I'm Way Too Drunk To Come Up With An Interesting Post Title

Actually, I'm very sober since I didn't even finish my beer, but I needed something a little more attention grabbing than I Can't Come Up With An Interesting Post Title. You know, for the moms. Anyway, things be feeling kind of mellow up in our house. N. is done with the schooling till August, which is pretty crazy. Of course he has work to do. We've been trying to figure out a schedule that works for both of us. Yesterday was our first day of him being at the pretend office. He actually was in the closet that performs as his office for most of the day, but we all pretended he wasn't home from 9-4:30. It worked pretty well except for when The Bean and I were having too much fun and he had to poke his head in and reprimand us. You know how those 9 month olds like to blast the house music.

For some reason I found it more exhausting than the days when N was really gone. I guess cuz he was here, but wasn't. Speaking of exhausting Brooklyn Mama has gotten an insane amount of sleep lately. I finally slept through the night (before I was waking around 2 even if Baby Bean wasn't) on Monday. Despite sleeping from 9:30 PM-5:00 AM and then from 6:00 AM-8:00, I still napped at 9 and then from 1:30-2:30. Last night I slept for 9! hours.

Tomorrow is day #2 of Dad at the office. It should be a little less exhausting since we have plans at the awesomeness that is The Bounce House. Having plans is huge these days. Bean and I get bored. Yesterday afternoon I was so desperate for something to do that I actually put the Bean in her jogging stroller and went out jogging.

We're planning on June being a work month, traveling a bit in July, and then winding down in August. I'm trying to get my own work done. I'm in this very sticky part of this YA that I was going to send to my agent like 2 months ago. And I'm also writing an essay on leaving New York. How very interesting, you think. What, you think all I do is puree beets and zucchini in my free time? Speaking of beets and zucchini, what do we think the chances are that little Miss Bean is gonna like the asparagus I'm gonna give her for lunch tomorrow?

I'm Sorry To Have To Do This To You But

I feel the need to update you on the rug sitch. On last week's episode we were anxiously awaiting the arrival of the ABC carpet rug. The colorful striped one. Well, it arrived, the baby napped, furniture was moved, and the rug was laid down. And I just couldn't get over the stripped colorfullness of it. But N. liked it and since he's the artiste in the family, I thought maybe I was just seeing things wrong. After three days of horrible, angsty striped stress, I snagged our neighbor/landlord for her opinion. And she agreed with me. Or rather, she was able to verbalize my angsty feelings into like words. The colorful striped rug was quite nice BUT IT CLASHED WITH ALL OUR FURNITURE!

Case closed. We moved all the furniture out, wrapped it up, and put down the new, smaller very brown rug, which N. curled up on in fetal position, crying that he, "just wanted the rug saga to be over with." I was happy with the brown rug maybe because ALL OUR FURNITURE IS BROWN. I've accepted that I'm going to have to vacuum the hell out of it for the next few months to stop the shedding and I'm alright with that. Totally off the topic, but The Bean is OBSESSED with the vacuum. I used it today and she just stared at it laughing. When I vaccumed her with it she went totally spastic with laughter, which was pretty awesome until she started licking it.

Anyway we still had to return the ABC rug, which meant me losing two days of my life opening a UPS account and trying to schedule a pickup and then cancelling the pick up because we didn't have a necessary Return Merchandise Number and it was the weekend and blah blah blah and then we finally got the stupid number and then I had to spent another three hours trying to deal with the UPS account until N. said he'd do it because he was afraid I was going to injure my computer. And then it looked like it was going to cost $130.00! so N. said he'd bring it to UPS, which he very kindly did only to discover it cost like $109.00, but whatever. I think we spent $200 sending rugs back and we still haven't gotten $ back from ABC but we will!

And since I know N. will never read this post because as he likes to say he "lives the rug saga" I'm going to tell everyone that he has a tail. Like a monkey's!

To All The Baby Mamas!

Happy Baby Mama Day, Baby Mamas! The Bean went all out this year what with the bling, the lights, the monkeys, the chocolate, and all the sloppy kisses! Every day is mother's day when you have such an excellent Bean for a baby. It's a bit gloomy out, but that's not going to stop me from enjoying the new season of Dairy Twirl---that's our local ice cream shoppe that opens today. The family will be going there in the afternoon after my massage!

I do have a new appreciation of all the work that goes into to being a baby momma this year so I'd like to give a shout out to Brooklyn Mama's mama! In celebration of today I started reading The Waterfall and of course, as you predicted, I like it.

Oh, and here's a picture of me not too long after last year's Mother Day!



And yes, I did continue playing professional basketball up into my 9th month!

What I Like About You

1. Spring here is great. We still have some crap days, but when it's nice I REALLY appreciate it.

2. I was able to make a reservation for THE restaurant in the area for a Friday night at 7:00 the day before. Like that would ever happen in NYC!

3. I like driving, actually. I feel like it would be frustrating to have to take the bus/train with The Bean. Not only all the stuff, but also it's nice being in control. Like the other day when we met a friend, had lunch, and then around 1:00 we booked it back to the Bean-Mobile and drove pronto home singing the whole way so the nap would be taken in the crib and not the car. Not sure how this would fly on the Q train.

