Goodbye Muppet

We finally took Evy to get her hair cut, for the first time, this past Friday. I think I was more apprehensive than anyone else, as I didn’t want to have a screaming toddler around any pair of scissors. But she did well, even at the hair washing – which was surprising.

We took her to a salon geared towards children called Cool Cuts 4 Kids. They have a great setup: a large confined play area so kids do not get bored if parents need a trim, lots of toys to keep them happy, and a whole wall of stations that have dedicated TVs to distract those youngest ones.

They let Evy pick whichever seat she wanted – she chose the red fire truck – then we had a quick wash that luckily mimicked our process at home. While I thought I wanted a clean short cut, I didn’t have the heart to cut the small soft curls in the back. So instead we gave her some bangs, layers in the back as well as blended the short hair from where Paul cut out a lollipop a few months back.

She looks, to me, pretty much the same – but less “muppet” like without her hair in her face. I think next time I will bite the bullet and get a shorter, clean cut. But that’ll be next time

August 2011

She's was doing so well!

Her "don't blind me with flash" smile

 

Yesterday was Evy’s 2nd Birthday!

She’s TWO YEARS OLD now, can you believe it?! I feel like just yesterday I was at the kitchen sink with Paul debating the best method to bathe her for the first time without getting her umbilical cord wet. Here’s a tip: there is no best method, hahaha, just go with the flow!

Here’s Evy – right after they bathed her for the first time.

Here’s Evy just last week – she’s growing so much!!!

We’re having her party the weekend of the 30th (conflicting events, next year the weekend BEFORE Easter) so last night we just went to the park and had some Thrifty ice cream

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Blah.

I’m very “blah” recently. I’ve started about four blog posts but they all end with a negative note and I’m over being negative. My life is great, I’m so fortunate to have my family & friends & means to take care of both. I need to keep remembering that!

I’ve got kids songs stuck in my head – thought to infect others…

Here’s one from Yo Gabba Gabba… GO MUNO, GO MUNO!

Can’t forget this one (keep watching until the food cries, its the best!)

Here’s a great picture I took of Evy & Paul while at dinner the other night.

Squirty Snail.

As terrible as it sounds, sometimes I forget I’m a mother. Then I find this while making my bed and it all comes flooding back.

I’m so fortunate to have my life, with my family – especially my daughter!

Been QUITE a few days…

I haven’t posted much in the last few days because when I wasn’t working at the house, working at work, sick in bed, or cleaning up after a sick child – I’ve been stressing out. No one wants to read about that – least of all me. I thought to get it all down though, as I do like to look back – even on the bad stuff - so check out some brief details below if you’re interested.

We moved on Saturday. It was a so-so operation in the sense that while we had our failures – we had our successes as well. One friend bailed out on helping to move, three others replaced him. Had two toddlers instead of one to take care of, but with the extra help I was able to leave with them and keep them entertained. It was raining, but just a drizzle when moving out and a break entirely when moving in and THEN the big storm came. We’ve had to make multiple trips to the rental house since, but we’re surviving and Thursday is the absolute last day we’ll have to deal with it all. The animal situation is not that great; with I half-feral cat in the backyard, having Junior & Ripley join the pack is hard – not to mention the big Akita that found a rotting board in the fence and has been visiting until his owners can get it fixed.

I left work early on Monday – my allergies (or whatever it is I’m dealing with) were killing me and I was useless at work as I was loosing my voice as well. Stayed home on Tuesday as well, so I feel pretty good today (plus, I got another refill on my allergy medication). However, last night I crept into Evy’s room after she went to bed to get my phone to hear her puking. This was the first time Evy has ever gotten sick (stomach wise) so it was all a learning experience. Luckily, that kid is mighty resilient! After we cleaned her up and took her into our bed – preparing for a night of vomit by covering the bed with towels – she was fine! Elmo made it all better and by midnight she was jumping on the bed. I popped her into her crib then, I was exhausted, and she slept through the night.

Today the rental house is being cleaned, then the carpets are being cleaned, and tomorrow we’re handing the keys over! I’m so excited to be done with this – then next week I’m on vacation

Days like this…

I’m having one of those days where I can think about are the negative things. I hate it, but I always feel better after venting about it all

Evy woke up last night at around 11pm and would not go back to sleep. This morning I woke up exhausted, and when we woke up Evy I could tell she wasn’t feeling well. Luckily she lacked a fever, so we went ahead and sent her off to my sister’s anyhow to see how she fares. I may still have to go home early today, which I would feel terrible about because that would leave one of my co-workers high and dry, but if it’s necessary – it’s necessary. I just talked to my sister and she said that Evy’s over there and so far in a good mood so let’s keep our fingers crossed!

I got my paycheck today. It’s the first paycheck where one of my two Aflac policies had been removed. On advice of my financial planner, we’ve decided to cancel Aflac because of the limitations and the cost. With a proper emergency fund, Aflac would be needless. I was disappointed to learn that I was not given an adequate amount of information about which policies I could cancel at any time and which policies I had to wait until open enrollment (once a year). It ends up that our most expensive policy – at over $100 a month – could have been canceled at any time and yet I waited a good six months thinking I had to wait until open enrollment. That really upsets me, money down the drain. Its in the past though, you live and learn.

