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For your entertainment and my future recollection... My parents have a training potty at their place for the sprout -- we're not pushing it at the moment, just exposing her to the concept. She likes the idea. The other day while my mom was changing her, she refused to have a new diaper put on. Instead, she insisted on getting down and running naked to the potty. Then she yelled "Mom-mom! Get books!" Having received her books, she happily spent a good chunk of time sitting on the pot reading (no actual action, just reading). ("Get books!"... that cracks me up. Like, "Woman, don't you know we've got a bathroom emergency on our hands here?!?") A few days back a saleswoman was talking to me about how we're going to have our hands full with her when she gets older. I said, "Oh, she's trouble already... she just loves boys!" The sprout grinned and said, "Love boys! I... *sigh*... love boys." Yesterday when I went to pick her up, my parents' neighbors were over visiting (they're good friends, good enough that the sprout calls them Bubbie and Zaydie). Bubbie R was commenting on how pretty her eyes are and how long her lashes... and the baby started doing this ridiculous, cartoonish rapid eyelash flutter! We howled with laughter, with the predictable result that now if you ask her to show you her pretty eyes, she bats her eyelashes like a pro. No, none of us have any idea at all where she got the notion to do that. Tags: crazy baby
Current Mood:  amused
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I hate summer. I hate feeling like a limp wet rag in the heat. I hate having my nose and eyes run uncontrollably after ten minutes outdoors. I hate how my skin goes bright red and blotchy unless I'm morbidly obsessive about sunblock and/or protective veiling. I hate (TMI!) shaving my bikini line (seriously, male-type people, you have no idea how much that sucks. and no, I don't want advice, nothing else works!). I hate worrying about ticks, possibly almost as much as I hate the dime-sized inflamed welts mosquitoes love to give me. As far as I'm concerned, there are exactly three good things about summer: 1) Fruits and vegetables 2) Going down the shore 3) Pennsic And guess what I'm not even remotely ready for? Feh, I say. Fetch me your finest fresh corn, tomato, and basil salad, plus maybe some nice white peaches. And then make it autumn already so I can bring out my boots and sweaters and enjoy a climate THAT ISN'T TRYING TO KILL ME. Tags: cranking
Current Mood:  aggravated
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Wow, lots of stuff. Catching up from not-quite-last-week... Last Friday the Ladies' Champion, ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) redshinma and I took the sprout on her very first visit to the zoo! Unsurprisingly, she loved it. We were all zonked afterwards -- and I mean zonked. There are times when I rue the tradeoff of parenting on the older side: the increased patience and general cluefulness, vs. the significantly decreased stamina... anyway. We got a membership, and will definitely be back.  Saturday was the big local parade, which she also mostly loved. There was a team of dancers with music amped so unbearably high that it threw her for quite a while, and she was also a little uncertain about just how many massive firetrucks and military vehicles went by. But hey, there were cars to wave at, little giveaway flags and fans to brandish, and friendly people handing her candy! Can't go wrong with that.  Saturday night we joined lacewood_lune, kevinarcher, zgwortz, and redshinma for the fantastic local fireworks show... another hit with the baby! She's still walking around saying "[garbled something that means fireworks] boom boom!" I don't have any pictures, mostly because kevinarcher was loudly mocking the people around us trying to take them. Just kidding -- I know better. :) Sunday we hosted combat archery/Pennsic prep/general hanging-out and had an excellent time. Lots of people who hadn't been to the house before got to see it for the first time (conveniently, we just had the driveway widened and graveled, so tons of cars could park! If you never made it to our last house, trust me when I say this driveway is a *big deal*). B & E brought their clan, who not only amused Mina endlessly but also managed to bend the laws of physics to fit the sofa that would not go around the corner and through the doorway into my office. I was impressed, and relieved that the sofa wasn't going to live on the landing for the next five years or so. suba_al_hadid came with her daughter (whom I'm embarrassed to admit I totally failed to recognize -- part my continuing facial recognition issue, I think, and part her turning into a young woman at an alarming rate). We even got to see sarahbracha and her family! As far as the actual productive stuff goes, much progress was made on the benches for the communal seating area at Pennsic, and many arrows were shot. klynn330, ubiq31, redshinma, and the L.C. are all shaping up to be formidable threats on the field. Me, I didn't do nearly as well with the arrows as I did with the knives, but I blame it on the stiff gauntlets and clunky, oversized nocks. *sigh* What we do for safety... :) For your amusement, I present our target:  Sunday night, redshinma and I went to watch fluffy anime ("Angelic Layer") with j_amused. Also "Jeeves and Wooster." It was an odd combination, but it worked. I need to see the end of the former, and more of the latter; I would say that I'm surprised I've never managed to catch the series before, but as j_amused would say, you can pretty much assume that anything generally acknowledged to be good/a classic/canonical is something I haven't seen -- unless it's something he's already made me sit down and watch. There's more, but this is long enough already. Alverthorpe Park pics/commentary coming in the near future... for now suffice it to say that the sprout has a boyfriend on each different piece of playground equipment. Heh. Tags: life
Current Mood: cheerful
