almost back to work

Last week was teacher week, which is why there was a severe lack of posting. Ava went back to day care full time and I headed back to work full time, although I don't really count it because it was just teacher inservice, which means meetings and lesson planning and setting up the classroom but no students. I usually go into psycho workaholic mode but because Craig was back on the road for the first time following his mono episode, I had to end the day at the regular time and come home to take care of Ava. Not that I mind--in some ways, it's a good thing that I'm forced to put work down and come home because otherwise I go a little crazy. (I told you--workaholic.) Anyhow there are a few loose ends to tie up so as soon as Craig wakes up to watch Ava I can go back and take care of them. Yesterday was my morning to sleep...today is his. Anyhow, I think this year will probably be good...or at least get off to a good start. From what I hear the kids have lower academic skills but are pretty sweet and they do try hard, which is all I can ask of them as a teacher. I'm so easy--if you do your work, try hard, and behave, we get along fine. If you don't, then we will have a problem. I don't understand what's so complicated about that to some kids.

ANYHOW--I got Ava's six month pictures yesterday and in spite of how much she freaked out at the photo shoot they did turn out pretty cute! I'll try to scan and post them but it may not be for awhile, since things are really busy around here with work and such. I think she's fighting a cold (and luckily seems to be winning) because she goes between having fussy sleep and sleeping like a ROCK. Three hour morning nap yesterday!! The rest of the naps were bad but in all fairness, we were dragging her to the store, Cheesecake Factory, etc. Last night she slept nearly 11 hours, much to my relief, and now she's back down after only about 1 1/2 hours of awake time which is unusual. Usually this is what happens:

6:00 or 6:30 am--eat
Go back to sleep until about 8:00
Awake and playing until 10:00
10:00--baby cereal and fruit, and a bottle
10:30--morning nap

We'll see. I would like to go to the mall after I work to take advantage of the Loft gift card Craig gave me for our anniversary + the 20% off coupon from Jen + the huge sale at Loft but who knows what will happen!

without further ado....

Some of the pictures don't seem to have loaded correctly, but I am so not doing this again...

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YOU HAVE GOT TO BE FREAKING KIDDING ME!!!!!!!!!

Don't expect pictures anytime soon. Or, better yet, don't expect them EVER. I just spent the better part of two hours resizing approx. 50 pictures--incorrectly the first time so I did it twice--and then uploading them to Bubbleshare and when I was FINALLY DONE, Bubbleshare chooses THAT moment to pop up a screen informing me that their server is down and they are "sorry for the inconvenience." And they suck about saving things (your album basically can't be saved until you go through the whole upload-review-caption process) so I lost the entire. freaking. thing. If there was something logical to take my anger out on nearby, I would be smashing something into little pieces RIGHT NOW.

If Craig laughs at me one more time, it might be his head.


UGHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

procrastinating the photo update

So I'm going to just post this: the best song ever, by the best band ever, performed in the best city ever, last week. And you can probably hear me singing along happily somewhere in the crowd.... ;o)



You'd think I'd be happy just seeing him once on this tour but I'm pretty bummed about missing the Raleigh concert...unfortunately, I don't know that many people here who actually listen to good music (sorry, it's true!) so at this point I'd pretty much have to go alone. Which I'm actually quite tempted to do. It's not like it's dangerous, the audience is just a bunch of older people and happy stoners, really. And the occasional random preppy math teacher/mommy, like me. ;o)

6 Month Stats

No, I don't have time for Chicago pictures yet, but we did have the 6 month checkup yesterday and Ava is...

27.5 inches long
18 lbs. 14.5 oz.

...in other words, HUGE. Still in the upper-90s for percentile ranking. Jeez! But, she's healthy and happy so no complaints here! I started giving her some Mylicon with her before-bed bottle and she now seems to be sleeping through the night without crying out, so maybe she was just having some tummy aches while adjusting to new foods. This morning she ate at 6:45 and then snuggled in bed with me, where we both slept until 9:15...nice! In my world, that's considered "sleeping in." ;o)

That's it, pictures to follow one of these days...

