I Hate you Blogger!

I have been trying to post about the Michigan trip for 3 days, but keep losing connection with Blogger. I'm going to try one more time, dammit, then I'm going to give up and put it on my lgt blog: www.loadedguntheory.com

Holiday Meme from Kelli

I plan to blog about our Michigan Extravaganza, but decided to do this first:

HOLIDAY TIME MEME
1. Egg Nog or Hot Chocolate?
Hot Chocolate. I think Egg Nog is totally gross.

2. Does Santa wrap presents or just set them under the tree?
When I was a kid, Santa set the presents from him under the tree and my parents wrapped the ones they gave us. Santa's presents were always arranged for maximum "wow" factor;) Guess we'll have to decide how to do it with Stella.

3. Colored lights on tree/house or white?
white, white, white. I think colored lights look tacky. I love white lights, they are so beautiful.

4. Do you hang mistletoe?
No.

5. When do you put up your decorations?
Usually the Friday or Saturday after Thanksgiving, but since we went to Michigan this year and just got back into town yesterday evening, I'm going to give myself a break and do them next weekend.

6. What is your favorite holiday dish (excluding dessert)?
My mom's dressing.

7. Favorite Holiday memory as a child?
I have several, but a couple include: Going to Picadilly at the mall with my family on my Dad's side and spending the entire dinner begging my parents to take us back to my Grandma's house so we could open presents. It was always the longest dinner of the year! Also running downstairs on Christmas morning to find all my loot;) And when I got to be a teenager with a driver's license, I liked surprising my parents by stuffing their stockings.

8. When and how did you learn the truth about Santa?
I was 9. I saw my parents bringing Keith and I's Alf dolls in from my Dad's truck. I knew it was over, but I didn't tell my brother.

9. Do you open a gift on Christmas Eve?
Usually. Something boring like underwear or socks.

10. What kind of decorations are on your tree?
The colors are lilac, light blue, and silver. We also an ornament when we travel somewhere (the latest is one from MSU), and we have a tradition where we get each other one each year. Although Tim usually forgets to get one for me:)

11. Snow! Love it or dread it?
Love it! We never have it. The last time we had it was in February a couple of years ago and our friends were over and we all had a snowball fight. One of the top 5 experiences in my life. Oh, and experiencing snow falling in Times Square in NYC on Christmas Day. Amazing!

12. Can you ice skate?
Absolutely not. I'm pathetic. (I'm borrowing Kelli's response because it's true)

13. Do you remember your favorite gift?
Honestly, no, but I'm always happy to have anything:)

14. What's the most important thing about the Holidays for you?
Spending time with family and eating way too much food!

15. What is your favorite holiday dessert?
Fudge, peanut brittle, Pecan SAndies (or Sandy Duncans as I called them as a child)

16. What is your favorite holiday tradition?
Timing the Thomas unwrapping extravaganza to see if we will set a new record for Longest Christmas Ever.

17. What tops your tree?
A lit up white star, I think.

18. Which do you prefer? Giving or receiving?
Giving, I love giving the perfect gift. Although I love getting it too!

19. What is your favorite Christmas song?
Silent Night

20. Candy canes: Yuck or yummy?
Yummy!

A Tooth Finally Rears its Ugly Head

So Stella, the baby who has been "teething" since she was two months old, finally has a tooth coming in. I can feel its sharp tip and see the white edge poking up from her gumline. Poor thing, I don't think it's making her very happy. She is sleeping a lot. I figure she will probably cut a bunch of teeth next week while we are in Michigan, so that all of her Thomas relatives will think she is a fussy little thing, rather than the angel we all know her to be.

In other news, Mother Earth, forgive me, for I have sinned. I have been using A Disposable Diaper (shudder!) on my child at night. I am sorry, but otherwise my baby wakes up at 2, either with a leaking Fuzzi Bunz, or with the diaper wet enough it has woken up her up because of her very sensitive bum. I think she pees more than other babies. If I put on one of the dreaded D.D.'s, she will make it to 4 or 4:30 before she wants to eat. I need my sleep. My baby needs her sleep. I realize that the landfills do not need the 365 diapers a year this will create, but I hope that because it is such a small amount in comparison to the mountains created by most parents, that I will be forgiven. This is a huge confession for me to make. I extol the virtues of cloth to all parents and parents-to-be I come across. I haven't even had D.D.'s in my house since Stella was two weeks old, but I ran out of diapers and my mother was in town and she was kind enough to go buy some for me and next thing you know... I still believe cloth is the way, but I have also fallen prey to the seduction of the evil diapers with their chemicals that keep the wetness away from my baby's skin so she'll sleep. And seem to give her instantaneous diaper rash. Her Daddy, the environmentalist in the family, is not down with this. But we all have our sins against the environment: he takes 20-30 minute showers, my shower lasts only 10 minutes, but I cover my child's bottom in a disposable once a day. We are considering switching to a diaper service and using pre-folds again, but I'm not sure whether Stella will go for that since she has gotten so accustomed to the fuzzi bunz which wick moisture awake from her most of the time, and only leak or announce their wetness while she slumbers.

