Saturday, March 25, 2006
Saturday at Noni's
Today I went shopping even though I felt like crap. I figured I could stay at home and feel like crap or go out and feel like crap. I had a list so I went out.

I was looking for comfy shoes for lots of walking in Germany, Old Navy jeans, maybe a black shirt and other necessary items. A big bust on all three of the biggies. Old Navy is totally lame on jeans right now. And apparently everyone in the area is my size. No offense to anyone in particular, but tall and short people annoy me. Would you buy the damned jeans that fit you? Everywhere I go the regulars are sold out and my only options are long or short. If you guys would buy up those jeans they'd restock them all, but nooooo.

The shoe selection was pathetic, the top selection was pathetic. I can't buy my damned Tylenol Allergy Sinus aka Tylenol Complete anymore because it's sold out everywhere. It has pseudoephedrin in it so now you have to show a freaking driver's license to buy it. Thanks a damned lot Meth-heads! Finally the Walmart pharmacist told me that it's gone everywhere because they're reformulating it, hopefully without the dreaded "phed." But then it may not even work anymore. God I hate our Nanny society and stupid lazy ass law enforcement "initiatives" that punish everyone for the illegal activities of a few.

Here's my pitiful offering for today...Emma is watching as Mr. Potato Head comes for her...


Here's sicko on the floor with her daughter.



Oh, and mark your calendars, M. actually closed the store fifteen minutes early today. He'd had it. Sick and tired. So tired that he didn't even mind if we stayed at Noni's another night. Which I opted to do so I would have some help caring for Emma and because M. called me and told me it was already snowing at home. Feh.
Yesterday's news
I got a call at work from Mary around 3:45 p.m. that Emma had just thrown up all over everything. Oh boy. I thought we were in the clear. It took me while to reach M. and he went on over there to pick her up and bring her to me, where I had a bag packed of her clothes. Emma and I were planning to head to Noni and Popis after work. When they arrived Emma seemed fine. Wanted to play. So we changed her into fresh clothes (she was wearing some clean clothes from her diaper bag, but unfortunately they were 12 mo.) Sometime after getting the call my tummy started to feel odd. At first I thought it was just power of suggestion. By the time we arrived at Noni and Popis I felt like crap. I ate a little bit but didn't really want to. By 8:30 I was in bed because laying down provided the most relief to my aching stomach. I got the bug for sure. Right on schedule according to Shawnie's estimate.

Four mountains away M. was puking his guts out too. I only wished I could throw up. Then I might have felt some relief, but no. By about 11:00, with a heating pad in my bed, I was able to fall asleep.

Today I was slow to start on food again. It just didn't hold any appeal. I got bold for lunch and ordered a chicken nugget kids meal each for Emma and me. At the end of lunch we'd eaten two nuggets and no french fries. At least we got toys out of the deal. Supper was chicken noodle soup. So far so good.

Here's baby girl on Noni's counter last night:


Here I was trying to get a picture of her jutting out her chin like she's been doing lately. I had marginal success.



Oh, and definitely no pink eye.
Thursday, March 23, 2006
Deep Thoughts
Oh I wish I were an Os-car Mayer Wie - ner
That is what I'd tru-ly like to be
'cause if I were an Os-car May-er Wie - ner
Ev-ery one would be in love with me.


Seriously, who wants to be a needy wiener?
Sickie Report
I don't know what happened yesterday. She threw up everywhere, but that was the end of it. By supper her appetite was back. She continued to have the runny nose and the one weepy eye. This morning the eye was better and the runny nose was a little better. She never seemed to have a bad attitude about any of it.

Today when I picked up Emma, Mary mentioned the one eye was looking kind of pink.

My immediate thought was "and..."
She says, "I was afraid it might be pink eye. But now it looks normal."
"Now where in the world would she come up with pink eye?"
"Oh Chelsea had it last week."

Ack! Chelsea is one of her older kids that only comes on snow days when school is cancelled. No one said a word to me about pink eye!

But the truth of the matter is that Emma's eye looks perfectly normal now. I'm not really worried about it. (Knock wood)
Pizza bliss is over, for now
We've been working our way through a Pizza Hut pizza kit. The kit contained our all-time favorite pizza, the thin crust pepperoni. The kit comes with ten pizzas. M. bisected every single crust and rolled it up, making twenty pizzas. Then he divided up the cheese, sauce and pepperoni into twenty individual packets for each item. So we get twenty half-pizzas out of each box. Yum, yum and YUM! I make the pizzas, which requires a little finessing, because it's hard to get the crust just right, you have to pre-bake it some before assembly. These kits are available through M's grocery company. I have no idea what we did to deserve such a delightful windfall. The pizza's are so compelling that a friend of ours, who happened to drop by one night during pizza night, has decided that he wants to order the pizza kit too.

We finished our last pizza tonight and they backordered our box on M's last grocery order. So now we have to sweat out the next delivery ;)
After-work Fun
Popi was through town today on business so we went by the store to see him after work. We visited briefly and then decided to walk down to the library to kill time. The first thing she likes to do is find the mat squares and punch out the numbers in every one. And with every one she punches out I have to tell her, No! not in your mouth!


