A Shout-Out to my (blog) Friend

If you think simply putting a few lines on your blog every day this month is a challenge, like I do, then you really need to check out one of my favorite bloggers to see what "crazy" means. Or should I say "Manic"?

That's right Manic Mommy is interviewing various bloggers this month. Her questions are telling, thought provoking (if puke and boobs are what you like to think about), and very, very funny. Bonus YouTube videos included!

Leave a comment and you might be next. Just say "Domestic Valerie" sent me. ;)

Maia Moment of the Day: Snacks Please

Maia has been a grumpy girl for the past few days. Cranky, not eating, (well, that's kind of a matter of course with her) not wanting to play...generally not wanting to do much of anything except be a pill. A cute pill, but a pill none-the-less.

Today she woke up with a snotty nose. Great. Last winter we managed to squeak by with a minimum of illness. Looks like this year we're in for whatever bug happens by. This will be her second cold in as many months. I should be buying stock in McNeil-PPC, Inc. and Novartis.

Of course, not wanting to be upstaged any more than I have to be by Miss M, I have been feeling under the weather for the past couple of days as well. It's been cranky pants city around here. I feel for my poor husband.

I was beginning to fear that her cuteness was not going to be enough to get us through the rest of the week. But fear not! Cuteness prevails around here.

This evening as I was puttering around straightening the house and getting dinner started Maia decided she needed a snack. She knows where her snacks are kept...in the cabinet under our kitchen not-an-island island. She comes walking up to me holding a bag of Goldfish (whole grain, did you know they made those?? but the first ingredient is "smiles") and her snack trap. Because earlier in the day when she asked for crackers, that was what I had given her: goldfish in a snack trap. I guess she decided to give me all the tools to facilitate her snacking pleasure.

Word of the Day : Ball!

Maia is adding new words every day. This morning she woke up and her first word was "ball"...not her more usual "kitty" or "Hi". All day it was "Ball, ball, ball" broken only by the occasional "baby".

She has enough to talk about, we have four different balls to play with, and that only counts the larger ones.

I only wonder what tomorrow will bring.

Four Weeks...Three Cakes

A mommy friend of mine teaches the cake decorating classes at Michaels and my other mommy friend and I have decided to give it a whirl.

For all my "skills" behind the stove and in the oven, I am seriously lacking in the "make it pretty" department. I can not *gasp* make a frosting rose to save my life. I know many of you are rolling eyeballs in my general direction, but really, when you tell people you were in the pastry business they expect certain things. Like frosting roses.

Never mind the pie crust as light as air. The delicate scent of rosemary married in a perfect shortbread crusted lemon bar. The homemade cakes towering and covered in real sugared fruit. Cute cupcakes with cream cheese frosting (I can pipe...I'm not hopeless). No it's all about the frosting bling, in some circles.

Plus, I like pretty. What girl doesn't?

I also like excuses to buy new pastry equipment. And I might be able to pull off some pretty fantastic birthday cakes in the near future.

I'm pretty excited. I love piping bags. And my teacher friend is so much fun. It's been a long time since I took a class simply for pleasure.

I'll post pictures of my efforts here, so you can see what I'm up to. We do get to bake the cakes, so expect something more than a box from me. After all, as my husband would say, I have a reputation to uphold. ;) And he'll be eating the majority of my efforts.

Dibs!

I've found other bloggers I regularly read participating in this monster called National Blog Posting Month aka NaBloPoMo. The difference between others and myself, other than talent, is their ability to post real posts. I have resorted to two sentences and it's only November 4th.

Lord help us when I'm in Idaho for Thanksgiving. I'll have to deal with *shudder* DIAL UP INTERNET. I think that's the worst part about a visit to the northern climes for this girl from the heart of the Silly-Con Valley.

I thought I would take this "extra hour" (really, it's the same hour we lost in the spring) allotted to us by the political machinations of WWI and maybe write a complete story/thought. I'll try at least.

I mentioned that I had a busy day yesterday. In the morning John and I delivered a table and chairs to my sister Natalie, bought a safe from a "unique" woman, and had breakfast. I then went to a baby shower for a friend of mine who is due with her first in December. Then it was back to sister Natalie's apartment for her birthday party. This was the first she had hosted a birthday for herself in her own home...so it was a big deal. That also required a quick trip to buy a present because my original plans fell through.

It was also a "work" day for John. I was fast asleep when he was finally able to come to bed last night. It's been that kind of week(s) for him.

