Friday Photos: Too Hot in the Hot Tub Edition

Do you remember that skit from Saturday Night Live? "Is it hot in the hot tub? Will it make me sweat-uh?" And this week was the Hotness. Today it's going to be around 88 degrees, which seems nice and cool.

More pics from my friend's housewarming party:

Lucy getting goat kisses. Or else she was trying to eat Lu's barette. Toss up.

Sometimes I can't believe that my girl is almost one,

and then I see her like this. SHE'S JUST SUCH A BIG GIRL!

And we found the one overpriced unit left in all of the greater Seattle area:

Lu's blown away by the window a/c unit we broke down

and spent way too much money on. Anything goes in the name of Sleep.

We have a climber!

Climbing is the new Fun. I'll look around and Lucy will be inside the cabinet, or on the changing table shelf, or on top of the tupperware we keep her play sand in. Sigh. Now I actually have to start WATCHING her. She's standing on her own, and she has taken a few tentative steps, but she's fallen pretty hard a couple of times and scared herself out of trying too hard right now.

Made it!

In Which I Give The Weather The Finger

Alright. I give. UNCLE! You hear me, up there (shakes fist at sky)??

It's freaking no-messing-around hot. It's crab at your crabby baby hot. It's take 3 showers a day hot. It's put contacts in because your glasses are glued to your face with sweat hot. It's naked baby sweating matted down hair hot.

We went to the grocery store again today. I now hang out at the Fred Meyer. Come say hi if you're in the neighborhood. It's just me and Lucy and the half dozen old people who have set up camp on the benches inside the door. I do my best to look like I'm "shopping," but let's be honest here - who am I fooling? I let Lucy play with all the toys in the kids section. And then I pretended to look for juuuust the right greeting card for about 10 minutes while the child played with the CONGRATULATIONS! balloons (which she pronounces "mamool" - she sounds like a deaf speaker). (And I'm setting a terrible precedent - now every time I pop in for groceries Lucy's going to want to go find the toys and play with the balloons we are not going to purchase. SIGH.)

And then I bought a container of cool whip to make the Bubba his favorite cold dessert.

$1.19 + tax: the price to stay cool for one hour.

The fans are blowing hot air around the house very efficiently. It sure is nice to have that film of sweat evaporated by the equivalent of a hair dryer blowing in your face. So refreshing.

And today. Of. All. Days. Was it the teeth? Was it the heat? Was it, oh I don't know, something? Lucy decided that she wanted to sit and snuggle in my lap and rock. All. Day. Seriously? Any other day? Yes PLEASE! I love me a good cuddle! And there's really nothing better than smooching on a normally squirming-away baby who just smells so nice like baby and goodness. But TODAY? Oh, girl. Don't touch me.

I totally deserve some sort of award (The Sweaty Mom Award?) for rocking and loving on that baby in 98 degree heat.

I think my Twitter or Facebook status recently said something to the effect of OMGKILLMENOWI'MDYINGASLOWEXCRUCIATINGDEATHOFHEATEXHAUSTIONPLUSHEATSTROKEPLUSHELL! and my friend from Tuscon mentioned that it was 95 degrees there on a regular basis. To which I wanted to reply with no kindness whatsoever "Call me when your air conditioner breaks for two weeks. And so do the air conditioners of all the restaurants in your area. And those of the community centers where you can take your child to play. And the conveniently located branches of the library. Basically, call me when you have to actually LIVE in the 95 degree heat."

Ahem. (Sorry Kim. No pity here.)

I made dinner this morning at 8am when it was a nice refreshing 82 degrees. And starting right around 9am, there were no other reported instances resembling productivity. But we had food. So I'm calling today a success.

As Long As I Have A Plan

Are you ready for this weather? Because I’m not. High ninety degrees this week? Is it just me, or have we had WAY more than our fair share of eighty to ninety degree weather this summer? And it’s not even AUGUST yet. Where did Seattle go and when was it replaced by Chicago??

Lucy and I have already been outside all morning trying to enjoy the cool low eighties (at 8:30 am! I KNOW!) and get some much-needed weeding done in the garden. With the sunny days and the commitment I’ve made to a thing called “Watering Your Plants” both the edible plants and the weeds have gone gangbusters. I harvested another pint of strawberries, a couple leftover peas, and a couple cups of green beans (which will go quite nicely with the grilled chicken I have slated for dinner). Lord knows I’m not lighting the oven AT ALL this week. If we can’t grill it or eat it cold, it will not be in the house.

