05.31.03

95128049

Posted in Uncategorized at 2:03 pm by Anne

Holy Balls I am 30 years old! I’ll be 40 when Lily is 10…eeek.

I have gotten so many nice well wishes, thanks to everyone for those. My parents-in-law called from DisneyWorld this morning and everyone sang to me through the cellphone. How obnoxious but sweet is that?! My sister called while I was snuggled next to Lily in the nursery for a few hours early this morning (Lily woke up at 5:45!goodbaby) and I missed her call. Luckily Babs had left me this really hilarious voicemail of her crooning in a filthy trampish way. She’s good at that.

Currently, Lily is sleeping in her crib, with just a diaper on. I’m telling you, as many cute outfits as she has, I think I love her the best in just a little diaper. It’s just so simple and good. I’ve got a few pans of devilsfood cake baking in the oven and will be filling them with a bittersweet ganache laced with raspberry preserves and then icing the whole thing with a chocolate glaze. Oops. Timer just went off. Here is a birthday lesson to you all. When the recipe calls for splitting it into 3 8-inch pans, don’t try to fit the batter into two. I just checked and the oven has a little mess forming. And the cakes are going to take a bit longer to bake. And I’m going to have to do some final shaping before applying the ganache and icing because no one likes burned dry cake pieces. hahaha,,,what a pain. The only reason I am not totally pissed off is because my girl Cecily sent me a box of Godiva truffles and I had just succumbed to their seductive pull moments before checking on the cakes. Divine, miraculous, chocolate goodness.

I’m thinking Shan’s grandparent’s will be taking us out to supper tonight, if the cake turns out, we’ll come back here for dessert. I mean, really, all that cake is too much for two people, or rather me. Shan’s not a big sweets fan. What a fruit loop.

I hear the little miss!

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05.30.03

95077310

Posted in Uncategorized at 7:32 am by Anne

I think that Lily must be picking up some irritating habits from Meg. The last two nights she has not slept through quite as long as normal. Last night she woke me up around midnight and then again at 5:30AM. At the 5AM-ish diaper changing leading up to feeding, after I blindly wrestled with the diaper wipes (There was nothing in the diaper I was removing but I still nearly always give her the wipe treatment) and fixed her up with a new diaper, I realized she must have peed all over herself inbetween diapers. Don’t ask me how her stomach and armpits got saturated but the little long-sleeved onesie was damp too. sigh. By the time she was cleaned and fed, I was wide awake. So I went in to the kitchen to make some coffee, french press Kona, and then back to the office to finish up some of yesterday’s samples.

Shan is sleeping. Lily is sleeping. And I have some solitude all to myself. yippeefriggindooo.

Happy Baby

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05.29.03

95051715

Posted in Uncategorized at 4:37 pm by Anne

I forgot to mention that I made the most fantabulous cheesecake I have ever eaten in my whole entire life, for Memorial Day. I found the recipe in a free issue of Cook’s Illustrated I had and I’m not even a big cheesecake fan. This one was a lemon cheesesake with a lovely lemon-curd topping. To die for. The most interesting part of the recipe was that the crust was not made from the traditional graham cracker crumbs. Instead, it utilized nabisco animal cracker crumbs. I tell you what, it was awesome. I will never go back to graham crackers again. The crappy thing is even though I have the magazine, the only way to get the online recipe is to pay them money. I think that is totally lame.

Lily and I went to Central Market today for a few groceries. I picked up a pound of sockeye salmon and some marinade and we are going to town tonight. If you aren’t familiar with sockeye salmon, let me assure you that it is one of the best tasting available. It’s a lot redder colored than regular atlantic salmon and a liot milder in flavor. The texture is to die for. Here is some info on it.

Menu:
grilled salmon
corn on the cob
green salad with maytag bleu cheese crumbles
sour dough baguette
yellow squash and onions (both from the garden)

I also bought a lovely eclair from the bakery. I haven’t decided yet if I will be sharing it with Shan. It all depends on him.

