Weekends are Wonderful

Hi all. We had a fun weekend, enjoying Mike's time off and the beautiful weather. Saturday morning we went up to see Ankeny's Summerfest parade with my parents. It was our 4th parade in 3 weeks, but at 2 hrs., great weather (many people were wearing sweatshirts!), and some interesting floats, it was the best yet. We are completely over the whole candy thing, though, so we went for the watching instead of the sugar high. Having seen so many parades in the last few weeks, I think I've come to the conclusion that it's a shame parades now rarely contain floats (you know, the fun that goes along with having a parade theme, and helping your organization come up with a creative way to dress it up in float form; i.e., eye candy for the parade-goers) and are more like advertising grounds for businesses and local politicians. I'm not opposed to local businesses being in on the act, but I got tired of all the banks, new developments and builders handing out parephenalia to rack up new business. And while Ankeny's parade did have some floats, apparently the art of float-making has gone by the wayside, as they weren't too ritzed up and there weren't too many. Be that as it may, it was a good parade and had more than just fire engines and churches. We got to see tae kwon do clubs break boards, baton twirlers, an actual high school band (my alma mater!), dog walkers, and other fun stuff. Not too many photos to report, but here are a couple:



Later that night we visited some friends at their new home in Ankeny not too far from my parent's house. Peter, Terrilee, Loralei and Owen--we are so happy you have your first house (and dog!) and can't wait to see all the new developments.

Today was spent at home just hanging out. A nice long walk in the morning, some weeding in the garden, mowing, and sandbox play in the afternoon. Good weekend stuff. I can't believe July is half over--where is the summer going??



Benj loves to stand

and look around

and smile

and be adorable

We also discovered he loves to be read to, already. He studies the pictures and kicks and smiles and coos while we read. Maybe he'll be a studious little dude.

Hard at Work

This is me, today and most days now that I'm in the midst of earnest work on my dissertation:

Correction; this is me and Benjamin. In fact, there isn't much division between the two of us as individuals. The baby knows the difference between mommy's arms and pretty much every other place on earth. Not even dad's arms are acceptable most days. Ben sleeps next to me all night long, he nurses with me all day and night, he rides in the Moby wrap most moments in between. I've tried laying him down in bouncy seats, pack n' plays, and other places once he's fallen into a deep sleep in order to have a little more freedom of mobility, but he always wakes up after a couple minutes when he realizes he's not being held. He never falls asleep in the stroller or car seat, which makes most outings terribly stressful if we have to drive more than 10 minutes to get there. I haven't yet reached that point of being "touched out," as some mom's call it, and hope I continue to feel fine with it. Yet it's admittedly tiring when all I want to do is give my back a break and go make a late night snack while Mike takes over Ben duty, and seconds after handing him over he awakes and cries and cries. We've tried letting Mike have a chance to calm him, but it never works. Most times he doesn't need to eat, he just wants me. I took a 35 minute trip to Target the other night to try on non-maternity pants, and upon arriving home I could hear Ben screaming from the garage. I took him from Mike and within 30 seconds he was calm and quiet. Fully awake, not hungry, just wanting me. It's nice to be needed, but it sucks for Mike and makes it so I'm never "allowed" to leave the house again (at least not after 7pm, according to my husband...unless I take Benj along. Woohoo, there's a night off.) Jack was never like that so it's a strain for Mike to have any Ben bonding time at all since he just can't keep the kid happy. I'm hoping that this will change as he moves away from the newborn months, since if it doesn't, I'm going to be in SERIOUS need for some time off. For the first time, I'm seriously considering buying a pacifier. Not so much for everyday use, but before our huge road trip to MN in August. There's just no way I can take him out of the car seat enough on that trip to make him happy and still get to our destination, so I'm hoping a pacifier would help him to fall asleep in the absence of mom's arms. I'm just praying he doesn't get too attached so that we don't have to face the art of breaking him of the habit 2 years from now. Any seasoned parents out there have other suggestions for helping him calm down in a car seat?

2 parades, 3 bags of tootsie rolls, 1 giant baby

Happy holiday weekend everyone. Hope you are being merry and all. Thursday was merry for us as we went to the WDM city parade. It can be summed up in this way: fire trucks, politicians, and tootsie rolls.