I’ve been sitting here making a list of Things To Do to stay cool this week. Because I KNOW that the whining of the hot, teething baby will bore into my skull and I will lose all patience and become the mom that says “Shut up!” to the baby that doesn’t understand - unless I have a prescribed list of outlets.

On the list:

• Get groceries (take a reeeeealy long time and be sure to buy popsicles)
• Eat popsicles every ten to fifteen minutes
• Go to the Childrens’ Museum for hours and hours and hours
• Go shopping at Target for stuff we don’t really need
• Play in the sprinkler in the yard (while Mommy sits under an umbrella and sips a pina colada and is fanned by the pool boy)

Not on the list:

• Go for a run
• Go to the (unairconditioned) Fremont branch of the library
• Bake a delicious blueberry pie
• Clean the kitchen

Hopefully we’ll make it through. In general, Lucy’s been better than I have expected, but she certainly has perfected the Whine. This past weekend it was about ninety degrees, and we went to my friend’s housewarming party. She bought a house with a couple acres on which she’s starting a little hobby farm just west of Olympia. She has goats and a fat little pig and dogs, and Lucy was in heaven. And except for the hair plastered to her head with sweat, I would not have even thought that she felt the heat!

Gratuitous pic of Lucy being super cute with the little baby girl goat.

The moral of that story is: If You Keep Her Occupied, She Will Be Happy (dummy).

And that is just what I plan to do. List in hand.

Friday Photos: Pigtails Edition

I can squeeze two teeny little pigtails into Lucy's hair. And so, of course, I DO.

We're still working on those teeth. And I do mean WE. Getting up to comfort and rock a hysterical baby four times a night means I get some credit here.

Being silly in the big chair.

Mmmmm. Pasta and sauce. FAVE!

Learning patterns at the Childrens' Museum

Riding the Monorail from the museum to Daddy's work for lunch.

Reasonable

Sometimes it's downright useful to have teeth on the bottom and not on top.

You can get every bit of goodness inside the skin of a mango!

Laid Back

I have the most awesome chill baby EVER. I don’t even know why I worry. I shouldn’t. I mean, Lucy basically takes care of herself.

Our friends’ wedding this past weekend was great. The ceremony was sweet and personal because a relative of the bride officiated – but he was RETIRED and OLD and every time he paused for more than a second or two, I wanted the groom to shake him and make sure he was still alive. And he also introduced the bride and groom and Mr. and Mrs. and everyone clapped, and when the clapping died down and before the recessional music started someone on the alter murmured something and the old dude said “Oh! Did I miss something?” and the groom said something like, “Can I kiss her?” And it was awkward and funny and the groom kissed the bride after that and they exited to twitters of laughter and Cannon in D.

Lucy didn't notice

The reception was nice too; they had a buffet at a huge sportsman’s club because there were about 300+ people there. It was in Tacoma, which is basically the Wisconsin of Washington. As we were driving home, the Bubba said, “If we ever thought of living here, I would just as soon live in Wisconsin. It’s basically the same except instead of being right next door, we’d be 2000 miles from family.”

My compliments to the chef

We brought Lucy’s clip-on chair down to Tacoma with us just in the off chance we’d need it. And I’m so glad we did. She sat on the end of a long banquet table and smeared her chewed-on crackers into the club’s linens while the Bubba talked shop with some other engi-nerds and I made my way through a gorgeous glass of ice cold white wine. And she sat there playing with a plastic cup while the toasts were offered to the happy couple, and she sat there shimmying her shoulders to the music while she and I shared a piece of strawberry-filled butter cream-goodness cake.

Busting a move with the old man

I got a chance to chat with friends while the Bubba took Lu to listen to the music and watch the dancing, and by this time it was already after 8pm. Lucy was obviously starting to get tired, and the Bubba and I were ready to call it a night too, since we still had an hour’s drive ahead of us. So we said our good byes and collected that priceless clip-on chair and loaded up.

Lucy stayed awake for the entire ride home singing to herself and letting us know when we passed a truck, and the Bubba and I had a contest to see how many songs we knew the lyrics to all the way through.

