Sitzfleisch

I just spent hours looking up more than 350 lines from the Rig Veda and marking the metrical boundaries in my notes. Other linguists get to talk to people, or at least do computerized searches of records of having talked to people; I flip through really old books. At length. At great length.

Anyway, ECIEC is eating my life- you'll note it's 3:30 in the f'in' morning.

I'll do a proper entry, with cute baby pictures, tomorrow. I promise.

Start wearing purple

This is a photo from yesterday, when Ari and I were helping Brooke in the garden. Well, by helping, I mean "alternately lounging around on the grass not doing anything useful, or physically impeding Brooke from being able to garden". As in the picture. ;)

Ari was mostly pretty good today. I'm wondering if her teeth were bothering her, though- she fought sleep tonight, and was pretty fussy and unhappy in the latter part of the evening. Earlier, though, she was totally sweet (as she usually is). She tried and mostly failed to eat cheerios. She can- and will- pick them up and put them in her mouth, but doing anything with them once she gets them there is the issue.
Today, we did very little except clean. Alot. I finally had had it with the horribleness of my house, and we spent the whole day cleaning it sparkly. To the left, you can see a "before" picture. Note the bunches of graded papers lying around, the piles of books, the random Stuff lying haphazardly around... Ari couldn't play in this room at all, between the mess and the table that got left in a non-baby-friendly spot in the room.

Anyway, it took us about 7 hours, but this is the "after" picture. Mind, 7 hours was the whole rest of the house as well, not just this one spot. ;) My bathroom is shiny, and my living room is vacuumed. I dusted, even. I'm hoping that some of the organize-y stuff I bought a bit ago will help us keep it clean, which is the real trick.

Oh, and we also made a whole searchable database of our games collection. That's cool.

And in exciting baby news: Ari climbed down the stairs today. Not well- she would have fallen off if I hadn't steadied her- but she still did it. That's good, becasue I'm tired of having to pull her off the stairs all the time.

Breaking up the ground

It's 2:30 in the morning, so I'm gonna make this short. I finished grading today (huzzah!), planning on cleaning the house tomorrow. Thad went to Shaintar, so I spent the evening at R&B's (hence the late bedtime- you know how it goes).

Oh, and I accidentally hit myself in the eye with my thumb so hard that it bled- I have a crescent shaped scab on my eyelid now, and that eye is swelling up.

Not eating cheerios

Yesterday must have worn Ari out, because she slept like a dream today! She passed out 10-ish last night, and didn't wake up till after 10:30 this morning- usually, she's up by 8 at the latest, so that was fairly remarkable. Not only that, but she napped with ease and was asleep by 9:30!

This morning, a friend came and picked us up and we went to a playgroup. She was supposed to come at 10, but didn't come 'till 11- which I was grateful for, as it meant I could shower and dress and eat and pack a lunch AND (most importantly) let my baby sleep 'till she was inclined to wake.

The playgroup was fun, but very chaotic. Ari, of course, is too young to play with other kids. She's just not aware enough of them, you know? But she did play happily in the vicinity of the other kids, and a good time was had by all. I guess we were gone about two hours doing that, and when we got home, that's when Ari napped.

Other than that, I've mostly been grading like a madwoman. I'm halfway through the final exams (I also did the LOC's and the HW4's today), and I think I'm done for the day! I'll finish it tomorrow.

After I finish grading, you know what I get to do?

I mean, other than work on my handout and plan for ECIEC, which is only a week and a half away.

I get to clean my house! I'm so excited. Does being excited about this automatically make me a grown-up?

Living in an alternate reality

Wow, today was a rough day.

It started okay. Thad went to work, Ari and I went to school. I had a meeting with Brian, and Ari was mostly pretty good during it. Wiggly, and wanting to explore (and eat Brian's papers) but reasonably happy and letting me talk. A kind of cool thing is that I was awarded the Linguistics department's award for teaching excellence for a 200-level course. I really do work hard at my teaching, so it's nice to be recognized- plus, it comes with some not insignificant quantity of money. The money is nice, too.

After the party deal where I got awarded, I needed to talk to Brian again (about ECIEC stuff), and that's when the day started to go south. Ari got to being tired, so I cut the meeting short and left to go home. It was raining, and I just missed the bus, so we had to wait around for the next one. She passed out while I was waiting, and I was hoping that I could get her straight into bed from there. Unfortunately, the rain woke her up as I got off the bus, and I couldn't get her back down again.

That touched off four hours of desperately tired, inconsolable (unconsolable?) sobbing, followed by a walk with papa, followed by a too-short nap, followed by a fussy evening that finally ended in sleep just a little while ago.

And me with too much grading to do on top. :P I'm going to go take drugs for my poor head, and try to sleep.

I can't believe...

Wow! Today has been a busy and exciting day. And not necessarily in the good way, either. To the left is a picture of my baby's head. If you look closely, you'll see the marks where a squirrel fell from the sky onto my baby's head and clawed the bejeezus out of it.

