Wednesday, May 30, 2007

Baby Frog


Remember how I used to call Jed my little tadpole? Well, apparently even at 13 weeks I was correct.

Today as I did my morning yoga routine, my child laughed at me. Just how funny looking does one have to be for even a four-month old child to recognize the humor? Yet undeniably, as I sank into my standing warrior 2, Jed looked right at me, and giggled. And here I thought I was safe from ridicule in the privacy of my own home.

Tuesday, May 22, 2007

Vanessa's Rollei






Vanessa has taken a liking to one of my old cameras, A 1953 Rolleiflex MX-EVS. It's a camera that takes medium format film, and you have to have a separate light meter to get the exposure. The camera itself has no batteries. I bought it about the same time that Vanessa and I started dating. Anyway, she just got her first couple of rolls back from the developer, and I am so proud of her, I wanted to post some of these pictures myself.

Friday, May 18, 2007

Yowch!

Yesterday I stubbed my baby toe. Darn baby swing takes up half the kitchen (but is oh, so handy there) and I hit it going full blast to save some burning toast.

I think it's broken. :c(

It was all swollen and red yesterday. I could hardly walk half the day. Now that I've taped it to the toe that didn't get any roast beef, it's feeling better.

But I'm still sad. Poor baby toe.

V

Thursday, May 17, 2007

Morning Pt. 2





Morning






Our baby must dream beautiful dreams. My favorite thing in the whole world is to lay over him in the morning, watching for the first flutter of eyelids. As he awakes, he looks up and returns my greeting smile with a wide grin of joy that just melts my mommy heart. He stretches his arms wide, still smiling, as if he would embrace the whole world if he could. I love this little boy.

Wednesday, May 16, 2007

Spring Cleaning

Michael's working late nearly every day this week, and here at home I've developed a severe case of Spring Cleaning Fever.

Our little house seems a magnet for clutter. I can clean this place EVERY DAY until it's spotless, and yet it seems every time I turn around the house snickers at my pathetic attempts and promptly grows another dish towel, two grocery shopping receipts, five bobby pins, and a moldy tupperware in a corner that's just out of my line of sight. I'm not kidding. Maybe it's a clutter possession or something. But it is ASTONISHING how one minute it's clean, and then you squint your eyes and look closer and there's another bagful of junk hidden there, eternally reproducing at the molecular level.

It doesn't help that we have too many books for not enough bookshelves, miscellaneous photo prints and/or empty frames haunting any available floor wallspace, a dozen camera bags, and several thousand electronic cords plugged into each two-pronged plug--one per room. Poor Michael tries, but it's hopeless. His "office" is our house entryway, and, well, let's just say the whole situation probably violates fifty "flylady.com" laws of cleanliness.

So this week, we're Spring Cleaning. Michael has the fever, too, but unfortunately he's rarely home. So Baby and I have taken on the task. After tearing the house apart in our exuberant plans for reorganizaton Saturday night, we have since made little progress in the front room.

Yesterday my future brother-in-law-in-law (is there such a thing?) came by to drop off some wedding announcements. In a moment of shock, I realized that I had forgotten his impending arrival. I quickly threw a blanket over my baby-feeding-utilities (which were sadly lacking in supportive devices, if you know what I mean)and made myself decent. I smiled graciously while simultaneously kicking the above mentioned support device beneath the couch, brushing the sweaty, unwashed bangs from my face, and patting my still-in-PJed baby's back. The couch, heaped with laundry to be folded, was facing the wrong direction, facing the desk with the TV and coffee table askew behind. So we sat on the floor. Which brought me close enough to identify all sorts of exciting lint, candy wrappers, potato chip bits and bobby pins strewn on the floor from our afore-mentioned exuberant yet unfinished furniture moving efforts. As we sorted the invitation stacks, I brushed unidentifiable crumbs off the thankyou notes and tried to casually point out several dozen times that I WAS in the middle of cleaning the house. Despite evidence that would seem to point to the contrary.

Poor man is probably terrified of marriage now. I promise, Mike, it isn't really always this bad.

Good news: the bedroom is reorganized and cleaned as it hasn't been cleaned in, well, let's just since before the thoughts of Jed entered our consciousness. All the winter clothes are put away, the summer clothes out, the furniture reorganized to fit Jed's new bed (he outgrew his bassinet already!) and the scary corners tackled with valiant effort and lot's of anti-bacterial spray.

The dining room but now soon-to-become-Michael's-office is cleaned out, even the carpet edges swept and scoured. The new dining area is set up and lovely. So now... all that's left is the living room.

And that, my friends, is my thrilling adventure for tomorrow. Stay tuned. (If you've stayed tuned this long. I can't imagine you have. Why on earth would I think it is interesting to write such a long post about cleaning my house? What a nerd!)

Chew Toys

Baby Jed discovered ten exciting new chew toys recently. Commonly known as "fingers," their warm chewy goodness seems irresistible to our little cannibal son. A few days ago, as I took a walk with Baby in the front pack, his usual grunt with every step was punctuated by the occasional cough. When the cough came fairly often, I peeked under the hood to see what was the matter.

Apparently Jed has discovered that though these fingers taste quite good at the tip of the tongue, they taste much better when you shove them way, way back into the throat. Fingers extended, he sticks his whole fist in his mouth, rooting around like there's some buried treasure down in his trachea.

These explorations are always, without fail, accompanied by a gag, retch, and a few coughs to clear out the spit and fingernails he may have left behind. In shock, Jed gazes at his fingers. Yikes! Those finger things are dangerous! Maybe I shouldn't.... hey, look at how delicious that pointer finger looks. I'll just take a taste. Hmmm.... let's try the whole hand!

Ten seconds later, he gags again.

