Nose- beep beep!

Ari is sitting in my lap, sticking Aquaman in my face and laughing like a crazy person every time I say "Aaah!" or "Don't stick Aquaman in my eyeballs!"

Anyway, just now I said, "I think you're a little punchy!" It is late, after all.

She picked up her baby doll's fist, connected it to my face, and said, "Punch!"

:D My baby cracks me up.

Wanting milk

Here is Ari being a pirate. Yarr. She found this on the floor (our very, very messy floor) and demanded Thad put it on her.

The last few weeks have been pretty suck. I've been really sick, and Thad's been working alot. His days start early and end early, partly because he's been biking this route to work every day. It's nice because it leaves me the car (although I've been busing when convenient) and also means using less gas. :P But it does mean a 45 minute ride at both ends of his day, and get up at 6:00 AM.

It's so weird, because I've gone from going to bed at 1 or 2 in the morning habitually to sacking out- exhausted- around 10 or 11. I'm just tired all the time right now. The worst of the nausea seems to have let up; now my problem is that I'm too exhausted to cook anything, so even though I could eat, there's no food.

Our other good news is that we have decided on a midwife. We were debating going with CHOICE, which would have been fine, I'm sure. I met with them and they seemed good.

But then we went out to Heath (an hour away!) and met with an independent midwife named Kathy, and we really hit it off with her and her apprentice. Her apprentice lives in town, which makes me feel better about the whole hour-away thing, also. Anyway, so we agreed that we would have her attend the birth here. I'm not sure where in my tiny apartment this will happen, but I think we can work that out later. :)

Well, we're trying to get our horrible house cleaned up before we have guests for Origins this upcoming week. Wish us luck. :)

Big ol' cranes

It rained yesterday. Alot! With wind. The power went out, and when we stepped out the front porch, look what we saw! This is the rec center across the street. As near as I can tell, by the way, that white car was completely unharmed.

To be honest, the whole thing made me slightly nostalgic. :) I did comment that if my parents had had a tree that rotten (see the rotting bits where it split?) they would have had it removed a long time ago, to prevent just this sort of event.

Oh, and when I came home from work last night, the local NBC station was filming some sort of news spot in front of it. Then I got woken up this morning by shouty men with buzz saws who were breaking the tree down. The whole thing is still there- I guess they mostly wanted to get it out of the street, and make sure it wasn't caught in any nearby branches so that it could fall and hurt someone.

Ari thought the rain was really cool.

A whole bag of nuts

Yesterday, Ari came up to where I was sitting at the computer with a damp clean-up cloth. "Oh Ari!" she said to me. "Oh Ari!" I wasn't really sure what she was doing, or why she was saying that. I had just had to usher her away from a hot oven, and I thought maybe she was repeating my words from then.

But she was insistent. "Oh Ari!" she said. Finally, I looked around. Across the room, on the tile floor next to the kitchen, was a smashed egg. Apparently, Ari had gotten the last egg out of the carton sitting on the counter, and smashed it (advertently or inadvertently?) on the ground. Then, she went and got a cloth to clean it up with. She'd clearly tried to clean it up, not been successful, and come to me. Since "Oh, Ari!" seems to be what I say when I run across a particularly nasty mess she's made, that's clearly the thing you say. Kids are smart.

PS: Thad made this pie today. It is full of berries. I bet you five dollars it will be delicious.

Getting my English up

Ari likes the nice weather, and she really likes climbing on mama's and papa's bikes. :P

This was me letting her run around the "back yard" (And by "back yard", I mean tiny fenced in space behind our house with two very broke benches and an increasingly enormous quantity of greenery round the edges) while I cooked. She fingerpainted and played with her balls and played with the trailer and then wanted to "ride bikes".

We've also been doing a lot of drawing with chalk on the front and back stoops.

This is Dr. Ari, running off to save lives.

We finally went and got a membership to COSI. COSI memberships are usually hella expensive, but we are not only poor, we are officially poor and on public assistance. That meant we were able to get an "access" membership, for not hella expensive.

That, in turn, means that Ari gets to go play in Little Kidspace, which is the kick-ass play area they have. It's got a water play area, and a big ol' playground, and some dress up/pretend areas and an enormous pile of blocks. Oh, and a giant helicopter and ambulance that kids can get in and "drive". Anyway, so this was Ari, dressing up like a doctor. She was running off to go drive the ambulance.

The weather has been warm, but it's been crazy rainy the last couple days. Yesterday, it started just pouring down. Ari wanted to run back and forth on the porch, getting wet.

As for us- Thad is done subbing for the school year. He's supposed to start a test grading job on Monday, which will run for maybe 6 weeks, and then he will go back to the Target. Well, up his hours at the Target- he's still working there one night a week.

My kids (I mean students) are supposed to give me their finals tomorrow, and then I have to grade them. Otherwise, I'm done for the summer. My goal is to have my final draft of my dissertation proposal done in the next week. I am, however, being frustrated in that goal by being stupidly sick.

For those of you who didn't know, I'm about 8 weeks pregnant, due sometime in January. I am in the hating-my-life stage. It ought to last about another month, or so.

Spit in your eye

The three of us went to the almost-a-dollar theatre (inflation being what it is, you know) tonight to see The Spiderwick Chronicles, which is based off of a series of books that Thad read Ari when she was a tiny baby. It was our first time seeing a movie with Ari since she was four months old. She really liked it. :D Highlight of the movie for me was my daughter squealing "Issa GISSIN! Issa GISSIN!" when the griffin ("gissin") came on the screen.

Unicorn revenge

Here's our little monkey, fast asleep in the papasan. I know this is a bit Anne Geddes (although, I suppose she would be dressed like a lima bean or something in that case) but I think it's adorable. :D

We have had sort of a low-profile weekend. Sunday was Mother's Day, of course, which I mostly celebrated by sleeping late and then getting taken out to a breakfast buffet, full of- as Kathy says- piggies and pancakes. Blueberry pancakes.

This is a shirt I made for Ari (I made another one as well). I was surprised that she knew it was (more or less) the Flash symbol, but she took one look at it and said "Sash!" and then demanded that I help her put it on and take pictures. This is her solemn little posing face.

It has been cold and rainy here. It sucks. I want the warm weather now! We were taunted by nice weather, but now it's pretty much coat temperatures again. :P Ari hates it because the cold and wet means no outings to the
park, and being stuck in the house all day.

I hate it because it means that my two year old doesn't get to climb her crazy out. Ech. Hope us for better weather soon, so my baby can play.