Young Baby Young

It’s not like we needed more evidence that I am the funniest person ever.  We all know it, deep down, although not everyone has outwardly embraced this undeniable truth.  Emily has no trouble telling you that even when I sneeze, I’m hilarious.  This child is good for my ego.

Emily LOVES the doggies’ food bowls.  Whenever I set her down in the kitchen, she lunges, twists, squirms, and swims until she reaches one of their filthy bowls.  Then she lovingly picks it up, twists it around, gazes at it, and eventually puts it in her mouth.  I sigh audibly.

It’s been a while since I’ve uploaded any videos of Emily being, well, Emily.  Note her hair-do — we’ve wanted to have the antenna forever, but she just didn’t have enough hair.  Finally, finally, the coveted “sprout” is here! 

Here she is singing to her toys:

and being inquisitive, grabbing the camera out of my hands:

and trying to crawl, with a little help from Daddy:

It was five years ago today that my life took a major change – Chris and I had our first date after months of cautiously getting to know each other at the bank.  We went to Cleonice for lunch and Chris got down to business immediately.  He gave me the Reader’s Digest version of everything Chris like political views, religious beliefs, family background, work history, and future goals.  He finally came up for air and said, “How about you?”  I wasn’t nearly as well prepared.  Still, we determined we were compatible enough for at least one more date…and then another…and then another.  On our second date, Barry White was playing on the radio; I totally lost myself and started grooving in the car.  I suddenly remembered that Chris was in the car, too, and I was momentarily mortified…until I casually glanced at him out of the corner of my eye to find him encouraging my dance moves with some of his own.  Ahhh, I knew something good was in the air when that happened.

I was going to take this opportunity to detail all of the fabulous things about the man I’m lucky enough to call my husband, but somehow the day has gotten away from me.  I no longer have the energy to sit in front of the computer and wax poetic.  Case in point about his fabulousity: he will totally understand my tiredness and won’t be offended that I didn’t detail his wonderfulness. 

He is the best husband, and now the best father.  I couldn’t be luckier!

We’ve experienced our third bat in the house tonight.  Is this cause for alarm?  I’m really not superstitious, I swear, but I thought I’d look up what a bat in the house portends — it wasn’t good….

“Folklore in Canada attributes that if a bat lights (lands) in a house, a man in the family will die, however, if it flies around a woman’s death is foretold.”

Well.  Hmmph!  It’s a good thing were not from Canadia, eh?  We managed to follow this bat around the house while it flew erratically, trying to escape, and it eventually disappeared up the chimney.  I thought I had sealed that up pretty well a few winters ago to lessen the drafts, but obviously not well enough.  Anyone have some tips on how to rid yourself of excess bats?

The new garage is coming along nicely.  When the builder(s) is here, he does awesome work…it’s just that he’s always needed elsewhere.  Ehhh, I won’t bust on them too much — they really do do good work; I’m just not used to “contractor time.”  My brain can only comprehend regular business hours.  I can remember peeking out the window a few months ago to see David here at 6-something in the morning, cheerily moving dirt with the Kitty (the small CAT excavator).  Ugh!  What are you doing here?!  Response: There’s work to be done!  Alright, you guys work whatever hours you need to work; as long as the project gets done, we’ll attempt not to freak out.  Key word: attempt.

8/20/09

8/14/09

7/23/09

7/15/09

7/2/09

6/11/09

I’m tired of all of the dirt and sawdust, and extremely tired of Nathan barking hysterically every time Builder Bill shows up with his dog Max, but it’s a lot of fun to see things change before your eyes.  Bill said that this coming week, he hopes to put in the door from the garage to the porch

and the windows are on order.  He’s working on the staircase, then they’ll start framing in the second floor.  Now that we’ve replaced the missing page 3 of the plans, we’re all in agreement on minor details like that there’s a door from the garage to the house or that stairs to the second level are necessary (unless Chris plans to levitate to the second floor every time).  Minor details, really. 

