Under the Same Sky

Is it really necessary to run promos for the season finale of Jon & Kate Plus 8 during the season finale? Sixteen times? Also, goodness gracious with the blatant advertisement for Allstate. I watch re-runs sometimes but I don't usually follow it regularly when it comes on, but I wanted to know what the big drama was going to be so I turned it on. As expected, not what they lead you to believe.

I told Evelyn this morning that we were going to clean house today, and she spent the whole day walking around talking about "clean house". So cute. She did not, in fact, actually allow me to do a whole lot of cleaning, but I did do the dishes and fold most of a gigantic mountain of laundry, so I am considering it a good day anyway.

After dinner, we took her to the playground for the first time this year. She *LOVED* it. Guess what she loved the most? The slides? Oh no no. The gunga (swing)? A close second, but the best part was obviously the mulch. She kept picking it all up, turning it over in her hands, throwing it up the slide, showing it to us and chatting about the wood. All wood belongs to Daddy. It's a valid assumption, really, since we've been working outside with the sticks and the burning and the trees PLUS he has heaps of lumber and mandolins in progress laying around in the basement and garage. For his part, he was probably just relieved that she wasn't calling them sticks, which is what she is usually saying about either wood or sticks. She has a bit of a problem saying stick, and it comes out as "dick". Sooo... she spends a lot of time when we're outside talking about "Daddy dick! Daddy dick!" It's really funny. It was even funnier when she saw him carrying a really big stick the other day and narrated that at the top of her lungs. It's a good thing our neighbors don't live close enough to have heard that little gem.

I am not a big comic person but I now have two that I read. I pester M with the very best of XKCD. (Order of the Stick being the other one that I read, at M's original urging.) Anyway, some of the XKCD comics are really brilliant. This one made M laugh tonight. I expect to see it in my near future in one of our conversations. Some of you are also wordy nerds so I thought you might enjoy it too. Also, I am out of things to say again so I might as well close this with a laugh.

You know, when you are literally in the middle of a conversation about all the expensive things you are planning to spend money on in the near future, and the prioritization thereof... that is not exactly when you want to find out that you have put your cell phone through the washing machine.

The good news, I guess, is that I think I'm out of contract as of this month...

You know, I've never really pimped anything in my own self-interest, but if you sign up for Ebates using this link, you'll get $10. I've been a member of Ebates for years and years and I've never tried to get anyone to sign up, but they really do send you money from shopping online, and if you want to sign up you may as well do it when you can give us both more free money. Lots of stores have accounts there. I have even clicked through to order pictures from Walmart.. it was actually an accident the first time or I would never have thought to do it. I think I got twelve cents from it or something like that. Hehe.

Here's another online shopping tip that may be obvious, but I know that lots of people don't do this. Next time you check out somewhere and they ask you if you have a coupon code? Go type the site and "coupon codes" into a search engine. You'll often find something. Godaddy in particular always has coupon codes floating around, so I have started manually renewing my domain names to save money on them. (They're set to auto-renew in case I forget.) Just now, I bought something online and couldn't get any discounts, but I did get a free soap gift package added to my order. Which.. hey, it's free. Free is good.

In other news, my baby is swell. Did you know that an infant signing "more" is just about the cutest thing in the world? It really is too bad that she mainly does it when Barney goes off. *sigh* At least she's cute. Oh, and she says "more" too. Well. She says more if it is pronounced "whffooofff" or occasionally "oooma"--those are the sound effects to the more sign, apparently. She also said "baby" today, and I do believe that she meant to, as they were saying baby on the Baby Einstein signing video just then--I couldn't handle another run of Barney so we switched--but I also think it was a total fluke that she actually got it right when she tried to imitate them.

Oh, and I had my very first ever banana split tonight. It was pretty good! A healthy dessert! Shut up. Fruits are healthy and so is ice cream.

The baby woke me up at six this morning, probably because she hates me. I am not a six o'clock person at the best of times but I was just completely broken this morning. My knees hurt more than they have ever hurt in my entire life, and with no real reason or explanation--it's been a week since I fell on them and they never really got sore from that, plus the bruises are even faded by now, and that's the only knee trauma I've had recently. I took some advil and sat very still as much as possible while feeding the girl. There were also neck pains and hand cramps and the myriad of lacerations on my hands (my right hand is a dry skin induced cracked and bleeding nightmare) and my continued stomach bug. I told M that I really wanted to take the day off, but sadly, Evelyn (my boss) does not understand the concept of calling in sick. Typically, I don't go back to bed when she gets up early, but I just could not take it this morning, and managed to steal another hour or so of sleep when she FINALLY went back down, and it was heavenly. It made showering with her sitting there in the highchair in the bathroom with me worthwhile. I hate doing that but sometimes you do what you must.