Then came Friday, the 4th of July. Mike and I aren't exactly the flag-waving type, but I'm a sucker for kids in festive clothing




We spent the day in Osceola with Mike's partents, grandma, aunt and uncle, and brother's family. Good food and company, a parade, a talent show, and carnival rids. And a footlong corndog I shouldn't have ate but enjoyed anyway. The Osceola parade can be summed up like this: tractors, horses, fire trucks, and tootsie rolls.





It was a long, good, beautiful day. We were worn out from the sun and didn't make it to fireworks that night. But the sound of the festivities woke Jack up, so we watched the end of the WDM fireworks show from the comfort of Benjamin's window. The show ended at 9:35pm and we went to bed at 9:45pm. Party Animals.

In other news, Thursday was Ben's 2-month birthday and he celebrated with a trip to the pediatrician. Instead of a percentile for weight, he received an "UP" arrow, indicating that he is indeed off the charts, thus theoretically 100% of other 2-month-old babies are smaller than he. He's now at 15 lbs 6 oz. Well, he was on Thursday. Probably more now. He's half of Jack's current weight. And 95% for height. But only 25% for head circumference. Pinhead? I hope not. I tortured myself for weeks on end leading up to this wellness check, since it would be the beginning of his vaccinations. I read "The Vaccine Book" to educate myself on vaccine controversies, and got concerned over the lack of research on the amount of aluminum in vaccines. I threw around the idea of asking for a spaced out vaccine schedule, but in the end wasn't commited enough to through a fit trying to get it. So I went ahead with vaccinations as scheduled. Pray that he doesn't have long-term aluminum toxicity from brain build-up. Sheesh. As my friend Samantha said, "Add this to the list of things parents have to worry about."

Monday morning I'll be mailing my adviser the first set of pages of my dissertation for her to see what I'm doing. I won't have near the quantity she'd like to see (probably 15-20 pages, but she's hoping for about 50-75) but it's something, I guess. Wish me luck on that!

One final note. If you or anyone you love is considering being in a parade in the future, please, for the love of god, do not throw out tootsie rolls. That is apparently the candy of choice for paraders these days, and I have to say, they just aren't that loved. Opt for, I don't know, rubber balls purchased at the $1 store (wouldn't it be fun watching kids dive after those as they bounce down the street?), or some other type of candy... but just not tootsie rolls. Or god forbid, their horrible cousin, "frooties," fruit-flavored tootsie rolls.

Still Feelin Photo Happy

Regression, anyone?



On our family walk this morning, we stopped at a little manmade lake just 7 minutes walk from our house. The little lake is filled with fish who are apparently quite hungry, and some very friendly (and also hungry) Canadian geese. We brought moldy italian bread, which they apparently thought tasted great.

Back in business

Our new camera arrived today! So far I'm loving it. Canon, I owe you one. I'm experimenting with a lot of the manual settings, which I have never done before, and am discovering a whole new world beyond the whole "automatic point and shoot" setting. While the boys were sleeping, I played around and Morphine was a very cooperative model.
Auto mode:

Manual mode with tweaked lighting:



What fun. The pets don't get much air time these days, so this was a treat for Morphine ;) If I could take a photo of the camera itself, I would (I'm way too lazy right now to find a mirror or look for a photo online). I happen to think it's the cutest little thing. It's a Canon SD1100 IS Digital Elph, so nice and tiny (slightly larger than my cell phone) and very lightweight. We got "bohemian brown" since pink, blue, gold, and silver all seemed to ugly or too boring. Mike was dead set against brown, but I won. It's a very chic color with burgundy undertones--what could be wrong with that? (Isn't it nice that our lives are so privileged that THESE are the things we concern ourselves with?)

Things here are chugging along. I have 8 pages of the diss. written. Not much, but more than before. I've gotten a lot organized and I at least feel I'm making progress. My adviser (yes, she's still my adviser. She was quite happy when I agreed to stop analyzing and start writing, just for her) is looking for quantity rather than quality right now, which is tough for me. But I'm trying. I do what I can, and I guess that's where I leave it.

