Walking Backwards

All in this house are falling slowly under the spell of illness. The brothers have not left their beds for the day. The littlest one in the house has gone to bed early with a fever. I am hoping it is merely a symptom of his teething rather than something more sinister. He has only felt poorly for a few hours now. We shall see what the tylenol and sleep do for him. I have hope that he should be fine to go to San Antonio tomorrow, I just have to question the mood he will be in.


Maria, you must tell me if Nico can come if he brings a cold with him. I worry for your little one too. I know she just got over being sick.

My mother is gone, the world has returned to its normal order. The baby is, understandably, upset for losing his spotlight. He vacillates between wanting to be held constantly and wanting to destroy everything in his path. Its hard for him to adjust to a life where he isn't constantly being attended to at every waking moment. I had to hold him the entire time I made dinner this evening. Hopefully his interest in my cooking indicates that he will follow in my culinary footsteps rather than his father's, but I have a feeling that his new found concern about all things gastronomic is more of an indicator of his need to be loved than anything else.


I have quite a bit to do to recover from the past week. While I have been picking up frequently for the past two days, it doesn't seem to be improving the state of my house. I had a list of errands to run today that remains unparalleled in my maternal career. Of course, this means I just decided not to do it all. The grocery store probably wasn't the wisest thing to cut out. Just the idea of having the current incarnation of my dear child strapped into a shopping cart for over an hour while I did my weekly shopping alone was enough to steer me toward the other errands first, though. I will have to feed him eventually, so I must go tomorrow unless his food intolerances vanish overnight and he can have a cheese omelet in the morning. I doubt that occurrence.


In a moment of desperation to keep my child from destroying my books, I strapped him into his stroller and wandered around our suburban neighborhood on a fact-finding mission this afternoon (this is after a walk this morning). I am searching out which plants will be appropriate for our garden. One of my mother's friends, who runs her own landscaping company, came over a few days ago and gave me some wonderful ideas with what we can do with my yard. It involves a lot of planting as my lawn is almost totally barren. She told me to look around and find some trees and plants that I like. We are going to be putting in a vegetable garden and a border and adding lots of trees. After this afternoon, I have decided that mountain laurel must be somehow incorporated. Evergreens as well. I'm just worried that we aren't going to be able to afford any major changes. I know some trees can be upwards of a hundred dollars at the nursery. Maybe if we just make changes slowly, it will turn out perfectly.


A sign that we are mere steps away from total insanity. Ben Franklin provides information usable by terrorists.

Ah, the house to myself for a little while. Well, not really to myself, the baby and Jon are still here, but it seems like I'm alone after having nine people here for so many days. Everyone else is out on the town. Strangely enough, I am really ready to get back to my boring day-to-day routine. The holidays are just too chaotic for me, and for Nico to I'm sure. I guess this is a good time to discuss the events of my holidays as Nicholas is watching one of his baby videos. We shall see if I actually get done.


Charla and Hank arrived two days before Christmas and we all had dinner of homemade lasagna (yay!) and just talked for the night. When they unloaded their car, my jaw hit the floor. The brought in enough presents to fill our front room, literally. They had six huge rubbermaid containers filled with gifts. I thought that was all they had brought and was still in awe, but they explained that that was just the "small"gifts. It was excessive. I didn't know what to say. Charla explained that they had also brought gifts for my parents and gifts that their family had sent, but it still seemed like a lot. Especially compared to what we had been able to buy. My mom's gifts to us had also arrived by UPS that night and our tiny tree was dwarfed.


The next day I took my Mother-in-law to Hill Country Weavers to look at spinning and knitting supplies. Most of the stuff she was interested in was sold out for the holidays so we went to visit my brother at Whole Foods and pick up some of the last items we needed for Christmas dinner. I was amazed to find that they had blood oranges. For some reason, I was under the illusion that it wouldn't be busy on Christmas Eve. Ha! How foolish. We did make it home alive, but slightly disheveled. That evening we invited friends over and my mother arrived. I roasted two chickens and had plates of appetizers for the thirteen people in my house. After eating we all walked around the neighborhood looking at Christmas lights on people's houses. It was really nice. To me, this is when it started feeling like Christmas. We got home and Nicholas opened up one gift, a puzzle block of the ark with 26 matching animals. Well. . . I say HE opened it. Then we patiently waited for him to go to sleep so we could put out his gifts. He decided to finally go to bed at one in the morning. We were in bed by two after stockings were filled and gifts put together.


