to all my co-workers

When you see someone walking around with a large bag over their (yes, I know that's bad grammer, I just don't care) shoulder, you shouldn't automatically assume they are going home. Especially in December without a coat. if you ask "Goin' home?" you just might get an answer you don't expect. I try not to shout it from the rooftops, but if I just say "No" you look at me like I'm rude. It's really none of your business. If you wouldn't ask - you wouldn't have to be faced with the fact that I'm about to go pump my boobs. Just don't ask.

Thanks
Katie

more pics
Same link as before.  Also, I'm in the process of putting up some at Flickr. Had a busy weekend. Will tell you all about it soon.

Well, crap...

I was all proud of myself for being at work when everyone else couldn't make it in, and then I had to come home. Anya got sick at daycare. She threw up twice. I think she's just draining a bunch of snot and her belly is a little upset, because she's acting just fine. She even slept last night and woke up happy this morning. She let Rob get her out of the crib and was happily playing when I got out of the shower this morning!

So anyway, we bought Ally some boots because she just grew past the boots I had. First they were too big, now they're too small. She went outside to play and help Rob break up all the ice blocking the back doors. She had a good time and got to use the snowsuit that Darra got her for her birthday. Great timing! (She actually got it for her a long time ago and left it with me in case I needed it before her birthday, but I didn't) Now, it's almost nap time. Maybe I'll even get one today!

pictures

I got one set of pictures back. These are the ones we took with my sisters kids.

SNOW!

Okay, so this morning, there was a giant sheet of ice on the car and it took forever to get it our of the driveway so we could drive our truck to work. Most other people did not even try. We were the only ones in our parking lot and the others were pretty deserted too.

 

 

 

 

 

 

The first is our lonely car in our parking lot. I turned around and took the second. There's going to be no one at work today. I wouldn't be surprised if they send us all home.

Updated: The phones all around me are ringing like crazy. I've seen about 5 people that work here. No one else has shown up yet. My boss got stuck in his driveway. So did one of my co-workers. Another's day care closed. There is only about 4 inches of snow, but there is a solid layer of ice under is. It rained all day yesterday then turned to sleet. Oh what fun!

Photo Friday

This was last week at Grandma Darra's house. Both kids had lots of fun. (and Anya only ate one leaf)

Busy, busy, busy
I realize that it seems I've forgotten to mention much of last week's festivites. Not so. I only haven't had time. You see we've done so much. We had Thanksgiving(s) and Birthday party(ies) and car trips and all sorts of neat things. I'll get to it eventually, I'm sure. With pictures even (that's what I've been working on). I have some all set for tomorrow and need to work on more. But right now I need to go pretend I'm a cow (moo! Oh wait, was that Too Much Information? Damn, and it's not even Tuesday!)

This could be bad
I ordered Christmas cards from Penney's last time I went. I don't rememebr choosing the text for the card. I wonder if it's too late? I wonder what will show up? If it's something generic, or "Insert your text here"? If Penney's will return my call soon...

oh, and Beth is doing a Christmas card swap. I think that's a neat idea. If anyone wants to do it, let me know. I love Christmas cards!

Oh,Thank God!

I took Anya to the Dr this afternoon. She has an ear infectino! She's not just crying for no understandable reason. She's in pain!

Ok, maybe that's not exactly good news, but um, it's pretty close.

The worst part, though, is that she didn't even have a fever. That sucks. It means that I have no way of knowing if she's just being a butt, or is actually hurting.

Anya's doctor didn't have any open appointments today, so I saw a different one at the practice. He said their standard protocol is to refer to an ENT after 3 months of not clearing fluid or 6 infections in a year. If I remember right (and I am going to check my archives as soon as I'm done with this) she was first diagnosed with fluid on Oct 15th. So, we're almost there. She's not clearing the fluid between infections just like Ally. hopefully we can get her tubes much earlier and avoid much of the pain and suffering all around. I really don't want Anya's hearing affected. We caught Ally's in time, but her speech was a little delayed because of her ear problems.

She's sleeping right now with ear drops soaking into her little ear. I hope it helps. Poor kid.

Pictures

My mom wanted to get her annual group pictures of all her grandkids taken, so we did it last Sunday. it was kinda crazy. My mom has 6 grandkids - my 2 and my sister's 4. Two of Christy's live with mom. 1 lives with my aunt Ruth. 1 lives part time with Christy and part time with his dad (I think? i try not to ask questions. It's just easier that way) So we all descended upon JCPenney's at 3:00. Well, not all of us. Christy and Bamako were late. After waiting a while, I got someone's attention and told them we hadn't been checked in yet. They didn't have my appointment written down. Grrr. So they said they'd work us in. Since Christy wasn't there yet, I was okay with the plan. Whatever. but, she still wasn't there when it was our turn. So we took individual pictures of all the kids. Christy's girls were all in matching clothes as were my girls. Mom bought all the outfits to coordinate. We had just about run out of kids to photograph when Christy showed up. So we got some with all the kids and some with just Christy's. It actually turned out okay.

