As promised

You might want to turn your sound down to block out my annoying excited screechings

Life is a Pigsty

So I REALLY miss my laptop. My laptop screen to be exact. I proposed to Tim that we use our birthday money to buy most of a laptop (well, we'd buy the whole thing, but the birthday money would only cover most of it), but he was not on board for that. We can't really spend money on a laptop until the house is bought. Perhaps I could charge Stella per diaper change? I bet I could get a lot of extra cash that way! I'm really sick of having to sneak into the office to check my email when Stella's distracted or sleeping. It's so much easier when I can just do whatever while she plays.

Sorry I haven't gotten the first steps video up yet. I couldn't get to the network for a few days and we were too busy doing house stuff to really get to the bottom of why. Now I'm just too damn busy. But I'm going to try and get it up today! We've finally got the house in shape. The first realtor comes tonight. It looks really dynamite, and I am starting to question why we're leaving at all. Of course, I'm sure that's everyone's reaction when their house looks this clutter-free and clean. Although my mother-in-law would probably not agree about the clean part. She has been great helping us out except for one thing: a lot of snide comments about the state of my house. Which I don't think was that bad, but I think I was allowed to let it slide while I did all the house fix-ups! Plus, we were digging into those places you never go, like under the couch and behind the washer and dryer, kicking up a lot of dust and ick. Oh, well, she's had cleaning ladies since I've known her. I could keep a spotless house too if I had a cleaning lady!

Whoo, I don't think I'm going to last much longer. Since Monday I have had spells of lightheadedness and vertigo. Monday it was really bad, I felt like I was walking at an angle like on those old V-8 commercials, my equilibrium was totally off. This was really bad timing, since we were doing the final push to get the house finished. Luckily, there were just a few things and Tim was able to get most of them done, with me helping out when I could stand upright. It's gotten slightly better, but it's still bad. I'd just read about a 27-year old who had a stroke, so at first I was convinced that was what it was, then Tim thought it could be a reaction to all the chemicals we had been using in the house in our cleaning. I now think (hope) it is a side effect to the new birth control pill I started Sunday or the antibiotic I started Friday. Or a combination of the two. I have a call into the nurse at my doctor's office about that. Anyway, I really don't have time to be sick, and I certainly don't have time for a stroke or an aneurysm!

I'm totally falling apart as I approach the big 3-0. My right foot is kind of swollen on top and on the side and is really hurting (I guess to compliment my left one), and my knee starting hurting yesterday. What the heck is wrong with me?!

I really shouldn't complain. I read an article about this in Oprah's magazine, which Tim's Mom left here (it's really a terrible magazine, even worse than her show, but hey, I don't have internet access while Stella plays). This woman was writing about how she has a tendency to blow minor things into major things and how at least her address isn't in Darfur or the New Orleans' Ninth Ward. Good point! I mean, look at that gorgeous, vibrant, hilarious daughter I've got up there. That shot is of her enjoying the pool at Daniel's birthday party weekend before last.

First Steps!

The most exciting development here at Thomas headquarters is that Stella took her first steps last night! I have tape of the exciting event, I promise to take time out of my closet cleaning and moving boxes out to the garage to get it on here. Tim and I were both there, it was awesome! First she took one step at a time twice without holding on to anything, then she took FOUR steps at once from me to Tim, completely freehanded! We are SO excited, I can't believe that my child walking could fill me with the same excitement as if I had won a big prize. Today Stella turns 14 months, so she walked one day shy of 14 months. It's funny because she started crawling a couple of days before she turned 10 months. I guess she likes to accomplish major milestones just before she has a "mini-birthday".

I think life is about to get a lot more interesting:)

I broke it

I probably will not be posting much because I broke the screen on my laptop. Actually, Tim and I have accepted joint blame for the accident. He left the laptop open on the edge of his desk. I did not realize it was perched so precariously and when I closed it, it took a back flip off the desk. Of course it was about two weeks out of warranty.

Stella has been doing so many cool things lately I keep forgetting to blog about. We told her to eat more food last week and she went, "no no no" while shaking her head. Then Saturday I told her she couldn't have any more of her Grandaddy's food (she'd already had a full lunch), and her face just fell. Like it was so dramatic, first she frowned a little, then a little more, then she added some puppy dog eyes, making sure everyone saw her, and then she started wailing. She didn't stop until I took her upstairs. Then, of course, without an audience she was fine. Although when her Grandaddy came up to put her down for a nap, she produced a few sniffles for him. She also stands on her own for brief periods, although when she realizes what she's doing, she usually stops.

