Wednesday, July 26, 2006

My Baby's Growing Too Quickly!



Timing has never been my strong suit. So I'll have to report after the fact.

Sweet Pea turned 3 years old on Monday.

Before The Bug was born, I talked with Sweet Pea about her birthday and asked what sort of party she wanted to have this year. I was completely unsurprised by her expected response, "I want a kitty party!" I sat her on my lap and we looked online to find kitty birthday plates and stuff, and she chose her theme. As you can see, in lieu of party hats, she opted for the kitty ear head bands - hee hee!

So on Sunday, she got her dream kitty party and had a GREAT time.
















Thank goodness another 3-year-old showed up. They had SO much fun together. Omigosh, they were so cute.



But the day of the party, during and after, I kept having flashes of her growing up. Could have had something to do with having a 13-year-old in the house, whose family I lived with for 10 months, beginning when she was only 1 month old.

Some day she won't want me to play with her every day. Some day she won't want to sit on my lap and fiddle with my hair to comfort herself when she's upset or tired. Some day she won't want to tell me every single thing that pops into her head. Some day she won't be so interested in what I have to say. Some day... it sounds like a long time away, but it's just around the corner!

Anyway - it's late and I'm tired so this is probably really boring and not making much sense, but before I go, here's another cute picture to enjoy.

Thursday, July 20, 2006

Do They Still Make Calgon?

But more important is the question, does it still work the way they showed in the commercials way back when?

I'm actually feeling a lot better today. Why? Because I managed to get my first shower since Monday! Thank goodness. I was feeling (er, smelling) RANK. And I never did get out of my jammies yesterday. It's nice to be in daytime clothes again.

Sweet Pea still has that 99.2-ish fever, but I'm starting to wonder if we just have another useless thermometer. I don't know. She is whining a lot, which continues making me feel a bit crazy, but I think that's just because she lost a lot of sleep earlier in the week and hasn't caught up yet. Otherwise she's acting normal.

Tomorrow we're going to have an outing to Costco to get some stuff for the birthday party. Wahoo! Thank goodness we have family nearby, because I haven't been able to get near the party supplies (don't want to take them out while Sweet Pea is awake; they'd never last until party time) and Slipshod has been at work so late almost every night lately that nothing is happening around here. Zero packing, even though we've had a pod delivered, and zero preparation for the party. Oh my god, that reminds me, I was supposed to order the food today... augh! Gotta go call Togo's and our local bakery. Wish me luck making it through a phone call; The Bug is calling from her crib.

What? That didn't make any sense? Oh yeah. The comment about family is because we'll have a bunch of them here before the party helping us decorate and set out the food, etc.

Wednesday, July 19, 2006

All I Want is an Effing Shower!

What the hell is it - is it where we live, or is every place as nasty and virus-filled as our area? It seems like whenever I take Sweet Pea out, she gets sick. Costco? Strep Throat. Tot lot at Alum Rock Park? Unidentified really nasty scary-high-fever-causing virus. Target? Apparently we're about to find out. I've just determined that she has a low-grade fever (in the low 99s). WONDERFUL. Now nobody with kids is going to want to come to her birthday party this Sunday.

Yesterday we took my niece to the Winchester Mystery House and all the nap Sweet Pea got was maybe 20 minutes on the drive home. Last night she awoke in the wee hours (3ish or 4ish) and didn't get back to sleep until 6am-ish, and I'm not even sure she was really asleep because she was talking a bit. Then she woke up for the day around 7:30am. Today, yet again no goddam nap. I'm going fucking insane. Because I get less sleep than EVERYONE around here, ALWAYS. But I have to take care of them all. Such is the life of a mother and wife, eh? Okay, I can't complain that it's ALL me... While it is true that I am the one whose sleep suffers, Slipshod has been doing all of our grocery shopping for months, and helps as he can with the girls (meaning, in the few hours that he's not at work each week).

Anyway... the upshot here is that it's nearly 3pm and I am still in my pajamas, feeling ultra-nasty because it was Africa hot yesterday when we were out, and as you might imagine with a house so big, the Winchester Mystery House is very much NOT air conditioned. And I was wearing a hot little baby in a Baby Bjorn during our 1 mile + hike through said landmark, and carrying Sweet Pea part of the time too. So people in Sacramento can probably smell my armpits. FYI, it's a 2 1/2 hour drive from here to Sacramento...

There is no point in trying to write more. Sweet Pea wants to sit on my lap and The Bug is waiting for me to get her out of her co-sleeper and we all could use some lunch.

Thursday, July 13, 2006

Quick And Big Update!



First, let me just say, I have NO idea what was going on with my blog last week; it's much better now, whew. But the lilypie baby tickers seem to have lost a day and I don't know why. I redid them and everything. Oh well.

Secondly, I'm renaming Petal on my blog: From now on she shall be known as "The Bug," or simply "Bug." Because that's what I find myself calling her. I nearly named her Peanut because when she needs a bath she smells like a little peanut (seriously!), but I don't actually call her Peanut, and besides, the Queen of Spain is already using that name.

Now - we've been so busy lately, and I now have very good things to report.

1) We have renters for our house!

2) We have a place to move to!

