first 1st birthday party

Let's see if this cranky website will let me post my photos today.


As I mentioned yesterday, Kate got to have her first taste of birthday cake and she loved it. At first she was delicate (we were very surprised) and just picked at the little dots on the butterflies.

Then she realized that the dots tasted good and went in for the kill.

I hope she didn't eat all that is missing.

Cake was everywhere. We'll see how next week's birthday party here goes. I might have to put her outside with her cake. I admire Sheila's ability to laugh when chocolate cake was flying across her kitchen; I do not think it will be as funny when it is in my own house. Call me Monica if you must.

Towards the end of our trip, we visited Tim's grandma where Kate got to play in the grass again. She loves that stuff! We might have to invest in a small patch just to keep her happy here. Rocks just aren't the same, I guess.

firsts, revisited

Kate had a few firsts on our vacation. One of the greatest ones was her first word: Daddy. I think she learned this while we were in Seattle, but we got to hear her say it a few times when we returned, and I think she knows what it means. She's getting better at calling me Mama and Tim Dada or Daddy. Her second word was 'hiiiii', which she greeted me with one morning when I went into her room to get her out of her pack n play. I always say 'hiiii' when I go into her room after she wakes up, and she has taken notice. After we returned to Arizona, she also said 'baby' (just a couple of times) and has now learned 'bye-bye', which she reserves for very special occasions that only she can explain. She has a very cute voice.

A not-so-fun first was her first trip to the ER a week ago. That cold she had come down with on the way to Oregon finally settled and seemed to be causing an ear infection. Tricare of course recommended that we go to the Salem Hospital ER, where they triage and we got to wait in the waiting room for just a hair over 4 hours. This was during naptime, and again created crabby baby who didn't want to sleep in our arms. Once she had been asleep for about 30 minutes, they called us into our room to see the doc. He came in pretty quickly, looked in both of her ears, diagnosed ear infections in each (is it bad to say 'at least she was sick'?), and left telling us that he'd be back to give us a prescription. Just a hair over 45 minutes later, when I was certain he had forgotten us (he had), I stuck my head out the door and hailed a nurse to remind her that we were still there. Waiting. Finally, prescriptions in hand, and 5 hours after arriving, we left on a quest for our meds. I think we only had to go to 2 pharmacies to find what we needed, but I can't remember for sure... So, another mostly-napless day for Kate. But she started getting better right away, which was good since we were flying out 2 days later.

Kate at the ER. What is this thing on my toe?

The next night we had Kate's family birthday celebration. She got her own cake (chocolate) and was the star of the show. She loved that. She also loved the cake.

And of course, now that I am trying to upload more photos, blogger refuses to acknowledge my requests. So I will continue this later. Grrr.

oregon, the first few days

Kate did really well on the airplane ride to Portland, considering she got very little sleep the night before and was coming down with a cold right as we left. She doesn't sleep in our arms, so that was challenging. We had 2 flights, so she would fall asleep just as we were getting ready to descend, and would wake up crying because her ears hurt. She didn't sleep more than 20 minutes that day, compared to her usual 3+ hours of naps. So, considering all of that, she did remarkably well.

We got to Grandma's house, had dinner, and put her right to bed. The next day we went to her great-grandparent's for dinner. She loved this because she got to play outside. We don't do that much here unless we're in the pool. She experienced grass again and loved it. She tried salmon and didn't love it. We're working on that one.

Mom, we should get grass at home.

Two days after arriving, we left our baby with Tim's parents for 4 days and 3 nights while we drove to Seattle for Christy's wedding. Luckily we were busy, because it was the first time we'd left her for that long, let alone overnight, and it was a big step. We all survived it, and we had a great time in Seattle visiting with friends and seeing sights. On Saturday we got to go to the Husky season opening football game with Shaun, which was awesome! The weather was perfect, and the view spectacular. Husky stadium has the best view from a football field ever.

The Huskies take the field.

The wedding was gorgeous, and the weather was perfect. We spent 4 lovely days in my hometown and had a great time. I even slept in until 9am twice!

After Labor Day weekend in Washington, we headed back to Oregon, and I'll post more on that later...

if your name is:

• Tara
• Steph
• Christy K.
• Amber
• Jill
• Elizabeth
• Carrie
• Dana
• Christy S.
• Samantha
• Kristen
• Sheila
• Rae

...then you were right in your predition about Kate's little sibling. Kate is going to be the proud big sister of a ... little girl. She is already so excited about her new sister, and can't wait for the end of January when she will get to meet her.

