Thursday, October 7, 2010
Announcement
Friday, October 1, 2010
Ships Passing in the Night
Yesterday
I got up at 7:15.
Virginia got up at 7:30.
She ate breakfast and took a bath.
James got up at 9:30, at which point I jumped in the shower.
As soon as I finished, Virginia and I headed off to story time.
Immediately after story time, we went to the airport to pick up our friend Vaneesa, who came home to spend the day with us.
We got home at 11:40 five minutes after James left for campus.
We ate a quick lunch, I put Virginia down for a nap, then went to take our other friends Alex and Brian to the airport.
On the way home, I stopped at the library and picked up West Side Story, which Vaneesa and I have been trying to watch for months. Really, I wanted to take a nap, but who has time for that? Instead, we watched the movie and I prepared my lesson for work.
Virginia woke up at 2:15.
The movie ended at 4:00.
Virginia and I then went to pick up our CSA box while Vaneesa took a nap on the couch. Lucky.
Vaneesa's ride home arrived as we got home, at 4:35.
James called about 4:40 to say he was on the way home, I didn't get to the phone fast enough to answer and he didn't answer when I called back.
James arrived home at 4:55 and took Virginia outside to play with bubbles.
In the thirty seconds that we were both inside, we realized that dinner would have to be frozen pizza; I didn't have time to make anything else.
I threw the pizza in the oven, quickly changed my clothes, ate some leftovers, and left for work at 5:15.
I was in a meeting from 5:30-6:30, tutoring from 6:30-8:00 and a meeting again from 8:00-8:40.
James called as I was walking out of work to see when I'd be home. Since we hadn't talked all day, we chatted on the phone while I drove home.
I parked in the alley and he walked out as I walked in. He was off to play basketball.
I went to bed around 10:30. He got home sometime after 11:00.
It's a good thing not every day is like this, or we might have to pass each other messages through Virginia.
I got up at 7:15.
Virginia got up at 7:30.
She ate breakfast and took a bath.
James got up at 9:30, at which point I jumped in the shower.
As soon as I finished, Virginia and I headed off to story time.
Immediately after story time, we went to the airport to pick up our friend Vaneesa, who came home to spend the day with us.
We got home at 11:40 five minutes after James left for campus.
We ate a quick lunch, I put Virginia down for a nap, then went to take our other friends Alex and Brian to the airport.
On the way home, I stopped at the library and picked up West Side Story, which Vaneesa and I have been trying to watch for months. Really, I wanted to take a nap, but who has time for that? Instead, we watched the movie and I prepared my lesson for work.
Virginia woke up at 2:15.
The movie ended at 4:00.
Virginia and I then went to pick up our CSA box while Vaneesa took a nap on the couch. Lucky.
Vaneesa's ride home arrived as we got home, at 4:35.
James called about 4:40 to say he was on the way home, I didn't get to the phone fast enough to answer and he didn't answer when I called back.
James arrived home at 4:55 and took Virginia outside to play with bubbles.
In the thirty seconds that we were both inside, we realized that dinner would have to be frozen pizza; I didn't have time to make anything else.
I threw the pizza in the oven, quickly changed my clothes, ate some leftovers, and left for work at 5:15.
I was in a meeting from 5:30-6:30, tutoring from 6:30-8:00 and a meeting again from 8:00-8:40.
James called as I was walking out of work to see when I'd be home. Since we hadn't talked all day, we chatted on the phone while I drove home.
I parked in the alley and he walked out as I walked in. He was off to play basketball.
I went to bed around 10:30. He got home sometime after 11:00.
It's a good thing not every day is like this, or we might have to pass each other messages through Virginia.
Thursday, September 23, 2010
Virginia Lately
It's hard to learn to use a spoon. Perhaps not as hard as eating yogurt with your fingers. But Scout tries both regularly, just to be sure.
Looking at herself in the mirror remains one of her favorite pastimes. She does not always have pants on her head for these sessions of self-adoration.
She loves bathing and reading. Now, thanks to the duckie tub, she gets a little of both.
She spends a good deal of her time hanging out with this adorable boy...
...and his adorable brother. They both walk, and with a good dosage of peer pressure, Scout will try it too.
She loves to push things around, her stroller here.
Usually, these days, she's pushing a little walker. It's given us both a lot of independence.She still loves playing in the dirt.
We recently took a little road trip out to our CSA farm and picked a LOT of basil. Scout thought it was great fun.And this is just a typical day at our house. Virginia makes her way into the bathroom whenever the door is open, trying to get someone to give her a bath, or let her participate in theirs.
