I Love Lists

My Five Top TV Shows of the Season
1. HIMYM
2. The Big Bang Theory
3. ANTM
4. Biggest Loser
5. Drop Dead Diva

Top 3 Things that could be the reason Gabbie refuses to go to sleep lately.
1. Teeth (I think this is most likely)
2. The episode of Ghost Hunters I watched while she was in the room where they caught a ghost on camera (it's been keeping me up too)
3. The munchkins from The Wizard of Oz. They freaked me out when I was a little kid too.

Top 5 things I should probably give up if I'm ever going to lose the last (20 lbs) of my "baby weight"
1. Nightly ice cream
2. Pie
3. Pop
4. Chocolate
5. Sitting on my butt as much as humanly possible

Top three things I'd rather be doing right now
1. Knitting
2. Playing Spore
3. Watching Destination Truth (I LOVE this show!)

Some favorites from Gabbie's summer

I'm taking the cheap way out today, but I know everyone loves pictures of my kid, right? Right?

She frequently sleeps like this in the car, and I think it's adorable.

This is one of my favorite things that we did this summer. I wasn't brave enough to hold onto a seed stick like my mom, but Gabbie loved it and amazingly didn't reach out to grab one of the birds that was easily within reach.

Just because I can.

I frequently call her Miss Silly Pants, but this is taking it a little far. Maybe.

Baby's first chocolate chip cookie. She loved it.

More silliness. Someone should tell that poor child's mother to pull her hair out of her eyes. (Not to get a haircut, because I can't bear that thought yet.)

Baby's first trip to the beach. We all had a blast!

Statistics

I have about two seconds to post today, but I thought I’d share this little statistic that I’m planning to collect data about for the next couple of months. I run data nearly every day, so I’m pretty confident that I can claim this to be true.

The probability that Aaron will make coffee in the morning is inversely correlated to the amount of sleep I’ve gotten during the night.

To wit: Monday night I got nearly 9 hours of sleep and woke up to a nice, hot pot of coffee waiting for me. Last night I got approximately 5 hours of sleep between the hours of 11 pm and 4 am, and there was no coffee.

WHY????!?

Doesn’t he understand that he should make the coffee when I really, REALLY need it? Instead I was forced, forced I tell you, to go get a giant S’mores Latte at the local coffee shop so that I had both the caffeine and the sugar necessary to make it through my day. I’m already starting to fade, so I better go get a Coke for lunch. And…I’m off.

Oh, right. We bought a house. (Part Deux)

This part won't be nearly as exciting as the first part, but here's most of the rest of the house anyway.

The Basement

Aaron is very excited about having a basement, especially since I told him he can do whatever he wants with the space down there. (As I was typing this, Aaron walked by and told me he loved me, and I said, "and I love you down there" as opposed to ending the statement, "as well". I have tears in my eyes I'm laughing so hard, and he says that sometimes guys need to hear that. Glad I could oblige. (Also, maybe I can't talk and type at the same time.))

Here's one end of the finished part of the basement:

And the other end:

This is Aaron's favorite part of the basement:

He's got it loaded with tools already (all the ones he bought, I swear, so he could fully utilize his tool bench).

The Upstairs:

Our upstairs contains the three bedrooms and two full baths. Unfortunately I took crappy pictures of two bedrooms and the kids'/guest bath, so here's a picture of our master bedroom.

I love the windows in there. Actually, I love the windows throughout the whole house. It's so bright and cheery! Also in our master bedroom is the master bath (on the right) and walk-in closet (to the left).

We'll be done re-doing the bedroom as soon as we paint (we didn't do it a couple of weekends ago as planned), but we have big plans for the bathroom.

So, yeah. That's pretty much the rest of the house. Someday, as we get things finished and set up just the way we want them, I'll post "after" pictures for comparison. With as long as it took me to get these up, I wouldn't expect them any time soon, though.

I only have a couple of minutes to post again today, but for a totally different and way more fun reason. We have the day off and we're heading out soon on a road trip.

(Also, on a completely adorable note, Gabbie is playing peekaboo with me from behind my laptop screen, by popping around the side and saying "Hi!". I might melt it's so cute.)

So, here's just a few quick points again today:

My crush on Joel McHale got bigger last night after watching Community (even though most of the pilot was featured in the preview). He's hilarious, and he has that dorky-cute thing going on that I always fall for. Plus! I'm like 3 degrees of separation from Mr. McHale - my best friend went to seminary with his brother. So close, yet so far away.

Gabbie has 2 baby dolls at home and one at school, and she is very cute with them. She gives them hugs and kisses, then lays them down and pats their backs. She'll also try to feed them from whatever cup she has in her hand. She coddles real babies too. There were several little babies in her old room at daycare, and she would give them a pacifier if they cried (although it may not have always been their pacifier), and give them hugs and kisses on a regular basis. She loves babies, which makes me think she'll be a great big sister when the time comes sometime in the distant, not currently in the process or plans, future.