My immediate family was all in attendance last night, so we naturally fell into conversation about the holidays. Who is going to be where for what. My parents are divorced. My dad just remarried to the lovely woman he's been dating for about 5 years. She is also a divorcee with two almost grown children with other family obligations and, of course, my siblings all have different places to be on holidays. Holidays around here are carefully orchestrated productions. I have to keep a running tab years in advance of where my little family needs to be for Thanksgiving/Christmas. It's enough to make one a little less cheerful about the upcoming celebrations of friends and family. Bah-humbug, Holiday Season. I'm tired already, just working out the logistics.

I have, of course, already planned out where John, Maia and I need to be. We're in Idaho with his parents for Thanksgiving. We'll be home for Christmas and I am hosting a Christmas Day Open House. All my family and perhaps assorted friends can drop by anytime during that day and stay for a snack, a meal, and a movie. We'll be playing Christmas classics all day long. I'll have a nice spread. There will be presents under the tree. There will be joy all around. There will be no formal where-the-heck-will-everyone-sit dinner like the last time I tried to host Christmas. I'm looking forward to it.

So the festivities for this year have been sorted. Kind of. At least I know where I'll be.

I leave the party around 8:30 and my brother, Rick, offers to help Maia and I to the car. He says he'd like to speak to me about something. Alright. He has decided that he wants Halloween. Specifically, he wants Maia for Halloween. He wants that to be their special holiday. He loves Halloween and he was musing about how he missed Trick-or-Treating and dressing up. He would love to show Maia the ropes of going door to door and creating a special bond for the two of them over costumes and candy. I am blown away by this. A very sentimental gesture on the part of my usualy stoic brother. How could I resist? I'm loving dressing her up and parading her around...but I really like the handing out the candy part of the evening as well. I'm thinking about how cool a tradition it would be to go out with Uncle Rick on Halloween. I hope we do make it a tradition.

My hour is up. Maia is stirring in her bed and I'm thinking about making breakfast at home. Muffins sound good. I have to check the cupboard, though. Then it's shopping and dinner at dad's to look at honeymoon pictures and play with the wedding gifts. Family stuff. But now I have next Halloween to look forward to.

Have a good day, fellow NaBloPoMo'ers. Check you later.

Cheating!

OK...so today has been really busy and I am really tired. But to honor my month-long commitment I will post a cheatin' post.

Check out our fun Halloween! John has posted a video he edited for everyones pleasure and pictures of Maia in her Grandma made costume. I made the hair clips.

Here's the link:Halloween


We're hosting the video...have a cup of coffee while it downloads. And enjoy!

Recaps of the madness tomorrow!

Quick Tip #2:

Hair dye DOES NOT (especially after sitting all day) clean off easily from my crappy plastic counter tops. Comet (the real abrasive powder in a can) usually does the trick.

Quick Tip:

Hair dye cleans off of tile bathroom floors so much easier than it cleans off of linoleum floors. Just to let you know.

Maia Moment of the Day

It should be easy to blog for a month by picking an Official Maia Moment of the Day. Don't worry, I'll try and post about other things in my life. But you know, it's my life and Maia pretty much fills my day.

Today's moment is brought to you by the sign
"shoe".

Maia has become obsessed with shoes. It's no wonder. She's my daughter. At the height of my collection I owned close to 50 pairs. That may not sound like a lot of shoes to some of you, but I would forgo eating and any extra closet space for shoes. I love them. I still do, even if my collection has dwindled to under 20 pairs. I don't get out as much as I used to. But I digress.

So Maia fishes a single shoe from her basket of footwear and asks me to put it on for her. Asking consists of making the sign for "shoe" and thrusting her shoe and her foot in my direction. I oblige, but we have a conversation about how she only has one shoe, and she needs the other. I don't know where the other shoe is to be found. She has grabbed one from a pair we don't wear often, mostly because they're still a bit too big. She wanders off, happy in her lopsided shoeness. I figured she'd pull it off in a minute or two and that would be that.

A few minutes later Maia tracks me to the kitchen, matching shoe in hand and asks me to put that other one on her. I still don't know where she pulled it from. But she constantly amazes me at how much she understands.

If only "no" would begin to take on some meaning for her...

November Blog Fest

I am taking the challenge. I am committed to posting EVERY DAY this month. It's part of: http://nablopomo.ning.com/

Check it out, all you other random non-posters like me out there.

