It's picture day at Anna's school

I swear she left the house with a bow in her hair. Halfway through the ride, I heard "uh-oh?!" and she was handing me her bow. Since she has a cute new haircut, I tossed the bow back to the seat. No need. She's darling without it. But she did have a new shirt and nifty new pink Converse tennis. I hope she cooperated for her photos. There's way too much pressure on picture day! Last year it was easy since she was a slobbery, cute little rolly baby, and babies just look cute no matter what. I didn't even really have to dress her special. But now I think I'm the only mom this year who didn't put that bow in her hair!

At least she looked especially cute while her face was red through her screams while I left her this morning. Good times.

Happy Birthday, Valeo PT!

Paul's Physical Therapy Clinic has been in operation for one year now. He has kept it afloat with no extra debt, gratefully. He is breaking even. To survive the first year has been great. And in my opinion, fast. Most small businesses fail within the first 1-3 years so I take this as an achievement.

Still, our little girl needs more to eat than mac n' cheese and nilla wafers, so please send us your clients and your sore body parts. He is an EXCELLENT healer. Seriously. I am not just saying that. Call him up right now. 281-488-5877.

More screaming at drop-off today

All I could say to her teachers was, "sorry, sorry" as the other empathetic toddlers joined in unison. Even in her new pink shirt and pink matching cool converse shoes, it wasn't pretty. After a kiss, I fled quickly.

Thank you, DVR

In the chaos of yesterday I missed the season premier of Desparate Housewives. And I still haven't watched The Office or Ed yet. What did I do in the world pre-DVR?

That being said, I am still ignorant on this whole bank bailout issue. Again: no time for TV. And this is not something I want to DVR and enjoy later.

Skinny Bitch

With all of my degrees and Paul's combined, and all of the fad diets we've read about (and even tried), we think we know a thing or two about weightloss. But I had to read this book, called Skinny Bitch, since it was a top-seller and written by two airheads with no experience other than the fact that they are skinny bitches. I knew what I was in for when I bought the book but I thought at least it was good for a laugh.

And I laughed outloud as I read it last night. Mostly because it's humorous the names they call your fat, lazy butt as you read along. Those words are just funny to see in actual print, I think. TV has no more shock value to me, but to read it in a book, it cracks me up.

"Soda is Liquid Satan", and that includes diet soda. They go on to rant about the link between aspartame and formaldehyde, and how sugar and grain processing strips the nutrients right out of our food at the expense of saving a dollar and mass production. I am in the middle of reading why dairy is evil, but I fell asleep in the middle of it. I know dairy is evil, I have seen and heard all about it. Processing animals to eat is a horrible, scary thing to actually see, and definitely not cool for the poor animal going through the nightmare. If you saw it yourselves, too, you'd probably consider becoming a vegitarian, or a vegan.

But I need my meat, though not alot, and I'm not a personal hunter/gatherer. This is how our society has approved the processing of meat, whether we like it or not. I guess I could buy free-range, and all that. Maybe I'll make a more conscious effort to at least look into it?

As for dairy, yes, we are the only species to drink other species' milk. But that's what we do. In our household, we drink organic, no antibiotics, no pesticides, no hormones. If we are giong to consume such mass quantities of the crap, at least we should try to cut down on ingesting the amount of bad stuff that goes into it. It actually tastes better too.

I do try to make good choices in snacks for Anna that keeps her little digestive system in shape and her blood sugar levels even. Therefore, I'm a bit picky on juices and punch and stuff (translates: we don't give it to her), but I don't outlaw it in social situations. I think it's a matter of everything in moderation (except for mac N cheese, which seems to be a staple in her menu. Even for that we've switched to protein-enriched whole grain noodles).

But even before reading this book, we decided we'll be sending her to day care with better afternoon snacks, since their menu is centered around goldfish and cheerios and nilla wafers. I just feel like that stuff is ingested then burned within an hour so that she's left hungry and just out of sorts. At least that's what it feels like when I ingest that stuff.

When Paul doesn't work the hospital

Too tired to write yesterday! To sum it up, cool morning air, good Sunday morning family breakfast, 2 mile run as a family (with a happy toddler in the stroller), playing with new safari animals (toys), a local T-ball game, ice cream with a little friend, a delayed nap (we pushed her), a cranky wakening (she pushed back), a garage cleaning and toddler clothes shopping, dinner, bath, bedtime (8PM!), groceries, I got a bath, and a book.

