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