She went swimming for the first time Sunday at little Daniel Quinn's birthday party. She LOVED it. She was tromping all over the place. She was the last baby in and we had to drag her out. I'd post pictures, but I'm on Tim's machine. Don't worry, I'll put some up soon!

Argh!

Apparently I am a lame pirate. I mean the description's great, but "Captain Jenny Bonney"?

My pirate name is:

Captain Jenny Bonney

Even though there's no legal rank on a pirate ship, everyone recognizes you're the one in charge. You can be a little bit unpredictable, but a pirate's life is far from full of certainties, so that fits in pretty well. Arr!

Get your own pirate name from piratequiz.com.
part of the fidius.org network

Stella the party girl

Stella and Daniel fight over the bottle of bubbles at the park today

Stella is currently calling to me over the monitor from her crib, where I have tried putting her down for her afternoon nap. I'm not real confident it's going to be successful. First, she was calling "Mama" over and over, which is actually a really good way to pull on my heartstrings. She's been able to say Mama for several months, but doesn't use it a lot around me. Today she has been saying it A LOT. So cute. Then she moved on to "Dada", I guess giving up on me, but he's not going to save her because he's at work. Then she went "Whoo-hoo!" like she was having a party up there and trying to lure me in. Now she's just babbling. I don't really think this nap is going to happen, which is why I am blogging instead of doing the 20,000 other things I should be doing. I have a hard time getting started knowing that I'll probably have to stop in like 5 minutes.

Tim said last night "it's so hard living in a construction zone." He is so right. The normal cleaning gets neglected in favor of doing fix-ups and it's easy to just let clutter accumulate because everything's a mess anyway. I get so overwhelmed thinking we'll never have it done. I painted trim and doors for 5 and a half hours yesterday while Tim's Mom watched Stella, and it looks great, but there's still so much more to do. We're going to have to commit to just doing stuff every night, all night and getting fast food so we can get it done. It's a bear, let me tell you. Luckily, Tim's parents have been helping, both by watching Stella and by actually doing work, it's been really nice of them. But my advice: don't move, just stay in your house forever.

Okay, now she's really wailing, guess I'd better go into "abort nap mode".

Okay, now I'm peeved

Why, in any article advocating "natural" childbirth or anything like it, do they have to attack giving birth in a hospital? And paint all births in hospitals as a nightmare of medical intervention where women feel like they were totally ignored and hate birth as a result afterwards? Also, notice how they only share the stories that end in c-sections? Ricki Lake has a new movie out where she talks about how wonderful homebirth is and how awful hospital births are, and I read an article about this movement called "Freebirth" where you hold your lighter up in the air and yell "Play some Skynard!" at the top of your lungs as your baby crowns. Not really. Although, maybe I'll try that next time. Actually, you deliver the baby yourself without any medical intervention. Or midwives, or doulas. Nobody except you and your partner, although your partner is more of an observer than a participant. And of course they describe all medical professionals as evil barbarians who just want to slice you open and yank out your baby, who they then steal away with to a nursery where they pump it full of formula, thereby denying you any hope of bonding with it or breastfeeding it. Yeah, because people get into medicine because they HATE HELPING PEOPLE!

Why does it have to be so either/or? Why can't an article say, "hey, hospitals are great for some people, but for some people they aren't. Why don't you check out my ideas on childbirth and see if they jive with what you're looking for?" I'll tell you why, because for some reason a lot of the people who get the most press are the ones who try to scare you into doing things their way. I'm sure there are midwives and natural birthing advocates, (hey, can I go on a side tangent here and point out that "natural" birth as a term doesn't make a whole lot of sense? Perhaps "non-medical" or "non-medicated" would make more sense. I mean, my baby came out of my lady pocket-more like lady "clutch" at that point-and even if she did it while I had an epidural coursing through my spine and an IV connected to my hand, I still think it was pretty damn natural. Plus natural implies an air of superiority. My friends who had c-sections don't love their babies a lick less than the ones who gave birth vaginally, either medicated or not medicated.), who see their way is just another option for pregnant women, but you never hear from them. I applaud women who go the non-medicated route, good for you, you go girl, but I am tired of people saying that everyone who goes to the hospital has a terrible experience. Other than the hospital being full when I got there, I had a great birth experience in a wonderful hospital. I like to share my experience with as many pregnant women as possible because they hear so many damn negative stories.