Chicago Trip, Part 1

I don't have time to download pictures right now--I have to resize and then Bubbleshare and it's going to take a million years--so this will be the verbal update and part 2 will be the photo update. :o) Let's see....the day after the concert...Ava got to meet some old family friends of ours: my mom's friend Jan and her daughters Jessica and Alison, and Jessica's daughter Janna, whom I'd never met. It was great to catch up with everyone! (It's also a riot listening to my mom and Jan talk, they're basically an older version of MJ and me ;o) That night Craig and I went to go see Wall-E...our first movie date in something like eight months. Great movie, by the way: family-friendly without being stupid. Most family-friendly stuff makes me want to kick myself in the head because it's usually pretty cheesy.

Fourth of July, my grandparents and aunt, uncle and cousin came over so Ava got to meet more relatives and we had a lot of fun with everybody. I miss my family like crazy. I swear, if not for the insanely long and freezing winters...I'd be very tempted to move back up there. But I am definitely not cut out for winter, I can barely tolerate the short, mild winters we have here in NC. Anyhow...we left after a late breakfast on the 5th and stopped overnight in Charleston, WV--Ava did much better this way and slept great at the hotel. Not us though...her little noises pretty much kept us up all night. But that's ok. :o) We made great time on Sunday and arrived home around 3pm and even though I miss everyone even more than before and even though I miss Chicago, it's good to be back in our own space again. I'm telling you though...I feel even more like an outsider down here than ever before. Everybody here has their family close by except us, and most people here don't quite "get" my particular brand of weirdness. For example, when we were at the movies, they showed a preview for a cartoon called, "Beverly Hills Chihuahua." It was terrible...the creators of it need to be beaten with sticks. The preview alone made me want to burn out my eyes and ears. I said to Craig, "THAT WAS HORRIBLE! I would rather stab myself in the head with an ice pick than ever see that again!" Apparently I said it loud because the guy in front of us started CRACKING UP and repeated it to his wife. That wouldn't amuse most people here, they'd just think I'm insane. (Which may very well be true, but they'd think it like it was a bad thing.... ;o)

Also--I miss the food. OHHHHH do I miss the food!!! Here is a sampling of what we enjoyed up there:

Portillo's

Noodles & Co.

Corner Bakery

Fannie May Candy

I'm telling you, all we have around here is fast food or ridiculously expensive restaurants! Or the same old boring chains: Olive Garden, Chili's etc. Not that they aren't good from time to time, but I like really good, reasonably priced places to eat. The only place I've found here that's local and pretty much awesome is Bella Monica. But, it's all the way on the other side of town and it's a place I'd rather enjoy sans baby.

Oh yes, in other news, I took Ava for her first "photo shoot" at Sears yesterday. We got a few pictures that turned out okay. Why only okay instead of adorable? Because she had a meltdown of epic proportions while being photographed. WONDERFUL. And I just got a plain white background instead of doing anything exceptionally cute or fancy--I had a coupon for a free sitting fee and 10 x 13 pic, and I got a few others. Now that I know I have to take her over within seconds of her napping and eating (to try to catch her best mood), I can plan another session and really do it up cute. Not too cute though...I don't do too cute. ;o) Tomorrow is the 6 month checkup (details regarding her latest weigh-in and such will follow) and on Thursday we have an appointment following up on something. Either her tailbone or her kidneys, I can't keep it straight anymore. (See how worried I am? ;o)

That's it for now, I guess I should probably start dinner...just salad and leftover Vidalia Onion Soup from yesterday (I make awesome soup) but I promised Craig homemade croutons for the salad. I randomly made up my own recipe yesterday and they were simply AWESOME.