Blueberries

Some quick notes about Maia, because these things should be written down and I am tragicly bad at journaling. No baby book here. Well, maybe someday, but I still need to remember these things.

So:

Maia loves blueberries. They are, hands down, her favorite food. She started eating them around 14 months...right about the time I was getting seriously desperate over her lack of desire to eat any kind of solid food. At least on a semi-regular basis. She ate an entire pint over the course of two meals. I should have slowed her down, but hey. It was something she'd eat.

Over the next few days she consumed a few more pints. And developed a raging diaper rash. Ooops. We slowed the blueberry consumption way down after that. Now, she gets some with breakfast, maybe more with lunch or dinner. We know she's not feeling well if she won't eat blueberries. If she gets a fruit salad, she'll pick the blueberries out first. It's very cute.

She started walking backwards yesterday. Because she can.

Maia has about 15 signs she uses, and 7-9 that she uses on a regular basis. She started signing "please" when she wants something. Or she'll sign "more" if she wants to do something she's done before. Today I asked her if she wanted some blueberries. She signed "please" as her answer.

She doesn't use very many verbal words. I'm not worried. She communicates with us and babbles in sentence patterns. She doesn't like to try new things, unless she's fairly sure she can do it right. I think she'll begin talking a bit later than many of her peers, but she'll begin with sentences. And it will come all at once. Like most things she does.

Maia likes to read books. She'll sit with a book, babble the words and turn the page and babble some more. I need to get a video of her doing that.

Maia started riding her birthday rocking horse. She does it all herself..except for mounting up. She can dismount when she's done riding. That's another activity I need to record.

About two weeks ago she started shape sorting. She loves to sort her wooden blocks that have a clever sorted lid. She'll be occupied for long (for a toddler) stretches of time sorting. Yesterday we got out her sorting box and she was able to sort the more difficult shapes, the star and triangle, with ease.

She's had a runny nose for the past week. Ick. She hates to have have her snot "snortled" with the bulb nose clearer so I've been attacking her with tissues which she only tolerates. This morning she took the tissue and blew her own nose. Right at this moment, she came walking up with a baby wipe and blew her nose all on her own. Baby wipes don't tear like tissues do. That's a good thing.

Maia is beginning to "help" when we get dressed and undressed. She likes to pull her shirts over her head. I'm waiting for her to discover that she can do that particular trick all on her own. Shirtless in the winter. Just what we need.

A quick tooth report: She has her two back bottom molars and is working on the two back top molars. No bottom eye teeth yet, just a cute gap between the four front teeth and the molars. That's 10 in and working on 12. Woo-hoo!

Next up: Weaning from the Bottle. We'll begin that trick next week. Wish me luck and an minimum of hard to get to sleep nights.

Three Years Ago

Three years ago today I stood on a beach at 10:30 in the morning and was joined together with my favorite man for ever and always...we wrote out the "till death do us part". Why should death stop a good thing?

Two years ago today we gave each other the best present ever as we found out that we were going to be parents...and our lives would never be the same. In a very good way.

One year ago today we ate sushi in our living room while our precious three-month-old slept. We thought it couldn't get better than that.

Tonight we have a baby sitter and we'll dine on German food. A bottle of our honeymoon Riesling is chilled in the fridge. We'll toast or good luck and our love as each year it gets stronger.

Three years. Too short a span for the lifetime of memories we have already created.

Cheers to you, my love.

Cute Story of the Week

Cute Maia story: (because I really should be writing these down somewhere so I can tell them to her over and over someday) Feel free to skip as the "cute baby" levels increase...

I am watching my friend's 9 month old son two days a week now. We're all adjusting to new things and it's hard first thing in the morning. Mr. M of course doesn't like to be dropped off, but he's getting better. That said, Mr. M was crying in my lap and I needed to distract him. Maia was playing in the doorway of her room and I ask her to go get a book so that we can read to Mr. M.

She hesitates before looking at me and doing the sign for book (her first time doing this) and then walks to the bookshelf, runs her fingers across the spines of her books before choosing one, and then pulls it out. Instead of bringing it to me to read, she plops down and "reads" the book to herself in baby babble.

She then chooses another book out from her shelf and brings it over to Mr. M and I and reads the book to us. Again in baby babble.

I love this kid, I really, really do.

Spetember 25

3rd Anniversary Traditional Gift:

Leather(!)

"As a material, leather is durable, warm, strong, flexible, and has a sense of resiliency to it. These are qualities that help marriages continue to thrive."

