beachin' babe

Yeah, it's a really stupid pun.

Anyway, we took a mini-vacation at the beginning of this week to the beach and had a great time. I was anxious, but it was definitely better than expected. The baby loved all the extra outdoors time and the extra attention from two parents. She did fine staying up past her bedtime for dinners out and she slept okay in the indispensible pac n play. I loved seeing her so happy all day long, and of course enjoying the beach myself and time with El Esposo (I think I'm changing his name back to LCD, by the way). Little A can be pretty fearless and loved the excitement of waves coming toward her and then jumping over them with daddy. In this case it was all fun and games until someone got a faceful of salt water.

Unfortunately most of the excitement happened before I went to get my camera, but here are a few shots to show we were really there.


Playin' frisbee, greased-up hair due to sunscreen (Little A is so over wearing anything on her head)


Baby's first whac-a-mole, or in this case whac-a-shark


Pool time

I do not love coming back from vacation

Happy baby turns cranky, sore throat that was supposed to just be a reaction to the sea air starts turning into an actual cold, pile of work that was so nicely "saved up" threatens to eat me, and solo caregiver switch turned back on. Harrumph.

I love vacation

A happy baby, a wonderful partner to help me with the happy baby 24/7, the beach, time to spare, and no work coming in (despite the free wi-fi). Oh yeah and episodes of our new obsession after the wee one is asleep. This is the life.

Style Obsessed

It's not really my norm, but now that I can finally wear all my old clothes (okay, except a couple that I chucked), and because I recently got some birthday money(!!!), I have been scouring the internet, SCOURING I tell you, for what clothes I should buy. I am especially obsessing over the cute dresses they have here, here, and here, and sometimes even here (NOT in my price range) and everywhere in-between. I am such a fashion victim (except that I can't pull the trigger). Still in nursing mode, I feel like I need a light at the end of the tunnel for when I can really wear dresses, you know, for more than a couple hours at a time. But, we don't have as much cash these days so I feel like I gotta pick ONE THING. Or two really cheap things. AND then I remember that I don't get opportunities to wear dresses that often anyway, so maybe I should be focusing my efforts on more casual attire. AND I can't afford to be too trendy, though I do want something a little bit special. AND it's gotta fit right or else this whole thing is pointless and I may as well keep shopping at Target clearance rack. AND, psst, even though I'm back to my old size I do have a cute *little gut* now, that shows when I wear tighter shirts, soooo yeah just a new wrinkle. What to do.

Seriously, I have filled up an online "shopping cart" like eight times recently and then chickened out. YIKES.

My child is officially a bully

At only eight months. She takes the other babies' toys. And she clawed one in the face today. It's odd, since both of us got picked on by bullies in childhood. Maybe it's karma. This is the part where we rule!

Mua ha ha.



But really, this could be a problem down the line. We'll have to wait and see.

Human Pandora Guessing Game

El Esposo and I invented this game. It's possible someone has played it before, but in our world, we invented it. Anyway, one person thinks of a band/musician and the other person tries to guess who it is. It's pretty much the most basic game format out there. Only there is a required format for guessing, wherein you ask "Are they more like X or Y?"

For example, say person A picked the band The Clash. And then person B asks "Are they more like Weezer or Kool and the Gang?" Person A would say Weezer. So person B now knows anything disco-y is out and they try and narrow down the brand of garage rock/punk by asking more "Are they more like X or Y" questions. I guess the object is to see how fast you can do it, but mostly it's just about the guessing and the judging where a band fits on the spectrum of music.

It's pretty fun and can be played anywhere at anytime. Even while a baby is screaming.

Oh the poetic symmetry

I'm sitting in my "office" checking some email while my daughter plays on the floor. (This only works for a few minutes, by the way, before she injures herself or gets upset at me.) I look over and find that she has happened upon my pile of labor books and is eating them. Yeah, that seems about right.

Mental Vertigo

My life is really good. It really is. I have been extremely lucky in love and I have a beautiful daughter, who sings along with me in the cutest way possible at eight months.