I went on a wild shopping spree with M's Paypal account (it's just easier to have one ebay and one paypal account so we share) this afternoon. I spent, why, close to fifty dollars in three locations. Of course, since he gets the emails, he caught me red-handed when he got home. Then he beat me. Just kidding, he already knew about it, of course. I have never understood people who lie to their spouses about money, or hide what they buy. That is so not us, in any case, but that's not the point of this. In the course of my shopping, I saw this beauty in the PayPal FAQ. I wonder how many times it's been asked so that they feel the need to write up a help document about it? Are there THAT many stupid people in the world?

Q: Do I have to have money in my bank account to add funds to my PayPal account?
A: Yes. In order to successfully add funds to your PayPal account, you must have sufficient funds in your bank account at the time of the request.

Apparently there is. That would be AWESOME, though, if you could just transfer pretend money into real PayPal money! I would start using PayPal more, I'll tell you that much.

Update on the box of melodrama--nothing much got done today, but yesterday I put away a whole lot of stuff, and cleaned both Winnie the Pooh and Elmo, and as they were the giant things taking up most of the box.. it looks almost empty! Still more to do, and need to stop putting more stuff in.

Oh, did I mention that my baby is crawling? Please, baby girl, it's really cute but please stop crawling away. Stay where you are put! She is dragging herself around with her arms at this point, but she's getting pretty fast at it. I had a few good weeks where she would play happily on her blanket, but now she wants to explore and I have ten thousand gray hairs that I did not have last month, and I hear it only gets worse from here. Yay crawling! I never did understand why I was supposed to want her to do this.

This week's big news is...

I bought a Wii!

The Wii is having a little scarcity crisis this holiday season (again) and so M and I were prepared to wait for it. You can actually buy them now online, but you have to pay $100+ more than retail, and I do not pay more than retail. I just can't, not when the alternative is that two grown-ups have to wait until after Christmas to buy an overpriced gaming console that they don't really need. We have resisted all the gaming consoles because we don't really have that much spare time... especially M, and he's the one who would most enjoy having it. The Wii just looked like so much fun, plus it has all those family-bonding qualities, and the fitness aspect of not sitting on one's ass to play it, and besides that, Evelyn can play it when she gets bigger.

So anyway, I asked Google how to buy a Wii, and finally ended up at WiiAlerts.com. I signed up for them to send me an email and a SMS when someone got some in stock. I didn't want to do the SMS thing at first because each message costs a dime and what if they kept spamming me with messages? Then I decided that in the context of buying something for $250, $0.10 is a ridiculous thing to worry about. ;) Anyway, two days later, I received a text message and quickly turned to the laptop located conveniently beside me on the couch and bought the thing--at Amazon, no less! With free shipping! It was THE AWESOME! I was so excited that I can not even begin to describe it. It was much more than the Wii, but the thrill of the hunt! I successfully stalked the big cool "no one has this in stock, get here when we open every day in case we get a shipment" toy of the season! And I didn't pay more than retail price! And by golly, I couldn't share it with anyone because M was at work and I can't call him at work except in an emergency and no one else would care. I would have posted about it then but I had a REALLY UNHAPPY baby at the moment because I was in the process of trying to force her to take a nap and then I temporarily abandoned the nap project in order to do my online shopping. Mother of the year, too! I mean, she didn't want to nap but she didn't want ME to not want her to nap... I guess. Babies are dopey.

Anyway, we're a little excited about it.

Yesterday, my parents, Evelyn and I descended upon the Christmas shopping with a vengeance. Or, at least, that was the plan. As it turned out, we bought almost nothing all day long, although we tried hard. I bought one(!) present, though admittedly it was the hardest one I had on my list. Technically, I bought three, but one was a shirt for Evelyn, which doesn't really count--I'm only wrapping it up because it's Christmas--and the other is a robe for my mom that she picked out and she really wants me to sell it to my cousin, who drew her name and can't figure out what to get her. That's actually okay with me I ended up buying her something else later (online), and if my cousin doesn't want to buy it from me, that's okay too because my mom's birthday is the first week of January, so extra Christmas presents for her are never bad. I had been waiting for yesterday's shopping trip before I had finished up with the online stuff, and so last night and this morning, I have really put my credit card through its paces. In two or three hours of sitting on my ass, I have finished up most of the people on my list. Why didn't I just do that to begin with? Who knows! I usually try to do my shopping online and I usually fail, because I like to look at things first. It's so hard to tell if something will look like you spent more than five bucks on it.

