Pretty much awesome.

So today is a bit of a cop-out post (see earlier post about Little Guy's Cold of the Millenium; I'm getting the residual effects today), but this is amazing. Enjoy.

And here is a video for you.

Don't forget to De-Lurk, please!

I was going to write about Shelob's lair today but I am ridiculously tired and kind of brain-dead, and that story deserves a better treatment than I can give it in my present state of mind, so instead I'm giving you an awesome video. This song gives me the giggles every time I hear it. There are lots of other video versions, but I have a soft spot for this one simply because of the ponies (you'll see what I mean), which double the giggles.

The song is Skullcrusher Mountain by Jonathan Coulton.




And yes, if you were wondering, this is the same man who brought you that beloved classic, the IKEA song.

An unforeseen benefit to having a son.

As I have mentioned multiple times before, I do not like spiders. They are gross and creepy and generally all-around-bad. I mean, they do have their good points like they eat other bugs and *spoiler alert* turn Peter Parker into Spiderman and save pigs from being eaten (although I can't guarantee those were both done by the same spider).

But really, I'd just rather not have them around.

I know some people who are more humane than I am and will rescue spiders they find indoors and transfer them outside on a piece of paper or in a cup or something so they can live a free-range spidey life. And that's cool if they want to do that. I do that with grasshoppers my cats drag in to play with, and with bees that get in the house if I can catch them.

But spiders? I have put them on notice many times before—if they come into my house their eight-legged lives are forfeit.

For me, a major perk of getting married was having someone to kill my spiders for me. Don't get me wrong, I can and will kill spiders on my own if I have to (the summer Shallow Man was out of the country for an internship featured several harrowing run-ins with large arachnids, which I feel like I've blogged about before). I am adept at the shoe swat, the stomp, and the turn-the-shower-on-and-wash-the-spider-out methods. I just would prefer, if someone else is around who can do it for me, not to have to get close enough to the spider to actually kill it.

I also figured that, as the mom, I would have to be the designated spider slayer for years to come while dad's at work because the kids wouldn't want to kill spiders (GROSS!). So I've been reluctantly resigning myself to the role of spider killer, and have even whacked one or two when my husband's at home so he knows I'm not a complete wimp (remind me to tell you sometime about the times when the spider I wanted him to kill turned out to really be as big as I said it was, rendering his rolling of the eyes totally unjustified).

So this afternoon I got back from an errand and had taken off my jacket and shoes. The Little Guy was standing up by the TV stand waiting for me to get his jacket and shoes, and just as I reached for his coat zipper, I saw a spider running on the floor. I turned to put one of my shoes back on so I could stomp it, but the Little Guy took one look at that spider, gave me a glance that clearly said, "No worries, Mom; I've got this covered," and he and his sneakers proceeded to stomp the living daylights out of that trespassing arachnid.

Wow. If I'd realized this was one of the perks of having a little boy, I'd've done it *years* ago. (Oh wait. Never mind. We tried.)

And now I dream of the day when I can just relax in a lounge chair and sip a fruity drink as my army of little boys stomps away all my spider-related woes. That's not too much to ask for, right?



Maybe I should've named him Samwise the Brave. . . .

How can you not love it?; or, The ruler of the waves.

So today we took the newborn divider out of the baby tub so there was more room for the Little Guy to splash around. Seriously, I don't know why it took us so long to do it, because a funnier sight than the Little Guy reveling in the expanded size of his new watery kingdom I have rarely seen.

His first item of business was to turn around so he was facing the reclining wall of the tub, which gave him maximum splashage space. The next priority was to grab the little crab-shaped sprinkler cup that came with the tub.

And then, oh, then, he splashed.

He splashed with glee and reckless abandon and giggled and squealed and splashed and wriggled and shrieked.

And eventually he would splash enough to fill up the little cup. And then the next time he raised his hand to begin another splash, he would inadvertently hurl the contents of said cup directly into his face.

Then he would gasp and cough and splutter and blink.

Pause.

Grin.

Resume splashing/squealing/giggling/refilling the cup.

Rinse and repeat.

Poseidon had best watch himself; there's a new ruler of the waves in town.



Yeah, I love that Little Guy. And at least now I know that his nose has definitely been rinsed clean both inside and out.

A few items of note.

In no particular order:

The Little Guy has his first ever real cold. I blame Shallow Man's freaky immune system. Usually the way sickness works in this house is that instead of everyone catching a bug in turn, I catch it twice and Shallow Man maybe coughs a couple times and is over it. However, this last week Shallow Man actually had to take two—count 'em, TWO—sick days. This same bug is the first thing that's actually gotten to the Little Guy. I haven't been sick at all. (Being hungover from lack of sleep after taking care of the Little Guy most of the night doesn't count.) It's not fun for LG or for me, but it is comforting to know that I won't necessarily have to catch everything three times going forward. (Have my menfolk met their own personal Cold of the Century? Only time will tell.)