Today she discovered that she can climb into the chairs herself. I think this is the first pop-up book she's ever seen too.


The display in their glass case was of Russian nesting dolls. I thought it was a beautiful display and wish I had some nesting dolls as pretty as those. The lady who put in the display adopted a child from Russia a few years before Emma was born. I remember hearing about when they'd picked up Sophie and actually getting tears in my eyes at how wonderful it was that they were finally going to have a child to love.


Here's Emma on the walk back to the store...

The Bath Crayons
These suckers are the be-all, end-all right now. The first few times we gave her one during bath time she threw a major crying fit when bath was over and it was time to take the crayon away. Finally Daddy was able to convince Emma that she'd get to play with them for every bath; that the crayon would be there next time. One time he set Emma in the bath and went to hand her the crayon. Before he released it he decided that he needed to move the crayon up in the case so more was exposed. Except he couldn't see what I was seeing...the delay of just a few seconds in giving Emma the crayon enraged and upset her so badly that when he finally gave it to her she wouldn't take it. She was beside herself. I could just tell that Daddy was playing with fire, but he didn't realize it until it was too late. The only thing that brought her down from her hysterical fit was when I dropped a second crayon in her lap. Somehow that was OK to take.

Wednesday, March 22, 2006
Sick Day
Emma was sick today. I think. Her nose was running out of control and one eye was kind of weepy. Then this morning as Daddy was heading out the door for work, she puked. Milk, or more accurately, cottage cheesy stuff. She spewed about four times, hitting the living room carpet in a couple of places and nailing her box of blocks. Daddy didn't blink an eye, he took of his coat, went upstairs to get the Little Green machine and started cleaning the carpet. Meanwhile I changed Emma's clothes and took her blocks into the bathroom to clean them in the tub. Fun.

She was pale after that. I decided to keep her on water the rest of the day. She showed no particular interest in lunch or the food I offered at 3:30 p.m. But strangely enough, she was Ms. Personality today. She didn't seem phased a bit to be leaking bodily fluids. Daddy did bring us home some pedialyte, so I hope we can replace what she lost.

Playing with the pen
I couldn't tell if she was trying to tease me or not, but when I told her to take the pen out of her mouth (the writing end) she proceeded to turn the pen around and play with it all over her face.

Spaghetti Dinner
This is what it looks like these days. I think she was neater in the past. Now that she's trying to eat it with a fork it looks like a massacre. She never really ate much today until I made her a scrambled egg around 5:30. Then we gave her the spaghetti in hopes she'd gotten her appetite back. She did pretty well with it; at least she was trying to eat. After the meal was over I took the easy way out cleaning up. For the first time ever, I set the whole tray on the floor and let the dogs clean it up. THEN washed the tray. It was just too much.

Tuesday, March 21, 2006
A knack for the obvious
I guess it's self-apparent that I don't have much to say lately. Sorry about that. Life has been mostly work and I'm pretty tired all the time. So what kind of updates can I give you?

-Sopranos are back. My last hurrah with appointment television. Oh, except South Park starts new episodes this week too. Damn, now that's two nights I have to watch shows. See how it is?

-Taxes still aren't done. Sigh.

-Emma is now crushing her crackers, or just about anything crushable you give her to eat. First she'll poke it with a finger till she's crushed the middle. Then she grabs a handful of pieces and squeezes them. In the good news department she willingly picked up green beans and ate them for the first time in a month.

-We leave for vacation two weeks from tomorrow. I haven't started the first list.

-Emma will clearly say "kitty cat" on occasion. But she still doesn't say much.

-Emma's nose was running when I dropped her off this morning and it was running when I picked her up. I asked Mary if it had been running all day. She said yes, and hers (Mary's) was too. Uh oh. I told her that Emma wouldn't be there tomorrow so if she was going to be sick please do it tomorrow. ;)
Today's outfit
What goes with a gray henley? I thought the pink pants kind of made the outfit pop. There are tiny pink accents near the collar, so it was OK ;)

Playtime!
She was lobbing this ball across the room, but she was doing really good at aiming for open areas so I didn't stop her.


I chased her around the room a couple of times and she finally sought refuge in my chair.

Monday, March 20, 2006
Because two wasn't enough...
Apparently ;)


From the archives (last summer).
Found more toys
Emma's latest project is to stand on the giant case of toilet paper in front of the dryer and play with the stuff on top. There was a tube of punch cups up there for a while. Today she realized what they were and that they could be great fun. By the time she pulled out seven cups I figured she had enough and took the pack away. She proceeded to spend the next 15-20 minutes arranging and stacking the cups.


Sunday, March 19, 2006
It's Over
for another year. Now we can start thinking about vacation.

It was a good weekend. It didn't live up to last weekend, but it was better than every other weekend, so there ya go. I felt better today than yesterday, but I imagine it will take a few days to get up to speed. I need to get back to work so I can rest. lol