A Strike Out and a Grand Slam!

This past weekend was my off weekend, which means I have to work another three weekends before I get my next weekend off (which is Halloween weekend, huzzah!), and I wanted to do family things since it'll be a while before we can do stuff together on the weekend again.  On Saturday, our favorite local produce market decided to have a fall festival.  It sounded fun, hay rides, band, BBQ, fire truck, hay maze, etc, just fun stuff for Ri to do and for Caoimhe to gawk at.  Unfortuately, it was geared for kids just a couple of years younger than Ri and he quickly got bored and in trouble.  I really can't blame him, it's a great produce market (did I mention it was our favorite?) but the fall festival was far from festive.  The hay ride was so boring and lasted forever that within five minutes of being on it, I was ready to jump off of it and walk my big ass back.  It was disappointing and I felt like it was a waste of a half of my weekend off.  To top it off, DH and I got into a wonderful fight, his fault, of course, but he was so drunk from watching to Notre Dame game with my neighbor that the next day, he only remembered that we were yelling at each other, but what it was about.  Trust me, his fault.  So needless to say, I did not have high hopes for Sunday because I was still upset from Saturday night and it actually took me forever to get to sleep that night because I was so pissed off.  I still did not like him on Sunday morning and even let him know about it, but I felt like the kids shouldn't be punished because their dad was an asshole to mom and now there will be no fun-age.  So I remembered that one of the (few) perks of living here in DE is that there's a Maryland Renaissance Faire AND a Pennsylvannia Renaissance Faire both within less than a two hour drive from our house.  MD's Faire was a little closer, but that was the last one we had gone to, albeit was probably five years or more ago, so we decided to go to the Faire in PA since that was the first one we had ever gone to and we hadn't been there since we moved here in 2003.  It didn't hurt that the Faire is on the grounds of a working winery and I've just becoming more enamored with wine.  Well, I cannot tell you enough good things about the PA Renaissance Faire!  If you're in the area, or even if you're not, go and check it out!  It always starts in September and ends usually the next to last weekend in October, but this year they've extended it to the last weekend in October.  My mom is thinking of coming up to visit us the last week of October into the first week of November and we're planning on taking her to the Faire on Sunday November 1st because I know she loves this kind of thing and I'm sure she'll have a blast!  Riley had the fun he was looking for so the sad Saturday he had disappeared in his mind.  As an added bonus, my princess officially became a princess!  Check out Princess Caoimhe and go to the PA Renaissance Faire!

Gator football and bacon...who could ask for anything more?

My daughter is definately a daddy's girl.  Decked out in Gator gear AND bacon in hand...I think he's officially proud of his daughter.

Sorry, mom

When my mom was here helping me take care of little Caoimhe, I had taken a ribbon that was tied around one of her baby gifts and just kind of laid it on her head and took a picture because I thought it was really cute.  My mom, on the other hand, said that she had no idea why white people had this thing about putting headbands on little babies.  Well, first off, I'm not white, so that was really, really confusing, and second, it IS cute, white or non-white I think Caoimhe looks adorable with a girlie little headband.  I finally asked my mom why she hated headbands so much considering that many powerful women seem to like them.  Like, hello!!  Secretary of State Hilary Clinton (just don't ask for her husband's opinion on headbands) made them all fashionable for us old people again!  Apparently, when my mom worked as a live-out nanny for this family, the mom insisted on putting on a headband for her little girl and the baby did not like it so the baby was constantly taking it off and my mom would pretty much spend all day putting that headband back on every time the baby took it off.  Now I understand why she hates them so much, because if I had to do that, after about ten minutes there would be a bonfire of cute girlie headbands in the backyard and me dancing nekkid in a circle around it screaming victory cries.  Fortunately for me, Caoimhe has always loved having something on her head, unlike her big brother who would do the 100 yard hat toss.  I made sure that the whole time I was in the hospital she was wearing that stocking cap, no matter how ugly I thought it was.  Because of that, I am now reaping the rewards!  After a weekend shopping trip to Target, I have a supply of lacy, girlie headbands that I have ceremoniously placed on Caoimhe's head each day.  I think it ups her cuteness and she seems to enjoy it, too!  Here's a picture for your viewing pleasure!

Roll over!

I know my daughter is growing up, but I feel like she's doing it too fast! She just learned how to roll over both from her back to her front and from her front to her back just two and a half weeks ago and now she won't stop rolling! She's like a little bowling ball, rolling over and over and over! I put her on her back and within two seconds, she flips over. I don't know if she wants to or if it's now some kind of habit! Here's a cute little video of her rolling over. I didn't catch the whole thing because whenever I tried to catch it on video, she would refuse to roll over so I had to do it on the sly. Happy viewing!