All I'm saying is, why do we have to be tearing each other down all the time? Can't we all just get along?

My friend Al is one of the funniest people in Austin!

We had a great night last night. We went out to celebrate our 8th Wedding Anniversary while Tim's parents stayed with Stella. First we went to Pappadeaux, (thanks to Christine, Brian, Caroline and Daniel for the gift certificate), for dinner, then we went to the Capital City Comedy Club to watch our friend Al Im compete in the semifinals for the Funniest Person in Austin contest. It was a blast, not only was Al HI-larious, there were a lot of other really funny people performing as well. AND we were so happy that Al was chosen to compete in the finals next week! He was the very last name called, so it was a bit tense there, I'm sure Al was about to crap his pants. I don't know if we'll make it or not next week, we have to see whether our on-call babysitters, aka grandparents, are up to it, and I think they sell out fast, but I'm so glad we got to see him this week. I know Al will kick some butt, go Al!

Wow, I was hot!

I was looking at old photos because my mother's school is putting together a scrapbook for her retirement and has like 3 photos of her teaching from the 21 years she's been there. I'm not surprised, my Mom's not really into that. In fact, I think she wishes they would just let her go quietly without hoopla, but this chick at her school is just not letting it go. First she called last Thursday, then she emailed me this morning to check in. Chill, woman, I've got a one-year-old and a house I'm trying to put on the market, plus yesterday was Mother's Day! But anyway, I found like no pictures, but I did find some pictures of me from high school, particularly my senior year. Dude, I was a stone cold fox! I mean, I realize this is incredibly conceited of me to say, but I was! I sure wish I could have realized and appreciated that fact at the time. I wish I could go back in time to my high school self and tell her, "you are quite the little hottie, even if no guys ask you out, enjoy it, because next year you're going to college and you'll gain the freshman fifteen and you will never, ever, look this good again. And in college, you will get some male attention, so don't fret so hard." Ah, youth.

These are days

when you really wish you could just send them back. When if someone told you they were considering children, you'd tell them to get a Sharpei instead. Stella woke up at 7:10am and since then she has been awake, except for a brief 20 minute nap in the car. She would not go down for her morning nap, which put Mama in a bad mood because Mama uses Stella's nap time to take a shower and clean the kitchen and sometimes, if she's lucky, have a cup of coffee. See, that's Mama time. And apparently, without Mama time, Mama goes a bit crazy and yells at the dogs for barking. Right around noon, Stella and the dogs were taking turns. Stella would cry, then I'd get her happy, but then Roxie would bark, and then she'd stop and then Lucy would pick it up. And then the cycle would start all over again. Actually, Stella's in a pretty good mood this afternoon, she's like the baby energizer bunny, but even as she rubs her eyes, and flops on the floor, she won't go to sleep. So my house is in a shambles and I've got a headache. Some of her no napness is probably my fault. Tim convinced me to go out to lunch with him, so she got the little sleep she's gotten in the car, rather than at home where she probably would have slept longer. But I really needed to get out of the house. Huh, I think she's trying to eat my thigh right now. Tasty!

Sorry to bitch, that was a really annoying post. Enjoy this cute picture of Stella trying to attack Daniel to take your mind off how annoying it was:

It wasn't all bad. This morning she was rocking Rupert, a little stuffed monkey of Tim's, back and forth in her arms like it was a baby. Of course, then she slammed Rupert into the ground repeatedly while holding onto his tail like he was bungee-jumping without a long enough rope. I think she's been watching Lucy with Bobo too much. She also was using her box of blocks to get leverage to climb onto her leap frog table. She actually suceeded in getting one leg up there.