Christmas morning dawned when the baby woke up at 8:30. We had put up the baby gate the night before so he couldn't get to his gifts. We ate blueberry muffins and waited for my brother to wake up and my mother to arrive. When everyone got there, except my father who was arriving late, we started opening gifts. Nicholas was totally uninterested in his gifts after the baby gate was taken down and just ran around the house. I got some great stuff: an ice cream maker, three pairs of toe socks, a subscription to 'National Geographic', a chenille blanket, a stone casting kit for garden markers, a silver locket, a coffee press, a book, tons of DVD's, a Kronos Quartet CD, a Target giftcard, a Dremmel, a breadmaker, and a bumper sticker that reads "Don't blame me, I voted for Kodos". Nicholas got more than any baby should ever receive. In order for it to all fit in his playroom, we are going to give a lot of his old toys to charity. My mom bought Joe and I a refrigerator to replace our thirty year old model. Compared to our 15 sq. ft., brown model, our new fridge looks ultra-sleek.


I spent the rest of the day in the kitchen making Christmas dinner, until my dad showed up. They all sat down to eat and Nico had his first tantrum of the day. I put him down for his nap while everyone ate. We then emptied our stockings of their fruit and candy (Jon got me a honey spoon). By about 8 o'clock every one of us was ready to go to bed, except Nicholas of course. We just spent the ret of our evening reading and snacking on junk food. Joe gave me a break and did all of the dishes and took care of the baby.


So that was my Christmas in a long-winded explanation. I have left out some of the more gory details for obvious reasons. I will try and post some pictures later, we have quite a few of them.

I would really enjoy sitting down to record the events of our Christmas holidays, but we're still wrapped up in entertaining the masses. I'll be back to record them later, they are wrapped up safe in my mind. Until then, the Friday Five. . . .

1. What was your biggest accomplishment this year?

Buying and moving into my first house.

2. What was your biggest disappointment?

Shopping for said house.

3. What do you hope the new year brings?

More time to spend with my baby and more patience doing it. I want to get a lot more planned activities down and have more routine behaviors. I also really want my husband to start working in Austin so we get to see him every day.

4. Will you be making any New Year's resolutions? If yes, what will they be?

I am going to be making a/several new year's resolutions this year, I just haven't figured them out. I'll probably write more on this later. I just have to make sure that it gets done before the new year.

5. What are your plans for New Year's Eve?
Joe, Nicholas, and I are going to visit our friend's in San Antonio who also have a baby. We are going to have a family new years celebration.

I have a strange craving for lasagna today. My mind keeps wandering back to its cheesy, tomato goodness. I'll have to wait until tomorrow to make it, and tomorrow evening to eat it. *Sigh* I seem to have replaced the insane desire to smoke and the playfulness of drinking with an unusual obsession with food. That and an undying need for Starbucks coffee (really, what do they put in that stuff). The holidays always make me think of my pre-baby life and my party girl days. I miss martinis and going to bars (I find this very strange). I wouldn't trade my life now for anything, but sometimes I just wish I could have a little bit of that life now.

I actually could be seen at church today. Most people I know wouldn't believe it, they would laugh at the idea. How does a confirmed agnostic go to a church service? Someone who was raised by athiests, who themselves had been raised by atheists. . . what is wrong with this picture? It turns out I actually don't mind this church. The people there know my beliefs, they know I'm not baptized so I don't take communion, they don't judge me, and they love my baby. Most importantly, I go because I like to see my friends perform in church. Several good friends of mine are very active in this church and today was their Christmas play. A Christmas musical, an original Christmas musical. . .eeek. It really wasn't that bad, it was like a high school play (somehing I missed going to a magnet school). Kind of hilarious to watch a bunch of adults get dressed up in handmade costumes and sing and dance. They were really enjoying it, and everyone was enthusiastic. You have to respect that. The following are some really bad pictures I took from the back row:

I don't know whether or not I am going to be able post as much over the next few days. I am going to try as I am not going to be able to remember everything that goes on unless I enter it here regularly. I also started setting up my recipes blog (see the link in the Goings On section to the right). It still needs some work, but it probably isn't going to get touched until after the relatives leave. More will be written when I get started on the content of it.