This kind of hard play comes when Paul is home and not working at the hospital on weekends. Nonstop. My feet hurt.

We are tired parents

Did all of this really happen in one day?

The girls' naps only lasted a little over an hour each, when we were counting on the usual solid 2 hours at LEAST. But we think they set their little secret alarm clocks to get just the minimal rest they need before they could get up and play again.

So on to the truck washing in the beautiful weather. Not my truck. Paul's. I don't see the point in washing the outside of a truck. They were meant to get dirty so I'll never be washing mine. I wash the INSIDE since that's where I spend most of my time...right?








To sum it up, more playing (including a slide in the front yard), more snacks, diaper changes, and then AJS went home. Then we went to drop off the recycling, ate dinner at Cafe Express, and topped it off with a Toys R Us visit before Anna started rubbing her eyes at around 7:30. Singing They Might Be Giants all the way home, bath, and night night.

Paul and I are happy to be chilling out right now. Whew.

First Haircut

Today Anna had her first real haircut. We weren't looking for anything short, just out of her face. We took her to the local Cool Cuts. After a wait of about 20 minutes, she was up! They put her sitting in the haircut chair, which was actually a car. Ofcourse she loves to "Wide?Wide" so that was a win, right there. She got to watch Sesame Street while eating fruit snacks while Daddy and I encouraged her to stay sitting. She did great! The cut came out beautifully!!


AJS is visiting us today so she got to witness Anna's first haircut. She is one day younger than Anna. She and Anna had a busy morning. After sleeping in later, playtime at the Little Gym, the haircut, and then lots of play around the house, they are both napping now. They are fun to watch together!



BTW the football game last night was fun! She enjoyed the stroller ride, and once there danced to the band, and watched the cheerleaders and the mascott, which was a "Bird!Bird!Bird!" We had a nice walk home in the dark where she watched an airplane do touch-and-go's at Ellington Field. She also looked at the stars. The weather was great and the mosquitos were absent!

Bailing Out...

Another I found from SprogBlog: (click on italics below)

"This satiric E-mail currently making the rounds is genius. I wish I knew who originated it (I cannot take credit)...."

Flexible Age

The coolest thing so far at 18 months has been our most recent surprise at the fact that Anna is more flexible with our schedules, including the ability to stay up later, which means we can start to have somewhat of a social life again that also includes her. Plus she can be kinda fun. Last night Paul wanted to cut the grass at around 6pm. Usually, we'd wait till Anna goes to bed so we can spend time with her, and she'd go to bed by 7 or so and there'd be plenty of light left to cut the grass. The fun thing about last night's grass cutting (fun? What have I become?) is that Paul went ahead with the cutting at around 6:30 and we hung outside to watch/help till almost 7:30. Imagine that, getting stuff done AND hanging out with Anna. BONUS! In the last 12 months leading up to this event, this would have never worked: Anna would have been an eye-rubbing sleepy-head mess by 6:30 and I'd have had to stick with her bedtime schedule/routine. But last night, the weather was nice and cool and dry, the mosquitos were mostly dead or repelled, and Anna was wide awake, fed, and happy. So we just hung out with Paul while cutting the grass. She even wanted to ride in the stroller she saw in the garage so we rode around our yard and she loved it. Simple and fun. It may not mean much to the non-parents who read this, but it represents alot to me.

She used to HATE the stroller, with the exception of her first few months of life when a bumpy, grassy ride at near Shaken-baby-syndrome levels was one of the only 2 tricks that would work to quiet her.

So tonight I am going to try something new, if I can get over my anxiety about it. I am going to attempt to take her out in her stroller to watch the local high school football game in our neighborhood that Paul is covering tonight for as long as she'll care to be there.

Remember my momentum theory? I think it's the root of my anxiety about taking Anna out for stuff like this. Momentum being that for the past year of my life and hers, I have had so many restrictions placed on what we do and where we go and the timing of it all centered around Anna's need for an early bedtime, that now anything off-schedual is a little nerve-wracking for me.

It's so much easier to stay home to watch TV but it would be more fun to enjoy the awesome weather at a high school football game where spacedaddy is working.

Rational thought: Get a grip, you're the mom.

All NASA elevators should look like this

I mean, it's really fun working at NASA but Building 17 has this really cool elevator.







