Prolific Taker Of Pictures

Most weeks I take somewhere around a 100 pictures, this weekend I took over 150. I've pared them down a bit so you need not be afraid to scroll down

Jason doing his best America's Next Top Model pose after very patiently watching the show with me for three hours
Jason: How is this always on?
Me: It has it's own network, ANTM TV
Jason: Do we pay extra for this?

The tiny Italy shaped blanket I made for Eli is coming undone. He doesn't mind there's more of it to play with this way.
Eli hanging out with The Lady Adelaide. Anyone who thinks that you can't have dogs and babies should come to my house and watch these two. He crawls all over her, puts his hand IN her mouth, pulls her tail, etc... and she accepts it all passively. In return he feeds her one half of every meal he eats.
I swear upon his life the bottle was empty when we gave it to him.
The shirt says it all.
Modem? What modem? Oh! This? I thought it was an early Easter present.
I should switch to cloth wipes for this reason alone, screw the economic/environmental aspect, I'm just sick of this happening.
Playing with his blocks on the couch, he's just learning how to stack them up.
Taking a rest, learning is exhausting.

Bunny ears! He was actually pretty tolerant of these.
Surveying his basket Easter morning. This was his first basket since we didn't get him one last year (a fact my cube mate Kelly Birkmeyer will never let me forget) and it took him a minute to dig in.
We had gotten him bubbles. Eli loved them and daddy had a great time blowing them IN THE HOUSE! He was one of those deprived kids who was told bubbles were an outside toy.
Eli had a lot of fun with the Easter grass, we're talking 45 minutes of quality entertainment.
This is what my living room floor looked like afterwards. It's really not that different from normal.

Happy Easter Kids

When I was young Easter was a lot like Halloween, only with church thrown in for good measure. I'd wake up, pounce on my chocolate stuffed basket, shovel as much sugar in as I could before donning my all white outfit (white dress, white tights, white shoes, white gloves bonnet and purse) and squirming through the best part of my sugar rush on the pew. Eli's Easter's will probably not be like this. 1. I would never put him in an all white outfit. 2. We don't attend church regularly and to me it seems very dis genuine to just show up on major holidays. 3. I'm not that keen on filling him up with candy.

Anyway I took a gazillion pictures today, but I'll not get them uploaded til tomorrow so why not watch a lovely Eddie Izzard diatribe. And if you enjoy it search Eddie Izzard Cake or Death next.

http://youtube.com/watch?v=_XJfRzNOJNE

Turn That Frown Upside Down!

Eli at King's on Friday night, I had to have the reflexes of a jungle cat to get a picture before he pulled it off.

Next time: Bunny Ears!

Actual Conversation

Happy St Patrick's Day!!!

OK, now that's out of the way I can get down to the matter at hand.

Last night I made lasagna for dinner.

Jason: Is there enough of that for three people
Me: There's a whole casserole, why?
Jason: It's Corey's favorite food, I want to take him some.

Is it normal for guys to take their friends leftovers?

Like the Mighty Groundhog

Eli sees his shadow:
And is terrified....
I hope this doesn't mean six more weeks of winter.

Where have you been all my life?

Dear Tiny Baby Jesus,

Chocolate Lucky Charms? It's like Lucky Charms & Count Chocula had a baby!

Thank You,

From Emily with Love and a Bellyache

Random

I went home last night, ready to argue with Jason over the whole vaccine issue, he's usually pretty behind just listening to what the doctor says. When I sat down and mentioned that I'd called the doc's office and brought up the vaxes he said "because of the risk of autism", "I saw it on Larry King", "the guys and I were talking about it at work.". Jason is a hundred percent behind me on getting Eli's vaxes one at a time. He never ceases to surprise me. It'll be a lot easier to talk to the doc with J having my back on the issue.

Last night I was going through some of my many many mounds of old papers and I came across a grocery list from when I was living in Vegas with Stephie & Mike; you can tell that nutrition was high on my list of priorities:
Jelly
Salsa
Cheese Slices
Cake
Beer
Mike's Cran-Lemonade
Soda
Toilet Paper
Shampoo
Conditioner
Body Wash
BBQ Sauce
Steak
Count Chocula/Lucky Charms.

Ah, the time before I was a mother, I assure you my list looks nothing like that now.

