We're all going along with life at the moment, in the general round of work/school/come home/go to sleep/get up and do it all again. I felt a little badly this morning when K was so surprised that neither B nor I was going to work today. It will be nice this summer to have both of us home all weekend to provide a little more continuity and relaxation in our schedule(B's library doesn't have Saturday hours in the summer and I'll be on maternity leave), although I suspect the tiny detail of having a newborn will cramp our style more than weekend work hours ever could.
We had a pleasant day today. B's uncle is in town for a conference, so he came to spend the afternoon with us today. We all went to a local park and fed bread to the geese and their adorable goslings, then watched K happily run around in the sunshine. Then we came home and I set K up with warm water and lots of bubbles in the sink so she could wash her rubber duckies (mind you, the reason the duckies were being washed was that they had mold in them after spending a winter in the garage with the insufficiently washed-out wading pool, and when I told her she couldn't play with them yet because they needed to be washed, I meant with bleach. Ah well, as long as she wasn't sucking water out of them, they weren't that hazardous). I left K happily quacking at her flock of biohazard ducks while I had a nice long conversation with my mother. Quiet and pleasant all around.
We are all healthy for the moment, although I am studiously ignoring a suspiciously sore throat and drippy nose in the hopes that the Christian Scientist approach of keeping my thoughts on higher plains will do more for preventing disease than anything else we've tried (mostly cursing and complaining a lot, which I guess is the approach of keeping our thoughts on lower planes).
I am still thoroughly bitten by a swarm of sewing bugs. Hopefully this week I can get some pictures up to show the mildly insane scope of it all.
Showing posts with label family. Show all posts
Showing posts with label family. Show all posts
Monday, May 11, 2009
Friday, February 8, 2008
Lent
B works on Wednesday nights, so I hemmed and hawed for a while, then decided to take K with me to the Ash Wendesday service at church last night. It wasn't ideal, since our church doesn't offer a nursery, but I finally came to the conclusion that if our church is truly open and affirming, they should be welcoming to their fellow child of God, even at an evening service, and if it really bothers them, maybe they should pony up with the child care.
K did as well as you can hope from a two-year-old at bedtime at a Taize-style service with lots of periods of silence. I did have to take her shoes off so she wouldn't make noise when she kicked and things got a little dicey when she insisted on taking a cup of communion grape juice and I wouldn't let her get any more. But I saved the day by pulling out the bottle of milk we had with us and serving her shots of milk in the tiny communion cup. I also had to whisk her to the narthex a couple times, but at least I didn't have to do the red-faced parental march of humiliation, hauling of a screaming child out of the church. More importantly, she was quiet enough that I was able to get something out of the service.
We had the choice of being anointed with healing oil or given the burden of ashes. I chose the oil and decided that it would be my mission for Lent: healing myself, mentally and physically. Obviously that's not something that can happen fully in seven weeks, but I can take the opportunity of a season of discipline and reflection to try to break some of the bad patterns I tend to fall into. So my two goals for Lent are to go to church every Sunday I'm not working to try to reconnect spiritually and to work on my diet to help myself physically. Since most of how I eat isn't that different than the low glycemic load diet, dieting will largely mean trying to give up the twin monkeys of Cherry Coke and Wawa chai that have taken up permanent residence on my back. I can't count the number of times I've tried to give up Coke, so we'll see if I have any success this time.
******
We saw my cousin and her five-week-old baby today. Oh goodness, newborn babies don't weight anything, at least when you've been toting a 30 pound toddler around. The baby was just about the same size K was when she was born. Oh, how I want a baby again.
K did as well as you can hope from a two-year-old at bedtime at a Taize-style service with lots of periods of silence. I did have to take her shoes off so she wouldn't make noise when she kicked and things got a little dicey when she insisted on taking a cup of communion grape juice and I wouldn't let her get any more. But I saved the day by pulling out the bottle of milk we had with us and serving her shots of milk in the tiny communion cup. I also had to whisk her to the narthex a couple times, but at least I didn't have to do the red-faced parental march of humiliation, hauling of a screaming child out of the church. More importantly, she was quiet enough that I was able to get something out of the service.