As for us, we are still trying to get settled after our vacation to Oregon and Seattle. We have many photos and stories, but I will have to save that for another time.

popsicles and pizza

Kate got to try popsicles yesterday. It's back into the 100s again, so we put on the swimsuit bottoms and headed outside to make a mess. She started with carrots (I didn't want to feel too guilty about all that sugar I was about to give her), and then moved on to a popsicle. She liked it, of course. Lemon popsicle, yum. She also liked chewing on the stick when she had eaten all she would eat. For dinner we had pizza. I'm not sure how much she ate. She's doing this new thing where she'll put a bit of food into her mouth, chew it for a second and then spit it out again. She even does this with foods she likes. I dunno. So most of the pizza came back out again, except for the cheese. The girl likes cheese!

Ew, I think I got a mushroom.

We are off tomorrow on our trip to Portland and Seattle for 10 days. I hope to post updates along the way, but last time Kate slept in the computer room, which reduced my time spent on the blog, so we'll have to see. Happy Labor Day!

anniversary

Tomorrow is Tim's and my 5th anniversary. We can hardly believe it's been so long, or that it's only been 5 years since we got married. We've known each other for 13 years now. I thought I'd post some photos of that fabulous day in 2001 when we got married at Willamette Valley Vineyards in Oregon.

Oh, here's a fun one from the year before: our engagement on top of the Space Needle in Seattle!

Photos from our first anniversary, which I spent in Silverton with Tim's family while he fought in Afghanistan:

Happy Anniversary, Tim!

meat sticks are gross

Everyone's baby loves meat sticks. Gerber makes these hotdog-like sticks of well, meat, and all the girls I know tell me their baby loves them. Kate does not. I now have 3 jars (shoulda tried just one to begin with, huh?) of various flavors of meat sticks sitting in my pantry, and Kate detests them. She squeezes them out through her fingers, and plays with the skins. Ew. I have to give her credit: she will put a chunk in her mouth to try it, but then spits it back out. At first I thought we had a vegetarian on our hands, but we gave her pulled pork and she ate lots of that. She just doesn't like meat sticks. And really, who can blame her? They're nashty looking. And they smell like cat food. OH! Idea! I bet Starbuck will eat them! Yes.

We went to Anna's 2nd birthday party on Saturday night. Kate had a blast. And I am excited to see how she reacts to her birthday presents next month, considering she cried when I wouldn't let her play with Anna's gift before we went to the party. Most kids like the wrapping paper and boxes; I think Kate will actually like the toys. We shall see. But, the party: there were balloons (Kate loves them) and they had a giant kiddie pool in the backyard. I think Kate might have liked it better than our pool. Bonus. Coulda saved a few thousand dollars on that one...except it's hard to do laps in the kiddie pool.

Zoe, Kate and Taylor watch Stoner play with the doll.

Kate loves the pool!

We also got Kate her first pair of hard-soled shoes to get her ready for our trip to the Northwest next week. I talked to Tim's mom and she told me how she would take Kate's cousin Mykenzie on long walks down to the city hall and back when Mykenzie was about that age. Now, the city hall is almost a mile from their house, so I thought she meant that she would carry Mykenzie or would take her in the stroller. Nope. They both walked to city hall. So I found some shoes for Kate. They are so cute! Pink suede with little suede flowers. At first she had a lot of trouble walking in them because they are heavy and awkward when you're used to walking barefoot, but she is already getting better. Yesterday we put on jeans and her shoes and walked all the way to the end of the driveway. Not bad!

After many, many attemps to upload a photo of Kate in her new shoes, I give up. I'll try to post one later when blogger is more cooperative, if that ever happens.

***

Update: Not even Starbuck the kitty likes these Gerber meat sticks. Damn.

2 hours of jen in just 2 calories

Ha! This is a good one - thank you Andrea! - a slogan generator. Out of the UK. Very funny stuff. Ooh, I don't know about this next one. 'Just Do Kate.' Let's try that again. Ack! 'Absolut Kate'. What are they trying to tell me?! 'A Kate is Forever'. That's better. Heehee: 'If You Want to Get Ahead, Get a Tim'.

Signed,
Better Ingredients, Better Jen

hot dogs, no thank you. i'll take more peas, please.