When she does have to get dressed, she loves to put hats on. And her diaper is usually sticking out the back of her pants.She still loves to read.
Many happy hours are spent pulling books off the coffee table and reading them.She's getting better with the spoon (and still working on growing more teeth).
Another favorite pastime, staring out of this window.
She is occasionally distracted by the pile of toys next to her perch on the couch.Always the poser.
Sunday, September 5, 2010
Celebrating
I like the fall
The mist and all
I like the night owl’s lonely call
And wailing sound
Of wind around
I like the gray
November day
And dead, bare boughs that coldly sway
Against my pane
I like the rain
I like to sit
And laugh at it
And tend my cozy fire a bit
I like the fall
I didn't write this poem, Dixie Willson did. But a friend recently introduced me to it, and I love it. It was exactly what I needed to cheer me up on a miserable, hot August day. No, I am not a summer person. So now that things have turned cooler, I'm welcoming Autumn and the opportunity to enjoy more beautiful leaves (it's not that fallish yet; the trees are changing, but the picture above is from last year). Bring on the fall!!
The mist and all
Thursday, September 2, 2010
Healthy Observations
This summer, for various reasons, I've been trying to be more healthy. First, my good friend Bethany invited me to participate in a competition with weekly challenges to improve our health. Second, the size of our garden plot quadrupled this year, so we had a lot more vegetables to eat. And third, back in the pre-Spring when we hadn't eaten anything fresh in months, fresh veggies sounded like something we couldn't get enough of. So, because our fabulously "progressive" health insurance gives us up to $200 toward buying a CSA share, we opted to split a weekly produce share with some friends. Thus, for the past few months, veggies have been making their way into our house like summer will never come again. And we've been eating, and storing, them as quickly as we can.
Although The Great Produce Plethora of 2010 will continue for another month or two, the healthiness challenge is ending tomorrow. So, I thought I'd share some of the things I've learned.
1. I don't love bread nearly as much as I thought I did. I still like it, but I don't need it.
2. I do love chocolate every bit as much as I thought I did. Possibly more.
3. Most cookbooks use vegetables as minor ingredients but aren't great at recipes that give you the vegetable as part of a somewhat nutritious side dish where you really get to enjoy the flavor of the vegetable. However, if you can find them, the cookbooks that do this are great.
4. Lettuce goes out of season. Who knew? In the middle of summer when it's really hot, it's too hot for lettuce. Of course you can still buy it in the store, but then you can buy tomatoes in January too.
5. All Bran tastes like cardboard. Cliche, but true.
6. Flax seed tastes worse.
7. All Bran and flax seed make excellent ingredients in delicious breakfast bread products that completely disguise their otherwise undesirable flavors. I do love whole grains, but it seems I enjoy them more collectively than individually.
8. 64oz. of water isn't that much. You can even drink it on a Sunday night after you finish fasting. Have a bathroom handy.
9. 96 oz. of water is a lot to drink in a day and takes concerted effort. Not to be attempted on a day when you have to fly somewhere.
10. Strength training is not that bad. I don't know why I always avoided it before, but I actually enjoy it in some forms. I will no longer neglect this aspect of exercise.
11. If you don't do any abdominal workouts for two weeks, no matter how great your abs were before, your abs are pretty much going to be gone at the end of those two weeks. And when you resume the ab workouts, you will be sore.
12. It's a lot harder to keep my healthy habits in line when I haven't had enough sleep. It takes energy to talk myself into making healthy decisions.
13. I can get almost as much pleasure from thinking about the food I want as I get from actually eating it. Okay, I already knew this one. But it's a great little trick.
14. The second (or tenth) bite of ice cream doesn't taste any better than the first. It's important to take time to enjoy it, and when you've had enough, save some to enjoy another day.
15. The difference between runners (them) and joggers (me) is that they pass me.
16. It's a lot easier to run three miles at the beach than in Phoenix (elevation friends, elevation).
17. There are a lot of things you can do with vegetables that put their nutritional value in question. But fennel really is a lot yummier if you braise it in butter.
18. Yoga is addicting.
19. No matter what the scale says, having a baby has permanently altered my shape. We suspected this to be true and it has been confirmed. Or maybe being old altered my body? After all, the pre-baby clothes fit just fine, but the pre-law school clothes, less so.
20. You can freeze tomatoes. Just wash them and freeze them. The little ones turn out like marbles and the big ones are like billiard balls. It's actually kind of cool.
21. As it turns out, you can have too many fresh vegetables, but that doesn't mean we won't do exactly the same thing next summer. Because which ones would we want to do without?
Although The Great Produce Plethora of 2010 will continue for another month or two, the healthiness challenge is ending tomorrow. So, I thought I'd share some of the things I've learned.
