As promised!

Here are the promised photos-

My krapptastic living room:

It tried to eat me...

It's definitely a Monday. Really, really a Monday. But I will not obsess.

We had good fun this weekend. Saturday during the day we played inside while PB tried to dismantle the giant tree that fell in the yard (I will get a shot of it this evening, if I can remember). If it had been a few feet taller, it would have ended up in the pool. Which really might have been the last straw for the pool, as far as I'm concerned.

But Saturday night was excitement all around. We met up with friends at C&D's house (where the puppies live!) and went over to the St. Bernadette's church fest. There were lights and people and a guy singing a lively mix of Neil Diamond and Willie Nelson hits. And LG got more attention that he bargained for. PB rode some rides with B (and neither of them got sick!) and the toothless carnies all cooed over LG. LG should run for president some day if he can get the attention of everyone from the Partners at my firm to the carnies at the church fest. And he's met his first politician. Dennis Kuchinich was at the fest and he stopped by (ok, B called him over) to say hi!. Thank goodness he's not a baby kissing type politician, lest any of that liberal nonsense rub off on little guy.

Yesterday we went to the Lake Farmpark. PB will tell you that a calf tried to eat LG, but I think he was just trying to taste him.

And we saw a sheep dog at work (and working hard, I might add):

And LG almost got to pet a sheep (but PB didn't actually let him touch the sheep because they're probably "dirty").

It's probably all for the best, though, as the ram that was hanging out with the sheep "bah"ed in a loud, angryish manner.

After the sheep LG pretty much fell asleep while PB and I walked a little longer before calling it a day. A successful outing for our first time with farm animals, though.

All that said, no work was done on the living room, which remains a pit. I'll get some shots of the ceiling and what is under the duct tape this evening for all to see.

On to conquer another week of fun in the accounting world. Oh, and Blogger's spell check isn't working, once again, so you will all have to live with my krappy spelling.

The Photo Shoot

Here's a picture of LG's first real food. Rice cereal. I chose to put this picture up first because he actually looks like he might have enjoyed it. Please note, this picture does not portray the real events of this moment.

This one is more accurate:

He spit most of it out and it was really funny for us. I'm pretty sure he didn't enjoy it at all.

The renovation continues. We have the carpet up and PB is presently sanding the ceiling. Then we fix the ceiling up and move on to the plywood on the floor.

So, here are the first pictures.

This is the plastic barrier that is keeping all the evil dust out of the rest of the house (and if you look closely you can see PB on the left sanding the ceiling).

Here is a lovely shot of the floor after we took up the carpet:

And, yes, that is duct tape over a hole in the floor. When we took it up, you could see down to the basement. Woo hoo. The previous owner did a marvelous job of his renovation.

Good times. I'll get the before pictures and the "what's under the duct tape" pictures up as soon as I get the time.

Let the fun begin.

An update: The yoga, it went well. I guess I'm all sorts of out of balance, though. The yogi promised to try to fix me. And it didn't really hurt at all, yet. Now we just wait for next Thursday for the first class to see how we get on.

I ended up having a root canal on Friday morning. Ahhh, so much better. I guess all the tooth grinding has caused me to fracture a tooth, which caused the filling in it to shift and get infected and all sorts of other badness. The endodontist that did the actual work was amazing, though. Less than 45 minutes from the time my rear hit the chair to me at the front desk holding instructions and taking my free toothpaste sample. And now? I feel like it's a whole new mouth. Ahhh.

As for the fun, it began this weekend. Yesterday we cleared out the living room of all it's bits and baubles. It is a big, empty canvas, waiting for repairs and some new duds. I have 27 boxes of hardwood flooring (Brazilian cherry- don't condemn me for my imported floor) sitting in the guest room, acclimating. This week, PB will pull up the carpet and start fixing the ceiling. To fill you in, the guy who "remodeled" our house didn't bother to put compound under the dry wall tape, so we have cracks in our ceiling located conveniently every 4 feet or so. Wunderbar, no? SO, our first mission is to fix that little thing. And sand all the "texture" off the ceiling, I guess (it bothers PB a lot more than it bothers me, all this sponged on texture across the house). Oh, wait, that's part II. Part I is to pull up the carpet and fix the floor (and get it to reliable ply wood status). I guess we have questions as to the status of whatever is under the carpeting. Then we do the ceiling. The we put in a new window, paint the walls (and the trim, unlike the previous owner, who didn't feel the need to paint the trim under the curtains...) and finally, put in the new floor. All of this in 6 weeks (a compromised time line- I think it will take 8, PB thinks 4).

