And I Was Doing So Well For a While There…

Posted on August 31, 2010 by Erin

OK,  maybe “so well” is a bit of a stretch, but for a little while there I sort of felt like I was getting back into the swing of things with the blog and the baby and stuff in general.

Jack and I took a nap this morning, since it was so nice out! Unfortunately he was almost asleep by the time we got home which means he’s in his crib now complaining (lightly) about how much he doesn’t want to be sleeping because he totally just had a nap and 5 minutes of snoozing in the stroller TOTALLY COUNTS, MOM! Except that it doesn’t.

My “baby” is 7 months now and has 2 teeth in and two thisclose to being in. As a matter of fact I wish they would just go ahead and BREAK THROUGH already because Jack is really tired of me sticking my finger in his mouth to check on them.

Tonight will also be the first night Jack eats a meat-product. Chicken is on the menu assuming when I’m done typing this past that I can remember to go get the chicken breasts out of the freezer to thaw. I would say there’s about a 50/50 chance I’ll remember. Short term memory for stuff like that just does not seem to be my strong suit lately. Go figure.

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Okra Sucks.

Posted on August 16, 2010 by Erin



Okra

Originally uploaded by Geeky-Girl

OK, maybe it doesn’t really technically suck, but I had visions of fried okra dancing in my head when I bought those plants, and now like two months later here I am with really tall plants containing like 3 okras each, which does not so much resemble the mental images I had when I brought them home.

I’m really disappointed.

I think I may need to do a little more research into these food plants I see before just buying them in a fit of fancy.

Kind of like when I bought lettuce at the start of the summer only to be shocked (SHOCKED) to discover that it’s really a cool weather plant, as evidenced by the fact that I got like 5 leaves of lettuce off it before it went to seed. LAME!

(And also add, broccoli, and spinach to that list because I am an enthusiastic planter, but a very slow leaner!)

So anyways, if you’d ever considered growing okra but wasn’t sure how it would turn out, this is how it turns out. Maybe in a week I’ll have enough okra for me and Nate to have at one meal.

Maybe!

(Please pay no attention to those pathetic little jalapenos plants to the right of the okras! I think this pot is too small for that many food things, and so they’re very sad, and I’m too lazy to just pluck them and toss them out.)

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Baby’s First Headbonk

Posted on August 10, 2010 by Erin



A boo-boo

Originally uploaded by Geeky-Girl

Of course, learning to crawl was AWESOME for Jack! The freedom, the mobility! Certainly it could not get any better than that!

And then he learned how to pull himself up to standing. The best part is, sometimes he even thinks he can walk. (He can’t). So he’ll pull up on the sofa, turn away, let go, and immediately find himself back on the floor. Surprise!

So this morning I put him in bed for his morning nap (as I do most mornings). It was a tad on the early side, but someone kept yawning while I ate breakfast and was doing a really good impression of a baby desperately in need of a nap. Until he got in bed. I went on to make his bottles for tomorrow (since he’s going to be with my mom tomorrow) and then washed about 50 dishes (all bottle related) and by the time I was done Jack was very vocally not sleeping.

So I went over to his room and peeked in and there he was, standing in his crib, crying. So I went in thinking I was going to lay him back down, turn his musical seahorse back on, and remind him that he’s tired and supposed to be napping.

Unfortunately in his excitement (he obviously thought his nap was OVER) he went to get back on his hands and knees, but lost his hand grip on his way down and bonked his forehead on the crib bars.

Cue Hysterical Wailing.

So we came out to the living room, calmed down, played on the floor until once again, nothing is fun, everything sucks, wah wah wah my toys and it was definitely nap time for real this time. This time, since he was due to eat again in a half hour, I gave him a 2oz bottle snack and rocked him to sleep. Spoiled much? Hopefully this will not teach him that slamming his face into his crib is a good way to get out of nap time. (No, I don’t actually think he’ll make the connection).

But anyways, baby’s first major bonk on the head resulting in a small welt to the far right of his right eyebrow. And this just goes to show that every time you think you have baby’s nap time down, baby throws you a curve ball!

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Teething is AWESOME!

Posted on August 3, 2010 by Erin

At Jack’s 4 month checkup, the doctor informed us that Jack was working on teeth, but there was nothing imminent. So I checked every now and then since his mouth was like a leaky faucet but never really noticed anything. Suddenly at his 6 month checkup, there they were! You could see two teeth under his gums and feel the two bumps. I swear they came out of nowhere!

