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!

In suspense

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

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

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

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

And here's my baby, dancing with toast:

A woman of quality

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

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

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

Cute things Ari does lately:

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

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

Smoked gouda

This is Ari, learning about the correct way to care for babies. ;) She's very serious about it, as you can see.

She is currently on my lap, eating an apple (a current favorite food) and preventing me from typing. I think she's interested in the picture of her; she keeps pointing at it.

Aaah- she's gone off in search of toast.

Yesterday was me working and then Pendragon. We had a really good dinner- chicken and couscous, and these cheesy phyllo things I made (still using up the phyllo from Solstice!) that were incredibly delicious.

Ari has really been very verbal all of a sudden. She knows the word "ball" (video to follow), and she definitely knows the sign for "diaper". She was trying to do the sign for "ball", as well! And she was saying "dice" again, too.

As promised, Ari says "ball":


Since I'm thinking about it, Ari's current favorite foods:

• Apples, but only in large chunks- halves or quarters. No slices.
  
• Couscous (which is an incredible mess; but she loves it)
  
• Cheese, but only sometimes
• Toast!
• Scrambled eggs
• Any sort of noodles, with or without sauce
• Rice
• Whatever Mama's eating
  

Leftover beef

I have no pictures from today, so here's one that I meant to post a while ago and never did. :) This is her chasing her animals around and around the room in circles. It was pretty cute.

She's been using some new words today, which is exciting! She's said "ball" (well, "ba", but you know how it is) on three separate occasions. She also really clearly signed "diaper" tonight while we were changing her. Yay!

We went to meeting today. Ari loves the first day school room there. She had great fun playing with a Buckeye colored football.

Also, it snowed again. But only that really fluffy snow that melts really quick.

Missing the Orkin Army

Wow, it's been a long time since I updated this. I'd like to be better at it again- it's just been hard for me to find a groove with it since I can no longer consistently count on having evening time to write.

Take this entry- I started it on Friday night by uploading pictures. Then, I managed to start writing it Saturday morning. Now, it's Saturday evening and I'm sitting down and writing again.

Ari is growing by leaps and bounds all the time. We're having some sleep problems lately- getting her on any reasonable kind of sleep schedule, mostly. It's very frustrating, because we'll finally get her to nap and go to bed on time for two days in a row, and then she'll randomly wake up in the middle of the night (and then stay up all night) and we'll be right back where we started, with a baby who won't nap till 6 pm and won't go to bed until 1 and is grumpy and tired all the time.

This is a picture of Miss Ari, having scarfed off with a chunk of blue cheese. :D I was making her some dinner, and she was acting really hungry, so I was trying to be quick about it. Next thing I knew, she'd snaked her little hand up to the table, yoinked the block of blue cheese, and had run off with it. Then, she proceeded to totally munch it down. Like, taking big bites and everything. I mean, I like blue cheese. I really, really do- but I don't know if I could eat that much straight blue cheese myself! Thad and I were laughing too hard to take it away from her right away, and then I had to take a picture. My baby is a hard-core cheese lover.

Here is Ari playing with her buddy Jaime. For whatever reason, some of our friends are Ari's favorites, and some aren't. Ari totally has Jaime (who, pre-Ari, didn't particularly like kids) wrapped around her pudgy little finger.

Ari is ?maybe? doing things like talking more. She says "up! up!" alot these days; sometimes in context. The other day, I think she said "bye". Also, I think she did the sign for "food" today! It was just once, though. She had come up asking for nursies ("milk! milk!") and I said, "Do you want some breakfast?" and made the sign for "food". Then she hesitated, and did the sign! Needless to say, she immediately got a plate of food.

Things she likes lately:

• rolling dice (and getting grown-ups to read the results)
• raising her arms in the air and squealing (and getting grown-ups to copy her)
• playing "monster"- growling and roaring
• having papa run down the stairs with her, making noises
• playing the hiding-and-surprise game with papa
• getting her teeth brushed, with the baby toothpaste
• having her nails trimmed- this has always been true of her, but lately, she'll find the nail scissors and demand me to trim her nails!
• And, as always, reading books. We've instituted a three-in-a-row rule on books- no more than three times through the same book in one sitting.
  

