08.25.03

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Posted in Uncategorized at 5:03 pm by Anne

Lily’s second drive to Austin happened this past weekend but Dad came along this time and so it made a world of difference. She doesn’t sleep near as long as she did 4 months ago and so while one of us drove, the other sat in the back and tried to entertain her.

I got a chance to visit my girl Cecily before flying out to a bachelorette party. A tawdry, bawdy, penile-influenced party and one with all manner of embarrassing games. Maybe the worst one was the ‘I never..’ game. Each of us were given 8 hershey kisses and sat in a circle. When it was your turn, you made a sentence like, “I never ate take-out chinese food on sunday.” and anyone who had done that was supposed to give you one of their candies. As you might imagine, the ‘I never…’ statements got sexual very quickly. Now I am not a skank or a prude so how in the HELL did I lose all my candies? ALl I can figure is I just wasn’t strategising properly. I should have cheated and made all manner of pregnancy-related and child-related statements. I did catch myself a few times, talking about Lily or other post-pregnancy related topics (sex drive, body image blablabla), and a few times was met with abject horror and near-silence. I realized then how I must have looked years ago when hearing similar mother-child related stories from other women, back inthe day before I wanted to be pregnant in the first place.

While I was at the party, Lily was given a bath in the kitchen sink and the story goes that the little girl grabbed hold of the water faucet and pulled herself up to standing. Yay little miss! But the main story is of the happening prior to our drive to the state capital. I was inthe kitchen getting food together, in a little cooler and Shan was watching baby in the bedroom. At one point I was in the garage and he helped me get something down. I asked him, “Is Lily in a safe place?” He nodded and not 5 seconds later he heard her start screaming. I have never seen Shan run to fast before. I followed close on his heels where he was bent down and picking up the little girl from our cement floored bedroom. Apparently he didn’t know that she has been wriggle-crawling lately and he had made a fortress on top of our bed out of pillows. Pilows don’t stop her anymore, she pushes through them. We were both freaked out and she was crying and sniffling miserably. We decided it would be a good idea to give her a bath so we could see if she had any knots and sure enough, once in the tub, we could make out an angry pink blotch forming at the top of her forhead. Shan called his sister, a baby-raising expert in her own right, and she reccommended children’d tylenol, and watching baby for throwing up, unresponsive pupil-dilation, and to wake her up every half-hour for naps. I got out the book and read very similar advice and we didn’t even call the doctor. Lucky for us Lily was fine. Her bruise has faded to light yellow already and her Dad (and me too) has learned a good, relatively inexpensive lesson.

scary.

Now I have to get back to work! gahhh.

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08.17.03

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Posted in Uncategorized at 10:01 pm by Anne

Ahem.

So I just HAVE to announce that after entering the homemade ice cream crankoff every year for the past three years and each time being summarily and unfairly beaten out in the chocolate category, that this year, I finally won first prize! The past 3 years in a row, the chef of some local 4star has always won, because the judges knew which confection was his but this year, the judging was a lot more honest and my double-chocolate almond won won won! ka-loo ka-lay! Our friends from Austin entered their corn icecream and it won first place in the ‘you made what?!’ category so it was an awesome day all in all. Albeit another scorcher. And of course, I dipped icecream during and after judging and the line just went on forever. Every year there are more entries inthe contest and every year, the line for icecream seems eternal, but I love it all the same. In fact, the food network has been showing clips of the icecream festival from a few years ago and I am in a few of the scenes and my sister and uncle in law (in charge of the whole fiasco) are actually interviewed. Hi-larious! Lily got more time out of doors than she has ever before but of course there was always a relative or a friend close at hand to hold her or walk her inside, or give her water. I had slathered copius amounts of baby sunscreen on her prior to heading out that morning and with her floppy hat, she didn’t get any kind of burn.

She is such a good child and just on the verge of crawling. Still with the backwards movement, which I need to catch on miniDV format, she’ll get on all fours and rock. I know it’s going to happen soon and I still need to babyproof! outlets and drawers and screwing dreseers and bookcases to the wall and bundling cords. note to self, on those. Meanwhile, her Dad is nearly done refinishing her highchair and it is going to look gorgeous. I know seeing it all painted and assembled will make my Mom cry with delight.

So sleepy. Will try to keep up better. Summer daze caught me.

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08.06.03

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Posted in Uncategorized at 10:03 pm by Anne

*new tricks*

1) Lately when I put her down for a new diaper, she starts moving her head back and forth from side to side like she is saying ‘no’ pretty emphatically. It is Hi-larious. And right before bed tonight we had some practice crawling time and she started doing the same thing with the cutest smile you ever saw on her little face. It killed me. I just have to eat her up when she’s like this.

2)Tired of the baby bucket, she complains. If we are out eating with her in the bucket and next to us, Shan had been undoing her straps so she could look about the room more comfortably. Tonight, over some pretty generic would-be italian food (It tasted microwaved so not really worth describing beyond that.), she grabbed hold of either side of the baby carrier and pulled herself up. In fact, for the rest of dinner she pretty well demonstrated that she was going to do everything in her power to escape the babything completely.

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Posted in Uncategorized at 10:07 am by Anne

Holy shazbot, I missed baby’s official ‘6 month old’ portrait milestone. In light of how busy this week is going to be, I guess we’ll just try to make it in time for her official ‘7 month mold’ portrait milestone which is next week. sigh. Honestly, I am not looking forward to making an appintment and then lugging her to the studio in her sunday best, hoping she doesn’t launch into the same kind of breakdown that led to the 3 month old session. I mean, heck, it’s a nice thing to do but surely not ‘required’ work within the great volume of “Motherhood” expectations. Is it?

She woke me up this morning at about 5, which wasn’t bad, since we had put ehr down inadvertantly last night an hour or two early, while driving aorund town looking at real estate. You’d think I’d know by now, when the dog is behaving strangely. Well, I nursed and changed the baby while Darin walked around in the hall, and I thought, ” Now dog, you can stay inside a bit longer.” and went back to bed. This lasted maybe 15 minutes when the foulest of odors greeted me. It could only mean one thing and not wanting a recurrence of the last time she had an *accident* whereby I almost slipped and bonked my head in her disgusting pooh, I nipped the situation in the bud and woke up Shan. Sure enough, he switched on the little light and Darwin had poo’ed. In her bed no less, which is weird in and of itself. So I let her out and Shan brought her bed outside tothe back yard, hosed it off, hung it on the fence, and we filed back down the hallway. After all that excitement getting back to sleep was difficult. Shan gave up and went to work in the garage but I stuck with it and awoke at the more normal Lilyhour of 7:30AM.

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