Taunting

"Go Beavers!"

"Go Ducks!"

"No, go Beavers!"

(*gleefully*) "Go Ducks!"

Today is Civil War, the game between the Oregon State Beavers (Tim's alma mater) and the Oregon Ducks (the evil green and yellow team of the Pac-10; also, Tim's father's alma mater). Currently the score is tied, although the refs made a terrible call last quarter that denied the Beavers a touchdown.

Kate usually gets to watch Dora after her nap, but on Saturdays during football season, we start the day with them so that we get the TV in the afternoon. College football: it takes precedence over most things in this house. Anyway, Kate is sitting in the living room with her sister and her father, eating graham crackers and cheering on the...Ducks. Tim at one point explained that the Beavers were playing the Ducks today, and Kate thought it would be nice to root on the losing team. It's very endearing.

Also, Claire has a horrible cold, and has lost most of her voice like I have. It is the most pathetic thing I think I have ever heard: a hoarse baby crying. So, so sad.

2-0

That's our record for the season so far. Two and ze-ro. As in, no losses! I am shocked, mostly because the game today was against #22 Boise State, and well, because our past few seasons have been horribly painful. Next week's game is against Ohio State, followed by UCLA and USC at the end of the month. They've said Washington has the toughest schedule in the country, and I believe it.

Today Kate talked to her daddy on the phone: "Daddy come home soon?" That was her first question. Kinda breaks your heart.

Me, I'm sitting here eating a vanilla sundae with Sander's hot fudge, because: yum! I'm debating whether I'm going to sit down and watch my movie: The Lake House. Seen it? Is it worth it? Bah, I'll probably do it, just so I don't have it sitting here for the next month. But, not before I post some pictures!

The avocado attacked me, Ma.

Claire's "I'm tired" pose.

So big!

So tired, but still so big!

Happy at dinner.

Thank heaven for baby medicine

That's right, I drugged my daughters and they are now both sleeping peacefully. Last night: not so much. And today I figured out why at least one of them was crabby: McLaren has another new tooth. Yes, another one. The second one this week. The new one is her upper left front tooth (my sister could tell you the name and number, but I'll just call it what everyone knows: the upper front tooth). After finding the tooth poking through this morning, I am impressed that she slept at all last night, or this past week for that matter.

Kate is still all congested and snotty-nosed, and cough-y on top of that. Now, after some toddler's Dimetapp, she is sleeping soundly! I have high hopes that this will allow me some continuous sleep tonight, as well. Because last night sucked, I tell you.

Tim is cross-country. For you non-flyer types: he flew a jet out to some big to-do function on the east coast. Except that he broke in San Antonio tonight, and will probably not be going to his destination, but will still hopefully be home early next week as planned. As for me, I'm not using my time wisely. I had the computer on from earlier today, and I've been sitting here, reading blogs and such for nearly 2 hours. I could have been reading Harry Potter. Or cleaning up around here for once, or watching the chick flick I got just for this weekend, or sleeping for God's sake! But I've been unproductively surfing the internet. Addict. I'm an addict.

Tomorrow I plan to be firmly planted in front of the TV, watching the Michigan-Oregon game, and willing the network to switch mid-game to what is sure to be a much more interesting match: Washington vs Boise State.

Did You See That Game??

I'm not talking about the Rose Bowl. That game was a little slow, in my opinion. My Dad, a proud Wolverine, even spent half the time watching the History Channel instead of his team lose to USC. Craz-y.

But, that game was followed by the Fiesta Bowl. Boise State vs Oklahoma. The announcers had their script in hand, as did the cameramen. Lots of shots of Oklahoma fans in their burgundy sweatshirts, lots of comments about how great the Sooners were, yadda yadda. Us, we're big Boise fans. Would love to live there. Love. So of course we were cheering for the Broncos. They were kicking butt for most of the game, but then seemed to lose hope and/or ambition towards the end, and I nearly turned the game off in disgust when they let Oklahoma score a touchdown and extra point with just a minute to go. GAH! They had blown an 18-point lead and were now down by 7. But then, on fourth-and-18, the BSU quarterback scored a 50-yard touchdown. Bea-u-ti-ful. They went into overtime and Oklahoma scored quickly. I thought the Broncos were done for. Again, they waited until the 4th down to score. And they did! And then they decided to pull a Mike Reilly and go for the win with a 2-point conversion. Wowza. What a game.

As for New Year's, it was pretty lame. We're old. We're parents. We're expecting a baby soon. Jessica came over for dinner and games, stayed till 10pm when we watched the ball drop in NY, and toasted bubbly (apple-grape cider). After she left, Tim and I played another round of 24 the game and after struggling with it for about half and hour, I got online to read some reviews about it. Sure enough, everyone says don't buy this game. Don't do it. And we second those opinions. The game is horrible. Totally useless. We still love 24, just hate the game. We ended up staying up till midnight, but were in bed right afterwards.

Hope y'all had a Happy New Year celebration!

Tim's 'Heidi' Moment

I mentioned earlier that we played a few games over Christmas, one of which was Totally 80s Trivial Pursuit. There was a question in there that brought up a story by my Dad. I don't remember the question, but the story made us laugh and cringe. Before most of us were born (I believe Mike was alive then??), there was a Sunday night football game between the Oakland Raiders and the New York Jets, now known as the Heidi Game. To use a ka-ching phrase, basically what happened was that the game went on longer than expected, and when it was due to end at 7pm, NBC cut to its previously scheduled programming instead of allowing viewers to watch the end of the game. People were pissed. NBC got so many calls from angry football fans that the phone exchange crashed. I think the networks learned something that night: don't publish your phone number.