4. I like driving and not seeing any cars for like ten miles sometimes.

5. I love our sun porch. It was closed off for the last six months, but now that it's nicer out we've been using it and you feel like you're on vacation in the trees. I'm so glad we only gave 1/2 of it to The Bean. The other half is ours and we've been having our cocktails and dinners out there. You should come visit if only to watch the sun set while drinking a vodka martini from there.

6. Today The Bean had a date with her friend O at Dartmouth's museum otherwise known as The Hood. She got to get her crawl on around the floor in some of the galleries because it was empty. It's very important for Bean to get her crawl on during her waking hours, you know. I do believe it would be impossible to crawl around any art museum in the five boroughs.

7. The Valley News. I love our local paper. Not only do I learn of cool happenings, but the local stories are a laugh riot. Like the mobster guy in Vermont who had posters from The Godfather all around his apartment and totally tried to be a gangster by selling drugs and beating the shit out of people, but who also, on weekends, to make money, sold crafts at local fairs.

My Friend's Book

came out today. Read it, y'all. Sara is one of the best writers I know. And if I didn't know her, I'd think she was one of the best writers I didn't know.

Nine Months In, Nine Months Out!!

Oh Bean,
Today you are a spectacular 9 months old! To celebrate we took you off your nap schedule so you could go to your swim lesson with your dad. Apparently it was a really good time and included jumping off the side of the pool. When you came home you had a bath, a bottle, lunch with mom, and a well-deserved nap.

You are becoming a much better napper, which makes us happy. You take two naps a day now. One around 9:00 AM and the other around 1:00. You go to bed right at 6:00 because you are throughly exhausted because you now spend a lot of your days pulling yourself up to stand! You're really good at this and you're good at getting back down on your bottom, which you were unable to do a month ago.

Now that it's nice out you're getting to spend a lot more time outside,which everyone is happy about. You really like the baby swing on the Green and last week you went in your first sandbox, which you seemed pretty happy about. You really liked the being in the back pack and going for a hike with me last week. I hope you like it even when your friend's dog isn't with us. You also like just sitting out in our backyard---you're not eating leaves and grass as often either. Yay!!

To celebrate your 9 monthiness you had (modified) macaroni and cheese with green beans for dinner. You loved the mac -n-cheese as I suspected you would. You fed yourself some pieces of bread and cheese cubes, too. For desert you had a fruit combo, which you also dug. You eat a lot of food these days It seems like I need to go grocery shopping all the time and it's mostly food for you! You still don't like cauliflower (although I haven't tried it lately), but I feel lucky that you are such a good eater. You even eat veggies with gusto! You're going to the doctor for your checkup on Monday. Luckily there are no shots! According to the Wii Fit you weigh 20.5 pounds. You seem very long to us, but we will know more on Monday afternoon.

You're sleeping better at night although you still wake up. You don't get fed anymore because you're too old for that, but sometimes you need some water, a diaper change, and a hug. Hopefully in the next month you won't need those things any more...at least not at 3 AM.

Your dad and I love you like crazy Bean Girl! It's been a fabulous 9 months! We can't wait to see what #10 has in store.

Much love,
Bklyn Mama

Friday Books!! (Really!)

First, a very happy birthday to the even older Old Man!

I finished Out Stealing Horses by Per Petterson a few nights ago. It took me almost two months to read and it's not a hard or boring or bad book. If I had to describe it with one word that would be: quiet. It's Scandinavian so I guess that makes sense. It enjoyable, but not exactly thrilling. In fact, I'm not really sure what I have to say about it and I'm feeling lazy. This guy had more so read this if you want more details. Happy weekend.

Rugs: A Saga or: How Much $ We've Spent On Not Getting A Rug At Pottery Barn

Pretty much from the minute N. and I moved into this place we wanted to get a rug for the living room. Our parents had generously bestowed some nice, but small Oriental rugs that worked fine when we were young and childless in Brooklyn. But childed in NH? We needed more of a carpet. So we made do with this weird 3 rug aesthetic until we got our tax return and decided to buy us some rug. We decided upon Pottery Barn since we had a gift card and PB is like the married with children version of Ikea.

First we had to get a swatch of the rug we wanted because N. in his infinite wisdom said it would be dumb ass to buy a $$ rug we hadn't felt. A swatch o' rug from PB costs $25.00, but it's "refundable" if you mail it back. So we did that. And N. in his photo-shopping genius created a whole rug from one swatch and we realized we couldn't get the color we liked on the computer, but we could get that rug in a different color. Cool, right? It cost me $7.00 to send that stupid rug sample back. And then we got all crazy and decided that we also needed a rug for under the dining room table and once again had to get a swatch and then send that back so now we've sent $14.00 JUST RETURNING things to PB.

But the rugs come and we're happy. We don't even care that we have to move EVERYTHING out of the living room to roll it down and then move everything back all while trying to prevent the Bean from chewing and pulling on 1,000 cables.

