A wan' boggle pease. Boggle pease." Nevertheless, my baby asked for something. With words. For like, the first time ever. :D

A blank page

This is my beautiful daughter, at 2 AM, sitting in the middle of a pile of rice crispies, compounded by a pile of cornstarch. She was eating the rice crispies, but I think she was just playing with the corn starch. I kind of hope she was just playing with it, because otherwise, it reveals some really disturbing things about my child's tastebuds. Ech, I got a face full of it when I was changing her jammies.

I haven't had the motivation to clean it up yet; I expect that'll come tomorrow. In my defense, I do get kind of zoned out when it's the wee hours and my girl still isn't to bed. I really ought to try to do something to get her on a more even schedule, but I've been too lazy- and her staying up so late all the time (which she has been, lately) isn't as suck as it might be, really.

Today, I got home, and Ari started asking for "sammy hugs"- which is to say, "family hugs", wherein she gets to be in the middle of a mama and papa sandwich. She also beeped my nose repeatedly and played "peetaboo" with me. It was freakin' adorable. Oh, and lately, when Thad goes to bed, she wants to snuggle under the covers. I can hardly get her away so he can sleep. Sometimes she asks for "sammy hugs" then, too.

The first outings for some of the cookbooks I got at the xmas are up at the Cookbook Party Club blog, if anyone cares. There is even pictures.

Very belated

This weekend was Marcon... check us out. I didn't take nearly as many pictures as last year- probably because I spent most of the con running after a certain little someone, and didn't have proper time to pull out a camera.

This is a picture of her, napping under one of the tables in the gaming room.

We pretty much spent the whole con in the gaming room, with one of us gaming and the other running after the girl. Ari had great fun seeing all the sights- including escalators, which she enjoyed going up and down and up and down and up and down and up and down.

This is Miss Ari deciding that the Icehouse pieces are her personal playthings. The rep from Looney Labs was nice enough about it, and I had her come away when they were actually ready to play. Brooke, who actually knows how to play the game, said that she was making some pretty good plays.

Matt McFarland (aka Black Hat Matt) brought his wife and daughter to the con, and Ari enjoyed playing with her. She's 10 months older than Ari is. She was really interested in other kids and babies, and every time she saw any, she'd run right up, saying "Bay-ee! Bay-ee!" One girl (maybe 5 or 6?) was getting really frustrated with her, saying, "I'M NOT A BABY!" But anyone not-adult is a "bay-ee" as far as Ari is concerned. :)

Oh, one kinda cool thing- there was a maybe 8 or 10 year-old girl there, dressed up all pretty and with a cat-fairy plushy. Ari kept pointing at her, saying "Seh-ee! Seh-ee! Seh-ee!" I told the girl that Ari thought she was a fairy (that being what "seh-ee" means in Ari-speak), and she held out the plushy, saying, "no, this is the fairy".

So, Ari pointed at the plushy, and said, "Dat!" and pointed at the girl and said, "Seh-ee!" She knew what she knew. :)

Time lapsed

Happy St. Patrick's day, y'all. We had a nice one, here. Although, it's ended a bit late, as you can see. We had some corned beef and potatoes and soda bread. I also made some green shortbread balls, which were delicious.

Hmm... I seem to be kind of delirious. Perhaps I shall go to bed and finish writing this upon the morn.

••••••••••••••

Okay, then. So, yesterday, we had R&B over for breakfast- it was supposed to be Cthulhu time- but Lauren was sick, so Cthulhu didn't happen. They ended up going back home and planning a dinner with some of Brooke's family. We were invited, but decided it would be better for the girl to stay home; she was really tired and grumpy. Jaime and Kelli and Jeff came over for dinner, though, and we proceeded to play a bunch of games- per usual. It was quite fun.

This is Miss Ari completely passed out on my lap, bless her heart. She just climbed up into my lap while I was on the computer, and was unconscious before I even realized it.

The day before, we all went over to R&B's for dinner- we brought them dinner, actually, because Brooke's granddad died last week (he'd been extremely sick for some time), and Friday was the funeral... I thought it might be nice for them to not have to cook.

Oh, and in very exciting news (for me, anyway), Ari knows my name now! :D She sees me and says "Ma! Ma!"

Lessee, what else... she knows the name of one number (six), and when she rolls dice now, she'll roll them and say "six!" and raise her arms in the air in triumph. She's also an accomplished nose-beeper these days, and she still likes to play the growl-like-monsters game.

Very exciting cupholders

Ari and I went to the department today, to talk to a woman thinking of applying to grad school. She's interested in historical, and apparently wanted to talk to grads with young kids (she has two of them herself), so that was me. Ari and I got free lunch out of the deal, and we also got to get out of the house.

Bedtimes have been creeping later and later recently, but I got Ari up bright and shiny early at 9:30 AM. She was not appreciative in the morning, but she did take a lovely nap at a reasonable hour, which is a good thing.

This is a random picture I drew. For a thing in a roleplaying game. I thought I'd throw it in for the hell of it.

