Judecorp.

Jen and I went out to dinner for our birthday tonight because one of our friends kindly offered to babysit after the kids went to bed.

Tukey has been waking up a lot and sleeping like crap, crying a lot and such, so I told her that if nothing else worked, she could nurse him. (She has a 1 year old.) I have never really wanted anyone else to nurse my baby (even though I really can't) and while he does drink donor milk, I kind of like being the only one to actually nurse him. But I like her, and I didn't want him to have a rough night.

Sure enough, he woke up right after we left and she tried bouncing, singing, shushing, etc. and ended up nursing him. She said she could hardly get him off of her. (He's kind of a boob man.)

Later, my friend Morgan pointed out that Tukey got more play on my birthday than I did.

DAMN YOU TUKEY!!!

We had a successful and small birthday party for Punk but now there is a lot of cake in my house. And I do mean a LOT. Please won't you come over and eat some cake? Please?

My brother and SIL are visiting from SC, and my grandmother and my aunt came out from RI. Julie and Moey came down, and Beth and Cathy came with Hannah. The three toddlers had a grand old time, but I think the biggest hit was stuffing them all in the red wagon and bouncing them across my bumpy back yard. Good times! I can't believe my tiny baby girl is two years old!

My brother and SIL got Punk a big wooden doll house with furniture and dolls and everything, and Rick put it together last night so it would be ready to go today. It was a HUGE success. Everything was, really. She was so into opening presents this year. And everything was so up her alley: a puzzle, a giant coloring book, stickers, the doll house, a tee-ball set, Yo Gabba Gabba bath stickies, books, LEGOs, and an Elmo and Abby birthday video that my brother got in the impulse area of the grocery store.

And then, when we were winding down for the evening, a black bear cub sauntered into my front yard. So cool!

So who's coming over for cake??

My grandfather turned 91 today. 91! Holy crap!! I drove down to RI and we went out to dinner: my grandparents, my brother, and my aunt and uncle. It was a good time and it was nice to get everyone together. It was the first time my grandmother left the house since she fell at home a few days after getting home from the hospital, and she was super nervous. Everything was fine, though.

My grandparents are really showing their age these days and it really bums me out. They have both lost so much weight this year and they have no confidence in their health or livelihoods. I don't know if my grandmother will ever decide to leave the house again without major encouragement, and she just seems so tired and shaky. My grandfather is just beside himself without my grandmother to fuss over him and take care of him, and it is making him stressed out and confused. It is so sad. I wish I lived next door to them so I could take care of them and bring Punk over to cheer them up.

My grandfather was in a good mood today, though, which was nice. I think he really likes having everyone together. He made a couple of statements about how close he is to us (my brother and me) and how we are so bonded because he took care of us and it was just really nice. I know we don't have a ton of time left together and it will be so empty and sad when they are gone, even though they have lived nice, full lives and deserve their rest. I can't even bring myself to think about it too much.

~//~

I was gone for bedtime and Jen doesn't usually do bedtime and it was horrible for her. I feel all guilty for being gone at bedtime even though I know that it was better than trying to drag Punk to a restaurant for 2+ hours after 1.5 hours in a car. But she wouldn't go to sleep for Jen and Jen was really upset about it, and even though I know she is just frustrated and not really upset with /me/, it still feels that way. I feel like I can never be gone at bedtime because it always ends badly.

So we survived Punk's first year and now her first birthday party, complete with rain because of course I can't have a party that I expect to be outside without a healthy dollop of rain. We invited a lot of people because it was her first birthday and we think she is the coolest ever, and also because of the holiday weekend bringing out of town friends closer, and I really relied on having some outdoor space to put some of these people. Thankfully the rain stopped in the late morning so we could have some folks on the deck, but the yard really didn't get used and I didn't get to have the Baby Pool Party I was dreaming about. (Oh, the photos we could have had!)

Instead we had Babypalooza in our living room and it was the cutest ball of chaos you will ever see. Besides Punk, there was Jack (16 months), Ruby (11 months), Mo (10 months), Charlotte (10 months), Jeremy (6 months) and Anna (12 months). It was crrrrrrazy! But freaking cute. Also, Punk has stopped beating up Mo and has moved on to Jeremy. Mmm, younger men.

~//~

My smurfbrother and SIL (gretastic) were in town for the festivities and as always, that was made of awesome. I just love when they are around because they are the coolest ever and because they are so in love with my kid. I mean, sure, she's the coolest ever, but they are so into her and it is really great. And she is really into them. After a day or so, I could ask, "Where's Uncle Rick?" and she would look at him and then crawl over to this giant ball she has so he could play with her. And of course she knew that Aunt Gretchen would pick her up whenever she wanted to see her balloons out the window. That kid loves her some balloons.

I wish they lived closer to us so badly. It's like an ache.

