Aaaaaand……I’m Spent

My mom’s 60th birthday party was Saturday night and I think I am still recovering. She had a good time and so did her guests, I think, so it was all worth it. Everything came together just as it should have and all that, but man, it was exhausting.

My family keeps telling me I should consider party planning for a job, but I disagree. It was too much, thinking about all the details. I’m a control freak and I spent a lot of time worrying about every detail that I left in someone else’s hands, from whether the restaurant would lose my order to whether my brother would get to the bakery in time to pick up the cake. And there was minimal pressure for this party since I knew my mom would not care about the details, plus this little dinner party for twenty people was small potatoes - and not the sort of event most people would pay a planner for.  If I had a paying client, the pressure would be ten-fold. The events would be mammoth. I would  never get a moment’s peace worrying about unreliable vendors and wilted flowers and broken cakes. And honestly, I am not very assertive so I don’t know that I could effectively hold a vendor’s feet to the fire to get what I need out of them.

So for now, I will preserve my party planning amateur status. You never know when they’ll add party planning as an Olympic event.

Maybe Abu Ghraib Has an Extra One Lying Around

Anyone know where I can find a sensory deprivation chamber? I think I’m going to have to find one on eBay or something if I ever want Bridget to eat again.

Here is the list so far of things that will cause Bridget to stop eating in order to investigate:
1. The dog. Doing anything
2. A bib with any design whatsoever or a tag
3. The pattern on the high chair
4. The straps on the high chair
5. The cat. Doing anything
6. Daddy. Doing anything
7. Sunlight

It’s easy to understand now why nursing became such an unworkable option for us.

Bummed

I stayed up until 1:30 this morning finishing Harry Potter. And now I am bummed. Not because of the ending. Just that I’m done with it and there will be no more. At least I have movies five through seven to look forward to (no I still haven’t seen Order of the Phoenix but I hope to very soon).

I won’t give anything away but if anyone wants to dish about the ending, feel free to comment and I’ll email you. I have no one to talk to about it around here.  Jake doesn’t read them and no one else I know except in blogland is finished yet.

Hurry up!

Temper, Temper

Lately Bridget has been expressing her displeasure with me. More specifically, her displeasure that I won’t allow her to chew on the power cord to the CD player in her room. At first, when I picked her up and pulled her away, she made this long, loud grunt of frustration. When she went for it again, and I again pulled her back, she made the grunt again, but then followed it up with whiny crying.  And when I tried to cuddle her to get her to stop crying, she tried to wiggle out of my arms. So it was obvious that she was just pissed at me for not bending to her will.

Honestly, isn’t eight months old a little early for temper tantrums? I figured I had at least a couple more months  before this happened. Sigh. She takes after both her parents, apparently.

Son of a Bitch

One of the sites I moderate includes a Harry Potter wiki and I’ll be goddamned if some asshole didn’t just post about the ending of the last book.

Fuck.

Way Too Excited

My brother has just changed careers and is going into business as a home inspector. So if anyone around the DFW area is buying or selling a home and needs a home inspection, be sure to let me know, ok? I know a guy.

Anyway, as a favor to us and a way for him to get used to writing up the reports, he performed a complimentary home inspection for us last week. I knew it would be trouble. We need a new dishwasher. OK, OK, I knew we needed one. I suspected for a while that there was a leak in our dishwasher, because the hardwood floors underneath it were buckling. But to have someone officially tell me we did was what it took to get me off my ass and out to Lowe’s to pick out a new one. Well, that and the fact that Sunday night I turned it on and smelled something burning. I have this rule about convenience appliances not burning down my house.

And just this very second, the installer guy left and I have a brand spankin’ new dishwasher. One that actually gets dishes clean and that you could run while watching TV. Woo hoo!

How old do I feel that the installation of a new dishwasher makes me giddy like a schoolgirl?

Here are the pictures of my newest toy:

Damn Muggles

This weekend was full of things designed to keep me from reading my new Harry Potter book.  I had been so diligent, re-reading books five and six (to prepare for the movie as well as the new book). I finished book six at about 5 p.m. on Friday afternoon, just in the nick of time for the arrival of book seven on Saturday. Except it didn’t arrive until after 1 p.m. and finally showed up just as I was on my way to run about a zillion errands. I had exactly 15 minutes to lay around Saturday evening before getting ready to go out so I read chapter one. Then I got home around midnight and had the energy to read chapters two and three. I don’t think I got to read any yesterday, and today I sneaked some reading in while work was quiet. I think I am on chapter six or seven now. And I love it!

But really  I had a great weekend. My cousin came in town with her boyfriend, whom we all believe to be The One. So Friday I packed up  Bridgie and we met them for lunch just for a bit. Then that evening all of us cousins went out and left all three kiddos with Grandma and Grandpa. We had wonderful margaritas and Tex-Mex at Chuy’s. Saturday night I went with my lovely sister-in-law to see Kathy Griffin. I DOUBLE HEART Kathy Griffin and was so thrilled when I checked her website a few months back to see that I hadn’t missed her by a few days, as is usually the case.  So I snatched up tickets, and then found out Jake had no interest in going. Which worked out perfect for us, because I had been hoping she and I would get to have a girls’ night out soon and we did. Complete with yummy Mexican food!

Sunday we went to my brother and SIL’s house to cook out and swim. It was Bridget’s first time in the pool. At first she wasn’t impressed, but once she was in for a while she dug it. Plus R&M have this really cool floatie toy for their daughter that we used for a bit when she was done with it. Bridgie could float and be in the shade and chill. She liked that.

Anyway, I am off to bed very soon to make some serious progress on my Harry Potter book. Is it wrong to be this excited about it?