Then Wednesday, it was time for just my kids monthly pictures. We needed Anya's 7 month, Ally's 3 year, Ally's Christmas, Anya's Christmas, and the two of them together. Last time I got Anya's, she was very cooperative and happy. It was at 11:00, so I scheduled this one for as close to that as i could. I picked the kids up early from daycare and took the day off. Apparently, 10:00 is NOT a good time for Ally to get her pictures taken. Oy! I wanted to strangle her! She wouldn't hold still. She wouldn't look at the camera. She stood when she should have sat. She sat when she should have stood. She screwed her face up when she smiled. I couldn't figure out what was wrong with her. She's only been to Penney's for pictures, like, 30 times before. At one point I actually hugged her tight so that I coudl try to control my anger. God, I'm not getting enough sleep. Anya was in a great mood. She smiled wonderfully and entertained herself in the cart while Ally got most of her pictures taken. The bad thing is that Ally used up all of Anya's patience. By the end, it sucked. Anya was not happy. We didn't get many good ones of Anya in her Christmas dress. i was so mad. They looked so adorable and Ally screwed it up. She just had too much energy. It looks like I'm going to have to start taking them seperately or something. I'll have them digitally soon, but won't put up the Christmas ones until after I've sent out cards.

I'm thinking of taking them to the mall this afternoon for Santa pics. Yes, I'm insane.

It ain't just a river in Egypt

Anya isn't sleeping. I haven't wanted to mention it, because I was afraid that by putting it in writing, it would be real. But from the way I feel lately, I can tell that denial just isn't going to work anymore. Recently, her longest stretch of upinterrupted sleep is right around 2 hours. That means mine is shorter. Sometimes she goes back to sleep easily and sometimes she's up forever (like last night). Mostly, I want to grab her by the arms and shake some sense into her. So instead, I nurse her and cry. I know she's not hungry, but it puts her back to sleep...

We have tried a bunch of different techniques to get her to sleep. I have tried sleeping with her. Nope. I have tried sleeping next to her on the floor so I can soothe her before she gets really woken up. Nope. I have tried feeding her more often while she's awake in case she's not getting enough to eat during the day. Nope. I have tried giving her more solid foods. Nope. I have tried giving her less solid foods. Nope. I don't know if you noticed that I said "We" have been trying different things, but all the different things "I" have tried? That's becaue it's Rob's idea to try all these things. He thinks that it would harm the kid in some way to cry herself to sleep. He can't soothe her, so I have to. "We" agreed that we wouldn't let our children cry, so I have to follow through with it. It's not working. I'm a basket case. I started crying this morning when Rob merely suggested that I get out of bed earlier so that I'm not late for work. The problem was that I tried to get ready this morning, but Anya screamed everytime I left her side. I'm so frustrated. I told Rob that if she's not sleeping by the end of the year, I'm doing CIO whether he likes it or not. I'm not a big proponent of the idea, but when nothing else works, you can't afford to rule out any possibilities, right? Oh god, I hope it doesn't come to that. I think I can handle Anya's crying, but not my husband's bitching.

TMI Tuesday #5 - How I met my husband - Part 2

When I moved, I had a couple weeks off school. My old school had cut the semester at the end of the year, but the new school's semester didn't end until mid-January. In the meantime, I didn't really have anything to do except settle in. (Oh, and get a job. Because we were poor and if I wanted to have any money, I needed to make it myself.) I found out that there was a scholastic bowl team at the new school. It sounded like fun. Geeky fun, sure, but fun. I like trivia. I'm really not all that good at it, but what the hey? So I signed up. The practices had just started, so I didn't really miss anything. I went to my first one after school got out one day before I had even started attending school yet. So the first people I met were the quiz bowl kids.

They were great. There was this group of friends that accepted me right away. They saw that I wasn't an idiot and made me one of their own. Tim was the captain. Rob did science and math. Jeremy (Ford) did more math. There was one other person, whose name I can't really remember. Abby and Emily did english and mythology. Bill and I ended up being subs. Oh my god. Just writing this makes me seem like such a dork. but it wasn't really like that. We Most of us weren't geeks. We were just smarter than the average population and chose to hang out with other intelligent people. It was nice to be able to talk about more than just who was going drinking with whom, etc.