Argh! I need a new dryer. The dryer we have now is on its last legs. I'll be so sad to retire it; its a classic. Today it took eight hours to dry a load of towels. The main reason for this is because the dryer would decide in the middle of a drying cycle that it was just too tired to continue. I would walk into the laundry room and it would be buzzing angrily at me and flashing its lint warning light. The clothes would still be wet and it wouldn't start again for at least 45 minutes. I do love my crotchety old dryer, but I need to get things done. Its a 'Lady' Kenmore dryer, created in the days where that type of marketing ploy was perfectly acceptable. It has a fold down cover for all of the dials so it can look sleek and fashionable and, while the dryer itself is white, the top controls and dials are in green and brown. It even has some sort of strange bottle attached to the lint trap previously filled with what it called "air freshener," now thankfully empty. We are probably going to end up with a plain white dryer with no personality, a simple work horse. Even though this dryer of my future will make my day less stressful and my laundering tasks less of a burden, I will still mourn the loss of my Lady Kenmore.

Nico and I went to the farm today. I got there a little past noon and almost everything was sold out. They did have two bunches of green garlic left, so tragedy averted. I also bought sweet potatoes for Christmas dinner, a loaf of poppy seed challah bread, and two baby heads of cabbage. I meant to pick up some smoke dried tomatoes, but I blanked in the face of a squiggling baby. He kept trying to hurl himself to the ground, but it was too muddy and there was much he wasn't supposed to get into. We did take a look at the chickens who were in their pen today. He was so infatuated with them and kept trying to get closer. When the chickens turned and started heading our way, Nicholas decided that he was a little more wary of the unknown than he had previously thought and clung to his mommy, hiding his face in my shirt. We'll have to go next week to pick up some more cabbage for new year's dinner as the cabbages that I bought today didn't make it past tonight.

I'm thinking of making two different journaling pages that will be linked to this one; a recipes page and a gardening one. I know of several people who do this on their own journals and I'm really interested in doing my own. We are going to be doing a lot of work in our garden this spring and have already started planning it out. I know that if I actually wrote the details about it in my main journal, I would go on for pages and pages every day. I have enough of a problem rambling on already. A recipes pages is just a given as one of my favorite past times is cooking. Both journals would help me keep track of my thoughts and experiences in both fields and everything would be organized and easily accessible. It might take a long time to set up and I worry that I would spend more time than I should writing each day. I think I'll leave the decision up in the air for a little bit, there is no pressing deadline after all.

Now for the 'more' of my day. All plans for the day went awry. A friend and I were supposed to go to a special Victorian Tea at the Driskill Grill, but I called to get directions and found out they had filled up. It was the last tea that they are going to have until next November, so I'm disappointed. I've never gotten to experience the full tea service. I guess that's what I get for not making reservations, even if I didn't know that it was possible to make reservations. Hmmmm . . . next time must remember not to wait until the last. Went over to friend's house instead and watched her get ready for the arrival of her family. I was looking forward to some one-on-one, no baby, friend talk. Maybe we can figure something out for when things return to normal after the events of the holidays unravel.

Seanna and Aiden elected to stay home this evening instead of coming over to play. It was probably for the best. Nicholas hasn't been in the best of moods and somehow managed to scratch his face up while pushing his stroller around. No holiday photos tonight :)! Seanna was just running behind schedule and had too much to do. We did get to finish out x-mas shopping, though. Yay for that!! All we had left of the shopping was a trip to Target. That was unpleasant, but no more stores (except grocery) until after Christmas. I even picked up the candy and tins that we are giving to the postman, the garbage man, and the recycling company. I just have to make the cookies that are going in the tins and put pretty bows on top. Everything is also wrapped. I have a whole five days left, too. Whatever am I going to do with myself.

Tomorrow I'm thinking of taking Nico to Boggy Creek Farm to go exploring while Joe works on his motorcycle. All he wanted to do on his vacation is spend time re-jetting his carburetor. I don't think he is going to get that done, but I have to give him some time getting his hands dirty. It will give the baby and me some good time together before the family arrives and someone will be clamoring to hold him at all times. The farm will be nice. I read on their newsletter that they are going to have green garlic so I can finally make my green garlic and white asparagus soup. The chickens also walk around in the parking lot and the farm stand. Nicholas should love it. I was hoping to get sometime to work on Nico's baby book, but it doesn't look like this vacation is destined to be for me. Too many plans, to little time. I will be glad if the house is orderly after everything is done. That should lead to a sense of accomplishment.

The Friday Five for now, more about my day will be posted later. . .


