Good Luck With That!

This morning, when our alarm clock went off at 7:57 am, Mike wasn't quite ready to wake up yet. So I went and got Emily from her crib, got her dressed and brought her out into the living room to play while Daddy slept some more.

Yeah, good luck with that, Mike.

So far, the dog has barked at some unknown menace in the backyard 4 times, Emily has played little drummer girl on the bedroom door, I gave Emily a nebulizer treatment (think loud air compressor)... Oh, and Emily has taken her wagon with the noisy wheels for a spin around the halls.

I'm expecting Mike will be getting up any minute now. He can sleep through a lot, but there are limits.

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Please ignore me. I am trying to play with the Google Webmaster tools.

I'm Dreaming of a Purse Christmas

It was a purse Christmas for Emily. She recieved 3 purses. One, is the Sesame Street Play Purse. The other two are more or less 'real' purses. One of them is pictured below.
Honestly, I didn't show her what to do with the purse. She seemed to figure it out on her own.

I have a feeling I'll be seeing this look for years to come. Maybe when she's 15? :)

We had a good Christmas. We got up at 8, thanks to someone who let us sleep, opened our presents to each other and then went to Mike's parent's house for Christmas with his parents, siblings and their spouses. We hung out there until about 4 and then went to Mike's Grandma's house to see his dad's side of the family. We left there around 7 and stopped by my parent's house to say hi. My aunt and uncle were here for Christmas, so it was good to get to see them again. Emily was pretty hopped up on sugar, she usually falls asleep in the car on the way home, but last night she entertained us with her singing all the way home. We didn't get her to bed until 9. That's very unusual, so she let us sleep until 8 again this morning. I could definitely get used to that. I hope that everyone had a good and restful Christmas.

I did it again

I had a post all planned out in my head and when I started this post, it was gone. GONE! I have absolutely no idea what I was going to write about.

So I think I will go kill my dog instead. He is sitting at the sliding door barking at nothing for the 85th time today. He is convinced that he sees something that we need protecting from, but in reality, there's nothing there. And it's raining today, so I don't want to let him outside to discover this fact for himself because then he'll eventually want to come in and I'll have to wipe his feet. And he has 4 feet. That's a lot of feet to be wiping 85 times a day. That's 340 individual feet wipes.

I might be a little tired. I tried to take a nap while Emily was sleeping and instead I wound up laying on the couch thinking about weird stuff. So I gave up and got up and ate crackers instead. And then Emily woke up, a mere hour and change after she went to sleep. After waking up at 6 am this morning.

Well, I have rambled on about nothing long enough. Ta-ta! And if I don't see you for a couple of days, have a Merry Christmas!

Kodak? They're dead to me!

I have been fighting with my digital camera for several weeks now. It suddenly decided that it didn't want to transfer my pictures from the camera to the computer. No matter what I did, it steadfastly refused to transfer. I sent an email to Kodak (I have an Easy Share camera) and never received a response. But I still have pictures I want to remove from my camera and put on my computer.

So today, I decided that the camera problem, it was going to be fixed. I called tech support and spoke with someone who said his name was Chris, through his somewhat thick Indian accent. We won't go there. Anyways, he took me through a ton of different troubleshooting steps, finishing with him sending me email instructions on how to uninstall and reinstall the Easyshare software.

I went through the process this afternoon, all 14 steps of it. Stupid (for a former tech support person) things like delete all my temporary files, temporary internet files and empty my recycle bin. Ookaay. And then after I got the program uninstalled (and it went veeerry sloooowly) and reinstalled (maybe slightly slower than uninstalling), it STILL didn't work. ARGH.

Just a few minutes ago, I was telling Mike, wonder husband of the year, about my tech support woes and how I was going to have to call Kodak back tomorrow and probably spend another hour on the phone with them, telling Emily fun things like "No, we're not going to play with Mommy's tummy right now" while on the phone and changing dirty diapers, when he suggested that I try to plug the camera in without the software installed.