We had hot dogs for dinner earlier this week. This was my first hot dog since becoming pregnant, so I was pretty pleased for holding out till the 4th month. (For those of you who don't know the story, I first suspected I was pregnant when I was shopping at the commissary one morning and while walking down the relish aisle, thought, mmm, hot dogs.) Since I'm trying to slowly transition Kate from baby food to what I call real food, we are cutting up more of our meals to feed to her. Sometimes this works well, sometimes it does not. For instance, she has learned that she can squeeze some foods and make them ooze out of her fingers. She enjoys this immensely. Bananas and blueberries are her favorites for this trick.

But I digress. We had weiners for dinner, along with peas and carrots (because you just can't feel like you're being a good mom by eating cereal, peanut butter toast and chocolate chip cookies as meals everyday. Not that I do this. Really.). I cut up the hot dogs into Kate-sized chunks, and also put a few peas and carrots on her tray. She picked up the hot dog, put it in her mouth, and spit it out. She tried the peas next. She likes them because they roll around on the tray, and also because they are green. I think. So she tried the peas. Loved those. Ate every pea on her tray, found the leftover Kix from lunch in the corner of her tray and ate those and then looked at us like Okay, Mama, I'm done. You've got to be kidding me if you think I'm going to eat those weird hot dog bits. Not that I'm complaining. Not a bit; I just was amazed at her desire to eat vegetables instead of hot dogs.

organized, focused, emotionally stable planner

According to the similar minds personality test, these words describe me. I am an ESTJ: extroverted, sensing, thinking, judging sort of person. I think that is probably about right. I am an "Administrator", much in touch with the external environment, very responsible, a pillar of strength, 8.7% of the poplulation. How they know that, I don't know. The part that made me give them a lot of credit was the 'favored careers/disfavored careers' section. It says that I would be good at:

• supervisor
• financial planner
• business analyst
• loan officer

These are all things I have done in the past.

And I would suck at:

• poet
• songwriter
• art therapist (what the hell is that??)
• art historian
• travel writer (I think they are wrong about this, but maybe I would just like the travel part)

Thanks again to Katie for the blog idea.

*****

I'm not totally left-brained (this is not a response to your comment, Katie!); I did somehow get some art genes. But I can't imagine doing something artsy for a living, mostly because I'm just not that creative to do it full-time, and that would stress me out.

Here is something I drew in high school:

And something I just finally finished for my sister:

For you ESTJs out there, this was a fun project that only took me 2 1/2 years. Check it out at this website.

addict

This is a fun website I found recently:

www.zillow.com

Type in an address and it will give you home values, a map and some home details. Kinda scary. They need to update their satellite image of our house: we no longer have that nasty chain-link fence around the yard, and we have nicer landscaping now.

My house I lived in while growing up is now worth $550K. Good GOD.

what does it say...

What does it say about us as parents that Kate's favorite new toy bin is an empty Pacifico beer box?

Or that we let her play after breakfast when she had Kix stuck to her butt?

On a different topic, we had the pleasure of hosting Uncle Bob (trucker Bob/racer Bob) for dinner on Sunday night, as he got a load of paper towels out of Oregon going to the local Costco stores here. Kate cried when she saw him, but it was probably because he's taller than Tim (and thus more frightening) and/or she thought she had a new babysitter for the night. Poor kid. Now Bob's on his way to Cheyenne - I'm sure that's a lovely trip! Enjoy!

Kate the magnet

Everytime we take Kate to the mall, other kids speed on over and cling to her. I don't understand it. Yesterday Jess and I took her to the mall to play and Summer (I know her name because her parents were sitting right next to me constantly saying 'Summer, be nice, Summer, be gentle with the baby, Summer don't hug her so hard, Summer Summer Summer. Kind of like Jeffrey Jeffrey Jeffrey from Bill Cosby Himself [Little Jeffrey. I remember his name, not because he said, "I'm four years old," but because Jeffrey's mother said his name all 2500 miles of the trip. ]) So Kate tried to play, but ended up just attempting to escape from Summer's 'love'. Then Kate discovered that there were bits of pretzel on the floor, right next to all the Cheerios that someone had spilled. Mmm. And of course, there were all the other baby's strollers and shoes to play with. So we didn't stay long.

Summer love.

Leave me alone!

favorites

I woke up at 2am with a great idea for a topic for the blog today, and I have since forgotten what it was. So I'm going to post some random thoughts.

