On Second Thought....

I guess that wasn't all my news for today. I heard on NPR today about someplace that's trying to institute a fine for "text walking." Something like $20, I think. This woman in Galveston works at a hospital and some time ago she treated two patients, the girl who had been text-walking and stepped off a curb without seeing it, and the man in the car who overcorrected when trying to avoid her with his car and hit a lightpost because he was talking on his cell phone at the time. She said she was so amused at the time because she'd never heard of something happening for such a reason--and now she sees about one text-walking injury a week!!!! Can you believe it?!? I am SOOOOOO guilty of this and would be completely broke if Lafayette ever started fining for it.

I wanted to make a "shout out" to our insurance lady, Brenda, who evidently reads my blog! Last week Martin and I walked down to the insurance place (to settle a slightly annoying complication between NHS and our insurance that would've been much more annoying if Tara hadn't told us it had happened to her two days before) and Anja and I stayed down in the lobby while Martin went up to talk to Brenda. When he came back he said she reads my blog! How funny.

The other day on NPR in the morning I heard a story about the upcoming Olympics in Beijing, and how it's something like the most polluted city in the world. Now I realize that China has gone to great lengths to try to improve their pollution problem for years, specifically for the Olympics, but obviously it's still a huge problem. Why would we subject these incredible athletes to such horrible air quality?! "Yes, I hold the gold medal for the 2008 Olympics... but my price was lung cancer six years later..." I just don't understand. And I'm glad that such an effort has been put forth to try to remedy the problem, but the fact is, it didn't really work, and I don't think that any of these athletes should be asked to compete in such conditions. Evidently they have what are called "blue sky days" and everyone was excited because they had two in a row last week. But then it was made clear that a "blue sky day" doesn't actually mean you can see a blue sky... because apparently a blue sky over Beijing is unheard of... it just means that the air quality is decent. I feel so sorry for the Olympians this year.

We just got back from hanging out with Matt where Anja was happy as a clam the whole time and actually fell asleep without a peep on the way home! Hooray! Whenever she wakes up she will easily be settled into her bed for the night. Anyway, we went to Barnes & Noble with him and I got a Jones Soda juice that was orange, tangerine and lime and IT WAS AWESOME.

The other news from today is that last night Martin and I fed Anja some mashed up bananas in rice cereal. She loved it, but it's become SOOOOO much fun to feed her. She is hilarious! She's really good at opening her mouth, but not so good about shutting it once the food is in, so the mushed up food kind of hangs down from her toothless gums and we laugh, which makes her laugh, and then she just looks ridiculous! (And by ridiculous, I of course mean ridiculously cute!!) I took a few pictures:

I've Been Rated!

I got an email this morning saying I've been given an 8.3 ("Great") rating on blogged.com! This is the same rate as Testosterhome!

Yesterday afternoon Anja and I went over to the Watsons for Anja's first playdate (excluding playing with cousins.) The little Watson grandkids were over and they were so fun to see... I'm not sure I've EVER met Annie, the youngest, and she's 4!! Anja really liked being there. She gets pretty tickled by other kids. I think she thinks they're all weird... but she's the one who's always doing Dragon Face at everyone.

I should be dedicating this and all times while Anja is asleep to reading Dr. Sears' "Baby Sleep Book" which I again got from the library, because we are having a REALLY rough time these days with sleeping. This is mostly because two new components have been thrown in: biting, and no longer sleeping in the car. The past two nights, after multiple failed attempts at putting her down in her bed, I've driven her around town while she's cried and cried and tired herself out so much that when she gets home she's nurse and fall asleep. It's rotten! I hate hearing her cry (it's not even crying so much as just very sad whining) and I liked it when we could drive her around the block and she'd konk out immediately. But the biting is the worse problem. The biting is making me consider weaning at only 9 months when I would've been more than happy to breastfeed her past her first birthday. This is how our mealtimes go now: (this is probably T.M.I. for most)

Anja is cranky and obviously tired and hungry. I lay her down on the bed and offer her her favorite source of food.