runnin' down a dream

Last night Mike and I went to the Tom Petty concert...as always, it was utterly, ridiculously, AWESOME. He is just an amazing musician live! No new album this year, just a random summer tour, so he played the hits and some other odds and ends--good stuff. We had a great time, except for the CRAPWEASEL DRUNKEN FRAT-BOY types behind us that yelled and cussed when the band played a couple more obscure (but still very good) songs. I wanted to throw them over the balcony because honestly, why does anyone go to a concert if they don't really like the band?!!? Morons. We did have an awesome guy in front of us though, who was rocking out and dancing like only an old white dude can. It was hilarious...but I respect that he was having a great time, even if he was expressing it with some rather amusing dancing. :o) Anyhow, I'd love to see him again in Raleigh next week but if it doesn't happen it won't kill me, I had a great time enjoying the music last night and hanging out with my brother as well. I have no pictures from anything yet, so enjoy this video instead :o)

Sweet Home Chicago!

This trip is going by way too fast...needless to say, we are having a GREAT time. Yesterday, Ava got to meet her great-grandparents (my grandparents on my mom's side) and they all enjoyed getting to know one another. Ava is also loving my brothers, her Uncle Mike and Uncle Billy. Craig and I are sleeping in the guest room downstairs and the baby is in the room next to my parents because my mom wants to be the one to get up with her in the morning, bless her heart! I could still hear her when she cried out a few times at night (par for the course, but she's usually just crying out in her sleep) since I apparently have some kind of ridiculous mutant sense of hearing now, but I didn't get up. (Okay, I snuck up there ONCE to check on her at 4am....) It was nice to be able to get almost normal sleep but I don't think I will ever sleep again as soundly as I did before having the kid.

ANYHOW, Craig and I went to Portillo's today, WOOHOO!!! It was heavenly, of course...and all of you transplanted Chicago people, I thought of you when I bit into that chili cheese dog (no onions)...AWESOME. They seriously need to put one in Raleigh, although I guess part of the appeal is that it's Chicago thing and I only get to enjoy it when I'm up here. Oh, I'm also getting a big box of Fannie May candy to take back with me. I'm telling you, NC just does NOT have good food unless you are willing to spend a fortune: up here, you can find good stuff in any price range, and even when we lived in Orlando there were some very good places. Okay back on track--after Portillo's we stopped at Fresh Market to pick up some dessert for the family and nearly got run over by some moron in the parking lot (idiot drivers are nationwide, apparently)...Craig made kind of a "WHAT THE HECK?" gesture at the lady and then motioned like he was talking on the phone (apparently he thought she was on the phone) and she--I'm not kidding--rolled down the window and shrieked, "I WASN'T ON THE PHONE!!!!!" Craig doesn't usually get into it with people, but he laughed at her and said, "Maybe you should have been, dumbass!" (I guess meaning if she wasn't on the phone then what was her excuse for almost running us over, she had come barrelling around a corner and we were crossing at a marked crosswalk.) She replied by shrieking, "SHUT UP!!!!" It was pretty funny, I don't think I've ever heard a grown woman shrieking like that before....um, psycho!!! Maybe Craig shouldn't have called her a dumbass but in his defense, she prety much was. Besides, better him opening his mouth than me...there is no telling what is going to come out of my mouth sometimes.

Anyways....I'll post pictures eventually but it probably won't be until we get home. Tonight, Anna and Jesse and Anna's parents came over to meet Ava but she was a bit fussy, as she usually is in the evenings....we did get a few smiles out of her though, and it was good to see everyone, even if only for a little while! I'm currently in Michael's room listening for the baby because she was having a hard time going to sleep (napped too late) and everyone else is downstairs playing with the new Wii. Tomorrow, Michael and I are going to the Tom Petty concert downtown--BIG WOOHOO!!! I was supposed to go in Raleigh but that fell through, so I was utterly THRILLED to find tickets up here. More expensive but totally worth it--I rarely get a chance go really go out these days and since Tom Petty is my absolute favorite musician, this is a huge deal to me. I have been waiting for this since the last time he came around. You know those people who follow around bands when they go on tour? I'm like that, only I have a career and family and can't follow the band, so I just go stir crazy until they come to town.

That's about it for now, I'm trying to post updates as the trip progresses so I don't end up just doing one GIANT one at the end, because that's a pain.