It’s nice to go to the other side of the house and enjoy a chaos-free life.  The garden looks lovely.  It’s been hot and sunny, so I wanted to put Emily in a little swimming pool, but I didn’t want to buy one now (it’s late August, after all)…I just used her bathtub.  She enjoyed herself!

Before Kevin left, he said, “I’m sorry Emily didn’t learn anything new while we were here.”  Wrong, my friend!  She mastered the art of getting herself into a sitting position from lying down.  It took a lot of effort the first few times, but now she’s a pro.  She might reach for a toy and overextend herself, forcing herself into a prone position, and then she nonchalantly picks herself up again and sits like a big girl.  It was very alarming to see her sitting in crib when I had left her laying down a few minutes earlier!

Other new things: she hates to have her diaper changed.  She screams “you’re trying to kill me!” during the entire process.  I think she learned that from her friend Lucie.  It’s a very tragic cry, but she’s over the trauma just as soon as she has a fresh diaper on.

Her two teeth are quite magnificent.  They’re awfully sharp — I can see why she spent a few months complaining about them.  They don’t look especially straight to me; I guess it’s never too soon to become tight with an orthodontist.

It’s possible that Emily is starting to slim out a little.  She’s getting taller and much more active, so in the coming months, she won’t be such a source of entertainment with her chubbiness.  I have to admit that this makes me sad.  I love all of her rolls (and the rolls on her rolls).

Emily is not quite crawling yet, but she’s so darn close!  She gets up on her hands and knees and then rocks back and forth.  While not technically crawling, she does manage to maneuver her way around a room pretty well.  I can’t articulate how she does it.  She’s beginning to yank on cords (the phone came crashing down yesterday) and try to pull herself up using furniture (note: the ironing board is not good for this).  The dogs are quite peeved with her because she keeps grabbing at them.  Natalie screams in terror when anything so much as grazes her (she’s our little drama queen), so you can just imagine the shrieks when Emily yanks on her ears.  Nathan’s tail has been tugged on a few times in recent days. 

Emily still isn’t eating “finger foods” especially well.  She enjoys rice cakes and frozen bagels, but the little things (like Cheerios) are still too hard for her to grasp and then feed herself.  So she pushes them around on her tray until they’re either stuck to her stickymitts or mistakenly fed to Nathan, who hovers nearby to Hoover things up before they even hit the ground.  For all of his bad traits, this is a particularly handy one.

Talking?  Not yet.  She babbles a bit and says things like, “Mamamama” or “Bababa”, but she’s not doing it discriminately.

Laughing?  Yes, indeed.  What a joyful sound!

Sleeping and napping?  Sometimes she’s great at it, and other times not so much.  When we have visitors, she doesn’t want to miss a trick, so her naps are like 35 minutes long.  Right now, she’s been down for over two and a half hours and I haven’t heard her stir yet.  She sleeps pretty well at night, although she did have a few weeks where she would wake up crying in the middle of the night.  At first I rushed in there to fix things, but then I realized that if I just ignored her for a few minutes, she’d put herself back to sleep.  Five minutes felt like forever, but I know this is a skill she must learn on her own.  The last few nights have been good: she goes to bed around 8pm and usually gets up around 6:15am.  Obviously, I’d prefer if she’d sleep until about 8am, but I have no say in the matter.  She manages to get her 14 to 16 hours of sleep in each day, as “they” say she ought to.

Clapping? oh, how Emily loves it when people clap.  She gets a huge grin on her face and flails her fat arms in a clapping fashion.  She claps for herself when you praise her.

Fears?  Emily has reached the age where out-of-sight means that you fail to exist anymore.  It’s sort of like Kenny dying in every episode of South Park.  Whenever I go around the corner out of sight, Emily’s world comes crashing down.  When I show up again, the angels sing and all is well.  Luckily, she’s still distractable: if Chris is home and playing with her, she’s only mildly displeased when I disappear.