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ARGH redux. It's not all bad -- the L.C. and I have been reminded lately how amazing our friends are, and how much we like hanging out with them -- but there's been a lot of... you know. Toothaches. Weird random skin irritation preventing me from wearing my wedding band. Contractors ripping the porch and deck apart to get to bits that need to be redone. Horribleness striking people we care about. Spending a chunk of my morning yesterday reading a 1918 account of the Armenian Massacre, in which mothers buried newborns in the snow rather than watch them die slowly. (Note to self: YOU CANNOT READ STUFF LIKE THAT. DO NOT DO IT.) Yeah. Thanks to all for previous comments and goodwill. I'm also grateful to alysten for hosting an awesome project day/Tadfest (the sprout got a new boyfriend!), and to ubiq31 and klynn330 for hosting an equally awesome Pennsic cooking planning party, and to non-LJers B&E for hosting yet another Arts & Sciences gathering of awesomeness. Much gratitude also to the Goddess of Chocolate, for taking redshinma and me to the New York Fancy Foods Show! Om nom nom. Memorable stuff what went in my mouth: Black garlic, lobster macaroni and cheese, venison pate with cranberries, duck bacon, a whole bunch of artisanal cheese, Knipschild truffles, spicy guacamole served on mini hotdogs (a surprisingly good combination!), a shot of fig-infused vodka and orange juice, frozen (reheated to serve) chocolate souffle and creme brulee (I was expecting them to be awful, but they were another surprisingly good thing -- very impressive), a sesame and fennel crunch bar, salmon prepared with pink Himalayan salt, and... uh... a lot of things. Good things. Yum. I came home with a maple bacon lollipop which I have not yet tasted, mostly because I want everyone I know to see it and marvel at it first. In case you were wondering, the GoC honors us by temporarily dubbing us her research assistants for this trade-only show, because redshinma is her barbecue/hot and spicy food-tasting guinea pig and I'm her tea, floral/herbal, and generally weird food-tasting guinea pig. I will eat/drink anything with lavender, which never ceases to amaze her. This should be a good weekend. We're hoping to hit B&E's again tonight; then the plan is to take the sprout on her first zoo visit tomorrow, catch up with mama_grainne, sarahbracha et al. at some point if we can manage it, see the Glenside parade Saturday afternoon, and host combat archery/more Pennsic food prep on Sunday. All are welcome to the latter -- just yell if you think you might be coming. We might also wind up trekking to Harrisburg to catch a friend playing in the outdoors Pops concerts, but I haven't quite talked the L.C. into that yet. :) Happy holiday weekend, everyone (that is, everyone in the States!). Tags: happenings, life
Current Mood:  blah
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The baby is better, but it was a little scary for a while. By Saturday evening she was so restless and itchy we wound up taking her to Ikea for a quick run -- we're in dire need of something to put the DVDs in so she won't toss them around. We were surprised to see how many people were there, especially families... but yesterday I noticed that last Thursday's New York Times featured an article touting Ikea as a cheap date for couples with children. Aha. At any rate, by Sunday she was right back to her usual happy self, although her nose is still running a little even now. I think it may take a month or two for the Ladies' Champion and me to recover. On the up side, we did fit a game of Scrabble in there, and I WON. I never win. Woooo! Usually the Red Wonder bowls everybody over and then all the people who can actually add and compare different potential point values in their heads follow her and stomp over my prone body, but she wasn't there this time. It was neck and neck, with the L.C. and I tied for several rounds and redshinma not all that far behind, but towards the end I pulled out zoeia with the Z on a triple square and that did the trick. No, I didn't know that word off the top of my head. We play with extremely friendly house rules wherein you can take a blank tile off the board if you have the letter it's supposed to be and are going to use the blank that turn, and you can look up words in the dictionary before you play them. It makes life happier for everyone. In BPAL news, I've been wearing Dolce Stil Nuovo ("rose otto, carnation, vanilla flower, lavender and jasmine with the clarity of crystalline white musk and the warmth of golden amber") a whole lot and am thrilled both to have a cool medieval literary-themed scent and to have something with jasmine actually work with my chemistry. Score! There's a bottle on its way to me at the moment, which is good because I've just about gone through my decant. I'm a little nervous that the fresh bottle might turn out to be different from my decant, since I get a warm, golden, slightly musky skin scent with touches of carnation and lavender... whereas a number of reviewers on the forum report a very clean, sweet rose scent. Huh. Keep your fingers crossed! Tags: bpal, life, scrabble
Current Mood:  tired
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Bad: I was sick on Wednesday and shortly thereafter the baby got it worse, with fever and everything. We took her to the pediatrician last night (everything checks out ok, she's being monitored) and there was a truly dire projectile vomiting incident while we were there. The Ladies' Champion got the worst of it -- he has astonishing, if inadvertent, instincts when it comes to sparing me on that front! -- but the examining room was a little worse for wear too. It was so extreme that it was funny; I hope the office staff didn't get the wrong impression because we were cackling like demented, sleep-deprived hyenas about his being covered in vomit. *sigh* I was punished for my amusement over the L.C.'s condition in the middle of the night, when my hair and pillow were the target. Today the monkey is slightly less sad and clingy than yesterday, but only slightly. Good: We have cable and a big TV! Really big. Like, HUGE. We went shopping intending to buy a 46" and came home with a 52", or something like that. I've never had cable before -- not anywhere I've lived on my own as an adult, anyway -- so this is exciting. Food Network, hurray! Plus, the difference between watching the Food Network in regular and HD is amazing. Double plus, I CAN WATCH IRON CHEF BASICALLY WHENEVER I WANT. MWAHAHAHAHAA!!!!! The timing was nice, as pretty much all the sprout is willing to do is lean on me and watch TV. Now we have several kids channels to choose from, at least. I think I'm going to be staying home tomorrow with the baby. The Ladies' Champion will probably still go to Barren Sands War, since he needs to get authorized in combat archery. Anyone else interested in shooting with the incipient baronial unit, it's still not too late... but "too late" is drawing nigh, so get in gear! Tags: bleh
Current Mood: blah
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