Sunny 9 for 2007 March

(4) Thu Mar 01 2007 09:23 Now dumber: I watched the Oscars on Sunday. I can't believe I actually sat through the whole thing (over 4 hours long). Afterwards I felt more unfulfilled. I suppose I just wanted to see what everyone was wearing mostly and I was interested in who won in the 5 big categories. Plus, I like Ellen DeGeneres. They make you wait till the end though for all but one of the big categories, and Ellen only really did stand up in the beginning.

I can't believe how many people read their acceptance speeches. I mean these people are in showbiz where you have to wing it. That's their job...to make stuff up. Some of them memorize movie scripts. They can't memorize one lousy speech? I just thought that was interesting. Next year I vow not to watch it. Maybe just the red carpet before the Oscars.

Thu Mar 01 2007 22:40 Scooters and movers: Oh no, it's that time. Gunnar now scoots himself into the corner of the crib and starts head-butting it when he is mad. I put him down for a nap and I have to keep going back in there to make sure he isn't in the corner and still kicking. It looks like he really wants to roll over now. He tries kicking up in a rainbow, but we'll see. I don't think it is time for him to roll over for another month. It goes by so fast; I can't believe Gunnar is already 3 months old. I can't believe even more he is getting ready to do baby stuff. Don get me wrong, it will be nice for him to be able to grasp a toy and keep occupied with that but it is just so strange to think he is getting to where he is going to start doing stuff. He has really been making eye contact too and responding to us. I talk to him and he coos back so well. He has even giggled. Lily never interacted the way Gunnar does. It wasn't until Lily was over 12 months before she started laughing. It is interesting how kids differ.

Lily is doing more things too, mostly naughty ones. She can speak pretty well and has even taken up bossing me around. When I tell Lily to pick things up she has responded, "you do it." Or I will start counting when she is disobeying and say "that's a one...that's a two..." if she doesn't stop, and now she tries to finish it "that's a two, that's a three". One of the things I love, and have been waiting for is Lily will now go out in the backyard by herself and play and entertain herself for a solid half hour usually. It is especially nice when I make dinner to leave the sliding door open (we are having great weather) and to check on her every few minutes, but to be able to get dinner ready without stepping on toes. I love to see her imagination in action when I check on her. She is usually playing with rocks and wood pieces and putting them in her little tricycle basket or getting on the slide or pretending to push her doll on the swing. She used to want to go outside only if I was out there with her but it is like having another room in the house. Lily's play room.

Mon Mar 05 2007 08:57 Night Out: Friday I called up my mom to see if she wanted to go see Rent playing at the Majestic that night since there were still $25 tickets available. We ended up not going to that but deciding to see a movie instead because it would be easier and closer. Mom really wanted to see The Queen because she has really liked Princess Diana since I can remember, and since Helen Mirren won best actress for it I said why not.

I actually liked it. It is refreshing to watch a movie that isn't too serious and deep and/or offensive and that doesn't have Hollywood all over it. My mom thought it was kinda like a glorified Made for TV movie and it kinda was but for me it was one of those that you think about a couple days after you watched it. Not like Ghost Rider which was laughable yet still demonic. It was like 'oh my gosh, that guy looks like a disgusting nasty freaking thing yet I still want to laugh at him for being so lame'.

So in short, The Queen: go see, Ghost Rider: don't waste your time.

(1) Fri Mar 09 2007 17:00 How they grow: I took Gunnar to the Dr yesterday. It seems like he changes everyday. His measurements are: Length = 25.0 inches

Weight = 14.75 pounds

Head circumference = 16.0 inches

Length = 75th percentile

Weight = between 50th and 75th percentile

Head Circumference = 25th percentile

I used to think he was a big boy, but really he is right about average. I guess he is slowing down a bit growth wise. I think that his chubby cheeks make him look bigger than he is. He's got the Jeffery R. Holland jowls thing going on. He is on the tall side, but so was Lily when she was under 6 months. So, who knows.

New this week, I had to take Gunnar somewhere and to keep him from crying I tried to entertain him with a stretchy toy monkey hanging on the car seat handlebars. I wrapped Gunnar's little fist around the monkey's leg hoping that he would play with it. Something worked and when I went to get him out he still had his hand wrapped tightly around the leg and he had put it in his mouth. Just that little step of hand-to-mouth movement progress in development made my chest leap realizing my baby is this little person. Pretty soon he is going to be rolling over and then sitting up and then crawling and it will be his first birthday and Aaron and I will be wondering where the time went. Like it already has between 0-3 months. On the one hand, I am excited that pretty soon he will be able to sort of entertain himself, but on the other hand when I looked at pictures of him right after he was born and saw how tiny he was part of me wanted to hold that little baby just one more time so I could remember. That sounds so sappy but there you have it.