Carrie and Dave and Laura and Kevin were here for the weekend.  What_a_blast!  Everyone needs to have friends who are as cool as mine.  People who are smart, funny, and easygoing.  People who empty your dishwasher when you leave the room.  People who feed your baby while you make dinner.  People who steal your camera and take timed photos of themselves after you’ve gone to bed.  (We’ll come back to that one….)

People who appreciate 20lbs of fresh lobster, corn, potato salad, and cole slaw.  People who rave about your smartness for having iced coffee ready to serve during this crazy heatwave.  People who couldn’t care less that the house is a construction zone and that the wallpaper never did get fully hung. 

These are people who play Pictionary, Hearts, and Scattergories, all with equal enthusiasm.  (…but not equal skill.  Now, one of us can’t deal cards correctly to save her soul, and another of us seems to make every Pictionary drawing x-rated; there’s one in the group who refused to do the Vulcan Mind Meld in order to sync up with his teammate in Pictionary, yet won anyway; one refused to concede that his entry of ”gravy” as “something sticky” was not point-worthy; an unnamed person was busy drawing a floor lamp in Pictionary while the rest drew a cigarette; a certain player of Hearts kept forgetting that the Queen of Spades is a bad card, so she ended up with it regularly; and a pair of college roommates were clearly cheating when one drew a triangle on top of a circle on top of a cylinder and the other guessed “Oscar the Grouch”.  One person shouted “suck it” every time she didn’t like how things were going, and that same person also put forth “Newt Gingrich” as a person/place/animal guess in Pictionary.  I’ll note that that same person thought “grace” was an appropriate entry for a state that began with G, and she might have been the one who had major qualms with “gravy” being “something sticky.”) 

My people are people who insist on wearing “team colors” when they go out, and who bring you matching Fuquay-Varina shirts (including a baby onesie) so that you, too, can wear matching clothes. 

My college friends and their men understand the importance of a good timed photo.  They’re willing to do it a few times if necessary to get “the right shot”.  They know that if you pose ridiculously, the picture looks funnier later, so it’s worth a moment’s foolishness to capture an excellent memory.  For example, we stopped on Sargent Drive and tried to get a good group photo.  Wouldn’t you know that a car drove through and left me stranded on the wrong side of the road, so the group took one where they all did some bizarre pose:

and then they patiently waited while I took at least two more pictures before I finally got the group photo we needed:

Teams Black, Navy, and Green did alright, don’t you think?

Timed photos are appropriate in pretty much any setting.  I suppose you could just ask someone else to take the picture, but where’s the fun in that?  It’s better to set the camera on some precarious surface, get it set just so, and then run to your spot just before the flash goes off.

Then you have to look at the picture instantly (thank goodness for digital cameras!) and pass it around to each person so that he/she can appreciate the stellarness of the photo.  It’s just how it is.

According to Carrie, candid photos can also be hilarious.  Like if you just grab the camera and push the button without warning anyone, you can get capture some good times:

My friends are the type of people who understand the importance of 1) buying creepy dog angel in the first place and 2) bringing it out for ridiculous photographs.  I present to you the following series of photographs to illustrate this point:

In that last photo, when Carrie proudly showed it to us, she dismissively noted, “And that’s all of you guys in the background there.” 

My people are the type that all totally agree that creepy dog angel has actually become cooler since losing one of his wings.  I told Chris that I was sending creepy dog angel to Carrie and Dave, which he thought was pretty funny, and I told him not to be surprised if we found it in some weird place after they left.  Would you like to guess what happened?  As I walked through the living room this morning, I noticed an object on the bookshelf was slighly askew.  As I walked closer to set it right, I found creepy dog angel tucked in there.  Obviousy, I had a good laugh.  They did not disappoint me.

It’s so nice to have guests who totally understand when you go to bed early but tell them to enjoy themselves as long as they want.  So they did.  They watched the meteor shower (great to do in a town without a lot of ambient light), they talked, they played games, and they took more photographs.  One night they were feeling especially punchy and giggly, so after they took the first few photographs of themselves on my camera — a special little sumfin sumfin for me to find after they left — they thought it would be funny if they took a posed picture in each room.  And they were right: it was hilarious. 