Overpowered Dracula

This is a sleepy baby, coming home from Rick and Brooke's house, totally passed out.

We ended up spending practically the whole day over there, as things happened. Ari and I woke up in the late morning, but we were letting Thad sleep after his early morning Target shift. Then, we went over to R&B's for waffles. Waffles and scrambled eggs started around 3:00 (bringing new meaning to the term "brunch").

We essentially spent the rest of the day hanging out at their place and playing games. And not- as I should have been- working. Ah, well. I will work a great deal tomorrow, and it's a long weekend anyhow, right? I should get one day of doing nothing useful.

Ari had grand fun over there, exploring the room and playing with people and cats. Cute things:

• Ari kept coming up and petting one of the cats as he was sitting in Brooke's lap. He was very tolerant, but she was pretty gentle (if a little poky)
• Ari was merrily following the cat around at one point, and later found him under a chair and was bent over, looking at the cat and blurbling away happily at him.
• She discovered a new game- the wave! She would throw both arms up in the air and squeal, and watch as all the adults at the table did it too. Hilarious! :D

Lastly, here's the video I mentioned earlier. This is Ari, saying "Boo!" Does "boo" count as a word?

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.

Earwigs on my mind

Check out my little artist. :)

I woke us up at 9:30 this morning (well, that's when the alarm was set for. It might have been closer to 10...) in the hopes that it might convince Ari to be on a more normal schedule. We'll see how that goes.

Other than that, we didn't do much today. We went to the bank to iron out some issues. May I just say how much I hate banks? They're just waiting for chances to screw you over. And then they have the gall to claim that they're serving you, the customer. No they aren't, they're serving nothing but their stockholders and their own bottom line. :P

This is Ari eating dinner. I've been experimenting with filo/phyllo/fillo ever since I bought dramatically too much of it for my Solstice dinner.Tonight, I made phyllo packets full of shrimp and bacon and cheese. I figured it was not the sort of thing Ari would be inclined to eat, but boy, was I wrong. She walked up and grabbed my last roll off my plate- I had barely started eating it, too. And then she proceeded to eat the whole thing, shrimp and blue cheese and all. :D

She was totally covered with butter and crispy pastry by the end. It was impressive use of her new teeth! A few months ago, she couldn't have managed big ol' chunks of shrimp like that.

Go Gators...

Well, as always, Ari started sleeping like crap, and bam, no blogging for me. I think I'm going to start trying to have a different blogging routine, because this is getting a bit ridiculous.

Her sleep is a bit ridiculous, as well. I hope that it's because of the new molars she has coming in (for a grand total of four molars and seven incisors, no canines or premolars) and that she'll cut it the hell out soon. She keeps staying up all night and it sucks.

This is a picture from right before we went over to Jeff's house to watch the big game on Monday. Boy, did that not go how we expected it to go. :) My poor Buckeye friends were very, very sad. Ever since, everyone just keeps repeating "we had a great season, and we beat Michigan."

Ah, yes. This is why I have heretofore tried to write in the blog when my girl is asleep. This is my fourth go at starting this paragraph; she keeps "helping" me.

Hm... what else have you missed? School started, and it's going pretty well. I'm teaching the undergrad language change course again, and it's going much better than last time I taught it. I'm doing a Gothic study group this quarter, which is fun.

Oh, exciting news- tonight is Thad's last time on overnight for a while. He's switching down to just working a few hours on Sunday mornings, which is great! He'll go back to overnight in the summer, when he needs the work, and not have to compete for scarce springtime hours. Also, we'll get to start going to meeting again, since Thad should get off work an hour or two before meeting starts.

Here's Ari playing with her blocks. It's very cute. :D

Ari's driving me a bit crazy lately, even besides the not sleeping (although, I'm sure that's not helping either one of us). She's seeming increasingly frustrated about not being able to communicate. She's also getting very demanding about nursing alot, which is getting on my nerves. Neither of us are ready for her to wean, but I'm really ready for her to stop trying to be on the boob 24/7. Especially because it's difficult to get her to sit still and not twist around and not grab my shirt/other breast/nose etc. Ah, well. I know this is a phase, and will pass. I'd just rather it pass sooner than later.