Hmmm, I was going to write about how I didn't expect a gift this year, my dear John. But leather? I'm feeling tingly in my toes now. So many options...so little time until Tuesday. I didn't know about the leather when we picked the restaurant where we will be wiling the night away. But now it fits oh-so-well. You know, lederhosen and all.

Three years. Where does the time go?

Friday Night Cheese Party

It was one of those evenings only a mom (or a dad, maybe) could appreciate:

Sick baby girl. She picked up a nice little virus at the beginning of the week and has been weathering the ups and downs since. Fever spikes, appetite lows and loads of snuggling on the couch with mommy. Yesterday she didn't eat much at all. I've been tempting her with food favorites but she just wants her bottle and yesterday she didn't even want that. At bed time she takes her bottle--the whole thing--and then proceeds to throw it back up. All over herself. All over the floor. All over the Mom.

It looks likes cheese curds. Ever seen the cheese making process? Cheese begins life as milk that is heated and curdled and then separated from the watery milk in little chunks. That was all over the floor.

I strip Maia down. I strip myself down. As I head for the bathroom to draw a bath for the baby, I notice that the Harvey cat has chosen this very moment to express his disappointment in the state of his litter box by pooping on the floor. Great. So I'm in underwear staring at curds and whey vomit on one floor and cat poop on another. What's a girl to do?

Call John and ask him to bring home a pizza. That's what.

I did manage to get everything cleaned up. I attacked the floor of Maia's room after scooping the poop and while the bath was running. After soaking the carpet with cleaner, I dropped the baby in the tub and cleaned the cat box out. Soaped the kid, got her out and into clean pj's then scrubbed the carpet again.

All this in my underwear.

I did manage to have my pj's on by the time John got home with dinner. I earned my beer last night.

Check

Alright, we'll be counting today as the first day of Walking. Maia has taken several small groups of steps all over...at the park and at home. She's not taken more than 4-5 and she'll usually stumble through 2-3 before either grabbing something or sitting down. But, hey. It has begun.

And it is very, very cute.

Radio Silence

Sorry for the interruption in service...I will resume regularly scheduled blogging soon.

~dv

Friday Night

On the recommendation of dooce I went ahead a read through Spinner's 25 Most Exquisitely Sad Songs.

Happy weekend me.

So now here I am sitting and drinking a double whiskey alone running through our song collection and playing the saddest songs I can find. Some from the top 25. Johnny Cash covering Nine Inch Nails "Hurt" twice.

That's when I broke out the whiskey.

Meh

I go through phases these days and lately its been a down swing. When I hit a down swing its all I can do to actually get up and get through my day...let alone write about it.

I'm not sure where this is coming from. Usually it's stress of hormones or something concrete I can pin down and deal with then get over. This time its lasting. I haven't felt good in weeks. No energy. No desire to do anything. I get tired half way through the day and then I'm done. For good. Housework comes and goes in phases. I spent several days working on pieces of our bedroom and nothing else. Now I'm desperately trying to get the kitchen clean but it all seems so futile. I cook, I clean, I clean, I cook. It's a never ending circle of despair.

Don't even get going on the diet. That will put me over the edge and in to full blown tear phase.

The school project has been grinding me down. That's almost over, thank god. My adviser was so right to suggest I do this one class on its own after coming back from having a baby. It's killing me. Two more weeks. That's it. Two more weeks.

Maia was sick sick sick last week. Poor baby. Fever for four days, crankiness, then even worse a lethargy that left her folded over with her head on the floor, eyes open and staring, instead of playing with the toys in front of her. That's when I called the doctor for a second time and brought her in. The verdict? UTI. That's urinary tract infection for those lucky enough to never have had those words uttered at them. Of course there are complications to a bladder infection at this age. Physical immaturity of the urinary tract can lead to a "back flow" from the bladder to the kidneys and in case of infection, this can lead to kidney damage. Oy. So more tests for Maia. And a regular dose of antibiotics to maintain an infection-free urinary tract once the current infection has been thoroughly killed.

All this for a baby whose parents decry the over use of antibiotics and swore to take a "watch and see" approach with illness. See how things change in the thick of it. Of course, I understand that *possible* sensitivity to certain antibiotics in the future is a very small price to pay to avoid kidney damage. I'm simply pointing out the irony here.

I blame the formula for this infection. Another item on the long list of shot down "nevers".

I hope to feel pithy at some point again in the near future.

For the present, I don't expect much.

POST!

Posting for the sake of posting. Meh. Time for bed.