(2) Sat Mar 10 2007 21:14 I don't know where she comes up with this stuff: During dinner Lily accidentally dropped something and she shouted' "ahh, freak". Not the best thing for people to hear your two-year-old say. She then went on to enchant us with "farting" on demand. Her words: "I fart". And then during bath she said, "Don’t touch my butt." I said, “No, it's your bottom.” She then pointed to her front and said, "No, this is my bottom, (pointing to her backside)this is my butt!" And shortly after the bath while she was playing before bed she dropped "oh crap" after she lost one of her toys.

We seriously need to start filtering what we say. The other day she was repeating every word I was saying on the phone. The upside to her speaking more is that in the car on the way to somewhere, Gunnar was screaming as he hates his car seat and screams anywhere we go in the car; Lily was trying to console him saying "Aww, Gunnar it's alright. I love you. It's okay. He needs his milk mama, he needs milk." It was really cute and sweet to hear her give an unforced "I love you". Also, when we are putting Lily to bed the sweetest thing you could ever hear is when she says “I want hugs. Soft hugs. Now tight hugs.” And she squeezes your neck so hard she grunts “uh”.

Poor child though. I don't know what she did to deserve us as parents. Us with our potty mouths.

(2) Thu Mar 15 2007 14:13 My own bit of dirt: At the beginning of this month I purchased seeds again for our garden. By now at least one of everything planted has sprouted. It seems as though this batch is so much healthier than last year because everything is growing beautifully and fast. Especially the cucumbers, yellow squash, and zucchini. I really hope we get a good crop of basil too because at the store they are selling like 2 branches for like $3. Hardly the 2 cups that I need to make Susie's pesto sauce, and not worth it to make homemade at that price. This way I can make it right instead of making it with spinach leaves like I did a couple weeks ago. It still came out delicious but not the same.

Last Sat Aaron and I worked out in the yard. It needed it so bad since I didn't really touch it when I was pregnant. First it was too hot and it made me sicker, and then I couldn't bend over. So Aaron mowed, edged, and weed eated. Our yard actually looked nice after that. It is amazing that just doing that little helped so much. I cut out all the dead parts of our plants and flowers and pulled weeds. It reminded me of Frances writing about what she did each day. "Today I pulled weeds." That's what I felt like. Pulling weeds...the never-ending process.

Aaron's spring break we have a lot of projects. Get the rest of the yard into shape. Aaron is going to get the garden plants into the ground. We are going to replant some things that didn't take. We already added 3 pretty shrub bushes with pink flowers that took the place of our dead Angel Trumpets, and we added some pretty gold and red flowers in our front bed. I wish I remembered the names of these. I need to rip out our Canna Lilies. They always come out looking diseased since it is so hot here. And I need to replace one of our Japanese Yew's. The other one is huge but this one I don't think we buried it properly.

Aaron also needs to finish the deck and we need to water proof it. The ominous job of painting Gunnar's room and installing the chair rail and crown molding is still hovering over us to do and we better get it done this spring break or else. I am tired of sharing my room and I want it back! I also want to repaint my room and rearrange it. Hopefully I can report these things as being done by next Sat. What a fun spring break ahead of us. At least we will get to see Atticus and Samuel while they stay with mom so Aly can go help out John and Susie. Dave will be here too but I doubt we will be seeing him much since he still has plenty to do on his dissertation. Fun stuff...

(1) Mon Mar 19 2007 14:29: I've added pictures again to my picture blog. I probably went overboard posting too many, but I sure like looking at them even if no one else does. Gunnar is learning how to grasp at objects better. He likes his exersaucer and playing on his belly. He is so sweet and will coo and giggle at anyone that wants to hold him and talk baby talk with him. I still can't get over how much he smiles and talks back more than Lily did.

(4) Wed Mar 21 2007 15:05 No longer a coasterless home: Okay, so we did this about 4-6 weeks ago, but I am just now getting around to mentioning it. It really is not a big deal to anyone else, but to Aaron and me it was quite exciting actually. We made our first (big) furniture purchase since we have been married. Well, beside our bed. And when we bought my recliner in which Aaron then used it every night from then out even though it was for my pregnant feet. But it's our first nice dining room table.

I love it. I love the color and the style and the fact that our chairs' screws won't strip and break. I love everything about it. And it has a leaf. The good thing about that too is the leaf is attached to the bottom of the table so we don't have to store it. So we could probably fit 8 people max comfortably with the leaf in. However, we don't have more than 4 chairs, but we can always order them when we are rich! Seriously though, I think this table is going to last us a long time even though Lily has already begun to gouge out the top of it with her banging the table with her utensils. Nice things...what's that when you have children?