This is repeated approximately 4,598 times a day. He never seems to bore of the finger sucking, and he never seems to put two and two together.

My child has a very healthy vomit reflex, I'm happy to report. And I just let him keep on gagging.

Monday, May 14, 2007

True Love

Sunday, May 13, 2007

Happy Mother's Day!

Three generations of motherhood--three generations of love.


Friday, May 11, 2007

I know I've said this before...






... but it's true! I have THE MOST ADORABLE CHILD IN THE WHOLE UNIVERSE! I took these pictures of Baby while he was playing with his daddy night before last.

Momma loves baby!

Thursday, May 10, 2007

Family Photos

Our first family photos! Aren't we lovely?! Thanks to Michael's self timer. Baby had a hard time looking at the camera. He was too fascinated by mom's ceiling fan lights. And then the hall light. Child's got an obsession with light sources. Finally we set up Michael's laptop next to the camera which kept him looking at least in the general direction. But then he started cooing at the pretty laptop... which left us with a pursed kissy-lip kid. Oh well! Guess it's going to pay off in the long run having the professional photographer in house.





Tuesday, May 8, 2007

Growth Spurts and Gardening

Boy, baby sure has been cranky lately. Which is unusual, because he has such a sunny, content personality. Usually he's so happy and smiley! The last few days, though, he's been grouchy as can be. He screws up his little face into an awful grimace, sticks out his lower lip, turns beet red and lets out all sorts of terrible squawks. He has a new cry, much louder and lower than ever before, that lets us know he's MAD! He has three modes: sleeping, eating, and angry.

After a long, whiny afternoon yesterday, I got to thinking. Hmmmm. Baby just hit his three month mark... seems like I've read something about three months... so I got out the Baby Book and sure enough, it's a GROWTH SPURT! As soon as I read that, the pieces all fell together--the incessant hungriness, eating every hour or so, erratic sleeping patterns, and general fussiness. Unpredictable, too. One minute he's giggling and smiling at his daddy's antics, and a split second later he's crying like we're poking skewers into his belly button.

I measured him yesterday and he looks to be at LEAST 27 inches long!!!! He's long and lean like his daddy all right. He's long enough that I can put his 18-month overall shorts on him. They fit just fine in length but the pant leg openings are big enough to fit his whole lean-grean-bean body through them. Ha ha ha!

This evening we all went out into the yard and worked on our new garden spot together. Our little garden is surrounded by green trees with blue sky overhead and a cool shady breeze. The atmosphere was so lovely that even MadKid was quiet and happy for an hour or so as we dug around in the dark brown dirt and enjoyed getting dirt under our fingernails. Michael manned the shovel. He made a huge mountain of dirt in the process of digging out some big tree roots. I took the little three-pronged hand tool and sat in the dirt, happily digging away, smoothing out clumps and getting rid of weeds. Baby sat in his bouncy chair and cooed at the sky. I can't imagine a more beautiful way to spend an evening. Tomorrow we're going to plant our seeds.

Monday, May 7, 2007

Harumph!!

Well, my suspicions have proven true. Apparently, nobody cares about my funny baby stories. All they want are photos, photos, photos. Hmph! Every time I post Michael's photos we get a veritable feeding frenzy of comments, emails, text messages... and when I post, nothing. Well, Leisa did leave me a sweet pity post. But that's it! And I thought my stinky house story was hilarious!

Harumph! Now I'm cranky!

Fortunately, I have the consolation that nobody even knew but all those cute blue baby photos we put up recently were taken by YOURS TRULY! Yep, those were MOM photos! Amazing how a very expensive camera can make my skills look so good! yee hah! I have some more really cute ones of M&J but Michael's computer has been undergoing a major overhaul so they'll have to wait.

Good news: I just got a new computer! A cheap second-hand laptop that doesn't take a battery, but it's all MINE! So now I can torture you all MORE with LOTS and LOTS of my stories.... bwah ha ha ha ha!

Saturday, May 5, 2007

Gradumatation

Hooray Papa Michael!!!!!

Wednesday, May 2, 2007

Stinky

There's an old saying that "fish and company stink after three days." I don't think our two week's worth of company ever really stank... but boy, we sure do. By the end, we were all wearing second-day underwear, I hadn't washed my hair in such a long time that I'm purposely not calculating, Michael was flat on his back with gross pus coming out of his eyelids, and people kept asking me if baby needed to be changed. I didn't have the heart to tell them that his clothes were still stinky from the day before but they were the last decently clean ones he had to wear. Ha ha ha! DISGUSTING!

So, after a brief flirt with Michael's cold, yesterday I started shoveling the house out. Open all the windows! Tackle the humongous stack of greasy dishes! Empty out the overflowing garbage cans! Stagger under the huge loads of laundry! Fold the mountains heaped upon the couch! Wipe off the crumbs covering every flat surface! Clean! Vacuum! Sanitize!

And now, at last, the place is looking decent again. Ahhhhhhh! I sat on an unencumbered couch today... and that, my friends, is bliss.

In the meantime, baby has been making all sorts of strides! After a week of staring curiously at his newfound hands, he's now embarked upon an exploratory adventure in USING those hands. He grabs, picks, hugs, stares. Today I had him laying on the kitchen floor on his blankie. He had his friend Giraffe and also Rabbit. For kicks, though, I brought out a new set of toys, some cool little balls that Paul and Maria gave us. I set them on the floor next to him and rolled him over on his side so he could bat at them. He started flailing at them a bit. I left the room. A few minutes later I came back to find my child scowling, yelling angrily at those darn balls because they just wouldn't behave! I picked him up and gave him Giraffe, whom he hugged close and all was well.

He's sitting on my lap right now. He's farted twice and belched once in the last thirty seconds. What a guy.

Off to the bath!