Indulgence January 31, 2008

I just needed to take a moment to be thankful. First, I’m thankful to the Critter for sleeping through the night for two out of the three past nights. And when I say “sleeping through the night” I don’t mean 5-6 hours. I mean ALL through the night – 9 hours one night, and 12 the next. TWELVE! It was amazing. Stunning. Life changing. And then he woke up last night at 3 AM. Ah, well. Maybe it’ll come back soon.

Secondly, I’d like to thank the good people at the Maryland Food Cooperative for having many tasty food items for me to enjoy today while I’m on campus. I just spent nearly $10 on food just now, including an egg salad sandwich, dried mango, figs, chips, and the coup de grace – a vegan brownie/cake thing. I just kept picking up treats and ended up buying all of them instead of putting some back like I should have.

But man oh man, I am going to enjoy the heck out of the brownie/cake thingie. I need chocolate! I need baked goods! Thank you, hippies.

Peek a Boo January 29, 2008

No, this isn’t about a fun game I play with the Critter, but rather an unfortunate event from this past Friday. My office is housed in a larger organization’s office, and so there are often people coming and going that aren’t directly connected to my work. We do work with our host organization a good bit, and in fact, their key staff are our de facto bosses.

On Friday, one of the big bosses was in town for just a few hours to attend a meeting. To put it in technical terms, he’s my boss’s boss’s boss. He stopped in to the office for just a little while, and I hoped to have a few moments to talk to him. He needed to get set up to do some emails, so I figured that I’d get him a bit later.

Well, the time came for me to pump, so I closed my door, made sure that the window was fully covered by the cloth I throw over it and got myself set up.

It was only a few minutes later that I simultaneously heard the knock and saw the door start to open. The pump was already going, so I’m surprised that he didn’t immediately realize that perhaps I was indisposed.

In my horror as the door continued to open, all I could do was cower behind the pump and say, “No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no!” He finally caught on and backed out before getting all the way in my office.

“Nice to see you, Natalie!” he called out as he closed the door and left for the airport.

“Sorry the timing didn’t work out!” I hollered through the door.

Four Things January 24, 2008

I know there’s a 100 things about me meme out there, but since I don’t have time for that one, I’ll do this one:

A) FOUR PLACES I GO OVER AND OVER:
My office, Trader Joe’s, day care and Teaism (when I can finagle some time to get to Dupont Circle)

B) FOUR PEOPLE WHO E-MAIL ME: (Regularly)
Lynne, Rob & Anny, Natalie M, Lisa

C) FOUR OF MY FAVORITE FOODS:
mangos, chocolate chip cookies (can’t eat this now), chinese chicken pizza (again, can’t eat this now), The Big Salad

D) FOUR PLACES I’D RATHER BE RIGHT NOW:
enjoying the view of Kilimanjaro from Moshi, Tanzania; running around my neighborhood lake; playing with the Critter at home; with Dave in San Francisco and Napa

E) FOUR PEOPLE I THINK WILL RESPOND (when I post this to the blog):
Rob, Allison, Melisa and Larson

F) FOUR MOVIES I WOULD WATCH OVER AND OVER AND OVER:
Raising Arizona, The Princess Bride, Ocean’s 11, The Breakfast Club

Lots of developments on the Critter front, including a regular bedtime routine (and we no longer have to repeatedly run upstairs to calm him down after a 20-45 minute catnap), MUCH rolling over, and a definite love of having his hands in his mouth. I need to upload some more pictures – coming soon!

More milestones January 16, 2008

Today, January 16th, 2008, the Critter rolled over from back to front. Whoo! He may have done it at daycare already (and if he has, I don’t really want to know it) but it was the first time he did it at home for us. We’ve been putting toys next to him so that he’s got to roll to his side to get them, but he actually rolled all the way over onto his tummy.

Pretty soon he’ll figure out that he can combine his rolling from front-to-back and back-to-front and then he’s going to use that to get places. Yikes!

Here’s a recent picture of our little guy wearing his bunting outfit that Aunt Melisa gave him for Christmas:

If the baby gets dirty, the baby gets nekkid! January 6, 2008

We were in Memphis for Christmas – land of Dave’s forbearers (and Graceland, down the street from his grandparents), our alma mater (where we met and started dating), the Blues, Sun Studio and lots of good food. We had a great time seeing family, relaxing, enjoying Huey’s & other favorites, a visit to Rhodes and introducing the Critter to family and friends.

Getting here, however, was crazy town nutty nut. It took me several days to recover from that week’s food poisoning episode. We had a mini-Christmas on Wednesday to open presents from my side of the family. Thursday night we started getting ready for the trip by wrapping presents and trying to get everything shipped off to my family. Of course we had serious trouble with the main present that we were giving to everyone: pictures of the Critter. We had a professional photo shoot the previous Sunday, but when we took the photo CD to get everything processed, the pictures kept coming out tinged blue. After three tries, we gave up and we’re going to try again when our photographer friend is back from covering the Iowa caucuses.

Friday morning was for packing, and it was crazy. I couldn’t THINK. There was so much to try to deal with, and I just couldn’t get my head around everything we needed. Long story short, we ended up at National Airport with our flight delayed and I realized that although we had diapers, wipes, blankets, burb cloths, etc., I had managed to leave the house WITHOUT ANY CHANGES OF CLOTHES FOR THE LITTLE GUY. That meant that if the baby got dirty, the baby would have to get nekkid. In the airport. My poor little redneck baby would be nekkid in public. Oh the shame!

I tromped around for a while, looking for a “My Momma went to DC and all I got was this onesie” type of shirt for him, to no avail. I tearfully admitted my blunder to my loving husband and he assured me that I was nuts. True. We couldn’t find anything in the Chicago airport, either, between our running to three different gates in hopes of getting on a plane to Memphis. Ah well. He didn’t get dirty, so he didn’t have to get nekkid. Score!

Our first food stop in Memphis was, of course, Huey’s. We got some great pictures of the Critter enjoying his first trip to this important spot in his parents’ lives. And then, of course, he barfed ALL OVER himself. He was Exorcist baby. He completely soiled his clothes, and had to be changed. Before I knew what was going on, Dave had the Critter nekkid (except for his diaper) and was changing his clothes right there at the table at Huey’s! Oh, my poor little redneck baby! Nekkid at Huey’s!

Somehow I managed to recover from the shame. Dave still doesn’t see what the fuss was all about! Here are a few pictures from the trip…

First trip to Huey’s!

Meeting Dave’s grandmother, “Little Grams”

Dave, Uncle Philip, Little Grams, George, Big Grams and Barry

The Eubanks men

Critter and me with the Christmas tree