Birthday madness

Well, the birthday festivities have come and gone and now we’re headed to Cape for a family reunion. I’m feeling all high tech, using my iBook on the road.

Friday’s party with the play group was big fun. All six mommies and babies were there, plus a six-year-old and one daddy. It was total chaos. I realized how inept I am at entertaining without Tim’s help.

But everyone seemed to have a good time, and Auggie made a great haul, with beautiful new diapers from Heidi Sugarbums and Jillian, diaper covers from Rachel and Nace, a rattle and a T-shirt from Arianne and Carolyn and a cool boat from Susan and Jordan. And Colleen and Richard brought a beautiful cake from Big Richard’s bakery. Thanks, guys!

Saturday, we had lots of family and friends over for a barbecue and the big cake mess that is traditional on the first birthday. It was a total hoot. Here’s the classic shot:

The whole thing was pretty exhausting, though. After all was said and done, Tim and I kind of looked at each other and said, ‘Do you think Auggie actually had fun?’

I think he did, at times. Probably not so much when all of his older cousins were enthusiastically trying to feed him his dinner at once. They were so sweet and helpful, though. I love how little kids are so drawn to babies. Mackenzie kept asking to hold him. No easy feat when the baby is over 23 pounds and very strong and squirmy!

But I know that he loved the cupcake mess, once he got into it. He especially loved the bath afterwards, with the pink water. He was highly entertained by the unwrapping of presents (especially the ribbon). All in all, a good time was had by all, I hope.

Jane, get me off this crazy thing… called life

Tomorrow is the big day.

Auggie is nearly 1. One year. 12 months. 365 days.

I suppose I should sit down and write a deep, introspective remembrance of his first year of life, but who has the dang time? I’ve got two birthday parties to throw in the next two days! You should see all the hot dog buns! It’s insane!

Here’s a shot from last week:

I love this picture, because it looks innocent enough… Until you realize that he’s not wearing any PANTS! See? This is what I’m talking about with the diaper changes! He’s thrashing around, screaming bloody murder while you’re taking off the diaper and putting the new one back on, but if you let him go, he’s hunky-dory. If you could witness it, you would understand why I just give up halfway through sometimes. And then you would never have kids of your own.

Still haven’t gotten to watch LOR… *sigh* But what’s to be done? I’ve had paying work to do. And I still have to partake of this pesky sleep thing.

So, as my baby enjoys his last hours of “zero-ness” I will be joining him in blissful sleep.

The Lord of the Things

Woo hoo! Break out the microwave popcorn, the 99 cent Milkduds and the frosty mugs of Coke — Lord of the Rings is out!

Yes, I did just purchase the widescreen DVD (Shane, Target has it for $16.99 this time too, so don’t screw up and get the full-screen version like you did with Harry Potter.). Yes, I did go out of my way to purchase some Milkduds at the grocery store. Yes, I am the biggest dork of all time.

Speaking of grocery stores, do all of them put the candy right next to the cereal? Having an increasingly-independent child of my own who will one day peruse the cereals aisles with much joy (as I once did), I find this to be completely insidious. Those of you who are scoffing at my extreme naivete are no doubt looking forward to my outrage over toy commercials during cartoons, obvious product placement in kids’ movies, etc.

Why should I be surprised at the cravenness of the advertising industry, anyway? After all, I did butter my bread from the feet of its evil throne for two years, right? Plus, after witnessing the all-out, no-holds-barred marketing of infant formula over breastfeeding (my own breasts’ advertising agency went under some time ago), I should be ready for anything. Sometimes capitalism just surprises me with its industriousness.

Anyway, I’m hoping for a more enjoyable experience watching the Lord of the Rings tonight. The first time I saw it, it was on mine and Tim’s anniversary and I was out of practice seeing a movie. All the extreme closeups nearly made me ill. Maybe our little 27-inch screen will not be as overwhelming.

testing

Testing the posting-by-email feature… Let me know if I’m annoying you, OK?

Sorry ’bout that

Sorry for the huge pic, there, guys. Hopefully nobody got stuck trying to download that post for five minutes. You dial-up people (and you know who you are) have my sympathy.

So tomorrow morning, we’re going to do the “World Walk for Breastfeeding” at Northwest Plaza, wherever that is. It benefits La Leche League, and we can dig that. Plus, you know how Auggie is just a huge media hog. He’s all about getting his mug on TV. None of that newspaper mention stuff. He’s ready to go big time.