Cut to the Sun Bowl on CBS on Friday afternoon, a game between the Oregon State Beavers and the Missouri Tigers. Tim's a proud Beaver, and was super pleased that his normally 'doormat of the Pac-10' team was 1) ranked, and 2) in a bowl game. He came home from work at a reasonable hour (noon) just so he could watch his Beavers play some football. So we're watching the game, and things are close. The Tigers score, the Beavers score. It goes back and forth for most of the first half. Then, out of nowhere, Katie Couric comes on the screen for some 'breaking news'. CBS had just cut out of a bowl game to cover one of President Ford's funerals. Except that the news team was totally unprepared, and it was fairly obvious that they didn't know what exactly they were supposed to be talking about. There were cars driving up to the site, but that was about it. I assumed that the network would cut back to the game within a minute, after seeing that there was really nothing to see at the funeral. Nope. Katie and some other reporter stammered on for more than 20 minutes, finishing out the first half of the game. Tim was pissed. I don't remember the last time I've seen him that mad. He tried in vain to find CBS's phone number so he could help the rest of the Beaver and Tiger fans crash their exchange, but to no avail. He ended up calling our network provider, which gladly gave him their number, happy that he wasn't calling to complain to them. There were some colorful words that Kate did not learn that day, because she was napping. He never was able to reach CBS, but apparently some people did, because not long into halftime, they switched back to the game. And the Beavers won with less than a minute to go, 39-38. What a game.

So True, So True

I get these weekly emails from Babycenter about Kate's milestones, and what to expect each week of pregnancy. This week, I opened the email about Kate and read the following:

Doing errands around town is harder than ever with a pint-sized explorer in tow. Being strapped down in a car seat or stroller is the last place your toddler wants to be: Expect an earful — usually accompanied by an arched back and flailing arms and legs — when it's time to buckle up.

Ha! So true! That arched back, the 'outside voice' screaming in protest at the horror of being chained into a stroller. The glare I get for putting her in there. Now, just add an 8 1/2 month pregnant belly and the crabbiness that comes with it to the mix, and you get some fun shoppers!

Kate had her 15mo well-baby check this morning, and is doing just fine, despite my concerns that she had lost a lot of weight during last week's illness. Nope. She gained weight over the past month (she's now 24lb 14oz). Must be the Christmas cookies. She had her first lollipop this morning after her shots; I felt bad for the screaming child and let the nurse give her one. Wow, did she love that. I think I'm going to have to wash the stroller seat cover now, it's so covered in sugary goo, but she was sooo happy until I took it away from her.

As for us, the house is a disaster (dis-as-ter, no kidding). Mike is finishing up the bathroom today (I hope), and I'll get to cleaning this place as soon as he's done. Dad's headed our way tomorrow, Christmas Eve dinner is at Jessica's house, and Christmas day festivities are here, including breakfast, gift opening and dinner.

Oh, and the Ducks got spanked last night in their bowl game. Ha! So sorry, Dad. Tim says they were still getting over their loss to OSU in the Civil War. =)

Cookies, Gifts and Snot, Oh My

How did I do all the stuff I did for Christmas last year? Decorate the house, get a tree, bake cookies, entertain Kate, send gifts and not fall asleep at the dinner table? Oh, right: I had a baby, not a toddler. Kate is into everything, and it's putting a crimp in my desire to be Martha Stewart this Christmas.

I started out by signing up to bake cookies for the base Cookie Crunch, a cookie drive that collects homemade cookies to give to the airmen living on base over the holidays. Since I was already making a batch of cookies, I might as well just go balls out and make a double batch of Peppermint Chocolate Chip cookies, then whip up some dough for the candy cane cookies, find a recipe for yummy mint brownies, and make plans for oodles of sugar cookies. Right? Right. To add to this recipe for success, I thought, 'You know, we should have a little holiday gathering, play games, eat, drink and be merry.' Got to get the decorations all up before then, clean the house, make some food, buy some alcohol, rearrange the living room to accomodate people, blah blah blah. Am I stressed? No. Just waking up at 4am, wondering when I'm going to get all this stuff done.

And then there's the crib fiasco. Target. I love Target, but they are a Gigantic Corporation and thus have their problems. The one I learned about over the weekend: they don't have the crib I want in stock, none of the Tucson stores do, and no, they can't order one for me. What?! We went to Tar-jay yesterday to look at cribs, and to order one because I figured they wouldn't have one in stock. That's why I waited till now to get one. Because I thought they would ORDER one in for me. Something about central warehouse/delivery issues and no they cannot order one in, but I can surely call them every week to see if they got one in recently, right? OR, I could go online and order the damn thing on my own, which is what I did. So sorry, Target. Hopefully we'll get the crib delivered by the new year...

Saturday was football day; the last day of regular season play for college ball. We (really, I mean Tim - I ran around the house like a madwoman trying to make cookie dough, clean, etc) sat on the sofa and watched USC lose !, West Virginia beat Rutgers (I thought it odd that Tim wanted to watch this game, but apparently there was a chance his team would play the winner in a bowl game), and then stayed up to watch the OSU Beavers play Hawaii. Okay, Tim stayed up to watch, I went to bed. The game didn't even start until 10pm! I watched part of the first quarter and then decided it would be better to sleep. Then at 1:30am he came into the bedroom and gleefully claimed victory over Hawaii. I cheered groggily.

We decided to go to the late church service on Sunday, but then thought better of it when Kate appeared to be coming down with a cold. We put her down for a nap instead of going to church, and were so glad we did. She didn't sleep, but she did vomit all over her crib and we were happy that she didn't do this in the nursery at church. Poor kid. Poor parents! Gross, cleaning that mess up. Thank you Kate for doing it when your daddy was home!

Now it's naptime and I need to get baking. Damn, there's a lot of cookies to make.