Judecorp.

We're gonna go get our seder on today.

Yay! I love getting some seder on with smemilyp. Her family is like my family, and I have adopted them as my own. I think I will start calling her father "dad." He is just that awesome.

Yeah, gonna eat the unleavened jew food and sing songs and say "let my people goooooo."

Happy Passover!

Oh, what glorious weather we had today. Seriously fantastic. Lower 70s, brilliant sun, not a cloud in the sky. Luka and I went to UMass for the Queerfest Week Lawn Day, to walk around in the sunshine, see some of the kids I used to work with, and eat sno-cones and cotton candy. It was perfect spring weather, especially with sno-cones involved. I even sneaked a little ice into Punk's mouth. Mmm, baby's first Red Dye #40!

Punk had a bit of a crazy day today because she didn't have any of her typical naps. I'm kind of a stickler for the nap schedule and napping in the crib, so that's unusual for me. But she had her 9 month check-up during her morning nap and had a nap in the car on the way home, and then didn't nap until we were home from Queerfest which was around 4:15pm... I woke her up at 5:30 because I didn't want her to be up all night and she was SO grumpy. Poor little Punkin!

I hope tomorrow is just as nice. We have swim therapy tomorrow so the morning nap is cheesed again, but hopefully I can work the afternoon out and get back into our little routine. She starts a little child care next week (*sob sob sob*) so we really have to get into it.

I need more weather like this!

1. Jennie FTW!

Punk takes Prevacid which, on our craptacular insurance, is a Tier 3 medication - $45/month. sassywoman said that she had some Prevacid packets that she received by mistake (her daughter used the solutabs) and she would send them to me. But HOLY MOLY, there is nearly 3 entire months worth! Jennie just basically handed us $135. WOAH! <3 <3 <3 Thank you so much, Jennie!

2. Cosleeping FTW!

So the biggest issues with Punk's sleep are a) she gets restless and rolls over, which wakes her up and makes her upset, and b) once she's awake and upset, she realizes she is lonely. We had tried cosleeping in our bed several times but there were a lot of issues, including that there wasn't a good way to put it up against the wall, and the squishy fake memory foam made me nervous. So Jen and I moved the futon from the living room into Punk's room, and we keep her swaddled in the crib until around 11pm when we feed her, and then I get into the futon with her for the night. It's against the wall so I don't have to hold her, and if she starts to get restless I can lay a hand on her to chill her out instead of having her roll over, wake up, cry, and then having to get up and go into her room and settle her back down. I'm still waking up a couple of times a night but it's for a few seconds to stick my hand out and lay it on her, and that's a lot less dramatic.

Also, I folded our queen duvet from the guest room in half, so it covers half the futon. So Punk is in her sleep sack on a just-sheeted mattress and I get to snuggle up with a down comforter up to my chin. It's pretty win-win.

And, I should say, that after her 11pm feeding she slept until 5:40 straight the first morning, 6:36 the second morning, and 7:05 this morning. Aaaaah.

3. Townie Vet FTW!

I love our townie vet here. He is quick and easy, in and out. When I brought Daedalus and Ralph for their 3-year rabies shots (I don't really do annual checkups, sue me), he agreed that indoor cats don't need a lot of maintenance, stuck them with the rabies, didn't bat an eyelash when I said I didn't want the other shots or any annual checkups, and told me to come back in three years. The whole process with two cats took 15 minutes.

Well, Ralph has been, umm, ralphing a lot and I took her in yesterday. It took five minutes (he appreciates how high-strung Ralph is and doesn't bother with anything unnecessary), he said she probably had an upset stomach, gave her a couple of shots, stuffed her back in the carrier and sent us on our way. No waiting. In and out in 7 minutes with a little bottle of tummy pills for her.

And it's sooooo much cheaper than any other vet I've ever gone to. The office visit fee is $47! (And then you pay for shots, etc.) Very reasonable, and he's super nice, too.

So the punk went down around 7:30pm like usual, slept straight through until 6am until she got really restless, drank 5oz and chatted for a few minutes until she started yawning, went back to sleep until 9:30am, had 6oz (!!!) at 10am, played for a while, and is now back asleep at 11:30am.

