Just like her Mama

Well, we've hit another milestone today. Fiona made a boy cry. I'm not entirely sure what happened, they were kind of like riiiiiight out of my line of vision, over to the side of the chair I was sitting on. But, yeah. We went to a new playgroup today, one we hadn't been to and didn't know anyone, so as usual it was kind of awkward at first. The other mothers were nice enough, the kids were all right around Fiona's age (which meant nobody really wanted to play with anyone else, they all just kind of played in the same general area), and we were having a pretty good time what with the goldfish crackers and the coffee. (It doesn't take much to make Fi and I happy, obviously)

Anyways. The incident. It may have actually been nothing, maybe she bumped into the kid, maybe she grabbed, maybe she tried to "share". All I know is that by the time I turned around, his snack cup was on the ground, amidst a small pile of goldfish crackers that Fiona was promptly hoovering up for us. She's good like that. This kid looks at her, and just dissolved into tears. He didn't seem like a particularly whiny kid up to that point, which is why I'd put money on her grabbing those fishies away from him like the little pint-sized bully she apparently is. I wasn't quite sure how to handle it, though. We removed the fishies from the situation, and the little boy's mother came over and was just like "looks like somebody's getting tired" and picked him up, it was really a non-event. But I kinda felt bad. I mean, she's small, and from experience I know that you've got to have a certain level of toughness to combat that, but I don't want her picking on boys when she's in the fourth grade, stepping on their feet or elbowing them when they're behind her in line, thus making them cry and calling them crybaby in front of everyone, or hitting them in the face with a windup Ghostbusters toy when they sit behind her on the school bus (repeat crying and namecalling). Not that I did anything like that when I was little. Poor kid. He really was a crybaby, but he probably just had a crush on me, and I used to torment the living crap out of him.

But I digress.

So, we've had our first bullying incident. I'm hoping that the next time something like this happens, I'll actually see it and be able to better gauge the seriousness of the situation, and deal with it appropriately. Cause she's gonna have to learn to be nicer. I don't want her biting the baby. Again, not that I did that to my sister or anything...

Today after playgroup we got home for naptime annnnnnnnd.... no nap. So I got her up from her crib, and we ate lunch and played and sang and danced and played and read stories and I though for SURE she'll sleep now annnnnnnd she slept for like 45 minutes. Which is not nearly enough. So tonight was a cranky evening for us here at the LaMartina household, even more so once Nate called and said he was gonna have to stay at work a bit later than normal...

But I still somehow managed to get dinner on the table! Cause I made one of the recipes out of my new crockpot cookbook! And since dinner was already halfway made by 1pm, it made it much easier to just throw together some mashed potatoes and microwave some carrots once Nate did get home. So, we had a delicious homecooked meal for the second night in a row. That's right, y'all. I cooked last night, too. Shake-n-bake chicken and oven roasted potatoes and broccoli. AND made banana muffins for this morning's playgroup. With whole wheat flour, none the less! Look at me go.

Now babygirl is sleeping, and the boys are downstairs having a beer/halo/microwave pizza/"forget we are husbands and fathers and kick back like we're in college type" of evening. I've been banished to the upstairs lest I break that fantasy, but it's all good. I've got my cup of tea, I've got my little stack of shortbread cookies, I've got my book. I'm gonna chill out and then go to bed early. And I'm not gonna lie, I'm pretty excited about that.

edited to add: My cup of tea got cold as I typed up this post. So I went downstairs to throw it in the microwave and ran back upstairs to take out contacts/wash my face/change into pajamas while the tea heated up again. I hear a knock on the bathroom door, it's the hubs. He saw me put the tea in the microwave and walk back upstairs, and, since he knows my tendency to forget about it and leave it in there until it's cold again (gah, yes Mom, I do that too now, sorry for making fun of you all those years), he brought it upstairs to me. So even on his guy's night in he's looking out for and taking care of me. Love that man.

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Beannachtaí na Féile Pádraig!

It's the 17th of March! One of my favorite days of the year! It's St. Patrick's Day!

Talked to my sister in Ireland this morning. It was awesome and I told her that I basically hate her. Well, not really. Really I'm just crazy jealous. I told her I'm thinking of maybe making Shepherd's Pie for dinner, and she said "Sounds good. Irishy. I think we're having ribs, but really whatever we eat is Irish, so it works." Bitch.

Kidding, Kels! Love you!

You know, once I quit a job because they wouldn't give me St. Patrick's day weekend off. I had already planned a trip back home to Boston to watch the parade and I had tickets to see the Dropkick Murphys! It was planned BEFORE I took that stinkin' job at that stinkin' pub! Who woulda thought that an Irish pub wouldn't honor any requests for time off in the entire month of March...