On the bright side, we ate really well--twice--and I finally got a haircut. I am not super thrilled with it but it's okay. It's lighter and it dried much faster this morning--as always, it looked better yesterday when she first cut it, so maybe it'll get better. And the mail next week will be super fun!

This past weekend was ridiculously busy. I can't even put it into words but you just know that isn't going to stop me.

Saturday morning, we were up at six to make it to Sam's by eight. Okay, we were up at six thirty to make it there by eight fifteen but we have a baby and things just take longer than they're supposed to sometimes. It was a little harder to spend the money than last year. We had Miss Baby to look after while shopping and so many decisions! But there were no Wiis (of course) and another expensive item that we were planning on buying was more expensive than it should have been (gift, shouldn't say, just in case) so we passed on that, and we ended up walking around desparately trying to figure out what to spend money on. It was, in short, great fun. We bought a pressure washer for M, a new computer chair for me, a toy for Evelyn, and a bunch of random stuff, like a set of new saute pans and cheese and a DVD burner and a spare battery charger. We ended up with only eleven minutes to spare. There were a couple of things that we bought just to spend the money on, but we mostly did really well. And it was so much fun!

After that, we were off to J&A's house to go for lunch. We forgot my phone so I couldn't call them (M didn't have the number) to warn them we were on the way and so I felt a bit bad. We had fun, but then we had to zoom off to my parents for the rest of the weekend. Very nice famly bonding time, nothing much to write about in particular.

Sunday morning, though, there was a bit of drama and for once, we were at the heart of it! Except, it wasn't our fault! We were perfectly innocent! I'm still not really sure why this became such a big deal but anyway. My grandfather lives half an hour from my parents and they go to church in the town he lives in. I didn't really feel like going to church yesterday because it's a giant pain to get us all ready in time and I usually end up taking Evelyn out anyway because she's fussing and I refuse to let her make noise through a sermon. (My parents think I need to not worry about it that much because she's not that loud but it's me we're talking about, and so I do.) Anyway, my mom decided to miss church as well, and so my dad went on alone, and my mom was going to ride up with us once we were all ready. Unfortunately, we were having one of those days when everything takes forever. My aunt showed up for 45 minutes to play with the baby, and we had to finish decorating the Christmas tree--which, that one we probably should have skipped but there was other stuff going on then too so it wouldn't have saved us THAT much time. Then we tried to figure out what we'd have for lunch, so Mom called my cousin to plan, and it was determined that we would need to stop at the store before we came. Then we had to take my niece home, across town in the opposite direction, and she wanted us to see her bedroom, so we went in, and then we were talking to her family, and by the time we came out, it was already one and Mom had two missed calls on her phone. She calls to see what they wanted, only to be jumped all over for scaring everyone. Where were we! Why didn't she answer her phone! Why aren't we there! My dad has freaked out and has started driving home to find us! Mom can hear her dad and her sister in the background, worrying loudly. We had talked to one of them less than an hour previously, told them we were late and why, and furthermore, if we had left right that minute and just dropped off the niece and ran into the store as quick as lightning, we still wouldn't have had time to make it up there yet! Apparently there was a wreck and they started worrying but we still don't really understand what they were all thinking. It worked out okay in the end, but we were very confused for a little while. My family cannot live without drama, apparently. Mom might have left her phone in the car, but M had his with him and they didn't call him at all.

You all think my family is crazy, I'm sure, so I should stop telling stories before you get the wrong idea. Or the right one. Whichever.

If you are the type to send out email forwards, does it offend you to receive a snopes link in return? I had several conversations last year with a third party about a clearly-untrue myth where finally the other person was all "why do you think something you find on the computer is right and someone else's is wrong? and why does it matter to you anyway if something isn't true?" I mean, there is the obvious knee-jerk reaction I have to someone spreading stories that are clearly untrue, but I also have their best interests at heart. I have to assume they believe this outlandish stuff. They're my family/friends! I don't want them worrying about buying Coke products because of terrorists or going to public restrooms alone or flashing their lights at cars or whatever else is new this week. I want to help them! Part of me feels obnoxious but honestly, if their reaction is to stop sending me shit, then I guess I will have to suck it up and live with it, tragedy though it would be...