Okay, I best go, happy baby juice has worn off and she's doing that cry/cough thing that will probably persist until her Daddy gets home in 1 hour and 50 minutes. But who's counting;)

Weird dream

I had a really weird dream last night that I was in the Army and I'd been sent to Iraq. My friend Jessica, of all people, who is even girlier than me, was also in the Army and had been there longer and thus became my mentor. We were loading up our trucks to move to another place and everyone in our unit was really nervous because, well, we were in Iraq. Although Iraq looked a lot like a high school hallway. We were looking around for anything suspicious when suddenly several men jumped out of lockers and we knew they were going to set off a bomb. Jessica and I, as well as anyone else around all ran back through these big heavy metal doors into the building and ran as far as we could away from the bomb. But of course my legs weren't working properly, and it was like I was running through Jello, like it always is in dreams, and as I was running I yelled out, "I never should have come here!" Well, duh. That was a bizaarre dream. I think it had to do with a bit I read last night in a Sam Bass program about how they were raising money to buy proper body armor for a kid who was going to Iraq with the Marines. He'd acted in their theatre since he was a wee lad and his mom is Renee Brown, a local actress who some of you may know. It was very sad. I hope they raise the money, but it's dispicable that the US Government doesn't give their soldiers the proper protection for battle.

Stella's eating phone book pages. I wonder if that's bad for her?

So, we're weaned. Tim and I went ahead and gave her a little pat when we went to bed because I hadn't seen her since I'd put her down for her nap at 4:30. Then she went back to sleep, but woke up twice, I think at about 5 and then again at 6. Tim dealt with her, so I don't know exactly what time it was. It's kind of crazy that she's pretty much sleeping from 8pm to 7am now. I must not have had any milk left because I don't feel even the slightest bit engorged. I did cry before we went to bed last night because it felt so final, and I tried to talk my way out of going through with it. But I was strong (Tim helped), and resisted. So I now have a fully weaned toddler. Who wants her to spend the night with them first? :)

My 24 Pounder and last? dispatch on weaning

So I weighed Stella this morning because she was feeling especially heavy and from our unscientific, "I get on the scale, then pick her up and we get on the scale together" method, she weighs 24 pounds! Wow, no wonder she's so heavy.

Also, we MAY be done with nursing. Last night Tim was like, "is this the last night we're doing this?" and I was like, "I think so." I kind of thought Saturday night was the last night and extra-special savored it, but we went ahead with last night too because she wasn't double-diapered. I think I'm okay with being done with breastfeeding, but I know that both Tim and I will miss the extra special cuddly time with Stella right before we go to bed, but it will also be nice to not worry when people are watching her if she'll wake up fussing before we get home. Also, I'm already really enjoying wearing regular bras. Goodbye dingy nursing bras! BUT, if we have too much trouble with her, I'm not ruling out doing a couple of more nights of nursing to make sure everyone involved gets some sleep. For the most part, though, I'm ready to say goodbye to this part of our relationship. It's been a wonderful, incredible thing and I have really enjoyed it especially once the marathon nursing sessions of the first couple of months were over. Being able to sustain your child with milk from your own body was even more amazing than I thought it would be. And weaning over a very gradual period of a couple of months has made it a much easier process.

I looked in Stella's mouth this morning and she is cutting FOUR teeth on top! She's been cutting one of them for weeks, then it was two, then 3, now four! I guess she's making up for lost time. Soon she'll have 6 teeth total.

Oh, that was gross and adorably cute. Stella just let some of the milk dribble back out of her mouth and down her chin. It was bubbly and looked like a white beard.

7 Random Facts about ME!

Kelli tagged me for this one, I feel really special:) And I mean that in a non-sarcastic, non-Eddie Haskell way! Warning, I have had one (1) Boddingtons, so my typing skills are not at their peek. Nor my mental skills.

Here are the rules: Each player starts with 7 random facts/habits about themselves. People who are tagged need to write on their own blog about their seven things, as well as these rules. You need to choose 7 people to get tagged and list their names. Don't forget to leave them a comment telling them that they have been tagged and to read your blog!

1) I am double-jointed in my thumbs. I used to pop them all the time when I was a kid, but they started to ache, so now I almost never do it because the feeling makes my skin crawl.

2) My best friend in high school, Josh, told me when I was a sophomore that his other friends thought I was mean, so after that I always made (and I think still continue to make), an effort to be nice. Although it's not an effort anymore or anything I am conscious of.