After a couple of cranky days (and a few night time wakeups) we have tooth! Finally one of the two teeth broke the skin and is jabbing through. It’s sharp! It also seemed to help the crank a lot today. Now I just have to wait for the other tooth (teeth) to come through!

I can’t believe my baby has a tooth! It’s like he’s turning into an actual little person or something.

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This and That (Baby Edition)

Posted on July 26, 2010 by Erin



Sounds Sleeping

Originally uploaded by Geeky-Girl

So far we’re not very good at predicting when Jack will go up a size in diapers. So far he’s gone up from NB to 1, 1 to 2, and he’s now going from 2 to 3. Each time we had a TON of diapers left over in the old size. We buy in bulk, it always seems like a good idea at the time, and then suddenly poop starts leaking out the back and we consider maybe it’s time for the next size, except we probably still have over around 100 size 2 diapers left over. Oops.

I’m not a big fan of the sizing of baby clothes either. We’re moving him up to the 6-9 month clothing (I can’t believe my baby is 6 MONTHS OLD – how did that happen?!) and there was a super cute pair of 6-9 month jammies* that I was SO excited about using except when I put it on him last night it was already too small for his feet so his little toes had to scrunch up. I’m pretty bummed.

Tomorrow Jack will be 6 months old and once again we’ll celebrate by going to the doctor’s office so he can have shots. Happy half-birthday to him!

I had to remove Jack’s crib bumpers for storage. In addition to the fact that Jack is thisclose to being able to sit up from the crawling position, he also had a mild allergic reaction to his face touching some part of the top of the bumper. The first time it happened it was a small spot so I didn’t see if til we were on our third activity past him being in bed so I wasn’t sure what caused it. The second time he went in the crib with no problem, and came out of the crib with red blotchy marks on his face that took about an hour to fade. So I washed it, packed it up and it will be missed. Especially since he likes to roll over to the side of the bed and wedge his head up against it. I have a feeling his mobile will be following shortly and it makes me sad to see them go!

*I typed this up at work and planned on emailing it to myself at home so I could look it back over later and decide if it was worth posting, although since I can’t think of anything else to post about I figured it would probably make the grade. Then I decided to attach it to a flickr picture. ANYWAYS! I typed “jammies” and hit the spacebar and Word turned it into “jimmies” and I almost didn’t notice. I’m a little sad that Word knows what jimmies are but not jammies, because seriously, who says “jimmies”?! SPRINKLES! I’ve since added jammies to my dictionary.

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New Neighbors

Posted on July 18, 2010 by Erin

Have I mentioned the fact that we live next to a rental house? I don’t remember and I’m too lazy to search back to check, but either way… we live next to a rental house. I have nothing against renters really, they’ve all been very nice so ,except the yard looks like.. umm.. it looks like mine did after I killed all the weeds to try to grow grass. Anyways, our third new set of neighbors just moved in and so far they are definitely not my favorite.

They have dogs. This in itself is not necessarily bad as we have dogs and the two families before them had dogs. The crappy part is the part where they seem to be outside dogs. (I saw the dogs outside yesterday during the thunderstorms. It made me sad. Yes, there’s shelter out there, but it still made me sad.) While they said “they don’t bark and only howl when they hear sirens,” I’m going to go ahead and call BULLSHIT.

They’ve only been here for two nights and on the first night they woke us up howling at nothing. Second night they woke us up howling and barking, again, at nothing. And they bark and howl plenty during the day too.

For the first week they lived here there were no dogs and we thought we hit the Neighbor Jackpot. Instead I think these are the crappiest dogs yet!

And just as a bonus, there’s a big metal archway in their backyard with the word”EVIL” on top, so that’s interesting! It’s not standing up, it’s laying on its side, but still. I’ll try to get a picture because it’s just funny.

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Is it Nap Time Yet?

Posted on July 15, 2010 by Erin

It was last night. 10:15pm, I was about to get in bed. Nate was at a soccer game, Jack was asleep and the dogs were on their beds. As I picked up the baby monitor to take with me, I saw it. A nickel sized spider on the wall above the dresser.

I said “oh my goodness.” (I know, I was surprised too. I’m pretty sure I did say “shit” at some point though, and I think that accurately summed up the situation.)