First, favorites. Last night we had mexican food from La Parilla Suiza (so tasty) and it made me think that I should post some favorite things on the web and hope to get some favorites posted back either in the comment section or on your own blog.

Recipes:

I first made this pasta sauce a few weeks ago when we had friends over for dinner. Since then I've made it at least once, and everyone loves it. It's easy and sooo good! This one is from Giada DeLaurentis.

Simple Tomato Sauce:

1/2 cup extra-virgin olive oil
1 small onion, chopped
2 cloves garlic, chopped
1 stalk celery, chopped
1 carrot, chopped
Sea salt and freshly ground black pepper
2 (32-ounce) cans crushed tomatoes
2 dried bay leaves
4 tablespoons unsalted butter, optional

In a large casserole pot, heat oil over medium high heat. Add onion and garlic and saute until soft and translucent, about 5 to 10 minutes. Add celery and carrots and season with salt and pepper. Saute until all the vegetables are soft, about 5 to 10 minutes. Add tomatoes and bay leaves and simmer uncovered on low heat for 1 hour or until thick. Remove bay leaves and check for seasoning. If sauce still tastes acidic, add unsalted butter, 1 tablespoon at a time to round out the flavors.
Add 1/2 the tomato sauce into the bowl of a food processor. Process until smooth. Continue with remaining tomato sauce.
If not using all the sauce, allow it to cool completely and pour 1 to 2 cup portions into freezer plastic bags. This will freeze up to 6 months.
Yield: 6 cups

Chocolate Gelato:

3/4 cup whole milk
1/2 cup heavy cream
1 vanilla bean, split and seeds scraped
8 ounces granulated sugar
10 egg yolks
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
6 ounces sweet dark chocolate, chopped

Place whole milk, heavy cream, and vanilla bean and seeds in a sauce pot and scald. Remove vanilla bean. Whip the granulated sugar and egg yolks to a pale yellow ribbon state. Your sugar and egg yolks should be nice and fluffy. Add about a 1/2 cup of your scalded cream to your chopped chocolate in a bowl. Stir until melted. Place the bowl over a double boiler of barely simmering water. Set up a second double boiler. Constantly stirring with a wooden spoon, add scalded cream to your whipped egg and sugar mixture. Place egg and cream mixture over the double boiler and cook custard until it becomes thick and creamy. See Cook's Note.
Once custard is cooked, place the bowl over a cold water bath to cool. Gradually add your melted chocolate. Once custard is cool place in an ice cream machine and run as per manufacturer's instructions. Enjoy the love.
Cook's Note: It is recommended that the custard not be heated over 140 degrees F.
This recipe is also from the Food Network.

Games:

We love games and have a few that we introduce to anyone who comes to dinner at our house. The biggest hits:

Carcassonne - great because you can play with 2 people or up to 5, and it doesn't take forever.

Lost Cities - a new favorite. This one took a few times to grow on us. You kind of love it and hate it, but it's another great one for 2 players and now we just love it.

Apples to Apples - for those who aren't into strategy games, this one is easy and fun. Add some liquor and it's a riot. Great for a group of people.

Fluxx - this is a game that I think pretty much only guys enjoy. But since Tim thinks it's great, I'll post it. A few years ago we had the Schweatys and the Tweeters over for New Year's Eve and the boys played 'just a quick game'. Ever since that 45 minute load of boringness, the game has not been on my list of favorites.

Toys:

Kate's favorites are the Little People, and her Dr. Suess book, Mr. Brown Can Moo, Can You?

Since I'm hungry, here are some of my favorite local restaurants. Please leave comments on others you think are fabulous - it's nice to mix it up a bit!

Lunch:
Beyond Bread
Baggins
La Salsa
Rocco's Pizza

Dinner:
Eclectic Cafe
La Parilla Suiza
McMahon's Steakhouse

Onto a different subject, Kate tried cottage cheese yesterday for the first time. She did not like it.

http://media.putfile.com/I-dont-like-cottage-cheese

nap face

Someone had a good nap this morning. It's always a sign of a good nap when you wake up with blanket imprints on your face that will actually show up on film.

Kate is still taking 3 naps a day on most days. I thought she'd be transitioning to 2 naps and soon to 1 nap, but she seems happy with 3. I can live with that.