It's still crap out and I'm still annoyed about it, we all have cabin fever. On top of that the man child would appear to be teething again and has taken to low grade whining pretty frequently. There's not much I can do to help so when he starts in I clean something; at least my house is looking snazzy.

My other annoyance for the day is a work issue that stems from the flex time schedule the support staff has not been offered. What it boils down to is that the only flex option I have is to work four 10 hour days, which I would do in able to have a whole extra day with E, but what am I to do with Eli for that extra hour a day? Anyone want to watch him one hour a day four days a week? There's cable and occasionally yummy snacks.

Enough whining.

I went into the kitchen and when I came back Eli had climbed up all by himself and was playing with my cell phone. As you can see he was very pleased with himself.

The next generation 90210 fan. He seems especially fond of Steve Sanders, let's all pray he never adopts a curly mullet.
He's got the whole world in his hands
Getting something out of his new toy box which keeps the living room a lot neater.
Bath time fun with Gavin the green duck.
Giving a baby a racket might be asking for trouble...duck Addie!

A short video of E during bath time

Hippie As A Genetic Trait

As I get further on in my job of parenting Eli I'm starting to think more and more about the decisions I'm making for him. I'm constantly saying things that I want to do different with the next baby, and mind you we're only a year in. Most of these pertain to medical issues. If I can figure out what went wrong with my body to cause the bleeding I'd like to try a home birth or a birthing center instead of the traditional hospital setting. When I think back to lying in bed being stitched up while various things of "immense importance" were done to Eli I get so annoyed. It was a full half hour til he was given back to me and I wish that everyone had been less concerned with cleaning/weighing/vaxing him and more concerned with letting me try to nurse him/bond with him/hold him. There was absolutely no reason I couldn't have been holding him while they were taking care of my "downstairs". Another thing that infuriates me in hindsight is all the doctors/nurses barging in to check his temp and startle reflex; waking up both of us or interrupting my fledgling attempts to nurse in the process. I can think of nothing more ideal than being in bed with my new baby interruption free from the moment of birth on. So that's one thing.

Another big thing is vaccinations. Don't start freaking out I want to vax my kid; but I don't want him to get so many all at once. I'd rather him get more sticks over more visits than have a reaction and us not know which vax caused it. This is a decision I'm going to enact with Eli, not wait for the next one for. I'm pretty nervous about telling the pediatrician (who will be a stranger to me since we're switching offices) that I want his MMR broken up over three visits, and that maybe we won't be getting the rubella at all since the worst side effects occur in pregnant women and he'll never be one of those. You can read about the disease here http://www.kidshealth.org/parent/infections/bacterial_viral/german_measles.html. And while I'm nervous about the conversation I feel good about my choice. Just like I'm proud of most of the choices I've made for Eli so far. Before I had him I assumed I'd follow the party line and use disposable diapers and feed him cereal starting at 4 months and follow the exact AAP schedule for all things, but I guess I got some hippie passed down in my bloodlines.

He's not always smiling

I know that mostly I post pictures of the little guy smiling and being fetching. This is not always the case in real life, as Eli decided to remind me last night when I tried to take advantage of the good weather to have a photo op.
Here he is being miserable in the grass, he wouldn't even stand up but rather flopped to the ground in the baby version of heavy cat.
Here he is screaming in his firetruck playhut, my cries of "but Eli you love firetrucks!" fell upon deaf ears. I still kinda love this picture though.

The only one who was enjoying being outside was Adelaide who refused to come back in and made me chase her around the yard saying threatening things in a sweet voice; saying threatening things in a mean voice doesn't work with her as whoever had her before us deserves to be shot in the face. Seriously she's so anxious and shy and weird with just about any adult besides me that it's hard not to get frustrated at times. I don't know how my sister-in-law, who has two shy dogs, does it.

I hope yesterday's good weather

Is enough to sustain me through what's likely to be a month of blah. Today it's pouring rain and we have talk of flooding. Bring back the sun please. Eli and I did make it to the playground last evening and had a very good time. He can be almost hilariously cautious since he started walking; when you put him down he likes to stand for a few minutes to make sure that I haven't dropped him in quicksand or some other unworthy surface. Then he'll start taking a few tentative steps with his hands in the air for balance, my mom assures me I was never as cautious (something I believe) and Jason wasn't either. I guess that's a trait that's Eli's alone. He sort of fell in love with an older girl wearing a pink coat and tried to follow her around; but when he couldn't keep up he just super glued himself to my leg and made a lot of happy squeaking sounds. Yesterday's fake spring got me so excited for when the real nice weather is here to stay, I predict lots of playground trips in our future.