Another totally rad thing about this Blogger Pro deal is that we get a free Blogger micro-ad. Here’s ours:

(Imagine this is a little blue box)

Perfect from now on

Read all about the toddler who is Guided By Voices

And they click on it and they come here! Whoopee!

Tim was like, “Our server only allows 10 concurrent connections.”

I’m like, “I don’t think we need to worry that just yet, baby.”

Auggie’s like, “Da! Ma!” (makes farting sounds on arm)

My son, the pickpocket

Woo hoo, impetuousity! I had one of my trademark changes of heart and just decided to buy the dang Blogger Pro already! And it is so neat! I feel totally over my head in geeky goodness already.

So, I’m basically just testing it out right now, while Auggie is sitting on the floor, going through my wallet. He is very deliberately taking out all of the cards and receipts (geez, there are a lot of those…). Yes, I already took out the cash. (Ice cream man!)

Here’s a pic, just to test that dealie out:

Let’s see how it works!

I swear I’ve been blogging every day, I swear! Apparently, we’re having some sort of trouble FTP-ing from Blogger. Hopefully Tim will get this taken care of post-haste Friday morning.

Oh, my, what a day. After an action-packed morning, complete with “where are my interview notes?!” freak-out, Auggie and I hopped in the car to jet down to Cape to see the new cousin. Apparently, his name is still under consideration. And Easton is nursing! That is so wonderful! I hadn’t even let myself hope… Here’s hoping that she sticks with it. I tried to be encouraging, but hopefully did not come off as rabid.

Auggie had his first Wib’s barbecue sandwich! And he loved it! My mom was worried about it being too spicy for him, but she was quickly appeased after the gazpacho story. The thing that makes Wib’s the best barbecue ever is that it’s basically just thinly-sliced smoked pork on toast, with a light spreading of barbecue sauce on the inside of the toast. Mm-Mm! My favorite is the “combination” which is the barbecue sandwich with pimento cheese. I know it sounds weird, but it is so good you just want to melt. Wib’s also used to make the best malts. But no more. Was that a haiku?

The ride home was very stressful, as Auggie cried for 45 miles of the trip. He was constantly chomping on his fingers, so I’m guessing that tooth #6 is working its way toward daylight. Poor little guy.

Anyway, once we were home and everyone was fed, I needed to get some serious work done. So I packed up the iBook and motored up to the local Starbucks concern. I’ve only been to Starbucks once before, so I was a little overwhelmed by the sheer number of things that could be “frappachino-ed.” I ended up going with a mocha frappachino the size of my head and it was mighty tasty. It’s easy to see how they are taking over the world, one four dollar coffee concoction at a time.

I guess that’s it. No big ideas today. No tirades on society’s ills.

Sorry.

So tired…

One more stinking article done. I can’t believe it’s come to this. But, hey, tomorrow’s only the first! I mean, it’s been, like, the 3rd and I haven’t even had the articles started before, so this is a piece of cake, right? I guess I’m just frustrated because every single dang month I pledge to not be scurrying around at the last minute the next month, yet here I am again.

Nuts.

I’m just itching to get down to Cape to see the newest member of my family. My cousin Easton had a baby boy this evening. So he’s my second cousin, yes? I don’t understand all that stuff. Or rather I should say that I don’t care enough to understand that stuff.

His name (the baby’s) is Jovarion. My grandmother was so cute. I was talking to her on the phone about his name and she said, ‘I don’t know if you know this, Beth, but the baby’s biracial.’ I was like, ‘Um, yeah. I kinda got that from the fact that most of our family doesn’t even acknowledge Easton anymore.’ Grandma said that she’s going to call him Joe.

This is something most people don’t know about me. My family is extremely bigoted. Not a big surprise for those of you familiar with southeastern Missouri. To tell you the truth, I have no idea how I didn’t turn out to be the biggest racist on the planet. Yet another bonus point for my incredible mom, I guess.

It’s just hard for me to understand why people even care what race people are anymore. I could make all kinds of excuses for Cape — it’s backwards, it’s conservative, etc. But they’re just that — excuses.

My cousin likes to date African-Americans. Big deal. I liked to date smart guys (married one of ’em too). Did my aunts and uncles ever care about that? Hell no.

Anyway, I don’t want to get up on a moral high-horse here. My family is what it is. You have to take the bad with the good, and all that. I’m just happy that Easton and her son are OK. If you are of the praying sort, though, could you say a quick one for them? With very little money, questionable support from the father and a community that is not exactly welcoming, they’ve got their work cut out for them. They can use every break they can get.