LG and I are now hanging out in our new "Batcave". We turned the office into a remote outpost of the living room. We moved the tv and the big chair into that room, and will hang out up there while the renovation takes place, far away from the fumes and dust. I'm pretty sure it's as far away as we can get and still be in the same house. But you can be that the jacktard that remodeled our house has some vent that directly connects the two, somehow.

I'll throw up the before and during pictures as we go (as well as update LG pictures).

Whine...

Oh, dudes, my tooth hurts. Like mad. I've never had a tooth ache before. How do people deal with this??? I called the dentist, and will see him tomorrow morning. If I don't rip this tooth right out of my head before then. OOOOuchies.

I read that swishing with salt water helps? Nope. Not at all. Maybe worse.

Anyone have any suggestions? What worked for you? Oh, help. Tylenol is not touching this one at all. Argh. Must not slam mouth with sledge hammer.

Betrayed

LG got his 4 month shots on Monday. The dr. cleaned out some gunk from his ears (which did not make her his friend, in any way) proclaimed him healthy and proceeded to stick him. And, once again, he gave me that look that said "Et tu, Mama? You knew this was coming, and you still let her do it?" It's that sad, betrayed look that I hate. But it's over now, and once the sting wore off he was absolutely fine and happy again.

On a happier note, little station wagon got some new tires yesterday. It feels like a whole new car! Woo hoo. Can I tell you how much I love my car? Don't care if people mock me for my "momobile", or that it's now almost 6 years old, I love it. Love to drive it, love to ride in it. Happy to click my LGs car seat into it. Good stuff. We have spoken about looking at the new VW wagons when they come out in August, but I'll be hard pressed to give up my car. Even the people who service it always say what a nice car it is, and how I've kept it up nicely. And now baby got a new pair of shoes.

And, on another note, when did work stop being about working? I had a conference call this morning with my "peers" where all they did was whine about the work environment. Really, people? I wanted to tell them all about what it was like when I first entered corporate America, 10 years ago. People could still smoke in the office (yuck), you had to wear hose ,and closed toed shoes. "Casual Friday" was really new and meant that you could wear khakis and a polo shirt (not jeans and certainly not t-shirts) and not every company had one. You had to come in at 8:00 and couldn't leave until 5:00. We all felt appreciated when once a year we got a corporate prezzie like a mug or a t-shirt, and you felt uber appreciated when you did a special project and got some $$$ for it. But the new people in the work world want to know what's in it for them. Uhm, other than the paycheck? I feel really old complaining about this, but it kills me.

And today I have my first yoga class. I guess it's sort of an evaluation. I'm very excited. I'm hoping it makes my back feel better, and gives me some energy back. We'll see. I'll report back to you, my loving listeners.

Must go. Duty calls.

Your ear bone's connected to...

Your stomach, somehow? When I went to pick LG up at school yesterday, the teacher stopped me to tell me how much they like the new baby bottles (score 1 for our team). She said he chomped right through them (she had more to say- see below). Which made me remember that he used to be a really good eater. Right up until the time he was about 7 or 8 weeks old. Then he got really picky.

Now, I'm wondering, could this ear thing have been going on longer than we think, and just gotten really bad now? Or maybe he just eats in cycles? It's a mystery. Either way, we're now up to 6 oz bottles (which is where we should be, again). Amazing. Go LG!

This is a picture of all the babies on Sunday. It was a "clothes free" zone for babies! That's cousin K, in the middle, and cousin S, on the right. LG is there drinking from his new bottle. I love seeing all these guys together. This is a year's worth of babies, in our family (K is 14 months, S is 7 months, and LG is 4 months.)

LG's teacher, Miss J, really liked the new bottles, though. No more rubber nipples (and why didn't someone tell me those weren't good for you? For Pete's sake, the hospital gave us those!!!), and no more Bisephanol-A. We went to these little numbers http://www.greentogrow.com/product.aspx?productID=BB10RG. We did have to get different nipples (we just went with the Avent silicone ones) since the Green to Grow ones were a tad longer than what we're used to and LG was gagging on them. She said she's glad we're up to date on our chemical free bottles (though they would never influence us either way). These bottles have a golden tint to them, though (due to the plastic they use), which freaked them out at first. The teachers thought something was wrong with the formula until they realized it was the bottle.

