Fireworks
Posted by E-George on July 1, 2009
I remember as a child pining and aching to have fireworks each Independence Day. I also remember my mother saying no and following it up with the explanation, “If you want to see money burn, I’ll set a dollar bill on fire right here on the kitchen table.” I also remember than when she did splurge on fireworks it was one (count it, ONE) smoke snake, and a box of sparkles that she rationed out over the course of two weeks. Iron clad logic she demonstrated because to this day I have never purchased any other firecracker other than a sparkler, and that was more than 10 years ago.
While Independence Day is easily one of my top 3 favorite holidays, I’ve always hated the prelude and postlude of fireworks being shot off in my neighborhood as soon as dusk passes into night. When I lived on Albuquerque’s west side, I hated it especially after a certain time of night when the fireworks ran out and the neighbors shot guns into the air as their low-budget alternative. This year I’ve found this early shooting of fireworks to be especially nerve wracking and obnoxious because now it threatens the peaceful sleep of my baby. I swear that if one of those nitwits wakes up my child I am going to… well… probably going to do nothing besides storm around my own living room muttering horrible things and immediately repenting for my sin of anger. But, boy will I be steamin’ mad if it happens. Or, at least really really frustrated.
On Saturday my plan is to have Evelyn thoroughly napped so come evening when all the explosions start she won’t be going to pieces from exhaustion. Hopefully we’ll be able to sit on the back porch and watch the big ones going off around downtown or the area golf courses. We’ll definitely be victim to the neighborhood miscreants who have smuggled in illegal fireworks from outside the county. Lord knows, M-80s are perfectly safe in urban settings. Usually the noise pollution goes well into the evening - unless, of course, the weather stamps out everyone’s plans - so hopefully Evelyn has sufficiently strong sleep that she won’t be too disturbed. I wake up for every one that goes off. Matthew, apparently, can sleep through anything, so my prayer is that Evelyn got his ability in this area.
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8 and 9 months
Posted by E-George on June 26, 2009
The last two months have been full of changes and improvements. The number one improvement has been the quitting of my job to stay at home and be with Evelyn. My sanity and logic have returned (mostly), and the loss of income wasn’t as tough to swallow as we had expected. It helps when to have built our finances based on half of Matthew’s salary, none of mine, and entirely on the expectation that this day may come.
Life is good, especially from the height of someone’s shoulders.
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In May, Matthew’s workplace had a family day. While this may seem perfectly normal, if not a little banal to most, but it was a significant event for our family and for the worksite personnel. It had been 10 years since the previous family day, so mother nature kicked in a little bit of fun by making it offensively chilly and windy and by tossing heaping helpings of gritty sand into the wind to keep things interesting. Not fully realizing the weather conditions, I dressed Evelyn in what has come to be known as the “Fruit Salad Outfit,” which came to her from her Auntie Emily. Thank goodness it wasn’t made of real fruit otherwise my edible baby would have been completely gobbled up.
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Evelyn started her quest towards mobility by rolling. She’d roll from stomach to back to stomach to back to stomach, making a wide arc across the floor. One day she rolled her way over to the bookshelf and extracted a lovely volume on Indian cooking.
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We seem to have overcome the issue with eating solids. As it would turn out, the type-A personality genetic code has been passed on to Evelyn in spades. In a nutshell, she had to control the spoon and its depositing action. I could load the spoon with food, but she had to be the one to put it into her mouth, or very nearly into her mouth. Also, she didn’t like the homemade baby food and preferred store bought. I think it had to do with texture and viscosity. Once we figured out this little dynamic, she’s been eating like a pro. Even better, it doesn’t seem like she’s at all a picky eater…yet. We had a small bout with constipation not too long ago, but that was quickly resolved with a lot of nursing and a little bit of prunes. Now we’re a lot more careful about the rotation of foods and the quantity she’s eating.
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Part and parcel to the mobility thing was the moving into the crib thing. Shortly after we got her moved in to the crib, we had to lower the crib mattress because she was pulling herself to a standing position at the railing.
We’re still working on our project of getting to as many city parks as possible this summer. Some of our progress has been slowed since we put the house on the market.
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I’ve been spending a lot of time trying to keep the house in show-ready condition. That, in itself, isn’t very difficult, but keeping the white carpet white has been the biggest challenge. Of course, within a month of having the carpet washed, a bout of stomach (puking) flu swept through the house. It was the first time I’d been throwing up for non pregnancy-related reasons in easily five or more years. I ended up having to call my mother to come up and help with Evelyn because I was in the bathroom trying to upchuck my lower intestine through my ears almost every 30 minutes for 8 or 10 straight hours. Hardly a conducive state to being an attentive parent to busy baby.