Also, my brother totally worked his butt off helping us out with the party. On Thursday while I was at work, he did all of my dishes. And on Friday, he mowed the back yard (even though we didn't get to use it). And then he made pounds and pounds and pounds and POUNDS of cook-out food - shrimp and couscous salad, pasta salad, and the most delicious potato salad ever. Yum.

~//~

Punk is just so awesome. So so so awesome. Tonight she was sitting on the floor putting toys in a container and dumping them out. Over and over. It is so neat to see her little wheels turning. Rick taught her how to work one of the buttons on her pop-up toy (now she can do two!), and now I'm trying to teach her how to push a toy car around and say "vroom vroom." Also, she is trying really hard to stack blocks, but she hasn't figured out how to let it go gently yet - she still pushes really hard.

She is such an amazing and perfect little thing, and I just love her so much.

~//~

Tonight is Jen's first night teaching Digital Media at a local adult education school. She is really excited about it because she likes teaching and because it's actually an art job, but I'm not going to lie, the idea of being a single mom twice a week after working long days is really daunting. That, and I need to find someone who can cover from when she has to leave to when I get home two nights a week, which is stressful. But the worst is that she told me it would be a 10-12 week commitment and I knew that no matter how crazy, I could plug away for 10-12 weeks. But then the other day she dropped the bomb that it is actually THIRTY-SIX weeks. As in 9 months. As in that's just crazy talk. That's 9 months of coming home from long work days, doing Punk dinner, Punk clean up, Punk playing, Punk bedtime, Punk toy clean-up, Punk day care bag change-over, the works. I am tired just thinking about it... and it's only the first day.

One of the gals I was privileged to meet through my due date community (july2007babies) is having a special day today. Today is the day that loretta78 became a mama. Beautiful little Aiden would have been one year old today. He passed away at 11 weeks due to SIDS. I can't even imagine, but she is so amazing and so strong and has so much grace about the whole thing, more than I ever could.

Happy birthday, Aiden. And happy birthing day, L. I'm thinking of you.

I bought a delicious cake for Jen's birthday. Please come over tonight and eat some of it. Only the big cakes were discounted with my silly Big Y coin, so it was cheaper to get the big cake than the smaller cake. Please eat some cake.

After 8pm, there will be much cake eating. YOM.

Jen got me a Nintendo DS for my birthday. It's cute. It's fun!

But I worry that I will never have time to use it. Or that the punk will puke on it. Or that I will never be able to afford any new games. (She got me one of the Brain Age games.)

~//~

Speaking of the punk, we took her for weight checks the last two Tuesdays because she had been really spitting up a lot and had slowed her eating for a little while.

Last Tuesday: 13lb 1oz
Today: 13lb 12oz

Woah, big baby! I guess feeding her in her sleep is working. :)

~//~

This ALCS is starting to get awfully depressing and very typical Red Sox.

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.

Happy Birthday to siercia and ntiva!

And lots of prayers for kjames.

I've had a REALLY good birthday this year. I made out like a total bandit and the birthday just keeps on going!

Saturday, 10-14: My mom sends us a gift certificate from Legal Seafood. Yay!

Sunday, 10-15: Jen and I get a nice dinner out, courtesy of my grandparents and my aunt and uncle. I got to make my uncle (the lone Republican black sheep of the family) turn red and lose words while trying to argue politics with me. We also got nice cards, money, and two little matching birthday cakes.

Tuesday, 10-17: There were two birthday cards on my desk - one from Coworker Kristine and one from my intern. Then Jen came home for the evening! We went out to a nice yummy dinner at Jacob Wirth where I had a homebrewed cream soda and some butternut squash ravioli (yummmmmm) and then used the theatre tickets I'd bought for us to see "The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee." And then got to spend the night with my favorite smoochie. We received some birthday cards. Jen and I exchange gifts and she gives me flowers and a new Playmobil pirate set!

Wednesday, 10-18: It was time for my birthday staff meeting, and they all sang "Happy Birthday." Coworker Kristine baked me a cake - marble with chocolate frosting!

Friday, 10-20: My smurfbrother sends us a very generous gift certificate for a fancy schmancy sushi place.

Saturday, 10-21: We have a birthday party! Lots of people come! eeka13 and violacat bring me a dinosaur that comes out of an egg when you soak it in water! Former Coworker Nicole shows up with a bottle of wine that I can't even sample. (It smelled good, though.) Shani makes us birthday cards and so does Dan's son, Jacob. Joe brings us bizarro gifts from Korea, including something that /might/ be a fig newton with chocolate chips, and some groovy masks. We have ice cream cake and lots of junk!

Sunday, 10-22: Jen wakes up and makes me banana pancakes with cinnamon. Yum!

( This is the coolest present, though: )

Best. Birthday. Ever.