Am I being repetitive by saying that I am learning that when nothing pleases Lily it is probably because she is sleepy and needs a nap? For some reason I have a mental block about her and naps and it always surprises me when I put her in her crib and after a few minutes of complaining, she drops to sleep. I need to place some sticky notes around to remind me.

Now I need to come up with what kind of birthday cake to bake myself on Saturday. Assuming nothing catastrophic happens between now and then, I’ll be 30. And I’ve only had one gray hair so far. One. Gray. Hair.

shudder.

I’m thinking something chocolatey and ganachey. And I really like hazelnuts. and almonds. hmmmmmmm.

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05.28.03

94990549

Posted in Uncategorized at 9:44 am by Anne

24 1/2 inches and 14 pounds! I knew she was getting to be a big girl and this just proves it. We took her in to the Dr. yesterday for her 4 month checkup and immunizations, and everything went as well as it could have. In fact, I think she cried a little less than the last time and she didn’t have such a reaction to the shots, only a mild fever which was easily handled with children’s tylenol. She seems to really like the sweet grapey flavor of the tylenol. The dr. also said we could start giving her cereal mash and introduce her to baby food a few weeks after that. Last night I fixed her a tablespoon of rice cereal (we had a free sample packet) but she wasn’t impressed. I think she was more impressed with the little fushia colored silicone covered baby spoon. That’s okay, we’ll take the introduction to solid food nice and slow. I’m in no hurry. Especially since I was duped on ebay. Get this:

3 months ago I bought a food mill/strainer from a canadian company for 20 clams. Add 10 to that for shipping. I paid “Kennias Gourmet” through PayPal and they accepted the transaction immediately, my bank was charged and I thought all was hunkydory. Well, it has been 3 months and I still haven’t received my strainer. In fact, I have called them three times and each time, I get their voicemail. I suspect it is a real crappy company run out of somebody’s house since no one is ever there.(Not that there is anything implicitly wrong with businesses run out of home!) They never return my phone calls. After contacting Ebay and writing a little complaint, the ‘owner’ of kennia’s wrote back that they had made an error and would send me the item with free shipping. That was a month ago. Right now I am waiting for the company to respond to Square Trade a third party negotiator but so far nothing. The worst part to all this is that I missed out on posting negative feedback (so other prospective buyers can read it) on ebay. You only get 3 months to do so and I kept putting it off to give this guy a chance to redeem himself. Up to the last minute!!! Basically, this a-hole stole from me. Not a lot of money, granted, but just enough to make me furious, especially with all the run-around and lies. I only wanted the strainer in the first place to make baby food!

sigh.

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05.23.03

94796023

Posted in Uncategorized at 1:10 pm by Anne

Well, just as Shan, the little miss, and I were walking to the pediatrician’s office, the office called my phone to say the Dr. had been called away to an emergency. I re-scheduled for this Tuesday and the little miss has been granted a slight reprieve on vaccinations, at least a few days. This just means we’ll all have a good Memorial Day weekend free of a poor little feverish fusspot. RIght now she is sleeping in her baby bucket. We had been running errands together, the three of us, all morning long. The last stop was by my office and I was greeted by a slew of samples. Nearly 40! Good lord, I’m glad I’ve got the weekend to work on them and Shan will be nearby to see to Lily if need be. Yow. This is going to be a good month after all.

Yesterday I got a new client as reccommended by one in south tejas. I love that kind of thing.

Lily was put to bed a little earlier than usual last night, 9:30PM instead of the usual 10, and she slept until 6:50 this morning when I woke her up. She is totally into the sleeping through the night groove and I am tremendously grateful, Once or twice she cried but when I went in to get her, her eyes were still closed. All I had to do was give her some comforting rubs and talk to her a little and she calmed right back down; I just don’t think I could ask for a better baby.

I need to wake her up again and feed her so that we can drive to kohl’s. Mama needs some new shorts!

Happy Memorial Day Weekend!

