This is one of the photos we sent out in our Christmas card. We couldn't get her to smile when we were taking these -- I think the chair spooked her -- so we also sent another we had taken earlier to demonstrate that she is a happy baby!
Wednesday, December 29, 2004
Delia update
So she's getting her top front teeth.
May I just say: Ow. Ow, ow, ow.
Those fangs come out pretty sharp, and she gnawed some itty-bitty holes in me. My sister-in-law was very helpful regarding some advice, and now things are tolerable once again, but whoa! Talk about painful.
She sits in the bath now and splashes around which is really fun to watch. Previously she hated the bath, I think it scared her, but didn't mind showering with us.
She recently had her first snotty little head cold, which is nearly gone. Gave her a teensy bit of baby Tylenol the first day that she seemed uncomfortable, what with teething AND snottiness, but other than that have had to do nothing special for her other than extra loves. Not bad for seven months: one clogged tear duct which corrected itself, four teeth which didn't seem too painful coming in, and one very minor snotty head cold. Oh, er, and that tumble off the bed when we were too stupid to realize that flipping over even once means you can't leave them on the bed anymore. *sigh*... there goes Mother of the Year...
May I just say: Ow. Ow, ow, ow.
Those fangs come out pretty sharp, and she gnawed some itty-bitty holes in me. My sister-in-law was very helpful regarding some advice, and now things are tolerable once again, but whoa! Talk about painful.
She sits in the bath now and splashes around which is really fun to watch. Previously she hated the bath, I think it scared her, but didn't mind showering with us.
She recently had her first snotty little head cold, which is nearly gone. Gave her a teensy bit of baby Tylenol the first day that she seemed uncomfortable, what with teething AND snottiness, but other than that have had to do nothing special for her other than extra loves. Not bad for seven months: one clogged tear duct which corrected itself, four teeth which didn't seem too painful coming in, and one very minor snotty head cold. Oh, er, and that tumble off the bed when we were too stupid to realize that flipping over even once means you can't leave them on the bed anymore. *sigh*... there goes Mother of the Year...
Dofletta! and Three Freaking Weeks!!!!!
Firstly, must announce that Julianna's sister is FINALLY having her baby tonight -- in fact it may already be here -- she was three cm dilated and fully effaced two weeks ago, nobody thought that darn baby could hang in there this long, but she did. We got the call about a half hour ago so Julianna hotfooted it over there to Shanny's house to watch Tommy (their 4 1/2 year old son) while Shannon and Jeff go to the hospital. Considering that Julianna's sisters drop babies like cattle (Moooooooooooo!), I wonder if they even made it into the hospital, let alone to the birthing suite...
We are all very excited. Shannon had a lot of trouble conceiving this baby, miscarried at five months, then miscarried at nine weeks right after I almost miscarried at 15 weeks last Thanksgiving (2003). Monday of that week I bled like mad and ended up in an ambulance, then sat alone and crying in the ER til Julianna could find me -- no thanks to 911, who wouldn't tell her where I was even though I gave them express permission and they called her themselves -- but I digress, don't get me started... Anyway after a week of bedrest I was okay and Delia turned out just fine, but two days after that Shannon miscarried, on the day before Thanksgiving. Since I had just been through that experience I knew something of what she must be feeling. Poor Shannon and Jeff. So we've all been holding our collective breath, uttering little prayers here and there along the way, just hoping, and now it's the day!
I can hardly wait to hold the new baby and remember what Delia was like as a newborn. She's so big now, at seven months, so capable, that I can barely recall what a little helpless thing she must have been. Okay, now I must post a photo. Look for one soon. :)
In other news:
GAAAAAAAAAH!
We get our new house in three weeks! Then we have til almost the end of January to complete moving.
I have a connection at the local Safeway so we are accumulating boxes of all types, and have begun packing already. We are hiring the piano moving done to spare the vertebrae and connective tissues of our loved ones... It's worth a hundred and fifty bucks. We will remodel Delia's room before we move so that we won't have to disrupt her any further once we move her into it. Then we will do our room probably this summer, paint and molding. Right now the entire house is white, white, white, like this one was, and the carpet is cream colored. Why do they even make cream colored carpet?! So rich people with no kids or pets can feel effete? Sheez!