These are really lame facts. Sorry guys, it's just stuff that's popping into my head that I have not shared before on this blog. My thumbs now hurt because I was trying to show Tim what I can do with them, but he wasn't looking anyway. Ow.

3) I cannot believe I am sharing this. In high school, my same friend Josh told me that if I hadn't lost my virginity by the time I was 16, he would do the honors. I had the date written on the calendar and everything. This is pretty sad, but in my defense, I was only 14. Luckily, he came out as gay so I did not have to take him up on his offer.

this is difficult

4) I hate the vast majority of rollercoasters. It all started when I was 9 and my father and I went on Space Mountain at Disney World as my first rollercoaster. I was so scared, I yelled things at my father that one should never yell at their parent. Lots of expletives, I'm afraid. Well, expletives a 9-year-old knows. Tim did not believe how scary I found them until we went on the Joker at Fiesta Texas and I screamed and cried and had my eyes shut the entire time. I simply do not like the sensation of falling and not knowing what's going to happen next. There are a few I enjoy. Excalibur at Astroworld (oh, no, Astroworld is gone, I'm suddenly very sad!), XLR-8, also at Astroworld (you were hanging from the track, so it felt more secure), and the runaway Mine train at both Disney World and 6 Flags Dallas. I've also ridden Greased Lightening at Astroworld a couple of times and found it scary, but yet exhilarating.

5) I played bassoon in 6th-8th grades.

6) I was on Pep Squad in 9th grade and tried out for the drill team, the Starlettes, at the end of the year. The audition song was "Move Any Mountain" by The Shamen. I so horribly botched my audition, I couldn't listen to that song for years without bursting into tears. The way you would find out whether you made it or not is that we all filed into the gym, and there was an envelope with our name on it. You'd open the envelope and if you got a little boot, you were a Starlette. If you got a horrible little prayer that basically said, "Right now you feel miserable and like your life is over, but tomorrow is another day and you will wake up and go on", you didn't make it. And you started bawling. Even if you had resolved to be stoic in the face of adversity. But my mother still gave me balloons and flowers and let me stay home from school the next day. Yep, my parents rock.
A similiar thing happened the next year when I auditioned for Winterguard and the audition song was "Under the Bridge" by The Red Hot Chili Peppers, but I was more sick of that song than anything else.

7) I have been known to talk in my sleep. I know that one's boring, but dinner is ready. I'll give you bonus fact to make up for it: my middle name is Denise.

So I tag: Travis, Ashley, Tim, Tara, Erin, Julie and Marsha

The worst nightmare ever

I had the worst nightmare I've ever had in my life early this morning. I've decided not to go into details because to put it into black and white would remind me of it more, but suffice to say, something very bad happened to Stella. It was such a horrible dream that when I woke up I couldn't even really cry, although I was relieved it was just a nightmare. Luckily Stella woke up about 2 minutes after I had it, so I was able to go get her and hold her and get some really good cuddle time which helped me forget about it. But it is so frightening what your subconscious can hold!

I'm sure this has something to do with the fantastic play I saw last night, Women of Lockerbie. It was brilliantly acted and a really moving and well-written play. But it was all about a mother who could not move past the grief of losing her son in the Pan Am 103 bombing over Lockerbie, Scotland. It was really about an entire city who couldn't shake the grief and it was drama done right, I tell you that.

And on a completely different topic, I forgot to blog about how much freakin' fun we had last weekend! My parents watched Stella while we went to Dog and Duck Friday night with Bill, Jessica and Sean and Anna, who'd all come to see Anton. (Anna's parents were in town.) The Flarsons and us could not believe that we were at a bar. Who even knew they still existed?! I for one had missed them, to be sure. I also ran into peeps from Blue Fish, it felt good to talk to them and I found out they are still having happy hours and I'm going to try and go to them again.

Then Saturday night was Tara's excellent birthday party. I was so tired I thought I'd barely make it to midnight. WRONG! We were there until after 2am. We've just got such great friends, it was hard to leave! We had the most fun winding yarn, playing wii, eating Jeff's fabulous food and having great conversation, including learning about bizaarro Ian's handcuff related injury. I really must dig up bizaaro Ian's email address and add him to the party invite list. He and his girlfriend Mary seem worth violating the "only one person for each name in a group" rule. (There really isn't such a rule, I just made it up.)