That's right. A squirrel. Fell from the sky. Onto my baby's head.

I shit you not.

We went to the emergency room and everything, just to make sure it was okay- it's actually much scarier-looking in person than the picture makes out (her hair obscures alot of it) but there's at least four claw marks on the back of her head, including one that bled a fair amount. She's just fine, and the doctor's weren't worried about her catching anything horrible from the squirrel or anything. Once she calmed down from the initial pain of it, she was more irritated by the poor triage nurse trying to take her vitals (and failing, I might add) than by the actual head wound.

Immediately prior to the Squirrel Incident (a freakin' SQUIRREL!), we were looking at a very likely prospect for a car- a newer Jetta than our Jetta. Prior to that, I spent some hours at school, working, and prior to that, Thad and I went and got our hair cut.

This is the new Julia style. I like it! I think it takes good advantage of my natural curl, and is short and cool and easy to take care of (hopefully). The look on my face, incidentally, is because I just got a look under Thad's mask. I am forbidden to say why Thad is wearing a mask, but let us just say that whatever the reason, it was startling. Quite startling.

The stylist had some fun chopping Thad's hair off. After roundabout three years of not cutting his hair, Thad decided that it was getting kind of ratty, and decided he'd like it short for the summer. So, Voila! It actually looks quite alot like one of the styles he had when we first started dating. It's kind of deja vu for me.

Ari is sweetly asleep now, and at a decent hour, too. I was afraid we'd be forever in the waiting room, but they got us in and out and home. We had such a running-around day, but she was just sweet as cream for most of it. Except when, you know, a freakin' squirrel fell out of the sky and clawed her head. She cried then.

A freakin' squirrel!

If that looking-glass gets broke

Here I am, back from the nursing-induced drugged stupor that overtook me as I was getting my baby to sleep. This was, I might add, an arduous task. The little bit just refused to go to sleep for hours. And this despite being so tired that she was falling around like a little drunk baby. She was still good-tempered (as usual!) but just... not sleepy.

Alas, since Thad and I both rely on post-baby-bedtime free time to get our before bed stuff done (including, I might add, writing in this journal), that means mama and papa are goin' to bed late!

Again!

Anyway, today we Got Stuff Done. Thad didn't end up getting a job, so I tried to get work done and he went and applied for jobs. The job-applying went about as well as expected; Thad will call them later and try to follow up.

I actually got some substantial work done today. Which is good, because I'm supposed to have a fair done draft to show Brian on Wednesday, and I'm... well, let us say that I'm not there at the moment. I'm not sure how good a draft I'll have on Wednesday, but at least I'll have pretty significant progress to show. I need to go into work tomorrow and do a whole bunch of stuff.

Besides working frantically on my stuff for ECIEC and also taking care of Ari (when Thad wasn't watching her so I could work) I

• didn't clean up my house
• did actually make a whole dinner
• did some car shopping
  

We've got a lead on a new car for ourselves. It's in the upper range of our price range, but much shwanker than we are used to. This is not necessarily a good thing, as the car we looked at tonight (we'll look at another one tomorrow) is all full of automatic locks and windows and computer dials. Call me a Luddite, but I'm deeply distrustful of these things. I think it's because I drive used cars that are usually around 100k miles and 10 years old when I get them... computery stuff tends to go funny in that time.

Check out my little girl! She's wearing a shirt I bought for her birthday from Granola Threads. It's a 12 month, and you can see it's a little big on her. If you're curious, it says "BREASTMILK: It's what's for Dinner. And Breakfast and Lunch and whenever else I want it!"

It kinda fits her now, though, so I'll let her wear it. That way she can wear it as long as possible.

Freakin' porkchop, man.

Check out my little girl and her squashes! She totally mushed squash around on her tray for like, 20 minutes today. She did have a few seeds on her face, so it's possible that some of it actually got into her mouth. Who knows? Note also the sweet bib that Grandma Colleen made for her. Those bibs are getting use now, at last.

As a tangent, I initially typed out "Grandma Porter" rather than "Grandma Colleen" just now. I think I asked at some point what she wanted to be called, and mom said "Grandma Porter", but I just couldn't bring myself to call her that. I mean, I know who Grandma Porter is! She's the woman who taught me to sew and made me prunes when I was a girl and made me beautiful, frilly dresses that I loved. I guess it's just weird for me to call my mom by a name that feels like it's already taken.

This is Ari cuddling the book she carried down from upstairs. I thought it was so adorable that I made Thad take a picture. :)

We had an okay day today. Thad went to his heroclix tournament. I failed to go to work and get stuff done (for those watching at home- I have a whole draft of my ECIEC handout that I promised to Brian by Wednesday, and I have yet to start it!) and we went shopping. Since our car is way too sick to trust to highway driving and a Sam's Club/Walmart amount of food, we got Rick, Brooke and John to drive us out there in the van. Since none of them had any shopping to do, it was really sweet of them to accompany us on our 3-hour journey.