Speaking of sins against the earth, have you ever thought someone was really cool, and then you see them driving a giant SUV and suddenly your opinion of them is knocked down a few pegs? This happened this Sunday when a friend from church waved at us from a giant SUV. What? No! They are so cool and so liberal and like all enviromental and even vegetarian, they can't drive one of those monstrosities. But, oh, they do. Tim said he thought he saw them emerging from an SUV the other night, but didn't mention it to me, hoped perhaps he was wrong. Maybe it was a rental? Maybe Enterprise was all out of smart cars and had to give them a giant gas-guzzling behemoth that destroys the earth's resources. But no, I think they own it. You'd think they'd at least be embarrassed about owning it and not wave to their friends, but I guess SUV-drivers have no shame. Sigh.

My Celebrity Look-a-likes

I stole this from Kelli's blog. Of course, I was only a wee lass of 24 when this photo was taken, so who knows what haggard folks I would look like now.

My Baby's Growing Up Way too Fast!

I am having a maudlin "Stella is growing up way too fast" day today. I don't know why. Perhaps because I was already having a weird "off" day and feeling down in the dumps, (kind of like PMS, but I don't have that right now. Sorry, TMI), just feeling depressed for no reason. Then I went through some pictures to send to my Grandmother of Stella, and I saw how tiny she once was and how big she's getting. She's so cool now, so much more fun than she was when she was brand new and tiny, like at the left, but sometimes I miss how fragile she used to feel. And it feels like her "babyhood" is running out. I thought of her weaning the other night and instantly my eyes filled up with tears. I know I still have a few months, but I don't plan to do extended nursing for a myriad of reasons, and so it will be here sooner than I think. It's such a special time to bond with her, and just gaze at her and hold her, I don't want to give that up and watch her go from a baby to a little girl. God, I'm being so melodramatic, sitting here, typing, my eyes welling up. I've got to go get Stella, speaking of, she's waking up. She keeps me from getting too introspective, thank God!

Halloween and stuff

So last night was Stella's first Halloween. She was adorable as an Octopus, as you can see, but the night didn't turn out exactly as I had planned. See, last year, when I was pregnant with Stella, Anna was pregnant with Daniel, and Henry was 10 days old, I had this soft little picture of all of us taking the kids trick or treating this year. As I handed out candy and patted my barely noticeable belly last year, I thought of how I would dress up our little girl or boy (I found out the next day that she was a girl). Unfortunately, Henry was sick, and Daniel's Aunt was in town, so we didn't get to all get together. And Stella was more than a bit fussy. I felt bad, although we assured ourselves that she would be fussy with or without the costume;) Luckily, though, Jeff and Tara showed up and Tara and I took Stella to about 4 houses of the neighbors we know just to show her off a little. After all, she WAS all dressed up with nowhere to go! We wound up having a great time because it'd been so long since we'd all hung out together. Nothing special, just beer, way too much pizza (I'd unfortunately ordered 3 mediums just before Ashley called to say Henry was sick. Then I couldn't get through to the pizza place to change my order), and the candy Stella had gotten and that we had left over. Unfortunately, this year we didn't have very many trick or treaters, unlike past years when the doorbell is constantly ringing between 6 and 8:30. So I'd been stingy with the candy early in the night, and wound up giving the late trick or treaters, the uncostumed teenagers, big handfuls of loot. But it was fun.

On another note, I ran into our neighbor this morning, who I'd run into a few weeks ago. We chat when we see each other, and last time we'd talked he'd said he was joining the Army. I couldn't believe that someone would join the army in the middle of such a terrible war. When I ran into him today, I asked when he was leaving for the Army and he said not until January, which disappointed him, because he'd wanted to go right away. Apparently, he had to wait for an opening in the position he wants. I asked him what that was and he said Combat Engineer, he said they demolish bridges and rebuild them and rebuild roads. I told him to be careful and that he'd be in my thoughts, but I couldn't help thinking it was like playing Russian Roulette, who would willingly place themselves in that situation? I guess young guys who don't really have a lot of career prospects and look to the military as a way to shake them up and give them a career path, or at least more direction. Our neighbor had worked at HEB, and just returned this month from a year long motorcycle journey across America. I think a lot of guys like that join the military. It made me sad, like I would be seeing my neighbor's face on the news come next year, as one of the fallen. I hope not, but I also wish we didn't see anyone's neighbor's face on the news as one of the fallen. I can't believe how badly this war has been screwed up and if I stop to think about the fact that we just invaded another country with no provocation and completely fucked up their infrastructure and killed over half a million of them, it makes me cry. So I don't think about it, which is even worse. We are a disgusting, bloated country that throws its own weight around just to feel important. I'm sorry.