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Early June presented itself more like late March in terms of chilly weather, rainy days, etc. Every time I tried to get an afternoon to take Evelyn outside to play in her pool the weather turned to crap and we had to stay inside. One day in particular, Evelyn was having attitude about wearing a diaper so she had been spending most of the day happily depants’d so I figure there wouldn’t be any harm with setting up her little hippo pool and having an indoor pool party. Easily one of my more colossally idiotic ideas that actually saw fruition. Getting it set up was easy. Getting it taken down turned out to be a wee bit of a logistical challenge.
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Eventually, we did make it outside, and we’ve had a couple of private little pool parties since then.
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Night time is still nudie time, and sometimes after her bath and encasement into a pair of jammies she still has plenty of energy to visit and work out a few more wriggles.
Evelyn has blossomed. She has gone from sitting up and rolling around, to sitting up, commando-style crawling, getting herself from her stomach back to a sitting position, and in the last week actually crawling for reals. Due, in part, to Matthew’s diligent tutoring.
Tons of other little things have happened in the last two months. Too many things to get into the details of here. She’s gotten two teeth on the bottom. She’s had play dates with other babies and had too much fun for words. She’s sprouted hair. Lots and lots of hair. Her legs are almost too fat for her to sit in the Bumbo chair anymore. She charms everything and everyone around her.
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It’s been a little quiet
Posted by E-George on June 14, 2009
I realize that there’s been a little radio silence here lately, but in my defense I’ve been working. On being at home. And, being with Evelyn. That’s my excuse, and I’m sticking to it.
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Youtube is good for some things
Posted by E-George on May 21, 2009
These being those some-things:
And,
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I like this one
Posted by E-George on May 15, 2009
It’s the butter bean in the soup of lentils that is the selling process. Which is to say, it’s the ugly obnoxious part of a much better set of surrounding circumstances. The house went on the market on Tuesday, and being that I am of an irrationally egotistical mind I assumed people would be clawing the screen door off its hinges to get into the house to see it. Needless to say, that hasn’t happened, so my careful tending of the stOOpid white carpet by making sure that Evelyn’s spit-up is containerized onto a blanket has felt a little overbearing because no one has made so much as a pass by the house to throw a rock at the sign.
All that may be about to change, though, as today there was a showing, and tomorrow another is scheduled. I have high hopes. We opted out of doing an open house right away, but since I’m really good at doubting my own decisions I wonder if that was the right choice. The thought is that if the house doesn’t sell in a month’s time, or see any activity that would indicate that it might be on the path towards selling, we’ll re-evaluate the price and have an open house then. We’ll see.
Since we started the discussion of selling the house and buying another, I’ve been glued to the MLS like it was the delicious nougat and caramel center of the internets. The bonus of being thus enraptured is that I’ve lighted upon several possible new homes. The bummer of being so thus obsessed is that even though we could go see them, we’d have to sell our house first before we could buy another one.
I know I’m risking deep disappointment and maybe even a little heart break if we go looking for a house, find one we like, and watch it sell out from our fingertips before our house gets sold. But, last night my top house pick dropped its price by $40k, and we learned it was a short sale house. WOOHOO! Ok, I know you’re reading that as, “Gaw, George. Could you be a bigger cold-hearted harpie-cow?” But you already know the answer. Of COURSE I can, provided the correct motivational fodder. As a result, I emailed our our realtor(and my long-time friend) a list of five houses and she kindly obliged by getting us to see three.
House 1 (Montgomery, east of Tramway): Holy 1960s, Batman! The house hadn’t seen an update in easily 35 years. The carpet had permanent furnidents, and the cavalcade of various linoleums, while delightful, was a little rough on the visual senses. It was a split level house, but the odd part was the installation of two glass paned doors at the top and bottom of each stairwell, almost like it was a type of hermetic seal to keep out the cooties from the main floor living spaces. The bathrooms were the size of postage stamps. Not the current ones that are kinda big and rectangular, either, but those perfectly square $0.02 stamps. And, the master bathroom had seen the decorative addition of cartoon lady bugs the size of dinner plates pasted all over the shower door. The best part was the lighting fixtures. The entire house needed a remake, but the lighting fixtures absolutely were required to stay. At more than $150/sq ft, this house was grossly overpriced for the amount of effort (read: cash) it would take to eradicate that musty basement potpourri that graced every room and bring the house into a more modern, less mumu condition.