Because N. and I are no dummies, we had measured the living room and dining room a lot of times to make sure the rugs would fit. And yeah, the living room rug fit. But it completely absorbed the whole room. We actually have nice wood floors, why not show a little? We put the rug down at 8:30 in the morning and even though we decided that we would sleep on it and make our decision about the rug being too big the following morning by 10:00 AM I was on the phone with the PB people ordering two more rugs---smaller, of course and finding out how to go about returning 8 x10 and 9 X12 foot rugs.

We were too tired to move everything out and roll up the rug so I scheduled the UPS pickup for Monday, which meant we had a good three days looking and walking (and crawling) on the too-big rug. I should mention that it costs $16.00 to return a rug, which means we're up to $46.00.....

Except we noticed that the rug in the dining room was shedding. A lot. Like ten minutes after N. vacuumed, which is not good. After googling, we discovered a very long thread about PB and their shedding rugs. In a matter of minutes it was decided that I could not live with a shedding rug so I tried to cancel the order, but it had already shipped. N. and I spent a whole night looking at new rugs because now that we've tasted the wine, we need to drink it. We find, after 4 hours of searching, a nice, seemingly unsheddy rug at ABC carpet. This rug was quite different as it was bright and lively compared to the PB one, which was dark and foreboding. So we ordered it.

Monday came around and we quickly rolled up the shedding carpet while the baby napped (we got smart) and had the UPS man take it away. Only he brought the two new ones. Luckily, the one for the dining room table seems good although our table weighs 800 pounds and for the past two days N. and I have been too tired to move it so the dining room table rug is now alongside the table rather than under it.

To continue the saga a friend tells me that she owns a PB rug and yes it shed, but only for two months and we should keep the rug because it will be fine. So....now we have the smaller PB living room rug in the garage while we wait for the one from ABC Carpet because you know what kids....we're gonna compare them! And then we're gonna have to send one back and pay yet another return fee.

Oh and wouldn't you know I had to call PB with the tracking numbers from the sent away rugs so they could credit my account and it was going fine until they wanted to give me a SEVEN HUNDRED DOLLAR GIFT CARD. Because you know we paid with a gift card....I had a minor melt down because it was only a hundred dollar gift card not $700! There's some message when you first call PB about their excellent customer service and I have to say it's true. The people are really nice and very helpful even if they retardedly try to dupe you into spending $700 dollars in their store. Thank goodness for that and the fact that after a long wait Mary Jo returned to tell me a $100 gift card would be sent to me, but the rest of the money would indeed be credited to my account. Whew.

Still, we're going ended up spending over $60.00 bucks on not buying a rug. And I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but there might even be rug saga update. As if this isn't long and boring enough....

No Sleep Till Brooklyn!

I just put The Bean to bed after a rather long day. N. is still at work so there was no respite for mama. It wasn't a terrible day though. The babysitter was here and in the later afternoon we went to the gym so Bean could have some fun in the day care. She had a blast although she was very tired by the end. Speaking of tired would you like to know the many ways The Bean lets her elders know she's ready for bed? Yes, of course, you do.
1. She yawns
2. She makes weird, deeply guttural, strangely alien noises
3. She puts her head down---on the floor, on her highchair tray, on the bottom of her closet, on your shoulder, which is the bestest
4. She gets very still
5. She gets very hyper and scampers around the room like a hyena
6. She cries
7. She laughs a lot, which makes you feel like you're being very funny when actually you're not
8. She acts like she wants to nurse
9. She climbs into your lap
10. She kicks her legs and won't let you change her diaper/clothes
11. She yells
12. She pulls her ear
13. She rubs her eyes
14. She pulls her hair, which is a feat since she's still pretty bald
15. She scratches behind her ear
16. Her motor skills start to stink
17. Her eyes get red
18. She starts to look dunk and stoned
19. She's too distracted to eat any solid food
20. While on the bottle her eyes roll into the back of her head--really, it's kind of freaky
21. She just wants to be held

Pretty wild stuff, huh? Luckily, she came with a manual. It's not like N. and I had to figure it out or anything.

Monday Monday

It's been a while. Despite my best efforts, I did get sick. A sore-throat/sinus/cough/tremendous amount of mucous thing. Pleasant. The Bean is still having some ailments, too, but she's mostly better. Although I think she's in a baby funk this week. She spent most the afternoon in a terrible mood despite a good nap and a positive, truly entertaining mama. The census lady got a huge smile for some reason though. And we were both throughly entertained by the dogs next door. I don't know what we would do without those crazy dogs. Watching them run and round like lunatics really entertains Ms. Bean. When she's a bit bigger, the dog's owner has said she can go into the yard (instead of peering over the fence) and run around with them!

I'd like The Bean to grow up with dogs so she won't be afraid of them like I was when I was a kid. The Bean's papa does love him some dogs and I imagine we'll get one at some point, but we need to have a big yard where it can go outside. Also, I'd like to live near some kind of park thing. So maybe in 5-10 years we'll have a dog. I also like cats quite a bit. More than cats, I like coming up with names for cats. Don't you think a cat named Waffles is genius. And Guacamole. I think that would be a good name for a cat too. We could call him Guac.

My next post will be better. I hope.