We had the choice of being anointed with healing oil or given the burden of ashes. I chose the oil and decided that it would be my mission for Lent: healing myself, mentally and physically. Obviously that's not something that can happen fully in seven weeks, but I can take the opportunity of a season of discipline and reflection to try to break some of the bad patterns I tend to fall into. So my two goals for Lent are to go to church every Sunday I'm not working to try to reconnect spiritually and to work on my diet to help myself physically. Since most of how I eat isn't that different than the low glycemic load diet, dieting will largely mean trying to give up the twin monkeys of Cherry Coke and Wawa chai that have taken up permanent residence on my back. I can't count the number of times I've tried to give up Coke, so we'll see if I have any success this time.
******
We saw my cousin and her five-week-old baby today. Oh goodness, newborn babies don't weight anything, at least when you've been toting a 30 pound toddler around. The baby was just about the same size K was when she was born. Oh, how I want a baby again.
Wednesday, January 30, 2008
Baby names
I got a call from my aunt last week, saying that my cousin has a photography show in Philadelphia, so she will be coming to Philadelphia next week, along with her six-week-old baby and my aunt to help babysit.* So I get to see the baby next week - yay! Oh yes, and my aunt and cousin as well. My reaction reminds me of when K was two weeks old and we called up some friends to see if they wanted to go out to dinner and we heard our friend ask his wife, "Do we want to have dinner with K and what's-her-name and that other guy?"
The baby's name is Adriana Gabriella [our grandmother's first name] [mother's last name] [father's last name]. My first thought on hearing that was that when that poor child has to sign all of the documents for her first mortgage, her hand is going to fall off. Not that we can really pass judgments on long names (K is Katherine Harper Hyphenated-Lastname. Although in our defense, we feel really bad about how long K's name is and we were trying to find a short first name to balance out the hyphenated last name). Although since they didn't hyphenate the last name, she won't have as many problems as K will, since you can have as many middle names as you want without impacting your everyday life. K, on the other hand, is stuck with a 16 character last name in a 15-characters-for-last-names-on-forms world.
I'm finding myself wondering if really long names are a new baby naming trend. I have two other cousins of that generation with two middle names each. Are more parents giving their children four or more names, or are my cousins just terminally indecisive? My (admittedly brief) survey of baby name sites has turned up a lot on popular first names and not much on middle name trends.
*I'm in general not a bitter infertile. But if you ever want a situation to really test that, try having a 41-year-old cousin who conceived last year with absolutely no trouble.
The baby's name is Adriana Gabriella [our grandmother's first name] [mother's last name] [father's last name]. My first thought on hearing that was that when that poor child has to sign all of the documents for her first mortgage, her hand is going to fall off. Not that we can really pass judgments on long names (K is Katherine Harper Hyphenated-Lastname. Although in our defense, we feel really bad about how long K's name is and we were trying to find a short first name to balance out the hyphenated last name). Although since they didn't hyphenate the last name, she won't have as many problems as K will, since you can have as many middle names as you want without impacting your everyday life. K, on the other hand, is stuck with a 16 character last name in a 15-characters-for-last-names-on-forms world.
I'm finding myself wondering if really long names are a new baby naming trend. I have two other cousins of that generation with two middle names each. Are more parents giving their children four or more names, or are my cousins just terminally indecisive? My (admittedly brief) survey of baby name sites has turned up a lot on popular first names and not much on middle name trends.
*I'm in general not a bitter infertile. But if you ever want a situation to really test that, try having a 41-year-old cousin who conceived last year with absolutely no trouble.
Friday, January 25, 2008
On the road again
We went to Center City today to have lunch with a friend. The company was good and the food was sublime - a neat little Ethiopian place. It always amuses me watching K eat Ethiopian - she took to it like a natural, grabbing her injera and dipping it in the nearest pile of stew.
Every time we venture into Center City, we keep saying we need to do it more, that we live in a big city with lots of stuff to do and we need to take advantage of it. Then we go back home and get caught up in our routine for another couple months. In our defense, it's really hard these days to make plans when both of us work alternating days on the weekends. January has been pretty easy in that regard, but next month B has a couple Sunday shifts in addition to the two Saturdays he always works. So I think there will be only two weekend days next month where one of us isn't working. This doesn't lend itself to a devil-may-care, fancy-free museum-visiting lifestyle.
