hi there!  well, i'm spending more and more of my "blogging" energy over at facebook.  it seems that the ability to just fire off little bits of updates is easier.  i have so little time and so i spend most of it lurking and occasionally spewing something.

life is great today.  i had a rough spot back there for a while, but as per usual each time it happens josh and i figure something out to make life a little easier and it indeed gets a little easier.  the goal for now is to get life to the point where a crappy week doesn't set me back months.  how to stay on top of things is a constant struggle.

i hired a lovely babysitter who came today for the first time and unbelievably my kitchen floor managed to get scrubbed and my accounting for bella managed to get up to date and some laundry managed to get done.  it's unreal the amount of things i can do in 3 child-free hours.  it used to take me weeks to do the same amount of stuff.

anywho, life is spinning and we're doing quite well.  i'm alive and clara continues to be fun and beautiful and brilliant! 

had the bestest birthday ever, or, well, um, it was really great.   I have no doubt the last few hours will be awesome as well.  spent the morning (after waffles & coffee!) sorting and folding all of clara's old clothes by size and putting them all away for future munchkins and no, i'm not pregnant, or at least, not yet, or i don't know if i am.  but her closet has been driving me insane recently and with the change of seasons i needed to get in there and put away the too small stuff and the too warm things.  her room is so clean it's fantastic.  i did a massive amount of laundry, which seems like not the thing to do on your birthday but it's what i felt like doing, so i did it, and frankly, it was nice.  and it will be nice to wake up on the saddest day of the year and have all of my clothes all sparkly clean and organized.... and i changed the sheets so i will have nice clean sheets tonight.  sigh.  i love clean sheets.

clara and i went to the library kid's program again, trying to improve on our experience from last time.  i was really nervous actually that it was going to ruin my whole b-day, because the last time we went, with the tantrums and then the refusing to nap and the horrid KFC not understanding my order 3 times and ending up with mayo on my chicken, well, i didn't want that to happen again.  but i vaguely remembered all the parent's hauling out snacks right before story time (it's set up as 1hr play like maniacs, clean up toys, then 15 minutes of singing/book reading.) and then there is the story time.  well, last time we got to story time and clara went all, 'fuck you, i'm not sitting quietly in a circle!" and we had to make a less than graceful exit.  this time, i brought snacks, drinks, and emergency m&m's and it worked!  we stayed for the whole thing and she climbed the stairs out of the library like a big girl and we had the bestest time.  she took a 2 hour nap, while i continued operation organize and then we played more and made dinner.

then we went to the maul for girly time, we got milkshakes and went to the smell good store (lush) and got smell good things and then we went to crate & barrel to get replacement goldfishy glasses for the goldfishy glass that i sadly broke last year and this awesome picnic bento box that we'll start using as soon as ms. thing starts to like real lunch.  very exciting.  now she's sleeping.

but what a day.  there was this moment where i was sitting in the food court at the maul and clara was sitting next to me at the table and we were sharing our milkshake and i was so happy to be there with her and i could almost feel the joy from the hopefully dozens and dozens of birthdays we get to spend together.  it was the best present ever.

and here is josh with my riesling!  yay birthday!

i have so little time these days to even catch up on lj, let alone post.  but since i'm supposed to be working i figured i'd waste some of my time on the internet.  not that writing to you is ever a waste, tastey readers, but you all know what i mean.

anyway.  life has been remarkably OK recently.  considering.  clara has cut 6 teeth in the past, what, 5 weeks?  oy.  operation fatten up my daughter has worked well even though she had another little growth spurt.  turns out ice cream sammiches are consistently her favorite food and she can put one away.  she's also been eating her weight in avacados recently which is the healthier alternative to the fatty-diet plan.  she actually looks like a slightly more rounded version of herself, though she is still quite slim.  i notice it mostly in her face.  hopefully at her next appointment she will be back on her curve and life will be fine.  i'm working on getting her to sleep on her own (again) and possible working in some minor night weaning (again again) but this time she seems to be responding well to the falling asleep on her own thing.  tonight being the exception where she fell asleep while nursing, but we had a big day. 

we've been meeting mondays to hang out with a mom and kiddo down the street.  Max is 3 mos older than clara and painfully, PAINFULLY! shy and attached to his mom.  we thought it might have been that we met at our house last week, but this week at his own house he was still sitting in his mom's lap most of the time while clara was off exploring their exciting different toys.  girl loves cars, need to get her a car toy or two.  you just don't get those kinds of things when you have girl children.  we get so many dolls and soft friends, no awesome bats and balls and trucks!

anyway, she's talking a lot now.  i can't remember all of the words that she uses and we're teaching her signs for things still and having great success.  she's very much into communicating and it's really rewarding.  i'm finding parenting her so much easier because she easily understands 90% of what I say and she responds to me.  we can do things together and have "conversations" about it.  it's good.

in non-clara news, the store is going well.  we've had some minor drama about the storeroom but it looks like it's all resolved and that's good.  sales have fallen off a little, i guess we're finally seeing some of the effects of the down turn.  essentially i just think that spring/summer is going to come a little sooner than before.  we're still doing well enough, and that's good. 