The only thing LG hates more than vaccinations is having his nose wiped. Kleenexes are bad enough but heaven help you if you bring a nasal aspirator within twenty feet of him. At times like these, I think of the medical staff who debated so long whether he and his lungs needed to go to the NICU or not, and imagine how proud they'd be if they could see him now. Actually, scratch that. I'm pretty sure they could hear him from where they were. I'm pretty sure FRANCE could hear him.

When he's not about to collapse under the weight of just how mean Mommy and her evil Kleenex-weilding ways are, LG's new favorite thing is to bury his face in my neck and blow raspberries. Each time he does this, he then leans back to see if I noticed JUST HOW AWESOME HE IS, and gets the cutest smug little smirk on his face. Like, "Yeah, I just did that." (LOVE THAT LITTLE GUY.)

He's also tried to raspberry my chin, with less than satisfactory (to his way of thinking) results.

He's not quite crawling yet, although he's definitely thinking about it. With the way the cats keep taunting him by waving their tails tantalizingly close to his grasp, I give it another couple weeks at most. Heaven help us all once he's mobile.

I had another surreal I-swear-I'm-not-old-enough-for-that moment today when the pediatrician's office called today to do a survey on customer satisfaction and they asked for "the parent or guardian of Little Guy" and I answered "Yes, that's me."



Well folks, the sad little snoring and whimpering from the nursery are telling me that it's probably going to be another long night, so I'll sign off now. I've got a sad little boy to snuggle.

Don't you evah . . .

Yeah.

This is an important message, kids. Pay attention.



Please note the appearance of one of my favorites around the 1:10 mark.

2010, at last.

Yes, yes, I know I'm a month late for the year-in-review game. Just live with it.

Here are some of the awesome things that happened in 2010. As I suspected, it was a MUCH better year than 2009. (Although, let's be honest, it wasn't hard to do.) As always, if I didn't list something you thought was awesome, it doesn't mean I didn't enjoy it; I just can't remember everything.

