Other Days

So yesterday The Bean woke up crying at 4:00 AM. It's the teeth thing so we pumped her with Motrin but she didn't fall back asleep till 5:00. I didn't fall back asleep till 5:45 and then I woke up with a shot at 6:00 because I had to teach. Then, I couldn't find my wallet cuz I'm forever moving it from the diaper bag to my purse to my car. I was all set to go to work without it when N. found it under a cookbook. Then, when I was driving onto the highway, the cap to my water bottle fell off, the bottle flipped out of the holder and I got soaked with freezing water while turning the corner. Of course the Xerox machine was broken by the time I got to school.

Then I had to collect research papers from students and now I have to spend the whole weekend busting my butt to read them so I can return them on Tuesday. I read two yesterday and it took forever! I'm not even grading---I'm just commenting and trying to help them. The papers are worth %25 of the final grade so I feel obligated to take the time. Ugh!

This morning The Bean got up at 5:00 (after waking up at 11:00 PM) and was in a really cranky mood. I know it's not her fault and most of the time she's pretty cheery, but by 7:00 I was begging N to take her with him to work. Things got a little better as the day progressed. We had an early morning play date here, took a short nap, and went out to lunch. Then we had two! friends over in the afternoon. I don't know when our house became play-date central. I'm mostly okay with it although I feel like I was inside too much. Hopefully, I'll be able to take a nice long walk tomorrow before we travel down to Putney, VT to see one of N's friends and her daughter.

Okay, the Internet-free weekend is beginning in like 30 seconds so the next time I'm on here I better only have 3 papers to go!
Happy weekend!

A Good Day

Today was a good day. The Bean slept till 6:00! I taught a good class and The Bean took the elusive two hour nap! Yay!! By the time lunch was had, we didn't have much time till our afternoon play date at Tots and Tea. Things were okay there---Miss Bean ate a lot of sugar (Teddy Grahams and undiluted apple juice) and became a bit of a nutter. But still....some days are so long you just don't know how you're going to survive the seven hours till bedtime. Days like today feel like a small miracle.

Hopefully there'll be more days like today.

What else? I've been on a soup kick. So far I've made chicken no-Nick-Noodle, split pea, and black bean. The black bean has been N's fave thus far. Tonight's dinner was crusty bread, salad, and bean soup and he said it was "restaurant food." The trick to having decent dinners on a regular basis I have finally learned is advance planning. On the weekend we just figure out 2-3 meals we can have for the week. Nothing fancy---we had soup tonight and we're going to have a crock pot dinner tomorrow and probably Thursday we'll have leftovers and maybe takeout on Friday. Just knowing what to have and having the ingredients is most of the battle. I'm loving the soup thing because I can make a vat on the weekend when N is around and not have to think about it when dinner rolls around during the week.

Of course N and The Bean would probably be happy with pizza four nights a week, but that's why the lord made mamas!
Oh, and send your soup suggestions thisaway! What do you think about veggie chowder?

Yay Yankees!

Thanks to the boys in the pinstripes, a certain NH mama doesn't have to the dinner dishes/clean-up for a week!

I wish the games weren't on so late. I could barely make it to the 4th inning for most of them and the parts that I saw were pretty exciting. Also, for the next NPR pledge drive, I'm giving to Vermont Public Radio instead of New Hampshire's. They didn't even announce the series games---they'd only be like in sports, the Celtics won, the Bobcats lost. N said this morning the announcer said something like, "The World Series ended in the Bronx last night. Some said the Yankees won."
Whatever, you sad little Red Sox fans. You're going to miss my $50 pledge. I'm so not going to miss doing the dishes though.

It's November? Already?

Hope y'all had a good Halloween. Miss Bean was a sheep and although she didn't baa once in costume a good time was had by all. Some friends and their son from up in the boonies came down here cuz you know, we're all urban. The rain held off so we got to check out all the kiddies on the green. Later, we took our sleepy sheep to a little get together in our neighborhood. The Bean seemed to enjoy all the festivities. The only time she seemed scared was when she was place directly in front of a giant gorilla. But who wouldn't find that scary?

What is scary is daylight savings being over. The Bean got up at 4:30 this morning. Although this was deemed NOT OKAY by the parental units, it didn't seem to change a damn thing. We're trying to keep her up till 7:00 (her old bedtime was between 6:15-6:30) but it doesn't seem to be working. She's hungry for dinner at 4:30 and ready for bed at 5:30. What to do? What to do!

And, surprise, surprise, here's a photo for ya!


I know he's scary, but don't be afraid of the man in the big hat!

Honk If You Wish It Were Snowing

The title is a reference to the sticker that has been plastered onto the stop sign at the end of my street.
No comment, here.