1. I don't love bread nearly as much as I thought I did. I still like it, but I don't need it.
2. I do love chocolate every bit as much as I thought I did. Possibly more.
3. Most cookbooks use vegetables as minor ingredients but aren't great at recipes that give you the vegetable as part of a somewhat nutritious side dish where you really get to enjoy the flavor of the vegetable. However, if you can find them, the cookbooks that do this are great.
4. Lettuce goes out of season. Who knew? In the middle of summer when it's really hot, it's too hot for lettuce. Of course you can still buy it in the store, but then you can buy tomatoes in January too.
5. All Bran tastes like cardboard. Cliche, but true.
6. Flax seed tastes worse.
7. All Bran and flax seed make excellent ingredients in delicious breakfast bread products that completely disguise their otherwise undesirable flavors. I do love whole grains, but it seems I enjoy them more collectively than individually.
8. 64oz. of water isn't that much. You can even drink it on a Sunday night after you finish fasting. Have a bathroom handy.
9. 96 oz. of water is a lot to drink in a day and takes concerted effort. Not to be attempted on a day when you have to fly somewhere.
10. Strength training is not that bad. I don't know why I always avoided it before, but I actually enjoy it in some forms. I will no longer neglect this aspect of exercise.
11. If you don't do any abdominal workouts for two weeks, no matter how great your abs were before, your abs are pretty much going to be gone at the end of those two weeks. And when you resume the ab workouts, you will be sore.
12. It's a lot harder to keep my healthy habits in line when I haven't had enough sleep. It takes energy to talk myself into making healthy decisions.
13. I can get almost as much pleasure from thinking about the food I want as I get from actually eating it. Okay, I already knew this one. But it's a great little trick.
14. The second (or tenth) bite of ice cream doesn't taste any better than the first. It's important to take time to enjoy it, and when you've had enough, save some to enjoy another day.
15. The difference between runners (them) and joggers (me) is that they pass me.
16. It's a lot easier to run three miles at the beach than in Phoenix (elevation friends, elevation).
17. There are a lot of things you can do with vegetables that put their nutritional value in question. But fennel really is a lot yummier if you braise it in butter.
18. Yoga is addicting.
19. No matter what the scale says, having a baby has permanently altered my shape. We suspected this to be true and it has been confirmed. Or maybe being old altered my body? After all, the pre-baby clothes fit just fine, but the pre-law school clothes, less so.
20. You can freeze tomatoes. Just wash them and freeze them. The little ones turn out like marbles and the big ones are like billiard balls. It's actually kind of cool.
21. As it turns out, you can have too many fresh vegetables, but that doesn't mean we won't do exactly the same thing next summer. Because which ones would we want to do without?
Tuesday, July 6, 2010
Things that make you go, huh?
At a certain parking garage in Madison, there is an elevator* for people with wheelchairs, strollers and other stair-prohibitive situations to get to ground level. It's great to be so handicap accessible, right?
EXCEPT they've hidden the elevator behind this extremely heavy metal door. Sure, there's a nice handicap-friendly handle on the door, but the door still weighs about fifty pounds and closes rather abrubtly the second you stop pushing on it. I have enough trouble with my able body and my stroller. I cannot imagine an eighty-year-old wheelchair-bound grandma holding that door open for herself while she wheels through to the elevator, even if her wheelchair is battery powered. So yes, this elevator is completely accessible to all disabled people who are also body builders. Everyone else will just have to take the stairs.
*I should say that this particular elevator is well worth the effort, if you can get to it. It has glass walls so you can look out on the city as you go up and down. Scout loves the windows, and I love admiring the courthouse that looks more like an acquarium-casino hybrid that anything government related. It's a lovely view.
Thursday, July 1, 2010
Warning! Proud Mommy Post
The past several weeks have been full of excitement for Scout. She has acquired a lot of new skills and had some new experiences.
No luck, it was still in fine shape. Of course, that was only until James wore it to a conference the next day, with an uncapped pen in his pocket. So the new shirt gift idea was a go after all.
Virginia got to swing for the first time. Overall, she liked it.
mostly me
She has started eating things that are bigger than bite size.
We are still working on not shoving an entire pancake into your mouth at the same time.
This picture is here because I think it's cute.
And this is the last pointless picture with no justifiably relevant caption. But look at that smile!
And actually, if you look closely enough at the smile, you can see the new top tooth sticking out, so there is a point after all.
She has started crawling, at last!!
This is what we call the "army crawl" or "leopard crawl," depending on who you ask.
