Fish Out of Water

Voice Mail

Tonight my daughter received a letter in the mail from my grandmother. It was some stickers and paper to stick them on. Whenever my grandmother gets stickers she always sends them to my daughter, and she loves them so it works out great. We told her to call and leave a message thanking her great-grandmother for the stickers. The great-grandmother in question wasn't home, so her voice mail greeting picked up. When it was time to start talking, my daughter said her first name, and then said, "Mommy, what's our phone number?"

This was because my grandmother's voice mail greeting says to leave your name and your number, and she'll call back. I was so impressed with my daughter's attention to instructions! I quickly realized why she kept saying her name, and explained that she could leave a little chatty message too, which she did, but it was so cool! She heard the very specific instructions and set out to do just what she was told. (If only she would be that attentive to my requests to brush her teeth in the morning......) I was very proud of her. She is a very cool kid!

Monday evening stuff

The poor baby has been a snot fountain for days. She cries at night, in her sleep, and it's hard to console her. Today I picked her up at day care and she cried the entire way home, and then cried whenever I put her down. She just wanted to be held and cuddled. Her daddy and I took turns cuddling her and then he tried to give her baby food for dinner. Mostly she wanted to go to sleep. He took her up to bed and about three and a half minutes later - just long enough to change her diaper and clean off her face - he came downstairs. She just rolled over and went to sleep. She even sounds like she has baby laryngitis. When she cries, it takes a minute for her little voice to kick in. It's all raspy. She doesn't have a fever, so I'm not worried, but it would be nice if she could breathe a little better! Poor sweetie.

Luckily no one else seems to be quite as afflicted - at least not yet - and of course now that I said that, we're all going to catch it. But everyone is fine. The big girl was telling me that today at school they went to an aquarium, got a 50-gallon octopus tank, brought back an octopus, and learned how to kill it! I am so curious about what really happened and what she's actually talking about.

Her new favorite show is Bindi the Jungle Girl. We finally did tell her that Steve Irwin died - about a year after his death - and now she loves to watch Bindi. She keeps telling me how much she wants to meet Bindi. She also told me that when she is 8, she wants to have a TV show too! Highly unlikely, since I don't follow the Lynne Spears school of motherhood.

Last night we were watching Sense and Sensibility together and she could not stop talking in a British accent. And she's actually pretty good at it! I was impressed. I was explaining to her why the Kate Winslet character gets so sad, and she was asking me in her best Queen's-English accent, "So he didn't love her?" It was so cute! Tonight I had a bit of a rough stretch with her, but I've calmed myself down and we are now happily hanging out together downstairs. She is playing with Play-Doh while I post this and do some Net surfing.

Yesterday I got to meet my friend's one-month-old baby girl. Hard to believe my giant ladies were ever that small, but the baby's already 10 pounds, so she's definitely bigger than my two were at birth. Amazing. I got to hold her and she just slept and snuggled in next to me in that sweet baby-hamster way that babies do. She had some very cute yawns, and I loved seeing her mom hold her. The mom is one of my very oldest friends so it was really special to see her with her first baby. Also she had her baby at the same birth center where my girls were born so I was proud to have told her about that place. She was as happy with her experience there as I was.

It's suddenly cold outside! The autumn came really late this year so now that it's here, it has whacked us upside the head. Not fun! Oh well, this is only the beginning........

Just lumping along.....

In one of the Winnie the Pooh stories, Winnie the Pooh asks Christopher Robin what he's doing and Christopher Robin says, "Just lumping along." That's how I've been lately. Just lumping along. Doing fine, just getting through each day. Work has been crazy - still great, but crazy. Lots of long hours this week. My husband and I went to a fancy dinner on Monday night to belatedly celebrate our anniversary and while we had an incredible dinner, we did end up with what the French call "crise de foie." Literally translated, it means "crisis of the liver." It means grody upset stomach! My husband spent much of yesterday in bed. I did go to work but felt awfully pukey for most of the day. Too bad, because the meal was outstanding. Oh well.

Today my husband had to pick up the baby early at day care because she had a 102 degree fever. He'll be staying home with her tomorrow. My theory is that she has a tooth coming in, and also she has a horrible cold. She's pretty uncomfortable. Poor sweetie!

This weekend we are supposed to be taking them to a Halloween thing for kids so hopefully she'll be able to go. Then on Sunday some friends are having a naming for their one-month-old baby girl. I hope we can go to that too.

Not much else to say. Just lumping along.

Eight years! And crawling! (This is about two different things.)

Today I went to pick up the baby at day care. I had the big girl with me and when the baby saw her, she zoomed across the floor to see her big sister! It was pretty cool to see how much that baby wanted to move. She does this funny thing of putting her feet on the floor, like these big pushups, and then wondering why she isn't getting anywhere, but then she remembers to put her knees down and then she goes. We cheered when she did it. It was very exciting.

The other very exciting thing for today is that on this date eight years ago, my sweet husband and I were married. All the usual cliches apply: we can't believe it's already been eight years, where did the time go, and the obligatory HOW DID WE GET SO OLD? But mostly we are very happy to be together. Happy anniversary my sweet!

Work Hijinks

I was having a really good day today. I started to finally be able to really get my hands dirty on this project, doing some software testing, helping to write some training documentation, and beginning to feel more connected to the company. Part of that was because there was a team meeting last night of our whole office, and I think those are always good to do when you're new somewhere because you get to see all the faces and be in the midst of the culture all at once. Also I ended up sitting at the same table with the director of our office so that was some good exposure for me.

So today I was zooming along with my tests, and starting to feel like a member of the team. Then I had lunch and ran into the director again and chatted him up for about 20 minutes. I told him all about my girls, my husband, all the crazy side businesses we have, and that was a good follow-up to sitting with him last night because now I'm even more memorable! Very good stuff.

I hadn't been back at my desk an hour when we all started to notice a really weird smell. First we thought it was a fried toner cartridge in the printer, but then the smell got worse. Then we looked up and realized that one corner of the back cube-farm room was all hazy, and we started to think something was on fire. Everyone gathered up their stuff and got the hell out of there and the property managers sent someone right over. It turns out it was some kind of motor that got burnt out, so all the cube inhabitants were sent home at 2pm to finish the rest of the day working from home.

Since I didn't hear anything to the contrary, I'm pretty sure the office is still standing. But wow! That was an interesting Wednesday afternoon. Honestly, I am such a nerd that I really wanted to finish my software test today. I was getting into a groove there. Oh well, there's always tomorrow.