This is the band photo for Saturday night. Doesn't it look like Bizaaro Ian is shooting death rays at Susann and she is trying to fight him off with a smile?

Very empty

I made the mistake of removing all the stuff from the top of our cabinets yesterday afternoon. I thought, "well it had to be done sooner or later." I should have done it later. The vast emptiness depresses me. We removed all the photos from the stairs last week, and that was kind of a bummer, but the top of the kitchen cabinets really looks blank. And dusty. Wow, was that area dusty. And not just dusty, but dust glued on with kitchen grease. Yuck. In the new house I pledge to dust the tops of the cabinets at least once a year. I think last time I did it was over 5 years ago when I was unemployed and I cleaned a LOT of stuff I haven't cleaned since. I think I will be spending the rest of the week cleaning off the top of the cabinets. And trying to find new stuff to put up there that is more to a buyer's liking. Hell, I have no clue what a buyer will like. What if someone exactly like Tim and I comes in and would have loved the old way everything looked and is turned off by how boring it is now? Then won't we feel stupid.

So it's not odd that I'm depressed by the cabinets, I'm kind of feeling down about everything these days. I think it's related to weaning and all my hormones going haywire from that, as well as PMSing (sorry about the TMI). We cut out all the day feedings a few weeks ago, but I'd waited to tackle anything at night until after my show closed. We were going to cut the feeding out before we go to bed, but we forgot to double diaper her Monday night before she went to bed, so we had to wake her up to do that. Then she slept until 7:30am! So we decided to just cut out the early morning feeding instead, since I hated that one anyway. Tuesday night she woke up at 5:30 and I went in and tried to get her back to sleep, which didn't work, so I changed her and held her and rocked. She kept trying to cuddle into my chest. So I put her in her crib where she cried and went to fill up two sippys, one with water and one with milk. By the time I came back upstairs, Tim had waved his magic wand and she was back asleep. And stayed that way. Then she slept until 7:25 this morning. Yay! So next week it's that last feeding, the one at about 11pm, which both Tim and I love. Tim changes her and cuddles with her while I get ready for bed. Then I walk into her room and Stella and her Daddy are lying on a pillow in the floor, cuddling and sleeping. It's so adorable, I must get a picture before we stop doing it! Although my hormones are messed up, I'm actually fine with the weaning thing, I think I'm ready. I mean, she's so obviously a toddler, and I can separate breastfeeding as something we did when she was a baby. So I think I'll be okay. Although I saw a 10.5 week old last night and he was ADORABLE! I think I scared Tim when I came home raving about how cute he was. But don't worry, there's a few years before another little monkey is on the horizon.

Oh, and on the magazine meme, I forgot my subscription to Gourmet because Tim uses it, and Tim's to Smithsonian, both from Tim's grandmother, because no one reads it, except very occassionally when there is an interesting article. This morning Stella was enjoying ripping it apart, so at least someone gets some use out of it!

Magazine Meme

Travis tagged me for this one. I'm with him on MeMe's, I enjoy them. Even if I don't know how to pronounce meme. So basically this is what magazines you subscribe to. I have way cut back on my magazine consumption, but I still have a few.

Spin: I have subscribed to Spin since I was 13, pretty much the whole time, except for a couple of years in college when they didn't properly forward my subscription and so whoever was the inhabitant of Room 503 in Kinsolving got a free 18 issues or so. This magazine has turned me onto so many musicians. I bought Liz Phair's Exile in Guyville after Spin kept going on about how incredible it was. I had not heard a single song by Ms. Phair before buying the album. Same thing with PJ Harvey's To Bring You My Love. I hadn't heard a single song, but their glowing reviews and articles convinced me I needed it to be part of my cd collection. Now, thanks to the internet and The Next Big Thing, I usually don't buy albums without having heard a single song, but I still take their recommendations very seriously. I bought The Editors, having only heard one song, after they named it one of their top 40 albums for last year. I wasn't disappointed. They had a couple of issues several months ago where they put crap like Beyonce on the cover and I was afraid they were going "mainstream", but luckily that didn't last long. They still have shitty bands like Fall Out Boy on the cover, but I know that's just to lure in newsstand readers.