*The new year began with what was probably the best party we've ever had or ever will have at our house. New Year's Eve: Geek Style brought awesome Jenga, lots of laughter, great conversation, and just enough craziness to ensure that none of those present will ever be elected for public office.
*Beginning the final semester of law school and feeling great about my schedule, even though it involved an 8:00 a.m. class three days a week.
*Actually making it to class on time for the first several weeks of class.
*Getting Baby (our car) repaired after she sat in the cold and snow for a month and a half after the big break-down in November '09.
*Having to repair a flat tire in the snow and gunk of our parking lot before we could actually take Baby in.
*Steve's Intermountain is the best mechanic's shop in Provo. Just sayin'. He's honest, doesn't talk down to me just because I'm a woman, and is genuinely nice.
*Staying home all day one Wednesday while feeling sick and crampy and reading.
*Aubrey's wedding with Kat and KEY.
*New red coat, yo.
*Rejoining ILMR and editing a really horrible article, but at least the head editors were much better.
*Working at WSP with an awesome team of editors and friends.
*Geek Night X. The second-best party we've ever had here.
*Making Mario cupcakes with KEY for Geek Night X. Yeah, I'm still proud of those.
*Shallow Man finding the trauco in an old box while KEY and I were decorating said cupcakes.
*Our already-decrepit fence blew halfway over in a major windstorm and we had no choice but to pull the rest of it down to avoid damaging the siding.
*More Just Jane, including the expansion to 10 members, with the inaugural meeting of the new, improved club also being the first non-Austen-themed, but still Jane [Eyre].
*Lunches with KEY, when they happened. And even when they didn't, the weekly "I'm so sorry for being a flake, but . . ." conversations.
*Starting to feel a little weird the last week of January/first week of February, but knowing it wasn't what it felt like.
*Buying cruise tickets with the Cruise Crew on Friday, Feb. 5th.
*Taking that test on the morning of Saturday, Feb. 6th, just to prove to my body that it wasn't pregnant so it could stop acting like it.
*Ten minutes later, when I could think again, wandering dazedly into the bedroom and, after staring at the ceiling for several minutes, saying to Shallow Man, "So . . . I think I'm pregnant."
*Driving to Walmart that evening to buy another test just to make sure, and having the car start acting really funny again as we drove there.
*While shopping, thinking of the most hill-free route to take home to save the car from going up any hills while it was on the fritz, then getting out to the car and finding out that it would no longer shift into reverse. This officially bumped the two days of Feb. 5th & 6th, 2010, into "Most expensive weekend yet in our family."
*Riding in a tow truck.
*Our ever-growing collection of Steve's Intermountain keychains. Finding out it was not the whole transmission, thank goodness, just the sensor. FINALLY having a functioning car, but being afraid to accelerate or go up hills for the next (okay, I'll be honest) three months.
*Walking to the Student Health Center on Monday afternoon to get the blood test and trying to figure out how far along I was.
*Getting the quantitative results back and wanting to sing.
*Feeling great until placement break (of course!) and then getting hit with morning sickness, big time.
*Working from home. A lot.
*Missing a lot of class. (My professors were all in on the secret and very supportive.)
*Going to a lot of different wards (our 9:00 a.m. meeting time didn't gel with my hours-that-I-am-not-hunched-over-the-toilet schedule).
*Julie and Julia for Valentine's.
*Telling the rest of my family (my parents already knew) at my birthday party. Much rejoicing.
*The tree in our backyard had to be cut down before the HOA would replace the fence (we at least got them to pay for the removal). It ended up being removed on the morning of my birthday.
*And thus we were introduced to the power of the pregnant sobbing. (Confession: I would have cried about the tree anyway. But I wouldn't have been reduced to blubbering.)
*Trying to make dinner for one of the pregnant sisters in the ward without looking at any of the ingredients, all of which made me sick.
*The saddest day of all: Baby decided not to let me eat bacon for the rest of the first trimester. This is especially sad when you consider that I had just discovered The Pioneer Woman's Fancy Macaroni the first week of February.
*Shallow Man took me to see 12 Angry Men performed at PTC in Salt Lake for my birthday. I snuck in trail mix and managed not to get sick during the performance. Lots of fun!
*Olympics! So much fun to watch. Also, they helped me discover the joys of pregnancy emotions (I have never cried so hard during a commercial).
*Bar applications. Yuck.
*Hire's and the Roquefort Bacon H. "Whatever that is."
*Cousin party and Rayman's Raving Rabbids. Whoa.
*Going to the first doctor's appointment in March and having everything look good. But, just in case, he scheduled a sonogram for the next week.
*Coming back to work after that appointment just to find out that the company had apparently imploded (not literally) in our absence and that all but a handful of employees were being laid off.
*We were not included in that handful. Actually, everyone from me down.
*Which meant that I got to break the news to all of my friends that they were being laid off. This included going to the homes of two of them who hadn't been in the office to let them know before they heard it from somebody else.
*Fortunately, seven horrible days later, we saw Baby for the first time, and heard the most beautiful sound ever: a strong, healthy heartbeat.
*Spilling the beans to everyone and seeing all our friends get so excited for us. (I put it on Facebook, and then it was true!)
*Viewing party for New Moon (mocking commentary mandatory!) and the Team Jacob t-shirt.
*Morning sickness escalation and the first prescription, which made it worse. Lost five pounds in one weekend alone.
*Getting the second prescription and starting to feel human again.
*Except for the only being able to eat Easy Mac part. But HEY, if that looked appetizing, it should give you an idea of the amazing effectiveness of that second prescription!