We will be moving as soon after we get the keys (August 1st) as we possibly can. Our renters will officially be moving in here September 1st. YAAAAAAAAAAAAY! This is big stuff.

Our new place is just a short drive (about 10 minutes on back surface streets) from where Slipshod works. It has a big back yard which features a shaded grass area, a deck with a hot tub built in, and another area with some concrete and some grass/dirt area which is mostly covered by raised planting beds. Cool! The main indoor area where the girls and I will spend our days is made up of a huge open kitchen and a nice living room which has a sliding glass door which leads right out onto the deck in the back. The new place is more than twice as large as the tiny house we currently live in and is two stories rather than one (not sure if that's a plus and we will immediately be installing baby gates at the top & bottom of the stairs, but it puts all the bedrooms upstairs which is kinda cool). This place is a duplex, which is not what either Slipshod or I had pictured, but we're just renting for a couple/few years, so it should be fine. The person who lives in the other side is a single woman in her 60s and is reportedly very quiet. The house is in a nice safe neighborhood with parks and schools nearby-ish. Our side of the house is close to an intersection, but it is pretty quiet due to lots of trees between the house and the intersection, and we've been told that the town we're moving to rolls up its sidewalks around 9pm and traffic is rare later than that.

In case you can't tell, I'm very excited that we finally have these two things taken care of. I've been mentally moving into the new place for a couple days now. ha ha! As for moving, we're going to get one of those pod things and pack ourselves, though we may hire some mover folks to pack the furniture.

At home, we have a visitor: One of my teenage nieces. She flew in this Monday from out-of-state and is staying until the afternoon of the 26th. My sister sent her out to help us for two weeks. SWEEEEEEEEEEET! We're loving having her. Sweet Pea is especially loving having a live-in playmate, and I am temporarily spared the stress/guilt of not being able to play with her much. :o) Although, The Bug sleeps so much that today my niece, Sweet Pea and I were able to get a good start on making some sock puppets. ha ha! Sweet Pea started asking a few days ago if we could make sock puppets because Steve on Blues Clues had one, and also because the creatures on the in-between things on Noggin often have buttons for eyes and she thinks that's cool. She wanted to make a blue sock puppet and as luck would have it one of her little blue socks had holes in the toes, so she got her blue sock puppet! it's a kitty with blue foam ears. Her cousin's sock puppet is a doggy. ha ha! We don't have any pictures of mine yet, but it's a beige kitty with bright green foam ears. Hopefully tomorrow we'll be able to give our kitties red felt tongues, but for now they're serviceable enough. Sweet Pea was so cute making hers talk to her cousin's doggy. Ha ha!

Sweet Pea continues to adore her baby sister. YAY!

The Bug continues to be adorable and sleep well. She smiles more and more every day, and has dimples on both cheeks! SO cute! She has already been responding to me as Mommy for a while. You know, quieting when she's fussing with somebody else (even her daddy) and they hand her to me. I didn't remember how early that happened with Sweet Pea and was quite surprised to find her recognizing me so early. It's quite gratifying, really, but I also worry that I'm the only person who will be able to quiet her, like I'm the only person who can quiet Sweet Pea. Gratifying but also a lot of work and sometimes a very stressful place for me to be. Eep. But she's still sleeping tons and nursing tons and is just plain doing very well. We're excited to see her smiling at us so early too. She responds to both visual and auditory stimuli. She will grin when we grin at her and raise our eyebrows or sometimes if we just stick our faces in front of hers. She also loves high voice noises and grins when I talk that way. She loves to hear and see Sweet Pea as well. And her daddy, of course. Even though Slipshod can't talk as high as Sweet Pea and I can, she grins at him all the time too. I guess she just knows her family.

We took her to the doctor for her 1 month well-baby checkup yesterday (at 5 weeks) and she is growing very well. Her weight is up to 9lbs. 13oz., her head now measures 15.75" around, and unfortunately I just realized that I didn't hear how long she is now. But like Sweet Pea at this age, her head size is in the 95th percentile and her weight and length put her in the 75th. We grow 'em big.

We like our doctor so well that we're not going to leave him, even though it will be a bit of a drive to get to him. We know we'll be moving back down here in the next 2-5 years anyway, so we're going to keep going to him for regular checkups for the girls and whatever Slipshod and I need. Since we have a PPO we'll be able to also see a different doctor closer to (the new) home for more pressing situations like fevers and other things in the girls.

Sunday, July 02, 2006

Smarty Pants

Well Sweet Pea may not be potty training, but three days ago she started to WRITE! As in, LETTERS! She has known her alphabet since before she was 2 and for the past many months has been working on learning what words start with what letters. She now tells me every day that her cats' names start with C and L, and that Daddy starts with D, Mommy starts with M, etc. So, the other day she announced to me that she was going to write a T, an I, and a C, and then she did just that! Color me amazed. And proud, obviously. ha ha! Since then she has demonstrated her new skill for her daddy and her grandma, and is having a great time with the letters. Sweet!

Since she is just starting out (and possibly also because she's left-handed and learning from a right-handed mama) some non-symmetrical letters come out backwards, and when she's writing her cat Lois' name (she hasn't tried any other words yet) she'll put the L on the right side of the page, backward, then the I, then put an O in between and skip the S altogether - but daggone, people, she's WRITING! Wahoo! :o) :oD