Rolling Stone: Rolling Stone pretty much sucks, but they gave me a free subscription through my Salon subscription. So we've got a music magazine for both the upstairs bathroom and the downstairs bathroom. And in an emergency, we could use Rolling Stone for toilet paper, I don't think we'd miss anything.

The Alcalde: I get this because I have a lifetime membership in the Texas Exes. I don't really know what "the alcalde" is or how to pronounce it, but I always look at the baby announcements in the back, mostly to make fun of the bizarre names people give their kids. Then I look at the wedding announcements. Then I skim through for interesting articles. There are usually at least one, but sometimes there are several. I also like to look at the tacky, I mean gorgeous, items you can purchase with the UT seal or a longhorn on them. One day I WILL have an entire set of burnt orange bone china.

Parents Magazine: I think I paid $11.99 for a 3 year subscription to this. I'm embarassed to say I actually really enjoy reading it. It has a lot of good suggestions, and when that fails, lots of opportunities for me to feel I'm not doing that bad as a parent, "We'd only been eating fish sticks and lard for dinner, but then I read your article on healthy eating, and now once a week we eat a vegetable. Thanks Parents!" Although it's totally sexist. It assumes that Dad is a lazy, sexist butthead who thinks parenting is "women's work" and has suggestions like: "Dad, to give your wife a break, why don't you change the baby's diaper and spend 10 minutes with it so mom can take a shower!" It also only addresses women. Like men would NEVER read the magazine. Although, maybe I am really that lucky and have the only involved Dad on earth as a husband, but somehow I don't think that is true or else I'd hear a lot more bitching from at least the moms I know.

Ah, behold the power of dinner

In an attempt to reach a world record for most posts in a day, I would like to report that Stella is doing much better after dinner and a Sam Adams. She had the dinner, I had the Sam Adams. The Sam Adams was left over from my Dad's SXSW visit (thanks Dad!) and was found hiding behind the crisper for just a day such as this. Stella also took a big crap that seemed to involve a lot of effort, so perhaps that was contributing to her discomfort. But in any case, she is back to her adorable, sweet self!

9ish? 9ish!

So I just picked up my computer for the first time in a while, since I've been trying to console Stella for almost the past hour. She has been throwing a huge hissy fit since she woke up from her nap and no matter what I do, or don't do, it seems to continue. If we were not under a flash flood and tornado watch, I would take her to the park, but unfortunately that's not an option. So I pick up my computer and there is an IM from Tim saying "see you 9ish!" 9ish! I will have gone insane by then! See, he has an HOA meeting tonight, which I knew, but I thought he'd stop by at 7 and pick up his car, so I could at least hand Stella off for two minutes and go scream before I had to take her back. But I guess he's doing the bus for the whole thing. Whee! Her dinner keeps getting pushed forward earlier and earlier because it keeps her occupied during what I used to call her "witching hour". Now I call it her "Devil's Baby" two hours. It all goes away as soon as her Daddy walks in the door at 7. But until then, whoo boy, it's almost constant screaming. She is now trying to close my laptop. But she's not happy whether I pay attention to her or not, so I might as well multi-task.

Stella climbs the stairs

Stella discovered out to climb the stairs Saturday when my parents were here. Now she wants to do it All. The. Time! Check it out:

More babbling about our new house

So we walked through the model home with our floorplan Sunday and took pictures. The model is now sheetrocked, so you can see how it actually resembles a home. Do keep in mind that our house is reversed, so when you actually see our home one day, it will be flipped from what is in these pictures. (What's on the left will be on the right and vice versa.)

The Great Room, which is actually pretty great:

The kitchen:

The Master Bedroom, which is actually pretty small and is going to take some getting used to after our palacial bedroom right now. All I care is that our king-sized bed better fit in there!

Cool Coffered (sp?) Ceiling in our bedroom:

Stella's Bedroom, which is bigger than ours:

It has two closets, one of which I'm sure will be used for LGT stuff -or Tim's stuff, since we have to share a closet in the master;)

There are more rooms, but I didn't take pictures or they weren't that exciting.

We're also continuing to work on getting this house ready to put on the market. Last night we primed the downstairs bathroom. So no more blue:( I forgot to take pictures, too, which makes me sad, so it will just have to live on in our memory.

One more bonus photo. This is looking up in the backyard from where Stella's eventual swingset will most likely be:

So as she swings, this will be her view!