Today though, no need to quit the job. Things are good. Had my OB appt today... he told me I was 32 weeks along, which well, awesome. I thought I was only 31. That NEVER happens to me. Somehow they gave me my old due date back? Now it's the 12th? (Which sort of screws up the whole "counting down the pregnancy with episodes of LOST", but hey. Who the hell knows what's going on in that show anyways. Do I really WANT to associate my pregnancy with that malarky? That's right. I said malarky. Wait, am I still in parentheses?)

So. 32 weeks. And they had to move the big chunk on the bottom of the scale over, which is always a low point for me. I've crossed that 150 threshold and then a little more. I've gained 25lbs so far this pregnancy, which ugh. With Fiona I gained like 27 lbs TOTAL. I'm at 25 and I still have 8 weeks to go? Crippity crap. I'm gonna go over 30. Blargh. My mom was so kind to say to me this morning, "oh wow, I think I only went up over 150 with one of the girls." Uhhhhh thanks but SHUT UP ya SKINNY MINNY CHICKEN LEG WOMAN! One of my calves weighs the same as your whole torso, so can it.

Other than that slightly depressing news, things are looking good. Everything is measuring what it should measure and heartbeats are good and strong and all that stuff.

ALSO, the weather has decided to stop being crappy and finally get nice and springy again. Doing a picnic at the playground with friends for lunch today, and tomorrow as well. This weekend its supposed to be sunny and get into the 70s? Yes please. Wearing my flip-flops today and it was only like 45 degrees this morning.

Well. Baby is down for her nap and I have things to do. Enjoy the day!

Happy St. Patrick's Day from my wee Irish lass!

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Cookies

Nate and I started dating a little over 4 years ago. Obviously, we have learned many things about each other since then. He knows that I sometimes chew with my mouth open, I know that he leaves dirty socks EVERYWHERE, he know I like to always have a glass of water at bedtime and I know that he can sometimes soothe a headache by flossing his teeth.

So when I went to order this year's batch of Girl Scout cookies, I confidently ordered a box of my favorites (Samoas), a box of his favorites (Tagalongs), a box of Thin Mints (cause I think that's a law, that you have to), and a box of Trefoils (because they go so well with a nice cup of tea). The cookies got here, hurrah, and I occasionally put a few Tagalongs in with his lunch, while saving the Samoas for myself because I do love them so.

The other night I was at the grocery store, buying some ice cream in celebration of our having a working freezer once again (!) and I saw that Edy's was on sale! And that they had limited edition Girl Scout Cookie flavors! Nate loves limited edition ice cream flavors! Perfect! I grabbed 2 cartons- Samoas and Tagalongs. Our favorites. Raced home all excited, pulled them out of the grocery bag, all "Look, look what I got! Aren't you thrilled??!?!"

A bit later, once the baby was in bed and we went to dish up the ice cream, I was surprised to see Nate opening up the Samoa ice cream first. I was a bit peeved. Here I was, I bought his favorite kind for him, and he doesn't even want to try it? What the hell is that about. So I asked him, "I bought the Tagalong kind especially for you, don't you want that?"

And he says "yeah, but Samoas are my favorite, so I wanted to try this kind first."

???????

Really? If I didn't know what his favorite was, that would be totally understandable. I mean, it's not a requirement to know things like favorite cookie flavor. But I was SO SURE about it. I felt like SUCH an idiot. Here I was, hoarding the Samoas for myself, completely without guilt because hey, I bought him a box of his favorites and I haven't had a single one. Fair is fair. Now I find out that nope. Dead wrong. You think you know someone...

I would also like to report that while I have not yet managed to go grocery shopping, I did go and pick up all our frozen/defrosted/refrozen into solid blocks foods, so we have some options for mealtimes again. And so tonight in keeping with my decision to do better about making dinner, I made dinner. I had a little helper. It was adorable.

Don't worry Gramma, I didn't actually let her take anything out. She just wanted to wear the mitts and walk around the kitchen saying "Hot hot hot" every time I opened the oven.

And Nate- I'm sorry for hogging all the Samoa goodness for the past four years. I'll be sure to put some in your lunch tomorrow.

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March

February has come and gone, with it tons and tons and feet of snow, most of which has now melted. Our tiny little yard looked like a battleground after the snow disappeared... big tree branches all over the place, a thousand little piles of dog turds, not to mention all the pine needles and leaves that we never raked up in the fall... Nate and I spent all this past weekend (which was GORGEOUS) outside raking and raking and bagging and it looks so much better now, even if there still isn't any grass...