But I'm going to digress for a minute and say working with multiple personalities is a pain. And working with no version control irritates me more than almost anything. And right now I am the middle man between the technical expert and the management expert and no one can please two masters, so it stinks. Everyone is messing up the document and putting their 80 million cents in and sending it back to me every time supposedly better but looking like a mishmash of what-the-ever. Then I send back my pristine version after brokering with both and making executive decisions that I know will be overturned, playing the tortured writer, and it is a cycle of monstrosity. In the meantime, my poor baby has been constipated for two months and I'm worried she's going to develop a complex, both mental and physical, about it. Darn solid foods. Yes, internet, I said it.

Anyway--paycheck. And anyway--darling baby. My life is still very good.

p.s., ROAR

Oh yeah, happy eight months to the little monster:

indoors v. outdoors

Just uploaded some pics from my new camera phone which is supposed to have uniquely awesome high quality.

Here's indoors:
(Yes, she is already a musical genius)

And outdoors:
(We also hang her upside down and let her play with the hornet's nest in the front yard)

Indoors:
(Playing with diapers. Good one, eh? At least they're clean.)

Outdoors:
(Photogenic pair, no?)

Indoors, with some outdoor backlight:
(She likes it!)

Indoors with lots of outdoor light:
("Let...let me out" as sung by Billy Corgan OR "Won't you let me out of here?" as sung by Steven Malkmus as "Jenny")

So yeah. Not bad at all with natural light. Otherwise just looks like a regular camera phone. Anyway I am just happy to have a way to take pictures so I don't have to wait for El Esposo.

Reluctantly jumping on the bandwagon

My jerk/nice brother got me the first season of Lost for my birthday. It's sort of like when someone handed me a stack of Harry Potter books and said have at it. Except that I was unemployed and friendless in a new town when that happened, so I had nothing but time. Also I love Harry Potter (duh). Lost, on the other hand, makes me want to hurl. And then watch the next episode.

I'm already really perturbed by all the cliffhangers. It makes me angry the same way all the tear jerking scenes in the movie 2012 (a REAL winner) made me angry. Except with 2012 you really know what kind of movie you're going to get. Am I a reactionary? Yes. Am I going to put up with this crap? Yes I will be manipulated, but I am NOT GOING TO LIKE IT. There, maybe that will make JJ Abrams think twice the next time. I really don't know how all you people watched all those episodes new AND waited for the next season. Except back in 2004 my life was a lot more fly-by-the-seat-of-yer-pants than it is now and there was no time to obsess over such things. Anyway, cheers to you all for your determination.

And for the record, yes I like the show. Enough that I'm already mad that I know about one of the characters that is going to die.

Parenting like a middle child

This isn't really an epiphany. Just a thought I've had for the last five minutes and figured was interesting enough for a brief blog. I think birth order has equal parts LOTS and LITTLE to do with personality. At this moment I am thinking it does have some to do with how I parent a baby and I bet it will continue to influence how I parent a toddler, child, adolescent, etc.

As a middle child I don't believe that any one way is THE way. And I have no problem differentiating myself from my peers, well except when I get self conscious (wanting to be different but wanting approval--classic middle child). But in the end I figure I'll do whatever seems right based on little A's personality (and WHAT a personality it is). So on stuff like this:

Baby wearing v. sticking baby somewhere v. letting baby run wild
Cloth diapers v. disposable
On-demand feeding v. schedule
Early solids v. later solids
Jarred baby food v. make-your-own v. baby-led weaning (which means they feed themselves from the beginning, soft but not mushy stuff)
Cry-it-out v. No tears sleep solution
No TV v. festival of cartoons

(Yeah, I had no idea there were going to be so many decisions about what to do with a baby)

I am all over the map with a combination of absolutely everything. I'm sure more rigid parents would think I am inconsistent. The less rigid ones would say I am overanalyzing. My favorite ones would of course say as long as the child is healthy and happy, the rest is my business. I hope that is what I would say about anyone else.

Sometimes I think it's because I don't quite trust myself that I take a little from column A, B, and C, but then I always land somewhere and when I do it often feels oh so right. And so I give my baby a slice of peach to scarf down on her own while I am mixing the cereal I will feed her with a spoon (which she will grab approximately 18 zillion times during the feeding). Of course Little A has A LOT of input into this stuff as she is quite the willful little almost eight-month-old. In fact I think where I land is often where she wants me, the little devil, which makes sense as getting upstaged is also classic middle child.

Things that make you go hmmm....