Not only did we get food, but we also got a whole bunch of bins and drawers. Our bathroom seems like a whole new place, and we finally got rid of the Munchkin boxes that we've been storing our office supplies and Miscellaneous Stuff in. Oh, and now we have a toy bin for upstairs. Since upstairs is the babyproof zone, it's good to have a place to put Ari's toys. Now, if we can just get internet up there, we can all hang out there and be happy!

Hoorah for magic grease

Check out this rare, rare sight! Ari actually asleep. In her crib. I can count on one hand the times that's happened. Not that it's a goal or anything, mind- it's just remarkable.

She actually slept there for about 45 minutes after she fell asleep nursing in my lap this morning. She was out and I was able to just lay her in there and she was happy. Alas, I had to wake her up so I could go to class. :(

Today was totally my last day of class, and we even finished early. Ari passed out again on the way home, and got a reasonably decent afternoon nap. I'm up later than I should be again, baking a cake for a party tomorrow. The only time I get to myself these days is after she's gone to bed- it's far too seductive to stay up late getting things done.

Ari herself seems to know when I ought to be in bed. She always calls me about midnight thirty (you'll note, I've fudged the time on this log again to make it be the right day). If I were just ready for bed, I could nurse us both happily to sleep. But no- I have to get back up and "finish doing things" and get ready for bed... silly me. I should listen to my baby.

Mamas and papas should love their babies

I'm gonna try to keep this quick, and go to bed soon and at a reasonable hour. I had a fairly good day today, but I feel kinda bad for Thad. I hear his day sucked. The girl didn't nap, and he spent most of this hot, summery day trying to walk a sad baby down. She was fussy for him alot, probably because of being tired and having a hurty mouth.

Anyway, today was my last full day of school. I have one last Bob tomorrow, and then that's it. Or, rather, then I work like crazy to get my ECIEC handout finished before I have to grade my students' finals and jump both feet into the summer. :P It sucks, 'cause I'm really ready for a break, but I really don't get one until mid-July. Plus, even then I'll be needing to work on a paper and develop the courses I'm teaching next year. Despite not being officially funded by the department.

Well, I could grumble on, but I think I'll take a moment to talk about the baby girl. Some of the things on the list I wrote a while back have changed, in only three weeks! So, here's the revised list:

• regularly trying food, not really taking much in
  
• one little nubbin tooth
  
• crawling like a little maniac
• obsessed with the tv remotes and the diaper cream tube
• able to stand now for several seconds (by which, I mean up to fifteen) on her own!
• walking with the use of a rail (like around the edge of the crib)
• can climb all the way up the stairs, and is working on learning how to crawl down again
  

She also remains super cuddly. I love that I'm the lucky person who gets to snuggle her on a regular basis- not even Thad gets that, so I must be special.

P.S. Thad is handsome. And awesome, like a pirate and a ninja and a viking all rolled into one.

Ramblin' round the old hay mound

Today was a very weird day. Tomorrow is my last full day of class. I tried to get some work done, and mostly failed. Mostly, but not entirely- I'm kinda minimally prepared for the morrow. Thad stayed home because of the aforementioned car troubles, which was nice on one level (no wild bus adventures, because Thad could watch the girl) and crappy on another level (no money).

The mechanics took all of two minutes to declare that it needs a new clutch. Since we had suspicions of this, and even another half an opinion (the long distance opinion of Phil, our old mechanic from Florida), we're going to start seriously shopping for a new car. Whee. There goes my hopes of getting a new computer- this one is starting to make me CRAZY.

The girl was mostly very sweet today, but she couldn't get to sleep, poor thing. I can only guess her teeth were bothering her. She had a clear runny nose and runny eyes, too. I have some teething tabs that are rumored to help, but I can't find them! Argh.

Roaches with wings

One of the downsides to having so much going on over the weekend, is that I have so many pictures that I have to post here, and then I'm obligated to come up with enough text to accompany them, and then you have to read it. :)

In any case, I was prevented from writing yesterday by... well... being tired out from Marcon, and also by wanting to spend all the times possible with Steve and Reese before they headed back into the Land of Tiny And Poisonous Snakes.

We had a good time at the last few days of Marcon; it was really nice getting to hang out and game with S&R. I got to RP very briefly with Steve, and it just reminded me how much I miss him as a player! Thad ran a Serenity RPG on Sunday morning, and BlackHat Matt, Monjot, Steve, and two other gentlemen whose names escape me played in it. Thad basically ripped off the plot of Captain Blood, and I got to play Olivia De Havilland's part. There was an astonishingly good performance of the part of Honesty Nuttall from Monjot- especially given that he has never seen Captain Blood!

After we left the con, we got icecream at the North Market with Reese and Steve, and then we all came back here and passed out a while. When Thad and I woke up, we went over to R&B's, and later R&S joined us. There were waffles, and we talked about the push to declare English the national language of the U.S., for some reason. :)

As usual, I've failed to get as much done today as I needed to. I did get the chance to go see X3, which was cool. Oh- and our car is probably nigh on dead. It's started having some serious clutch problems (albeit on-and-off). Thad will take it in to the mechanic tomorrow, but I'm not hopeful. I started searching Craigslist for auto postings already.