What? I could use the camera without the irritating software?! Really?!

So I tried it. I uninstalled (again, with the slowness) the software, restarted and plugged my camera in.

And.....

It worked! And to prove that it works, below are the pictures that have been held hostage in my camera since Thanksgiving.

This is a shot of our loot, after we (my sister in the green, dad with the bald spot, Mike, and Emily (pictured) and me, my brother-in-law and mom) finished opening presents.

A before shot. Brother-in-law, Mike, is also visible in this shot.
A test picture taken early this morning.
A tantrum thrown before we went to get our Christmas tree. We were expecting to have to go tromping through the woods to get it, so we dressed Emily up like an Eskimo, unlike last year, when she was 4 months old and we.... didn't.
Still more of the tantrum. Mike and I were laughing. It was pretty funny. She didn't want to um, walk? I think? to the car.
I took a bunch of pictures of Emily's play kitchen to show Grandma and Grandpa. This is the Sunday after Thanksgiving. Mike and I stayed up late the night before putting it together. The first of many nights surrounded by annoying bits of plastic and unreadable directions, I'm sure.

Sorry, I didn't realize this one was sideways. Just think of it as a neck exercise. :)

Mmmm. Emily is a good cook!
Mike brought this box home from work and made it into a house for Emily. It's from a printer that comes with its own ramp on its own pallet. He bought 3, so we have another whole box in the garage for when this one eventually dies.
Emily did this pose all by herself! No prompting by Mommy, I swear!

A test shot taken by me at the request of the tech support dude today.
Ditto.

See? Aren't you glad my camera works again? I sure am. I just have to test the printer part and then I should be good to go.

Two Nap or Not Two Nap

Emily has been working on giving up one of her naps for the past several weeks. She went back to two naps a day for a while when we were fighting with a fever virus/tooth thing, but now she's pretty solidly taking just one nap a day. I've tried to convince her that she really does want to lay down in the mid-afternoon, but she's pretty adamant that she doesn't need or want to. So I guess I have to give it up. My girl only takes one nap a day.

I hate it. I want my two nap per day girl back. I could get things done, I could take a nap on the couch (which would be especially nice now that I am pregnant and exhausted all. the. time.), I could sit and read my book, I could work uninterrupted ... I had some freedom.

Except that I had a hard time leaving the house because our outing invariably interfered with nap time somehow. Either we would miss one of the naps, or have to rush home so she could take her nap. The time between naps was always too short to get everything done.

I miss that second nap. I know that I dodged this bullet for longer than I should have. My girlfriend, whose daughter is a day older than Emily, has lived without the second nap since the girls turned 1 in August. I got an extra 3, almost 4, months of blissful quiet twice a day.

I know that gradually giving up one nap is a phase we all go through, and eventually she'll give up this nap, too. However, I am kind of enjoying the flexibility its giving me. I can go out in the morning! Before her nap! Or I can go out in the afternoon! After the nap! And Waterbabies! Won't be such a hassle this year, because it won't interefere with her nap! Yippee!!

5 Christmas Songs

I got tagged by Julie to list my 5 favorite holiday songs.

Now that I am sitting down to do this, of course, I can't think of any of my favorite songs. Ok let me think....

1. Carol of the Bells, specifically the version done by George Winston on December. Gorgeous! I could listen to that album over and over again. And do. Usually at hearing-damaging volume. Coming in at a close second would be the version of Carol of the Bells done by Metallica and the Trans Siberian Orchestra. Again with the hearing-damaging.
2. Green Christmas by Barenaked Ladies from Barenaked for the Holidays. It has a scrooge/grinch slant to it that just cracks me up.
3. Marshmallow World. I have no idea who this is by, but one of the local stations plays it every year as part of their all Christmas music fest that starts in October.
4. Joy To the World. Really any version. I had to do one non-secular song.
5. Sleigh Ride. The instrumental version done by ... I don't know, but the specific one I am thinking of has a section where the orchestra goes from straight to swing for a chorus, then back to straight. I just love that. Non-music-type people (Mike) may not know what I am talking about but it is seriously cool. And I just outed myself as a total music geek. Oh well.