So there I was with a giant spider on the wall trying to decide on the best course of action. After grabbing some paper towels and a shoe I decided I just didn’t want to risk it. If I whacked it with the shoe and tried to snag it with the paper towels (it was kind of higher on the wall than I could easily reach) then I would risk the spider escaping, and frankly that was a risk I was just not willing to take (plus, do spider guts leave a mark?).

So next I went to get a stool, a dixie cup and a stiff Applebees ad we got in the mail earlier. I stood on the stool, trapped the spider under the cup (the spider FLIPPED OUT, by the way. It was freaky) and then I slid the Applebees ad under the cup to trap it in before carefully escorting it outside.

By then it was closer to 10:30, I got in bed but I didn’t get to sleep for another 20 minutes or so. I just kept wondering if that spider had any friends that maybe I needed to know about. I really really really really hope not.

And of course it didn’t help that Jack woke up (but required no assistance) around 3:45am, but usually I’m really good at the falling asleep part, just lately (baby related) not as good at the staying asleep part.

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Look Out!

Posted on July 14, 2010 by Erin



Look Out!

Originally uploaded by Geeky-Girl

For the last week and a half, sleep at our house has not been smooth. Naps have been short and restless, over night sleep has been interrupted, sometimes requiring a trip to the nursery, sometimes he just put himself back to sleep. This coming from a baby who for almost a solid month slept from 10pm-6:30am and was just starting to take good, semi-regular naps.

It sucked.

We figured it must be like right after he turned 4 months old and he was learning how to master rolling back to front and front to back and he spent ALL NIGHT doing it and it woke him up and we had a very bad week of sleep around then too, and then one night everything went back to normal.

I don’t want to get too far ahead of myself, but last night was the first night in over a week that everything was 100% normal. No crying, no getting up, not a peep from the nursery, and this morning I think Jack showed me why…

Skill Acquired.

Look out, world, my baby is mobile! (Oh Crap)

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Jack’s New BFF

Posted on July 12, 2010 by Erin

Oh man! My friends, Ted and Jennifer, had their baby last Monday (I mean technically Jennifer is the only one that actually really had the baby, but you know what I mean). On Sunday we went over to visit today and bring them dinner and OH MY GOD HE’S SO TINY (and cute, of course, but OMGTINY!)!

I mean I know babies are small, once upon a time Jack was small, but this baby is even smaller! (Jack was 7lbs, his new BFF is 6lbs). It’s hard to even imagine. He was so cute and so little and so sleeping and I remember it all so clearly but at the same time it feels like it was only a dream a million years ago.

And also as a side note, Jennifer is my hero because on Friday night she attended a cloth diapering 101 lecture thing with me in downtown Apex (she’s interested in cloth diapering, I’m only vaguely curious but mostly skeptical). I think it was like a month before I left the house after Jack was born, except for his doctor appointments!

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FINALLY!

Posted on July 11, 2010 by Erin

So on Friday I got an email from my mom asking me why there were no posts on my website. I was confused since I had literally just written one, so maybe I don’t post very often any more… there was still something there!

Turns out she was talking about the fact that half of my left menu was missing, and so was 100% of my content.

Interesting.

So I downloaded my site content and decided to check it out.

And then I changed my mind and figured since I’ve never actually updated wordpress at all, ever since I installed it that maybe the problem was in there somewhere.

So I backed up my database, downloaded all of my files and wiped my site. I copied up the new installation, went to upgrade and was informed that my database was too old and could not be used. Oops. Maybe should have checked that first.

Long story short, I went and had godaddy “install” it for me which created a new compatible database (it also put everything in a wordpress folder which I didn’t want) and used that db to get set up.

So I’m back! (I know, wooo…)

And now I have to create a new theme! Which I’m sure will happen eventually.

Some day.

Maybe next year?

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My D Key

Posted on July 7, 2010 by Erin

It fell off my laptop. I’m not entirely sure what happened, but if I had to guess I would guess that one of my asshole dogs stepped on it.

So of course I googled how to put the key back on, and fortunately I was able to put it back on.

Unfortunately I’ve had to put it back on like 10 times now because the little cage thing that holds it on is broken. I’m not even sure where one buys something like that. I’m a little sad about it too because I just bought a new battery for this laptop because my battery totally kicked the bucket and I decided to replace the battery instead of buying a whole new computer, but I’m not entirely sure what to do with the whole keyboard thing because I honestly can’t think of any place I’d trust enough to leave my laptop off with them in order to have it repaired.