You can see here my baby's first bandaid-worthy owie, covered by a stylish Batman bandaid. You'll be pleased to know that I fulfilled my first-time-mom responsibilities by getting frantic, calling for Thad's help, and crying a little while we doctored it. Ari didn't seem to mind it, of course. She didn't even cry when Thad peroxided the cut, even though she did flinch a little so I do think it hurt her. She was such a little trooper.

Oh, and in the category of Super-Exciting Baby News: Ari's first tooth erupted on Saturday! It's still just the barest little nubbly bit, but it's definitely there. Ari is (thus far) apparently a champion teether, though- she totally doesn't seem to care.

In every generation...

Well, happy anniversary to me and Thad. :) Today makes five years that we've been bound together in the eyes of the law. We celebrated by... um... *cough*goingtoagamingconvention*cough*. We are such geeks. We went dressed as vampire hunters (basically cobbled together leftover D*Con costumes), and we have Ari here dressed as... I'm not sure what. A victim? A vampire? A gore-splattered slayer? She was cute, anyhow! :D

As you can see, they even gave her her own badge- I'm told it was for security purposes, if she got separated from us. I have to admit, though, that I was pretty enchanted by my baby's first con badge. It has her name on it and everything!

We had a pretty good time at the con today. Nobody showed for Thad's Hellboy game, but it was just as well, because we were in the registration line so long, he would have had to start an hour late for his game. Instead, we went and got food and met up with Rick... checked out the dealer's room and the art show and even let Ari crawl around on the floor a little. There was even a free sushi bar set up in the ConSuite, but it started right when I was supposed to be running my Arkham Horror game.

As it turned out, though, there was a screwup in the schedule, and I was really supposed to have started the game an hour earlier! The printed schedule grid (which is what they presented to the public- i.e., me) said 8 o'clock, but their database, and therefore the sign-up sheets, said 7 o'clock. Whee.
Anyway, we played AH (won) and then went and checked out the Doctor Who party they were having upstairs. Brooke and I would have been perfectly happy to sit and munch their munchies and watch the episode of Who they were showing, but the boys were antsy. We went ahead and left the Who party, and went down to the ConSuite (always a good choice!) and gamed a little more.

Just a note- the ConSuite at Marcon is the best ConSuite ever! They have decent food at most hours- including stuff that isn't just sugary crap. Cheese and veggies and fruit and all. Also, they have big tables, with chairs (and even a few couches)- lots of them! We never do pickup gaming in the game room- we always go do it in the ConSuite, where they have tasty snacks and drinks and comfy chairs.

After that, we had a long walk home, on which Ari (miraculously) didn't just pass out! Oh, and some asshat whacked me with a cup full of water at me from his car. What the hell? I thought I was out of freakin' high school.

A few, precious baby moments

Last night, Ari (after refusing to go to bed in the usual way at the usual time) drifted off to sleep in my arms. She didn't fuss, didn't nurse... she just snuggled against me and eventually her eyes just closed. It was so peaceful and trusting, it near burst my heart.

Just now, Ari woke up. I nursed her a bit, and cuddled her. Then I took her downstairs, and had to do something very quickly with both hands. As soon as I set her un the crib, she started to cry- not a mad cry, but a sad, panicky, disconsolate cry. Tears were literally streaming down her fat little cheeks. As soon as I picked her up, though (about 90 seconds later), she stopped crying immediately, wiped her eyes with a chubby little fist, and just snuggled up against me. She's sitting in my lap, nursing and snuggling as we speak.

She makes my heart feel like a bathroom sink with the hot water tap stuck to on.

Sundae cones and castles

Apparently, I only have time to sit down and write every other day at the moment. It's actually nearly one in the morning at the moment. I fudged the time on Blogger (shhhhh....) because it's still Wednesday, dammit- It's just the wrong side of the clock on Wednesday. I still need to finish my morphology presentation for tomorrow- plus, the girl had a late nap and is still awake. :P

See you tomorrow!

I never knew what love was

Check out the eating of the broccoli! Or, more like, the gumming of the broccoli. She had a grand ol' time sucking on it. I did actually take another sprig and grind it up with the food grinder so she could have some to actually eat, but she didn't care. Ah, well- the point of solids at this point is new flavors and textures, anyhow, so I guess whether she actually consumes the stuff doesn't matter.

I went to bed early last night (rather than writing here, for example) but stayed up late reading a book. It made me do a lot of thinking about being a mother and life choices and such. One interesting thing- the book is a collection of essays. Most of them are written by mothers, but some are written by women in anticipation of motherhood. In every case, I was able to identify the essays written by non-mothers well before they actually gave me that information. It's incredible how much I live in a totally different world than before I had Ari.