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05.22.03

94754458

Posted in Uncategorized at 4:03 pm by Anne

So I have spent the last hour or so trying how to figure out the Minolta Maxxum that Cecily had given me a while back. I have little to no experience with one of these ‘real’ cameras and have realized how completely dependent I am on the digital coolpix. The instant image feedback is so convenient! I have a box of different lenses and to be honest, I don’t have a clue about what any of the numbers mean or when to use which lens, but I think I determined that one of them must be for a great distance because when I peer through it, seemingly cloes objects appear far off. Maybe I have it all wrong. I’ll figure it out the more I use it and there is something so wonderful about the heavy mechanical but precise sound that comes frmo the slr every time I snap a photo, I know I am going to love it once I overcome this apprehension. I think I have learned that when there isn’t enough light on the object I want to shoot, or if the object (namely Lily) is squirming around, then the autofocus just zooms in and zooms out and the camera won’t allow me to take a picture. This is a case in which the machine is smarter than the user. Does the 10% rule apply here?

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05.21.03

94705733

Posted in Uncategorized at 4:52 pm by Anne

And I forgot to mention, Lily has THE cutest little laugh ever, I think I noticed it for the first time about 2 weeks ago. It’s a hilarious chuckle that sometimes ends in a squeal. You would just scream it is so incredible!

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94694656

Posted in Uncategorized at 12:26 pm by Anne

I just read an article in some parenting magazine at the gym about how competitve parents are nowadays about their children and how soon or how late their children reach various milestones. I know I use the term pretty loosely in my blog, but I’m really not hoity-toity about them. To be honest, I just love being able to see Lily grow. Is it a good thing or a not so good thing that we’re (she and I) not around other kids her age to compare her to? I surely don’t want to be one of those scary parents who continuously push their offspring to get all A’s, play first chair saxophone in honor band, compete in baseball, soccer, football, lacrosse, swimming etc, and publish poems by the tender age of 8 but going the opposite direction is just as freaky. So I’ll just keep doing what I’m doing…reading articles from the new yorker or harpers aloud to her, singing silly songs, explaining to her the importance of frequent diaper changes as she wriggles, and above all telling her how much her father and I just plain love her. Walking, talking, and algebraic calculations will all happen sometime and not necessarily in that order.

And no matter what anybody else says, I don’t believe it is possible to spoil a 4 or 5 month year old. or 6 or 7 or 8.

Just got a note from Amazon that George RR Martin’s “A Feast for Crows” release date has been pushed back until September of this year. Funny, that’s just when I expected it to when I pre-ordered it. Whatever. That book has been overdue for nearly 2 years. I’d love to re-read the first three before this one comes out but I don’t see that as within my abilities, since the last book I read was “The Fellowship of the Ring” right before Lily came out.

I finally got the rest of the baby announcements out today and of 175 ordered, only 3 are left. Thank goodness Cecily helped me, next time around I’ll be much better prepared. Much better. In fact, next time I’ll even try to get them all out within the first month. So far only one person has given me any grief at all for the 4 month delay. I would hope that the exquisite enclosed photos of the little miss would make up for overall tardiness. But then, some people are just never happy so what can you do?

My garden is kicking all kinds of vegetation booty. All the lilies and gladiolas are getting ready to burst into a meagerie of color and each of my 40 rose bushes (excessive, I know) are in the process of making second blooms and little to no aphid action! Lavender is doing well too. And gerberas. And daisies! But don’t get the wrong idear. I have a ton of work left to do out there, front and back. The climbing roses need trimming and everthing wants fertilizing but most of all weeding. I need to weed out the wazoo. Unfortunately I was planning on doing just that this weekend but all the local weatherfruitloops are calling for thunderstorms. Don’t get me wrong, I love the rain and we need it, but how is it that it always seems to rain on the weekends? I need to keep track and see if this is a fluke or if there really is something to it after all.