After her 2nd nap, Dana and Eric came over to swim. Eric was a little tired when he got here, and Kate made him jump with one of her shrieks. It wasn't even a loud shriek this time! Then they played with toys, each trying to take what the other one had in their hand. Lucky for Kate, she can walk and outmaneuver Eric, so she won most of the time. Sorry, Eric!

Does that tickle?

See ya, I'm outta here.

damn. 5 more weeks to wait!

I didn't get an ultrasound yesterday. I did get to hear the heartbeat for the first time, though. My next appointment is after we get back from Seattle, on 12 September. We didn't find out if we were having a boy or a girl with Kate, and I don't know how I waited! I want to know now!

So far the votes are 2:1 in favor of a girl. What. It's like y'all think Tim's a fighter pilot who will only produce girls!

I left Kate with Jessica yesterday while I went to the doctor, and she had fun playing there. She did fall and hit her head I guess, but that was outshined by her split lip that was caused by me tickling her when I went to pick her up. I don't remember if she has ever screamed so loud. Way to go, Mom. I was tickling her and she leaned forward into the table and smacked her lip - it's the first time I've seen blood on my baby. Luckily there wasn't much or I would have felt really bad.

Today is a lunch date to Baggins with Jess & Michele, then hopefully some pool time with Dana and Eric, if it doesn't rain. Dinner tonight is with Jess, Mike, Michele and Sean at La Parilla Suiza. Yum - Mexican food!! I'm just waiting for that craving to hit...

predictions?

I have my next OB appointment on Wednesday and may or may not get an ultrasound that day. Just in case I do, I'm soliciting predictions as to whether we are having a boy or a girl. Let me know what you think! Some Chinese calendars predict a girl, others a boy. Of course, the one I used for Kate told me she was a boy, so I can't hold too much confidence in them.

Mr. Brown makes funny noises.

thaaaat's nice....

Should I question the competence of the base vet here, who told me, after I asked, "Yes, your kitty Starbuck is a girl. She's beautiful!"? We took Starbuck in this morning to an off-base vet to get her spayed, and I just called them to see if she was ready to pick up. "Yes, Starbuck is ready after 3pm today. But, um, Starbuck is a boy. He was neutered today. I promise we didn't do a sex-change operation on your kitty." Yeah. My sister and I kept wondering....'she' seemed rather um, endowed down there. In any event, I guess the name we chose for him is pretty fitting, although the TV show character started out as a man and was changed to a woman, not the other way around. It's a good thing we didn't name him Sharon.

how fun!

I haven't been out of the country (except to Tijuana last summer, but let's not count that) in over a year. That's pushing up against one of my goals since I lived in England a decade ago: after coming back to the States, I wanted to go overseas at least once a year. The year 2004 should probably count for a lot, considering all the traveling we did while we were in Korea, but now it's been since last March since I've been out of the country!

Here's a map of European countries I did get to visit, most of them back in the 1990s:



We were hoping to get to Europe next year, but I imagine traveling with 2 little ones will be challenging. Traveling with just Kate is interesting enough. We'll see if we can get to Germany in 2007 to visit friends...

back to blue

Skies, that is. I think my sister and I are the only ones in Tucson who will miss the crazy rains we've been having for the past week. Tim walked into the den yesterday morning and said, "Um, some guy named Noah just went by outside. I asked if he needed a cat, but he already had some." Lucky Starbuck. But seriously, we have had anywhere from 1-2.5" of rain at our house every night for the past 7 days (I think it's 7. Maybe more. Eleven? Can't remember.). Usually monsoons hit in the late afternoon/evening, but we've been getting thunderstorms after 10pm, and usually for the following 8-10 hours. The other night it woke me up 5 times. Kate somehow slept through everything; I'm not sure how, because the thunder was loud. Tim let out about 3" of water from our pool yesterday, after having drained an inch the day before. But I like the rain! I think I like the change in weather. In Seattle in the winter I would always pray for sun, just a hint would be fine. Here you wait and wait for something other than blue skies and hot weather. Weird.

Driving back from errands yesterday I was amazed to see the Pantano wash raging. People had gathered on its banks to watch it. At first I didn't know what the heck they were doing. What are you staring at, people? There's nothing there. Then I saw it: white caps in the very brown water that matched the brown color of the wash banks. Huge water! The Rillito River (we do have a river in Tucson, it's just rarely full of water) overflowed its banks yesterday. Craziness on the north side! Anyway, we've had a lot of rain, and now it's gone and I miss it.