*CHOMP*

Chewing continues while I tense up my whole body, waiting for my milk to come down, which is the only way to make her stop chewing on me and start sucking and eating.

Since there's no possible way I can actually relax while having my nipple chewed off, the milk never comes down.

We get up, go downstairs with minimal whining (mostly from me) and try again a little later.

So this happens multiple times a night!! It's crazy!!! Of course it doesn't help these days that the birthday party the other night threw her off her schedule and now, while she was going to sleep between 7:30 and 8:30, she doesn't want to go down until 10 or 11:00. Last night we tried driving her around but she was soooooooo wide awake and happy that we didn't know what to do. And that was at 9:00! So we took her to the grocery store and walked around with her in the cart. She had a great time, but it didn't tire her out much. It was much later when she finally went to sleep.

So anyway, I need to devote some serious time to that book. Meanwhile, I just ate a bowl of Campbell's cream of chicken soup and it was AWESOME.

This is really all my news.

Birthday Bash

Yesterday was Martin's 26th birthday!!!!! I looked for any grey hairs coming in or teeth falling out, and I found neither, so I guess he's not thaaaaat old. Tee hee hee! To celebrate his barfday we had a little dessert party here at the house with our families and the Aikens. Even Aunt Anna May came! That was a treat. It's fun that she's getting to know the Schap side of the family so now she won't feel weird being invited to family gatherings like the one last night.

I worked all day getting ready for this party. Anja, as usual, took a worthless nap. I cleaned the house a little bit but really spent most of my time making a chocolate cake from a Dorie Greenspan cookbook I stole from my neighbor Tara. This cake took my whole day. When I wasn't actively working on it, it was consuming my thoughts. I made a few easily fixable mistakes, and finally a little after 4:00 (people were coming over at 6:00) I got it into the oven. And only then did I realize that I hadn't greased the cake pans!!! Luckily, this story has a happy ending. It didn't matter. One layer broke so I used it as the bottom. The other layer miraculously came out pretty flawless, and the icing covered any bad blemishes. (It doesn't look so good in this picture, but I promised, it looked edible in real life!) It wasn't in the recipe, but I added a layer of raspberry deliciousness to the middle layer and I think it made the cake even better. Next time I'd like to add it to the top too. If there is a next time... I'm much more of a pie person than a cake person. But anyway, it looked good. We also had some zucchini bread and a hamburger cake that the Aikens brought! I didn't actually get any dessert last night--by choice;I'd had plenty of chocolate throughout my day in the kitchen--so there was one piece of this chocolate cake left that I ate for dessert this morning! And it really WAS good, although it still warm when we cut into it last night and Martin said that made it even better.

Anja was so good while I cooked. I only spent small chunks of time trying (and failing) to get her to sleep, but really for the most part (at least until late in the afternoon) she was happy to play on the kitchen floor and talk to me. Have I mentioned that she is crawling for real now? The thing that did it was the dog's water bowl. Even before she was crawling properly on her hands and knees she would manage to get herself over to that and spill it over onto herself within seconds of Martin or me having our backs turned. She's getting good at crawling too... the other day I went up to check on her while she was napping, and lucky I did--she was crawling right off the end of the bed!

I'm lucky to have a husband who enjoys his baby so much. I realize that there are husbands out there who are less interested in their kids, or who don't go out of their way to do things like spend time alone with them or make fools of themselves for them. But the other morning I was getting out of the shower and I heard all this quacking coming from the kitchen. Martin was playing with Anja's ducks with her. And another day I came out of the bathroom during his vacation and this is how I found them:

They weren't going anywhere, he just felt like wearing her around the house!

Oh, but I'm kind of a bad wife. Last night after the party I went up to put Anja to sleep and I accidentally fell asleep with her. When I woke up I had that strange feeling where you don't know if it's nighttime or morning, and I was very confused. I went downstairs and I'd been sleeping for an hour and Martin had cleaned up everything!!!! On his birthday!!!!!!! Sad face! I felt really bad.