Tonight, one of Shan’s aunts is going to be in town and everybody whose anybody inthe family will be meeting at the maternal grandparents for a caravan over to Huck’s to “go fishing”. There is a tiny town north of here with a tiny main street that hosts the absolute best restaraunt for fried catfish in the state of Texas. I was never even a big fan until I ate it there and it is just plain good. When we go there, and everyone in Shan’s family just loves it so we drive up at least once every 3-4 months, I always get the half order of fried catfish. No sliced onions, no green tomato relish, but yes tartar sauce and yes fresh lemon. The half order comes with two perfectly browned hushpuppies (nice on the garlic) and two fish filets, plenty for one person and often more than I can finish. It also comes with two sides and I like to get a baked potato (with sour cream, bacon bits, and a miniature tub of ‘country crock’ or something like it) and either ranchstyle beans or coleslaw, depending on my mood. And of course a gigantic iced tea, regardless opf the time of day. The clientele are almost as good as the food, if any of you know what tiny towns are like, you know exactly what I mean. You can count on the food being just the way you remember it to be, most of the time, and I respect places like that. I feel the same way about P.F. Changs. yummmmmmmmm.

Ok. Time to go home for lunch. (I brought Lily to the office to check on things and just got to blabbing.)

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05.20.03

94664196

Posted in Uncategorized at 9:30 pm by Anne

okay, i know I suck, but my sister was in town last week. And we had a ball. She got in a lot of Lily time, especially since she decided to sleep in the nursery with her. Every morning I’d wake up and go in there to find them together, they’d both have the biggest smiles you ever saw! It was awesome. We all went to the store together ( I showed her the consumerhaven known as Costco), made supper together, drove all over town, got our nails done, and when I got samples in, my sister would look after Lily. I never laugh quite so hard except for when I’m with my sister. We just know know each other, is all, and I love her to death. In fact, our relationship inspires me to have another child, so that Lily can have a sister or a brother of her own.

My videocamera came in and I took footage every day. I’m sorry to report that it would probably be about as interesting for most people as watching someone else’s slides of their vacation, or worse their wedding, but I’m just glad to have some film of my sister and Lily together. I need to get firewire so that I can edit and make some little movies for the rest of the family to see. I bet ebay has it cheap. I’m wild about ebay.

I do have a Lily story. While my sister was visiting, my old organic chemistry prof from college called to invite us to lunch. I loaded up the stroller, baked some chocolate chip cookies, and went to the nursery to feed Lily right before we left. I sat down in the rocking chair with Lily in my lap and as I was undoing my top, Lily squirmed and managed to get her head under one of the wooden armrests. Oh, she HOWLED. I reached down and set her up to nurse and she cried in little bursts while she ate. It wasn’t until we got to my prof’s house that I noticed her forehead. The little miss had a long purple bruise right above her eyebrow, it was at least 2 inches! I had no idea she had pressed against the rocking chair THAT hard. Talk about feeling like a rotten mother, again.

Another milestone with Lily happened while Babs was here. She got her first taste of solid food! I mashed up a tablespoon of ripe banana and while my sister filmed with my camcorder as well as the one she had brought from home, I fed teeninsey amounts of banana pulp to the little miss. Although she didn’t seem to actually eat much of it, most of the mash got all over her hands and bib and chin, she obviously liked the sweet taste because Lily kept pulling my hand,with the spoon, to her mouth. I think it was a little soon for solid food, since the tongue thrust reflex was vrey strong, but I’ll try again after describing it tothe pediatrician this friday. Unfortunately it’s time for another round of vaccinations. gahhhh. I am a little wigged out about vaccines after having read a number of articles drawing a link between autism and vaccinations. Scary. I also need to talk to the Dr. about that.

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05.09.03

94058047

Posted in Uncategorized at 10:59 am by Anne

Well she’s finally done it in front of me! While I was on the phone with my sister this morning, Lily was laying on her back beside me and I got to see her roll over onto her belly! This is one of those milestones I’m supposed to write down in her memory book thingy. Two cheers for the little miss!

My sister in flying in tomorrow and there is so much I have to do: clean the house, wash and fold laundry, bake a super chocolatey dessert- probably a cake or torte of some kind, run by the office, weed the flower beds, feed the roses, wash the darwin, the list can go on infinitely. I am hoping to get my digital camcorder today as well, I bought one on ebay from oklahoma and ups shipping shouldn’t take more than a day or two. yeehawww.

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