I was kinda ticked off in the book by how little attention was paid to the stories of women who must work to support their families. Most of the women who were writing were working for a sense of personal fulfillment or something. One woman, who had a nanny, commented that the nanny didn't experience the same agony of conflicting feelings about working, because she had to for the money. And, y'know, poor people don't have feelings anyhow. (*squinty-eyed look*)

Anyway, check out Ari enjoying the empty Guaraná bottle from Sunday's excursion! I finished it off with dinner tonight, and she got to enjoy the results.

Too many cookies in the fridge

I actually got some stuff done today, but I spent most of the day at work. We did take some time off in the middle of the day and went to visit a friend's grandmum's garden. It was lovely, and the girl had a pretty good time there (although, all in all, we had her in the car a bit much today). While we were over there, we wandered by a store that purported to be a South American grocery, and I picked up some guaraná and some passionfruit-flavored squash. Mmmm.

After that, I went back to work and Thad and Ari hung out another couple hours. We had a very, very tasty dinner- chicken and couscous, organic broccoli, and pita. I think I'm going to parlay my passionfruit squash into some ice cream as well.

Ari munched on some broccoli during dinner, and seemed to really get into it- although she couldn't really eat it, of course.

I got me some pineapple

This is a picture of my baby's first bruise. It's kinda funny- I've been feeling horrible about it all day, but it's so subtle in the pictures I took that I had to draw an arrow or you'd probably never be able to tell. Poor thing- she wonked her head on a table leg last night.

We had a very outdoors day today, and I didn't get nearly enough work done. I never seem to, alas. We accidentally slept in, the three of us. Or, I should say, Ari woke up at an obscene hour of the morning, Thad got up with her, after 45 minutes, they came back to bed, and then we accidentally slept in, the three of us. ;) This meant that Thad missed his tourney, and I missed the LLL meeting I meant to go to. Instead, we went and had breakfast all together at the Wildflower cafe.

After breakfast- and mind you, it was nearly noon at this point- we went over to a barbecue for socio-minded people in my department. There was much chatting and hanging around outside in the fine weather. Ari tried tandoori-flavored bell pepper, and seemed to much enjoy munching on the piece we gave her. After barbecue, we hijacked Angelo and took him to the Whole Foods with us.

After Whole Foods, we came home, and I tried (and mostly failed) to get some work done. I just couldn't focus. I did do some important thinking and outlining and rereading of my morphology presentation, but that was about it.

At that point, we went over to R&B's and had fancy mac n'cheese with smoked gouda in it, organic cauliflower, and freshly killed roasted rabbit. By freshly killed, I mean they had the pelt drying out back, and I actually fished out a piece of shot from the meat. It was all quite tasty. We hung out on their front lawn most of the time, and Ari had a total blast crawling around on the grass.

After that, we came home and the girl passed straight out. I should have gotten stuff done then, but just didn't.

Playin' on the floor with her fishies

I actually sat down yesterday to write, and couldn't. Thad and I were having a fight, you see, and I was too upset to think about my day or my sweet sweet baby girl. What were we fighting about? What we always fight about (when we fight, which is not often)- a game. Yes, we were fighting because I moved Thad into the inn, which prevented him beating Jaime up and reclaiming the Necronomicon, and returning it to the Altar and thus winning the game. And he was mad about it, and I was defensive, and I think both of us kinda needed to go to bed... Everyone always says that "don't go to bed angry" thing, but I think some things can really be solved by a decent nights' sleep and enough distance to see that we were both being ridiculous. :)

Anyway, yesterday was Thursday-licious. It was notable because Ari took a two and a half hour long nap, without mama to nurse her back down! She passed right out when I laid her down after we got home, and then I had to go meet with a student. Thad was working at Everett, so he got home right as she was passing out, and I was able to just go. I didn't get home 'till near on 5 o'clock, but she just slept right through the whole thing. She didn't wake up until after I was home, which made me happy.

Today was the Day of Laundry- I did four loads, the last of which was diapers (still unretrieved from the dryer, you'll note). In between laundry loads, Ari and I had a good time dancing around to the music my mother sent me for Mother's Day. Ari loves dancing with me, or watching me dance, so she was happy. We also spent a good long time making faces at each other. I love watching her when she's happy- her little mouth goes wiiide open in a big grin, and she laughs with her whole body!

We went to Janessa's house in the evening (tonight was a Shaintair night, so I had to amuse myself somehow), and I kept her out way too late, poor little girl.

Pumpkin pie for dessert!

Check out the scariness! I am more convinced that we got the gates up just in time.

I had my presentation today, and it went okay. Given, y'know, that I was running the ragged edge of zombie-ness (after the 4 hours of sleep I got last night). Oh! And I got observed teaching yesterday. My supervisor gave me really good marks last time she came and saw me, so I guess she's got a good idea of the gamut of my teaching ability! I was such a zombie and utterly unprepared. Like, I didn't print out my notes and didn't even glance at my lecture in advance unprepared.