Thinking about Easton and her new baby reminded me of my first night with August. He was born at 6:21 p.m., so by 11, everyone was gone, including Tim, who I sent home to get some sleep. The hospital was quiet, my room was dark, and I was supposed to be getting some rest myself.

But I couldn’t stop staring at my son.

Just watching him breathe.

I couldn’t tear my eyes away from him, lest he stop breathing at that exact moment. Eventually I did have them take him to the nursery, just so I could try to sleep for an hour or two. I ended up walking down there an hour later to bring him back. I couldn’t stand not having him with me, since he had been with me every moment for the previous 40 weeks. It was like telling them to take your right leg away for a couple of hours. Just didn’t feel right.

Plus, I figured that you never heard about babies dying from SIDS in the hospital anyway.

Now he’s so big. Starting to take those first Frankenstein-esque steps. Or as my brother says, ‘Having a toddler around the house is like living with a drunk.’ He points at stuff he wants to check out. He likes to hang out with his friends.

I can’t believe it’s almost been a year.

Finally! One article has been completed! I’ve found that once I get past the first article, things usually start rolling pretty quickly. And since I need to get all seven articles written and submitted for approval by the end of the week, “quickly” is the operative word. Tomorrow afternoon will pretty much be dedicated to getting these babies done. I may have to send Tim to MoKaBe’s without me… *sigh*

More teething related fun times today, as Auggie took two 45-minute naps today. That just does not cut it for my little guy. He did not want to go down AT ALL. So putting him down for his morning nap was an hour and a half long ordeal. (I know there are supposed to be a lot of hyphens in these adjectival phrases, but I’m just too darn tired to deal.)

You know what font I really like? Chicago. It reminds me of college. Sure, lots of people gave me a hard time, because it’s a big font and it fills up pages more quickly than, say, Times New Roman. But I really just like it because it’s easy to read. I think it’s maybe just a Mac font, anyway, because I haven’t used it in a long time. God, I’m such a geek.

So I know you’re wondering why I didn’t get any work done on those aforementioned articles this evening. Well, let me tell you! We went out to dinner is why. A spectacularly overpriced dinner, at that. You see, someone recently mentioned that TGIFridays was a particularly “child-friendly” restaurant, and I haven’t been to one since, like, 1995. So I figured, what the heck?

Eh.

I was adventurous tonight. I got the gazpacho. It was not so good. Kinda like eating cold salsa. With cucumbers. Not so good.

Then I got some kinda shrimp entree that sounded pretty good. Sauteed in a spicy sauce, with corncakes to balance the spice. Well, the corncakes were WAY too sweet. The shrimp was OK.

So, all in all, I’d recommend sticking with the salads if you are ever forced to eat at TGIFridays. I think I’ll wait another seven years before I go back.

I haven’t checked the odds in Vegas today as to whether I’m odds-on to fail at my every-day-posting pledge today or tomorrow. All I have to say is, bet the farm that I’m going to make it. You know how I love a long shot.

This iBook is not good for my carpal tunnel. I’m occasionally frightened when I imagine the future; all of us with our shriveled, crippled forearms after years of typing nonergonomically. When I had my massage back in May, the therapist massaged my carpal tunnel muscles and it hurt like the dickens. She said that they were really tight. (Like my neck, my back, etc.) Man, I have got to get back for another massage. It was soooo wonderful. (I know, I know, stating the obvious…)

Tonight was a fun night for our little family. Once Tim got home, we all set out on our bikes (Auggie in his trailer) for Grant’s Trail, which is about three miles from our house. We rode down to the end of the trail towards the river, another 3.5 miles. So, all told, we covered about 13 miles today! Woo hoo! And there was

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this totally huge hill that I had to use the tiniest gear to make it up. And this mean guy yelled, “Pick another route!’ once we were at the top. I gave him the finger. Not a good example for my son. Bad Mommy.

Anyway, once we got home, I cooked up a Mexican feast — Auggie’s first. And he loved it! He was covered in shredded cheese, refried beans and tortilla once all was said and done.

Now it’s nearly 11 and I need to get off to bed. Auggie woke up at 1 last night and was completely inconsolable. Our best guess was that his tummy hurt, so I brought him back into bed with us, where he nursed all night and I barely slept at all. However, tonight Tim noticed that another tooth had broken through his top gums so there you go! He is teething! Perhaps that explains all the biting! So if he wakes up tonight, we’ll try the gum-numbing stuff first. Poor Auggie.

Still no articles written for my newsletter project… I did go over some of the information I will use to write said articles, however. That’s a step.

I’m such a bloody procrastinator. It’s a sickness, really.