I'm not a very confident person most of the time. I dealt with this in high school by attaching myself to a boyfriend and joining his group of friends. I wanted to be in this group, so I found an unattached guy - Bill. We started dating. I later found out that the rest of the group weren't really that close to Bill until I joined them. He was kinda the idiot of the group. They hung out with him more because of me. Oh well. Rob was dating Emily and Abby was Emily's best friend. Mostly Rob Emily Abby and one guy not in the group hung out. Then me and Bill. I got tired of Bill pretty quickly and we broke up. Bill kind of dropped out of the circle a little. Rob got this idea that I should date Tim, so I did. He was a nice guy and a great friend, but I just wasn't all that interested long term. We went to prom together with Rob and Emily. After a while, I broke up with Tim, I started dating someone else back in my hometown because I still visited pretty often. (Tim was fine with it. In fact, when he came to visit me in college one time, I set him up with my old roommate, who is now his wife)

I got along with Emily okay. She wasn't really a person I'd pick to be friends with, but I liked Rob, so Emily was around. She was a really needy person and kinda whiney. I didn't like Abby at all. One of the many times I went back to my hometown to visit, Rob and Emily broke up. By this time it was summer. Rob was going to go to Basic training soon, because he was in the National Guard. Rob decided that he wanted to go camping before he left. But his tent wasn't good enough for some reason. I don't remember why. He enlisted my help to create a tent out of mosquito netting, duct tape, and pvc pipes. Of course, I had to try it out too, so I lied to mom, and went camping with him. He cooked me macaroni and cheese over the campfire. That was the best mac and cheese I've ever had. We watched the sun set through the mosquito netting, laying on a blow up air mattress. I don't remember how it happened, but we ended up in a tickle fight. Rob didn't know it at the time, but I'm not really ticklish. I have found that being ticklish is a great excuse for a guy to have his hands on you though, so I feign it on occasion. I think I got about 80 mosquito bites that night because we hadn't gotten the tent up early enough for it to really work and mostly we just trapped the bugs in with us.

When he left for Basic a couple days later, we were together. We talked on the phone and wrote letters while he was away. I moved in with him the second half of my senior year. We broke up about 3,3221,435 times, but always managed to get back together. Good or bad, he is one of the reasons I am who I am today.

When I write it down like this, it just doesn't really sound all that interesting. There are a lot of holes in the story. Some of those are because I don't remember. I had some bad shit happen to me when I was younger and my memory was affected, I think. There are big chunks of my life that I don't remember. Some of it's missing just because it was just life. You know, all that stuff that they never put in the soap operas because it's just too boring - going to the bathroom, paying the bills, going to work, high school, etc. Mostly, it doesn't really matter anymore. We're together - that's what is important. So most of the time when someone asks how we met, I just say "We went to high school together." I mean "We shared a life" and we still do.

Wednesday? How did that happen

Tuesday came and went at my house. It left me lying in bed most of the day with a congestion, a sore throat, and headache from hell. I stayed home from work. I got nothing accomplished. I took lots of medicine. And now, I have to get ready for the weekend. Yikes. Tomorrow we go to my grandma's for Thanksgiving and a birthday party. Tomorrow, we let Ally open some stuff at home and then drive to Rob's mom's. Saturday, we have t-day meal again and another birthday party. So, yeah, busy. Gonna have to wait til next week to finish the story of Rob and I.

Anyway, I feel really bad lumping her birthday party into holiday visits instead of celebrating it separately, but that's the only way the whole family will be able to do it. otherwise, there's just no way to get everyone together. Too much going on. So I channeled my guilt into presents. I just realized this because I just finished wrapping them, and I went way overboard. Now, most of them are books and movies, but it looks like she has a mountain to unwrap. Oh well. I had fun getting them, and I'm positive she'll have fun too.

Now I've got to go start gathering things. Yikes!

and of course, a little about poop

Ally only had one accident all weekend. Saturday morning, I was in the shower when Ally woke up. Rob was upstairs with Anya and I blame him (of course). Ally came looking for me. She did not go immediately to the potty without Passing Go like I always do in the morning with her. So she peed in her panties. She is determined to where them to bed, so I let her. She has done really well. I think I'm going to have to donate her left over pull-ups soon. Yay.

Saturday night I was downstairs nursing Anya and Ally was watching TV upstairs. Rob was in the bedroom messing with a computer that we're trying to get set up to give Ally for Christmas. (I got my first computer when I was 19. Rob - when he was 24 or so? She'll be 3)  Ally started talking very loudly to me as she was coming down the stairs. When she got closer, I heard what she was saying and yelled for Rob to deal with it. She was carrying her potty seat cup downstairs because she needed to dump it in the toliet. She had pooped all by herself!