Eight Months

Oh, how can it be??? How is it possible that my eensy-weensy little baby is already eight months old? Surely someone is playing games with time because I just don’t believe that this can be right.

OK, I guess I’ll dispense with the usual parent crap about “my little baby is growing up” and move on with the rest of this post.

So let’s see….Bridget is definitely crawling - but not all the time. That surprises me. I figured that once she figured out how to do it, there’d be no stopping her. But really, up until yesterday, she was normally content to sit in one spot with her favorite toys and just play.  I used to have to lure her into crawling by moving one of the Chosen Toys across the room. Even then, she’d give me this look like, “Seriously? You’re going to make me crawl for it?” and then reluctantly take off toward it.  Yesterday however, when I wanted her to sit happily and play while I put away some laundry (*gasp!* I know!) she decided that was a fine time to start her hands-and-knees exploration of my bedroom. Luckily the sex toys are too high for her to reach so her only reward at the end of her expedition was a flashlight.

Bridget still has no teeth but I  swear it’ll be any day now. She keeps flapping her gums, literally, which makes me think that she feels something in there, but so far no flashes of white have erupted and I feel bumps but her entire gumline feels bumpy so it’s hard to say if there are teeth under there at all. That doesn’t keep her from her new-found love of Cheerios. I had really only been giving her the apple cinnamon puffs that pretty much dissolve on contact when she touches them, but she always makes this face like she can’t understand why anyone would want to eat those. I tasted one and it’s almost like a communion wafer (you Catholics will know what I mean) in that yes, it does start to dissolve on your tongue but you kinda have to mash it a bit to actually get it gone. (I may have lost the Catholics here because I KNOW you aren’t supposed to chew the body of Christ, but come on. Everyone chews a little bit. You can’t go on to brunch with the body of Christ stuck to the roof of your mouth.) Anyway, I digress. Yesterday I gave her Cheerios instead and was a bit worried about her choking, but she didn’t and she loved them. In fact, I put a line of them on her tray and watched her move her hand over all of them until she found the biggest Cheerio and picked that one up and put it in her mouth. A baby genius, this one is.

Bridget is a climber. Holy crap, is she a climber. There is no surface safe from her trying to scale it. Me, Jake, the couch, the window, her play pen, the crib….. Even when she is totally wiped out and ready for bed, when I turn her around to burp her, she picks up her feet and starts to use my boobs as a toe-hold to get up and over me to see what’s behind the rocking chair. So far she hasn’t succeeded because we don’t let go of her, but she keeps trying. Jake has predicted that she will be the little kid who gets her head stuck in a hole in the ground that you see on the news. “I just wanted to see what was down there!” will be her answer when the newslady asks her why she did it. A penchant for exploration already. We better start saving up for spelunking lessons for her.

I am one of the unfortunate mothers who will never know what their child looks like asleep.. She will sleep through the dogs barking their fool heads off right outside her door.  We listen through the monitor and she doesn’t make a peep. But somehow, the sound of her door opening every so slowly, quietly and gently wakes her up.  Last night, I could tell by the sound of her breathing that she was sleeping soundly, so I couldn’t resist the urge to just sneak a peek at her.  I opened the door and she immediately lifted her head to look at me. Then sat up. Oh, there was hell to pay when I laid her back down. Hell to pay.  She cried for about fifteen minutes even though she was half asleep. Bad bad mommy.

And today, she clapped for the first time. It was so cute! OK, so she hasn’t figured out that her hands have to be open in order for the clapping to make noise, but she was clearly imitating me when I clapped for her.

You know, some days are really hard. Those days are usually when she’s feeling clingy and doesn’t want me to put her down and I can’t get anything done. I do get exasperated although not really at her, just in general. But all she has to do is put her head down on my shoulder and I know that nothing else in the world matters except our little family.

One Tequila, Two Tequila, Three Tequila - Floor!

My birthday was last week and as some of you may know, I relish being The Birthday Princess. This year,  I was able to milk my day for not one, but three birthday celebrations. I’m good like that. Well, it’s not really like it sounds. Since my birthday fell on a Wednesday, Jake tried to plan one weekend get-together with my friends. But Karin and her boyfriend were not available the weekend that everyone else was, so we went to a yummy sushi dinner with them last Saturday night. We were supposed to go out for Indian food on Wednesday night, but Jake wasn’t feeling great, so we got some takeout sandwiches and postponed until Thursday. Then last night was the big celebration. M&K came from Austin, as did Sarah and her HUSband, and Audrey joined us as well. We went to a very chi-chi Dallas place called Trece. The kind where all the women there are on the prowl for rich husbands, and use their silicone boobs and teensy-weensy dresses as bait. But we overlooked that and went for the food and the tequila. The place calls itself a Mexican kitchen and tequila lounge. They have tequila on tap! The food was great, the drinks were amazing (I had a cucumber lavender mojito which was incredible) and it’s always wonderful to spend your birthday celebration with dear friends. And despite my three drinks (the cucumber lavender mojito, a Mexican martini and a birthday shot of fancy tequila courtesy of M&K) I did not pass out or throw up, but I did have a very nice buzz that turned into a mild headache, but I’m not hung-over today so that’s something.

And we were still home by 10 or 10:30, like semi- responsible parents.

Another Reason I Miss Nursing

Damn! I’m getting my period for the first time since February of 2006. I have thought a couple times in the past few months that maybe it was happening, but it never really materialized. But it’s real this time. Words cannot express the joy I am feeling.

I guess that explains the tiredness, the headache, the grumpiness, and the manic need for chocolate that I’ve been experiencing lately. I might need to go lay down with a heating pad soon.