I mean, shouldn't all NASA elevators look like this?

OK, who left the cow on my keyboard?

Anna? How'd you get away from school and onsite?
I was only gone a second.

Day Care drop-offs

I know Anna likes her day care/school. She gets nothing but good reports and I can tell she's learning stuff. I've dropped in several times over the past 15 months and she's happily playing with others or involved in something like a book. I see no suspicious behavior at home that I could correlate with something fishy at her school. But as I figured, this week the drop-offs have been especially hard.

Paul used to do the drop-offs and I would get the pick-ups. Since she was always a clinger/crier from month 12 on, I figured he got the raw end of that deal (although there was a period of about 2 weeks where she would just chew me out the second I showed up to pick her up...HOW DARE YOU LEAVE ME ALL DAY?!). Anyway, this week has been the worst we've ever seen of her screaming just as we walk into the door.

She happily trots down the hallways leading up to her classroom, pointing at stuff and telling strangers HI! Then as we get to the door of her classroom, the hesitation sets in. I try to coax her in with fun stuff instead of hauling her screaming on my own. But no, the coaxing isn't working. Today I led her in by her hand and when we crossed the door threshold, I looked down and her little scalp was actually red. In looking closer at her face, she is already in the middle of one of those big, quiet inhales that signals that an ear-piercing scream is forthcoming on the exhale. Yep, there it went. Just enough to show me that there's no sign of the canine teeth erupting anytime soon.

Anyway, I picked her up and we all tried to distract her. All three teachers, and even her toddler buddies tried, but she wasn't interested. I had no choice but to pass her off to Miss P as about two of the other toddlers started their sympathy crying. "I am so sorry" was all I could say, over and over. One screaming toddler = two more screaming toddlers.

When I dress her in the morning, and decide whether I'm going to do her hair all cute, I wonder what would look best and obtain more sympathy from her teachers while she screams as I leave in the morning.

As I passed her off to Miss P, she said something about the fact that it's obvious she's an only child. She didn't say it in any derogatory way or anything, and I didn't take offense. I actually agreed. Does this mean that non-first borns don't pull this crap because their parents don't have time to dode on them and give in to every demand? I think this is true anyway from what I've heard of parents with more than one kid. Anna's not usually so clingy, but I don't know...there are other first-borns in Anna's class. Do they cry too? Or is it only MY child? I am jealous that the other parents can just walk their toddlers in, tell them bye-bye, and leave without the drama. Honestly, I don't think she does this because she is spoiled, really. I have seen spoiled, and from what I've seen, this ain't it. I think she does this because she is smart and she is very much a part of our little family at home. Anna has brains behind her eyes and she knows "what's going on" and has always preferred consistency. That has been lacking for her since she was moved into the Toddler rooms at age 12 months. It has just never been the same. So now here we are, post-Ike, new teachers, new friends, new classroom. So yeah, she's taking it a little harder.

There is plenty of stuff out there telling me all about what separation anxiety is, and how some are worse than others. Fortunately, I think Anna's on the middle of the spectrum since her cries stop shortly after I leave and she is fine the rest of the day. But, like the car seat screaming phase, I am surprised at the fact that this has lasted 6 months! Before Ike, some days she'd cry, and others she would be fine. Now, she SCREAMS. I guess it'll take about another week or 2 till she gets it under some level of control again.

Skeeter Killings

Apparently our homeowner's association agrees with my plan to destroy them all. We heard the big mosquito sprayer circling our neighborhood last night. Ah, the fresh inhalation of mass quantities of toxic bug killer.

Be gone!

Thanks, TJ

I am certain that TJ is responsible for getting our power back up. If I hadn't have moved whatever sparse cold groceries I had left over to her house, and if she hadn't gone through the trouble to set up MM's room for us to move in, and her neighbor hadn't set up the painfully cumbersome Pack N Play for Anna, I am sure we'd not have gotten power back tonight. On the other hand, it was fun hanging out with them again this evening. Sort of like family. It made me wonder why we don't do it more often, since they're just down the street! Life just takes over.

Back to my smug, comfy, powerful home now. Where I wish Paul would change the channel so I don't have to hear Bush blame "some" others for the current economic crisis. "The Market is not functioning properly..."

I must stop watching. Now. Let's watch Ghost Hunters instead, please?