And when we got home, I gave that baby a bottle, the Bubba stuffed her chub into some pajamas, and she went to sleep at almost 10 without a peep not to be heard from until 7:15 the next morning. And she made up for the sleep she missed with longer naps on Sunday.

No crabbing (that couldn’t be attributed to her top two teeth that are FINALLY making an appearance, that is), no crying, no drama.

She MUST be her father’s daughter.

Friday Photos: Music Video Edition

Lucy got an early first birthday present when we found this gem at the second-hand store:

A little naked toe-tapping goes a long way.

Lucy has taken to humming when she's playing and it just KILLS me:

Baa baa black sheep, maybe?

More music table:

This girl's going to break a hip swinging them like that.

And the piano! I love how she explores the keys:

My little concert pianist in training. She's an entertainer already.

Aaaaaaand! The Shimmy!

Shake it like a Polaroid picture! I wish I could get a full scale version of this, but it seems that every time I get the camera she's more interested in seeing it than doing the shimmy!

Chocolate is Good For That

Today Lucy and I went to the wading pool in the morning with Carrie. And, oh. She was having the day I was having last week. The Nothing is sacred, Nothing is clean, Nothing is nice, My every day is repeating the same motion over and over kind of day.

Every mom has those days. Sometimes multiple times per week even. The Ohmygod if I Have to Pull the Child Away From The Dang Cords One More Time! kind of days. Sometimes I think a chimp could do my job. Picking up the same book off the same floor to put it in the same spot on the shelf and sweeping the space under the booster seat eighteen times a day and closing the file drawer time after time so that the curious little paper-eater doesn't wreak any more havoc in there. Hmmmm. A house chimp. Maybe I should look into getting one of those.

It's a lot easier to look at those days from a not-in-that-day space. From here I can nod my head and understand. I can roll my eyes at the frustration and I can suggest the consummation of copious amounts of chocolatey desserts.

But in that space? The frustration space? I know it feels like there's nothing else. Like every waking hour of every waking day will be spent getting angrier and angrier at a little person who doesn't deserve the anger. Then the anger that you feel is at yourself for just being angry. And the badness continues.

Dear Lord, I hate those days.

And if there's anything to love, it's looking at them from a that-was-then point of view.

Today I feel nothing but love for my Lucy. We went to the wading pool, we sat at the canal for longer than I wanted to watching boats go by, we went to the library and dumped all the puzzles on the floor. I taught her how to shimmy-shimmy-shake her shoulders to music. It's 9:47pm and I'm recently home from work and I have to restrain myself from going into her room to wake her up and cuddle her and love on her.

If only we could get the shimmy days without the Rage days.

I think the answer might actually be a house chimp.

500 Words on Nothing

So, it's Wednesday, huh? Looks like I've been neglecting this blog for a while. I feel like I should put up something of substance. I've been thinking about marriage from this article and this blog post.

I've been doing research into fertility awareness, because as I know that you all are SO INTERESTED, the Bubba and I aren't yet ready for Lucy's little sisters to arrive any time soon so we're trying to hedge our bets now that Mama's body is back to basics. (And as an aside? That stuff is FASCINATING! Why don't women/girls learn more about this from the get-go? Or do they, and I just didn't?)

I've been thinking more about my life as a SAHM and my work schedule therein and trying to plan alone time and away time and happy time and exercise time (queen of excuses, right here). And I've decided that I have a full time job and two part time jobs. (Hm. Maybe that is good fodder for a future post. I'm sure you're riveted.)

But I'm pretty sure an entire blog post about either one of those things may very well make you poke your eyes out not to mention alienating all of my male friends and relatives from this place.

So that leaves me with..... Nothing.

We've been busy doing stuff lately, the Lu-bird and I. I've been trying to avoid getting sucked into the internets during naptime and either reading or knitting or cleaning, or, you know, doing other mildly productive things. In order to have a better outlook on things in the evenings when we're trying to maximize family together time and fight the Bedtime Battle.

But the weather has been nice, and we've been getting out to enjoy it. We're frequenters of the kiddie pools and the swings at local parks. And Lucy has a newfound love for her yard. Especially when the sprinkler and sandbox are involved.