Growth spurt, anyone?

~//~

Backed out of visiting a friend in Shutesbury this afternoon. Decided to give the punk a little break and not make an hour drive after the chiropractor. Hopefully the cranky couple of days were growth-spurt related.

~//~


Long weekend, whee!!! Three days of showering whenever I want!

First of all, happy wedding day to prunesnprisms on Saturday and happy birthday to my lovely Labortine laurajones! xoxo

~//~

We jam-packed as much into this weekend as we possibly could, considering we both seem to have come down with some sort of crud and the baby has picked up one of the side effects of switching to Prilosec, which is diarrhea and abdominal cramps. Poor kid has been /miserable/ for the latter half of the week, straining so hard that she's given herself Abs of Steel. But we're determined to make her a "portable kid," and the weather has been pretty good, so...

Saturday we celebrated Gus's 2 month birthday by taking a little road trip to the outlet malls and dropping a mint on their sidewalk sales. We manage to curb spending by only buying things for the punk, heh. But still, umm, she got some, umm, stuff. It was a nice day to walk around the outlet malls, and the ride to Lee is always really pretty. Lots of people brought their DOGS to the outlet mall. WTF is up with that?

Yesterday we decided to brave the Tri-County Fair. We wouldn't have gone if we'd known that admission was $10 each, but hey, live and learn. By the time we off-road parked in some dude's backyard and walked through the gate, we realized that there really wasn't anything to do with the baby at the fair besides walk around a little bit. And eat fried dough. Mmm. Still, we got to see some pig races (yay!) and eat some fair food and a large number of people stopped to tell us how beautiful the baby is. That's weird! The baby makes us popular. Jen carried the punk in the knock-off Bjorn thinger and it was nice to see, and the punk seemed to like it. Then we went to Friendly's to eat ice cream sundaes and vowed to be better eaters the next day. Heh.

Today after lounging around the house for a long while, we went to Childs Park in Northampton, spread out a blanket, and hung out for a couple of hours. We took some photos of the punk and just chilled in the nice weather. It's good to finally just pack up and get out sometimes, and I'm not going to lie - it's nice having Jen home for an extra day to share Baby Duty.

I am so not ready for summer to end. For realz.

Wow, it is Restaurant Week and I didn't even know! How did I miss this? I am so slow.

HOWEVER, I did manage to score a reservation for Saturday night for me, Jen, and Jodie who is visiting from Maine. After scouring all of the menus looking for foods I can eat, of course. (Lots of Asian/Sushi/Seafood stuff up in here.) And foods that the other folks like, too.

Because I am the awesomest wife ever, I made reservations at Caminito Argentinean Steakhouse even though I don't eat beef and don't like the smell of beef cooking all that much. But Jen loves steak and Jodie likes steak and really, how often does Jen get to go to a steakhouse? Pretty much never. Besides, their Restaurant Week menu has a sweet potato ravioli entree that sounds ridiculously delicious. Mmmm, I am hungry already!

Jodie is coming tomorrow and we are going to have so much funnnnnn.

I stopped for gas this morning at the same old gas station I always stop at, because I'm lazy and it's right there and because it's usually 2¢ cheaper than the other places. So I pull up to the pump and I'm pumping my gas. The weather is gorgeous and I'm wearing shorts and a VERY maternity tank top - the kind that is stretchy elastic over the breasticles and then just tents over the belly.

I guess I look bigger than usual in this shirt because out of nowhere, the Big Gas Station Lady comes out of the booth and puts on her suave voice and says, "You look like you're starting to get mighty uncomfortable, my dear," and makes like she is going to pump my gas for me! Thankfully I was totally done and putting the pump back into the tank and chirped, "Naw, I feel great, thanks!" and then she sticks around and takes my receipt out of the machine (pay at the pump) and hands it to me.

She says, "Boy or girl?" and I say, "Girl," and she tells me she knew it because I'm carrying so high. (Whatever, I'm 'carrying' 4 weeks behind!) So then I say very quickly, "I just hope they're right or I'm in trouble," and I scurry into my car and drive away.

SCARY GAS STATION LADY WAS HITTING ON ME!!!