House 2 (Universally referred to as Garage Majal): Hm. $197/sq ft. And, for what? High ceilings and a 6-bay garage set up. This alleged 4-bedroom house is really a 3-bedroom house with an odd triangular room off the living area that was classified as a bedroom because it had a closet. All the bizarro designer paint choices in the world couldn’t really make this house better. I especially liked the water dish in the kitchen that had a thick layer of slobber floating on top from that pony the home owner called a dog.
House 3 (Thermal Envelope House): Say it with me: GORGEOUS! At around $125/sq ft this was an ideal house from the front door (that sticks) to the back door leading to the hugantic backyard (which, granted, needs A LOT of work to bring back into submission). The house had been redone, but done beautifully. The first floor had hardwood floors throughout. The pantry was big enough to host clog dancing lessons inside, and the 600-square-foot enclosed sun room could be quickly converted to a lovely Berta quarters with the addition of a closet and a bathroom. The kitchen was lovely, well laid out, but in need of some appliances updates. The upstairs was equally gorgeous with renovated bathrooms and new lovely carpet. Along one side of the house was a thermal envelope for passive heating. This space, assuming it doesn’t get to bread-baking temperatures, would be ideal for Matthew’s office. Loved it. Loved it loved it loved it!
House 4 that we’ll see next week sometime is the short sale house, and the number one pick on my personal list, even though House 3 is nearly stealing the crown in the Pretty House pageant. I liked the pictures of House 4 for several reasons: it has 4 bedrooms, a large flat backyard that is already grassed and landscaped, and it was within a block of open space and foothills hiking. Allegedly, it has fruit trees which I’m not a huge fan of unless they are peach trees in which case I’ll cheerfully tend to its every whim. It also has a pool. Now, as soon as I say that, everyone I talk to furrows their brow and either mutters something about the work to maintain it, or the inherent safety risks of having a pool. I like the idea if for no other reason than I wouldn’t have to go to take Evelyn to the over-chlorinated pee, fart, booger, and spit receptacles known as public pools to get a watery respite. I also like the idea because it would help make my home the centroid of family and friendly activities, allowing others to not have to take their kids to the public pools, either. Besides, it would be a mild expense to fence it off safely while the risk to small children is so present. I also liked it because it was inexpensive, and if we could buy the house for cheaper than we budgeted to buy a house for, then we could use the remaining cash to do any updating or fixing that we would want to get done.
Of course, it’s easy to find a house to buy. Which made me come home after touring the three today and stare meanly at our garage door and demand of the house, “Why don’t you sell?! Don’t you want to sell?! SELLLLLL D(ARN) YOU, SELLLLLLL!”
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For sale
Posted by E-George on May 11, 2009
Last week, this weekend, and today have been a series of frenetic hours decluttering, cleaning, tidying, organizing, and otherwise purging our house in preparation to put it on the market to sell. In some ways, it’s been deeply cathartic. In other ways, it’s been deeply disturbing.
It is experiences such as these that reveal aspects of my personality that I don’t often exercise. As an implementer, the moment we made the decision to sell the house I emotionally disassociated myself from my need to feel like the home’s occupier and dove headlong into packing up all my personalizing effects from shelves, cupboards, and closets. It never occurred to me that others in the house might have appreciated a somewhat slower approach instead of my patented bull-elephant style of project management.
On Saturday we had one of our biggest days of changes where we moved out my divorcee furniture from the TV room into storage, decluttered the pantry, took a load of junk to the dump, had the carpets washed throughout the house, and took the leaf out of the dining table and reduced it from an 8-seater to a 4-seater. In general, the feel of the house is a lot larger.
Now, I have a mandatory slipper rule for walking on the carpet, Berta has a mandatory keep-the-kitchen-clean rule, and Matthew has a mandatory keep-the-weeds-pulled-out-of-the-driveway-cracks rule. Hopefully all these rules combined will make for one super rule that will ultimately get the house sold in relative alacrity and speed us on our way towards being able to start searching for our next house.
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What do balloons and baths have in common?
Posted by E-George on April 26, 2009
The answer: Evelyn!
This first video is of Evelyn playing with a sun balloon that Berta had WWE wrestled a mess of old ladies for after a church luncheon. Yes. I said that correctly. Church luncheon. Evelyn loved this balloon. It’s important to note that we didn’t tie it to her or anything, she’s holding the ribbon herself. She figured out on her own that if she held the ribbon in one hand, and drew it through her other, the balloon could get close enough for her to swat and/or grab. It was wonderful to see her deductive thought process so well exercised. Two things to note about this video: (1) Matthew filmed it; and, (2) the balloon had started to lose some of its oomph by this point, and wasn’t quite as bouncy as it had been the day before.