Sorry for the silence. We had family weekend 09 last weekend. It was a lot of fun most especially for the Bean who has realized that grandparents=attention. Attention=happy Bean.

Miss Bean knows a lot of words. Perhaps the most amazing thing is how much she understands. It seems like out of nowhere she is able to understand and do what I ask. Within reason, of course. I can say, "Beanie, can you pick up your cat over there and put it in the bag?" It's not 100%, but she can usually do it! Very exciting. Now we just have to work on getting her to put her toys away. And maybe wash a few dishes....

We've been having nap crises all week though. She's only been taking one nap, which would be okay if it was long, but yesterday it was only 30 minutes. This is very bad as Miss Bean gets wack-a-doodle drunk by the end of the day if she's sleepy. Luckily, she's been getting her zzzzs in at night, but mama needs a nap too. I think she might have a tooth eruption since she's been practically gnawing her fingers off since Saturday. Hopefully things will improve. But as N sagely points out, at least she's not protesting the night sleep. In fact, she's desperate for it and will point to her crib while I'm 1/2 through her nighttime song. And yes, it might be might my voice.

This week Bean has been insisting on having one of her baby dolls (it doesn't matter which one) in her crib when she sleeps (or doesn't sleep). I'm okay with this, but hope she doesn't get attached to a particular doll. We'd lose it since we lose practically everything.

Hopefully it won't be too miserable on Halloween. We live with an excellent baaing dog and panting sheep!

Bad News At Borders

You know how I liked working at Borders because they didn't have free wifi? Well, I'm bloggering from there right now because they went all free wifi. And you know I have the will power of a goldfish.

But it's this or learning about commas so I can teach my students how to use them and frankly, commas, I don't give a damn.

So, Miss Bean got her first dose of Benadryl after her lip start swelling from something she ate on Saturday night. I feel bad that she's seemed to inherit my allergies, but she was okay and thank goodness the Benadryl made her drowsy and not jittery.

Fully recovered from her lip swelling, the three of us went to a local apple orchard on Sunday. That night we went to colleagues of Nick's for a jamboree. The Bean came and while she had fun, I can never totally enjoy myself because first I worry if she'll actually go to sleep and then, when she did fall asleep, I felt bad waking her up to drive her home. I know it's okay to do this to her once and a while, but her sleep was screwy all day yesterday and I believe it's due to the wakings.

But it was fun to hang out with new people in a new place. And the food was good, too.

Last night we had one of the new faculty over for dinner, which was fun. The babysitter had to come today and since it's been fall break yesterday and today, I've had some free time. And, as you can see from this illuminating post, I've been using it quite wisely.

This Morning I Saw SNOW on some Cars as I Drove To Work

Um, yeah. Here we go again. I thought maybe of deciding to be positive about winter this year, but giving up my rants would be no fun. Plus, I need some topics to blog about as we don't want to be too Bean-centric here. This is going to be a short post since N came home early and is entertaining our off-spring and I'm going to attempt to make chicken noodle soup. From scratch. Well, mostly scratch. I did buy stock, but I really don't have that much time on my hands. Between chasing after Beanie and needing to grade 17 papers by Thursday I'm kinda rushed. But I'm excited to try non-canned soup.

In (and out of) Stitches

Golly, it has been ages since I've posted. I think it's the teaching thing that's getting in the way. I've just managed to go through the stack of bills on my desk. With the job thing I feel like I'm only two people with no room for anything else. One is the teaching person and figuring out what to do with my class and the other is MOM. Having a walking child really makes me feel like I'm not capable anything else. It's so tiring that all I want to do is nap when she naps. I suppose I wouldn't feel so split if I actually did some prep during her naps, but I'm just a sleep addict these days.

But, I don't mind the teaching. I'm glad I'm doing it.

In other news we had our first hospital visit with The Bean. She took a face plant last Friday morning. I was a bad/stupid mom and didn't turn on the light as she walked into the bedroom to get N out of bed. SHe's done this hundreds of times, but I think the room was darker than usual and there were shoes and clothes by the bed and WACK! She got a cut just under her chin that required 3 stitches. Luckily, my mom was visiting so she was able to go with us to the ER. I feel so lucky that the medical care is so good up here. And empty. We were literally seen in five minutes. The waiting room was beautiful and the triage room was kid-themed. The Bean got to go home with a new monkey. And by the afternoon, after a good long nap, she was perfectly fine.

The stitches came out on Wednesday. It was actually more involved than it needed to be, but the end result was Bean getting ice cream after dinner.

In other news, I'm leaving town. In fact, I'll probably be back on route by the time this posts. I'm going to Boston Sunday-Monday, which means for the first time it's N and The Bean on their own! Watch out New Hampshire!