Yesterday we went to a concert in the park. It was a youth group playing wooden xylophones, and they were pretty awesome. The concert was an hour long - from 12 to 1pm - and Lucy was entertained almost the entire time. She was dancing and clapping, and when they stopped for their breaks between songs, she would sign for more.

She loved the music, but just as much, she loved the other children all up dancing and playing on the grass. She is completely over her 7 months of separation anxiety and has turned into quite the social butterfly, crawling over to any old stroller to make friends.

Today we're heading to the beach to dig and point at boats. And then I'm going to blink and the week's going to be over again. The next eighteen hundred weekends (or so) we have stuff planned - weddings and parties and weddings and such. The summer's going to be over before I know it. I'm trying to make sure we get out to enjoy every last bit of it.

Did You Feel That?

That cool breeze that just blew up from the South somewhere? I think hell might have just frozen over.

Lucy and I were playing with her toys and reading some books this morning. She was happily going through her entire toy box and sorting toys into what I can only imagine was the "play with" and "not play with" piles while I was reading her a riveting story about trains going past towns and conductors shouting "All abord."

All of a sudden Lucy looked up at me and made the "all done" sign. So I asked her "Are you all done playing with your toys? Or all done with books?"

And THEN? She made the sign for "bed." And I thought she mixed up her signs. I asked "Oh yeah? Are you ready for a snooze?" And she made the sign AGAIN.

So, still thinking that she'd realize what she "said," and maybe freak out because it was on the early side for a nap, I picked her up and took her into her room. I closed the blinds and laid her down and covered her up and turned on the traffic-drowning sound machine while singing her bedtime song.

AND THERE HAS BEEN NARY A PEEP FROM HER ROOM SINCE.

PS - Thank you, God.

ELEVEN

Such a character!

Guess who's 11 months old today? CAN YOU BELIEVE IT? In less than four weeks I'll have a one year old. Holy moly - let's not get ahead of ourselves, my head almost exploded.

Oh! The angel baby! Sitting so NICE!

I almost didn't notice the date, so (grandmas) you sure are lucky that I decided that I should probably sit and write down some Lucy updates lest I forget. And today happens to be the perfect day for it!

Lucy's ever widening vocabulary now includes:

(in order of importance with dialectical pronunciations in parentheses)

• bath (dat-th)
• more (mo!mo!mo!) (as pertains to food)
• walk (wah, wah, wah, wah, wah, as we hold her hands so that she can walk)
• NONONONO (usually as she does something I tell her not to)
• water (wa-ttt)
• circle (euh-ckl)
• oops (ooop)
• uh-oh
• moo, moo
• quack (mack, mack, mack: in Lucy's world, birds say this as well as ducks)
• Ruff, ruff (muh, muff)

Signs she's added to her repetoire:

• help
• boat
• change (diaper)

Favorite foods (the girl still only has two bottom teeth, but this doesn't seem to stop her...):

• blueberries
• spaghetti
• buttered toast

Favorite activities:

• anything outside where she might see trucks or busses
• the pool
• her sandbox
• reading books
• knocking on doors
• dancing

Other things she has learned this month

• how to make tears come while fake crying
• how to bear walk so that her delicate knees don't touch the scratchy grass
• how to pull all the books off the shelves in the living room
• how her legs work to climb up on things

And let's go ahead and be honest here. This is what all the rest of those bear pictures looked like:

On Having My Cake and Eating It Too

For the fourth celebrations, we went to Lucy’s little friend Violet’s house. Her parents have an amazing view of Lake Union looking directly through Gasworks park, and we were planning on enjoying a cookout and playing by ear what would happen as far as firework viewing.

I’m not dedicated to the idea of watching fireworks. They’re nice and I enjoy them, but I would just as soon go home and read in bed. Part of the issue is that they don’t start until after 10pm, and, as everyone knows, I’m a pumpkin long before then. What a riveting life I do lead.

Anyway, I would have loved to bring the Pack-n-play along and stick Lucy in it around her normal bedtime and then wake her up to walk home around 11 when the fireworks were over. But then I overthink it. Would she scream and make everyone miserable? Would she wake up Violet? Would it be more of a pain than it’s worth? Lucy has basically never slept away from home – is this really the time I’d like to try it out?

I went through the same thing when we were considering camping for the first time. What would the sleeping logistics be in our tiny tent? What about warming up a bottle? Do I REALLY want to deal with it at this point? (That answer was “no.”)