Kate is cruising like crazy. She used to use her push-walker to get around and then would cry when it got stuck against a wall: Mama, why won't it go through the wall? Now she navigates like a pro. I think it happened overnight.

http://media.putfile.com/walkin-and-talkin

She is also initiating peekaboo now. My girl's all grown up...

http://media.putfile.com/peekaboo-13

monkeys, rhinos and zebras, oh my!

We went to the zoo! In the summer! And we didn't die of heatstroke! Today is so nice - it's 2pm and like 75 outside, I think. It is sprinkling once in awhile, and you can't see the mountains because there are low clouds in the way. LOVE IT.

The zoo was fun. Kate is getting better about actually seeing the animals, I think. It is kind of hard to tell, but sometimes she'll look in their general direction and smile. She had a bottle before we went, along with some sweet potatoes, and I stopped at Sonic for a burger and tater tots (mmmm...tater tots, love those cravings!), so we were pretty good to go. I brought Cheerios and freeze-dried fruit for her to munch on, and we hit the road. Dana and Eric met us there, and we started at the monkeys. Those are kind of hard to see unless they are moving, because they are dark and have a pretty dark background, but Kate saw them and watched them swing for a few minutes.

Hi, giraffe!

Ooh, birdies.

Rhino!

Then Daddy's airplane flew over, and both kids saw that! The zoo is right in the landing pattern for the DM runway, so it was perfect - I think that was the first time Kate has actually seen what I'm talking about when I say, "Look, Daddy's airplane!" She usually gives me a weird look like Mom, Daddy is not here, what are you talking about? So we went to the zoo and saw airplanes. We also saw the giraffes eating trees, otters swimming in the water, and rhinos walking around. If they weren't moving, she wasn't interested.

They were both worn out after about an hour and a half, which was good, because so were we. We were walking back to our cars, talking, and mid-sentence I cut Dana off: "They are so not using my car as a picnic table." But, they were. A group of about 12 adults (adults!) and children were just 'cleaning' up their picnic from the trunk of my car (I'm sorry if your SUV is too big to use as a table, but that does not really make it okay for you to use my car as a feasting surface). They did a crappy job of cleaning up, too, leaving a smear of mayonaise (GROSS) and their receipt tucked under the fin on the trunk. What the hell? No, I did not say anything because they were several feet away from the car by the time I got there and really, what would it have accomplished at that point. I needed Julie - she would have come up with some snappy response that would have made them think twice about doing that again. Alas, I wiped up the mayo with the receipt and stood there speechless as Dana wondered aloud where people's manners are these days.

i LOVE this

What you can't see is that the thermometer reads 68 degrees, and 65% humidity. What you can see is the rain soaking the stone fence. Awesome. Since it's such a nice day outside, we are off to the zoo. Woohoo!

such a big girl

Kate brushed her own teeth for the first time this morning. Then she played in the trash while I was out of the room getting a washcloth to clean up. Mmm. The teeth-brushing part was very cute; mostly she just chewed on the brush, which is what I guess she should do considering she only has 2 teeth.

Now she's wailing because she doesn't want to take a nap: huhhhh, huhhh, mmmaamaaaa, mammaaaaa, sniffle sniffle. I hate to hear that cry (it means there are crocodile tears coming out of those big blue eyes), but I'm pretty sure she's tired. I could be wrong; she did sleep in this morning until 7:30. That is virtually unheard of. So the 8:45 nap had to be postponed. Till what time, I'm not sure....we're trying 9:30. Aah, the crying has ended, 9:30 seems to be good.

more appealing photos than last time, I hope

So sorry to those of you who opened my blog yesterday only to find a gigantic picture of a tarantula. =D Today I have less distasteful photos, I think.

What is this? It's the heavenly substance known as homemade raspberry jam. Kate and I made it this morning. MMMM. Here's Kate helping:

Kate's 'help' consisted of her licking every piece of tupperware in my kitchen. But she sure looked cute doing it. My next task is to make chocolate gelato, and I hope to get that done before she wakes up from her afternoon nap...

firsts

I have lived here for almost a year and a half, and yesterday was the first time that I saw a tarantula. It was at Albertson's, in a gravel bed near my car. It was dead, lying on its back in the dead spider pose, but it was still about 2" long and rather wide. I had to look twice to make sure I was really looking at a tarantula, but there it was. Man, they are furry!