Upside-down daisies and Cinnamon buns (did someone say buns?)

Last time I checked, I'm a girl. Because I'm a girl, I was born with what most men would define as a defective gene that makes me love anything cute. Unfortunately, my gene is either very defective or mutated because I don't just love anything cute, I love ALL things cute. I don't even have a limit to what cuteness I can handle. See, for most people there's usually a point where something is so incredibly cute that it makes them gag. For some reason, I lack that gag reflex and I really can't recall anything that I've gagged at because of it's cuteness. Now that I have a baby daughter, I'm constantly on the quest for anything cute I can knit her, preferably hats or booties because not only do I have a defective gene for cuteness, I have ADHD on top of that and even baby sweaters take too long to spin and knit and I'll lose interest and then it goes into my ever-growing pile of unfinished knitting which does not need to get any larger. Well, on my quest for cuteness, I came across the cutest hat for Caoimhe. I knitted it in two days flat and I tell you not even the ugliest baby can take away it's cuteness! I had so much fun that I'm now knitting one in another color for my best friend who's expecting in September!

Here's the hat in progress:

Here's the completed hat:And for those of you who have that cute-gag reflex, here's a pic of some fresh homemade cinnamon buns!

I sound like an idiot...

I sound like an idiot on it, but here's a video of Caoimhe and her big bro, Riley, for your viewing pleasure. Actually, it would be way more pleasurable if you just hit mute first.

Who farted?

Who farted?

Oh! It was me!!!

Mom-brows

My daughter has no sense of humor. The above picture is proof of the lack of humor. She's giving me what I term "mom-brows". Every time I do something stupid or silly at her, she furrows her eyebrows and gives me the "not funny" look. I'm hoping that she'll grow into a sense of humor or I need to rethink my idea of funny! Here's a happier picture of her and I'm hoping she'll crack more smiles as she gets older!

Part Two: The joys of motherhood and Ozzy Osbourne

Okay, I know everybody has told me that every child is different, but since I already have one kid, I thought, "how different can they really be?" Apparently, they can be as different as night and day. I figured that my daughter would be just like my son and that the sleep deprivation would be high since I'd be feeding every two hours. Nope. She sleeps like a dream, it's eating that I'm having problems with! Caoimhe reminds me of the Coneheads from Saturday Night Live and if you remember them, you're really carbon dating yourself because they were from a long time ago. First off, her head is kind of shaped like a conehead even though she was a C-section baby, but here's where she really reminds me of the Coneheads, one of the things the Coneheads would say was "consume in mass quantities", that pretty much summarizes what she does with food. She consumes in mass quantities and I cannot keep up! You'd have to be half Jersey Cow to keep up with the milk demands of this small child who is smaller and lighter than her big bro when he was born!! Needless to say, I've had to supplement her feedings with formula because she'd lost so much weight at the hospital and since I've supplemented her feedings she's gained 4 oz in a day and she's gained another 4 oz after just three days!! I think it surprised both her regular pediatrician and the pediatrician who checked up on her just before our discharge. She's all about the food and sleep right now. I'm not complaining because I think I can deal with the consume in mass quantities better than the total sleep deprivation that I was dealt with the first time around. At least now, she's sleeping sometimes four hours at a time which means I get at least 2 and a half to three hours of sleep straight!

I bet you were wondering about what the hell Ozzy Osbourne has to do with motherhood. I was getting to that. Monday was Caoimhe's first pediatrician's visit and for the most part she did well. Her patience ran out at the end, though, and she spent the last half of the visit crying and she was still crying as we put her in her car seat and drove home. I thought that she'd go to sleep after the car broke 30 mph, but after breaking 55 mph and she's still screaming, I knew that there was little chance that she'd stop. I asked my husband to turn on the radio and tune it to the usual rap and R&B station that I listen to and hoped she'd remember the sounds of that station from when I was pregnant, but before he could get to that station, he hit a station playing Ozzy Osbourne. Caoimhe stopped crying immediately and started to fall asleep! Not just that, both hands went up and I swear that if I looked under the mittens that I'd put on her hands, her fingers would have been in the "rock on" formation often seen during Ozzy concerts! Now I have nothing against Ozzy, except for that stinker of a TV show they had on Fox, but I really didn't expect to have a six day old Ozzy fan on my hands. Oy, I guess what my mother said was right. Payback is a bitch.

Part One: Congrats to my big brother!!

Congrats to my big bro, Mark, who just ran in his second Boston Marathon!!! He was also featured in a pretty neat article that was featured on Gainesville.com and the Gainesville Sun newspaper. Here's the link so you can think my big bro is pretty neat, too!!