After all the research, and the ordering and such, I'm feeling pretty good that it worked out and LG is happy, and school is happy. Though, more research has caused me to laugh. The bottles I bought were $9.99 on the website. And $15 on Amazon. and even more other places.

Sorry to go on about this, but it's been on my mind a lot lately. I don't know why it's stuck there. Bizarre. It's like getting a song stuck in your head. You might think about other stuff, but it all comes back to that one tune.

Bisephenol A...

Yeah, I probably spelled that wrong. And, no, I don't care. Argh. The list of things that makes me worry these days is never ending. My biggest worry used to be "did I turn off the stove? yeah, probably" and I'd be done in a day. Now? Argh. I'm pretty convinced I'll never be able to do this Mom thing quite right, and I'll always be just treading water. I am the Mom that will show up 5 minutes late wearing not quite the right outfit and not quite sure I'm in the right place. And for most stuff, I'm ok with that. As long as my kid is healthy, and relatively happy.

Hence my worrying about this bisephenol A. And its potential problems. Last weekend I spent God knows how many hours out on-line trying to find a bottle that looked like one LG would like that didn't contain potentially harmful chemicals.

And don't start with the "when we were kids" krappe. When I was a kid, half of the things that might kill my kid now didn't exist. I could drink from the garden hose because the water came from the well and we lived in the middle of nowhere. We could ride out bikes alone because without our knowing it, about a hundred neighbors were looking out their windows at us, and if we needed them, we could have knocked on any one of a thousand doors for help from people we knew.

Not so much anymore. We're in such a hurry to be bigger, and better and faster that we're a danger to ourselves.

Yesterday I did manage to get another really cute shot of LG.

You just have to love that face. I love the way he's looking right into the camera. Now, if I could just make the binki go away. Oh, well.

The brink of death

Holy cows, last week we really were on the brink of death. Saturday, we took PBadger to the Dr to see what was wrong with his eye. He's fine, just allergies, but 3 hours in the waiting room. Really, now?

Then LG went to the dr for his 4 month check up (and shots) and we found out he has an ear infection. Which apparently explains the stuffy nose, cough and splorking up whole meals. I feel bad that he wasn't up to snuff for a whole week before we found out. Poor kid. But now he's on the mend.

And I had the plague (no, not literally, though some of PB's co-workers did think it was literal). It started out as a sinus infection, but the medicine the doctor gave me made me nauscious, so I stopped eating, and drinking. And on Wednesday night, couldn't sleep, so I took some Tylenol PM. Oooh, not good. PB found me on the floor between our room and LGs and lets just say I wasn't in good shape. I kept telling him about how I saw Barnie Miller on TV (which I did) and how the guy actually does say "Book 'em, Dano.", which I had forgotten. He was all freaked out.

But after many ice pops and some jello, we made our way back from the edge and are now doing just peachy.

Friday night was our Relay for Life thingy. It was fun, but hotter than the devil's arm pits. Whew. PB and LG joined me at around 6, but couldn't stay outside long in that heat. So, Grammie and Auntie C and cousin K came on over for a short visit, instead.

Saturday morning, Auntie J flew in from the east, all by herself (I'm pretty sure she doesn't remember the last time she did something ALL BY HERSELF). We spent the day hanging out, and doing some food shopping, and learning how to roll. Then Auntie M (our fairy Godmother) came in afternoon. More food, more rolling.

On Sunday we had the baptism. LG was really good through regular church. Then he began to scream at the baptism. I think he was just overtired, and in new clothes (see gown below). Oh, well. He stopped after a few minutes and got through the rest just fine. It was really a nice ceremony.

Then we all went back to the house for a BBQ. And that, too, would have been much improved had the pool been open. Holy Hot, batman. I swear, people were melting on the lawn. But LG got to visit with almost everyone and all was well. Some of the folks that were there he sees more than others, and I think everyone did a really good job of sharing.

I have to say, I'm still really happy about finding that gown. Shopping for really important things on-line makes me nervous, usually. You just never know what it will really look like, or how it will fit. And you never know if you can really return things to people you can't walk up to. But this worked out well. It's not too fancy, but very pretty. And it will work for a boy or a girl. And it's well made, so hopefully we can hand it down among the generations. PBadger and Uncle B had to get over the fact that LG was in a "dress" for a few minutes, but they did eventually.

More later on Bisephanol A and my quest for baby bottles. For now, maybe to find somewhere quiet to nap? Not at work. Rats.