josh is doing well, he just had his birthday and he's still doing all his martial arts training.  things have calmed down with clara enough that he's trying to go 3x a week every other week.  so good for him.  i'm trying to get back into walking outside.  i've noticed a real difference in clara's temperment when we get to the park as close to once a day as possible.  so we try to get to the big park at the end of blackstone blvd which is a longer walk.  today i went down the blvd a mile first and then turned back and we hit the park.  i'm hoping that i can make either that or a long wlak on the blvd in the morning before work and a trip to the little park after work a regularity.  it's all part of the plan of getting myself back into some semblance of shape (excluding my serious momma guns i've got from lugging clara around all the time) cause we've decided to start trying to spawn again next month.  so i'm spending some serious energy trying to remember my vitamins, drink loads of water, cut down on my caffeine intake and get some exercise.  i was in pretty good shape when i got pregnant with clara and i'm sure that's part of why pregnancy was largely easy for me.  so i'm hoping to find a way to make exercise work in my schedule before i get knocked up.  it's funny how josh and i respond so differently to the decision to start trying to get pregnant.  for him it's mostly a distant getting used to the idea of having another baby and at some point just forgetting to use birth control but for me i feel as if i need to prepare my body physically.  the emotional preparation for another baby i've started months ago and i'm sure that will come easily while i'm pregnant, but the physical preparation is equally important to me.  i have to remember that i have to be pregnant and care for miss thing so i need to be prepared. 

i've been feeling loads better and sleeping loads better (the few hours a night where i get to sleep solidly i do sleep solidly and i'm having a much easier time falling alseep) so i know that all of this is good for me as well as any future wee-bit that comes along.  nice to finally take care of myself, or at least to have the energy to do it.  clara is getting so much more self sufficient and helpful that it's much easier.

anyway, i really need to get to work.  later! 

clara and i are sick.  oddly enough, i'm handling it better than she is.  usually i'm the worst, most mopey person when i'm sick but i'm hanging in there.  poor girl is trying to birth two more molars and be sick at the same time.  she has the worst cough and the runny nose.  tomorrow we're supposed to get shots but i don't think that's going to happen, she's been running a fever off and on since thursday night.  hopefully she'll push out a tooth and that will bring her some relief.  we've been giving her more tylenol than we feel comfortable with because she's obviously in so much pain.  poor munchkin.

other than that, my weekend was full of organizing and beer.  josh and i got a new bookcase thing to store all of my knitting accoutrement because it turns out they don't have a place otherwise and it has been annoying us both.  now everything is beautiful and organized and we loves it.  ever present in my mind is this wacky idea that we're going to try to knock me up again sometime this year and i need to streamline the house even more if i'm going to have to clean it with two kids running around (or alternatively one tiny child strapped to me and another one running around)  so much tossing and cleaning and making sure everything has a place so we can theoretically put it in it's place when we get the chance.

dude i just did an inventory of my freezer.  i'm insane.  oh well, sometimes when you're sick odd tasks like that are pleasing because you can't do much else.

just heard a squeak from the living room and clara had sat up in her sleep, and looked around and then laid back down.  that girl is so sick.  poor munchkin. 

well i was supposed to be working and paying bills so off i go.

today i got into the dumbest car accident in the universe.  me ->  open car door, go oh crap a tow truck, oh i have room, oh wait i have not enough room.  crunch.  but the guy was going about 1/2 a mile an hour and it bent my door a weeeeee bit.  of course we had to do the insurance thing and the cop thing and people were waiting for me to open a 1/2 hour early even though i told them i was in an accident and i needed to deal with it and then i could open, but oh good lord the inconvenience of me not being open a 1/2 hour early and being there and taunting them with my ability to go and look at yarn while they had to go get coffee for 1/2 hour.  for shame.

i think i dented the guys nut covers on his wheel, because that's all that hit my car.  who knows, maybe they'll be able to bend my door back and touch up the paint so it won't rust.  it's just annoying and the deductible would have been much more nicely spent on, say, my new fridge.  sigh.

also, clara is getting a molar.  i saw it this morning while she was screaming her head off.  which is the only reason why i would see it because it's farther back than i was thinking and also on the top, not the bottom which is where i thought it was.  so on the way home trip to the cvs to get the tastey tastey tylenol, girl loves that stuff, it's like the crack.  anyway.

so _that's_ why she hasn't  been doing so well at the night time thing recently.  i mean, sheesh.  we've gotten to the point where she gets that tantrums don't work.  last night she wanted to ramp up into one at 12:30 and i just told her that it didn't work and she grumbled but didn't escalate into the full blown tantrum.  thank god that parenting thing occasionally works...  i've been happy that even though she still wakes up 2-3 times a night she's been going to sleep easier not only when she wakes up in the middle of the night but also at the beginning of the night which had been a rough time.  when she was happy she would take at least an hour to settle and then when she was upset it would, well, take at least an hour to settle... you can uh, see that was uh, fun.  anyway, she'd been going to sleep really easy and even screaming less during naps, which was so nice.  anywho, the last couple of nights we were back to the hours of coddling to get her to sleep and then difficulty at night.

tonight just one tantrum after the bath cause, well, today just sucked, and she was not so happy.  but we had a cracker, we had some milkies and snoooooooore.  phew.  hopefully tonight will go smoothly.  hopefully.

well, i only logged on to work up the pattern for this bib i'm making.  a mild distraction from my sock binge.

la la la, i should my beer.  which reminds me i made beer this weekend!!!!!  yay!  irish stout.  our beer store changed ownership and they have cleaned it up a lot and opened up a wall which makes it a lot bigger.  they are super hard core hippies, but they had the kits we've used before and had success with, so yay. they are going to do tastings which is cool.  yay beer.  this time went a lot better, no boiling over.  it smells awesome and i've been cooking a lot so it's been warm in the kitchen, go fermentation!

anyway, focus, bib.

later.

i'm not saying that you have solved all of my problems in life... because it's only day two of the miracle of your existance (and lots of things make clara super happy for three days, the real test, i'm afraid will be thursday) but you have made the past two days so awesome as to be remarkable.

i love you drinkable yogurt.  i'll be making you myself in bulk instead of buying you in your adorable tiny containers if after thursday you still work.

in one of my worst, 'no, really?' moments of parenting i think clara has just been really freakin' hungry and doesn't want to slow down enough to eat (much like not wanting to slow down enough to, er, sleep) and this has been causing some of her more nasty tantrums.  since my doctor was completely un-helpful in the nutrition for kids thing i started to do some research and figured out that uh, she really couldn't possibly be getting enough calories.  i've made the little hamsters in my brain run faster for a while and picked up a ton of toddler friendly high-calorie (high fat/protein) snacks and discovered the joy of my life right now, whole milk yo'baby drinkable yogurt (which as i said i'll be making with whole milk, whole milk yogurt and some frozen fruits cause that shit is speeeeeeeendy) anyway, yesterday clara sucked down a 6oz bottle in about 8 minutes, and then went to town on the next one (hence the bulk necessity, uh, yeah) and seemed perfectly happy to drink another one thinned out with whole milk today.  oh yeah.  also made the point of offering food to her in tiny bites every 10 minutes or so all day and wow...she has been like the best version of herself for the past 36 hours, I can't even begin to tell you.  she was having so much fun at work she threw a tantrum when we left.  (she apparently likes yarn as much as her mama cause boy when i took that ball of teal plush away from her the world ended... ENDED i tell you!) whoa.  she went to sleep in all of 10 minutes tonight.  seriously, i'm in freakin' heaven.  HEAVEN!  have i died?  no really, have i?  cause this couldn't possibly be real! 

then made her her favorite dinner (this one particular shape of pasta and bolognese, she is apparently my child;) and she ate what the box considers a serving... for adults.  and the sleep, the sweet blissful sleep.

woke up last night twice, 11:30 and then 4 and was very hungry at 4 and didn't sleep very well until i got up and nursed her again at 6.  if i can get her used to fasting more at night and eating like a real human baby during the day i may have the miracle child cause we had the BEST day ever today.  we were having so much fun i was actually a little sad she went to sleep so early.  i wanted to read more stories and giggle!  we'll see how the rest of tonight goes, but honestly i'm on such a high.

wow, some days you actually question your decision to have kids because it's so HARD and then other days, like today just make you so unbelievably glad you did.  thank you, thank you, drinkable yogurt.  if nothing else i just had the best day ever and i'm sure you're responsible for it.  now i'm going to go knit, drink a beer and read my lincoln.  mmmm tastey tastey lincoln.

well, chrannukah was lovely, we had a nice time in maine taking advantage of the nearness of very enthusiastic grandparents (ahhh, it finally kicks in, my desire to have time for myself and their desire to steal my child)

anyway, it was basically a clusterfuck of toys with my niece at my mom's.  holy shit if that was holding back in the presents department we're going to have to have a serious chat about next year.  honestly, how much crap does a 1yr old really need?  especially when the tupperware that she got me is to date clara's 2nd favorite toy from the whole experience.  oy. also, need to find way to get little girls naps when hanging out with cousin.  wow that night was insanely bad.  anyway.  everything else was just lovely.

josh and i got soft with the sleeping in every morning and have a really hard time adjusting to normal life again.  while it's lovely to be home, man was sleeping in so deeply nice.

i normally don't do new year's resolutions and this year will be no different.  i have things i'd like to accomplish, ie, get pregnant sometime, see my brother get hitched, drink beer.  it has nothing to do with it being january.  i'm just a goal oriented person in general.  i am hoping to get my ass back into running because in the 2nd instance of the universe speaking directly to me through the mail i randomly have a subscription to runner's world coming to our address under a name that is not the person who lived here for the 8 years before us and no one who lives here now.  bizarre.  i doubt they would send a freebie to a person who subscribed 15 years ago, but it is theoretically possible.  (for josh: "it's not possible") not like it was really the universe speaking to me the first time, then it was my dead grandpa, but that's a different story entirely.

anyway.  i've stopped weaning clara.  it was a near total failure.  i'm hoping to keep up the no nursing at work thing, because i was getting used to not showing my tits to everyone.  esp. the creepy but reliable guys who wash the windows. i think i've decided it's really a matter of expectation.  like with her sleeping if i just change my expectation from her sleeping through the night like a happy sleepy baby to her getting up at least 2 times a night because that's just how she rolls it is just easier.  josh and i have had some discussions about how we can make that work in our life so we are both getting enough sleep to function. it is making it easier to just do what she needs to sleep instead of trying to make her conform to some sort of modern ideal of how much children/people are supposed to (or even, gads, "capable of")sleep.  i mean for fuck's sake, i'm a horrible sleeper, it takes an act of congress to get me to fall asleep, if you are near me snoring i will never be able to sleep and i'll end up weeping in desparation and i regularly wake up _a lot_ at night, i mean, easily 3-4 times a night.  the times i've slept through the night are easily countable on my tiny appendages (and therefore memorable) and come after days where i've had extreme physical effort, like hiking all day with a 30 lb pack on my back, or for instance, giving birth earlier in the week but if you're snoring next to me and you wake me up i still won't be able to get back to sleep.  i mean, bad smells wake me up, so everytime mr. skunky goes on a rampage in the neighborhood (yay spring) i'm up.  a lot.  with all that background, why on earth should i assume that just because a child of clara's age is capable of sleeping through the night that she will?  i mean geez. 

anyway, somehow not expecting her to sleep through the night, and therefore nursing her back to sleep when she wakes up has made our daytimes a little easier.  she knows what to expect at night (and it's a pleasant expectation) and she's not super clingy and boob demandy all day.  this makes me resent nursing less and it makes it even easier to nurse her at night like she needs.  it's like an upward spiral instead of the downward one i was on previously.  two things i must admit about clara, 1) she is not going to sleep well, like, ever 2) she is a boob-hound, she will not spontaneously wean herself at 15 months because she's bored with it, it's her favorite thing ever, and that's not going to change anytime soon.

i must prepare for tandem nursing our next because as i've discussed with josh, bringing a new child into our house and then telling clara that the new baby gets all the milk will make her figure out how to put the new baby in the oven and press "clean"  i told josh last night that i expect to be lactating for a long long time.  that i don't love nursing doesn't change the fact that clara really, really, i mean, really does.

so i get to drink more guinness.  yay, beer.  beer makes milk.  mmmm, beer milk.

anywho, back to my knitting. and uh, happy new year and stuff.

well, hmmmm.  today i had to work all day long with the peanut and i was DREADING it.  i was having flashbacks to the times when we used to close the shop (before i knew that was a bad idea) and she would freak out at the end of the day.  so i overprepared, i had several changes of clothes, enough diapers for a daycare, lots of food, lots of juice, the stroller, pjs, oy, lots of toys.  clara did great, she barely freaked out, hell, she often freaks out more just during a normal day.  we had a great time!  we had lunch and dinner there, and then i changed her into her pjs and she fell asleep on the car ride home and then went right down when we got home.  perfect!

had some annoying customers and honestly i had more issues working the whole day than clara did!  yikes.  i'm just not used to being at work for so long.  oh well. 

josh and i have started the holiday gift giving season, which we stretch way way out.  i have to say that he's already gotten me something so sweet that the rest of the presents are just gravy.  i have to do some serious research to find him the awesome things. 

hm.  i can't put a thought together to save my life.  i've been obsessed with tim gunn's guide to style and i've given away over half of my clothes.  i'm tired of looking 12.  i'm actually tired of looking like a college student.  part of it is being young looking in the face but part of it is dressing like a slob, or at least caring less about how i look.  so now i'm caring and it's taking me longer to get ready in the morning but i do feel a bit better about myself.  which is nice.  i'm still in the search for good pants.  i have some coming from an internet order, and i hope they are awesome.  they are coming with the boots that will hopefully allow me to wear my many many skirts.  joy.  it's all really boring.  but it's part of me trying to take care of myself.  i find it way to easy to martyr myself in the name of family but i'm trying very hard to put myself at least on the list of people that i'm taking care of. 

i've been showering and brushing my teeth, which if i'm honest were things i had a hard time doing.  i have to make a concerted effort to CLEAN myself.  i mean dood.  so cleaning, dressing like a grown up... these are good things.  respecting myself enough to take care of myself.  i'm also taking sunday mornings off to go and do work for the biz and it's making my life so much nicer.  i've settled on a coffee shop that has the tastey coffee, i had an awesome pesto breakfast sammich on sunday and they have wireless.  i sit and do my accounting and theoretically when i get more of the backlog taken care of i'll be able to work on my professional blog, my biz website and my ravelry presence.  it's good.  i listen to some podcasts.  i'm in love with sundays.

clara has been sleeping a bit better since she's recovered from cold and that is making mommy very very happy, and well, more tolerant and fun.  she still wakes up at least once in the middle of the night but i've gotten some good sleep recently (6 hrs straight on saturday night, yay!) so oh yeah, i'm feeling pretty good.

well, i have to go and do some research for josh's holiday gifts and i'm going to drink a beer and "watch" some rachel maddow.

i swear i'll take my $0.99 reusable shopping bag and throttle them.

or, how my obsession with food shopping has caused me to understand the weird weird truth: "real food is actually cheaper at whole foods"

So recently, i've been spending a lot of time thinking about how much money we spend on stuff and where and is it necessary and how can we maintain the same level of comfort while perhaps shaving a few pennies off the monthly bills.  i'm assuming a lot of folks i know are doing the same sort of things because of the whole shitty economy, winter coming up, various states of employment and what not.

well, i'm an extreme sort of person when it comes to these things and i also have only 1 braincell to rub around inside my skull these days so instead of trying to keep everything in my head i started this nifty excel spreadsheet.  I spent some time every weekend planning out our weeks meals, trying to re-use leftovers or at least use them as lunches, y'know trying to stretch our food dollars while still eating like foodies, or at least middle class foodies (ie no truffle oil and saffron...)  so i type up all of the food shopping receipts and break up the items into different categories, i break down our per meal cost per day and i have an average.  it's actually pretty cool. 

after some discussions with josh it occured to me that i may want to try shopping at various stores (i exclusively shop for food at whole foods during the week with a roughly monthly/6 weekly trip to sam's club for various things like coffee (starbucks free trade) some meats, avacados are super cheap there, paper towels and zippie bags, etc.  i don't buy chicken anywhere but the whole foods because i know just enough about how horribly chickens are treated and i can't tolerate buying purdue.  i know that if i did a little research, i wouldn't be able to eat other meats from sam's club, but um, i'm purposefully not doing that.

anyway, this week i was perusing the weekly circulars for the various stores around here, shaw's, stop 'n shop, and i looked up eastside marketplace online, and i checked out whole foods (unbeknownst to josh and i'm sure some other folks, they actually do have weekly sales... anyway)  today i decided to see what it was like shopping for the sales at lots of places, trying to get the things we need for as little as possible.  i popped myself in the car around 10am, hit the trip recorder on my odometer and went first to shaw's in attleboro. 

there are many things i find annoying about shaw's.  people look at you like you're crazy for having your own bags, the self checkout doesn't let you use them because it can't tolerate the extra weight on the little weigher thing and it only lets you skip bagging so many items.  i needed the helper person 3 times, it was annoying.  i bought the stuff i came for on sale and then i went and looked at 3 items that we buy every week, stonyfield farms yogurt in the large container, stonyfield farms yobaby (which is crack for clara) and 2lb bags of onions.  for shaw's the price was insane!  on sale 2lbs of onions in a bag was 1.50 it's normally $2.00, the large yogurt was 4.79, and clara's yogurt was 4.69.  at the WF, the same items are 1.29 (onions) 3.79 (large yogurt), and 3.69 or 3.79 depending on whether we get the yogurt with the cereal or not.  when i got through the checkout i had spent way more than i had anticipated and i was annnnnnooooooooooooooyyyyyed.  actually, i felt a little ill, but i kept on. 

the next stop on my list was east side market place, so off i go there for ground lamb (i got a great recipe for stuffed eggplant from a turkish woman who comes to my open knit) apples, and milk (which was 0.10 less on sale than WF normally)  checked out my "staples" 2lbs of onions 1.49, large yogurt 4.49, clara yogurt 4.49.  insane!  also, the aisles there are so narror that two carts and one browser can't get through at once and again with the crazy concept of bringing your bags. 

so i ended up at the whole foods on butler to pick up the things i needed there, boneless skinless chicken on sale, the aforementioned yogurts, and something else, i forget.  the end result of my 1.5 hour shopping trip is 14 miles on my car, way way more money spent than I would have believed and i had so many lists that i ended up forgetting to get eggplants (for the turkish recipe), tomatoes and bananas for clara.

so i ended up having to go back to the WF (this time the one i normally go to on N. Main) for the things i forgot and also for guinness, because after all that, i need beer!

i am perplexed as to why people think WF is so much more expensive than other grocery stores.  perhaps they are buying cheetos?  perhaps they aren't trying to shop natural/organic?  Perhaps everything is so beautiful that you buy way more than you should and you end up spending more money because of it?  i always go with a list, i shop my list and i leave.  if i end up straying from my list, yes, it is possible to spend way way too much money.  there are things i definitely don't get there, like paper towels and toilet paper, cause that stuff is insanely expensive.  but if you are going for just food, things that you have to cook for yourself, raw ingredients, you are far better off going to my whole foods than my shaw's, or my eastside marketplace.  I feel vindicated in many ways for my insistence on shopping there because the food is better now i know it's cheaper too.

But i'm curious, why is it so much cheaper there for the things that I eat?  how come they can charge 1.29 for a 2lb bag of onions and shaw's can't?  is it their commitment to buying local as much as possible, does it cut down on delivery cost and spoilage?  do they just make so much money off of hippie chips that they can justify charging less of a margin on "real" food?  and don't even get me started on buying their bulk foods!!! i mean their oatmeal is so cheap! and it's frankly better than their packaged variety, it tastes so much better.

so while it was in some ways a failed experiment in that i spent more than i would have had i just gone to the WF in the first place, at least now i know that when i go and shop there I am actually getting a pretty good deal, especially on things we can't live without.  and i don't get the comments from josh about how expensive it is.  yay.

so tired.  since josh got up with clara the night before last and he let me sleep in yesterday, today was my day to get up early.

uuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuugh.  the pean (short for peanut) got up at 3:30. nursed, went back down for an hour, woke up soaking wet at 4:30 so changed her clothes and diap and then she proceeded to nurse and kick me and try to crawl away with my nipple in her mouth for an hour and a half, gave up at 6 and got up with her, folded laundry, did some dishes, looked at the market circulars, drank some coffee.  at 7:15 passed her off to josh and took a shower which was apparently my big mistake of the day.  before the shower i was doing great, after the shower all i can think of is crawling into a ball and contemplating if i can fit under the couch to hide for a nap.  insert more coffee, clara is sleeping off a nap/walk right now and i'm hoping the intar-web will make me more alert.  the verdict: not really helping.  we'll see if icanhaz haz anything good today, or maybe the goggies will help me stay awake.  sadly i have more laundry i could be folding and more dishes i could be moving around (clean to shelves, dirty to dishwasher) but i think the noise will make clara awake again and i just need to stare at the walls.

there are days where being the mom is just exhausting.  everyone wants something from you and more often than not your boob is involved.  the quiet moments where no one is asking anything of you are too few these days.  far too few.  i wish that i could enjoy those moments that i do have instead of heaping on so much guilt for not tackling things on my to do list.

sigh, part of the problem with being the mom is that it's just so easy to martyr yourself for your family.  it's not always the folks asking things of you but you asking too much of yourself or not asking for help when you need it.  i tend to just go and go and go and then go splat and freak out on josh.  sigh.  balance, your doin' it wrong!

anyway, i hear wriggles, which means i can go do dishes and get ready to go to work.
blorgh.

so happy that obama won.  stayed up to watch the speeches.  so tired.  slept through josh getting up for clara last night!  i think that's happened once. 

anyway, phew.

totally freaking out about the election.  sigh.  want to know what happens, but i only want one result!  aaaaaaack!  i'm just uploading more clara photos and watching tivo'd rachel maddow (that i've already seen, but her paranoia, i find it comforting)

clara was such a trooper today.  it was her 1 year well visit at the silly doctor.  she had to have 4 vaccines and then we decided to do the lead test as well, but uh, we thought it was a finger prick but it turned out to be 2 (!) vials of blood.  she did so amazingly well.  hell, she did better than I would have under the same circumstances.  because i tend to get dizzy when i think about needles and well, clara getting shots, josh has to come to the dr for the vaccine visits.  he held her while she was getting her blood drawn.  i ended up being so concerned about how she was doing and trying to help her get through the blood draw that i came into the room and tried peekaboo (which worked oddly well, and reminded me a bit of hikaru at the vet playing with the pen with the thermometer up her butt... anywho) and she managed to stay relatively calm.  she was crying but not struggling too much.  such a good girl!  I managed not to get dizzy and fall over, so go mommy! 

so, after the bad part of the day we tried to improve things, she took a little nap then we had some tastey lunch and then we spent a looooooooooooong time at the park playing, swinging, sliding, digging in the dirt.... and then we got a "we're awesome" (cause i got my flu shot today too!) dutch chocolate milkshake at 3 sisters (aka what used to be maximillian's) then home for more fun, and she was wiped from all the excitement so early dinner, early bubble bath (check the flickr site for adorable photos of her 1st bubble bath) then milkies and sleep.  so now i'm chillin' uploadin', and freakin' about the election.

i was struck tonight as i did my usual rock my adorable daughter to sleep thing how unreal it is how much i love her.  seriously, i honestly didn't realize my capacity to love another creature, or anything on this earth, was so huge.  she is just the most amazing thing in my life and i can't believe how freakin' lucky i am to have her and josh.  to have them as my family is to fulfill my own potential for joy and love.  i have to remember how blessed i am. 

but lest someone actually think i'm uh, not of this opinion, let it be known:

Copy this sentence into your LiveJournal if you're in a heterosexual marriage, and you don't want it "protected" by the bigots who think that gay marriage hurts it somehow.

(or have been or will be in a heterosexual marriage)

seriously, i'd love it if all the gay folks in the world could get married and not be harrassed.  i think the whole anti-gay folks movement is the most bizarre thing ever.  honestly, if i know you i probably don't want to think about you having sex, with. anyone.  so who you get extra-smiley with is really of no concern to me.  and if you'd like to exchange rings, have some cake, make/adopt/otherwise obtain a kid, or not, co-habitate, whatever, that's lovely.  i'm a big fan of cake.  i'm a bigger fan of pie, but that's another conversation altogether. (specifically peach pie, or apple, and sometimes, rarely, pumpkin, if there's whipped cream...)

in other news, there are more adorably clara pics up at the flickr site, which i've linked before, and hasn't changed.  she just gets cuter every day.  i got her this adorable burgundy velveteen coat that is so quintessential new england and i took her picture wearing it in front of our shiny new Obama/Biden lawn sign.

i honestly can't believe i put up a lawn sign.  but there you go.

i'm supposed to be making a katamari princess hat for clara for her halloween costume and instead i'm obsessed with finishing projects that i started ages ago, including this sock that i started just after she was born.  my brain is finally almost functional enough to understand what the heck i'm supposed to be doing.  it's from this awesome book that freakin' blows my mind.  normally i can sit down and knit a sock without actually thinking, cause uh, i knit a LOT of socks and i've written a few sock patterns and i can make it up on the fly.  but this lady really smokes some excellent something and has turned the whole sock knitting thing completely sideways (not actually sideways socks,those exist as well, but metaphorically, she turns the whole concept of sock construction on it's head)  whoa.  so i tried knitting this pair of beautiful socks and my brain exploded and i fucked it up royally, and then about 6 months ago, i tore out most of that first sock and re-knit it and did a better job and cast on and knit, oh, 3 rows of the next sock and then the brain fell out again and now i'm working on it again.  damn, if i don't find that book so freakin' inspirational!  oooooooooooooh god, i want to knit more from it, and maybe i can find a way of making my soon to be sister-in-law's x-mas socks from there.  mmmmmmm.  but really i'm supposed to be making this: http://itchystitchy.blogspot.com/2008/08/fo-and-pattern-katamari-damacy-prince.html except i'm going to make it pink like this: http://epii.info/anime/2006%20Fanime/Katamari%20Damacy.jpg so clara can be adorable and pass out the candies and also um, get us into this super hip party we're going to...

so, yeah.  instead i make the socks.  but they are so pretty!!!!!

seriously, if obama doesn't win i'm going to be so crying big salty tears.  oh, man, he just has to win!!! daaaaaaaaaaamn.  i'm getting worried about this stupid election.  

la la.  i really must go to sleep now, clara will be up soon wanting the boooobies.  so starting to re-night wean that girl next week.  sigh. 

my little girl turned 1 yesterday, and it was a great day.  thank you to everyone who came to celebrate!  I know clara had an awesome time and so did her parents.  It was a good party for the wee ones and a good party for the grown-ups, who could ask for more!

i still can't believe she's been on this planet for a whole year.  i'm so glad it's over because i love the person she has become and it is so much more fun now than it was a year ago!

unbelievable, that was then:



this is now:


i love you little girl!  here's to an even more awesome second year!

while normally i would love to have josh around, and in fact i was really sad he went to work today.... it is really nice to have a day to get things almost back in "order" in the house.  there is so much laundry, cleaning, cooking, shoping, la la la that needs doing in my world and when josh is here i don't want to do it i just want to hang out with him and see how hard we can make clara laugh.

so far the dishes are cleaning (there must be at least one more load)
clothes are drying (after this momentary lapse in productivity there will be more hauled from the upstairs and washed)
food for the week purchased
roasted veggies for soup are chopped, peeled and roasting (man i am super inspired by this post at my friend's vegan blog... oh, cooking for the week would be sooooooooooooooo satisfying and i had never thought of treating ginger like that, what a good idea, and crap i forgot to get ginger for my soup.  oh well, i can have josh pick some up on the way home from work...)
now i must clean some floors, the jade plant is back inside (it was 36F when i woke got up this morning!) and monkey kitty likes to pull the leaves off of the plant and clara was all, 'is this a cracker? yay! i found a cracker!' this morning.  uh, i don't think jade is all that poisonous and uh, i'm pretty sure she just licked it.  so yay.  parent of the year!  me!

in other news, i'm getting really excited for clara's birthday this weekend.  in no small part because she's getting really really good at walking and i think she's going to have an insanely good time running around with the apple trees and picking up apples and putting them in baskets.  also, in no small part because it's actually seasonably cold out and she's wearing all these sweaters that i or others have knit for her and she looks adorable in layers.  she's already opened with glee her first birthday present.  she had a problem with the tape and once that was removed just tore into it and was happy that there were books! books! books! inside.  she seemed quite sure that it was for her and this was an exciting thing, even though she hasn't seen anyone open wrapped presents since christmas, unless you count the boxes we get in the mail, and oh wait.... when i get boxes of yarn at the shop, oh, daily, and tear into them like a 5 year old with a room full of presents.  right, she totally gets it.

anyway, i've got to get back to my regularly scheduled stuff.  it's so nice to get my world in order! 

or is it 6?  i dunno.  last weekend was the we're replacing all of our windows weekend.  we actually didn't replace _all_ of them.  we decided to forego the basement windows, we didn't even order them, and the short wide one in the dining room that doesn't open that we decided to make into two casements stradling a fixed window... well, we decided to actually wait on that one until spring.  but all told we did 16 out of the 17.  and, yeah, that sounds like a lot of work, and it was, but the hardest part was where we were trying to not lead-poison clara because all of our old windows were covered in horrible horrible lead paint and pulling them out was going to (and did, actually) release a lot of paint chips and lead dust.  so when we removed the windows we had to move all of the furniture and stuff into one corner of the room and cover it in plastic and then vacuum (with the insane-o vacuum i just got for *gasp* $400, sigh) then move the plastic, then vacuum again, then mop, and uh, vacuum everything we could find, then put the furniture and stuff back where it belonged.

i swear our house is probably cleaner than it's ever been in the history of ever.

i'm so fucking tired. oy. 

the weekend before last was josh working the whole weekend... this weekend was the long weekend of construction.  i feel like i haven't seen josh in weeks, josh feels like he hasn't seen clara in forever... dude.  sigh.  i need a vacation, except not a vacation because vacations are stressful... i need to have time off and stay at home with josh and just walk up to 7 stars and drink cocoa and play at the park and hang at the zoo and roll around at home with clara and josh.  we're not going to get that for a while... but soon enough, soon enough. 

luckily today was an awesome day with the bean-pot, i don't actually know how she got that nickname, but whatever.  work was phenominal, i sold mucho $$ yay me, and then we went on a walk with elizabeth to the audobon in bristol and walked down to the water on their amazing boardwalk and it was the most beautiful day ever, then we came home and had some dinner with the girl, she's in love with strawberries right now, and then bath and instant sleep.  so it's 6:45 and i'm on the couch watching tivo'd america's next top model.  yay.  so needed to sit around today, so did not need a nurse-fest then struggle-fest then finally give up and sleep-fest tonight.  so thank you god of sleepies.  relief.

clara, speaking of sleep, has done pretty well recently.  she's getting a bit more consistent.  she has totally un-night-weaned herself, but luckily she's usually just waking up around 3, nursing and then going back to sleep for 1.5 - 2.5 hours.  this is reasonable for me in the long term, i usually get around 5 hours of sleep in one stretch and that's really the most i can ask for.  recently i've been waking up naturally just a few minutes before she does, which is weird... mind-meld!

also, clara turns 1 in, oh, a week and a half.  i'm beside myself, i can't believe it!  we're planning on apple-picking and then cupcakes.  i'm really excited, since i love my birthday so much, i've really tried to plan something fun for her.  she likes outside, she likes picking things up and putting them in baskets, she likes horses and she likes apples.  so i figure apple-picking is a winner.  and i'll get some ice cream sammiches to go with her cupcakes.  i'm going to make lemon pound cake cupcakes.  with a weeeeee-tle glaze on them.  and a candle.  i've already gotten the candles.  yay!  birthday!

anyway, i need to knit on something that is really making the store money.  woot. 

http://www.pbs.org/now/polls/poll-435.html

i'm guessing you have some idea of what I think the answer to that question is, but, i'm putting it out there any who.

clara is back to having sleep issues, this time it's different, but she's leaping ahead developmentally and physically and i have a feeling that has something to do with her sleep issues.  i have a feeling she's going to spend a lot of time sleeping with us in the near future.  oy.  luckily she's getting larger, so i feel less like i'm going to smoosh her when she sleeps in our bed.  but oy!  she's walking, like pretty well.  she still crawls when she wants to get somewhere but she's taking many more steps consecutively.  she's climbing onto chairs (her size chairs) and climbing up (not down yet) the stairs.  she's got a lot more words, today, key, okay, last weekend she started with doggy and more consistently daddy and mama.  pretty wild.  the climbing though, that's giving me daily heart attacks and is making our house way less clara-proofed than it was before.  i have to really start nailing and strapping stuff down.  yikes.

i'm still panicking about all that's going on and yet i've kinda decided it would be fun to have a birthday bbq for clara.  so if you are around the 26th of october which is a sunday, um, i think we'll have folks over for grilling and possibly for apple picking.  who knows, we'll come up with some details soon-ish.  since it's a clara event it would start mid-morning ish like 11 or so and go to the early afternoon.  anyway... i'll keep y'all posted.

lalala.  time to go bathe the little monkey!

just got back from DC.  it was a nice visit.  even though the drive home was difficult.  we went down to see my brother get promoted to chief petty officer.  it was a nice ceremony and it was quite amazing to see these military guys openly crying.  it's a really important promotion for my brother and it was awesome to be there.  while we were in DC we went to the museum of natural history, the air and space museum, we did some monuments and the national zoo, where of course i squee'd over the pandas along with my niece cailyn who brought along her panda stuffed toy to show him his relatives.  it was adorable.  of course both my mom and my dad were with us on the trip to the zoo and that was very very weird.  my dad is depressed, old and kinda passive aggressive, or well, not that exactly, he's really very eoyore about the whole thing and my mom is just clearly, "i'd very much rather if you wouldn't talk to me" less passive, uh, more aggressive.  it was very weird to have all of the "family" ie. my brothers and both my parents in one room.  that hasn't happened since james' wedding, and there were many more people around for that.

so week 3 of our 8 weeks of crazy is over, next we have josh's mom visiting at the end of next week, the next weekend we install our windows (yikes! i'm freaking out about that) with j's dad, then columbus day, then the symphony with j's dad and the walkabout, then clara's first b-day.  whoa.  i can't believe she's almost 1!  holy crap!  at least for the rest of our 8 weeks of crazy we're home, and that makes life a lot better.

i like being home. 

anywho, clara is still sleeping pretty well, which is nice, she still loves early morning which is a little ugh, but i'm slowly adjusting.  the store is fantastic, we are doing really well, as of yesterday sales are up 79% over the same time period last year, and 7.2% over the whole year.  bitches.  yay!

met my brother's fiance this weekend and she's fantastic, i couldn't ask for better for him, so yay. 

i can't think of anything else to say, life's pretty good, albeit crazy right now, but good.  i can't wait for november.  really, even more than usual.

la la la.

about sleep deprivation on such a scale is that you don't even really recognize that you're functioning on such a minimal level until you get a little sleep and you can start to use your brain again.  unbelieveable.  i can remember some things again... my short term memory is so much more functional than it was.  i have a new side project that i'm excited about, a little etsy store.  pretty sweet.

i've convinced myself that i'm not thinking about the whole, "when do we start trying to have another baby" dilemma until march.  the logic is, march is the absolute fucking earliest i would want to get pregnant again for reasons of child spacing (I want to be pregnant again now for reasons of hormones taking over my brain) and theoretically by then j's sister would have some sort of more solid ideas about the wedding besides, and i'm not exaggerating here, 'my best friend's ex-fiance's family has a villa in tuscany and we're going to try to use it for the wedding' and if she's planning it for an inconvenient time procreation-wise we'll re-evaluate.  i've literally been driving myself nutso about the whole thing because it's probably one of the more important things in my world and i'd kinda like to have a plan cause that's how i function best.  so even if the plan is we'll make our decision in march, at least it's a plan and that i can work with.

anyway, clara is still working on those 3 teeth, the two center top teeth are pretty wide and therefore are taking a while to cut, and the one on the side is just a slow mover.  last night we had to give her some tylenol, but it's inconsistent, she seems to need help every other night.  last night she had a really late nap and slept from 8:30 to 6, which was awesome because she's been getting up at 5am every day all bright and shiny and refusing to go back to bed.  so we're trying to push her bedtime a little later in the hopes that she'll eventually realize that 5am is a horrible hour, that nothing happy happens then and she should just sleep until 7.  which is not bloody likely, but heh, 6 would be manageable, 6:30 we could deal with even better.  in order for her to stay awake until 7:30 or 8, we have to give her a really late nap and by give her, i mean i have to toss her into her carraige and walk around the neighborhood until the yawns turn into nap.  it was a much shorter walk today than yesterday.  i'm hoping if i do this every day eventually she'll just get used to sleeping then and i'll be able to put her on a squishy nap nook, or even better, her crib.  but i will take a walk every afternoon if it means that i can sleep until 6. 

the store is doing so well in the new location.  it's really amazing.  sales are up, up up!  yay!

anyway, i have no faith that she'll actually sleep until 6 tomorrow since she only went to sleep at 7:45, so i'm going to bed.  now that my body remembers what sleep is, it actually wants me to get some of it.  mmmmmm. sleep.

night-weaning!  all the ap shit that i read is big on the night nursing, but, 3 nights is all it took to get her little stomach used to sleeping through and now i've gotten so much more sleep in the last week than i had gotten in oh, the last 7 months.  tonight on her way to dreamland she waved at me just before she fell asleep.

mind you, she slept from 6:30 to 5 am last night and she's cutting 3, count them, 3! teeth. 

yay, oh god yay.

trip to maine for j's sister's engagement party was nice.  unfortunately she's kinda planning her wedding when we were planning on popping out our next kid, *to the month* so i'm not sure what to do.  i'd convinced myself that that was THE time to do it and postponing it or moving it up by 6 months or so is a tricky proposition.

anyway, we're going to have a The Wire marathon.

later.