Last week we also had an interesting couple of days when our fridge decided, after months of making this really annoying loud clonking noise, to die completely. Of course, I didn't realize it until it had been dead for so long that all the frozen food was totally defrosted...thank goodness for friends with deep freezers with space. All the fridge food was loaded into coolers with bags and bags of ice... this was Thursday. They finally delivered our new fridge yesterday, and it's so shiny and clean and new and COLD and it's just fantastic.

This morning Nate took off work and the three of us went to a Rocknoceros concert at Jammin' Java. Sounds kinda lame, but it's actually a really good time. Babygirl is slow to warm up to the idea of concert, staying close to Mama and Daddy at first, but after a while she enjoys getting up there and being part of the action.






Fi wasn't SO much into the dancing while I was shooting this little video, she was a bit more intent on sticking her hand inside the back of her diaper. Which was actually kind of embarassing. She has become kinda fascinated with that lately. In the past couple weeks, we've had three instances of "I'm done napping and now I think it would be fun to reach into my dirty diaper and make a poop painting on the sheets of my crib..wheeee Mama isn't this fun!??!?!" Yesterday she tried it at the end of her morning nap, but was thwarted by the zip-up footie pajamas. Although she made a valiant effort and managed to get one arm outside of jammies. She is too much.



In completely unrelated news, I haven't given any updates regarding baby numero dos recently... that's probably because everything is progressing just fine, no issues beyond the fact that I'm a little anemic and tend to be a bit hypoglycemic. Neither of which is surprising, I've always tended that way. Just means I need to eat frequent small meals and take an iron pill. I'm also supposed to take it easy on things like sugar and white flour and simple carbs... all those things that make up delicious snacks. Instead I have to do proteiny complex carb things. Like wheat pitas and hummus. And hardboiled eggs. Which isn't as delicious as bagels or candy, but still pretty good. I'm 30 weeks along now, so we have entered the final stretch, the final 10 weeks. I'm actually counting down using LOST episodes, because there are only 10 left till the end... the final episode is slated to air May 23rd, and I'm slated to have this kid May 18th. We'll just have to wait and see which finishes first- this pregnancy, or a show that we belatedly only got into last summer and has sucked us in like none other. I've got my next appt in a week, I'll od my best to update again at that point, maybe even including a how much have a gained type update?

I've also decided to become better about cooking dinner again. I was doing so well back in the fall, and then it fell away to NOTHING. I saw this cookbook in the checkout aisle at the grocery store (I fall for that stuff Every. Time.) and it caught my eye. "Fix It and Forget It. 200 Slowcooker recipes using 5 ingredients or less." The way I see it- I have both energy and time in the mornings. In the evenings I've got time, but I'm also usually beat. Getting up the energy to make dinner just seems like a monumentous effort. So if I slowcooker it, I can prepare dinner earlier in the day when I've still got some get up and go and then I can still be tired and blargh in the late afternoon and yet manage to get some actual dinner on the table. I went through the book and marked a bunch of recipes that looked tasty, added the ingredients to my shopping list, so we'll see how it all turns out... I'm hopeful.

On that note, I need to go get a little snack and then maybe a bit of a nap while Fi is still sleeping... here's hoping.

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15 months

Well, little chickie had her 15 month checkup today. The doc was all "Oh wow, she's walking, that's so great!" and I was like "Phsaw. Old news. Her new thing is saying 'Hot! Hot! Hot!' anytime we sit down to eat or when she sees me cooking at the stove or drinking tea." She's not too thrilled this afternoon, she had to have a total of 3 shots- two in her leg and one in her arm. So she's a bit cranky and nap-refusy. Which means there's no time for a lengthy entry here. I just wanted to give the stats from the doc.

15 months old.
29 1/2 inches tall (25%)
18lbs2oz (>5%)

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Snow. and Snow.

Yesterday Nate left at 5am to catch a cab. A cab to the airport. To catch a plane to SanFran and then on to Shanghai. This morning at 10am we videochatted with that fool who'd stayed up until 11pm after traveling halfway around the world, just to say good morning to us. He'll be gone a week, and we already miss him around here, but it sounds like he is going to have a really great trip, and we should be able to talk a few more times throughout the week. Thank goodness for Google videochat.

Also this morning at 9am, it started snowing. Just flurries at first, I thought it wouldn't add up to much of anything. Then it picked up, and kept snowing the whole entire day long. After lunch I took the little one outside to play. We walked down to the mailbox, picked up the mail and stuck it in the back of babygirl's sled. Her gorgeous little wooden sled on metal runners that her Great-Grandpa Troutman made. Made from a sled that was Grandma's when she was a little girl. So it's a pretty special sled. And she absolutely loves it. Sitting in the sled, walking in the snow, eating the snow... she seems to be a cold weather girl.