I skipped Irish and Mycenean this afternoon. I hadn't prepared my Irish and in my zombified haze, I left my books on my desk, so I couldn't even follow along. So, I went and did an extra pumping session instead, and got back too late to make it to Mycenean on time. I'm glad to do more pumping, because (as I think I mentioned previously) the girl is eating now. No more 2 hour nursing marathons when I get home.

Um, my girl's favorite song is "5 Little Ducks". And I'm going to go sleep now.

l-vocalization, here I come!

I don't have long to write; I need to finish a presentation for class tomorrow. It's 11:30, and the girl's just now gone to bed. Meaning, of course, that I'm just now getting to start working on it.

Today was as most other Tuesdays. I did get off class a little early, and Thad worked at Everett (the middle school across the street from our house) so I got some work done in the afternoon. Not enough, though. I'll let you know how it goes tomorrow!

Avast!

Well, seeing as how it was a Monday today, I didn't have a terribly exciting day. Ari, on the other hand, was rocking the proverbial casbah! Check out her mad banana-fu. Oh- while you're at it, also check out the super cool pirate outfit she's wearing in the picture. :D Brooke gifted it us for the Mother's Day. Or, more accurately, it was an excuse to give the girl a pirate outfit. ;) To her, we say: "Yaaaar!"

Not only did she munch on apple and banana while I was gone, she also ate nearly all of two whole bags of milk. That only adds up to about 3-4 oz, but it's a vast improvement over nothing. On top of that, she also had nearly a 3 hour nap for her papa.

And check out this badass standing! Technically, in this picture, she's actually leaning on the stairs- but she did stand all on her own for nearly 10 whole seconds today. Oh, and she's stair capable- we've caught her trying to make it up the stairs a couple times now. I think we got them gated off just in time.

Mother's Day

Today was my first Mother's Day as an actual, y'know, mother. Some of my relatives and friends sent me good wishes last year, when Ari was but a large and protruding belly. We didn't celebrate here much, though, because I didn't feel like a mother. In retrospect, I still don't consider myself to have been a mother then. I became a mother in those first moments when I held that tiny little girl in my arms. Or, in many ways, in the moments that followed, as I first had to take up the responsibility for caring for her- for being her protector and her food source and her comfort and her warmth.

It's sappy and cliche, but I've never done anything that mattered as much as having Ari. I've never loved anyone like I love her (and mind- I love my monkey man an awful lot). If I had it to do over, there's no question that I'd choose to be her mama again.

Anyway, to leave the mushy stuff behind- today was an up-and-down day. Mostly, I just had way too much work to do, so I spent much of it at Oxley. The monkey man made me breakfast (and was very cute about it- he made me a whole menu and "took my order" before he started cooking). As a present, he gave me a little crossword book wrapped in the Life section of a newspaper I'd thought had been accidentally thrown away. This may sound kinda dumb, but I always save the Life (and accompanying crosswords) to read and puzzle through while I nurse Ari to sleep. It was a very thoughtful gift, and I'll definitely use it.

Speaking of nursing, I just wanted to say that I really love nursing Ari these days. She's been clawing me less since I made myself an assortment of nursing necklaces, which is nice. The main thing is, though, that she's so snuggly when she nurses. She just curls her little body up against mine and cuddles right up. She doesn't stop for snuggles so much anymore- she's such a busy little explorer these days. I only get unwiggly cuddle time when she's tired or upset, these days. Or, when she nurses. So, huzzah, boobies!

Oh- one last thing! Today was Ari's first real go at solids. Thad gave her a pear (a whole one that he'd been eating off of) and she had a grand old time chewing on it. I think we're really going to try giving her foods she can feed herself, and we're going to totally skip the bib-and-spoon-and-here's-the-airplane stage.

My little jailbird

I didn't get nearly as much schoolwork done (read: any schoolwork done) as I needed to today. Where in the hell did the day go? I spent the morning to the afternoon having breakfast, and then picking up a table and then taking care of the girl. Thad got home, and we ended up hanging out with Jaime for the rest of the evening, I guess. I didn't mean it to end up like that; I really did mean to go in and work. It's kind of bad, because that means I need to work tomorrow- and I've already promised to be at Ila's for dinner, and, what with it being Mother's Day, talk to my family on the video chat in the afternoon.

This isn't a minor needing to work I need to do, either. It's a whole presentation that I have to work up, by Wednesday, on a subject I have basically not yet begun to research. God, I hope the reference materials are available.

Anyway, I thought I'd put up a picture of our current bedroom layout- Bedroom Mk. III. We've taken the bed off the frame, is the big change. I'm debating getting rid of the bedside table- I need somewhere to keep my crosswords, is the issue. You'll note that there's padding on both sides of the bed. Even though she can get herself purposefully off the bed safely most of the time (she faceplanted just this morning, though), she can still roll off unawares if she wakes up when we aren't in the bed. Hopefully, we'll be able to remove the padding on Thad's side at least soon.

