Having a Little Drink.

First Granddaughter.

Oh man. Sometimes I think to myself "even if we didn't for sure want to have a second child, we'd HAVE to have one, otherwise Ellie is going to be spoiled beyond words. She will be absolutely impossible, with the grandparents she's got."

Observe:
Friday night, getting a little chocolate ice cream from her Gramps, in celebration of his birthday.

Sunday, she got to spend the afternoon with Grandma and Grandpa, including a lovely sunset cruise around East Lake.

I call this candid "Who's In Charge Here?" Grandpa is not even steering. Grandma is preparing to drink an adult beverage, and Ellie is staring off into the man-made depths of the lake. She LOVED boat time though, it was very cute.

Today, when we went over to Grams and Gramps' house, I went to the bathroom and came back and found this. Not pictured: our 30 minute soak in the hot tub, jets and all.

And of course, the truth is, she's not even half as spoiled as her lucky mommy. I don't know what I'd do without this village around helping me raise my child.

Baby In Action.

Are You Ready for Some Football?!?!

Oh what a night!

First off, turns out that going two years without visiting the dentist, being pregnant and then having a baby will cause you (ie me) to grow four tiny cavities. Blech. I had my first office visit in too long today. They said my teeth still look great, but such is what happens when another human being leaches nutrients from your bones. Thankfully, three of them will just require a little polishing and sealing. And after all of the screaming Ellie was doing this morning, the dental chair felt like a dang Club Med vacation.

Then on the way home, a lot of the street lights were out. Turns out, there's a pretty massive blackout through parts of Southern California and Arizona. The good news? My house still had power. The bad news? Mom and dad's doesn't, nor does Sara's apartment. Still, I came home, I turned on my AC, I hunkered down in front of my TV, and I told Dad he could come over to our house to watch the game. Poor mom and Sara tried to come too, but the drive from horseback riding was horrendous, with all of the street lights out. The thing that kills me is any time I see a fender bender around town, there will be about 8 of Mission Viejo's finest out to the scene of the crime, but when major intersections and freeway offramps go dark, you can't get a couple freaking cops out to direct traffic?

Now that we have our new couch, and since we have free DirecTV this season, I've made it clear to our friends that our house is Thiel Stadium, open for business at all times. Tonight I'd made some chili and some chicken salad, and we were expecting a crowd. Dad was well behaved, even though he generally hates watching games with other people... especially chatty nerds.

But what a game, right? We definitely enjoyed. And yes, Ellie was out in her baby finery.



Gramps did manage to play with her a little. During a break in the action.

Amazing to think that her first game of last session she looked like this:

And then after everyone left, I put her to bed all by myself! Go self.

Sit on It!

After several years of living in a total dump, we are finally turning our house into a grown up house. Or at least, a place with a more comfortable, grown up living room. It started with us being copycats and getting the same recliner that mom and dad had purchased. The thing is amazing - it's not a big hideous man recliner, it rocks, it's so comfortable. I only wish I'd had it before Ellie was born. It would have made the first few weeks much easier. I look forward to sleeping it with #2 on my chest when he or she is a few days old and needs to hear mommy's heartbeat to sleep.

The next step was getting rid of our entertainment cabinet. The one we had is a 70s relic from the Ford rec room. It's a nice piece of actual wood furniture, but it didn't have any shelving and was basically made to store VHS tapes, not all of the cable boxes and X-Boxes that Tim has. His friend Ed bought a new entertainment center and sold us his. Voila! New entertainment center on the cheap. We were even able to unload our old entertainment cabinet via the magic of craiglist (I put it in the free section and someone actually came and got it! One can only hope that getting rid of the couch will go as well.)

It gets better. At knitting I was talking about how Tim and I had decided to go look for a small sectional during Labor Day, to take advantage of the sales. Jackie mentioned that she had friends in San Diego who had some barely used furniture in storage that they were looking to unload. Turns out, their sectional was almost exactly what Tim and I were looking to buy, and they were looking to sell on the cheap. So today we rented a U-Haul cargo van (which we filled with puppies and candy, for the children of San Diego, naturally) and dumped the baby at Grams' so we could go and pick up our new couch. It was like a day off - four whole hours spent reading and goofing off in the van, without the baby? SWEET FREEDOM!

So I present, without further ado, our sweet new living room.

Now I just sort of wish we had held out - perhaps mom and dad would have sold us their recliner gently used.

I also present: how babysitting went (aka: making the baby sleep in the yard.)