Wed Mar 28 2007 14:52 My beau, my Bug, and my Boo: This week has been especially hard with Aaron being gone till after the kids are in bed. I don't know why it is that from 5:30 on is the hardest part of the day. Those couple hours are harder than the whole day before it. Gunnar is usually not in a good mood, dinner needs a fixin', and I have had it by then. It's just been one of those weeks...or months depending on how you look at it.

However, some things have happened worthy of note. Two nights in a row Gunnar has woken up in the wee hours of the morning on his back! My little rolly polly. Yesterday it was around 2:00AM when he woke for his first feeding and he was sideways and on his back. And then again last night he woke up at 1:30 and he was on his back. I wonder how he got that way not really being awake or active. I guess for all I know Gunnar always wakes up around 2:00AM for some play time before wanting to eat. So there you go. Just a few days shy of being 4 months old. I just want to see it be done now.

His sleeping has been pretty standard for some time now. He usually goes down around 7:30-8:30 and then sleeps till 1-2 and wakes again around 4-5 and sleep some more until 7-7:30ish. It's not too bad considering. I do get my evenings which is SOOO nice. I would rather that then to keep him up until 11 or midnight and not have as many awakenings in the night. Even though that seven hour stretch, give or take half an hour, of sleep would be pretty nice. There's something about solid sleep, then again I love when I wake up at 2:00 and I know I still get to sleep for another 5 hours. I would say overall I prefer the down time at night and take on one more night feeding in exchange. I mean I hardly remember it half the time anyway when I wake up. I just know it is always twice and then the early morning wake-up call. I really think Gunnar would sleep until like 8 or 8:30 though if I changed his diaper in the middle of the night, but I'm too lazy. I kid you not, the boy wakes up at 7:00 every morning with wet jammies because he has peed so much and it comes out the top of his diaper. I think the discomfort wakes him early.

I am seriously a zombie though, I barely remember even getting him out of the crib and putting him back. Lucky for me his favorite is lying down nursing. Sometimes between the 5:00 feeding and 7:00 feeding I just leave him in bed with us. What a spoiled boy! Almost 4 months old and still sleeping in our room. Lily was out by the time she was two months old for sure if not 6 weeks. At least he doesn't wake up when Aaron and I talk in bed at night. Lily would have never let us get away with that. By the way, I used to think I was an expert on babies' routines and guess what? I'm not. They just do whatever they want. You can kinda tweak their routine a little but they do whatever they want anyway. Gunnar...he still eats every 2 hours. Yeah, not happy about that. And the testimonials of babies sleeping through the night: the parents are lying because my kids sure don't. I don't think anyone can have a baby sleep for 12 hours straight, I just don't believe it. And don't even say your child did because I won't like you anymore. Baby Wise Shmaybe Wise Baby Whisperer Shmaybe Whisperer.

In between Lily throwing her body into convulsions every time we make her go to her room for a nap, she does find a place in my heart that makes me smile when I think about her at the end of the day. Today she remembered the owie on her thumb and made me kiss it better again and then she kissed her thumb better too "ummah". And then she said pointing to her pinky, "Is this a thumb? No, that's a pinky. Is this a thumb? No, that's a finger (ring finger). Is this a thumb? No, that's a pointer. Is this a thumb? Yeeesss, good job Lily" as she claps for herself. Those of you who have seen Diego, Animal Rescuer knows exactly how these questions model it. And she likes to go around the house saying "thanks for helping". And she calls the camera "take a pic". She loves Dora so much that she turns on the TV all the time now without my permission and puts in her DVD. We are going to have to work on that.

(5) Wed Mar 28 2007 19:54 Gah!: I ventured out, by myself, with the two kids in tow, listened to Gunnar scream the entire way to Costco because he hates being in a car seat, was in rush hour traffic because that's when my kids woke up from a nap, listened to Lily scream because Gunnar was screaming, got all the way to Costco, picked up a package of diapers and D batteries because Gunnar was out and he had literally zero diapers, and the bouncy seat had been out of batteries and unusable otherwise with no vibrations or music, so as you can see this trip was a must otherwise why would I be so stupid to go out under these conditions, and it was put off a couple days because I knew this would happen, had to do it during the day because Aaron has been gone till after Costco closes to study for a big test, not to mention the frozen yogurt I bought Lily to bribe her with she insisted on holding in her car seat in which I gave in because there was only a little bit left and didn't want to hear the crying all the way back in which she then proceeded to smear it all over her body behind my back, only to finally get home and to realize Lily only has about a dozen diapers left as well and I didn't buy her any. Ugh. I am seriously having a bad week and only hope that finals week has mercy on me. I would be the most awful single parent; I don't know how people do it. Probably go crazy like I am doing right now.