I'm going for a friend's baby shower, but staying overnight and really looking forward to seeing a moving,eating some decent Thai food, and sleeping past 5:00AM. Watch out Boston, Mama's in town!
Till then.
BG

Weekend Update

Heya Kiddies,
The three of us went, somewhat spontaneosly, to Portsmouth, on the seacoast this weekend because I had a revelation that if we didn't take a free weekend in nice weather and go somewhere new we never would. I've always regretted not visiting San Francisco when I lived in Seattle. It was so close, but I never chose a weekend to just do it.

So, early Saturday morn we set off. Portsmouth was a nice town. There were good shops, a nice park with stuff going on, and we had fab weather too. It made me miss having coffee shops a lot though! We all had success shopping too: N got a Ghostface Killah album on CD because he is the last person on earth actually building up his music collection with actual, in-your-hands CDs, I desperately need new pants, but got two "new" sweaters at a great consignment shop, and Bean got her first ever baby doll from an amazing toy store that I'm happy is not in our town because I would spend too much money there. I think we got suckered into buying the doll because there's really not much cuter than a toddler saying "baby." We walked all around Portsmouth and got to see some cool boats, nice gardens, an amazing bubble machine, and even some fairies! The only bummer of the trip was the food. We were hoping for fresh amd tasty seafood, but it didn't happen. We chose Thai for dinner because the one Thai place near us is awful, but so was the place we chose. The Bean's tofu and veggies were delish though. And she got to discover the wonderfullness that is undiluted pineapple juice.

Speaking of pineapple juice, to celebrate our weekend on the coast, Missy B slept in till 6:15 the next morning. N and I could hardly believe it cuz she's been waking at 5:15ish for the past hellish six weeks of so. We were so happy we promptly gave her a banana and the rest of her pineapple juice right in the king sized bed. Horray for lots of pillows!

We went to a fun, quirky place for breakfast because its open 24-hours on weekends and it's exciting to go out to breakfast at 6:45 AM! After another walk through town, we drove up the coast to York, Maine! We made the right decision not to go to the Children's Museum because there was really low-tide so the Bean could scamper to her heart's delight along on the beautiful beach. Plus, there were dozens of wonderful dogs running every which way that were more than happy to play with her. The water was even warm enough for me and Bean to put our toes in.

After checking out an incredible playground with slides YOU'RE SUPPOSED TO WALK UP, we had our last touristy meal and drove back to NH because, as the Bean likes to say, as nice as it is to get away,it's even nicer to come home even if your town doesn't have any coffee shops, heavenly toy stores, or walk-up slides.

That Time of Year

It's crazy how one day you notice a few red leaves in a single tree. Those leaves seem like an aberration since you're still in summer mode, running around outside most of the day and cooling off at night with a fresh squeezed lemonade at the Farmer's Market. But then, it feels like hours later, every other tree's leaves is changing and nights and mornings are downright cold.

Here we go with NH Fall #2. I'm trying to be positive. The leaves are so pretty, but it seems like every day more of them change from green to red and yellow and even more of them are on the ground. Today Missy Bean and I spent a lot of time in the house and we both felt a little nutty. But we have a membership to the science museum and even when it's cold we can take short walks to the library and art gallery. We can go out to lunch, look at books and toys at Borders, go to the pet store, grocery shopping, etc. We also have music on Fridays and we know a lot more people than we did a year ago and hopefully we'll know even more by the time the weather is downright dreadful.

Yes, I've used "downright" twice in this post. I have no idea why.

Anyway, teaching has been pretty good. The students seem pretty alert for such an early class although this could change in a few weeks. While I miss the diversity of my old school, the new has some nice things. At my old school, I worked, often taught, and took all my graduate classes on the same floor as the president. But he was in an office within an office with a door that was always closed. I saw him maybe three times in six years and two of those times were at functions. At the new school, the president's door is open and he sent a campus-wide email saying he had office hours for faculty and staff and there were even monthly brown bag lunches with him. As a lowly adjunct who needs to get home to watch the kiddo, I won't be partaking in these, but it still creates a nice vibe.

Even nicer than the pres' lunching? They let the faculty use the copy machine! Without having it under lock and key. It's in a room across from the department office and you can use it (assuming you know the code) without feeling like a criminal. At my old school, if you wanted to make your own copies (because maybe you needed the copies quickly) there would be 3-4 secretaries right next to you just waiting for you to go over the alloted number. It was pretty stressful and although I'm sure there were profs who would abuse the copier for their own use, I believe that most people wanted to make copies for the students. To uh, teach them. So that's nice.

It's a little rough having to go teach, drive back and take care of the Bean, but overall I guess I'm happy I'm back in school. It's a lot easier to be tired at work than tired with a toddler. But you should probably ask me again in six weeks.