We did get one productive thing done today, however: we installed the new baby gates. Our bedroom is now gated off, as well as the bottom of the stairs. I'm glad; her newfound mobility (and she is quite mobile now, do not mistake it) was making me paranoid that she might crawl out of the bedroom and fall down the stairs.

Burnt gingerbread

Today was a nice day- I love Fridays. Why, you ask? Because Fridays, I'm home all day with my little girl! She gets proper naps, and proper food, and I get all the baby cuddles I could wish for.

Today, I managed to get a bunch done, too. I cooked dinner, for one. I prepped it early in the day, and did the cooking bits with Ari on my back in the mei tai- my first time attempting that position without a Thad spotting me (think for a moment about the logistics of tying a baby to your back with a big bandanna with straps, and you'll know what I'm talking about). We walked to the store for bread, and I even made cookies in the afternoon, while she napped.

I made two more nursing necklaces, and Ari seems to like them. Score! I have high hopes for the saving of my tender flesh. We also finally retrieved our drill from R&B, so we can install gates now. This is vitally important, because our bedroom door blocks most sound. Convenient, perhaps, but it also means that if the bedroom door is shut during Ari naps (as it must be, at the moment, to prevent an increasingly mobile girl from falling down the stairs) that I'm unable to hear her very well if she wakes and needs me. This actually screwed up her nap today, too- she'd been crying for some time before Thad happened to go upstairs and hear her. Poor girl. :(

I'm not *that* skinny

Check out little miss talking to Grandpa!

Today was just another Thursday. I had less than stellar bus-catching, so I was a whole 15 minutes late to my class (instead of 5 minutes as it should have been), and I spent far too much time hanging out in the rainy cold in my short-sleeved t-shirt. I felt like kind of a bad mommy, because I didn't bring a coat or a blanket or an umbrella or anything, and it was damp and pretty chilly. I guess Ari was fine, though- she was wrapped in the mei tai, and she had her dinosaur hat to keep the rain off.

Ari was super-cute on the bus rides. She just spent the whole time smiling at strangers (as is her wont) and babbling and cuddling me. She didn't pass out on the way home, though, so she totally missed her afternoon nap, which screwed up her going to bed time. :P

I made a pretty good dinner (a fairly easy Chicken Cordon Bleu, with Munster instead of Swiss) and Jaime came over to do clixes with Thad. They just got went in together to buy these giant clixes, so they wanted to try out new teams with them in. In the meantime, I actually made progress on cleaning up the dining room- good since, apparently, Mr. Hall is going to be bringing some people over here tomorrow.

Ari did a couple of exciting things today: first, she figured out how to crawl down off the mattress without face-planting. And also, she figured out how to pull the caps off pens. Poor girl! No more playing with pens for her. She'll be crushed.

Ice cream on the couch, and rice on the chair

Today was another work day, but at least the home time was quiet. I am glad that we could be there for R&B during their recent travails, but I am also very glad to have some alone time now. As a rampaging introvert, that alone time is vital.

Today was a work day, so nothing much interesting happened- except for a highly unpleasant conversation with ANOTHER student (I've had several this quarter) that I am reporting for cheating- the subject of yesterday's PSA, if you were wondering. He kept trying to get me to not report him to COAM, but I just kept telling him that I had to do it, I had no choice (which is true). It dragged on forever, and I just felt drained afterwards. I only was able to pump maybe seven ounces today, and I think it was because of my being so tense coming off of that stupid cheater conversation.

Ari is my sweaty-headed little sweety pie. She went to bed pretty early tonight and has only woken up a few times since. I'm going to try to get to bed early, too, because zombie-hood is starting to set in.

Things going on with Ari:

• still not eating
• still no teeth
• crawling like a little maniac
• obsessed with the phone card and the diaper cream tube
• able to stand now for several seconds (by which, I mean up to four) on her own!
• walking with the use of a rail (like around the edge of the crib)
• pulling herself up/climbing on everything

We went out and bought gates this last weekend, and now our kitchen is gated off- which is good, because it is just not safe for her on MANY levels, and she was starting to try to get in there. We still need to install the gates for the bedroom and the stairs, though.

Oh, and we also had to take our bed off the frame. Thad is way bummed, and to a lesser extent, I am too. But Ari has had a major scary fall off the bed twice now, and that was enough for us. I figure we'll go back on the frame once she gets old enough to learn to get down safely!

Shiny butterflies

Here's another not-an-entry, written way too late by a needing-to-get-to-bed Julia. Been still busy talking to R&B and trying to keep up with housework and schoolwork. I just finished grading papers for me students. Rick and Brooke seem okay-er. Hopefully things will be a little quieter soon.

Oh, and here's a message for the kids at home: DON'T CHEAT. Cheating's bad.

Tina Turner meets Time Warner?

Gah! Too busy. We did some cleaning up today, and I got a little bit of school work done but not enough. I'm up till all hours now trying to finish before tomorrow. My brain's not functioning any more, though, so I'm off to bed (several hours later than the time stamp on this entry, I think- I've been meaning to write for a while).