I do not understand how one tiny baby could be so very, very sweet. Seriously, I don't. She is so GOOD. She sleeps more than we have a right to expect, she rarely fusses in public (and is easily soothed if she does), she isn't colicky, she isn't plagued with diaper rash, she likes people alright, she's healthy and strong. It does create one small problem--how could M and I possibly consider ever having another baby? What if it isn't as good? We have no experience being parents to fussy babies! I am being facetious, of course, but the child is currently in the swing, watching her fingers in fascination. How much better does it get?

It is interesting to me that I am the crunchiest person I know, in real life, and fairly crunchy but mainly pretty average to most of the mommies I know online. I breastfeed (which to me is so normal that it barely even counts anymore--until I talk to or about people in real life), I use cloth diapers, we are anti-circ (not that we needed to have a policy on that this time!) etc. And yet, now that I hang out in some of the cloth diaper communities and similar forums.. I am scarily mainstream. OH MY, Evelyn likes to sit in her walker! I don't wear her while I work around the house! She she also likes her stroller! She's had her vaccinations! We don't co-sleep! And for the love of little green Martian men, she was born by c-section after an induction! And I still have plastic stuff in my kitchen! OMGWTF THE HORRORS THAT POOR CHILD. Not that anyone says that but it's implied. I don't care, but it's funny. As long as I am not snorting coke off my baby's belly while breastfeeding, I figure I'm ahead of the game.

Speaking of wearing her while working around the house.. my arms are just too danged short to accomplish that much with her in front of me, and it's uncomfortable for me (and her, I think) to bend over too much, so most light housework is out, too. Is it all about the back carries? I haven't really tried that yet because I think she's somewhat small. I do most of my housework while she's asleep, but I can't vacuum then because it would wake her up. Also, I don't like to vacuum and so it's a handy excuse to continue letting M do it upon occasion. She's getting to an age where I'd like the floor to be cleaned more often, though. Not that my floors are not scrupulously clean at all times anyway, of course. Just saying.

As always, I was distracted while writing this and it is now hours later. I failed in putting her to sleep during the bedtime feeding, which happens sometimes, and M is walking with her and singing about a nasty little dog, or possibly about Lucia. She threw a little freak out fit while hovering near sleep, which put her decidedly in the "hey, let's wake up!" mood. While she was freaking out, I started tracing one finger lightly around her face.. across her cheek, over her nose, around her mouth. That's what my mommy used to do to me when I was little. She quietened down, and mostly closed her eyes, and she became very still, just enjoying the way it felt. She looked like she was willing me to never ever stop, to keep caressing her little face until the end of time (or until she got bored with it, whichever came first). It's a pretty wonderful feeling to bring that much happiness to someone merely by touching her, and I must confess that my husband looked over and caught me weeping over our sweet little baby. I keep thinking that she will never remember that moment, but I will never forget it. I am living the best years of my life. Such a strange feeling...

I meant to post about this earlier and then I forgot. Guess what arrived in the mail for me this week! A cute little box all the way from Canada from stress_kitten! I met her when we were both pregnant, and she had a little contest that I won. I came closest to the correct date and time to the birth of her adorable baby boy, Rhys. (I didn't specifically guess that he was going to be adorable, but he is.) She had offered a cute custom-color cross-stitched dragon, and it was very sweet--he is drinking Pepsi! With a tiny little logo on the cup! How cute! She also included a few yummy cookies (the whole box smelled incredible because of them AND a little jar of homemade spicy mango chutney that she made a while back. I'm looking forward to trying that! Just as soon as I figure out what to have it with. I have never had mango chutney before, but they use it on FoodTV sometimes. :)

Anyway, thank you! You're so sweet!

We made it back home at 6:30 this evening. We had such a good time and it was sad to say goodbye. I mean, there are only so many times you can meet up with people just like you, and get to play peek-a-boo with an extremely handsome and intelligent little boy all at the same time!

It was forcefully implied that pictures of this meeting should be provided. I hate posting pictures of myself, but I feel a little better now that carrieb told me that I am much hotter in real life than in the pictures she has seen. Okay, what she actually said was something like "eh, I guess you're not as bad in real life as I thought you were!" but I heavily claim the right of artistic license. Also, Carrie, this sort of thing is pretty much what I meant by "I make shit up."

( Photographic Evidence )

High School Girls Pummel Man Who Exposed Himself - fitting. :)

And I remembered this when talking to paradisecowgirl a few minutes ago. M and I laughed outrageously over this last year, so in case you haven't seen it: Pumpkin PC.