Ok, now for tagging others. Um... Jess and Katie. And any others who might feel so inclined.

This always happens to me!

I came up with the perfect name for my last post about Emily's visit to Santa. But, did I think of it in time to use it with the post? Nooooo. Of course not.

That always happens to me. I come up with the perfect comeback, wise crack, counterpoint to an argument or whatever at least 10 minutes after the conversation takes place. And then I stew about it. Because it is really annoying! What is wrong with me that I can't come up with that stuff when it's relevant?

Anyways, in case you were wondering, the alternate title to the post about Emily's visit to Santa is Bad Santa. See? Hmph.

Santa Claus

Yesterday I met my mom and dad at the mall and while we were there, we decided to take Emily to see Santa.

There were a couple people in front of us in line, but the wait wasn't too bad. Emily was waving to the little kids in front of her and generally being her regular adorable self.

Finally, it was our turn. I took Emily out of her stroller, and set her on Santa's lap. And she started SCREAMING! Like someone had just poked her with a sharp stick. I quickly picked her back up and calmed her down. While I was doing that, Santa asked (wisely) if I wanted to be in the picture with Emily. I said I guess I'm going to have to. So I sat down next to Santa and tried to put Emily on my lap, closest to Santa.

And the screaming started again. Seriously, it was like Santa had an electric current running through him. If any part of him was touching Emily, she was SCREAMING her head off. So here is the result from our fun-filled visit with Santa.


Doesn't it look like Emily is having the time of her life? It's almost like she's saying, "This is not funny. I am NOT smiling for this." And it's not for lack of trying on our part to get her to smile - my parents were making faces, the picture people were shaking bells and stuffed animals. Nothing doing.

Well, maybe next year.

Ultrasound Picture

I had my ultrasound yesterday and the baby is almost exactly where we thought it should be. Just about 9 or 10 weeks old. Here is the picture of our peanut.
We could see in another shot where the umbilical cord attached to my uterus and the yolk sack. All very cool. And, I'm sure, all signs of genius, just like its big sister. Though I may not have mentioned it here, Emily is going to be a doctor-lawyer-supermodel-poet laureat. She's that brilliant. And gorgeous. :)


I have a birthday party to go to this evening and I'm a little concerned. I had to go to bed last night halfway through Standoff (I love me some Ron Livingston) because I was so tired. That's at 8:30, people! I know I have a good excuse and all, but 8:30 is a little ridiculous. Fortunately, it looks like I didn't miss a new episode of House. I was very concerned about that. Oh for the 2nd trimester 'energy spurt'.

Warning: Pregnant Whining Ahead

I. am. so. tired. I have been in bed before 9 the past 5 nights, except Friday night, when I stayed up late. Until 10. I know, you guys are so impressed with me.

And not only am I incredibly tired (and by the way, all those days with the early bedtimes? Also had a nap during the day.) I am also still fighting with the morning sickness. I thought it was getting better until I threw up while eating pasta. Plain buttered pasta. Yet another thing to scratch off my allowed foods list. Dammit.

I have been checking people's blogs, but haven't had the energy to leave comments. Except for at Miss Doxie's, where one of her dogs just passed away. Other than that, sorry, just not enough energy.

I'm going to go lay on the couch and supervise my daughter through half-closed eyes.

Updates

I went to the OB yesterday for my first prenatal visit. According to the nurse practitioner I saw, I am about 8.5 weeks pregnant. (Americanbaby.com says 9 almost 10, but whatever). She did not attempt to listen for a heartbeat with the doppler because it's too soon. She did, however, schedule me for an ultrasound.

WOO-HOO!