In other news I made a fantabulous tuna casserole last night with tons of peas that both Eli and I (and Aunt Suz) ate with joy and gusto. My cooking resolution is going really well, I'm making another fritatta tonight. Jason thinks we should have a blind cook off where we invite our friends over and each prepare a meal, then let them vote. Of course Jason stipulates that the using of recipes is forbidden "the meal has to just come out of your head". Everything Jason makes he says he invented, be it rustic tomato sauce, pork loin and roasted potatoes or garlic butter shrimp. My co-worker and I have a running joke about this, her boyfriend invented lemon chicken! Imagine the debt our palates owe to that man.

I hadn't uploaded pictures in awhile and I took a ton yesterday. A bunch follow:



One of Eli's new favorite games is for me to stack his alpha blocks up really high so he can knock them down
Unfortunately he sometimes get very upset the second they hit the floor.

Here's Eli wearing his Christmas present from my friends Heather & Erin, it came from San Francisco if you can't tell. We feel it's pretty amazing.
Eli and mama in the backyard yesterday, Eli is watching the dog, you can't see her obviously but Adelaide was running insanely fast circles so happy was she to actually see the grass.
Happy to be hanging out in the backyard.
Testing the ground at the playground. Luckily it stayed firm beneath his feet.

After his very first trip down the slide!
He loved this little dinosaur toy, he figured out how to make it rock all by himself. You know because he's a genius.
Enjoying his after dinner bath, wondering why mama couldn't put the camera down for one frigging second.
I caught him mid-splash. We love the action shots.
Wearing his super duper awesome smurf pants that Shellie made out of an old sheet. She's very talented and I'm officially in search of any retro cartoon bedding for Eli and future babies wardrobes.

Surely I will have 50-100 new photos by next Tuesday.

Fake Spring

The weather is miraculously mild today. Mid fifties, sunny, no wind; snow and ice finally melting after a week of deep freeze. I know it's not going to last, but God is it beautiful today. My goal is to get Eli out and about in his stroller tonight so he can breath some fresh air into his poor cabin fevered lungs. Also I'm pretty sure the dog would enjoy a walk. Hurray for fake spring!

It's almost St. Patrick's day which makes me yearn for corned beef and all things cabbage. I found a recipe for brining your own brisket, but it just seems like too much work; instead I'll probably bribe my mom into getting me one from the butcher shop in her part of town. Below is a picture of my adorable niece getting into the spirit of the holiday.

Pretty damn cute huh? St. Pat's day makes me think of my first night bar tending, a Friday night St. Pat's where my cocktail waitress (who liked to do more than a little drinking on the job) quit on me in the first hour. I ended up bar tending and cocktailing with my green stained hands; I pulled in over $300 dollars but it's still not something I'd ever want to do over.

In other news I'm so excited about the primary elections tomorrow night! The results could very well decide who are democratic nominee is going to be. I'm a big Clinton fan, but would certainly not be upset by an Obama candidacy and presidency, as long as there's a democrat in charge I'll be a happy camper.

Eli-Centric

I haven't done a post just about Eli for awhile so that's what we're doing.
Here's Eli wearing Aunt Suz's favorite hat, he kept taking it off and getting this picture was hard, I had to be quick like Toiger!
Eli and Addie enjoying a rare moment of calm on the sofa. Lately he has taken to abusing her by hitting at her and pulling on her tail. The dog is pretty patient but I'm waiting for the day when she has her I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take it anymore moment.
Here is Eli enjoying the tiny Italy shaped blanket I crocheted for him during one of his many naps with daddy. The blanket lives in his toy box and someday I hope to make a bigger one with better yarn; we'll see what happens.
The other night after dinner I found this present from Eli in my shoe. That's what I get for sitting them so perilously close to the highchair.
Here is a video that finally shows Eli's walking skills to the best advantage. He's pretty much a full time walker now. In the past few days he's started to carry things around while he walks. Show off.