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.

Where have I been?

Ari's had another spate of sleeping badly. We had a few nights where we were up till dawn... anyhow, no babyfree time to blog. Or do much of anything else *grumble grumble*.

Succubus mistresses

We did a whole ass-load of nothing much today. For most of the day, I was suffering from a nasty sinus thing that caused me to have horrible sharp head pain every time I tried to move around. As a result, I spent most of the day sitting in the computer chair. Ari didn't like that...

Thad corrects me. I did a whole ass-load of nothing much. He did dishes and finally got his license renewed.

This is Ari last night, before bed, playing with blocks. She built the whole tower... not the big one you can see, but the tall skinny one that's mostly obscured by her arm. Anyway, I thought it was cool. :D

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).

The BMV printer was broke

Merry Christmas, and a happy Boxing Day, y'all. :) We had a lovely Christmas here. I've posted a whole set of pictures on the pictures website for your perusal. Ari wasn't much interested in opening presents, but she sure seemed to enjoy playing with them! She's played with and seemed to enjoy pretty much everything she got.

I was a little worried that it would be a bit much for her, opening so many presents at once, but she was fine. I think it helped that we didn't even bother trying to get her to open anything- we just opened them for her, and she got around to playing with them in her own sweet time. :)

As for me, I got the best present ever- a new computer! This one does everything that I want it to, and all fast and spinky. I've done it up in a Batman theme already, and everything. In fact, I've spent most of today playing with it and the printer Thad got to go along with it. Tomorrow, I intend to actually do work.

Thad had a less nice birthday than I wanted, because I was really feeling unwell yesterday. I didn't make him dinner, much less birthday pie. :( He did get steak, at least, though, and we'll try to make him pie later this week.

In any case, here's the movie I whipped up real quick this morning on my spinky fast computer. It's less good resolution than I would like, but I hope y'all enjoy it. I'll try to send better versions to some of you in ye olde snaile maile sometime soon, along with more pictures and vids.

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!

Last night

Today, we finally did Christmas cookies (about time, right?). Jaime and Kelly and Rick and Brooke came over to help... we made a batch of gingerbread and a batch of Mom's sugar cookies. I even made green coconut to use. :)

We have an enormous bunch of cookies now... we already gave a plate to our next-door neighbors. They were kind of shocked and happy- I hope they enjoyed them. We have a plate made for the library people and the night staff at Target and Thad's roleplaying group. Now, we just need to figure out something to do with the other three plates of cookies!

Ari is really doing so totally much better. As soon as we took her to the doctor, she perked right up, right? :) Brooke and Rick brought over a whole bunch of presents for her- including some new books, which are always welcome. I think we're planning on hiding a few of her current books after the holidays (for example, Where's Prancer can go to hell, and it can die).

We, on the other hand, seem to have caught whatever it was she had. We've got coughs, sore throats, insomnia, etc... It's not enough to incapacitate us, just enough to make us uncomfortable...


Here's Ari playing with her friend Jaime. :)

Ari wasn't much help with the cookies- in fact, Thad took her out for a walk a few times to get her out of the house- but she was fun anyhow. This is her playing with the fuzzy puzzle that Brooke gave her. For some reason, she kept sticking the cow piece under her chin, and then clapping for herself. Later, she graduated to walking all around with the puzzle piece under her chin(s).

Sometimes, I really wonder what's going on in her head. :)

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. :)

-5 Valorous

Ari's been up late the last few nights... She's still sick/teething and is generally pretty miserable to be around. Additionally, tonight, she tripped and smacked her forehead into the edge of a chair. A big, blue, nasty bruise rose up immediately (although no goose egg to speak of), so I imagine that's also bothering her. Between that and the hacking cough and the stuffy nose... it's no wonder she's not sleeping well. Poor, poor little girl...

Cool things: She can build stuff. We played blocks today, and she helped me build a tower. Every time she put a block on, she clapped for herself. I love it when she claps for herself... it's like, "Yay! I'm awesome! *clap clap clap*" She even does it sometimes when she's playing by herself.