*Going to Cracker Barrel because spoiled pork chops made me cry. (Yeah, not fun.)
*SLA night II, which ended up being me, Motion deSmiths and Megan watching "She's the Man." Awesome.
*Going in for our 12-week appointment the day before my last law school classes. I had nightmares for the whole week leading up to it about the last time we went in for a 12-week appointment. But he found the heartbeat instantly. I may or may not have cried.
*Holy cow, I do not even know HOW I finished that last semester of law school. But I did.
*Last class of law school.
*Last final of law school (which is the closest I will ever get to living that nightmare where you have to take a final for a class you didn't realize you were enrolled in).
*Substantial writing, aka Major Paper (neigh!). It nearly killed me, but I did it.
*Last papers of law school, for the most useless class ever, and the professor who I'm pretty sure gave me a lower grade because I had the audacity to be pregnant while taking his class, even though I can't prove it. He was the only professor who wasn't 100% supportive and willing to work with me. He did work with me, but under protest and not without accusing me of unprofessionalism first. Blech.
*Graduation! I am so glad we got to walk in the Provo Tabernacle! We were the last class to be able to do so, as there was a fire in December and the roof collapsed.
*Partying, relaxing, and lots of sighs of relief.
*Hitting the second trimester two days before graduation, and briefly thinking that the morning sickness would stop. (It did leave me alone for graduation, thank goodness.) This turned out to be a lie—the sickness wasn't going anywhere for the next few months. But at least I could eat bacon again.
*Being re-hired by the publishing company as a part-time independent contractor.
*Mother's Day wasn't traumatic for the first time in several years.
*CRUISE!!!
*The toilet of lost souls.
*"Aw, hell."
*Balcony!
*Cruise director Gary.
*Dennis, our waiter. ("Denniiiiiiiiis!")
*I ate escargot for the first time ever.
*Only having to send one plate back because I nearly gagged just looking at it (roast beef, of all things, which I love. Weird.)
*Cruise ship entertainment. ("You can't pay money for those shows!") The big talking purple couch.
*The Land Whale. ("Freeeeennnnnncch Toooooooooast!")
*Our seven-year anniversary, spent in Grand Cayman, with the most beautiful beach I have ever been to.
*The group excursion in Honduras—snorkeling, good conversation, yellow fish, not enough sunscreen despite reapplying frequently and liberally.
*Feeling Baby kick for the first time that I could definitely say was Baby and nothing else while standing waist-deep in the beautiful blue water at the beach in Honduras.
*Banana slug blisters. Apparently my pregnant skin does NOT react well to sunburn. (I haven't blistered since I was maybe 12, and never like THAT.)
*Magic shows with lame final tricks that rely on fictional sob stories.
*Piggy banks made out of coconuts, discovering ice cream and cinnamon, and an amazingly choppy boat ride in Belize.
*Karaoke and attempted dancing.
*Delicious food in Cozumel.
*Floppy hat!
*Trying to figure out what the heck the towel animal of the evening was supposed to be, and sometimes feeling glad that we didn't know.
*Renting a van and driving around Miami.
*Horrible service at Bubba Gump's, which I didn't notice because Baby had started the first-ever round of kick the bladder.
*Worst ever TSA experience at Miami international.
*Weather delay in Miami led to missing our flight in Dallas. After a mad dash across the airport on what ultimately turned out to be a wild goose chase (more Kick the Bladder ensued), we and the Smiths were given vouchers to a surprisingly nice hotel.
*Finally getting home, and the cats gluing themselves to our sides for the next day or so. ("Never leave again!")
*Early morning Spanish.
*Helping friends move.
*The most awkward dinner visit we've ever been forced to endure. (If you're reading this, it wasn't with you.)
*So much Gloria's.
*Camping for Memorial Day with our AWESOME NEW AIR MATTRESS. Seriously, it's amazing.
*Motion deSmiths left us. How we wept, precious!
*The Ultrasound on June 3rd. Despite having a feeling that Baby was a girl the whole time, as well as having a girl's name already picked out, baby very clearly showed us that he was a boy. He also was sitting curled up like a potato bug, blocking the technician's detailed view of his heart, thus necessitating a follow-up visit six weeks later (oh, darn!).
*GIVE MY SON THE JUICE!!!
*Family camping trip. Lots of fun with Kick the Bladder and pit toilets. Wind so strong we felt like our tent was going to blow away with us in it. Being the cool hangout for our nephews because with the huge air mattress our tent was like a carnival bounce house.
*I remember we got our oil changed in June because the sticker they left on our windshield said that the date for our next oil change was the day Baby ended up being born.
*Southern Culture Night. Hands on a Hard Body. Lots of good food. Very Yes.
*I finally finished reading Great Expectations, and it was better than I had expected.
*Lots of fun trying to change our car battery. Riiiiight.
*But we got the car inspected and registered and such WAY before the end of the month. No sneaking around backroads like last year.
*Fireworks with the family for the fourth.
*Bar study all the time. Post-traumatic stress and such.
*Follow-up ultrasound, where everything still looked perfect. :)
*One year later, and thinking what a long way we'd come, and being happier on that day than I would have thought possible a year before.
*Actually getting to go to my mom's birthday party this year.
*Having to get a doctor's note in order to take food into the bar exam. ("Because not all pregnant women need to eat.")
*The Dreaded Bar. Two days of UNGH in which my feet swelled up to ridiculous sizes.
*BUT—my magic spreadsheet predicting the essay question topics was pretty much spot on. The only one I didn't predict was Property, but that was okay because it was still an MBE subject. Yeah, I felt good about that.
*IT'S OVER!!!!
*Dinner at the Mayan with Megan and Mr. G, just because it was there. It's still as cheesy as I remembered, although I was greatly angered that the chocolate pot was no longer a dessert option.
*Finding out that E was pregnant and S was adopting, and we were all having boys. Hello, three musketeers!
