12.30.03

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Posted in Uncategorized at 10:31 am by Anne

Thank goodness Shan’s parents volunteered to watch Lily for us last night. We were able to go and finally see ‘Return of the King’ and it was as incredible as I had hoped. Truly, the three films in this trilogy are the best I have ever seen. Who is this Peter Jackson fellow?

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12.28.03

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Posted in Uncategorized at 10:29 pm by Anne

The munchkin got a huge pull this Christmas and as far as first Christmases go, it still would have been a good one, even without all the presents.

We spent Christmas Eve at Shan’s parents home with paternal grandparents, uncles, cousins, and Shan’s sister’s family. I nearly forgot to mention that earlier in the day we all took the DART down to Thanksgiving Square to listen to a tremendous group of tuba players get together to perform Christmas music. It was chilly but beautiful and exceedingly holly jolly. I had never taken the DART anywhere and was amazed to find it just like any other public transport, like in San Francisco and Washington DC. Glad we have it here.

Lily and I baked and decorated the Buche de Noel aka Yule Log Cake the day before and it was even better than last years. Again, an airy flourless chocolate genoise cake roll with a light chocolate ganache filling and a dark chocolate ganache outer icing but this year I went all out. I piped and baked perfect meringue mushrooms a few days beforehand and the day of, made homemade pistachio marzipan. The marzipan was tinted green and rolled out and I used a tiny cookie cutter to form ivy leaves. After icing the cake, I draped a long stem of ‘ivy’ and adhered leaves hither and yon, then pressed a few red hots in appropriate places to mimic holly berries. I was surprised at how easy it was to make marzipan; a perfect job for my food processor as it made a paste of the toasted nuts very quickly. and Lily LOVES chocolate cake. Good baby.

Christmas day Lily got us up around 7:30 and we went into the living room to open gifts. Naturally, Lily loved the paper and the tissue and chewing on tape and boxes but she also actually played a little with this cool Little People arc contraption. That was from Shan’s parents. My parents got her some really great books, one of which is The Polar Express, my alltime favorite Christmas story. It was the same book I had almost gotten her a few weeks ago but had put back on the shelf after considering how much this season was costing.
I had planned on roasting a prime rib along with yorkshire pudding for our supper but earlier in the week when I had gone to Central Market for beef, the line in the butcher shop twisted all the way down to the produce section and I was not even close to being in the mood for waiting too long. After telling Shan about the line, he suggested we get a spiral cut honey baked ham instead and new plans were made. I can never refuse a ham like that, they are simply too good. So Christmas morning I set to baking a cherry pie. Then I found only one can of cherries. So I chunked in some frozed blackberries and frozen blueberries with the single can of cherries and made a triple fruit pie. Then we went back over to Shan’s parents house to celebrate with them and his Grandparents. I brought along the pie since dessert like that needs to be shared and it went over pretty well. In fact, I ate that last slice of it tonight with Lily’s help. Entirely long story short, we didn’t get back to our house until late and it was well past a respectable time to have Christmas supper so we canceled it and have just been eating off the ham every day since. Today I finally cut the rest off the bone, diced it up, tossed some on spinach linguini for supper tonight and froze the rest and the bone for split pea soup. I am telling you, the best pea soup is made with a ham bone. The rest of the weekend we spent cleaning the house from top to bottom. The day after Christmas we took down the tree and all the holiday decor! Now everything is back to normal, more or less, and Lily’s room is a veritable toyland.

Here is baby’s new carseat! We are all very excited to have her facing forward very soon. It was delivered to the office but someone is concealing it from me. I may have to bust some heads tomorrow.

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12.22.03

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Posted in Uncategorized at 11:46 am by Anne

The Little Miss took 11 steps on her own over the weekend! No, I wasn’t there to see them but her Grandfather and Aunt Kris told us all about it. She’s also discovered her tongue for what it is, something to show everyone.

Also, we played the most fun game EVER with 12 other folks in the family. I’m sure many of you have seen it or heard about it or even played it yourselves and all I will say is this: Cranium is the BEST! At the beginning while everyone was still learning the rules, everything was just hilarious as we saw what to expect from every category. When it was his turn, one of Shan’s cousins said, a little too seriously, “Okay now, it’s very fine for everyone else to laugh like crazy but if we are going to win this, we need to get serious.” I couldn’t just let that go, he’s 19 for crying out loud! So even more guffawing took place at his expense, although I will say this, his team did wind up winning!

Currently, Lily is taking her morning nap and we are getting ready to run a myriad of errands. A friend from up north of here, had her baby yesterday morning around 2, so we need to swing by and pay our regards. The poor woman was induced at 8AM the day before but never fully dilated so her Dr decided to perform a C-section. The child’s due date was Christmas day and they decided to induce early due to the holiday, I guess the Dr was going to be out of time. I feel a little bad since I never told this girl about my own C-Section experiences… the exquisite pain, the suture bleeding, the frightful staples, etcetcetc. Her Mother mentioned that she was having some discomfort. Little does she know how long to expect it. I think it took at least 3 weeks for me to not grimace whenever I got up and even longer for the area to heal enough so that a little hanky panky wasn’t excruciating.