I get to have the ultrasound because I expressed my desire to "skip all that natural birth crap and go straight to a scheduled c-section." (Emily was an emergency c-section, her heart rate dropped into the 80s and 5 minutes later she was born. Or so it seemed. Turns out the cord was around her neck and when my water broke and she dropped, the cord started choking her. I labored for something like 12 hours before all that excitement happened and I don't think I want to do it again.) The ultrasound will determine the exact age of the baby so that when we schedule the c-section, we are certain we're not taking the baby out too early. But! Ultrasound! Before 20 weeks! YIPPEE!! (I was always so jealous of those people who got to have extra ultrasounds because they sneezed funny or whatever. With Emily, I only got the one at 20 weeks and then another of a very squashed baby at 40+ weeks. And? That last one? The doctor scared the bejeesus out of me when she said baby was going to be "not small". As in 9+ pounds. !!! She was only 8 pounds, but STILL. So glad I didn't have to do that vaginally.)

Ok. Enough with the tangents.

I am now in the process of thinking about what birth date I would like for my child to have. And that seems almost as strange to me as saying "I would like a blue-eyed, red-headed boy, please." Which doesn't happen yet, but definitely could. (And for the record, I don't care what kind of baby we have. Boy? Sure. Girl? Sure, we have all the clothes already. Mike is determined that this baby is a boy. Every morning, he rubs my tummy and says "Good Morning, my son." To which I reply "Or daughter." He says he put in his request and it will be honored. Someone is forgetting his biology.)

So, for birthdates I am thinking either 7.7.07 (which? So cool! and easy to remember!) or 7.11.07. That would keep the pattern going. Emily is 8.11 and I am 9.11, so we'd have a July 11, August 11, and September 11. Of course, this will all have to be vetted by my doctor and will depend on when she's actually available to do the cutting, but hopefully she'll be able to work with me a little. And she is the world's coolest doctor, so I'm hopeful. She wanted me to name Emily 'Joan' after her. And now she's after me to name the next one 'Joan', even if it's a boy. I'm thinking no.

What do you guys think? Any and all votes will be considered (except any dates after 7.14.07).
We also went and had Emily's pictures taken yesterday. They came out very cute. We brought along a wooden rocking horse made for my by my dad that Emily just loves and got some neat pictures of Emily standing by it. (It was too high to have her sit on it on the table and made me nervous just thinking about it). We also brought her Christmas outfit and got some cute pictures of her in front of a Christmas background. I even picked out Christmas cards. Woo-hoo! Of course, they won't come in until 12/21, so they will be post-Christmas cards, but whatever. I haven't done Christmas cards since 2000.

Today I have an appointment at the dermatologist. I have had an especially persistent case of acne on my chin for the past, like, 3 years and I am getting very tired of looking like I am 13. (and actually I managed to get through my teens without too much in the way of acne. So maybe I'm paying for that now). I'm hoping that he can give me something that will play nicely with the fetus inside me. My GP suggested I go on tetracycline this summer, but I wasn't crazy about that idea. Especially because I was something like 6 weeks late at that point and had had one inconclusive pregnancy test. (Ultimately it was determined that I wasn't pregnant, but I think I was and miscarried. My cool dr agrees.)

I will post pictures of the ultrasound (Tuesday. 10 am. Mike's still undecided as to whether he'll be joining me. Hopefully he will. I keep having these nightmares where they discover that there's more than one in there. *shudder*) when I get them.

Gotta go get ready to go to the doctor. Bye!

Misc.

I have been trying not to go to the grocery store for a couple of weeks now, so that we can use up all the dregs of the stuff we already have.

However, my morning sickness has not really been all that conducive to me eating whatever I can slap together from the 85 jars of canned tomatoes, a couple of pounds of ground beef and some veggies that we still have in the house. So I started thinking about what foods didn't make me want to hurl or actually sounded good.

