Just like a child…

Today I continued my quest for the floppy seat. CRB's car seat does not fit on the top of the shopping cart child seat area, so I always end up with a basket full of baby, and items on top of him. Now that he obsessively places things in his mouth, coupled with the fact that he sits so well, I decided that I must do something different, hence the push for the floppy seat.

I remembered seeing one at W-M so I headed there (first today, third store overall). No floppy seat, but as I was able to purchase some items that W-M sells at good prices. (Yes, that is me looking on the bright side.)

On to store #4, where I eventually find the seat, as well as a wood puzzle and a nifty ride-on car. CRB was "outraged" by the time I was putting my purchases in the car. I was looking over the receipt when I noticed that Justin the sales clerk did not charge me for the floppy seat. After briefly considering going back tomorrow, I headed back into the store. Most people would have stopped at customer service, but I chose to wait in line so that I could get Justin again. After all my whole point of going back in today was to make sure Justin did not get in trouble.

After showing Justin the receipt, Justin said "Honest, huh?" Just like a child, I beamed with happiness over the praise he gave. $43 poorer, but so what!

P.S. CRB loves the car!

Rough Day at Target

So I needed to make a return from my baby shower in September… The cashier asked if it was on my registry and I replied "I don't think so."

Liar, liar pants on fire! Don't worry I learned my lesson.

After bringing the cashier $19.99 worth of different baby stuff, I was able to continue with my real purpose at Target. The store was out of 4 of the 7 items I went for, and to top it off, when picking up some delicious flavored soda in glass bottles, what do you think happened?

If you guessed: "Umm, one of the four escaped the cardboard surround and shattered at your feet. This made such a loud noise it was hard to tell from where the sound came…" you'd be right.

After leaving the next store (0/2 there, by the way), I noticed a shard of glass was in my leg and actual blood was still escaping. Lovely image, yes.

The highlight of my trip? The drive home, where I amused myself with making cell phone messages to Kerri and ToolMan letting them know of my plight.

Morals of the story: Even if the store has a ridiculous policy, be truthful, even if it costs you $19.99. Even if it technically works out, you WILL incur bad karma, and possibly lose blood.

Purse Meme - a.k.a Anyone need a pen?

Amberly tagged me for the purse meme earlier today. I am so excited about participating!! Colin the yorkie even helped!

This is my first over-sized purse. I was always one of those small purse people. Well, I finally got tired of having to take my wallet out every time I needed to answer the phone or find my keys. About two months ago I bought this beige purse. I had 15 whole minutes to choose it but I am really happy, even if it is a Jessica Simpson. (Full disclosure on the selection of the purse: I read somewhere that you might possibly look skinnier if you carry a large purse. So forget convenience, that fact alone would probably have been enough.)

The contents of my purse are kind of surprising to me. At the moment, I do not have any student papers in it! Here's the unabridged contents:

I tried to follow Kerri's organization scheme, but anyone that knows me very well knows that was very short-lived.

Top row: Baby amusement: Toot Toot the elephant beanie, some car seat jingles, and CRB's Elmo/Cookie phone. Baby necessity: one used spoon from our dinner out. My essentials: USB key and the knife I purchased with a salesman's help when I told him that I did not want a wimpy knife. That knife really impresses the guys :)

Middle row: Reading glasses (I am only 33!), wallet, sephora hair brush (love it), two #2 pencils, MINI Cooper pen plus 5 other pens, cell, Tylenol sinus medicine for ToolMan, regular Tylenol with with the anti-nausea pill from being preg., & inhaler.

Bottom row: receipts (only 2!!), fortune cookie fortune (The question of life is 'Why?' The answer is 'Why not?'), Kerri's new card, 5 lipstick items, sanitizing gel, pocket mirror, tape measure, keys and more keys (note the huge allen key/hex thing), and membership card keychain.

Whew! Anyone need a pen?

Signs

Unfortunately I do have to use television to occupy CRB more than I would like. Thankfully, I only have a few more weeks of this as the semester is winding down.

Perhaps we only watch 1 (ok I admit 2) episodes a day. Regardless, there are some clear signs that the whole (extended) family is watching too much of the Backyardigans.

10. If you were on Survivor and the Backyardigans were there, too, you already know who you'd vote off. (I'd go with Tasha.)
9. Sometimes you fall asleep to Uniqua's hit single "I want to be a knight" even though there is no tv or cd really playing it. You just can't get the song out of your head.
8. When while watching the Nascar race, and CRB gets upset, his grandmother says "Yes, I know it is the wrong Pablo."
7. You have discussed with your significant other whether "vintage" Backyardigans is better than the new episodes.
6. The extended family has participated in a discussion of whether Austin is a dinosaur or a chihuahua.
5. When you accidentally delete a tivoed episode, you mourn the lack of variety this will cause in your life.
4. You have discussed (again with the entire extended family) whether the voices are that of adults or children.
3. When grandpa says "I see they are re-using the horse CGI from 'Riding the Range'."
2. When you get sooooo excited about the new episodes being aired, even if new isn't as good as vintage.
1. When you know the snack at the end of the episode.