One more picture, of Martin on his way to work this morning carrying the new bag my mom got him for his birthday.

A Difficult Day

Last night Anja woke up every hour. This isn't so much unusual, except that she had slept really well the night before and we thought, "Hooray! Caffeine was the problem!" but I guess we thought wrong. She woke up super happy at 5:00 and didn't go back down for a nap until 7:00. She slept for two hours and I slept with her. In the few hours she was awake before going down for a nap a few minutes ago, she was only somewhat cranky... but then she was trying to pull up on a kitchen chair and slipped and hit her face on one of the rungs. Then she was REALLY cranky!! The poor thing has two big red bumps under her eye now. We went to the library on another search for the Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child book that I keep looking for, but it's always checked out, and we settled for the Dr. Sears Baby Sleep Book instead. I got it once before but didn't read it all the way through. This time I will. We saw Michelle there with Elijah and Mary, and Michelle was wearing a VERY cute green skirt.

We had a nice weekend, even under the fog of depression that hung around us knowing Martin was going back to work on Monday. On Sunday we went to brunch at Hour Time with the Watsons again! This time Dr. Watson was there too! It was really fun. Old people really like Anja. It's really sad to think that Joannie's already preparing to leave. The summer flew by so fast, and even though I'm not going back to school so my summer will last as long as the warm weather, I'm still sad knowing that the academic Summer is coming to a close. Also, when the Purdue kids come back it makes campus so much less enjoyable.

The other thing that makes today difficult is the fact that Martin's gone back to work. Aside from the fact that the house seems empty and it's sad to think that our fun vacation (staycation) is over, I'm realizing the mountains of housework I've been ignoring for the past two weeks! Holy smokes!! I have a lot of work ahead of me today.

Tomorrow is my Martino's birthday!! He'll be 26. We invited our families over for desserts, and I am going to try to make zucchini bread, pie and a cake. I accidentally let 2 of my zucchinis in my garden get too big for dinner, so it's a good excuse to make them into bread. But I'd better get to work on it if I want to get anything done before Anja wakes up!

These Days

I know I've been kind of bad about posting these days. This is for a number of reasons, the biggest one being that I don't seem to have time to post anymore! Since Martin is on vacation, Anja's naptimes are used in other ways. For instance, for the past two days we haven't even been home for her naps--we've walked over to Vienna and she's slept in her stroller while we sit on the patio and read our books. It's really enjoyable and she always wakes up in the greatest mood and she LOVES being at Vienna. Yesterday was especially nice; we walked over and Anja fell right asleep and when we got there we used a full sandwich punch card I had (and had had for possibly more than 2 years) to buy a sandwich and split it. Delicious! Vienna has THE BEST SANDWICHES IN THE WORLD. We had a turkey on olive oil & basil bread with spinach, tomato, black olives, provolone and pesto-mayo sauce. We had potato chips for a side (neither of us likes potato salad or celery, the other choices) and you get a pick spear too. It was the perfect little lunch for us to split with our coffees.

Oh, coffee. Anja's been having trouble sleeping (again... like she has for her whole life) so I'm cutting out caffeine entirely. Again. Last time it didn't seem to make much of a difference, but maybe this time it will. We'll see!

I'm reading a great book called "Flower Children" by Maxine Swann. It's very interesting. It's about the four children of some very extreme hippies/activists in the 70's and 80's and how life is for them. I'm close to the end of it now, and I've really enjoyed it.

I used to have that "Currently Reading" spot in my sidebar here on the blog, but I deleted it because I never changed it and since I put it up I've read at least two other books. So that little idea didn't work out... oh well.