Let's see, what else?
Oh, Christmas. It was nice. Bit of a new perspective on it what with being all religious lately, though it seems to be a subject that my mind can only peek at through its fingers thus far. Cautious, ever cautious. But none of that stops us from the traditional celebration of the commercialism that made this country what it is today, i.e. the gifting, cutting down perfectly good tree for temporary living room decor, gorging on rich foods etc. It was a fairly modest Christmas for us and we spent it with our families and aside from some minor Drama and some Tension, supplied mainly by J's eldest sister and mother respectively, we all had a pretty smashing time overall.
New Year's is our anniversary -- we got together around Easter time, moved in by mid July, and had our first commitment ceremony on New Year's Eve 1999. (We got married last March 5th when Multnomah County was issuing licenses to same sex couples but that is held up in court indefinitely, so it would appear.)
Okay, must post photo now, maybe more later? Am too hyper to sleep what with waiting to hear of Dofie's baby. (J and her sister took to calling each other Dofie, meaning "stupid" in German, when they were teens and it remains to this day an endearing sisterly habit. Shannon calls and leaves voice mails that start out "Hey Dofie-Doh!" which I find terrifically amusing and sweet.)
We are all very excited. Shannon had a lot of trouble conceiving this baby, miscarried at five months, then miscarried at nine weeks right after I almost miscarried at 15 weeks last Thanksgiving (2003). Monday of that week I bled like mad and ended up in an ambulance, then sat alone and crying in the ER til Julianna could find me -- no thanks to 911, who wouldn't tell her where I was even though I gave them express permission and they called her themselves -- but I digress, don't get me started... Anyway after a week of bedrest I was okay and Delia turned out just fine, but two days after that Shannon miscarried, on the day before Thanksgiving. Since I had just been through that experience I knew something of what she must be feeling. Poor Shannon and Jeff. So we've all been holding our collective breath, uttering little prayers here and there along the way, just hoping, and now it's the day!
I can hardly wait to hold the new baby and remember what Delia was like as a newborn. She's so big now, at seven months, so capable, that I can barely recall what a little helpless thing she must have been. Okay, now I must post a photo. Look for one soon. :)
In other news:
GAAAAAAAAAH!
We get our new house in three weeks! Then we have til almost the end of January to complete moving.
I have a connection at the local Safeway so we are accumulating boxes of all types, and have begun packing already. We are hiring the piano moving done to spare the vertebrae and connective tissues of our loved ones... It's worth a hundred and fifty bucks. We will remodel Delia's room before we move so that we won't have to disrupt her any further once we move her into it. Then we will do our room probably this summer, paint and molding. Right now the entire house is white, white, white, like this one was, and the carpet is cream colored. Why do they even make cream colored carpet?! So rich people with no kids or pets can feel effete? Sheez!
Let's see, what else?
Oh, Christmas. It was nice. Bit of a new perspective on it what with being all religious lately, though it seems to be a subject that my mind can only peek at through its fingers thus far. Cautious, ever cautious. But none of that stops us from the traditional celebration of the commercialism that made this country what it is today, i.e. the gifting, cutting down perfectly good tree for temporary living room decor, gorging on rich foods etc. It was a fairly modest Christmas for us and we spent it with our families and aside from some minor Drama and some Tension, supplied mainly by J's eldest sister and mother respectively, we all had a pretty smashing time overall.
New Year's is our anniversary -- we got together around Easter time, moved in by mid July, and had our first commitment ceremony on New Year's Eve 1999. (We got married last March 5th when Multnomah County was issuing licenses to same sex couples but that is held up in court indefinitely, so it would appear.)
Okay, must post photo now, maybe more later? Am too hyper to sleep what with waiting to hear of Dofie's baby. (J and her sister took to calling each other Dofie, meaning "stupid" in German, when they were teens and it remains to this day an endearing sisterly habit. Shannon calls and leaves voice mails that start out "Hey Dofie-Doh!" which I find terrifically amusing and sweet.)
Friday, December 17, 2004
Cat Vomit
Just in case you were all (all one of you, probably) dying to know what the story was on the Mystery of the Barfing Cat, I found a very impressive hairball while cleaning the basement, and have not seen any vomit since.
Mystery solved.
Mystery solved.