1. List your five favorite beverages.

Water
Jones Soda in Fufu Berry
Earl Grey Tea
Pineapple Juice
Almond Iced Tea

2. List your five favorite websites.

Amazon.com
Mommietalk.com
Google.com
Neopets.com
Homestarrunner.com

3. List your five favorite snack foods.

(I don't know if this is true because I am having a serious fruit craving today)
Grapes
Apple slices
Tangerines
Vanilla Wafers
Avocado slices with tomatoes and salt

4. List your five favorite board and/or card games.

Trivial Pursuit
Chess (although I haven't played in awhile)
Boggle
Spades
solitaire

5. List your five favorite computer and/or game system games.

Diablo
The Sims
Gauntlet: Dark Legacy
Tetris
(That's all I can come up with because I don't play video games really)

So very tired. . . Nicholas was up all night long. His teeth are bothering him. I can't believe it, but he has eight teeth coming in at the same time. It isn't a pretty sight. After his first four teeth came in, I thought I knew what teething was all about. I was sadly mistaken. My grand total of sleep for the night was two hours. No amount of tylenol or oragel could placate him. He, of course, fell asleep on the way to and from Joe's dentist appointment. Now he doesn't need a nap. *Yawn* I do. I actually indulged in Starbucks coffee this afternoon. Four dollars for a cup of coffee seems excessive, but I dare anyone to question me about it.

Now, about those carolers. Night before last Travis, my brother, ran out to get dinner. Upon his return he came in declaring "look out, the carolers are approaching." I've never personally encountered carolers. I thought that caroling was just a made up tradition that was only reflected in truly idealized societies where goodwill to men is commonplace. What it was doing in my neighborhood, I had no idea. My brother suggested that we hide as neither of us had any idea of what to do in this situation. Then they rang the doorbell and started singing without us even opening the door. Jon, my brother-in-law, reasoned that our attempts at hiding were obsolete as they had seen Travis walk in the door and there were four cars in the driveway, sure indicators that someone was home. So Jon opened the door, Travis remained at the dinner table with the conclusion that we shouldn't all have to suffer. I just stood there with this frightened smile on my face as thirty people sang 'Gloria' to us. Then they asked for requests. Not bold enough to actually tell them that our request was for them to leave us to our dinner, they just assumed that no request meant dealer's choice. So we were regaled again. As then second song neared its long awaited conclusion, the ring-leader came up to inform us of their popular bible-study class that met every Tuesday down the street. Handing us some Christian propaganda, they went on there way to the tune of 'We wish you a Merry Christmas.' It was quite a surreal experience.

Joe missed the caroling, lucky him. He did have to experience the other, darker side of caroling (the one where you get dressed up to go sing songs to total strangers) when he was younger. He is therefore forgiven. Now he is home for nine whole days. We were told that his vacation was approved thirty-six hours before he got to come home. Because of this I may not get to post everyday, but I am going to try. For some reason, whenever Joe is home we seem to think that we can get a lot more done than is logical. Now we have this stress compounded by the fact that our house must be Christmas ready in five short days. Yay! The caffeine doesn't help that much. Until next time . . .

Just looked over yesterday's entry and had to laugh. That is what happens when you start writing an entry at 9 and the baby wants you to play, so you go and play. Then you come back to try to finish the entry at 11 and the post comes to your door and you forget that you're writing. Then at 1, you check your bank balance before going to the store and decide you must finish, but have to leave because you are out of diapers. At 2:30 you return from the store and sit down to read the Ikea catalog since the baby is asleep and you have to wait for your tomato bisque to heat on the stove. When going to look up stuff from the IKEA catalog you get mad at yourself for leaving your journal entry for five hours and try to finish it off. In the end the baby wakes up and you just publish it because there is no way to make it cohesive no matter how hard you try.

More later because I must writing about the festivities of yesterday evening. Let's just say it involved Christian carolers.

I finished my book this morning and am sad that the story had to end. I stayed up until two in the morning last night to try to finish it, but I was just too tired and read the last ten pages this morning while Nicholas brought me everything he could carry. I have quite a large pile of miscellaneous stuff on my bed right now. I am in disbelief that I had never read this book before. While reading it I realized that quite a lot could be applied to some of the political situations we are in today. Towards the end they spoke of how the middle-class thought that 'temporarily' relinquishing some of their constitutional rights would be acceptable as long as it ensured the safety of the free market. It was published in 1986 and based in a South American country they don't reveal. It transcends time and location. The lives and history of the Trueba family are so complex and intertwined, I cannot imagine how difficult this book was to compose. I could go on and on, but I know that I shouldn't.