I sent Jack's 2nd birthday party invites out today. Seven weeks in advance...there is some dissertation procrastination for you. It's a truck theme and I plan to *attempt* to make a truck-shaped cake. Given my history with cakes, I hold low expectations. I consider myself a fairly proficient, even good, cook. But cakes are not my strong point. Refer to the following photo for the proof (a peanut butter chocolate cake I surprised--and I do mean, surprised--Mike with one day back in May 2006):


Incidentally, I do better with pies...

although I have never figured out how to make two crusts meet and mold together so all the filling doesn't ooze out as it did in these pies. Suggestions? Anywho, back from my tangent. Point is, truck cake may look like a landfill, but I'm going to try. We are going to have a little water activity pool for the kids. Because I'm so camera happy right now, I even took a photo of the box:

We're going to grill again like last year, but at home this time so we have the option of air conditioning if it's super hot again. Should be fun. Can't believe he'll be two in just 7 weeks. Yikes. He's taking after me lately by eating spicy foods. He ate up this mint/currant/couscous salad I made the other day, and loves the Mexican chicken corn chowder we had last night (very spicy). He eats salsa when we are out at Mexican restaurants as much as everyone else at the table. I thank myself for eating all those homegrown jalepenos during pregnancy for the fact that I don't have to cook special, milder foods for him now :)

Benjamin will be 2-months-old in 2 days, and is following in Jack's footsteps at this age by simultaneously losing hair and gaining weight. He's probably over 15 lbs at this point, no joke. Here's a big old chubby smirk for you:

He's normally not quite so lumpy looking, but apparently the angle I chose for that photo beefed up the cheeks a bit. I thought it was cute enough for a post, though.
Off to watch "30 days" on FX (AWESOME show by Morgan Spurlock, "Super-sized" dude.) Expect more posts now that I've got a camera on hand again!

Johnston Green Days

Saturday my parents and I took Jack to his first parade. Ben went too, but as you can imagine, he didn't get much out of it. Johnston had their town celebration, complete with carnival, antique car show, and all other sorts of events. It was a great day and tons of fun. We came home with two bags full of candy and toys. Thanks to my parents for bringing their camera! Be prepared for photo overload...

Jack and "Bapa" playing frisbee before the parade. Bapa is his favorite person in the whole world right now. Closely followed by his friend, Jaxson. Mommy and daddy don't even make the top 5 anymore.


Ben was just chillin

Jack waved to EVERYthing and everyone in the parade


"Ohmygod, is that a fire engine?"

"Yes! Yes! That IS a fire engine!!"


Ben and me at the parade (is that my newborn?)



First carnival game

First carnival prize


First and second rides on carousel


Slide!



Isn't it fun to be a kid? The simple pleasures of life :)

Last night was supposed to be a mostly-adult evening for Mike and I, though the plans didn't work out exactly. We had won some free tickets to the Funny Bone comedy club, and decided to leave Jack with my parents and go out for dinner before the show. We ended up rushing through dinner since we had to get to the club early to pick up the tickets. It was a nice dinner at Fire Creek, though--my pasta was really stellar. We had Benjamin with us, since all he does is sleep in the evenings, and he hasn't tried bottles yet. I'm putting that off for a long time, if possible, because of our horrible experience with Jack refusing to nurse after being introduced to one. So we get to the club and meet our friends who were joining us with the other free tickets. We order drinks, we chat for awhile, then decide to go in. At the door, the guy says "I can't let you take the baby in." Huh? Ben is sleeping silently and peacefully in the wrap. Not a peep. I tell the dude that he's a newborn and all he'll do is sleep, and if he wakes up, I'd be happy to leave without a moment's hesitation. Still, no go. I can understand, I guess, that they'd be worried if he would start crying and throw off the comedian's monologue or something. I guess we should've asked when we accepted the tickets. I was just so happy that the club's new location was non-smoking and combined a restaurant-atmosphere with the stage, that I didn't even consider they simply wouldn't allow us in. But what irks me is that we sat there the whole time, ordered drinks, the guy stared at us and clearly knew we had a baby with us, and never said anything beforehand! That wasted a lot of our time (and money). I asked why he didn't say something beforehand, and he said, "oh, i didn't know if maybe you had a sitter coming or something." Hmmph. So though I tried to convince Mike and the others to stay while I'd go outside for a walk, they all decided to leave with me. We ended up going home for socks and then bowling. Ben liked the bowling alley :)

it all comes down to Priorities. period.