Thursday, December 16, 2004
A hundred bucks
Okay, so the inspection was this morning. I herded the dogs out to the Vanagon and deposited baby therein also, after painstakingly removing the clumps of hair left in her carseat by Hope last time the dogs were transported in the Vanagon. Julianna felt it was hilarious to permit Hope to curl up in the carseat (which was empty as I took the baby down to see my sister-in-law and my Mom), where she could perch high enough to see all around and therefore find more things at which to bark.
Next time Julianna feels the urge to permit Hope to do this, she can bloody well go out there and brush all the hair out of the seat herself.
So after several trips to the Vanagon to de-hair the carseat, deposit diaper bag therein to prevent dog from sitting in it, remove fast-food debris, deposit dog blanket, deposit my coat and cellphone etc etc, and finally strap baby in -- really, I felt like a sherpa after about five trips out there -- off we went to Vancouver to camp out at Julianna's sister's house. If you must be away from home with an infant and three unruly, obnoxious, nervous dogs, you must find a place to camp. Shannon's house was empty and she has both a crib and a fenced yard, so there you have it. And our future home lies just across the street! Sadly, Emmy (owner/seller of our future home) was not home so I could not invite myself in to roam around mentally placing furniture here and there at my leisure. Instead, I sat in Shannon's family room and watched a little tv and played with the baby.
I can say this in all honesty -- I rarely watch any tv at all when the baby is awake. Lately I do have music playing, usually Christmas carols (okay, so you now know I'm a total geek and I listen to cheesy holiday programming) but I very, very seldom turn on the tv when she is in the room. The one glaring exception was when I needed to clean like a maniac one day recently, in preparation for selling the house, and I parked her in her Overstimulator 9000 exersaucer and turned on public television. She actually did not seem to pay it that much attention, which made me feel pretty good. She was more interested in trying to strangle the toys on her saucer, or jam them into her eye. Whatever floats your boat I guess.
The stay at Shannon's was uneventful in that I don't think Petey peed on the rug anywhere, and it wasn't until we were crossing the I-205 bridge that I noticed that the gas tank was dangerously empty. Hmph. Guess Julianna forgot to put gas in it, and I forgot to check. We made it on fumes to the station. Then as we were nearly home the buyer's realtor called to let me know they were done and it was safe to come home, and when I asked how it went she said it was all fine and they were quite pleased. Big sigh of relief.
This afternoon our realtor called with the reply to the counter-offer. Merry Christmas to you, she says, you don't know how lucky you are. This does not happen. Usually in the inspection they find, oh, five hundred or a thousand dollars worth of things to fix, minimum. But your buyer? Oh, he wants a hundred bucks to have the carpet professionally cleaned after you leave. And he wants to stipulate that the built-in microwave stays (which we intended to leave anyway). And he wants to move the closing up to January 7th. But you can still rent back to the end of January.
It's tough to be us. Really. :)
Next time Julianna feels the urge to permit Hope to do this, she can bloody well go out there and brush all the hair out of the seat herself.
So after several trips to the Vanagon to de-hair the carseat, deposit diaper bag therein to prevent dog from sitting in it, remove fast-food debris, deposit dog blanket, deposit my coat and cellphone etc etc, and finally strap baby in -- really, I felt like a sherpa after about five trips out there -- off we went to Vancouver to camp out at Julianna's sister's house. If you must be away from home with an infant and three unruly, obnoxious, nervous dogs, you must find a place to camp. Shannon's house was empty and she has both a crib and a fenced yard, so there you have it. And our future home lies just across the street! Sadly, Emmy (owner/seller of our future home) was not home so I could not invite myself in to roam around mentally placing furniture here and there at my leisure. Instead, I sat in Shannon's family room and watched a little tv and played with the baby.
I can say this in all honesty -- I rarely watch any tv at all when the baby is awake. Lately I do have music playing, usually Christmas carols (okay, so you now know I'm a total geek and I listen to cheesy holiday programming) but I very, very seldom turn on the tv when she is in the room. The one glaring exception was when I needed to clean like a maniac one day recently, in preparation for selling the house, and I parked her in her Overstimulator 9000 exersaucer and turned on public television. She actually did not seem to pay it that much attention, which made me feel pretty good. She was more interested in trying to strangle the toys on her saucer, or jam them into her eye. Whatever floats your boat I guess.