Some say it's just "scooting," but we pretty much ignore them. Deliberate forward motion is good enough to be crawling in my book!
Life is full of simple joys.
With it being Father's Day, Virginia had to decide what to get for her Dad. She inspected this shirt thoroughly to see whether it required replacement.
No luck, it was still in fine shape. Of course, that was only until James wore it to a conference the next day, with an uncapped pen in his pocket. So the new shirt gift idea was a go after all.Virginia got to swing for the first time. Overall, she liked it.
She is now pulling herself up on things.
mostly me
She has started eating things that are bigger than bite size.
We are still working on not shoving an entire pancake into your mouth at the same time.
This picture is here because I think it's cute.
And this is the last pointless picture with no justifiably relevant caption. But look at that smile!
And actually, if you look closely enough at the smile, you can see the new top tooth sticking out, so there is a point after all.She has started crawling, at last!!
This is what we call the "army crawl" or "leopard crawl," depending on who you ask.
Some say it's just "scooting," but we pretty much ignore them. Deliberate forward motion is good enough to be crawling in my book!And just because we were on the scooting/crawling border, she is now doing a full, up-on-all-fours crawl.
Life is full of simple joys.Sunday, June 27, 2010
Thoughts on Constant Parenting
This afternoon I had to take a little trip to the bathroom. I even took a book with me, silly me! I left the door a little ajar because I had a feeling Virginia would want to come be near me, as is often the case. As predicted, she promptly showed up, proudly pushing the door open and crawling right on in.
Scout is currently fascinated by doors. She loves to push them open and closed. So, she busied herself with the usual swinging back and forth of the bathroom door. Then she got a little excited and swung the door right into her face, whacking herself in the mouth right where her new teeth are emerging. Needless to say, drama ensued.
There was screaming, there were tears. I coached her to crawl over close enough that I could pick her up and put her on my lap for a few minutes to give her some comfort. She told me all about how awful it had been and how that mean door whacked her right in the face. I tried to be as sympathetic as possible.
Finally, she calmed down and began spinning the toilet paper on its holder. I could see that it would all be on the floor shortly if she didn't find other entertainment. So, I pulled a few soap samples from the basket on the back to the toilet, showed her how nicely they rattle, and put her and them back on the floor to play while I finished my business.
At this point, I started thinking about a friend who was recently asked whether becoming a parent isn't really a selfish decision. And I'd been philosophically pondering this question for several days. But now, with my daughter trying to pull her soap from the edge of the bathtub, I just had to laugh. Anyone who thinks parenting is selfish has no idea what parenting is all about. Whatever it started out as, it very quickly becomes a major commitment and a lifelong lesson in service unlike any other.
There are a lot of jobs that are very demanding. But most of them don't follow you into the bathroom. Even if a crisis happens while you're in there, it usually just has to wait a minute or two until your personal business is taken care of. Parenting is its own special kind of work with no bathroom breaks, no sick days and very little shift work.
Scout is currently fascinated by doors. She loves to push them open and closed. So, she busied herself with the usual swinging back and forth of the bathroom door. Then she got a little excited and swung the door right into her face, whacking herself in the mouth right where her new teeth are emerging. Needless to say, drama ensued.
There was screaming, there were tears. I coached her to crawl over close enough that I could pick her up and put her on my lap for a few minutes to give her some comfort. She told me all about how awful it had been and how that mean door whacked her right in the face. I tried to be as sympathetic as possible.
Finally, she calmed down and began spinning the toilet paper on its holder. I could see that it would all be on the floor shortly if she didn't find other entertainment. So, I pulled a few soap samples from the basket on the back to the toilet, showed her how nicely they rattle, and put her and them back on the floor to play while I finished my business.
At this point, I started thinking about a friend who was recently asked whether becoming a parent isn't really a selfish decision. And I'd been philosophically pondering this question for several days. But now, with my daughter trying to pull her soap from the edge of the bathtub, I just had to laugh. Anyone who thinks parenting is selfish has no idea what parenting is all about. Whatever it started out as, it very quickly becomes a major commitment and a lifelong lesson in service unlike any other.
There are a lot of jobs that are very demanding. But most of them don't follow you into the bathroom. Even if a crisis happens while you're in there, it usually just has to wait a minute or two until your personal business is taken care of. Parenting is its own special kind of work with no bathroom breaks, no sick days and very little shift work.
How Scout Plays Peek-a-Boo
This is hiding
Notice how the corners of the cloth are pulled down?
And this is peeking
And this is peeking
Notice that the corners are now up.
After all, if she actually covered her eyes, she might miss seeing your wonder where she's gone, and that would be no fun.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)