La Isle La Bonita

My head is like a Madonna jukebox today. First Material Girl was stuck in there, then Cherish and now Like A Virgin.

The strange part is I haven't even heard a Madonna song today; they just keep popping up in there.

Eco-Friendly Eli

This article, which was pretty much stating things I already knew, caught my attention this morning.http://http://ecostreet.com/blog/eco-friendly-parenting/2008/03/26/10-ways-to-raise-a-green-baby/ I agree with everything it says, and so should you : )

Last night I watched the documentary The Business of Being Born and was blown away. I cried, alot, and started thinking about my own labor (which I've been doing a lot anyway). For me the part that rang the most true is just trusting your body to know what to do; birth is what our bodies were made to do. I think that the way tv and movies portray birth terrified me into getting an epidural. My body new what it was doing while I was laboring at home before heading to the hospital, and I feel that without the epidural I may have pushed for a shorter period of time because I wouldn't have been dulled from my natural instincts. Anyway the crux of it is that I am pretty firmly decided that next time I am with child I'll be laboring with midwifes at a birthing center. There is actually such a place 10 minutes from my house http://www.midwifecenter.org/tmc/tmc/content.asp and I'll be going there for my care from the moment the stick turns.

A.M.

This morning while perusing mentalfloss I came across this link http://http://funtasticus.com/20080324/advertising-vs-reality-a-product-comparison-project/
the products are all German and sadly I don't think they're available in the US because wouldn't you like to eat Nougat Pillows for breakfast? Just the name "Nougat Pillows" makes my mouth water. I once heard gnocchi described as little pillows of potato dumpling and haven't been the same since.
Don't they look delicious?
Apparently in Germany you can get stuffed peppers in a can...not sure how I feel about that one.

Sometimes in the evening while I'm trying to cook dinner, do dishes, do laundry and play with Eli in that little 5 hour window I have before bedtime things get a little hectic. My parenting style at these times could probably be best described as eccentric.
Here's Eli playing with the phone book because he was screaming so loud while I tried to chop vegetables that I feared I'd cut off a finger. He did pull pages out, but I'm sure they weren't any of the important ones.
And here's the little man escaping from me after bath that same night. This was after he pooed in the tub and before he peed on the floor. You can see that I gave him back his Easter grass to try to pacify him before giving him the phone book. Since the grass is not the magical cure all I thought it was it has since been thrown away.

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.