She woke me up this morning with Whose Mouse Are You?, which is her current favorite book. I hate hate hate it. :) I was sitting there, going "wha? huh? *grog*" (because I was up until nearly 4 AM with her last night, and she woke me up at 9:30 this morning) and she's going, "my BOOK, mama, read my BOOK!"

She grabbed my hand, shoved the book into it, and then started to cry when I didn't immediately start reading to her. Stupid book.

Some corn for popping

For once, the time stamp on this post is actually accurate. My baby is asleep... mostly... and it isn't even midnight. Whoo! :D

I say mostly, because she's sleeping kinda fitfully. Having so many teeth come in at once is making her nose run like crazy. It got to the point where she wanted to lie down and nurse to sleep, and she couldn't nurse! She couldn't breathe through her nose long enough. In fact, the only way I could get her to stay asleep upstairs was to have her sleep on a pillow for the first time ever. Having her head more upright seemed to let her breathe a little better.

This is a picture of our Christmas tree. :) We went out to a farm outside of Columbus, and Thad cut it down. We would have had a nice running around and picking it out and all, except that poor Ari passed right out in the car (I think, again, sitting upright let her breathe well enough to nap at long last) so Thad just went out and cut it while I sat in the car and planned my solstice dinner. I quite like it, though.

Putting it in the crib was a stroke of genius, if I do say so myself. Ari can look at it, but not get at it, and it also provides a safe place to put presents. We have to be careful which presents go where in the crib, though- smaller ones, she can fish out through the bars. We figured that out when we suddenly noticed Ari playing with one of her presents across the room... When Christmas is over, I think we shall dismantle the crib until it is needed again.

Oh, poor girl. I can hear her coughing upstairs. But she doesn't seem to be waking up.

Well, I'm'a go put a movie on and start sewing. I have a few personal projects I'd like to work on, in my precious baby free time before I head to bed.

Update!

Well, as previously mentioned, Ari was up till 1:30 in the morning again. She currently has four (count 'em) teeth coming in, including two molars and two incisors, one top and one bottom of each. And this is not even counting the two more molars that are clearly ready to burst forth from her gums at any moment. Yay! She's mostly okay, but her sleep is totally messed up.

Let's see... in the last week, Thad and I went to see the new Bond movie (rock star awesome!). Ari is becoming more verbal- she can do "more" and "eat"... kinda mostly. I'm told that tonight, she was clearly saying "tiptoe tiptoe" along with the Bear Hunt story.

We have spent time trying to get presents done and out- most of you should be getting packages in the mail relatively soon. :) Now, I feel like I can relax and have Christmas. We're going to get a tree tomorrow, and we're going to make cookies on Monday. That means, we have to clean the house before people come over! Yay! It's kind of a mess in the aftermath of present making. Although, at least the basement is clean!

I wrote about this in the entry that got deleted, but I had a great exchange- one of our friends needed some cash moneys for presents, and we needed a non-scary basement and kitchen. Our dollars and her obsessive-compulsive tendencies got together and had a party, and voila! Clean basement! The kitchen is... erm... no longer clean. Let us say. Best investment of dollars ever!

Here is Ari, building a tower of dice. I'm told she was able to build it four dice high, which is pretty impressive. The woman holding her is Kelly, she who cleaned the basement. She is Jaime's new lady, and gets on with Ari wonderfully. Ari likes to make her read the same book over and over and over and over and over... come to think of it, she likes to make everyone read her the same book over and over and over. :) Kelly is just willing to do it. Well, and so is Brooke.

Brooke watched her while we saw Bond, and poor Miss Brooke had to read the Good Night Butterflies book upwards of 37 times, I hear.

Absence

Sorry I haven't posted in a while... Ari has been staying up till 1:30 and 2 in the morning, and that's my time to write. She's on and off really unhappy with these four molars she has coming in...

Liver

Well, I wrote a whole post. With pictures. And just as I was hitting the button to post it, Thad accidentally unplugged the computer while he was attempting to figure out what was going on with our Christmas lights. And now it's two in the morning, and I can't face writing it all over again...

The most wonderful time of the year

Today, Ari and I went over to another mom's house for a playgroup. This is Ari, having apparently gotten over her fear of animals, stalking their cat. She followed the cat across the whole house, as fast as she could, and was much frustrated that she couldn't catch her.