I realized last week that it's been a year since we moved to Philadelphia. Last year at this time, we were sitting in a new house, surrounded by half-unpacked boxes. And this year, we're, um, sitting in a new house, surrounded by half-unpacked boxes. Look how far we've come! If I move next December though, it will only be at gunpoint, so we will have made progress. And there certainly are signs that we've acclimated - we own Wawa travel mugs, we refer to Roosevelt Boulevard as "The Boulevard" and don't worry for a second that people won't understand us, we know to expect that as soon as the light turns green, someone will whip around and make a left turn in front of oncoming traffic. We haven't started saying "youse" yet though, so we haven't gone completely native.
We may have been here for a year, but most of our thoughts lately are plotting how often we can leave. Currently, our only firm vacation plans for the year are working at Acen again after a two-year absence. The current plan is to drive out to Michigan, drop K off toget thoroughly spoilerspend the weekend with her grandparents, drive down to Chicago for the convention, drive back to Michigan to pick up our spawn and drive home. It occasionally seems a bit masochistic of us to use a large amount of vacation time and drive 1000 miles for the privilege of working in the volunteering salt mines of an anime convention, but we've really missed it. And more importantly, all of our friends that will be there.
Other potential trips: I have a cousin getting married in Colorado this year, so my mother would like to go to the wedding and has suggested that K, my brother and I come along. We had discussed spreading Dad's ashes in Colorado, so this would be our opportunity. But we don't know when the wedding is yet, so that's largely up in the air. The other completely up in the air possibility is that my library is closed Easter weekend and B has Good Friday off (way to go with the separation of church and state, city of Philadelphia!). Since I've already established that we won't have another weekend off together until the end of time, let alone a long weekend, I absolutely refuse to stay home and do nothing. Boston is a definite possibility, or even just Connecticut to visit my aunt and uncle. Or even just drive over the bridge to scenic New Jersey. Just so long as we don't waste the opportunity, dammit.
Every time we venture into Center City, we keep saying we need to do it more, that we live in a big city with lots of stuff to do and we need to take advantage of it. Then we go back home and get caught up in our routine for another couple months. In our defense, it's really hard these days to make plans when both of us work alternating days on the weekends. January has been pretty easy in that regard, but next month B has a couple Sunday shifts in addition to the two Saturdays he always works. So I think there will be only two weekend days next month where one of us isn't working. This doesn't lend itself to a devil-may-care, fancy-free museum-visiting lifestyle.
I realized last week that it's been a year since we moved to Philadelphia. Last year at this time, we were sitting in a new house, surrounded by half-unpacked boxes. And this year, we're, um, sitting in a new house, surrounded by half-unpacked boxes. Look how far we've come! If I move next December though, it will only be at gunpoint, so we will have made progress. And there certainly are signs that we've acclimated - we own Wawa travel mugs, we refer to Roosevelt Boulevard as "The Boulevard" and don't worry for a second that people won't understand us, we know to expect that as soon as the light turns green, someone will whip around and make a left turn in front of oncoming traffic. We haven't started saying "youse" yet though, so we haven't gone completely native.
We may have been here for a year, but most of our thoughts lately are plotting how often we can leave. Currently, our only firm vacation plans for the year are working at Acen again after a two-year absence. The current plan is to drive out to Michigan, drop K off to
Other potential trips: I have a cousin getting married in Colorado this year, so my mother would like to go to the wedding and has suggested that K, my brother and I come along. We had discussed spreading Dad's ashes in Colorado, so this would be our opportunity. But we don't know when the wedding is yet, so that's largely up in the air. The other completely up in the air possibility is that my library is closed Easter weekend and B has Good Friday off (way to go with the separation of church and state, city of Philadelphia!). Since I've already established that we won't have another weekend off together until the end of time, let alone a long weekend, I absolutely refuse to stay home and do nothing. Boston is a definite possibility, or even just Connecticut to visit my aunt and uncle. Or even just drive over the bridge to scenic New Jersey. Just so long as we don't waste the opportunity, dammit.
Thursday, November 22, 2007
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