We're Going to Win Twins.

....no, we're not. We're never going to win a damn game against the Angels while I'm in attendance, but we can have fun in the mean time, I suppose.

Dad was able to get us 8 tickets for today's afternoon game. They were seated four and four, so we had to do some trading off to make sure that everyone got a chance to hang out with Itty Bitty. I thought it worked out pretty well (though we did have to briefly reprimand a certain grandma for her baby hogging.) Ellie did great at the game - she was pleased to let everyone hold her, she didn't fuss too much, and at the end of the game she flat out passed out. Visual evidence!

Starting the game with her Angels-loving grandparents!

She is slightly perturbed by the strange, older man behind her.

Then her Twins-loving family arrived! (well, I had already been there with her, obviously.)

I had forgotten my AWESOME Circle me Bert sign (in the car!) but mom had made some little signs... which Ellie ate. She loves paper products.

So, at the end of the game, the moms, Sara and Jake were all sitting with the baby in the lower seats. The rest of us were standing in the back (behind the blue line, as the crabby stadium staff member kept reminding us if a toe crept over the line) basically waiting for the game to be over so we could reunited and rally and head out. All of a sudden, I get a text from Sara that Ellie, who I had handed off maybe five minutes ago, was asleep.

What a lazy baby! I think Grams gave her the sleeper hold. Actually, I realized about ten minutes later that it was after 3pm. It wasn't 1 o'clock like I'd thought in my head. No wonder the Bean was tired!

The best part?
Her falling asleep with a chew toy in her mouth like a pseudo binky. Her cheeks were all poked out from it. She stayed asleep as I moved her into my ergo, and slept on the car ride home (after being moved and clipped into her carseat, of course.)

Since she'd been a good girl, and since she got in a decent afternoon nap after the game, we took my friend Kristen up on her invitation for a BBQ at her house. Elizabeth got to hang out with Lexi and some other baby friends, I got to drink sangria, Tim got to stand out by the grill and run his mouth with a bunch of dudes... everyone had a good time!

And the fun don't stop. Stay tuned for tomorrow's NEW COUCH installment of this blog.

Franks and Beans.

It's only Saturday night, but it's already been quite the busy weekend, after a nice week. My best friend from college, Frank (aka the Fluff) was having a co-ed baby shower to celebrate the upcoming birth of his October baby. His wife and I were pregnant together last year and due within weeks of one another, but sadly, their son was born too premature to survive last June. They've had a long road to get to this place, and so when we were invited to celebrate their new addition, we knew we'd be there come hell or high water. Or a 90 minute drive into the Valley. Eesh. Ellie of course, stayed awake until we were about two exits away, and then woke up the second the car stopped. So... there went the hour nap we were hoping for. She was actually a good little trooper and survived on just a 20 minute nap in the late afternoon. There was plenty of delicious food, lots of good company, and plenty of plastic spoons for Elizabeth to amuse herself with.

I'm so glad that my Frank finally met my Beans.

This week has overall, been a grand one. We had a minimum of horrible screaming fits for absolutely no reason, no one had to do a "cool off" in her fun cage, and my mom got back from Wisconsin so I could spend more time mooching free childcare and dinner. FUN FOR EVERYONE!

Lately, when Ellie gets up, she'll go and play with her toys for a few minutes, but she's been abandoning them quickly in favor of crawling around the couch and visiting her library. I absolutely love it. We read a lot of books together, and then she spends more time turning pages and squealing to herself.

On her way to her library, she often encounters Thor's toys. Her affection for the blue ring with the ball inside may be what finally gets Thor to like her. She sits at one side and pushes the ball, he sits at one side and pushes the ball... it reminds me of a moment from long ago.

The blue ring toy is also what convinced Lulu that she liked Thor. Note: most cats enjoy that toy as kittens and then outgrow it. My cat is a boy idiot.

We continue to do a lot of good standing and some serious cruising. Mostly, she likes to be where ever I am. The other night Tim came home and I was on the couch fooling around, hoping he'd entertain her for a few minutes. I look down and she'd crawled over and pulled up, looking at me like, "hello! Play with me! ALL THE TIME!" She still hasn't said mama (to me) yet, and from the looks of it, she's definitely going to be one of those kids yelling "mom! mom! mom! mom! mom! hi."

And this is the cutie cute face she makes as she crawls over to climb all over me with open mouthed baby kisses. I think the weird unicorn horn is a particularly nice touch.