She had a great time playing with other peoples' toys- although she did steal another kid's snack. To be fair, the other kid (a 3-year-old) had just left it lying on the floor, where she found it and munched it up. Hmm... it's just now occurred to me that I might, perhaps, be reasonable to be concerned about my daughter eating off the floor.

Then, she refused to take a nap. She was desperately tired from not sleeping last night and not napping... between that and the molars coming in, the evening was pretty miserable. At least she passed right out at 9:00...

So much Dunwich Horror

Oooh, man. I just stayed up way too late. The date tag lies, but it's 3 AM. Wheee! :D

We went to the department Christmas party tonight. Ari was sweet mostly. There was another mama there with a tiny 7-week-old little girl... so little. It was kinda cool to run into another mama who wraps and cloth-diapers and breastfeeds, outside of my existing hippy mama group.

Ari things:

• She has another sign- she's definitely done "more" a few times now.
• She has two molars coming in. Ow, the lack of sleep.
• She likes to clap for herself when she thinks she's done something good.
• She imitates us shaking our heads 'no', but doesn't seem to actually understand what it means.
• She likes to play a game where she points at different people, and we say their names.
• She knows where our noses are, but not other face parts.
  

Happy birthday, Dad

Aaah- I'm back again, with much to report. Finals are over (although I still need to get my grades in...). It was a harrowing few days there, including such exciting events as:

• A fire alarm going off in my building while I was trying to work. For an hour and a half.
  

and

• My laptop dying.

Yup... my laptop all of a sudden froze up when I was trying to work on it Sunday evening. I was able to force-quit out of things and try to restart, but when it was restarting, it wouldn't boot. It would just hang on the grey apple screen, with the little gear going 'whirly whirly whirly'. I spent an hour on the phone to AppleCare discovering that we weren't going to be able to fix it without doing a clean reinstall and reformatting... he did tell me how to retrieve the data, though, although it involved a frantic late-evening trip to the Apple store to buy an expensiver-than-it-should have been Firewire cable. Now I just need to sit down and pull everything I care about off the laptop and go about wiping it clean and reinstalling.

I was able to finish despite my computer woes, however, and I stand before you (write before you?) a free woman! At least until I have to work on my third-year paper and the course prep for Winter Quarter. But before that come the Christmas cookies.

Ari and I celebrated yesterday by... going to the library. Where we always go if it's not sufficiently nice out to go to the playground. She loves those fuzzy chairs. :) In fact, she mostly just loves the library. I *think* she tried to sign "library" today, but I'm not sure... she was just sort of waving her hand (library is an "L" shape that you move in a circle, so hand-waving is a reasonable approximation).

Today, we went to much shopping with that papa. Mostly Christmas shopping... including a very nice toy store in town, and the children's bookstore that we love. We barely managed to squeak our way out of the bookstore without a bunch of new books for Ari. :D


Here's Ari with something on her head. I'm not sure why she wanted to put in there, but she stuck it on her head and walked in circles, making these little hooting noises. Repeatedly. I love my little girl. :D

There was snow on the ground for the first time this season today. They immediately responded by dumping mass amounts of salt on the roads, though, so all was well.

Well, that's what you get... we stayed up very too late trying out the Dunwich Horror expansion of Arkham Horror tonight. It was awesomely fun... we all agree that it improves the play of the game immensely. We had a real nailbiter and ended up barely defeating Yig in combat.

Put some clothes on and call me

Well, this is going to be the last time I even try to post until Tuesday or Wednesday- I just have too much to do in terms of trying to finish finals crap. Tuesday evening is Pendragon, and it should be all over by then (though I may collapse from exhaustion that night).

In any case, I give you cute baby pictures to tide you over. :D This is Ari stealing my hat and trying to wear it. For some reason, she likes wearing hats. Particularly mine, as you've seen in the "Pirate Ari" pictures.


And this is Ari from this morning, playing with pots and spatulas in the kitchen. Aside from the adorable baby qualities of this picture, I really like how it turned out, with the reflection in the oven and all.

I had a study group over here, and all my fellow students kept going on about how adorable and sweet Ari was.

What can I say? It's totally true. ;)