And...that's all I have. Time to go pack a picnic lunch for the beach!

Let's see how fast I can type

I have 3 minutes to tap out an entry today, because I am crazy busy, so here goes.

Gabbie slept through the night last night. Halleluiah!

I made a delicious pot roast for dinner last night (I’ll post about it over here). I seriously could have eaten the entire thing, by myself in one sitting. I love pot roast. Aaron informed me that he really does not love pot roast; he couldn’t bring himself to eat more than a couple of bites. He says that his mom ruined it for him by making dried out roasts with no flavor. Gabbie, however, LOVED it, and would have helped me finish off the entire roast if I would have let her. So, he’s outnumbered and has to deal with roast for dinner at least a few times a year. Hey, I make and eat meatloaf because he loves it so much. Ditto for chicken breasts (I’m just not a big fan of huge chunks of chicken). He’ll survive, I’m sure.

I don’t know if it’s just me, but I think ANTM is a little boring this season. Or maybe I’m just getting too old for it. Either way I’ll keep watching it. It’s tradition!

It's bad when you day dream about taking a nap. Really bad.

We don’t know what is causing it, but Gabbie has been sleeping horribly for almost a week now. She doesn’t seem to be teething, she made it through the transition to the toddler room at daycare and has settled in there pretty well, even making an easy switch to one nap a day. We’re seriously at a loss as to what is going on. But she’s really not sleeping, which doesn’t make it easy to pull together the brain power that is a necessity for me this week at work.

Just for example, on Monday morning she woke up at 4:30. I had stayed up late finishing a good book, so waking up at 4:30 netted me about 4 ½ hours of sleep, definitely less than the 8 I strongly prefer and have gotten used to again lately. When it became clear that she wasn’t going back to sleep, I turned on the TV and put on Sesame Street for her to watch while I snoozed. I really didn’t get any additional sleep though, and all day Monday I was a complete zombie, doing only whatever basic functions were needed to get me through the day. I was so worthless that I went to the grocery store to get stuff for dinner – we were having tacos – and I forgot beef and tortillas. Kind of essential ingredients for our tacos.

That night was somewhat better, but then last night was a mess again. She was up from 12:30 to 2:30. Aaron and I each took an hour, and finally she crashed hard. Interrupted sleep is in no way good sleep, though, and I’m a mess again today. I forgot my purse at home, and didn’t really think much of it, but that’s where my birth control resides, so I’m going to have to run home at lunch to get it. I also forgot to eat breakfast this morning, so that’s always helpful. So here it is, 11:15, and I’m counting the minutes till I get to leave for lunch. Here’s hoping the day only goes up from here. And that she finally sleeps tonight. I really, really like the sleep that she’s allowed me lately. No fair reneging!

It's a metaphor

Be ye forewarned – this post contains a little more personal information than I usually like to share, but it was funny and I’m out of other things to post about since my life is pretty much made up of work, cuddling with Gabbie for a few moments, eating, and sleeping right now. September sucks.

Anyway…

Since September sucks so much, and because we’re still getting settled into the house which means we’re busy all day and totally wrecked come bedtime, even on the weekends, Aaron and I haven’t had much of a chance to, um, we’ll go with go bowling lately. We both want to bowl, but it just hasn’t seemed to be in the cards, which stinks because we both enjoy bowling.

On Saturday afternoon, Aaron was taking a break from yard work, I had just finished mopping the kitchen floors, and we noticed that Gabbie had fallen asleep in her bean bag chair while watching her very favorite movie (Shrek). We decided that this provided us the best opportunity we had for a little bowling, but we didn’t want to go upstairs just in case Gabbie woke up and was disoriented because we weren’t there. So, there’s one little spot in the front hallway that’s invisible from all windows in the house and we decided to bowl there. Just as we were getting the game underway, I notice there are shadows moving by the front door. I can see about an inch of window space, and suddenly someone’s left arm appears. Then there’s a knock on the door.

Of course. So, we quickly put away our bowling gear, and I go answer the door, because it’s obvious we’re home and all the neighbors have seen us around the yard all day, so they probably won’t go away if I don’t answer.

It was one of the neighbors inquiring about our lawn mower, so I gave him all the information I had, and let him check it out, but since Aaron was not quite over our missed opportunity to bowl, I told him I’d send Aaron over later.

Also, the commotion woke up Gabbie.

We’ve been laughing about this all week, because it seems the universe is against us getting in a game lately. No worries, I’m sure we’ll get a chance to go bowling again sometime soon. I hope.