Ah, the irony of the world. I'm finally feeling interested and ready to get back into the swing of dissertation writing, and have made an earnest decision to work at this and finish once and for all, and NOW is the time my adviser has chosen to finally come down on me for my slow progress. Good timing, eh?! I've been nervously waiting during the last 2 years for her to drop me like a hot potato, and yet she's responded to each email I've sent her with patient support. Strange. For those who know her, well, you know her. Enough said. For those who don't, she is a very intense person. She's career/professionally-driven, a respected, committed scholar and intellectual, and she takes few prisoners. She has made being an anthropologist her entire life, and aside from her partner (also a well-respected scholar who co-directs a scholarly institute with her) and a few pets, she has few outside distractions to keep her from her work. You rarely have to guess at what Virginia is thinking, or at least, what she thinks of you. She's pretty much ignored my two pregnancies and has never asked how my children are doing, or if having a family has altered my professional goals. She strives to be a mentor, but only on the intellectual front. God forbid you have other life priorities, or perhaps some unexpected life events, or you may not be in her limelight anymore. I politely sent her an email last week notifying her of the birth of my second child, and also to let her know that I've put Jack into daycare part-time so that I can finally finish the dissertation within the next year. Her response was slightly full of doom. I'm not sure she'll stay my adviser at this point, so I may soon be on the search for a new chair for my committee. At this point in the game that is a difficult prospect for many reasons, not the least of which being that many of the faculty at UI when I was there have now retired or moved on to new universities. I don't know most of the new people, nor do they know me since I'm not even living in IC anymore. For now my plan is to just keep working on my stuff until I find out for sure if I need to worry about this other administrative crap. The fun never ends in academia, folks. Just another reason to finish this thing and run as fast as hell in the other direction.

On the homefront, our father's day breakfast was less than thrilling. How do I sum it up... let's just say that upon leaving the restaurant, the last words I heard (from the mouth of another patron) were, "Now, THAT'S why I never had kids." Scratch La Mie off the list of acceptable public places to take Jack. Childless people have even less patience for 2-year-old antics than the parents of said toddlers do.

Back to Work. Sort of.

Seems like a long time since I've blogged. Things are rolling along as usual, sometimes slowly, sometimes quicker than I can keep up with. Benjamin is 6 weeks today, and he gets more beautiful every day. No, that couldn't possibly be a biased view, or a nursing-induced oxytocin high clouding my judgement. It's just the truth. :) He's also getting bigger and bigger. When I see Mike holding him from afar, I'm astonished that he's still a newborn--he's so long! He still fits snugly in my Moby D, however, and that's where he spends a lot of time. He's not a fan of the bouncy seat or swing or playmat; at least not for too long. He doesn't like laying down without being in my arms, so he sleeps on me in the wrap most of the time, and is with me all night. Unfortunately he hasn't developed this closeness with Mike yet, and my poor husband feels Ben doesn't like him much yet. Sometimes I'll hand him over to feel like a free agent again for just a few minutes, but Ben will cry and cry so much he gives him back. I think they need more time to figure each other out.

The biggest change around here will begin Monday morning, when Jack starts his first daycare experience. Our friend and neighbor, Stephanie, is beginning her own at-home daycare: The Little Hawks Daycare (appropo, don't you think?), and Jack will be one of her first kids. He's going to go over there three mornings a week so I can start the dissertation work again. He loves playing with Jaxson and their house is a bit like a second home for him as much as he is there playing, so I think it will be fun for him to hang out there a few mornings a week and be the social butterfly he loves to be. Steph is a fabulous mother and nurse, so I know she'll do a great job at her new endeavor. Good luck, Steph! On the fourth day that he won't be going to their house, our favorite sitter from last semester will be coming to watch him for a few hours to provide me with more work time. Then the fifth remaining weekday, my mother-in-law will occasionally come up to spend time with the kids. I may use this for work, though some weeks I imagine I'll want to use that time to clean or do the grocery shopping or run some other errands that are hard to do with two kids. So, I'll get 4-5 half days each week to return to the great dissertation journey. At this point I won't be finishing in December as planned, so I'll have to ask for that one year extension from my department. But I WILL finish by December 2009, or else I won't finish at all. It's got to get done before I forget it entirely. Benjamin will stay with me since he's nursing, and unpredictably so. Thus I want to get as much done as I can sooner rather than later while he is still content to sleep in the wrap while I work. I'm anxious and full of dread. I feel so removed from intellectual work these days. Putting out fires as most mommies do doesn't usually require thinking on a higher level, but is more of a multi-tasking effort. I hope I get excited about this stuff again once I get back into it.

Other than that I don't have too much to report. Our camera is en route to the Kodak repair facility, and the replacement they send us will be our FOURTH C875 camera. Once this one dies it's bye-bye Kodak for us. But I can't justify buying a new camera at this point when we can still take advantage of the warranty. Especially with a new fridge, an anniversary dinner, a new carseat (ah, yes, more on that in a bit), and various hospital bills on the credit card bills right now.