Yesterday was Pride and we (work people) were all supposed to assemble at 10am to set up the float. I had been asking for nearly two weeks for an e-mail with the address or name of the actual meetup location, and instead got a lot of shoddy information that was not helpful, like, "You know, so-and-so's work," or "You know, it's on King Street and that's not a very big street." So early in the morning Jen and I drove up and down the street several times looking for a 'medical building' that 'you can't miss' that had a parking lot big enough in which to set up a trailer. When we didn't see ANYTHING that resembled such, I got angry and pulled into a parking lot, where Jen called one of my coworkers (one of the nice ones) to tell everyone that we weren't coming, eff it. I mean, if no one can be bothered to tell me where to go, why should I show up? But in the end, Nice Coworker convinced us to come, and the location was, for the record, NOT on King Street at all but four buildings down a side street off of King Street... and even when told which side street, we still didn't find this elusive hidden parking lot.

The parade was fun, though, and we kept Morgan sane while driving the float trailer and we threw beads and balloons out of the truck. We got to see some nice people that we know, like Eryn! Fun! We stayed at the actual festival for a very short time and then headed out to Emily's baby shower. It was a good time but her dad's girlfriend was an incredibly chatty woman who kept cornering me to tell me lengthy stories. And of course everyone wanted to tell me how SMALL my belly is.

Today we headed to RI to visit the grandparents and do a little early Mother's Day with the grandmother. I was going to try to catch anitsirk in town and meant to check e-mail from my grandparents' house to see if she was game, but my grandmother was really nervous about an upcoming endoscopy that she is having so it really set me on edge and I wanted to stay there as long as possible. She just kept talking about how everyone she knows has cancer and that she's pretty much convinced herself that she has cancer, too. God, I hope my grandmother does not have cancer. *gulp*

So now we're home, laundry's in, Jen's watching Spiderman 2, and I ate too much fish and chips and currently feel like butt. But I have decided not to let people who like to hurt me matter. Because they don't. Good times.

I found this guy for work and he's coming to perform tomorrow. He seems very smart and very nice (check his blog) and I'm hoping that a lot of people come. But, like everything else around here, it will probably be dismally attended. So come out and see this cute guy! (We just got off the phone and I just adore him.)



The Stonewall Center Presents:

"Doin' Time in the Homo No Mo Halfway House: How I Survived the Ex-Gay Movement"
An autobiographical performance piece by Peterson Toscano.

Thursday, March 29, 7pm
Isenberg School of Management, Room 133

For more information:
www.umass.edu/stonewall

Three of my former coworkers took a little road trip out to visit us yesterday (Kelly, Funk, Marti Maraschino). It was very good to see them and we had a good time on a small budget. We got greasy diner food for lunch so I could fulfill my BLT fantasy (I guess it's one of the closest things I've had to a "craving" so far) and then came back to the house and played board games pretty much all afternoon. We thought about going out to dinner but decided instead to change into pajamas, bust out another game, and order pizza and salad. We managed to do a little Apples to Apples, Cranium, ImaginIff, and the new DVD version of Clue that Gina and Ben sent us for Christmas. After Jen went to bed, the four of us did this sort of question game that Kelly had until we got too tired. FUN.

Of course Marti remarked that she would have never known I was pregnant by looking at me. Urg. I was just starting to feel the pregnant vibe, too. Aah well. I guess that's more time I can rejoice in being comfortable and not needing to waddle. Right?

The girls left this morning and I am enjoying a lazy holiday at home. Presidents' Day is such a dumb holiday but I am not complaining. There is a Law and Order marathon on TNT, I finished the laundry, am still in pajamas, and have enjoyed some leftover pizza. Perhaps I will do some dishes and try to decide if we should have leftovers or something new for dinner. I'm guessing leftovers only because we have so much chicken parm that Jen made on Saturday and we still have quite a bit of pizza. The girls also brought over a bunch of chips for snacks and they freaking left them here, so now there are bad snackies here, too. I think I will go grab some baby carrots and resist!

~//~

Crap sleep last night. Fell asleep fine but the evil left buttcheek pain came back in full force. I need to figure something out else be doomed to bad sleep for the next five months. The only time I don't feel the butt pain is when I allow myself the privilege of sleeping on my back.