And that’s just a little about mememememe.

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12.18.03

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Posted in Uncategorized at 4:11 pm by Anne

Last night while we cut things up for chicken fajitas, the little miss took a few tentative steps in our general direction. We laughed in spite of ourselves, since we had been kind of snarky with each other. What great timing. Then again thisa afternoon as I read about ‘The Clear Channel’ and how it is a great big hideous evil empire of a corporation, she stood nearby and I looked up in time to see her toddle over to me, taking about 3 steps. She is learning to walk but isn’t at the point of using it as her central means of locomotion. Even now she is crawling out of the room. hold on…
This weekend is the annual Christmas luncheon at Shan’s maternal Grandmother’s home and many relatives from the farthest corners of Tejas drive in. For some of them, it will be their first view of Lily. I’ve got this little red velvet dress with a white furry neckline; oh yes, it will kill them all. Also white tights. For the white-elephant gift, I made an Ofoto calendar created with photos of various family members holding Lily. Oh man. Speaking of which, she isn’t having any of this me typing on the computer right now. More later, I hope.

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12.17.03

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Posted in Uncategorized at 2:31 pm by Anne

Wow. More reasons to like Andrew Sullivan. Check out his piece quoting John Rhys-Davies and his take on Tolkien.(Called ‘Gimli Gets It’ on his December 17th, 2003 blogging) It’s so refreshing to come across an intelligent actor instead of all the brain-dead, ignorant, fools that feel it’s their ‘duty’ to lecture self-righteously about things they don’t understand.

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12.16.03

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Posted in Uncategorized at 9:56 pm by Anne

ooh. Check these out. I would prefer exchanging the peanuts with almonds or hazelnuts, though. mmmmm. Maybe, we’ll see if this makes it on the list of things to do.

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Posted in Uncategorized at 5:19 pm by Anne

Today Lily slipped, fell backwards, and smacked her head on the cement foor. Later, she rooted around in one of my orchids, uprooted it, and munched on a bit of charcoal. not good. not a good baby today. And she cried alot for her great grandmother who came over to watch her while I organized things and IM’d my pal Cess. I gave baby some tylenol for her troubles and now she sleeps like a good girl.

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Posted in Uncategorized at 9:35 am by Anne

6 teeth now. 4 upper and 2 lower. No wonder she was cranky yesterday.

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Posted in Uncategorized at 8:52 am by Anne

Lily took another step yesterday at the tenacious encouragement from her Aunt Kris. It’s hi-larious, she will walk anywhere, anytime, with great ease and speed as long as she is holding on to something with one hand. and on the weaning front:

Last night she woke about 4 times. Once I nursed her back to sleep and the other 3 times I just patted her back and murmured loving messages of sleep. Soon we will be down to just one nursing event a night, right before bed, and then taper away to nothing. I have a goal of total weaning by the end of January 2004. And I have this notion that at that time I will cease to be her number one fan.

Tonight homemade spaghetti and meatballs and fresh gingerbread (with lemon glaze ) for dessert.

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12.11.03

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Posted in Uncategorized at 11:22 am by Anne

Today I am going to bake these and another batch of the alton brown sugar cookies. Lily is sleeping right now and it is so peaceful and nice. She is on the verge of walking on her own and gets into everything. Opens doors, cabinets, pulls the covers off books, and sticks every single thing she finds into her mouth. Last night, she nearly walked. To me, walking is placing one foot in front of the other more than twice and Lily took a tiny step to the right, while standing, then returned to the neutral position, and then took a tiny step with the other foot in the opposite direction. Shan and I were terribly proud.

Speaking of my period, (HAH) it finally came back after over a year and a half vacation from it. And I was pissed off about it. Oh well. My sister in law told me her cycle returned to normal 3 months after giving birth…I can’t complain for a 10.5 month break following Lily. Amazing. Now some people have started asking when we are considering having another child. The thought of being pregnant again makes me happy but also anxious. Lily is at such a stage now, and I sense she’s only going to become more active as time progresses. It amazes me to hear stories of women who have children one after the other, some less than a year apart. How do they function? How do they accomplish anything? In any event, I think we are going to take some more time before Lily gets a new brother or sister.

Last night we went out to supper for a friends birthday. There were at least 20 people, including kids ranging from 7 to 15 and somehow I got stuck down at the kid end of the table. Really, I kind of placed myself there. Sometimes adult conversation is so tedious. Lily was in excellent form. I’ve been pulling her hair into the sweetest pigtails lately and they are cuter than cute. She was passed up and down the table and never acted ugly once. I got the fried shrimp, since I had never really been fond of Rockfish but the girls I was with ordered the alsakan kind crab legs and they gave me a taste. Yes, I am a believer and will go back for the crab. Yikes,it was that good.

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