I still have not seen a rattlesnake here in Tucson (for which I am grateful), javelinas (still can't believe Tim didn't take a picture of the 8 that were in our yard last fall, eating my pumpkin), a black widow spider, a gila monster, a mountain lion, or any of the number of other desert animals that live here that I can't think of.

I have seen:

-bark scorpions
-roadrunners
-coyotes
-wolf spider (on Kate's dust ruffle, ICK)
-a horned toad (on my night flight last summer when we were walking to the airplane, of all places)
-woodpeckers
-quail
-huge ENORMOUS beetles that like our pool (this one isn't all that big, only about 2"; the others I have seen have been that long, but fat)

A beetle that was in our pool filter, clinging to Kate's ball for life.

The horned toad is interesting - it can shoot an aimed stream of blood out of its eyes to confuse predators.

And of course, the greatest predator of all lives with us in our house:

Starbuck, destroyer of...peace.

hot, steamy mornings in Tucson AZ

Uff. It's 8:30am and 92 degrees. It's rather humid, too. Yesterday it was 110. Hot hot hot. It does make a dip in the pool feel oh-so-refreshing, though.

I got to have lunch with Elizabeth yesterday, quite accidentally. I was headed to Bookman's to trade in CDs and videos, and went to Beyond Bread afterwards with Kate. I figured I wasn't going to be able to find anyone to go with me at such late notice. So after I finally got a seat (mind you, I have Kate in a stroller, a soda in my hand, am carrying my name placard to let the staff know where to deliver my soup and sandwich, and 2 [two] people who saw me clearly heading to an empty table in the busy restaurant outright raced me [and of course won] to the open tables), I heard 'Jen!' from across the room. Elizabeth (who had a baby girl, Cate Lorraine! 2 1/2 weeks ago) is standing in line, looking all awake and refreshed. She joined me for lunch and we got to talk mom talk and compare baby stories. Cate is adorable; she looks so much like Sam right now, but I am sure she will start showing her Elizabethan beauty soon. Christy also showed up with Jack and Taylor to have lunch with her husband, so it was a regular Dragon reunion in Beyond Bread yesterday.

Jess came over to hang out with me and Kate later, and we swam swam swam. It was 110, afterall.

bad commercials

Maybe I'm watching different TV shows, now that I'm a mom. Maybe I'm just obsessive-compulsive and can't get things out of my mind when I hear them. But there are some commercials out there that need to die a quick and painful death. Particularly the ones with 'jingles'. I am talking about:

-the Ford commercial with that Idol guy (I get what I want, I get what I need...blahblahblah, is it stuck in your head now too?)

-the mayo commercial where they sing a stupid song about not being able to get the mayo out of the jar. How dumb.

-Oscar Meyer. What is it with this one? "Oh I wish I were an oscar meyer weiner, that's what I'd really like to beeee-eeee-eeee..." ARGH.

I know there are others, but these are the only ones that have stuck to my brain so far today. Perhaps I need to watch less TV. (I really don't watch much, I swear.)

forwarded emails, revisited

Some version of this has been going around for ages. But it's kinda fun, and seeing as how I haven't been very good at posting posts, I'll "borrow" this from Katie.

Some things you may not know about me:

A) Four jobs I have had in my life:
1. Grocery store checker, Ballard Market
2. Financial Planner
3. Commercial Real Estate Analyst
4. part-time roof construction (I have no idea how I landed this job in high school, nor do I remember what exactly I did that didn't totally mess up the roofs)

B) Four movies I would watch over and over:
1. Thomas Crowne Affair
2. Dirty Rotten Scoundrels
3. Napoleon Dynamite
4. Swingers

C) Four places I have lived:
1. Seattle, WA
2. London, England
3. Songtan, Korea
4. Sanford, NC

D) Four TV shows I love to watch:
1. Battlestar Galactica (did anyone see the new preview on SciFi the other night? Awesome! I am such a geek.)
2. 24
3. House
4. CSI:

E) Four places I have been on vacation:
1. Phan Thiet, Vietnam
2. Hong Kong
3. Maine
4. Tallinn, Estonia

F) Websites I visit daily: (or semi-weekly)
1. hotmail
2. blogspot
3. yahoo
4. food network

G) Four favorite foods:
1. sushi
2. berries
3. cake
4. breakfast foods

H) Four places I would rather be right now:
1. Pacific Northwest
2. Show Low, AZ
3. sailing in the San Juans
4. at a home Husky football game

What are some of your answers? Leave 'em in the comments section!

and the award for lack of posts goes to...