*Being able to say that we were now "After the Bar."
*Failing the other test I took that week. (Nasty glucose test.)
*Failing the other nasty glucose test I took the next week.
*Hello, gestational diabetes.
*Hello, sore fingertips.
*Possible pre-eclampsia (what is with these whale-sized feet?). Fun sample collecting.
*Celebratory post-bar pedicures. (So at least the whales had cute toenails.)
*Inception. Twice. Even though my feet hated me for it later.
*We bought a car seat and stroller! That felt like a major accomplishment, somehow.
*Trying to find a suitable crib.
*Trying to figure out what the heck to name the Little Guy.
*Tensions between Barrie and Joyce.
*Weekly and sometimes bi-weekly non-stress tests, as well as another couple of ultrasounds. Which do, incidentally, help ME de-stress, because I get to see the Little Guy and hear his heartbeat on a regular basis. We find out baby has a big noggin.
*Reunions and birthday parties.
*Reading The Hunger Games Trilogy and being very glad, as I hit the end of the second book, that I waited until all three were out before I started them.
*Pre-natal classes with uncomfortable chairs and videos.
*Blood pressure acting sketchy.
*Geek Nights, Just Janes, more tense moments.
*Bar results come out and WE BOTH PASSED. Holy cow.
*Baby shower!
*The crib FINALLY arrives and we start putting it together Thursday night after our class.
*Friday morning I go to my 36-week appointment, planning to run some errands afterwards and then wait at home for the delivery man to show up with the new camera we've ordered. Instead, the nurse looks at my blood pressure and sends me to labor and delivery.
*Did I mention I was planning to pack my hospital bag later that day?
*Shallow Man's wonderful co-worker brings him to the doc's office and we head to the hospital. My angel sister heads to our house and packs bags for us, arranges for a neighbor to sign for the camera and bring it to us (she was headed to a concert in SLC and couldn't wait for it herself, which only increases her angelitude in my opinion), and even cleaned up the boxes from the crib (which we were too tired to throw away the night before) and fed the cats. At some point in the next few days she even did laundry for us, and I don't know what all else. Let me take a moment again to emphasize that she is amazing and an angel. Thank you so much, sis!
*The short version here is that after 30 hours of labor, I had a c-section on Saturday night and the Little Guy made his entrance to the world. Shallow Man and I fell instantly in love with him and it's only gotten better.
*Adventures in hospital staying. I found out that morphine is awesome. And I have never been happier to eat a milkshake in my life.
*Finally made it home the next week, although I had to get a prescription for blood pressure meds because mine was still higher than they liked.
*Having a moment of panic when I had to sign the "Parent/Guardian" line on the hospital release forms.
*Near-daily visits to the hospital lab for bilirubin counts. We were nearly on a first-name basis with the nurses there.
*One night with the Little Guy on bililights and I hope I never have to do that again.
*A fun trip to the emergency room for me because my blood pressure was reading something like 201/120. Yeah. When we got there and it was only reading 175/105, they couldn't understand why that made us so happy. Meds were upped and things turned out okay.
*Tripping down the stairs one of my first days home alone with the baby. Not recommended.
*Shallow Man having to work till 11 p.m. most nights the week after we came home. Also not recommended.
*Much pain and suffering and frustration and tears (on both ends) trying to figure out the whole nursing thing. Thank goodness for the lactation clinic.
*Being sworn in as lawyers and actually getting to go to the ceremony. Wahoo!
*Oh, losing, like, 40 pounds in the first three weeks after the birth. I was back in pre-pregnancy pants two weeks after he was born. I don't know how it happened, but I'm not complaining!
*Making a Hiccup (from "How to Train Your Dragon") costume for the Little Guy for Halloween, even though he maybe should have been Mount Vesuvius.
*The arrival of two more geeklings (one before, one after the Little Guy, and both girls).
*Slowly and gradually healing.
*The Little Guy's blessing day. I've been waiting for that one for a long time. (Yes, I cried.)
*Going to the funeral for my great-aunt, the last surviving member of my grandmother's family. Losing one of the Little Guy's socks at the graveside service.
*Thanksgiving. And pie. But mostly thankfulness for being so blessed.
*The Little Guy's two-month appointment. He is a string bean—long and skinny, but very healthy and cheerful.
*Completing 30 blog posts in 30 days for NaBloPoMo.
*Going to the Christmas party for Shallow Man's work at La Caille. Delicious food, even if the atmosphere is a bit silly. Two of his team members (sitting at our table) won prizes. We enjoyed the juxtaposition of our car being brought up by the valets at the fancy restaurant.
*The failed attempt to see my sister's quartet perform, and the encore just for us.
*Getting to see Red and Harry Potter in theaters when awesome people baby-sat the Little Guy for us.
*Finally leaving the publishing company for good and all.
*Working with Shallow Man again, only this time he's my supervisor, sort of.
*Little Guy's first smile.
*Little Guy's first laugh.
*Little Guy just being awesome in general.
*Another cousins party at the end of the year, this time with three new babies. :)
*We are a three-stocking family now!
*Spending Christmas at my parent's house along with my sister and her family because they were moving out of state on Christmas afternoon. Packing up their house in the days before Christmas.
*The best Christmas ever.
*Also the most tearful as we all gave our last hugs and goodbyes and my sister and her family packed up and drove off for four years of school in the South.
*One wonderful week of having a bread maker before it died.
*First eye appointments since the beginning of law school.
*Oddly, all of our invited guests for New Year's Eve ended up having to cancel, so we rang out 2010 as a family, with just the three of us. It was a good end to a good year, and I think the vast difference between the beginning and the end of 2010 were in keeping with the other surprises and changes that came along the way.