I don't know if I posted this on Monday (or if it had even happened yet) but we've moved back upstairs. Now upstairs we have our bed in its usual spot and Anja's bed next to ours, against the wall. This is a much better setup. When her bed was at the end of ours, I was always so afraid that Martin would kick her in his sleep. He is quite the thrasher, and he tends to scoot down the bed all night until his feet are hanging off the end... or stuck in Anja's face. So the new arrangement is a big improvement. Also, it makes me feel more like Anja has her own little bed and her own little space. We put in the window unit and I've got the temperature set just right. It's sooooo nice in there. Anja is definitely her daddy's igloo child. If she's at all covered up she sweats and sweats and wakes up from being uncomfortable. In the same room on the same night, I'm covered with a sheet and two quilts! Silly, silly.

But anyway, we haven't moved anything but the beds and a few things to the downstairs. So the upstairs looks like we're living in a cramped storage room and the Big Room looks like a thrift store lifted the roof and vomited into it. Dressers, baby equipment, golf clubs, storm windows, a weight bench.... these are only a few of the items that are littering up the room. And then there's all the dirt. It's a pretty gross place back here. But we have plans to make it very cute.

Anja loves pulling herself up in her crib these days and this morning she started walking around it! She is so pleased with herself when she does these things. Sometimes I put her in there and leave the room just so I can come back in and be surprised to see her standing up! I know she'll be that way, but I love to see how proud she is of herself when she thinks she's surprised me.

Last night we had a birthday cookout at Prophetstown for Andrew's birthday. (My sister made some delicious blueberry cream pie.) Anja and I for awhile were sitting up in the tower of the playground because it was shady and we were eating pineapple with Gracie. The kids would run up and "scare" us over and over again, and Anja thought it was hilarious! She's such a good sport... for all the mauling she gets, she sure does seem to enjoy it!

I'm sitting here looking out the window and I can see so many red spots on my tomato plants... I think it might be time for another harvest today!

What Will Do It?

Its becoming more and more obvious that no matter what the luring item that finally motivates Anja to crawl is, it most definitely won't be me. It might be the cat, it might be her rubber duck, it might be the smallest piece of carpet lint that just HAS to be tasted... but it won't be me. She never even TRIES to crawl over to me. But she is often very determined to get to other things. For instance, she actually did crawl tonight; she made about three swift moves to get to her Taggies book.

This morning we read books on the porch while it rained. When the sun came out we went to the grocery store where Anja rode in the cart with great enthusiasm and we ran into my mom in the parking lot. In the afternoon we did a little bit of housework before meeting up with Martin's family at the fair--even AnnLaura and Aurelio were there! Much fun.

Then we came home and decided to start really moving the bedrooms. So we did. I mean, we didn't complete the job, but Martin borrowed a ladder from the Cooks and got up on the roof where he was able to take the screen off the bedroom window AND saw off the huge branches that were overtaking the top of our house. It was a lot of work for one evening. While he was doing that, I was entertaining Anja who had gone to sleep but woken up with no available bed to go back to sleep in. Eventually we got the beds made and the window unit installed and now Anja is sleeping comfortably upstairs in our real bedroom, which is still full of boxes and all sorts of junk. However, we know what we're going to do with all the junk, which is a huge step. No, we're not getting rid of it, which would be the smart thing to do. We're going to partitian off part of the Big Back Room with a dresser and a bookshelf and maybe a small table. We're going to decorate them like they are part of the room and we're going to stash all the junk behind them, while making a cute little living room area with the rest of the room! It will be great, I can't wait to get to work on it tomorrow.

Ooo, it's kind of thunderstorming now, how nice!

I harvested a lot of cherry tomatoes this evening and noticed that one of my zucchinis is about ready to pick and my Romas are turning red! They aren't very big... they're more like the pear tomatoes than romas. But that's because all their plants died. The only really thriving tomato plants in my garden are the cherry tomatoes and they are giving me lots of fruit and I love them. I'm going to make salsa tomorrow with them, and I might even pick off one of my peppers to use in it as well, even though they aren't all that big yet.

And that's all the news from my world tonight.

As the Weekend Rolls In...