I didn't write yesterday because I was feeling lazy and I was in a bad mood. It was my wedding anniversary and I missed my husband. I also felt overwhelmed by the amount of stuff I have to do before Christmas. My mother-in-law will be here in seven days and I have to get ready. I'm starting to look forward to a Christmas at home, though. I need to write down everything in order of priority so I can start finishing it off instead of haphazardly starting something when I remember it and then promptly deciding I should be doing something else.

I read my entry from two days ago and came to the conclusion that it didn't sound right, so I am going to make some disclaimers. I love my family, but like all families they drive me crazy. They aren't malicious people, they're actually quite nice. It is just that having them here makes my day to day life a little more complicated and I don't need more complicated right now. I don't think that I wouldn't have them come. We hardly ever get to see each other and I do miss them all. I am just really high strung and feel badly if everything isn't perfect. Hopefully, I can get over this by the time they get here and we'll have a good, lazy Christmas with lots of food.

We still haven't heard back on the final details of Joe's vacation. This is very problematic because one of the options, the one we want him to take, for his vacation starts this Wednesday. They were trying to make him feel guilty for asking for time off, but why did they give him vacation if they didn't want him to use it? I just think that it is really low of them to say that it will cause animosity among his teammates if he left to be with his family for the holidays. He has worked every holiday this year (that is why he has so many vacation days saved up). He has even missed events that aren't holidays for most people, but are important to us. He missed my first mother's day and our anniversary and quite a few other days. I guess that I am just upset that his company is implying that his job should come before his family. Anyone that thinks that should be forced to spend THEIR holidays alone.

I got my IKEA catalog yesterday and have mentally spent a small fortune on furniture and accessories. There are a few things that I am definitely going to buy next time I am in Houston. Here are some of them:
PS Brum Children's Armchair
Alfhild Cushions
Rationell Pull-out Tray with bins (for recycling)
Dromvarld Bed/wall pocket storage unit
Groto Plant Pot
I wish there was an Ikea closer to us, Houston is a long way to travel to shop. I could spend hours and tons of money there. Unfortunately (or fortunately depending on how you look at it), we don't have much of either. We don't need any more stuff right now. As soon as the boys move out and the baby gets a little older, I'll feel free to decorate. Just a little bit before then.

Well off until later . . . a baby seems to be calling to me.

Goodness, that was just a lot of time spent doing nothing. It feels like I've been working on this thing for hours now. I very well might have been. It still isn't finished yet either. I still have to add links to some of the blogs I read and I have to figure out how to get the picture at the top to stop tiling itself. At least it looks better than it did and I am a whole lot happier with it. The baby finally took his nap at 5 this evening after spending a great deal of time just laying there and acting silly. I got tired of waiting for him to crash and started working on this template at about 4 and let him watch Baby Santa on the couch. He was perfectly happy doing this and got mad if I went over to try to cuddle him. What an independent baby. He wanted to be by himself most of the day today, so I guess I shouldn't have been surprised. I just hope he is a little different when he wakes up because we need to run errands tonight. Shopping just isn't much fun when you have a toddler who is arguing with you to let him do his own thing. We have to go tonight because tomorrow is going to be full of fun and excitement, dropping off all of our adopt-a-family gifts and touring his pre-school.

I am still trying to come up with things to do while our family is here. I want to keep them busy so we don't spend a lot of time staring at each other and talking. When we all start talking I get really nervous and answer all of the questions asked of me in the dumbest way possible. Joe's family must think that I'm totally nuts. Plus, the questions that they are going to ask me, I don't have answers for. I have no idea when I am going to be going back to school, I don't know if we are going to have any more kids, and I don't know when we are going to be able to spend our vacation there. The questions I do know the answers to I don't want to answer because I fear it will begin the freezing hostility that usually takes over when people have disagreements about their principles. I just hope they don't make any comments on how I am raising my son, because I just don't have enough self-control to let that slide by. I should be able to come up something that will keep them entertained for four days. Hope, hope . . .

I came to the conclusion today that Christmas is fast approaching, so I should get my act together. The original plan was to have everything done by the first, but I can laugh at that now. I did get a lot done in November, but between the middle of November and now, things kind of fell by the wayside. Hopefully I can get motivated again.