Fun Ari things lately:

• Ari beeping our noses
• Ari playing dress-up with hats (as you can see)
• Ari climbing our stepladder and then having to cry to be let down
• Ari playing "throw the dice down the grating"
  

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!

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!

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. ;)

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.

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

Silent movie kiss

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.

A pleasant fiction

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.

We haven't been helped.

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.

Stacking blocks

We had another up- till- four- slept- until- noon- everyone- is- vaguely- sick day... which is to say, we didn't do much of anything.

We went out to the Apple store in Easton to resolve some last stuff with my most awesome computer (exchanging the .Mac Thad bought for an iPod Shuffle!). Easton is usually an abomination on the face of the land, but it was really packed, and extra... abomination-y.

When we got home, Ari was asleep in the car, and we went and picked up R&B. I don't think I've mentioned this, but their car died a death, and they are thus without transport.

Rick helped us install Boot Camp and Windows, which lets us be able to boot my beautiful new mac with Windows on it. Then, we played Boggle (which I won handily), Set (which I lost, but not badly) and Carcassonne (which I got murdered at).

Shedding

I hope all y'all had a great Christmas Eve. :) Ours was pretty low-key, with it just being us, and all. We cleaned up some, and I made Ari a stocking, and we went on a nice walk downtown. It's surprisingly warm for this time of year, here, and the walk was very pleasant.

In this picture, Ari is wearing one of her Christmas presents from Brooke- which is so appropriate to us. Have I mentioned that our games shelf is full? It has no more room.

On our walk, Ari actually stopped traffic. A couple in a truck were waving at her and making faces, and didn't notice the light had changed until Thad pointed it out. Anyway, we walked down to the North Market, where we got pheasant pot pies to bake up for dinner, and some stollen for breakfast from the Austrian bakery, and some delicious ice cream from Jeni's. Ari very much liked the ice cream.

Then, we came home, and baked our pot pies (pheasant and morels, very tasty) and watched a movie, and played a game of Carcassonne. Then, I went and did Super Secret Christmas Stuff in the basement while Thad played with Ari.

Despite getting a late post-walk nap, Ari went to bed at a relatively okay hour, and we just spent time getting the house cleaned up so we have a nice place to have Christmas in. We'd best get to bed soon, so Santa can come. Since no one will see this until tomorrow at the earliest, Merry Christmas, y'all!

At long last

This was my baby a few nights ago, trying to pass out asleep under a chair... shortly before she threw up all over Brooke. The last few nights (weeks, really) have been really rough on all of us. This week, Ari's just been fussy and not feeling well all the time- hence my not writing. It's really been quite horrible.

Tuesday night, she was up all night with Thad. Wednesday night, she was up all night with me- plus, she threw up twice. She barely ate solid foods for about three days (yay still nursing!) and has just been clingy and whiny and totally un-fun to be around.

This is a picture from Wednesday night, when she was carrying around a book and trying to hold it to go to sleep. The girl only marginally cares about teddy bears, but she wants to cuddle a book when she's not feeling well. She didn't want me to read it- she just wanted to hold it. She did the same thing on Thursday morning, except with the "Safe Baby Handling Tips" book that Max gave us last year for Christmas.

Last night, she wouldn't pass out until about 1:30 (in the sling with papa, she didn't want me) but she slept like the dead until I had to wake her up to make our doctor's appointment. It was actually supposed to be a well baby visit, with some shots, but clearly that wasn't happening. They checked her over, and said it was probably just a viral thing, and they expected that she'd be better in a week or two (argh)... and then Ari threw up all over Thad as we were getting ready to leave.

Despite the fact that she threw up, and that she barely napped today, by the evening, she was so much better! Better than she's been in ages (aka as long as my sleepless, fogged brain can remember). She was interested in food, and ate a whole bunch of nibblies I got for her. She was cheerful and playful and her old self again! She even fell asleep easily, upstairs, before midnight. Check it out:



This is her dancing to the new CD that her Uncle Darren sent. :D

Well, it's been a busy few days even aside from baby craziness. We've had packages flying in from all over with presents from everybody- the Christmas Crib is now full of shiny things. Oh, and yesterday we had our solstice dinner. Andy, Krista, Ray, Jaime, Kelly, Rick and Brooke all came. I made a turkey, with pear stuffing (for the first day of Christmas, as we're counting it). We also had rosemary garlic mashed potatoes, crab/shrimp things in fillo shells- my first time working with fillo, and it turned out great!- green beans cooked with bacon, oyster mushrooms cooked with roasted garlic and bacon, and Jeff's mother's chocolate pecan pie for dessert. The chocolate pecan pie was much less sweet than I would have expected- it was really delicious. Oh, Jeff made it- it was just his mum's recipe. She lives in Massachusetts, and wasn't making pie for our solstice dinner at all.

After dinner, we played a few games of Carcassonne (Jaime's Yuletide present to me! :D) and generally hung out. It was really lovely, except for Ari not feeling so well... but I'm glad she seems to be doing better! I wasn't sure how much more I could take, quite frankly. :)