Yeah, all in all, I think 2010 is my favorite year yet. As the Little Guy grows and develops even more of a personality and gets even cuter (if such a thing is possible), I'll be excited to see what comes next!

You're on notice, 2011. You've got a lot to live up to.




I have to say, seeing as this post is a month and a bit late, that so far 2011 has not disappointed. Onward and upward!

Best. Baby. Ever.

So I know I'm way behind in the blog posts I'd like to get written. There's still the birth story, 2010 in review, and a few others that I want to get done, but haven't. (All together now: Sometimes being a good mommy makes me a bad blogger. Sigh. Rinse and repeat.)

But I did want to take a brief moment to brag about my awesome child share this story. We just got back from visiting Shallow Man's grandparents in Alabama (and oh, the stories I could tell you about that trip. But that's for another time). We were pretty nervous going into it because although we have flown many times, we've never flown with a not-quite-four-month-old infant before. I was worried the Little Guy would have problems with his ears or the noise or have a massive blowout on the plane (yeah, I have a few more "I'm not blogging about poop" entries, too). I dealt with this anxiety the only way a mother can: by over-packing. But we flew on Southwest which = free checked bags. Which, of course = very yes.

I needn't have worried, though. Little Guy was, as per his usual, a champ. On each leg of the flights, I would start nursing him once we got in our seats, and he was completely asleep by the time we took off. He would wake up, briefly, once or twice during the flight and then conk out again in the face of the humming of the very large engines (our boy is curiously susceptible to the lulling sound of the car, so it wasn't too surprising that an airplane has the same effect).

The best part? At the end of each flight, the passengers around us (even one sitting right next to Shallow Man!) looked around when they stood up and said in surprise, "I didn't even know there was a baby on this flight."

Yeah, I know.

Best. Baby. Ever!



Unfortunately, between holding the Little Guy and worrying, we somehow neglected to get a picture of him being angelic on his first air voyage. Hopefully he'll do a repeat performance the next time we fly anywhere.

Things I love; or, Just the facts.

I love:

*The fact that I have been able to see the seasons change from late summer to autumn to winter by watching the leaves change on the tree that is visible from the nursery window while I nurse the Little Guy.

*The fact that my red-haired son has long eyelashes which are strawberry blond and not white. (And yes, he also has my invisible eyebrows. But that's another story.)

*The fact that the Little Guy took two legitimate naps today, rather than a handful of catnaps. (The fact that I got a major amount of cleaning done may or may not have anything to do with this.)

*The fact that the Little Guy is starting to enjoy bath time.

*The fact that there is, in fact, the Little Guy.




Yeah, I'm hopelessly in love.

Victory Lap!!!

Well, we made it! I didn't know, at the beginning of the month, if I'd be typing up my 30th post in as many days today, but it worked! Thanks to all of you who have stuck around during this undertaking.

I've realized that blogging more frequently is a lot of fun, and completely doable as long as I make time for it specifically. That being said, I've also realized that I don't necessarily have enough to say to keep blogging every day. Looking back at the last 30 days, I've done:

*A whole lot of cop-out posts, usually about how tired I am because of something the Little Guy has been up to. Don't get me wrong; I would much rather be tired and boring and have the Little Guy around than be energetic and witty and still childless. But as I have said before, being a good mommy sometimes means I have to be a bad (or at least uninteresting) blogger.

*A few posts about musicals you may not have heard of but should totally check out.

*A book review.

*A series about word nerd-age.

*Much linkage.

*A moderately successful De-Lurk Day (if you never did de-lurk, or if you thought you weren't included because you don't technically lurk, you are still more than welcome to comment now!).

*Maybe one or two actually interesting posts about random stuff from my brain.

Not too shabby, I suppose, but it also has lots of room for improvement, substance-wise. I'm thinking of some changes and organization for the blog which I hope to implement in the coming month. But I reserve the right to occasionally pop in with nothing more than a note saying I'm still a mommy, and I'm still alive. But I guess if you've made it this far with me, you'll probably understand that. And, as always, if you have any suggestions and/or requests for blog post topics, please let me know and I will do my best to oblige.

Thanks to all of you for reading, and for making me feel like there were people I shouldn't disappoint, which kept me posting here this month. I love knowing that people read this random stuff I write, and that some of you even enjoy it.

So I guess I'll see you in December!



My Amazon PayPhrase today was "Elliespen's Unstable Essays." I'm not sure what to think about that.

And, in case you didn't notice before, yes, this is DAY 30! Mission accomplished!

My favorite holiday.

I love Thanksgiving. It's my favorite holiday. It has all the good food and relatives gathering and crisp weather and good cheer of Christmas, but doesn't involve as much stress or shopping. (I dislike shopping, unless it involves unlimited resources and lots of books.)

KEY, when I told her this, challenged my assertion that Thanksgiving is less stressful than Christmas. I told her that meant she was doing Thanksgiving wrong. (Don't worry; our friendship is awesome enough that we can tell each other things like that and not get upset. Unless it's about James Joyce. . . .)*

The key to Thanksgiving is delegation. It should be like a very, very organized potluck. Everyone has an assignment and everyone brings that item to dinner. If only one person is in charge of all the shopping and cooking for everyone else, of course that's going to be too much stress for them. If you show up to a Thanksgiving dinner that someone else cooked and you haven't contributed to at all, you haven't really joined in the point of the holiday. You might be grateful for their efforts but you haven't made yourself a full part of the communal Thanksgiving experience. Everyone cooks; everyone shares. That's how Thanksgiving should be, at least in my opinion.

One of my favorite aspects of Thanksgiving is Pie. Pie, pie and more pie.

Oh, and pie.