I went to the Cafe Java Christmas dinner tonight at Seanna's house and had a super time. Nicholas was really upset at first and I was almost at the point of going home after only thirty minutes when he calmed down. I wanted to give him a chance to play with Aiden since he gets so little interaction with children his own age. In the end, they were so cute together. Nicholas would hand anything he could find over to Aiden and feed him food. He just loves other babies. I hope this carries over later into his life and he doesn't turn out as shy as I was. So far he only seems timid in unknown situations and adjusts fairly quickly, as long as he isn't tired or hungry. The party was a great situation for him because the house was childproofed and there was so much for him to play with. I was also happy to be there. Ever since I left the cafe I've really missed all of the people, even though I see a lot of them at least once a week. It isn't the same being on the outside of the work crew. They are able to discuss work problems that I don't have any knowledge of or couldn't contribute anything to. Everyone that works there is almost like family. I got to make my cranberry relish, which I love, and everyone else brought goodies. Annie made what she calls her "white-trash" dessert, lemonade pie. It was so yummy and sour. Nicholas even enjoyed the one bite that he got. Patrick brought antipasto salad with all kinds of roasted vegetables and cheeses and mushrooms. I love food! Now I have dinner for the next two nights in my fridge and poor Seanna must have enough to feed an army. It was so much excitement that Nicholas is now passed out on my bed prior to a bath or dinner (he did snack a lot). I know this does not bode well for tomorrow morning.


I got the bill today for all of the charges for repairs to our apartment. They want us to pay $700 to replace all of the carpets in the house that were damaged. I have no idea where this money is going to come from. I have to go talk to them on Monday to find out if they are charging us for the damage caused by the pipe leak that they knew about and let fester until it ruined the carpets in the hallway and in the dining room. That should be their responsibility, not ours. There isn't much we are going to be able to do if they say we have to pay them, though. I'm just hoping that they are nice enough people. Somehow I doubt that they are. This is a bad time of year to be asking us for extra money, too.


Still have a lot to do to get ready for the extended family experience we are about to have. My to-do list is about three miles long. How much of it I get done is still questionable. I am hoping that Joe gets the time off of work he requested so that he can help me get ready, but I'm not holding my breath. Even if he does get the time off, I would much rather spend enjoyable time with him than labor tediously just to make my family think that I'm not a slacker. They'll think that no matter what I do, but I like to minimize the things they might complain about. Amazing that they (my mother, that is) think that I should be able to keep a pristine house even though I have a toddler that I have to take care of by myself the majority of the time. I just want to keep the mess at a minimum and find someplace to put all of the boxes we haven't unpacked after living here for three months. I would prefer to unpack them, but my standards aren't so high as to discount the advantages of putting them in an out of the way closet.

Just got back from my first Christmas party of the year. My BIL Jon and I went to his friend Rebecca's, house. It was nice, but I didn't know anyone there except for Jon and I was a little uncomfortable for a little while. Fortunately everyone was pretty relaxed and friendly, so I actually felt like I wanted to be there after a little bit. Nicholas loved it; he was the only baby there and was the center of attention. They also had a dog and six cats to chase around. Even better than that, for him, was the ping-pong table. He kept throwing extra balls onto the table whenever anyone was playing. I was so afraid that he was going to get smacked in the head with a paddle, but everyone was cautious with him around. He also lifted weights and got to eat all the pretzels he wanted. He was in heaven. There wasn't the usual crying until it was time to leave. I always worry when I take anywhere with mostly adults because I don't know how he is going to behave or how people are going to react to him. I've been in situations where he is looked at as a nuisance and it always saddens me. I want him to be able to be around people, because I am isolated otherwise. I know many people with children and all of the playgroups Nicholas has been in haven't gone over very well or for very long. Joe is never home so if I want to go any place without the baby I am out of luck. That isn't the part that bothers me, however, what bothers me is that the people in my life who don't understand why I would WANT my child to be with me. *sigh*


In other news, Nicholas' future pre-school called today and said that they will be having a introductory class for 8 students and their parents every Friday this January and would I like to sign him up. I jumped on the occasion because we haven't had much opportunity to get out of the house because the weather has been bad and is getting worse. Now he is going to have something fun to do and will get to meet his future classmates. I'm still not sure how he is going to handle pre-school in the fall, but that is just going to be wait and see. I have to see if he has to be potty-trained before he goes into school because that is going to be a whole other issue. Also, he is getting enrolled in the kindermusik program at the Orpheus Music Academy. The new teacher there is our old kindermusik teacher and promised us to enroll us with the old rates since Nicholas would be a "transfer" student. The teacher suggested we move him up to the next class level so we are going in for a preview class on Wednesday next week. The class he will be enrolled in will start in the middle of February. I just wish I got to go to music lessons :).