This is what I came up with:

• Mint chocolate chip ice cream
• lenders bagels (I have some others right now and they are too puffy)
• sour cream (to go with the potato chips I already have)
• carnation instant breakfast. I think I should be able to chug one of those before my body figures out I'm feeding it. Hopefully.
  
• pasta & sauce. Pasta for me to eat with butter and salt. mmmm. Sauce for Mike so he's not being subjected to the prisoner diet I seem to be on.
• Cereal (does NOT sound good to me, but Mike is nearly out and I feel bad going to the store to get food and not getting him some.)
• grapes. My girlfriend at church told me she was able to eat grapes during the worst of her morning sickness, so I'm going to get some to try. We'll see.
  
• Bananas. Emily is, well, bananas for bananas.
  
• Apples. Mike takes one every day for lunch and the batch I bought a while ago are icky.
  

So that is what I will be buying at the store when Emily wakes up from her nap.

Also, I just made myself some minute rice and for the second time, it didn't come out right. It still had a bunch of water sitting in the bottom of the pot (after I let it sit for 7 minutes instead of the recommended 5). How is it that I can't make rice?! And minute rice at that! That's like a step up from not being able to boil water! I feel like the kitchen village idiot.

In the running for Mother of the Year

Just a few minutes ago, Emily fell off the couch. She whacked her head on the coffee table pretty hard and of course, screaming ensued.

As I am comforting her, all I can think of is that she has an appointment for her Christmas portrait two days and hope that the mark isn't somewhere terribly conspicuous.

Yep. That's me. Not worried about the possible head injury my child just sustained. Nope. Worried that she might have an unsightly bruise for her Christmas picture. An appointment we have changed no less than 4 times already. And certainly could change again.

She seems to be ok so far and the bruise isn't all that conspicuous (Thanks, God!). It is hidden under her bangs, so as long as we do some careful combing, no one should be any the wiser. I'm going to go get her some Motrin because I am sure she has one heck of a headache. And then I'm going to move the coffee table away from the couch just a smidge.

woo-hoo!

Red

Up until about five years ago, I had a fairly noticeable red streak in my hair. It was bright enough that people would comment on it -- even hairdressers would accuse me of dying it like that on purpose.

"Totally natural," I'd reply proudly, enjoying their surprise and compliments about how cool it was.

Part of me knew that it wouldn't be red forever.

Like the red streak, little if any of my life stayed the same. On most days, I wonder if people who knew me as an acquaintance or so-called-friend back 5-10 years ago would even recognize me. On other days, I'm not even sure if I recognize myself.

I think about the changes that come about when a woman becomes a mother, and I imagine that at some level, we all become different people. However, I wonder if I have become the person I'm supposed to be, or if I just lost the person that I was and took on a new persona.

I don't consider myself stuck in the past, although when you've got a toddler strapped to your leg and another one on the way, it's easy to reminisce about late nights out dancing at clubs, whooping it up at various concerts, and spending way too much time trying to figure out what to wear – you know, when times were easier, feelings were lighter, and my biggest worry was whether my dog had pooped on the floor while I was away at work.

When people see my streak now, all they see is white. It turned that way about five years ago. And there's no shortage of people who say something lovely like "Oh wow, you are really going gray!" or "Did you know you have a lot of white hairs?"

Up until recently, I'd be trying to dye it back every now and then, or I'd comment "You know, it used to be bright red…" I'd go on about how cool it was. How original and unique.

I sometimes wonder if motherhood has taken away all my color. If I'm doomed to remind people about how I was "way back then." Or is it that white is my new color – that motherhood has allowed me (or is forcing me) to paint a new picture of who I am and who I will be.

This new year I'll remember my red streak fondly and attempt to start embracing the white one. Not for what it was, but for what it is. The new me – still the same, but with new colors.

Kristen is mother to a toddler and one on the way. She blogs more than she sleeps at Motherhood Uncensored (where you'll find Erin today), The Mom Trap, and Cool Mom Picks.