Which I actually need to go make now. So I will leave you with these two awesome pie-related things:


Pushing Daisies. If you haven't seen any episodes of this delightful (and, unfortunately, now-cancelled) TV show, do yourself a favor and introduce yourself to Ned (the Piemaker, who has a special power), Chuck (his alive-again sweetheart), Emerson Cod (a private investigator who knits to calm his nerves), Olive Snook (the waitress who loves Ned unrequitedly), Aunts Lily and Vivian (retired synchronized swimming duo with agoraphobic tendencies and a proclivity for waving around shotguns, at least in Lily's case), and Digby (an alive-again dog). You won't be sorry. As Ned says, "Pie is home. People always come home."



I've always liked this particular Wondermark.

Now go forth, eat pie, be thankful, and take looooong afternoon naps.




*Love you, KEY! Even if I don't love Jimmy like you do. ;)

Day 24 and I'm posting in the middle of the afternoon, yo! How's that for being on top of things!

Word lovin'.

I came across this article about word attraction today and it got me thinking. (There's another article here about the opposite effect of word aversion in general and the word "moist" in particular which is also quite interesting.)

It's true that I love words. A lot. And I love coming across those dollar-vocabulary words like "ebullient" and "viscosity" (words like "thither," "felicity," "mischance"!) and sharing them with friends, family, casual acquaintances and even, occasionally, strangers on the street. I know other people have favorite words (my sister's favorite word being "perforated." Which, you have to admit, is a pretty dang cool word).

My grandpa used to have fun teaching us words that were disproportionately long for our size. Nothing quite as funny as a two-year-old trying to say "hypothetical." And given a little more time, I'm sure we'll be trying to get the Little Guy to say things like "anticipatory repudiation" or "temerity."

Probably some of the reason why I love Amazon PayPhrase suggestions so much is because they tend to include awesome words. I mean, "metallurgical?" Come on! That's good stuff right there! (Today's PayPhrase: Elliespen's Scarlet Equity. I don't know what it means, but I like it.)

But my favorite word is not a majorly complicated five-syllable word. ("Polysyllabic" is a great word, though.) It is, however, pretty much the most amazing word in the English language:

Askance.

How can you not love that word? It looks and sounds exactly like what it is. Let's take another look.

Askance.

Ahhhh. Gotta love it.

I also enjoy its cousins, "ajar" and "askew." And many, many other words, some of which are fancier and more impressive to the lay ear.

But "askance" will always be first in my heart, lexically speaking.



Let's celebrate Day 17 with awesome words! Please list some of your favorite words in the comments so we can all share the joy and beauty of vocabulary.

Three things that make me laugh.

Courtesy of Booklicious.


I'm kind of in love with this show.


Just saw this movie and loved it. John Malkovich definitely stole the show.



12 days and counting! I could totally be a Christmas song at this point.

Short and sweet: The Amazon PayPhrase.

Today was rather busier than usual so we're going with the short and sweet post today.

All I really want to say is that Amazon PayPhrase is one of the joys of my life. I have not yet and never will set my Amazon PayPhrase because if I did, it would stop suggesting pay phrases for me. And I get such good ones.

Like today's gem:

"Elliespen's Austere Sofas."

Past favorites include:

"Elliespen's Sketchy Seat"
"Elliespen's Unstoppable Disco"
"Elliespen's Glowing Jewels"
"Elliespen's Unfocused Thoughts"
"Elliespen's Social Fraternity"
"Elliespen's Extreme Retention" (This was either a good omen for bar study or an apt reflection on the size of my pregnancy feet.)

A friend of mine once got "Metallurgical Episodes" and "Racy Writings." Today, Shallow Man got "Gradual Layers," and once it was "Shallow Man's Wild Missions."

Yes, an Amazon PayPhrase suggestion can brighten up a grey day or add extra zest to a happy one. What are some of your favorite past PayPhrases?


Today, mine should be something like "Elliespen's Continued Triumph." Day 6, baby!

It's Freaking Awesome, That's What It Is.

Sometimes awesome things happen.

(Like the fact that, while trying to post this blog entry, my internet service hiccupped [no, that’s not the awesome part] and while looking at my network settings I noticed that apparently some of my neighbors have named their wireless networks “BaconFace”, "Howdy :)" and “Gellin Like a Crellin.” Yup. I think maybe I need to make better friends with my neighbors now.)

(Oh, and don’t worry. My internet service came back in time to post this blog entry before the deadline. Which is why you’re reading this now. Which is another one of those awesome things that happens, although not, again, the main awesome thing in question here.)

No, sometimes awesome things happen, like what happened to me last Saturday.

I went to my cousin’s baby shower on Saturday. Okay, technically she’s my cousin’s wife, but it’s easier just to call people plain cousin; they’re all family anyway. But the in-law factor is important to this story of awesomeness because it meant that some of her other relatives who are not directly related to me were also present.

Said other relatives were sitting on the other side of the room during the main festivities but came over to coo over Little Guy during the munch-and-mingle phase. (Because, let’s face it, Little Guy is eminently coo-over-able. The dude is adorable, is all that I’m sayin’.)

One of them asked who he belonged to, and I fessed up to being the mother in question. After congratulating me, she said, “We were trying to figure out who he belonged to before, but nobody here looked like they’d just had a baby.”