When Other People Win

I've been watching the Academy Awards and it always makes me think of my dad. My dad loves when other people win things. Every year he'd watch the awards (or tape them if he had to work) and he'd be so happy when people won and if they got emotional he'd tear up too. That's one of the things I love best about him, how he roots for perfect strangers to win. I can be pretty snarky sometimes but I hope I have a little bit of that in me.

Greymazing

Yesterday on the walk home from work I had to deal with snow and rain. I was wearing boots, pea coat, gloves, scarf, hat & carrying an umbrella; the colors went brown, green, grey and pink, green, cream, school bus yellow. You can imagine for yourself how great I looked. Of course I passed several other people who were similarly outfitted for their personal journeys. One man was shoveling big scoopfuls of water off his sidewalk. As usual the weather in Pittsburgh defies logic. I have experienced days where it was 70 degrees at 9 am, 50 degrees and raining at 4 pm & 25 degrees and snowing at 8 pm. I'm sure this happens other places but I always think "only in Pittsburgh".
The basic point of this post is that I'm more than ready for spring, if it doesn't warm up soon I'm packing up the baby and taking a Greyhound out west.

Speaking of Eli it's 3 minutes to 10 and he's still asleep! I woke up at nine because it was physically impossible for me to stay in bed any longer. I got the diapers in the washer and started the dishes and now I'm just relaxing. I'm actually contemplating going upstairs and waking him up because I kind of miss him. Because I'm lame.

Web Diving

Sometimes I'll get started looking at one thing and end up in a completely different place. Leaping from one idea to the next is one of my favorite things making me think that my ideal job would be as some sort of researcher or fact checker. Today I was reading a post about supposedly haunted abandoned hospitals and started doing image searches on the places, I found some great images that I blatantly stole for the purpose of blogging with them. SSSSHHHHH.

Some of the images, like these suits left to decay are kind of creepy.
Then there were things like this beautiful fireplace where it's just sad to think of them sitting there rotting.
I just thought this was very creepy and lovely. Most of the old hospitals were tuberculosis sanatoriums's so they are full of windows.

But the pictures I liked the most were the ones showing things that were geared towards kids as in the below pictures.

The clown thing of course creeps me out the most.

Fun Stuff

I'm pretty sure I never put this picture on here and I noticed it on my comp today and wanted to share. Jason spotted this great graffiti a block or so from our house when we were out walking with Eli (when it was still nice enough to leave the house with Eli). It instantly became my favorite graffiti ever and I snapped this pic with my camera phone. We're going to be very sad if the city ever decides this doesn't qualify as art and paints over it.
This second thing I found while taking a Saved By The Bell quiz on http://www.mentalfloss.com/ which is one of my very favorite sites. They always have interesting articles and fabulous links. I did very well on the test and was so excited about this graphic that I stole it. I hope that you can actually purchase this on a t-shirt as this is my favorite ever episode of Saved By the Bell and Steph and I have been mocking it ever since I first saw it. Not that caffiene pill addiction is a laughing matter; once way back in 1995 I took two NoDoz and couldn't even blink for like 18 hours. Scary stuff.

Obsessed

I'm now kind of slightly obsessed with menu planning and am collecting recipes like a crackwhore collects- well you know what she collects. I've been going to Foodnetwork.com and Allrecipes.com and getting sent links from my internet buddies (thanks Shellie) for crockpot and casserole recipes. Who knew that I could enjoy cooking as much as I enjoy eating. My next round of new ventures includes eggplant parmesaen, cheddar apple quiche, and lime chicken thighs with jamaican rice and peas. My grocery list is just going to keep getting more and more interesting.

Eli has been fairly good spirited the past couple of days and is doing so well with his walking. Soon I'll no longer be able to call him baby Elijah but rather he'll be known as toddler Elijah, the thought makes me sad. He did wake up screaming twice last night, which is unusual nowadays. Nothing seemed to be wrong he just wanted tucked back in. Jason theorizes that he was having bad dreams, what sort of nightmrares do you think a baby has?

Stuff

Today I need to start by writing a thank you ode to our IT guy at work.

Dearest Darling Jeremy,
I know that I often make ridiculous requests of you, requests involving teaching me how to download the songs that aren't supposed to be on my computer onto discs which I will need you to supply for me. Or that week when I made you move my computer 3 times. And also I feel bad for that time I kind of backhandedly called you a rascist after learning that your pet ferrets (who you clearly adore) are named Boo and Whitey. Of course he's named Whitey, he's an albino ferret. Jeremy your patience with my shenanigans has not gone unnoticed and I laud you with thanks.