As I mentioned earlier, Laura and Kevin and Carrie and Dave are coming to visit this weekend.  I asked them last week if they had any dietary restrictions so I could plan my menu accordingly.  Laura’s response cracked me up:

Unfortunately, Kevin has developed several food allergies since I started cooking for him.  He can no longer eat burnt pot roast, soggy noodles, anything with vinegar, or kumquats.  He may be willing to try guava fruit since it’s been several months since his last episode.  I hope his allergies to water, oxygen, sunlight, and small children won’t cause too many problems.  Oh, and we’ll be bringing along the six children and minituare Clydsdales we just adopted.  They should all fit into the overhead compartment.

Amazingly, Chris has developed some of the same food allergies!  Most noticeably to Spinach Surprise…..

When I was going on a backpacking trip to Eastern Europe a few years back (five, to be exact), Carrie and Dave found the most ludicrous piece of kitsch and insisted that I take it with me and have it appear in most of the photographs.  I obeyed.  I was pleased to find Weird Dog Angel in the basement recently and figured it was time to send him back to Carrie and Dave — you know, to get their visit off to the right start.  They responded appropriately by sending me back a series of reenactment photos of them receiving the box, opening it, registering surprise — then delight — and then introducing the cats to Weird Dog Angel.  I was most pleased.

Our day officially begins when we hear Emily quietly “talking” to herself in her crib around 6:30am.  She plays with her toys, cooing at them, and kicks her little froggy feet.  We come into the bedroom and peer over the edge of the crib.  She looks totally surprised to see us; an instant later, she’s all smiles.  She puts out her fat little arms and squeezes her hands — her sign that she wants to be picked up.

There’s usually some nursing in bed after this (I’m trying to pretend that I’m still asleep, as if that will fool her) and then we head downstairs for family breakfast at the kitchen table.  Her “cereal” is rather different from mine, but it’s cereal nonetheless.

Around 9am, she’s ready for her first nap, which will last anywhere from one hour to two.  I rush around like a madwoman after she falls asleep, getting showered, doing laundry, tidying up, putting dishes away, etc.  There’s always plenty to do to fill the time.

After the morning nap, we’re ready for our first excursion.  This could be a walk in the stroller, a trip to the grocery store, a drive to Bangor, an outing to playgroup.  Today we went to a friend’s house to help him with some software issues.  (I suspect that I share some DNA with Bill Gates.)  His wife enjoys playing with Emily while we coax the computer into doing what we want.  Today, Emily was displeased with Audrey.  She cried quitely vocally in protest until Audrey showed her pictures in a catalog, which made her happy.  (Seven-month-old babies are fickle creatures.)  From the other room, I heard Audrey gasp in surprise as paper was loudly shredded, then she said to Emily, “My, you’re quite a little goat!”  Did she just call my daughter a goat?  That’s too funny.   

The rest of the afternoon was spent in Bangor, preparing for the arrival of my friends this weekend.  In one store, there was a young woman who was obviously pregnant.  A man walked up to her and asked the usual questions: When are you due? [November]  Do you know what you’re having? [A girl]  Is this your first?  [No, my second.  My daughter was born in December.]  I nearly gasped as I overheard this conversation!  Emily was born in December.  I can’t even begin to imagine being six months pregnant right now.  I was totally flummoxed. 

I finally started wallpapering the guest bedroom.  The new paper is fabulous (although I’m sure many will disagree.  There’s nothing conservative about it).  However, its matching paper, which I was going to use on the bottom half of the walls, looks terrible with it.  It looks like I have this lovely print above, then I got bored and painted the bottom half blue.  So we’ve decided to do the whole room in the bold print…but that means I have to strip down the wall I’ve done and redo it (since the bold print only goes halfway down right now).  Sigh.  It’ll be cool in the end.  It appears quite unlikely that I’ll have it all done before our guests arrive.  Again: sigh.