We got baby gates today- some work, some not. We also are still dealing with R&B fallout.

I didn't upload the content for my course onto the website. I didn't finish grading midterms (and I was so close!). And I only got minimal stuff done for Trudgill and the rest of my school stuff (and near nothing done for my own research). (I like parentheses- usually I try to limit myself and not overuse them but I'm too tired to care right now). I'm sure there's some othere stuff I didn't do, but I can't remember it right now.

I was at work for about four hours today, and Ari missed me like crazy. :( She lit up so much when she saw me, and vaulted into my arms and just clung to me. I need more time to work, but I can't stand to be away longer. :(

I need a fuckin' Time Turner, that's what I need.

Run, run, run- just as fast as you can.

So, Rick and Brooke are breaking up. I am very bummed about this. I kinda hate to say it like this, because it almost sounds like I'm appropriating their real heartache as my own, y'know? My bummedness seems insignificant in comparison.

Rick's been over here a bunch, kinda processing the whole thing. He spent most of last night crying on my shoulder (while the girl tried to claw his face and slobber on him, mind... *roll eyes*) and I guess that today was the actual breakup. He slept here last night and tonight, also. I haven't gotten to talk to Brooke yet, and I kinda worry about her. She sounds pretty shocky, the couple of times we've spoken on the phone.

Anyway, again, I haven't had any time to write. I've been desperately trying to catch up on my school work- I have a presentation in my socio class in less than two weeks, I have to write a cheating report, I have to grade midterms, and I need to make some real progress on my actual research. That plus having Rick over here means not much free time for Julia...

Tomorrow, we will try to pick up our sty of a house. Plus, I need, need to get some time to myself to do some serious work.

Nanners and rice cakes

Check out Ari not eating this banana! That is, she'll stick it in her mouth all day if it's got peel on, but if it might actually be acceptable food? Nawww. ;)

We had a decent day today, but not enough sleep for Ari. She basically didn't nap, save for maybe 40 minutes on her daddy's chest. I do feel good that I got a lot of things checked off my to do list as well- including making a tasty dinner.

Ari's been a little fussy from being tired, which kinda sucks. Oh, and I got some very sad news from a friend, which I'm pretty bummed about.

Chicken tenders for lunch

As I sat down to write yesterday, Blogger was broken. :P So, here I am with a day skipped.

Yesterday was rainy and I spent most of it running around on busses. Ari utterly refused to nap, and I know she was tired. She actually went into totally inconsolable meltdown about 40 minutes before we had to leave to go catch the bus to Catherine's. Didn't calm down on walking, nearly chomped my nipple in half when I offered it... She nearly sobbed herself to sleep in my arms right then. But then we had to go to catch the bus, and she perked right up when we were outside. So, bam, no nap. She was okay for Catherine (so I'm told), and I thought she'd pass out on the bus- but no dice. We went to the Giant Eagle, shopped, and went and caught the bus home, and still no sleeping baby. She passed out in the bus on the way home at last, but then I woke her up with all my grocery lugging (I had bought more groceries than I really should have) and that was that.

She didn't end up getting to bed until nearly midnight either, poor girl. She just wouldn't sleep. Catherine says she's teething, and that she could feel little bumpies of teeth coming in, but I'm clueless. She is acting teethey, but she's been doing that on and off since four months. Although, I guess in principle she can have been teething on and off for four months, too. Who knows?

Anyway, today was school again, and not so much fun. I'm too busy there- I never have time to do things I need to do. At least the bean passed out by a reasonable hour today.

Eight months a baby

Well, that weekend went by quickly. I really haven't had a chance to sit down at the computer and write at all. The Marcus was here, and you know how it goes when you have a guest- it feels like a waste (and a little rude) to just hang out on the computer when there's someone to play pinochle with.

All these pictures are from the Viking Festival on Saturday- I would put up a picture of Ari with her Grandpa, except I don't have any! :( The suckiness of us not being picture-takin' people strikes again.

Anyway, we had Good Times at ye olde festival. It was a little thing, with not that many vendors. The vendors were nice, though, and there was a cool viking boat in the middle of it. It was held in the town park in this wee little town south of Columbus, and it seemed like kind of a cool community event. In the evening, we went out for Indian food. It was a really lovely dinner outside in the evening. I had lamb vindaloo, and it was delicious.

After Indian food, we went over to Rick's birthday party, bringing his present and naan from the Indian restaurant. Marcus proceeded to totally hang out with our friends, which was impressively cool. :)

Then, yesterday, I spent a few hours working while Thad and Marcus went to the North Market with my little bit. In the evening people came over and had Thad pizza, and drank liberal quantities of scotch and white wine.

So, as you can see, I've had quite the weekend. I ended up having to stay up till 1 in the morning yesterday to finish grading, as well. Anyway, all this to say that I have good reasons for not writing.

My little bean was super sweet through all of this, too, I must add. She nearly always is. :D

Oh, and Saturday was her 8 months birthday. She's getting so big!

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. :)