The stay at Shannon's was uneventful in that I don't think Petey peed on the rug anywhere, and it wasn't until we were crossing the I-205 bridge that I noticed that the gas tank was dangerously empty. Hmph. Guess Julianna forgot to put gas in it, and I forgot to check. We made it on fumes to the station. Then as we were nearly home the buyer's realtor called to let me know they were done and it was safe to come home, and when I asked how it went she said it was all fine and they were quite pleased. Big sigh of relief.
This afternoon our realtor called with the reply to the counter-offer. Merry Christmas to you, she says, you don't know how lucky you are. This does not happen. Usually in the inspection they find, oh, five hundred or a thousand dollars worth of things to fix, minimum. But your buyer? Oh, he wants a hundred bucks to have the carpet professionally cleaned after you leave. And he wants to stipulate that the built-in microwave stays (which we intended to leave anyway). And he wants to move the closing up to January 7th. But you can still rent back to the end of January.
It's tough to be us. Really. :)
Sold!
We sold our house in 36 hours, for 5 grand over the asking price, and the guy didn't care if we took our refrigerator.
I almost feel as if we are taking advantage of his good nature.
But --
GAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!
Now we are looking at moving in less than one month!!!!
The inspection of this house is today, and our new house will be inspected on Friday. We had a sweaty moment when we could not reach Emmy (the seller) because she was out of town and didn't give us her cell number. !!! What was she thinking?! Of course, she didn't have any idea that our house would sell so fast. Nobody did, really. Our realtors are all a-tingle. Talk about your easy money!
Must run, have to gather pets and baby and be out of here in less than one hour, and have not showered yet. Evidently I am very ambitious. And have lousy sense of urgency.
I almost feel as if we are taking advantage of his good nature.
But --
GAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!
Now we are looking at moving in less than one month!!!!
The inspection of this house is today, and our new house will be inspected on Friday. We had a sweaty moment when we could not reach Emmy (the seller) because she was out of town and didn't give us her cell number. !!! What was she thinking?! Of course, she didn't have any idea that our house would sell so fast. Nobody did, really. Our realtors are all a-tingle. Talk about your easy money!
Must run, have to gather pets and baby and be out of here in less than one hour, and have not showered yet. Evidently I am very ambitious. And have lousy sense of urgency.
Thursday, December 09, 2004
Wading through the Crapola
And so it begins... we have to clean up the house spic and span by Monday, as it will be listed then and could potentially be shown. How much fun is it going to be, packing up a six month old infant and three unruly dogs into a Vanagon and driving around aimlessly for however long it takes to show a house?! I'd say we could go shopping or something but I am so not leaving those dogs in that car for even five minutes alone. Petey already chewed the corner of my glider ottoman... I'd hate for that Vanagon to make it through twenty years and six kids with pristine upholstery, only to have an eight month old pug shred it in twenty minutes. And there's also no way I can control three unmannerly, energetic dogs by myself with the baby. And I don't know anyone else who's home during the day. So we will pack it up and go for a drive...
Speaking of the baby, she is upstairs refusing to nap. You can tell by her plaintive sobs that she is indeed exhausted, yet she will not close her tiny eyes for even a minute. Grr. She went to bed too early last night due to a refusal to nap yesterday, and was up early, and now is overtired, and so the cycle continues. However, Mama is not playing along and is thus far resisting the urge to go upstairs and rescue her from the mean old crib. This is because Mama knows that if she does, the baby will only be horribly cranky for the rest of the day and again go to bed too early.
That being said, Mama will now commence with the fruitless shifting of boxes back and forth in the basement in an attempt to make some sense of all this crap. Whose idea was it to obtain all these things?! And why must we dress it up to look pretty? So that unsuspecting rubes will purchase our house thinking that it is larger and tidier than it is, fooled by our feng shui placement of cardboard boxes of junk, that's why...
Speaking of the baby, she is upstairs refusing to nap. You can tell by her plaintive sobs that she is indeed exhausted, yet she will not close her tiny eyes for even a minute. Grr. She went to bed too early last night due to a refusal to nap yesterday, and was up early, and now is overtired, and so the cycle continues. However, Mama is not playing along and is thus far resisting the urge to go upstairs and rescue her from the mean old crib. This is because Mama knows that if she does, the baby will only be horribly cranky for the rest of the day and again go to bed too early.