So, I guess you could say she's a fan

So, I disappeared there for a week or so. I took off a few days from work, then got sick, so I decided to just stay in bed and ignore everything else. It was lovely. Thankfully I started to feel better by this past weekend, so we were able to accomplish quite a bit. Well, Aaron was able to accomplish quite a bit, and I spent a lot of time entertaining Gabbie. But, it was fun. We tailgated (I’ll post a picture later), we watched lots of football (my team lost, his won, sucks when that happens!), Gabbie played in the yard for the first time since we moved in (the mosquitoes have finally abated some; previously you couldn’t go out there without getting at least 5 bites, I swear), and then she had her very first milkshake, which was the absolute highlight of the weekend for all of us.

She and I were out running errands for Aaron, who had been doing yard work all morning and into the afternoon. I figured he could use something to cool him down, so we stopped by Steak and Shake to grab a couple of shakes on the way home. The whole way home, Gabbie and I passed our vanilla shake back and forth. I watched her eyes light up with her first sip, and heard her get whiny if I was taking too long to give the shake back on my turn.

For some reason, I have this fear of her drinking too much cold too fast and getting a bad cold headache, and think she’s too little to realize the pain will soon abate, so when we got home, I put the shake in the freezer for a few minutes while I unloaded the car. Cue absolute hysterics. She had tears streaming down her face and she was yanking on the freezer handle trying to get it open (oh, boy am I screwed for when she finally can, because she knows that’s where we keep the ice cream). She plopped down on the ground and continued screaming and crying while Aaron and I laughed and laughed (I could just bet that if she could speak she would have told us she hated us for that, but it really was incredibly funny). It took me about five minutes total to unload the car, and she cried the entire time. When I was done, I picked her up and gave her a hug. She had those after-a-hard-cry hiccups, that are adorable and break my heart at the same time. A few minutes later we went to get the remainder of the shake out of the freezer. There wasn’t much left, and I’m sure you can guess what happened when we finally finished it.

Yep. More hysterics. I threw the cup away and she even went so far as to try to get the cup back out of the trash, but I wouldn’t let her.

Shortly afterward she went down for her over-due nap. I think we were all equally relieved.

Oh Happy Day

Yesterday was a wonderful, relaxing, fun day during which I spent exactly zero minutes on the computer. We lounged around for the morning, went out to lunch and roamed around the downtown area of a nearby quaint little town, went to dinner, and then Gabbie went to bed early so I had time to knit before I hit the hay. Additionally, it’s the day before a long holiday weekend, we’re going to a baseball game tonight (I haven’t been in 2 years and can’t wait), and my best friend is visiting this weekend. Consequently I’m in a pretty good mood this morning.

Then, this morning, I stopped by Metalia’s site, and found this gem: People of Walmart. I haven’t laughed quite so much in a long while. I hope it makes your Friday as fun as it has made mine.

Yes, Again. I know.

Last night was the only night this week that we were alone in our house. We’ve had/will have overnight guests galore! Since we’ve been doing a lot of cooking/entertaining we decided to take it easy on ourselves last night and go out to dinner. However, we still ended up eating at home because Gabbie was throwing such a fit at the restaurant that we had to leave before we finished eating. Before the food got there, she was getting so riled up that the lady at the table next to us offered her some French fries to keep her busy while we waited. I embarrassingly accepted, and was thankful for such kind, generous people, but still. It was horrible. She never acts like that, so I don’t know what was up. She’s getting ornery in her old (15 months) age.

This morning wasn’t much better. Everyone was better behaved, but Gabbie had a poopsplosion the likes of which we hadn’t seen before. Sure, she’s done the up the back thing before, but this was solid and came out the leg-holes of her diaper. This is going to get even grosser. You’ve been warned. So much came out that Aaron had to scoop it out of her pants with a wipe. He cautioned me as I turned the corner into the family room not to come any further. He’d rather just clean it up himself than let me witness the horror. So, Gabbie got a bath, and her pajamas got a fresh wash all by themselves in the washing machine. Consequently, both Aaron and I were late for work and I missed a conference call. Thank goodness for competent assistants who filled in for me!

And now for some totally unrelated topics:

I don’t know if it’s just me, but this is the scariest damn teddy bear I’ve ever seen. I would never let that anywhere near my house, not to mention I wouldn’t want to be in the same room with it in someone else’s house!

I have recently discovered the awesomeness of Ask Metafilter. This post is one of many that make me want to have a party, and this post makes me want to get Gabbie down to bed early on as many nights as possible (and not for what you think before you click that link!). I love going to the “Popular Favorites” tab every day to see what comes up. I never fail to learn something interesting (for example, Irish Pub Culture)when I visit this site.