So Benjamin hates the infant car seat. Jack did too, as many babies do, but once he was in the car, he usually fell asleep (as many babies do). Ben, on the other hand, has a hard time giving in to sleep and fights the thing tooth and nail. He HATES it. We drove an hour up to Boone Thursday for the visitation service of Mike's step-grandfather, and had to stop once to get Ben out and comfort him. On the way back it was the same thing, but after this stop he kept crying after being put back into the seat. There wasn't much we could do but drive home. I can tell you that listening to a newborn cry furiously not only breaks a mommy's heart, but causes mucho stress and a tad higher blood pressure. Add to this a toddler who thinks it's fun to scream at the top of his lungs sporadically when bored, and whine, and cry himself, and you've got some very frazzled parents. And this was a one-hour drive. So imagine our dread at the upcoming August car ride to Brainerd, MN for the wedding of one of my best friends. I am super pumped for the short vacation, and can't wait to witness the nuptials of Scott and Alicia, but if I could fast forward time past that car ride, I would be much less stressed about the trip. It's about 6 hours from West Des Moines to Brainerd (going at least 75mph, and not stopping). With our stops to feed Ben and let Jack run, I'm guessing it'll take 8-9 hours. Dear GOD. We'll be there 3 nights, then it's back again. Although the trip back will be split, since we're going to Minneapolis to visit friends that 4th night, so we'll have a 2 hr. drive, than a 4 hr. drive the next day. That will be a bit better. Anyway, with reference to the new car seat, we bought a second convertible car seat since Jack will be in his long past when the time comes for Ben to switch into one. Jack has a Britax Marathon and used to sleep really well in it when he was rear-facing, so we thought maybe by getting one for Ben before the MN trip, he would start liking the carseat better, too. It's much more posh than our cheap Graco infant seat, and likely more comfortable. So please keep your fingers crossed for us!

Happy Father's Day tomorrow to all you daddies. We're taking Mike out to breakfast at our favorite spot, La Mie, for some amazing coffee and food. Thank you to the French for creating Brie. My mouth is already watering in anticipation of tomorrow's omelet. I also made Mike his favorite dessert, Boston Cream Pie, and bought him a new cordless drill. The boys colored (well, Ben got his footprint drawn) a card for Mike, too. Hopefully it will be a fun and relaxing day.

We are keeping all our friends in Eastern IA in our thoughts and the flooding takes over many areas. Despite best efforts, a levee broke north of downtown today and downtown is really getting hit hard. I'm hope, hope, hoping Court Avenue does okay. The city has spent so much time and money turning our downtown area into a fun, more urban place to hang with all the new restaurants and bars and activities, and it will truly suck if a lot of those businesses get destroyed with the flooding.

Brothers


Court Avenue flooding

the newest addition to our family

meet the newest addition to our family:


as our house approaches it's 20th birthday, it slowly is trying to shell some of it's old parts. the fridge just went this past week, so we were in a frantic search to get a new one so we could continue to, well, eat. this one was a floor model so was drastically less than the normal marked price at good old best buy, and yet once we got it home, the ice maker failed to produce ice. so we're already waiting on a repair. a couple days later our digital camera decided that all photos taken will now look like they were taken in a tunnel. compare to the new photos we now take:


this is the THIRD Kodak C875 we have had, and all have failed us in different ways. at this point we may be enough past the warranty that they may not replace it , which will suck. i highly discourage people from this camera. hell, from kodak cameras all together. back to canon for us. i guess all of our belongings think we have money to throw around so are dying on us just for fun.

right now we have a baby who eats constantly and a toddler who cries and needs to be held constantly due to teething pain. fun, fun, fun.

One-Month-Old!

Happy one-month birthday to Benjamin today. He has kept up his one pound a week gaining streak, and is now at 11 lbs. 11 oz. If he keeps that up, he'll weigh 60lbs. by his first birthday! ;) He's getting bigger for sure, though I still don't think he looks "chubby" yet. At least not compared to our major chubster Jack at that age. His hair is thinning on top, so maybe he'll be bald soon, like Jack was. It appears I may have lost the eye color battle yet again, as I was rooting for green, but they seem to be lightening up and remaining blue. Dang it! But they'll be beautiful no matter what. We snapped a few photos in honor of his first birthday milestone.



Jackie, here is the outfit you sent--marked SIX-TWELVE months! It's still big, but actually fits okay now. Yikes!



In honor of his 1-month today, he decided to go preppy: