birds

We had our family room painted and spruced up a bit, and we replaced the cover of our Tylosand sofa with an new orange one. I have some little decorating plans, including some of the painted fabric silhouettes that Anna Maria Horner did on Martha Stewart.

I covered 3 canvases with this Amy Butler fabric:


And now I have to pick 3 of these birds to paint on them:


One of my many many projects to tackle in the next few weeks.

Thankful

Mimi laughed her first real laugh on Thanksgiving. Just like with Delma's first laugh, what got her going was Josh lifting her up by her hands and kiss-attacking her neck. Such a fun and silly and beautiful sound.

We spent Thanksgiving with some of Josh's family. This is the side of his family (his step-dad's brothers) whome we pretty much only ever see when they stay in CT and host T-Giving. They're such warm, welcoming people and we love going there for the holiday. This year they also extended the invitation to my dad and his girlfriend, so they joined us too. It was a nice time, Mimi slept, ate and smiled pretty much the whole time, and Delly was very well-behaved.

Tonight we had our own little Thanksgiving at home with a Tofurkey and a bunch of left-over sides that came home with us on Thursday. While Mimi napped, Delly, Josh and I held hands and sang the Shehechiyanu to celebrate this joyful time, the health of our family. And like every Thanksgiving, we listened to Alice's Restaurant and sang along.

Mimi is a cutie-pie. Josh is the best husband and father ever. Delly is smart and funny and clever. I am blessed.

growing

This little girl is getting so big. At 2 months she's already wearing her 3-6 month clothes, just like Delly when she was a baby. She's finally starting to bat at toys and trying to touch and grab them. She still mostly keeps her fists clenched, but she's starting to stretch out her fingers sometimes. She's also grabbing a little at me while she's nursing, which is so sweet.

When Delma was tiny, I loved her completely. But figuring out how to be a mommy and always keeping track of when she was changed, when she'd eaten, when she'd pooped, etc was so distracting that I didn't get to just sit back and relax. It's been so different with Mimi, the details of managing an infant are not overwhelming anymore, it's given me a lot more mental space to just enjoy her. Her first few weeks, when Delly was still in daycare fulltime, I got to sit around with Mimi all day long and cuddle. I fell head-over-heels in love with her. It was great. I'm not one of those women who melts into a puddle when there's a baby in the room, but this is my baby, and she's a little slice of heaven.

But the past couple of months with Delma home with us, I haven't felt completely connected with either girl. Juggling them has been such a struggle for me that neither really gets my full attention. They're both always pulling me away from the other, and I'm just not very good at this. Even on the days when I just have Mimi, I try to cram in so many errands and chores that I want to do without having Delma around that I haven't had as much time to chill out with her.

Delma goes back to daycare fulltime on Monday -- a topic for another post -- and it'll be the Mommy and Mimi show, 7:30-4:30, M-F. I do have a lot of crafting to do in the next few weeks before Hanukkah -- another topic for another post -- and I've also got to make some time for some walking and pilates before I get back to work, but I plan to spend some nice quality time every day gazing into Mimi's eyes. Oh, that girl.

And here's some more of Delma's handiwork. She put her pajamas on Mimi like a blanket, tried to put a hat on her, put a baby doll and a Skwish toy on her Boppy, and also put some of the treasures she keeps in her pocketbook (sample sized soaps and lotions) on Mimi. It cracks me up. And Mimi's all, "WTF?"

disaster area

Josh is out of town for a few days. Handling both girls by myself is pretty tough, but not quite as bad as I was anticipating. Of course, I haven't washed any dishes or picked anything up, so the house is totally trashed. But we're all clothed and fed and Delma hasn't had too many time-outs, we've had nice mommy-delly-mimi cuddles and pig-piles on the bed... The cleaning can wait.

Slinky Cat

I am an unapologetic Cat Person. I respect and appreciate and relate to their moodiness, their being playful one minute and drawing blood the next. I think they're hilarious and I would never want to not have a cat in my house. I adore those ridiculous clip collection videos that people post on YouTube, of silly cat antics.

This is a short, silly video of an absurd cat.

a glimpse into her brain

When Delma woke up this morning, she was crying and asking for her puppy. "I want my puppy!" She doesn't have a puppy. I can only assume this was some carry-over from a dream she was having. I asked her about it a couple of times, but she didn't tell me anything about her dream or the puppy. She's been talking a lot about monsters lately, too. Not in a fearful way, really. Sometimes she'll ask me if the monsters are coming. The other day we were playing and all of a sudden she got very quiet, told me to be quiet, then sat down on the floor and whispered to me that the monsters were coming. She just sat for a few moments, quietly waiting. It sounds creepy when I explain it, but it was actually cute and playful. When she asks me, "Mommy? Monsters coming?" I laugh and make light of it and tell her no, of course not, they're only pretend and there are no real monsters. But she really doesn't seem concerned about it or like she's looking for reassurance. It's just more conversational.

It's hard for me as a parent to not project my own fears and insecurities on my children. I was such a fearful child, I was afraid of my own shadow. I expect her to be scared by things, like monsters, but she isn't. She's fearless. And she's a performer, like Josh. She loves an audience, and it's facinating to me because I am just the opposite. She also has no regard for her personal safety at all, which is not unusual for a toddler, I know, but she really pushes it. She'll throw herself around like the world is one big pillow ready to cushion her fall. A few weeks ago at a playground, she watched a bigger girl jump off the jungle gym. She just walked over and stepped off after her, without even looking down. Luckily it wasn't a far drop, but if it had been I hate to think what would have happened. I wasn't close enough to catch her before she hit the ground, it left me completely shaken and left her oblivious as usual.

I don't want to make her afraid of the world, I want her to be a brave, bold, fearless girl and woman. But I don't want her to break her legs or worse. How do you instill a healthy dose of caution in a toddler?? Maybe we need to invest in a helmet and a bubble-wrap body-suit until she's old enough to reason with.

pickles and ice cream

I missed 2 days of posts. Damn it! I never think about posting til night, and then I can't get to our computer where we have all of our photos because our office is currently serving as a makeshift nursery. The girls will be sharing a room, but until Mimi is sleeping through the night we have her set ip in our office so as not to mess with Delly's sleep at night. And our house has been topsy-turvy for several days while we had work being done in our family room. Gah. I've also been forgetting to pump breastmilk at night, so my little schedule is just all whacked out. Josh and I got our family room pretty much put back together today, so now I'm feeling more settled and back to normal.

Tonight we visited our good friends Greg and Adrienne and brought them pickles and ice cream to celebrate the news that they are newly pregnant. So fun and exciting. Their sone Fletcher is just a smidge younger than Delly, and they're cute little friends. I'm very happy for them, and it makes me miss all that fun of getting pregnant... Josh and I are such planners, we always were very intentional with getting pregnant, using the ovulation kits and testing as soon as possible, it was like a really fun project. I loved it every time and I miss that.

But, that's not enough to make us want to do it again. We love our daughters, we love our little Mimi, but honestly we don't love having an infant again. It's sweet and it's joyful, but it's also exhausting and frustrating and is very hard for us to re-adjust to now that Delly is so far away from those baby days. Caring for Mimi takes so much time and energy away from what we can give to and do with Delma. Now that Delly is old enough to be able to really communicate and develop personal interests, I am so excited about fostering those interests and it's tough to be distracted by Mimi and her immediate and insistant needs. Both Josh and I are very much looking forward to getting past the baby days and having fun adventures with our girls.

Though I hate to make permanant family decisions based on current finances, the fact is that Josh and I are not wealthy, and we want to be able to take our children on fun vacations, see a bit of the world, and that stuff ain't cheap. We'd have to wait til Delly is in kindergarten three years from now to have a third baby, since we can't afford to have three kids in fulltime daycare, and I can't see us wanting to go back to square one with an infant at that point.

I'm not going to run out and get my tubes tied, but I really do think we're done now and that our family is complete. There's something very comforting in knowing that. When Delma was a wee baby, as hard as it ever got, we always knew we'd at some point be doing it all over again with a second child. Now we can actually say, when we get past this phase, we won't ever have to deal with this again. It feels good. I'm very pleased with our little family, I love that we have two girls, and I love that Josh is such a good daddy to those girls -- I think it's going to be a very fun dynamic, with him as the only guy in the house. He's so great at hanging with the girls, playing dress-up and tea party and all that good stuff.

We have some really good times ahead of us. But I'm not just banking on our future, I am enjoying our family in the here and now. I am excited about how much better and better it will get, too. Oh, the paper dolls and dance lessons and camping trips and more to look forward to... Good times.

how about some pictures?

Josh and Delma rocking out and singing "We're Not Gonna Take It."


Decal up on our living/dining room wall. I've been struggling with how to decorate this wall since we moved in, and I'm finally happy with it.




One in a long line of Delma's baby-as-art-installation pieces.




Daddy and Baby, looking very sweet.


Our fix-it guy starts work on our family room today, which means we won't be able to go downstairs to hang out and play for 2-3 days. And it's super-cold and windy out, which means we can't kill time at the playground. It's going to be a hairy few days!

well-deserved calm

Both girls are napping right now. I love that. It wasn't so easy, though... After over an hour of Mimi nodding off then waking up and wailing, and Delma refusing to sleep, I finally nursed Mimi back to sleep and threw a coat on Delma and tossed them both in the car. I knew the car would knock Delly out, so I drove around til she was asleep then came home and put her in her bed, and put Mimi in her car seat in the Snuglider I picked up yesterday.

Delma has been a great napper for quite a while now. But in the past couple of weeks she's been fighting the nap. One day last week I finally put one of those child-proof doorknob covers on the inside of her door so she can't get out of her room. She'll get up over and over asking for play-dough and her toys and wanting to play. The mornings are crazy too, sometimes she's up as early as 4am. "I want to play!" We get up over and over and tell her to get back into bed. We usually call it quits around 5:30 and let her get up and start the day -- and when I say "we," I mean Josh. Since I'm in charge of Mimi's nighttime feeding, Josh is on duty with Delma and her early-morning antics.

I'm looking forward to sleeping through the night again. Sleeping til 6 seems like a luxury. It now feels laughable that we thought we had it tough when we only had Delma to deal with. Oy.

farewell, my friend

I didn't drink coffee today, and Mimi took a great 3-hour nap this afternoon. Looks like I'll be off the sauce for a while. Not sure how I'll deal with our girl days on minimal sleep and no coffee. Ugh.

invisibelt

I need this puppy. To find pants that fit my big ol' thighs usually means a loose waist, thus the hated plumber's crack. I hope this belt will help.

Last night was rough. Mimi woke up earlier than usual to nurse, and then had trouble staying asleep after that. We have her sleeping in a cradle that we got from a friend. It's lovely, but it's not working. Mimi shimmies around a little in her sleep and works her way to the side of the cradle, which then tips over and she gets all crushed against the side. It's awful, how does this not happen to all infants that sleep in cradles?? Anyhoo, we will be moving her to the bassinet in the Pack N Play. Keeping fingers crossed that we have a better night tonight.

pumpkin ginger bread

Yesterday evening while my soup was simmering (This super-fast and ridiculously simple and easy but tasty recipe for red lentil soup; went great with challah to dip in it. Shabbat Shalom!), I quickly whipped up the batter for the Ginger Pumpkin Bread from MS Everyday Food.

The recipe makes 2 small loaves. They're supposed to bake for 50 minutes, but I think I ended up doing 60 minutes to get the middles thoroughly baked. The bread came out moist and quite tasty, but really what made it were the chopped walnuts and dried cherries I added. I don't think I would have loved it all that much. I'd definitely make it again, probably next time with walnuts and chopped candied ginger.

In other news, Mimi is insane. She was awake ALL DAY today. She usually isn't awake for more than 2 hours at a clip, but today she would not fall asleep. She wasn't cranky for the most part, just awake and alert. She was awake the better part of 8 hours, and it was making us cuckoo, try to feed her and soothe her to sleep, but she just was not having it. She turned 8 weeks yesterday, and like clockwork she's in a new phase. Gah. The early baby days are rather maddening.

cookie fun

I bought a roll of Pillsbury sugar cookie dough to have some little cookie decorating fun with Delly. I cut the roll into quarters, and bagged/froze 3 of the quarters individually for future use. I thought that was very clever of me. Each quarter makes about a half-dozen cookies, which is enough.

I actually started off using a rolling pin. Hello, overkill. I ended up just squooshing it all by hand and letting Delly use cookie cutters for a few of them and then made a couple little circles by hand.

When they were cool, I let Delly decorate with some tacky, gross glitter decorating gel and little star-shaped sprinkle things. She loved it. I only gave her 2 to decorate, otherwise she would have used every last drop of gel. I told her they had to dry, and then she never even asked to eat them. She just loved cutting and decorating them so much that she seemed to forget that they were food and not just a craft project.

This was a great "baking" project with Delly, since Mimi's napping times are very unpredictable and I don't want to get caught in the middle of some real baking and have to abandon it to tend to the baby. It didn't take much time but was very fun and not too messy. Good times. Good glittery times.







ps Please note that Delma is STILL wearing her Supergirl costume!!!

Baby Huffington

Title is a little inside, sorry, only those with kids hooked on Noggin will get it...

Mimi does a lot of huffing and puffing (that's where Huffington comes in). She's a sort of noisy baby. And right now she has a cold, which has made her sleep pretty much all day today (score!) and also makes it hard for her to latch on to nurse and makes her especially huffy and puffy and schnorfle-y. Poor little bean.

So the plan was to cut out coffee/caffeine starting today, and I was thinking about curbing the sugar and dairy too since she has a cold and doesn't need all the extra crap creating even more mucous. I was up at 5am today and by 9:30 am I had had a huge coffee with milk and sugar, a Reese's peanut butter KING SIZE tree (yum!) and was toasting an english muffin topped with Muenster cheese. I am a weak, weak, woman.

rollercoaster

Yesterday was a rough day. Today was an OK day. The only thing relatively predicatble is that Mimi is pretty much a wreck in the later afternoon/evening. I try to nurse her around 4 or 5pm so that she'll nap during dinner and while we're putting Delly to bed. D goes down at 7:30, then we get Mimi up, change her and give her a bottle, and put her down for the night. But getting her down for that last nap before dinner is usually quite an ordeal. I'm going to lay off the coffee for the next few days and see if that makes any difference at all in her temperment.

She had a few good stretches of happy awake time today, which was really nice. She looked at toys and batted at them in her little herky-jerky uncontrolled baby robot way, and cooed and was very cute.

Delly gave her lots of kisses and talked to her and tried to give her toys to hold and dance with her. I'm so glad that though she acts out quite a bit with us these days, she's still super-sweet to her baby sister.

deer

We live in a raised ranch, and the windows in our family room downstairs sit right at ground level with our front yard. The other day I saw something out of the corner of my eye while I was down there (probably nursing Mimi and watching CSI, I do a lot of that), and looked up to see a deer eating some little weeds growing just inches from the window. We live in the woods and have deer in our yard all the time, but I've never been quite that close to one. It was beautiful.

A while later I went out to get the mail, and the deer were still there, next to the driveway. Two of them put their tails up and bounded off a bit away from me, but one of them just stayed there. She didn't even flinch, her tail didn't go up, not defensive reaction whatsoever. So I just stood there for a bit, checking her out. She started coming closer, and I put my hand out and she came even closer. She was only about 20 or 30 feet away when I realized I was holding the baby and if the deer panicked and charged me or something, that would be a very bad thing.

I don't know if she'd been handled as a baby or what, but she really was sweet and wanted to come up to me. It was so cool. I went in to grab my camera and took some pics as they continued munching away in our swamp.

Lame Post

Tired, time for bed, and I have to post something... I ran away tonight after dinner, just had to get the hell out of the house. Mimi was pretty good today until the end of the day, when I picked Delly up from school and took them to the grocery store. I figured the timing would be perfect, since Mimi had a full tummy and was due for a nap. But no. She screamed the whole time in the store and during the whole ride home. It was maddening and left me completely frazzled. I had planned a simple but nice dinner with fresh vegetables, but since we had to deal with the baby we were left with almost no time to make dinner, and ended up with pasta and frozen veggies yet again. After dinner I left Josh and Delly with their Play-Dough and I went and ran some dumb time-killing errands just to be out of the house and all alone. So that was good I guess, though not particularly productive. This baby is sucking the life out of me! Oy.

So to cheer things up, here's a cute pic. Delma in her Pooh ears and Mimi in her Eyeore ears.

Bye-Bye Freshy

Today we said goodbye to our cat Precious (aka Frecious aka Freshy). She did not die, she is alive and (hopefully!) well, but now living with another family. She's a beautiful, wonderful, loving cat, but there were some issues specific to her and this house that made it necessary for us to find a new home for her. It took a long time, but we found a couple who had recently lost their female cat. They have a male cat who is desperately lonely now without his companion, and since Freshy used to be very bonded with our male cat who died a couple of years ago, we're hoping that these two will hit it off. It was hard to see her go, but it's also a great relief. It's so tough wondering if we made the right decision, but we just have to trust that we did. It was not one we made lightly, it's been a very long time coming. We just wish our little Freshy all the very best and hope that she has a happy, fun and love-filled life.

A Good Day

Today was a good day. We spent some time with family, celebrating my dad's 71st birthday. Mimi had some cranky periods, but also had a few long alert, happy, cute, interactive periods too. Both girls took long naps at the same time, which gave me some long overdue time to tackle a little home decor project and do some cleaning. It all just felt very normal for the first time in a long time, it was so quiet and domestic and lovely.

We also met with a highly recommended and very nice house cleaner, and decided to give her a try. I'm looking forward to cutting myself some slack in the cleaning department, and having a tidy and good-smelling house every Friday so I can comfortably invite over guests on weekends without freaking out about the state of my home.

We finally decided to hire someone to do some painting, tiling, and little random repair tid-bits. It's mostly work in our downstairs family room, which has never really looked good or complete or cohesive. I have some cute but simple and not super-expensive decorating ideas to make it look snazzy once the repairs are all done. That, along with some plans to repaint our bedroom and office, is making me feel like our little house is finally coming together and feeling like a nice place to be for the foreseeable future. Next year we'll have to start putting some time and energy into the exterior and landscaping, which we've been totally ignoring. But I can't think too much about that yet, or else I'll feel way too overwhelmed. I just have to take it one little project at a time and hope I can keep up the momentum. Slow and steady.

Supergirl

Delma has been wearing her Supergirl Halloween costume every single day and night since Halloween. When we have to take it off for a minute to chenge her into or out of pajamas, she is in a complete panic until we get her redressed and get Supergirl back on. Tonight we finally got it off of her to put it in the wash, and that did NOT go over well. The whole rest of the evening she was throwing tantrums and begging for Supergirl, and trying to use her binkies (which she only uses at night in bed). She was so desperately lost without it, but that think needed to be washed so badly. She ate a pickle several days ago and you could still smell it on that costume. Ew. Now it's hanging up drying, and I wouldn't be surprised if it's the firstthing she asks for in the morning. I think it's so hilarious that she's obsessed with it, especially considering what a comic book freak Josh is. She is such a little Hatton.

Girl Days

When Mimi was born we kept Delma in daycare fulltime for a few weeks, so I could have time to figure out what the hell to do with a baby again before juggling both kids by myself. A few weeks ago we changed the schedule to Delly in daycare on Mondays and Thursdays, and home with Mimi and me on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Fridays. We call them our "Girl Days."

Some days there's more TV than I'd like, and on girl days I rarely manage to get any chores done. I expected Delly to have little-to-no patience when I had to tend to Mimi's needs before her own needs or wants. And she has certainly pitched some fits, and they are getting more frequent as Mimi becomes more high-maintenance, but for the most part she's been unexpectedly good. I was braced for each day being one battle after another, being completely stressed out and was planning to have to find things to keep her busy all day just to keep her out of my hair. What I didn't expect was to really have fun. I didn't expect feeling very proud of myself on those days when I can keep both of girls mostly happy and can also get work done around the house, and get us out of the house to run errands or do fun things. It's so simple, and kajillions of other parents do this, but it still feels like such an accomplishment to me. And a wonderful product of this new arrangement is that Delly become more Mommy-centric than ever. She's generally either shown no preference for either Josh or me, or occasionally prefers her Daddy. But she almost never purposefully picked me over him. Now she does, and often when he comes home at the end of the day it takes her a while to warm up to him. I feel like such a MOM. It's very satisfying, and I love it.

Our girl days are very challenging, and usually leave me shot by the time Josh comes home, but I really am so happy to have this precious time home with my daughters. Even though the second Mimi starts screaming I start counting the minutes til I return to work. We've been going back and forth about the possibility of hiring a house cleaner. Part of me feels like, what a waste when I'm home every day. But when I have a little time when the girls are napping or occupied or when they're with Josh, the last thing I want to do is clean floors. But I'm more and more feeling like it may very well be worth the cost.

I don't want to look back at this brief period of time and regret that I didn't make more of an effort to really enjoy it. When will I ever get months of time at home again?? I don't want to waste it making myself more stressed than I need to if I can avoid it. Plus, I want time to sew more clothes for my girlies! More on that in another post...

Yes We Can

So, Obama won, and I'm super-psyched about that.

In other news: This afternoon Delma demanded that all her clothing, including her diaper, be removed. After a while of letting her freestyle around the house, I tried to put a diaper on her. This did not go well. She has a couple buddies who are potty-training, and I think it's making her feel left behind. Maybe this is her deciding she's ready too. Or maybe this is just a whim for today. Can we handle a borderline-colic infant and a potty-training toddler? Yes we can. Maybe.

yikes!

So excited about the election that I almost forgot to post. Baby will be waking me up in a few hours, so I'm heading to Snoozeville USA now and hope to wake up to news of Obama being our next president!!!

Cry-baby

Miriam is 6 weeks old now, though for the life of me I can't figure out how that happened. The first 4 or 5 weeks she was sort of a breeze -- sleeping a ton, relatively easy to soothe and to get to nap. But the times, they are a-changin. Now she's more alert and is having more awake time during the day, and is turning into a major fussbudget. She doesn't transition well at all between wake and sleep, and if she's at all sleepy she just falls to pieces. And this girl screams and howls, and it seems to be getting worse every day. When she does get to sleep during the day, she has a hard time staying asleep. It's maddening, especially on the days when Delly is home with us too and I really want the baby to sleep so D and I can have fun. I can't work on any projects in the house or with D because at any moment that baby could need my full attention and pull me away. I can't pump breast-milk during the day because I don't want to get all empty and then have her wake up and need some nursing to be soothed.

All the soothing techniques that worked with Delma just make this baby angry. The swing and the car both used to make D pass right out and sleep forever. Not this one. The only way I can get her to calm down in the car when she's in her hysterics is to roll down her window for a while and blast her with all that cold air. That's going to be super-fun when it's freezing out. She likes to be rocked in her car seat on the floor, so you'd think the swing would make her happy, but no. She's like a little crazy-person.

I've been looking at the calendar to figure out when to go back to work. I was originally planning to be out 16 weeks, which would be the middle of January. But we just booked a trip to FL to accompany Josh on a work trip at the end of January so I'm going to go back to work right after New Year's in order to work a few weeks before taking off on a vacation. But now I'm actually considering going back a week or 2 earlier than that. I'm not going to make that decision just yet, but I'm going to stay open to the idea if the next month doesn't get easier or even gets worse. This is just too stressful for me, which makes me feel guilty and like a big weak loser, but I need to be honest with myself and take the best care of my family that I can. And if going back to work early makes me a better mom, then that's what I'll do.

Thankfully, she is sleeping great at night. We've got her on a little bedtime routine and by 9pm she is down for the count. She wakes up once at night, usually around 2:30, and then goes back to sleep for a few hours. Delma is up every morning at 5:30, and Mimi has been getting up just a little after that most mornings. And if the nights weren't so easy and predictable, I think these long tear-filled days would put me right over the edge for sure.

She's a little maniac, that Miriam. And she has the face of a little old man. But for those brief periods each day when she's actually happy, what a fun little old man face it is!

Resolutions revisited

I remembered today that I made some New Year's Resolutions back in January. But I couldn't even remember what they were. That's not good. Here they are, with a status update:

1. Finish organizing our utility room

Well, we did this. And then it all got trashed again and needs to be de-cluttered again. I'm thinking that this is probably something that will never end.

2. Finish our little odds-and-ends fix-up projects (tile in family room; replace all icky goldy brassy door hardware with brushed nickel; paint doors; paint office; paint family room)

I actually just started getting quotes this past week to get the bulk of this work done. Josh and I have finally realized that though these are projects we could do ourselves, we just do not have the time now that we have a baby and want to spend our weekends with our children.

3. Plant a vegetable garden

Did not happen. Not even any container vegetable plants! All I managed were a few sad little Morning Glories to climb trellises. That was a good experiment, and I'll know better next year how to get fuller coverage where I want those flowers to climb.

4. Learn how to use the fancy features on our fancy camera, so I can take better pictures

I downloaded this document that some dude wrote, all about my camera and how to make full use of the features, but I haven't read it. Hmpf.

5. Plan weekly meals, shop accordingly, try new recipes (started already, more on this soon in another post)

I started to do this, but very early in the year when my pregnancy started getting rough and I was feeling like shit every day and never knew more than 10 minutes in advance what I'd be able to stomach for dinner, this pretty much fell apart. Now that time and the budget are tighter, I've started revisiting this, so I can shop smarter and plan meals.

6. Make a quilt

I started cutting pieces for the quilt top months ago, and then forgot all about it. I have all great yellow and grey patterns that will look very cool when I finally get my act together and finish!

So... I didn't do so great, despite my very humble and achievable goals. That's disappointing. Now I feel this pressure to cram it all in before the end of December! We'll see.

In the meantime, I can celebrate the completion of a baby quilt by my girlfriend Moira, a gift for my wee Mimi:


"Why, I oughtta..."

NaBloPoMo

So I decided to do NaBloPoMo. Maybe it'll kick me in the butt and get me in a more consistent habit of writing/posting? We'll see. At the very least I can post corny pictures of my kids and my cats!

To kick things off, here's my little Super Girl Delma:


With some of her buddies at school:


Kissing her boyfriend!


And our sleepy little Bat, Mimi -- she was a hit at our town parade:


A whole month of daily blogging, here I come!