This next video is of Evelyn playing in the sink. For the first time ever she’s suddenly started to play during bath time. Before now, it’s always been this lay-back-and-let-the-water-relax-you quiet time. No more! For now we have the power of…the splash!
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Park 0: Crestview Heights Park
Posted by E-George on
Matthew and I have committed to spending more time together and as a family. We’ve made the outrageous project to visit as many city parks as we can fit in over the coming spring, summer, and fall. We’re starting with those parks that are within walking distance of our house. First up, Crestview Heights Park. It’s west of Tramway, and most easily accessible by taking the pedestrian bridge over the busy street which dumps you directly at the park. Alternately, you could walk down Rover, cross Tramway, and weave through a cute little collection of townhouses to get there.
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Matthew carried Evelyn in the backpack carrier that Babka keeps at the house. Clearly, all of Babka’s hard work was paying off, because Evelyn enjoyed her walk in the backpack immensely.
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The first thing was to assess what the park had in terms of both play and picnic amenities. For play, it had one of the city’s few sandbox play grounds, with two swings, a see-saw, and a fort that came complete with two slides.
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For picnic there was a decent covered patio area with three bench-and-table rigs, but no grills. The grass was verdant and the dandelions were plentiful, yet there was a remarkable lack of dog poo laying about.
The park lies along the drainage easement better known as the Indian School ditch. On a bright sunny day like we had when we were present, there is usually a steady stream of idiots, morons, and other various boobs hurtling down the ditch in their saggy pants, skewed hats, ear-buds-n-ipod, riding on their skateboard. Occasionally (and by “occasional” I mean “hardly ever”) there will be a soul who will wear a helmet or *gasp* knee pads, but not often. The surrounding neighborhood is very nice and a classical example of Albuquerque middle class living.
As we walked back home, Evelyn succumbed to the rhythm of the motion and fell asleep.
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I’m embarrassed to say that I did not calculate our time in the sun correctly and all of us got a touch of sunburn. Matthew on his neck, me on my shoulders, and poor Evelyn on her little arms. My next big purchase will be Water Babies sunblock lotion SPF 30×10^5.
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Helicopter Mom
Posted by E-George on April 23, 2009
A friend told me about this term today. I sort of want to be one to see if it is as exhausting as it sounds, but I sort of don’t want to be one because that’s a fast road to alienting (or completely crippling) your kid.
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7 months
Posted by E-George on April 21, 2009
Evelyn is now seven months, and does it ever show. She sits up on her own, grasps things, rolls over easily, and puts anything she can reach into her mouth. Of late, her favorite game is Swat Mom’s Head, followed closely by Swat Mom’s Head With A Solid Plastic Toy.
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With spring come the spring winds. Evelyn loves the wind, it seems, and anytime we’re out in a breeze she leans forward and spreads her arms wide and sticks her tongue out. It very much looks like the whole “King of the world!” thing from the Titanic movie.
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Spring has additionally afforded us the luxury of taking walks again. To protect her skin, Berta made her a hat.
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I still struggle with working. I worry that my performance has dwindled, and the stress of feeling like I need to keep up has created a major impingement on my milk supply. For the last two weeks we’ve been having to supplement with formula and I cannot express how unhappy and disappointed I am about that. I’m working really hard to rebuild the supply, but it is slow going.
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With her sitting up so well, she really enjoys bossing her own toy box. She’ll rock it until she gets it tipped on the side so she can empty contents and then chew on the box.
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Also with the advent of sitting up Matthew has taken the opportunity to see if she likes to sit on his shoulders. The answer is a resounding, “Yes!” It was all fun and games until she spit up on the back of his head. Matthew froze in place, “Did she just puke on me?” “I don’t think so.” “Check. CHECK! I THINK SHE PUKED ON ME!” “It’s not puke, it’s just a little spit up.” “IT’S THE SAME AS PUKE! TAKE HER! TAKE HER! I’ve got to wash this out. Ugh… I just got puked on.” Technically, it was just a little spit up. But, I can appreciate not wanting that to dry up and stick in one’s hair.
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Sitting up has brought around a whole new level of play. In the mornings - at least on the mornings when I have the option to lounge in bed - we bring a few toys to bed and she plays cheerfully while my brain slowly (and I do mean slowly) revs up for the day.
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Evelyn is a doll. A for-reals angel-faced doll. She continues to be happy, easy-going, calm, with just a hint of bossy.
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Last week I did an impromptu photo shoot. Had I been using my dwindling faculties I would have taken the bib off first, but by way of trying to recover from that error smoothly I will simply say that the blue bib brought out the warm blue of her eyes.
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I gotta say, this just keeps getting better and better.
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