I bought two pairs of work pants from Lane Bryant last week, and I was excited about the cost (40% off!) and the fit. I washed them and this week I wore one pair once and then tried to wear them again this morning. Seeing a long black thread coming off the bottom hem of one pant leg I realize that the entire hem has unraveled and now one pant leg is about an inch and a half longer than the other! Didn’t realize this until I had to get dressed and go to work so I’m wearing them today and hoping no one will notice. Going back to Lane Bryant TONIGHT and getting a new pair – I’ve only washed them once and this is frakin’ ridiculous!

I ordered an awesome custom netbook skin from SkinIt, only to realize that the skin model I bought did not fit the model of my netbook I went online to see if I could find any place that made skins that fit my model and no one does. Its just too old (in regards to technology) and so my only options are a skin that only covers the lid and not the wrist rest or nothing at all. Haven’t decided, going to wait until I get a refund for the SkinIt product.

Okay. I think that’s all the “atrocities” I’ve had to deal with as of late. I feel better!

Evy likes to play with food!

I’ve been wanting to post this for a few days, but for some odd reason Vimeo ate it and didn’t poop it out or something. Anyhow, here’s a video of my daughter taken last week. She’s getting so big!

PS: For some odd reason the microphone on our DSLR seems to be on the back where the photographer is – so it’s my voice that is the loudest. She’s not doing much talking, so I suggest you keep it low or even mute it.

Of work and motherhood.

Friday of last week we got hit with a virus at my work. Being the front end for technical support, that meant that myself and the team I work with were responsible for cleaning the PCs that were infected. I ended up staying about 2 hours after work – with 4 PCs connected to my KVM at a time. Lucky for us, the virus – while well hidden – was seemingly unmalicious. Once we found out where it was hiding, we were able to remove it from all the 20+ PCs that were infected and get them back to the users without much time down.  I’ve seen virus’ that were very smart and would prevent you from removing them by making control panel, task manger, and services unavailable. This was not one of those – so we could just clean them instead of wiping them and having to reload the user profiles.

This week I also replaced a motherboard – my second hardware centric assignment since my botched test. The co-worker who passed me the task said I did well, and finished quickly, which made me feel better. I’m really not that terrible at my job, its just that “PC Tech” is such a broad field to so many people that it would be impossible for me to be everything everyone expects of me. But I’m trying.

I don’t know if I’ve mentioned this, but my work is shifting to “9-80′s” at the beginning of the year, which means I’m working 9 hour days (with an hour lunch, I’m at work for 10 hours), but retaining my 80 hour work week by taking every other Friday off. At first I was really excited because that meant I could start having at least two days off a month to spend exclusively with Evy (we’ve been having trouble finding daycare for Fridays anyhow). But before my supervisor left for vacation he reminded me of a request I’d placed awhile back in regards to a preschool I wanted Evy to attend. It’s a co-op preschool which means I’d be required to be in the classroom at least 3 times a month – half day. That’s really going to throw some stuff off. I’ll have to choose between the co-op preschool and two Fridays off a month – because I can’t do both without practically living at work.

Being a working mother is hard – not physically really, just mentally and emotionally. I’m always wondering if I’m screwing up royally with Evy – wasting this time to nurture a loving, smart, creative person just because of how crummy the economy is. Soon she’ll be in preschool, and then she’ll be attending school full-time and I’ll have lost my chance. I know I’ve mentioned this before, but I really do believe that Denmark (and other such countries) have the right train of thought about paying mothers to stay home. They are raising the future population of the country, don’t you want them to be the best they can be? Mothers (on a whole) can do that, they can create that if you give them the chance. Its just as important, if not more important, than any other job in a society.

I’ll stop babbling now. I’m just a bit overwhelmed this week. Baby Center says Evy should be able to say at least 20 words by now – and even piece together two or three into basic sentences. Evy can’t do that – at least not that I’ve seen. I’m not even sure she knows the difference between “mama” and “dada”, even if she is able to say them.

Such a trooper!

I dislocated Evy’s elbow on Sunday afternoon. I’m obviously not the model parent.

We were walking through Target and I was pulling her along and all the sudden she started crying for no good reason. I tried getting her a cup of water, which usually will fix anything because she loves cups – no go. Then I thought to let her walk around a bit – no go. Even petting some puppies they were trying to sell outside – no go. It was truly mystifying.

It took us awhile to realize what the issue was, but I had an idea having read about it in my “What to Expect the First Year”, and so we took her into the ER. The triage nurse seemed pretty certain that she had what is commonly know as Nursemaid Elbow, and so we started our LONG wait at about 4:45pm not really sure if she’d be getting an x-ray or not. Strangely enough, at about 5:30pm Evy got this burst of energy and appeared to be fine! She was using both arms just as normal, and was even letting me bend her elbow and prod her. Asking the triage nurse she explained that sometimes this can resolve itself. She said it could still be awhile before we saw the doctor, so Paul & I made the decision to just take her home. She’s been doing fine ever since, she such a trooper!

I did call her doctor this morning though and left a message with the nurse, asking if we should go into the office for any kind of follow up. After doing some research on the common aliment, we’ve let her caregivers know that her left arm is vulnerable to a repeat of the issue and to not walk with her using her left hand and to be careful with picking her up and playing with her.