I believe that it just had to be her idea to potty-train. We used the pee-pee timer for a while. The potty wasn't an option anymore, it was just a matter of when. We had control with the timer. So she took the control away from us and peed in her pants on purpose. We stopped using the timer and she was back in control. The potty still wasn't an option, but the timing was all under her control, so she goes now. Maybe I'm just attributing motives, but that's how it seems to me. She's stubborn like that. She comes by it honestly

baby vs puppy

Sometimes I feel like I'm house training a puppy. Anya is constantly getting into stuff. Ally really wasn't one of those babies who you had to watch all the time. She was content to observe her environment and interact only after she had studied it. Anya crawls right in and puts tastes everything. She puts things in her mouth. She chases you around the room. She eats crumbs off the floor if I don't clean them BEFORE I get her down. No matter how far away I put her, she crawls back faster than I can sweep. I tell her "Get that out of your mouth" and "Don't bother your sister" and "Anya, get that out of your mouth" and "Here you can chew on this" and "Don't lick the toliet" and "Stay out of the pee". She will not leave Ally alone when she's sitting on her potty chair. She thinks it's the most fun toy in the world. I caught her getting ready to chew on the little splash guard the other day. The same splash guard that I had to sand down because it was all scratchy from when the puppy chewed on it. She carwls around things to find it. It's getting very troublesome. I wonder when we can put it away?

My god, she eats!

Anya is nothing like Ally! Ok, so she looks kinda similar and lately, she's been sleeping like Ally used to, and ...

But! She eats! In fact, she eats almost too much. I strap her into her booster (I don't like the highchair, so I put her in a booster at the table. She loves it) and she's reaching for the table before I even scoot the chair in. She eats just about anything you put in front of her. The other day she even ate some hamburger at day care. They gave her some little pieces and said she chewed them and chewed and chewed and when she'd finally gotten them all soggy and tasteless, she spit them out and picked up another bite. She's almost gotten the picking up part figured out. Although, sometimes she still gets them in her palm and doesn't know they are hidden there. Rob gave her a half of his biscuit this weekend and she ate it almost instantly. Then we gave her a muffin and it disappeared. There were crumbs everywhere, but she ate most of it herself. So far she has eaten:

Toddler food
wagon wheels
fruit puffs
cheerios
many many jarred foods (that aren't jarred now, they're in these little plastic containers)
crackers

Table food
pizza
hamburger
french fries
biscuit
blueberry muffin
little bit of enchilada
Chef Boyardee ravioli
pasta
mac and cheese (yes, it's pasta, but it's entirely different)
toast
bananas
cooked carrots

There might even be more. We have just been giving her whatever she wants. She reaches for everything. Even our cups. We've started letting her drink a little water and she laps at the cup like a little dog. So cute. But, she's getting the hang of it. She's not even 7 months old yet!

She needs to slow down, but she doesn't want to. or maybe I'm just sad because she's not dependent on nursing as much if she starts eating solids more. I never really thought I would be sad about it. I wasn't with Ally. Of course, she didn't eat like this. I was more than happy to wean her when the time came and only had mild pangs of nostalgia. Mostly, I felt an overwhelming freedom. I really suffer through the infant stage just to get to the other older stages. Infants are so hard. Anyway, where was I?

I know at this age food is really just practice, but I don't really remember how much is the upper limits (since last time I mainly dealt with the minimums) of what I should be giving her. Ally has a Dr appointment in a couple weeks. I'm going to have to talk to him about Anya then, too.

Format changes
I figured out how to make your email address visible only to me if you leave a comment. Yay! (If that matters to you)

Parrots

You know how some people say things over and over again and you don't even realize it? At least not until your daughter starts repeating it that is. I have found that I say actually enough that Ally has started to repeat it pretty often. "Actually, I prefer milk (the prefer comes from Elmo)" "Actually, no. I don't have to pee-pee now" etc.

Lately, she's pointed out one of Grandma Darra's more commonly used words that I hadn't noticed before. Darra starts the beginning of most sentences aimed at Ally with "Well..." For example: "Well, you'll have to ask you mom about that" and "Well, I don't think you should be ..." or the ever-popular "Well..." where she just doesn't know what to say.

So now, anytime you hear "Well..." coming from Ally, you know that an argument is coming.

What has your kid picked up from you or your family lately?

More conversations from the car

We were headed out of town to grandma's house. Anya was trying to get loose of her buckles by pushing against them with her chest with all her might. She lets out a yell...

Ally (gleefully): Anya if you say aaunhh again you will be in tr-uhh-ble! (giggle)
Anya: looks at Ally
Ally: Mommy if she says aaunhh again, she will have to be in trouble.
Anya: aaunhh!
Ally: You're in trouble. Mommy Anya said aaunhh again, so she's in trouble now.
Me: Yep. She'll have to be in trouble when we get to Grandma's house.
Ally: No, she's in trouble now. She has to sit on the couch.
Me: But, there's no couch in the car.
Ally: No, no, no, no, no. I was talking at Grandma's house! (Idiot)

 

Photo Friday

I took these at the beginning of October and just started playing around with them today. My god, my daughter is beautifull!