Where on earth does one get a new keyboard key?!

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Out and About

Posted on June 10, 2010 by Erin



IMG_1031

Originally uploaded by Geeky-Girl

So once upon a time (last year) I bought a blue bird box. We have a small back yard and didn’t really have a good place to put it, so we nailed it to the fence about 6 feet away from the bird feeders thinking maybe we’d get lucky.

A year later we were getting ready to take it down and paint it, to make it cute, because there were no birds in it and it was just sitting there, so it could at least sit there and be cute.

And then there were birds. I couldn’t believe it! It was so exciting.

And now the babies are out of the nest, flapping around, learning to fly and it is just adorable!

It’s also really stressful because there are other birds and there are cats that hang out in the area behind our fence and hunt and one baby bird fell over the fence and then the mower was here and I was afraid it would be mowed over so I plunked it back over the fence into my yard which really pissed the mom off, and then it didn’t matter because the mower didn’t come up that close to my fence anyways.

STRESSFUL.

But also fun. I’m uploading videos later, whenever I remember, because CUTE!

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I’m So Lazy

Posted on June 9, 2010 by Erin

I’m such a bad blogger now! I just feel like my life isn’t very interesting right now, except of course to me.

Not that it was probably ever that exciting, but I think I can only write “today I played with the baby” so many times before people are like “seriously, isn’t there anything else?” and I have to say “not really” because really, there isn’t! And it’s totally fine! Once upon a time while I did see parenthood in my future I also had no idea how I’d manage waking up a bazillion times a night and never leaving the house again and basically it was terrifying.

It’s really amazing how much it all becomes routine.  How you start to look forward to getting up at 3am to feed the baby and watch Vampire Diaries, but then as soon as you get used to it, it stops and you’re actually almost disappointed except that sleeping more than 3 hours in a row is kind of amazing and I’d really actually forgotten how awesome it was until I started doing it again.

ANYWAYS!

I came here planning to write about something but frankly after that little tangent I can’t remember what it was. Seriously.

Oh well. Maybe next time!

Tomorrow is one of my days at home with Jack so maybe we’ll do something super exciting and totally worth writing about (or maybe we’ll just eat, play and nap like usual, with him taking far more naps than me I’m sad to report).

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Why Yes, that is a Dead Frog!

Posted on May 20, 2010 by Erin



Why Yes, that is a Dead Frog!

Originally uploaded by Geeky-Girl

So this morning when Jack and I were taking the dogs out before leaving the house we noticed a strange shaped blob stuck in the screen door. On first glance I thought it was leaves but I leaned in for a closer look and it is definitely not leaves.

I’m not 100% sure how a frog even got in there between the screen and the plastic door thingie, but it’s there! And it’s DEAD! And I’m certainly not touching it. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve handled my fair share of dead things (spiders, a snake, and a baby vole) but for some reason I just cannot wrap my brain around handling this frog thing, so it’s going to sit there and wait for Nate to get home from work. (I did warn him it was there).

So anyways, now that image has been burned onto my brain so I wanted to share.

You’re welcome.

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Geese are Jerks.

Posted on May 19, 2010 by Erin



Geese are Jerks.

Originally uploaded by Geeky-Girl

There is a goose on a nest sitting in the pine straw just out of this picture.She usually just sits there and glares at people, which is fine, while her mate (pictured) wanders the parking lot.

Fort his picture when I was leaving the building he was literally sitting right in the middle of the parking lot between two islands, and definitely in the way of traffic.

Yesterday he one-upped himself and was full on patrolling which involved hissing, wing flapping and some moderately menacing slow paced chasing of people and of cars. It was actually kind of funny. He was sitting on the other side of the road from his mate and their nest, so people HAD to walk between them in order to get to their cars (the nest is pretty close to the front door).

I walked out yesterday with another woman a little ahead of me. The goose hissed at both of us and I sort of did a slow waddle towards us, definitely not happy we were there. We both walked to our cars and before I got into mine I looked over and saw him flapping his wings at her car as she tried to pull out of the parking space, and then he chased the car! Seriously! I wish I could have gotten a picture of that stuff, but I was definitely too far away. I almost died laughing.

I haven’t been over there yet today, but I can’t wait to see where he’s hanging out when I get there!

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