When It Rains

It's freaking pouring lately. Making up for lost time, it's been so dry and hot... It's fabulous.

As always, blogging in the wee hours. Baby sleeping, wife sleeping, everyone sleeping but me. I've been kind of insomniac lately, waking up and dorking around on the computer for an hour or so most nights. It's kind of worrisome in a way, in that generally if I'm having trouble sleeping it's because something is wrong, but I think this stems more from the general worries of having a new baby and not something more acute. Plus I have learned it may be the only real chunk of time I get in a day that is mine and even then can be cut short at any moment...

Yesterday finally got some stuff in the mail by walking to post office with baby in front pack. She can hold head up well enough to ride facing out and she grooves on it, particularly if she can get ahold of your fingers and cram them in her tiny mouth while you're walking. I sent some stuff up to Nome and also threw that quviut in the mail for fellow blogger Cate to play with. Not a minute too soon as I found our two younger cats mauling it the other day after I had cleaned up the living room a little and set it down where they could reach it. They were quite interested in it though they haven't molested the itty-bitty fur slippers from Nome that have been sitting on top of the piano for a couple of weeks. The dogs would have those slippers in furry little shreds if they could reach them, but the cats don't seem interested. Huh.

Much has happened lately. We are buying a Vanagon, for starters. Old family friends of BH have it up for sale. Garaged its whole life, meticulously maintained, newly rebuilt engine, only driven to church on Sundays etc. Okay just kidding about that but it only had 150k on it when the engine was rebuilt in February. It's freaking gorgeous.

To get the cash for it we are cashing in my 403(b). It will get us enough to buy the Vanagon and pay off all our credit cards, (of which we have only three and it's not like we have tons of credit card debt) and then we can stuff all that money we were spending on interest into savings, Roth IRA's, and college fund for little FI. Now that we've paid the car off, all the debt we'll have after this will be my student loan and the mortgage. I am rubbing my grubby little paws together in anticipation of socking away money -- have never been much of a saver and am quite interested in experiencing having money around and not touching it. Not that it won't be a challenge but after my entire life of mismanaging money, I'm ready to make the change.

Speaking of making changes, I'm keeping up the good work with Fat Losers, I mean Weight Watchers. I have lost 22.6 pounds to date, in about five weeks. This whole breastfeeding thing is da bomb... And I have kept up my interest in triathlons. Seems pretty ambitious for someone who a) has never been terribly athletic, and b) has the flattest feet in captivity. But the more weight I lose, the better my feet feel. I can now walk a couple of miles and not be so sore afterward that I can't think straight, as was the case in the past. The orthotics I have now help, and so does wearing better shoes if I'm doing more than just hanging around the house too. BH asked what I want for my birthday (in about two weeks) and I said, running shoes. We are getting a treadmill too! Once we have saved up a bit. BH has wanted one for the longest time and now I am seeing the value in having one too. Run in the privacy of our basement, away from the watchful eyes of our neighbors... At least until there is less of me than currently, so there won't be so much jiggling.

FI is doing well. She has discovered her feet, and sticks her little legs in the air more often. She grabs her toes and stares at her hand and foot. She has been pretty screamy this past couple of days though, and when I try to get her to sleep by bouncing on the exercise ball she conks out much more quickly than usual. Maybe this is the 3-month growth spurt they talk about. She's about that age now. We also reached A Milestone today -- I set her down on the bed after getting her to sleep, and she didn't wake up and start screaming! Usually I have to get into bed with her and even nurse her because she wakes up and starts having a conniption, but twice today I got her down without getting into the bed too. So we will practice this during the day and get a room-darkening roller shade for her room because it's so very bright in there, and eventually move on to laying her down in (gasp!) the crib! At least during the day for naps.

I do like co-sleeping, for a lot of reasons, primarily because she's so hard to get to sleep otherwise and so desperately seems to need to be held and cuddled at night. This is a 180 degree turn from how I felt about it before giving birth; I was very anti-bed-sharing.

Uh oh I hear her on the monitor. Time to go...