Yes, my friends, sometimes awesome things happen.


(Yeah, it’s been several days and I am still floating over this one.)

(And. AND—what is also awesome? The fact that I’m still on track here after three days. Yeah, with the whole parenthood and sleep deprivation thing, I take what I can get.)

And now, an even bigger surprise.

I don't have time (or energy) for a full post right now, but just wanted to let you all know that our little guy decided to make an early entrance (or it was decided for him after my blood pressure was dangerously high at my 36-week checkup). He arrived at 6:30 p.m. on Saturday night via c-section and is, quite simply, perfect. No complications for baby or for me so far. I'll share the full story later, but for now, here are my 1000 words:


Yeah, you just WISH your toes were that cute. :)

OH MY STINKING HECK I ACTUALLY PASSED.

And best of all, so did Shallow Man!

WE BOTH PASSED THE BAR, YO!

(Our poor kid officially will have two lawyers for parents. Maybe you should pray for him. . . .)

You never know what a Monday will bring.

So today did not start out very promisingly. In short, things did not look good for Homestar Runner (read: the rest of my week). I got to work and found out that my little half-gallon of milk, whose sell-by date will not arrive for two more days, not only smelled rancid but had little bits of stuff floating on top. I don't know how a half-of-a-half-gallon of milk spoils that badly over a weekend (Shallow Man surmises that there was a power outage over the weekend and the fridge got turned off for a while), but it didn't make me happy in any event. This frustration was repeated when it turned out that half of my individually wrapped string cheese packets (whose best-by date is not until Oct. 30) had also started to putrify in their wrappers. This is not the way you want to start a Monday.

I'd rather not get into the story of how my boss's inability to handle looking at and sending out a 1-sentence document in less than 96 hours also started to send my blood pressure skyrocketing. Let's just say I'm not getting paid nearly enough. And that it did not bode well for the rest of my week.

Third trimester nausea is also back in full force and was really making its presence felt today, too. But I don't want to talk about that, either.

But then Shallow Man and I had an appointment for another ultrasound today, this one as a follow-up for the exciting new gestational diabetes issues going on. Baby is doing fine but was being a punk and hiding again so we couldn't see his face. But seeing the rest of him helped lower the blood pressure significantly. The technician took all his measurements and then took them out to the doctor, so the doctor saw Baby's stats before she saw us, and was a little worried about how big his head seems to be (not ginormous, but bigger than you'd expect). Then she came in and saw Shallow Man's large noggin, and heard how even I have a hard time finding a hat that isn't too small, and she was reassured. Yayy for crazy genetics rather than weird complications, I suppose. We also got a good picture of Baby's foot and determined for certain that he has what are referred to in my family as "Daddy toes." Very cute. (Can't tell yet if they're webbed like his daddy's or not, though.) So that helped make Monday feel a bit better.

And when we got home my Monday luck underwent a major change. I may or may not have mentioned in my last post that I like YA literature. And that I am anticipating the release of several awesome YA books this year.

Well, one of those books is the highly-anticipated Mockingjay, the final book in Suzanne Collins' The Hunger Games series. (I must admit that this is not the number one book on my list of anticipated releases, but that's just because I haven't had a chance to actually read the first two yet. Law school managed to take up a lot of time, and then I figured I may as well just wait until the third one is out so I don't have to do the whole waiting-so-impatiently thing. But it was still number 4 on my list.)

Mockingjay is not supposed to be released until tomorrow, August 24, 2010. Or, at the very least, at midnight tonight.

Yeah, Amazon just delivered it to my door about an hour ago.

This means a few things:

1. Someone at Amazon made a shipping error.
2. This kind of shipping error would be considered lucky for the recipient.
3. I am that recipient.
4. That means something lucky happened to me, to wit, I have a copy of the year's most highly anticipated YA release in my hot little hands a full seven hours before I am supposed to.
5. This situation definitely calls for a diabolical laugh.
6. BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

This is not the kind of lucky thing that happens to me very often. I can't decide if this means that my week is not going to be as horrible as I was afraid it would be, that my overall life luck pattern is about to change for the better, or that the universe is simply giving me a small apology for a quarter-gallon of wasted milk and the fact that I had to eat my regularly scheduled peanut-butter-and-jam-on-toast with no milk to wash it down this morning.

I figure, whatever works.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I have a trilogy to read.

Just a quick announcement.

This will be a longer post later, but sleep deprivation is kicking in and my brain is currently incapable of producing long, intelligent, interesting posts. So for now I just have a few quick bullet points:

1. I love YA literature.
2. I think YA literature is often better than many other types of literature.
3. There are YA books coming out this year which I am greatly anticipating.
4. One of them is being given away as an ARC.
5. Here is a link to the giveaway.
6. Tell your friends.
7. But don't enter. Because I would like to win.
8. That is all.

So very true.

Brought to you by Allie of Hyperbole and a Half. This video is one of my new favorite things.