Amazing. I went into my backyard today and there was a baby slide in it. Apparently Nico's uncle Jon brought him home a plastic Fisher-Price slide and didn't feel the need to tell us. Nico was in heaven. He kept going up the back of the slide on his own and sliding down. He didn't seem to be able to keep from hitting his bottom on the ground, though. He keeps going up to the back door and knocking on it for us to let him out. I'm so happy he is starting to enjoy the backyard. When we first moved in he was so uncomfortable about just walking on the grass. If we put him in the middle of the yard he would stand completely still and whine until someone came and got him. He wouldn't get of the sidewalk in the front yard. Now he will actually sit and play in the grass (even though he is mildly allergic to it). His favorite times now seem to be outside. Its finally getting to be a comfortable enough temperature for us to go outside, too. Today it is a lovely, sunny 64 degrees. Perfect weather for October, we're just a little late.
In other news, I went to Target last night to pick up items for my adopt-a-family. Joe, Nico, and I had a great deal of fun shopping for items for the kids. We still have to pick up a couple of things on their lists that Target didn't have by Monday. As I got home to wrap all of the gifts, I found out that we were going to have a problem. Nicholas wouldn't let me have half of the toys I bought. He kept dragging them away and hiding them. If I took them away he would start to fuss. He would hit the boxes trying to get his daddy to open them for him. Joe had to take Nicholas into the living room and distract him while I hurriedly wrapped everything. This morning it seems he had forgotten all about the toys, thank goodness. Stephanie said to worry about next year, he won't give up as easily and won't let us take those festive packages away.

Its the middle of the afternoon and I have the chance to sit at the computer and write an entry, it is a great day. Lunch was Chick-fil-A and Joe has taken care of the baby most of the day. I'm getting through "House of Spirits" by Isabel Allende, which I love. I may even lay down for an afternoon nap. I'm spoiled.

Blah. Didn't get anything done today. I'm too lazy for my own good. I thought it might be a good idea to clean out Nicholas' playroom to make room for the stuff he is going to get for x-mas. I figured that we would find lots of stuff that could go to charity, but he still plays with most of the stuff he has. I don't think that Goodwill would appreciate getting plastic Easter eggs and chewed up teething toys. Fortunately, we bought a bunch of toys to donate when they were on sale. I still have to get the Christmas gifts for the adopt-a-family program. I realized that I have no idea what a twelve year-old girl would want and her wishlist was really vague. I am going to go shopping this week and just guess. I feel a lot better this year for actually getting off my ass and doing the charitable stuff that I mean to do every year, but never get around to. Ever since I've been a stay-at-home parent, I have been attempting to do volunteer work, but it has been hard since I have to take Nico everywhere I go. Every place wants donations though, so that is how I am going to do my part. I wish I could do more sometimes. Being here makes me feel like I am not contributing to society at all. I have to do something.

My first blog post. Here goes. To those who happen to have the time or the inclination to read the day-to-day events of my life, I am happy that you have chosen to read my stories. As most of you know who are going to show up here, my name is Jamie. I have an 18-month old son, Nico, and am married to a wonderful man, Joe. I live in Austin with my son, my husband, my cat, and my two brothers. We have quite a full house. I stay at home with the bebe and am constantly fighting the urge to go insane. Don't get me wrong, being at home is fun sometimes, but with a toddler and people constantly coming in and out I feel slightly off balance. On to today's events:

- The house was cleaned as we are expecting a plethora of relatives and friends to walk through our door between now and New Year's day. Nico walked behind me and uncleaned. He knows how things are supposed to go.
- Made potato and leek soup and salad for dinner. I didn't actually make the soup, but ordered it last week from the Soup Peddler. It was wonderful. Good thing I didn't make it.
- Tried to take Nico's picture by the Christmas tree. He thought it was funny to run away and have me chase him. Our cards this year may have a distinctly halloween feel to them.
- Watched Shreck twice. I swear, I used to like this movie.
- Tried to teach Nico to say book. It came out sounding like "ba"

Tommorrow will hopefully be more interesting. Tonight I'm content sitting on the couch and drinking tea while Nicholas plays with his cookie cutters.