I'm not one to complain about the heat, but I don't like taking Anja out in it for long periods of time, which greatly cuts down on our number (and length) of walks these days. I'm eager for the 80 degree days to return. But our house is cool, which is great, and our porch is shady all day, so we spend a lot of time out there during the day.

Last night was horrible! Anja went to bed at 8:00; Martin brewed a pot of coffee while I was putting her down. After she was asleep we went to the porch and sat on the swing drinking coffee and talking. We had the monitor right there with us, and Anja never woke up. Finally when it was getting late, we decided to go to bed... I went back to the bedroom to check on Anja and she wasn't in her bed. That's not TERRIBLY unusual, since she's rolled off her bed before. That's why we have pillows next to the bed and a bundled quilt beyond that... so if she rolls off there's no way she'll possibly get hurt. But she wasn't on the pillows either. I didn't see her until I was all the way in the room--she had fallen off the FRONT of the bed!!! She was lying on the floor with her eyes open, and I seriously thought she was dead. It was terrible!!! Of course, I picked her up and she was perfectly fine, although she was completely covered in dog hair grossness, but I don't know how she got off the bed or why she didn't make any sounds while she was moving. The only thing I can think is that she woke up happy and crawled right off the edge. It was very awful and I hope it never happens again. We drove her back to sleep and every time she woke up in the night I would sit up to nurse her and then put her back in her carseat to sleep because I was too afraid to put her back in her bed.

But today was pretty good. Martin went to the second day of his conference; yesterday we walked him over, but today Anja wasn't awake in time so we didn't. It got over at 1:00 and he brought flowers home to me as a surprise! How nice! Funnily, my sister saw him walking home with them so she told my mom and my mom mentioned it on the phone. I should've pretended to know nothing about it and make her think he was having an affair, but I didn't think quickly enough. Too bad.

Martin took a nap while I made an early dinner. He had a ride-along scheduled with the Lafayette police for tonight so he requested a big dinner and an afternoon nap. He wouldn't be getting home until around 3:00 in the morning or so. So I made a giant dinner of baked potatoes (HUGE potatoes) Lemonicious Chicken, green beans and a delicious tomato that my mom brought by for us. It was a scrumptious dinner but I wasn't very hungry (I'd had a lot of lunch) and he had just woken up from his nap so HE wasn't very hungry, so we didn't really eat all that much of the dinner. Aaanyway... we also didn't get much eaten because I spent most of my time feeding Anja bananas (she's really starting to love being fed and it's SO CUTE to watch) and then it was time for Martin to get ready for his ride-along which started at 6:00. So I cleaned up and he left and I was feeding Anja a few minutes later when he called to tell me that the ride-along was cancelled. He thinks they forgot he was coming because evidently they asked him to fill out the same paperwork he'd filled out when he'd gone in to request the ride-along date, and then a sgt. came out and told him they were too busy to do a ride-along tonight, and that he could come back another time. BUMMER!! Because he can't really come back another time, this is his vacation he can sleep all day if he wants to, that's why he scheduled it for this weekend.

So to make up for that disappointment we went to Vienna and spent a gift certificate we had in our Gift Certificate Drawer--it was from Laura and Dan!--and got ourselves each a double vanilla chai. We sat on the patio and saw our friend Ben, as we almost always do, then on the way home we swung through Target where Martin got to see Anja ride in the grocery cart!!!!! I'm telling you, we have so much fun with that baby. She gets soooooooo excited to be in the cart, and holds on and smiles through the store, as if she thinks she's really something special. So we took her all around the store (even though we were only there for 3 things) and then when we were finished, we drove her to the very farthest away cart corrall before finally taking her out. Her favorite part is definitely going through the parking lot. She LOVES it! And on the way home we were very gross and got a cherry coke from the drive-thru at the gas station. Martin's a lot grosser than I am though because he drank most of it.

I think in the end the day turned around, even though martin had to go to his boring conference and then didn't get to do the ride-along he'd so much been looking forward to. Now Anja is asleep and, wow! it's late! I think it's time for me to be asleep too.