You've Come a Long Way, Baby

Overheard in our house:

K: She's seven months old!!
S: Can you believe it?! In five months, she'll be a year old. She'll be WALKING.
K: She's closer to a year than she is to being a newborn.
S: She still lives with US, and not with GYPSIES.

Is that "Taps" I hear?

Ah, swing. I feel a stronger tie to you than any inanimate object since...well, ever. You are the only reason we didn't jump off the roof or sell our daughter to the gypsies. You gave us thirty to ninety minutes of peace every evening. You gave us our very first three hour stretch of sleep after G was born. You were our failsafe- we never had to panic, if worse came to worst, "we can put her in the swing."

It's funny how scared I was to have to break her swing habit, only to find she mostly broke it herself. (I was also worried about using it too much because what if she found herself all swung out and the swing stopped working?! We'd DIE!!!) One day, I came home from work to find her in the swing, toes just at the edge. I looked in the manual, and she was still within the size range, but between those edge-tickling toes and the fact that we had to crank it ALL the way up to the highest setting to make it swing at all, it seemed like a losing battle. Anyway, she was starting to go to bed earlier, eliminating swing time, and was finding the exersaucer, and later the jumper, a lot more fun anyway. Also, the world was maybe not such a hideous place after all. And so she didn't need the swing anymore.

It sat in the living room for two and a half more months. Mostly because we had better things to do than take it apart and put it away. But also...it was sad! Our best friend, our little battery-powered nanny, getting taken apart and stuffed into black plastic bags, shoved into the garage rafters, to be used by the next baby (who please dear god don't let that baby need it as much as she did, please please please). Finally, today, I bit the bullet and took it apart. It was taking up too much room and she's definitely too big to use it anyway. Let us have a moment of silence for our dear, temporarily departed friend.

(G isn't nearly as emotional about this as I am)


PS- Yes, I know her jumper was too low. I took her out and raised it as soon as I took these pictures. Priorities and all.

My dad's take on Internet Message Boards

"Have you ever gone to the GardenWeb? It is a really cool garden forum with scads of topics. If you do good searches you can find really wise old gardeners happy to share info. But, then there are the dupas, lots of them and they really bug me. The worse always shows up like this: Someone asks a question like, "Is it easy to grow plant XYZ here in Greenland?" the dupa answers, "I have never grown plant XYZ but I really love to watch the guppies swim between the vallisneria." I would like to put poison electrons in their computers."

This has been making me smile all day.

My Little Foodie

I've said it before, but I'm gonna say it again: my baby, she LOVES to eat. We finally introduced the baby feeder (for the uninitiated, it's this weird mesh sock-thing that you put fod in and the baby can suck on it without getting big chunks they can't handle). So far, we've done a piece of watermelon with a single blackberry. See for yourself how she likes it:





Also, settle the debate for me, are her eyes hazel, or are they hazel?? (I know formatting is wonky here, but I can't figure out how to fix it and I don't have the energy to, either.)

Being Really Vague...

There are people at my job who are severely pissing me off today. And I am fighting tooth and nail to be diplomatic with them. But they are pissing me off nonetheless. And there is no reason for them to be pissing me off. They are being difficult, and I'm beginning to suspect they're being difficult on purpose. Which only pisses me off more.

Also, I would like if certain OTHER people did not operate on "Person X Time", but the time of the real world, because it would help me avoid these other people being difficult.

This has to be the world's stupidest blog post ever. Let's just say I'm feeling really irritated and pissy and wish people didn't insist on being so damn difficult. We all know those days.

Beware the Bars of Target

I kind of love grocery shopping. I love comparing prices and finding deals and using coupons. I LOVE buying generic. I love knowing that Dominick's is insanely, ridiculously overpriced, second only to Whole Foods, and one should only shop there under duress. I love knowing that groceries are cheaper at Target than at Jewel (which is also overpriced but not as egregiously as Dominick's).

I also love Fiber One bars. They're kind of an addiction. They're only 2 WW points per bar, plus you can always find a coupon for the Kelloggs version, and every store has a store version. They're also RIDICULOUSLY overpriced at Jewel, cheapest at Costco, and cheaper at Target. However, while the Jewel-brand fiber bars are a good substitute, I am learning things about Target brand fiber bars.

For example, that they're made of peanut butter chips and HAAAATE.

I don't wanna be disgusting. But I'm a vegetarian, plus, like I said, I'm rockin' a serious fiber bar addiction. This stuff generally doesn't affect me. There is SOMETHING different about the Target version. It's pure evil and my body, she doesn't like the Target version.

Consider yourself warned.

(on a less ooky note, why doesn't anyone make store-brand veggie burgers? I'm stuck buying name-brand, and none of the name brands are remotely cheap. Costco only sells vegan Bocas, and I don't like Boca burgers, plus the vegan version of any veggie burger tastes like warm butt.)

In Training

It's official. Marathon training has started.

This is good because distance just builds from here, and it's so gratifying to see my long run get longer every week.

This is bad because it is BEYOND stressful. A bad run is so much more than just a bad run. It throws everything off!! No, obviously it doesn't, but it feels that way.

Overall, though, it's good, because this means I can eat my dad's pancakes every sunday for the next few months. SCORE.

Wish me luck. I'm not entirely sure what I was thinking when I signed up for this.