Me me me! But, I do have an excuse, which I can finally share with y'all: we are expecting a baby at the end of January! Kate is going to be a big sister, and she is so excited about it. She has so much fun with everyone who visits us, and then looks at me forlornly when they leave. "Where did they go, Mama? Bring them back." So next year she will have a new friend to play with.

Grampa's here!

The kids will be 16 months apart, and my due date is 30 January. I had my first OB appointment last week, and because he couldn't find the heartbeat with the doppler, I got an ultrasound. I'd post a copy of the photos, but frankly it just looks like a really really tiny alien. I am almost 13 weeks, and am so looking forward to the time when I am not tired. I have been exhausted, and with Kate, I can't nap whenever I want to. That part sucks. But so far so good; I haven't had any morning sickness, and I mostly feel fine except for being a zombie.

Last weekend, my Dad, stepmom, stepsister and her friend all came out to visit for a couple of days. Kate loved it. We went to Colossal Caves on Saturday to excape from the heat, and went to dinner at Rocco's that night. We also celebrated Tim's 37th (gasp) birthday which was last week. It was Kate's first time in a really dark place, and I'm not sure how much she liked it. She did enjoy sipping water out of Tim's water bottle and then spitting it on his arm.

Ana, Jess, Jen, Kate, Tim, Jim & Simone

still here, just busy busy

mmm...tortilla chips!

I guess it's been a busy week - I haven't updated for days! We had a nice 4-day weekend last weekend, so we kept busy with...stuff. I'm not even sure what! We did have my sister and her husband over for a bbq on the 4th, and enjoyed the pool throughout the day. The rains didn't start until after the fireworks (which we saw from our backyard). Kate slept through the whole thing.

So the week was a short one. I went to a dinner party with some girls at a local restaurant on Thursday night, and got a flat tire on the way home. I was in Tim's car, it was 9:30pm, I was wearing a dress and heels, there were about 2 streetlights on the whole street I pulled over at, and there was a thunderstorm. How fun. I called Tim and begged for my knight to come rescue me. Oh, and I had the car with the carseat. So Tim had to ask our wonderful neighbor Rae if she could come over and watch Kate while he drove over to fix my flat tire. She left her 3 kids home alone so she could babysit Kate. I spent a good part of Friday afternoon baking cookies for Rae.

We had Jess babysit Kate for us on Friday night so we could go to a Lt Col-select party, and last night we celebrated Tim's birthday by having an awesome steak dinner at McMahon's and then going to the drive-in to see Superman. Kate's had a lot of babysitters lately, but she's doing pretty well with them.

She has her top 2 front teeth coming in, and the bottom 2 are getting bigger every day. She's taking little steps on her own (mostly if you trick her with food, or tempt her with something she's not allowed to touch, like the telephone or the camera). She'll walk a couple of steps before she realizes what she's doing, then drops to her knees so she can crawl.

Here are a few videos we've taken over the past week:

http://media.putfile.com/crawling-with-the-squeaky-duck

http://media.putfile.com/walking-and-shaking-her-head

http://media.putfile.com/2-steps-27

mt. lemmon

Yesterday we planned to go hiking on Mt. Lemmon, and then have some lunch. But we got up there and were hungry to begin with, so we had lunch first. Lunch lasted about 2 1/2 hours (if you've ever been to the Mt. Lemmon Cafe, you know that this is about standard). Then Kate got cranky (it was, after all, past her naptime, plus she didn't get her own slice of pie), and it started to rain. So, we pretty much just went to Mt. Lemmon to have lunch (and pie), and get soaked.

I have never been up there on a holiday weekend. It was PACKED. I guess we did get a little hike in: the walk to the cafe from the car. We decided next time we would bring lunch in the car and eat on the way up so we could actually walk around on a trail while we are up there. Hopefully we'll get to do that next weekend or the weekend after. It's a great place to hide from Tucson's heat, as it's close by, yet about 20-25 degrees cooler, more if it's raining. Yesterday it was a cool 59 while it was raining. Awesome!







Just give me some pie, people.













Where's my slice?













Look at the rain on the sunroof, Dad!








We also saw X-Men III last night. Eh. It was okay. Not nearly as good as the first two. But it was a night out alone, so that was great!