My (lack of) Cultural Enrichment

So today is Monday, a day when I prepare for my Tuesday classes. Today I am part SAHM and part university employee, doing both with some level of success. At the moment, I am at home reading Lawrence Lessig articles. Lessig is one of the great thinkers of today. He's a law professor, writer, & columnist. This week, my ethics students are tasked with reading an article of his, writing a summary/critique, and presenting their topics in class. In order to be prepared, I am reading each of the articles and writing a few notes about each as my memory no longer serves me in the way it used to serve me pre-CRB. Nine down, twenty-one to go.

In order to get this done, I am employing some distraction techniques. We got 40 minutes out of the jungle mat. I know it was 40 minutes as he tolerated 2 cycles of rainforest music. Now CRB is in the jumperoo, and I have turned on the television.
CRB is a big Backyardigans fan but so that I don't have to man the remote (we have 18 episodes tivoed), and so that it will be “fresh” later during his “sun downing” time, we are watching Live TV. We missed the Wonder Pets, but Dora is playing doctor and we have counted the booboos on the alligator and applied 7 or siete bandages. Perhaps she will get to number 11 one day, so that I can order lunch at Jalapeno’s.

Reinforcements

Saturday morning my parents arrived. Just in time too...

CRB is teething. Not that I am an expert or can really see anything, but it appears to me that he may be getting more than one tooth, too. He is understandably really uncomfortable and is letting us know how he feels. Our nerves are shot. Thank goodness for the grandparents.

My mom spent the whole weekend trying to think of things that she could do to help me. To illustrate how much she tried and how much she did, at one point this morning when I was washing Colin the yorkie, she said "I know, I can get him brushed out and dry while you do something else." That pretty much summed up what she did: everything she could think of ...

My dad loves a challenge so CRB being difficult did not phase him a bit. Saturday afternoon and Saturday evening he had CRB in full belly laughs no matter how much his mouth hurt.

My parents left late this morning and Toolman took the two of us to lunch at my favorite campus eatery. CRB slept the whole time. I said "This is the best lunch ever!" and Toolman just laughed.

This afternoon CRB and I spent some time at a neighbor's house. Our neighbor has a 1.5 year old little girl. CRB had a great time playing, and I realized once again, what an easy baby CRB can be. We just need to keep up the distraction.

Friday Favorites

Amberly, at Moments Amid Messes, has just started Friday Favorites where a participant posts about his or her favorite anything - recipe, tip, memory, etc.

This week I will offer up my favorite parenting technique for determing when to put CRB in his crib for sleep. At the moment, there is a bit of an absurd factor here, with the teething and late night trips to the store for Pedialyte, some of our friends (Wren!) are probably snickering but I digress...

At the end of my pregnancy, a co-worker recommended the Babywise book and told me in no undercertain terms that if I wanted any sanity to read it. She said it was rather hard core in parts, but that if I could take some from it, it would really help.

With the encouragement of the book, we are luckly in that we somehow never got into the pattern of rock/feed/hold him until he's asleep. More than 95% of the time, we put him in his crib awake. The big question is always when do you put him down?

I have some success if I pay attention to his breathing. Wait for it to slow a bit.

But I have my most sucess (my main trick I guess) is to look for the yawns. If the baby is not in the bed BEFORE the third yawn, in my experience you have a disaester ahead. The first yawn is a sign of relief for me, he's probably going to go to sleep. At the second yawn, I have to make the bed transition. In bed before the third yawn helps him be more receptive to the sleep process, perhaps because he is not yet overtired.

I hope that the third yawn tip can bring you or someone you know some measure of help.

Wordless Wednesday

"Forget any and all college affiliations today. For today, we are all Hokies."-Russell Denney

Source: Facebook

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Mothers of the Disappeared

Midnight, our sons and daughters

Were cut down and taken from us

Hear their heartbeat...

We hear their heartbeat

In the wind

We hear their laughter

In the rain

We see their tears

--u2

I was getting into my car to go home this afternoon when I heard the bell tower at my university begin playing chimes.

And then I remembered ... at 4 p.m. the bell tower was to play the Virginia Tech alma mater. Such a beautiful song played for such a tragic purpose.

Somehow, traffic and parking cooperated and I was able to get to the quad in something like one minute. I was glad to have an opportunity to send my thoughts and prayers to the families.

Teaching in a university setting helps me understand how powerless the VT community must have felt. Last night, our local news was interviewing our campus police, who wanted to assure the us that "there is a plan in place." I really did not care for their "this could not happen here and if it does we have a plan attitude." It is unrealistic. What, do they have a Batman logo to put in the sky? Some magic box that can predict what is going to happen before it does?

Mothers of the Disappeared lyrics can be found here.

Mother Teresa and Mary Poppins

Wow what a crazy week! I truly cannot keep up the pace that I managed to maintain this week.