I blame all of this on the fact that I don’t have family in town. There’s no real reason for me not to keep to a schedule. There's no spending the day at Grandma's or sleeping over with cousins. There have only been a couple of occasions when I’ve really wanted Lucy to be able to sleep in the car or in the Pack-n-play somewhere else. She’s never even been babysat in a wakeful state.

I’m beginning to think that it’s a shame. It’s too bad that I never leave her with someone during the day (but then, who would THAT be?) or brought her with to sleep however/whenever/wherever we are. But it’s just worked out more easily that we make it home and the schedule just kind of bends to fit.

We have two weddings coming up in the Tacoma area, and this is one of those times when I really really really wish there were some way I could leave Lucy with someone and leave town for the evening. These weddings are full of fun friends and we’re really looking forward to seeing everyone and cutting a rug.

I can’t imagine the scene that would happen if I left Lucy with someone else at bedtime – not that she’s a difficult putter-downer, quite the opposite. We just have a very tight little routine down. And not only that, but I can’t imagine that first time it happens and my being all the way in Tacoma if it doesn’t work out. Nightmare.

So I guess we're opting to take her with us. And that part I don’t mind in the least - I love showing her off and spending time with her and letting her experience new things. It’s just the bedtime part that becomes and issue. I don’t want to LEAVE the party at 7 (would we even have finished dinner by then?! I think not!) and nor will Lucy be a joy to have around as she gets more and more over stimulated. So should I bring Lu home after dinner and leave the Bubba to party? Or should I bring the sling and convince her to sleep in that for a while? Neither of those are necessarily idealistic through a "fun" lens.

Sigh! Family, when are you moving out here?? I want to leave my kid with you.

Oh, and in case you were wondering? This is what we saw of the fireworks from our bed:

TGIFriday Photos

This week in photos:

Lucy is totally uninhibited at the pool. Completely fearless. She crawled out into "deeper" water where she couldn't crawl without her face in the water and got a snout full. She was a little bit upset about it so I brought her to our blanket for a little rest. That is, until I realized that she was crying not because she got water in her nose, but because I took her out of the pool.

Bathing beauty

Directly after taking this photo, my sweet angel slipped on her sweaty little feet and bonked her head complete with silent scream crying. Parenting: FAIL.

Making beautiful music

It occurs to me that I never graced you with a pictures of my new glasses! Now, I know you're as excited as I am so here you go!

Old glasses

New glasses! I know.

I TOTALLY went out on a limb

here and got something

COMPLETELY different.

Well, ok, I didn't but I guess if I'm going to have to sell a kidney to afford a new pair I kind of want them to be classic.

Hope you have a SPECTACULAR 4th of July weekend!

Fourthaversary

Four years ago today, I met my Bubba in the conference room of the church. It was warm, but not hot enough to explain the little sweat drips making their way down my back. “You look amazing,” he said. And there were tears in his eyes. I got nervous that he was sad about being there with me and my heart started beating a little faster as I plotted ways to make a run for it.

Enjoying the view, Bubba?

The truth that made me stay was that I had met my match. He was funny and nerdy and liked things that I couldn’t comprehend like snowboarding and reading textbooks and pop culture. And he liked that I like things that he couldn’t comprehend like French and discussing current events. He made me want to be a more interesting person: better liked, more adventurous, more patient with people.

But really, I had no idea. And I suppose I’m lucky that way – as good as it seemed, the Best Of Us didn’t happen right at first. I find that four years later, I couldn’t possibly have imagined a better match. Something happened to bring us together, and something made us want to get married, but we couldn’t have guessed at how we have grown together.

There were times that first year that I packed the car to run away. There was a time when my Bubba kicked a fan over in frustration. There were times we thought we rushed into things and times we wished the learning curve weren’t quite so steep. We learned that loving each other is hard ass work. But we also learned that we’re up to the challenge. And any other challenge, for that matter.

We make a pretty good team.

Four years ago I promised my best friend that I would grow with him and love him and cherish him. And he promised me that he would encourage me to be everything I want to be and support me in my shortcomings.

Always cheering me on

Being married to my Bubba has been the hardest, most gratifying, and most inspiring thing in my life. And I know that it will take a lot more hard ass work as time marches forward. But man, is it worth it.