Catching snowflakes on her tongue.

Now she's down for the count and I've cozied myself up on the couch for another evening of solo TV watching. Though I've cut myself off from doing anything like watching 4 episodes of Criminal Minds right before going to bed... I couldn't fall asleep for anything last night. Every little noise I would open my eyes, all "oh NO! It's an intruder! A rapist! A murderer! A kidnapper!" Normally I can watch things that freak me out, and then later when I start to get all pathetic and creeped out I just scoot over to Nate's side of the bed and while he doesn't wake up, he's still enough to reassure me that I just have an overactive imagination, and that everything is normal and fine and okay and it's just the wind, for crying out loud. But not last night. I was all on my own. So tonight it's just straight home renovation shows. Maybe a little Hoarders. Those will let me sleep.

And now, even though it's kind of chilly in here, I've got a hankering for some ice cream. So I am about to go serve up some mint chocolate chip and I will leave you with some comparison pictures.

Making a snow angel on patio table last March.

Making a snow angel today... though I did still have to move her arms and legs.

Last year she wasn't so sure about the whole idea of snow.

This year she looooooves it.

Oh, and PS? The girl is 15 months old today. 15 whole months. She's got her checkup on Monday, so be prepared to be regaled with all sorts of stats and percentiles as to just how tiny she still is.

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Lame.

I don't even want to try to make excuses. Two months? Pathetic.

And we've done so much and been so many places, I'm hesitant to even try to write a catch-you-up-on-our-lives entry. Soooo. Let's do a quick recap of the last two months. Thanksgiving in MA. Came home, set up our Christmas tree and did our little Christmas #1 here at home with just the three of us. Went to PA to visit family and have Christmas #2. Then we came home and were here for all of a week before we took off again to visit family in ID, where we stayed for nearly 3 weeks of good times and loads of food. That included Christmas #3. Also New Year's. Also, a ski trip to Montana, during which I left my little chickadee with her grandparents and spent four WHOLE DAYS doing nothing but drinking tea and reading by the fire and not worrying about if the baby was about to wake up from her nap and end my quiet. Finally came home in January and we were here all of what, a week and a half before we took off for the Poconos for a weekend for Christmas #4 with the Grimes side of the family. Ended up taking 2 siblings home to VA with us, Erin and Jonny were here with us all last week, which was really fun. Then this past weekend was the March for Life, which meant various members of the fam were independently coming to DC. Heather came and stayed here for the weekend, and Mickey stopped by for dinner on Saturday. Yesterday after Mass and a lovely coffee date with some Walkers everyone left for their various homes, and we are back down to just the three of us. It is quiet.

So that brings us up to today. Not the most riveting paragraph I've ever written, but it covers the basics of what has happened in the past two months.

Now to begin writing about the banalities of everyday life again. To start with, my child has an inSANE love of bananas these days. I mean, she wakes up and we go down to the kitchen, she just starts in with "Nana? Nana? Nana?! Nana! Nana!" until she's got the banana in her hot little hands. Then she eats the entire thing in like 2 minutes flat and starts asking for more. I think the girl would eat an entire bunch of bananas if I let her. It's fairly hilare.

Also, she has started doing this little fakey cry whenever anybody else is sad... I first noticed it yesterday when we were at Mass. There was a little boy a few pews behind us who was getting kind of cranky, and when he would start to cry, Fiona would glance up at me or Nate and make a little pout face and start to whimper in empathy. Then last night we were playing with a little Fisher Price girl, I would balance her on my knee and Fi would knock her down, I'd say "Oh no, she fell!" and Fi would start to do these fake little sobs until I said "She's okay!" It's so cute.

In baby #2 news, we've had the midwaypoint ultrasound, and everything is looking good. I'm at about 24 weeks now, and starting to really feel pregnant. I've got the obvious pregnant belly now, which makes me happy cause I no longer just look like I'm getting kinda chunky. I've also been having the whole charlie horse thing, which is not so awesome, along with the various aches and pains that are still more annoying than actually painful. BUT I also get to feel the baby move and kick ALL THE TIME, and he/she is still small enough that its not painful yet. So that's awesome.

Annnnnd that's all I've got time for, kids. Backyardigans is over. My blog writing window is closed. Now I've got to get to playing with this little monster, hopefully get some errands done, blah blah etcetera, boring things. Peace out.

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