Monday late, ToolMan got sick. This man is NEVER sick, but he went to the faculty free clinic and it turns out he has an ear infection. He got a shot and 3 kinds of medicine.

Tuesday was a teaching day and my web programming class had an unexpectedly hard time with their XML files. That's alot of people having simultaneous problems in lab. Later that day, my ethics class discussed one of the Microsoft v. US cases (which does not make for fun reading or interesting class discussion ... shh don't tell anyone, we tried anyway.)

Once again, I do not know how I could handle life without our part-time Nanny. Wednesday morning CRB was almost as glad to see her as I was.

Wednesday I worked from about 9:30 am until 6:40 pm then from 7 pm until a little after midnight. CRB spent the evening in the shop with ToolMan and was still awake at midnight. CRB is a very easy baby and normally keeps a 930-7 schedule. But at midnight, he apparently missed me because we had to coo, laugh and roll around until about 1 am while watching tivoed Mythbusters. It truly was a lot of fun, regardless of how tired we were. You know at some point, you just cannot be any more tired (unless you pass out...)

Somehow I was able to leave for work this morning at 7:20 am and I arrived home about 3:45 pm. I am not sure that I managed to do any "extraordinary" teaching (more Microsoft v. US)but the day went ok.

After several days of this one would think my house would be in ruin, CRB would be upset, the dog would be irrate, etc. But no...

Well, Nanny is completely amazing. My house is spotless, I swear she organized some closets and drawers today, and CRB and Colin were in great moods. I definitely think she is related to both Mother Teresa and Mary Poppins.

I think I have managed to get enough stuff done so that tomorrow I can just email, grade, and create some assignments during naptime and Backyardigans.

Hello I love you . . .

Monday nights are our favorite night to eat out. Since we have been married, ToolMan and I try not to eat out on the weekends unless we have company or a specific invite.

Tonight we had great company: Kerri and her brother. The only other family eating in the hut of pizza had a small little girl, so we were able to relax a bit.

CRB started doing back bends so that he could see the little girl. The whole family was really sweet - they were waving, smiling and making funny faces to CRB . CRB was in heaven with all the attention. With a bunch of encouragement from them, CRB waved back.

Murray*

*Name has been changed to protect the innocent :)

One weekend afternoon a few weeks ago, Colin, CRB and I were taking a walk through the neighborhood. We came upon Murray and her mom.

Murray shouted from across the street "I love your baby! I like your doggie!" We headed across to meet them and Murray said "I want a baby boy." Murray is about 6 years old. It's clear to me after just 5 seconds that Murray is a really cool little person.

I said "I really wanted a baby boy, too. One day maybe you will have your very own to love, too."

At this point Murray's mom speaks up and says "Are the older girls at home?"

Bewildered I say "No CRB's only sibling is the dog..."

"Oh, okay ..." said Murray's mom.

Suddenly I realize Murray's mom thinks I am one of those people who (get) wish for either a boy or a girl.

So although I consider myself an open person I did not say any more. Now Murray's mom thinks I wanted a baby boy. I guess that's ok.

I did not try to tell her that all I wanted was a baby.

Boy or girl... whatever... Cute or ugly ... well I lucked out on that... Smart or just average... again lucky. All I ever wished for was the baby to make it here.

I hope all Murray's wishes come true.

Here's a photo of CRB after yesterday's chilly walk. We did not see Murray or her mom.

Two weeks

So much of my married life has been spent in the 2ww (two week wait). If you don't know about the 2 week wait, it is the time between ovulation - or for those more involved, egg retrieval -and a potential, confirmable pregnancy. It's amazing 1) how long 14 days can seem and 2) how much of your life can slip by in two week increments.

Right now, the two weeks that I think of is that's how long Kerri and I have been blogging. We conceived of this idea as something we could do together and share. It's been a lot of fun. Last night on the phone I called her a "gunner" because she had already prepared her blog for today, plus she has one in the draft bank. Gunner is a term we had in law school for people who liked to raise their hand every time to answer questions.

To her I meant this as an endearment - I am so glad that we can do this "together" since our schedules and commitments make doing stuff harder now. It's been a fun 2w.

Wordless Wednesday: When I Look at the World

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Photos

Toolman helped me take some photos of CRB this afternoon after work.

Somehow during this CRB learned to sit. Yes, he can sit!

We got a lot of great photos, and we are going to try again tomorrow for a few more. Here's one of the "sitting" and another action shot of what happened when Colin got involved.

Lists

I seem to be in a perpetual state of hurry.

Why then, when I compose a mid-morning "To Do" list do I write down the things that I have already done just so that I can check them off?

This is absurd. I wrote down 5 items so that I could cross them out. Now I mostly have a "Done" list, where I have only completed the easy items. Strangely, I still have a feeling of accomplishment.

I have never been a big list maker. After CRB was born, I started making lists and I would write down completed items too so that I would *actually* be able to remember that I did them. You know, in the sleep-deprived fog I could take a quick glance so that I would not have to worry that I was forgetting stuff.