That being said, Mama will now commence with the fruitless shifting of boxes back and forth in the basement in an attempt to make some sense of all this crap. Whose idea was it to obtain all these things?! And why must we dress it up to look pretty? So that unsuspecting rubes will purchase our house thinking that it is larger and tidier than it is, fooled by our feng shui placement of cardboard boxes of junk, that's why...
Monday, December 06, 2004
Sadness, and Gratitude (warning: sadness and gratitude within, and some hard stuff)
Saw a thing on my isp homepage today about a woman who murdered her 10 month old. They think she's mentally ill (ya think?!). The thought of anyone killing a baby makes me feel physically sick. I won't talk about how she did it because that just makes it worse. This poor woman, her poor baby. Poor everybody.
Then read a thing in mamacate's blog (which I would link if I knew how but I'm sort of lazy and pressed for time, but I promise to figure it out soon) saying to read this essay a friend wrote on parenting a child with CP. And as much as I totally appreciate everything she said about how perfect her boy is, and totally agree (and he is a total cutie to boot), that doesn't stop me from feeling huge great gushes of gratitude that Delia is not affected by something like CP. Who knows what the future holds for her, anything can happen, but she was born in a great hurry and appeared into the world physically perfect and with no problems aside from one tear duct that was a little cloggy for a while. Which resolved itself within a couple of months. Oh, and a real dislike for sleep, which we still argue over but generally speaking have under control. Sort of.
I know that if she did have some issue, some challenge, some disability or other-ness or whatever a good way of putting it is, I would appreciate her for just exactly who she is in all ways just as I do now. But I can't help but be glad that she doesn't have to face bigger challenges than most people do, for now.
That being said, I must give an update: she had her six month appt on Friday. She is healthy as a horse. Fifteen pounds one ounce, 27 inches long: that is, 90th percentile for height, but 25th for weight! She's a total stringbean. She has a new tooth coming in -- upper left front tooth -- to add to her lower ones which came in at 3 1/2 months. She sits unassisted -- that is, if you sit her up she stays that way for a while -- but does not crawl as of yet. She "motates."
And she sleeps through the night to about 4am, give or take, then nurses and goes back to bed until between 6 and 7am.
And I am filled with gratitude.
One last thing and then I head up to bed: Why do we clean up our houses and yards the best they have ever looked when we go to sell them?! It has never looked this good in all the time we lived here! Why are we moving again?!
Then read a thing in mamacate's blog (which I would link if I knew how but I'm sort of lazy and pressed for time, but I promise to figure it out soon) saying to read this essay a friend wrote on parenting a child with CP. And as much as I totally appreciate everything she said about how perfect her boy is, and totally agree (and he is a total cutie to boot), that doesn't stop me from feeling huge great gushes of gratitude that Delia is not affected by something like CP. Who knows what the future holds for her, anything can happen, but she was born in a great hurry and appeared into the world physically perfect and with no problems aside from one tear duct that was a little cloggy for a while. Which resolved itself within a couple of months. Oh, and a real dislike for sleep, which we still argue over but generally speaking have under control. Sort of.
I know that if she did have some issue, some challenge, some disability or other-ness or whatever a good way of putting it is, I would appreciate her for just exactly who she is in all ways just as I do now. But I can't help but be glad that she doesn't have to face bigger challenges than most people do, for now.
That being said, I must give an update: she had her six month appt on Friday. She is healthy as a horse. Fifteen pounds one ounce, 27 inches long: that is, 90th percentile for height, but 25th for weight! She's a total stringbean. She has a new tooth coming in -- upper left front tooth -- to add to her lower ones which came in at 3 1/2 months. She sits unassisted -- that is, if you sit her up she stays that way for a while -- but does not crawl as of yet. She "motates."
And she sleeps through the night to about 4am, give or take, then nurses and goes back to bed until between 6 and 7am.
And I am filled with gratitude.
One last thing and then I head up to bed: Why do we clean up our houses and yards the best they have ever looked when we go to sell them?! It has never looked this good in all the time we lived here! Why are we moving again?!
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