Emily

Ok, I feel better now.

In other news I started my plan to make a real meal every night this weekend. What money I had leftover after paying utilities is gone, but my freezer and cupboards are pretty well stocked with REAL food which makes my mom very happy and proud. I need to remember to clip coupons so I'm not spending so much, but I am saving money by eating leftovers instead of buying lunch every day. Tonight I'm making orange chicken ala Cyndie's recipe. If it sucks I'll surely let her know.

And in other new things news I'm learning how to crochet. Not being crafty has hindered my progress a little but today I finally learned how to make single stitches. You can see the evidence of this in the picture below. It's a blanket for Eli. It's shaped kind of like Italy and made of yarn that one of the supervisors dug out of her grandma's attic. I'm impressed with myself.

Your eyes aren't decieving you it's a blanket smaller than a piece of paper. And yes I am available to teach you how to make your own tiny blankets.

The February Blahs

For me February has always been a hard month, it's been winter forever (or at least it seems like it has) and we've got at least 2 more months of cold weather, zero sunshine, and ice to look forward to. As a teenager February was always the month where I cried the most and missed the most days of school. I still have a mix-tape (yes an actual cassette) of sad songs entitled There are 90 days in February. So maybe it was a blessing that Eli was born in my least favorite month. He brings joy to me daily in the schmaltziest sense of that already schmaltzy expression.

Showing off his new style yellow fuzzi bunz, looking dapper, he's actually lying down on the ottoman not standing up being gripped by his ankles.
Cuddling with daddy, one of his favorite things to do. Daddy can make him laugh no matter how mad Eli thinks he is.
Eli's new favorite food is spaghetti. He looks good eating it.

Here's a short video I took last night. We've been trying to catch Eli walking on camera for a while now and this doesn't show his walking skills to great advantage but he makes a darn cute face at the end of the video. And yes that is 90210 in the background.
p.s. spell check still isn't working. excuse all mistakes please.

My Temper Doth

Get the better of me sometimes. Like this weekend when my mother-in-law was visiting. I'm not going to get into it, it's been rehashed enough times in my actual life that I don't need to get into it online as well. Suffice it to say the visit didn't go well and I'll be feeling the repercussions for awhile. I thought instead that it'd be fun to discuss some previous blowups.

-I am 8 and I have a neighbor named Timmy. Timmy is spoiled and has a lot of toys that he is not obliged to share with siblings. One day Timmy is visiting (we rarely invited him to play but he often showed up) and is flaunting a toy in front of us and not letting us touch it. So I deck him. I hit him square in the face with all the force of my 8 year old spaghetti arms. It felt very cleansing until he scratched me with all the force of his uncut 8 year old nails. I still have a scar that runs down my chest and our mothers never spoke again.
-I am 20 and riding in Michelle's car on some sort of freeway, we have extended our vacation to the great annoyance and inconvenience of others. My mom calls (on my very first cell phone that we ran up a $400 bill for on that trip, hi AT&T!) and proceeds to tell me how irresponsible and inconsiderate we are being. So, I throw the cell phone as hard as my 20 year old spaghetti arms can. This feels extremely cleansing until Michelle's windsheild cracks and she's so startled that her car swerves into the other lane.

And there are a thousand tiny instances of me freaking out and screaming and behaving innappropriately. I've decided halfway through this post that they're neither interesting nor flattering. On to pictures.


We got Eli his very own baby cell phone for his birthday since he was always so fascinated with mine. He loves it! It was only $9 and you can bet your ass that should we ever lose it I'll buy two more.
I decided to let Eli have cake after all. We did it during his small party Sunday night. Jordin Sparks was singing the National Anthem before the game started and Eli was thoroughly enjoying this new addition to his life called processed sugar. He went directly into the bathtub after this.
After his bath and about half an hour of hardcore walking he passed out in my lap. of course thanks to the sugar he didn't stay passed out, he woke up at 1 am 3 am & 5 am. Annoying.
Also my niece is six months old now and very cute. I don't blog about her much but she likes me and I like her.

Excuse any spelling mistakes in this entry I can't get spell check to work.