Congrats, Markie!! Riley and Caoimhe are super proud of their Unca Markie and hope to see you soon!

Good to be back home!

After a trying week, I'm back home! Caoimhe Grace was born on Tuesday April 14th at 1424 via C-Section. I was in the hospital until Friday and today is my first full day home and it feels good! I will post pictures of my little piggy(story to follow) soon, but until then, I had forgotten how fun a newborn can be. I've just experienced love at first sight for the second time of my life and although I'm wickedly sleep deprived right now, I really hope that my little girl will take her sweet time growing up!

Down the home stretch!

Well. Today was officially the last day of work before my scheduled C-section. Actually, it worked out pretty well since I had originally taken off this Friday through next Sunday due to my son's spring break, which is always Good Friday and the week after. Little did I know that my C-section would be scheduled for that week and I actually get 13 weeks off with the new baby rather than the 12 week FMLA. One week extra, hooray!

Well, I got my new spinning wheel, SpinOlution's new travel wheel, the Bee. I would post pictures, but I haven't gotten any so no pictures as of yet. It's performing waaaay better than I thought it would and I've already spun up a nice lace weight yarn on it. Of course, when I get on a spinning "trip", I usually go way overboard because a couple of weeks ago I decided I needed to upgrade my carder. Don't get me wrong, I love my Strauch Finest but I wanted something, oh, electric driven. So I knew that Strauch had recently put out an electric version of the Finest, but I had told myself a few years ago that if I were to upgrade, I'd upgrade to the Pat Green Supercard, especially since it has like three heads and it runs only on 2 amps so it's pretty environmentally friendly. So needless to say, I sent the check a couple of weeks ago and just this afternoon I spoke to the very nice Paula Simmons Green who told me that my Supercard will be shipping on April 23rd! So there will be posts soon with pictures of (hopefully) both my new Bee and the Supercard!! Wow. I really am way more addicted to fiber and fiber related equiptment...actually I even have a list of potential wheels for my next wheel purchase. I wonder if there's counselling for this kind of addiction?

Two new babies on the way!

I am now almost six weeks away from my scheduled C-section and I have officially started the pregnant waddle. I have slowed significantly, it takes me twice if not three times longer to do certain things and don't expect me to ever put the pedal to the metal. It is a little aggravating, I'm used to speeding around work and the place I used to work at called me "Taz" because I was constantly doing my work at breakneck speed. Now a snail could easily breeze by me. I am getting larger, although I am not nearly as large as I was with my son, but I will have to admit it's nice to slow things down a bit and not rush quite as much. She seems happy, she also tends to wake up at around 9pm when I'm trying to get to sleep. That is her time for stupid fetus tricks. I just hope that when she pops out, she won't keep those same hours because I'm am not a night owl, I'm a morning person to the Nth degree, the earlier in the AM the better. I like to go to the Super Wal-Mart at 4am! That's about it on news on one of my new babies. Now, I have another new baby on the way. This one I won't have to endure major abdominal surgery and a four to five inch scar. I have ordered the brand spanking new Bee spinning wheel from SpinOlution. I have high hopes for this wheel, my Golding wheel as spoiled me with its really high ratios for spinning. I'm so used to the high speed that when I started looking for a travel wheel, I wanted one that spun at least a 24:1 if not higher. This baby is not only a travel wheel, but it can get an approximate ratio of 35:1!! Woo-hoo! Don't get me wrong, I absolutely adore my other wheels (Golding, Timbertop, and Schacht) but they are large, heavy and do not travel well. Especially my Golding, it's a well balance and precise wheel that I don't want to risk damaging or knocking it out of alignment by travelling with it. So I needed a travel wheel. All the other travel wheels I looked at either had low ratios to spin on or I just thought they looked ugly or funny. Then I found the Bee. It just came out and it looks and sounds marvelous to me. It's been paid for in full, but I don't know when I'll get it. Hmmm....I wonder if the hospital will allow me to spin a maternity yarn while I'm there for my manditory four night stay....








































































This is the new SpinOlution Bee! It's coming in the mail and I can't wait!!

Damn it all to hell!!

As of now, this pregnancy was going along pretty well, I haven't gained nearly as much weight as my first pregnancy (oh, that was about 80-90 lbs gained...it was fun....), so I thought things would go smoothly. Wrong!! I just got my results for my one hour glucose tolerance test, it was abnormal!! Now I get to have the fun 3 hour glucose tolerance test!! Lucky me!! (If you haven't figured it out yet, yes, I'm being sarcastic)

My two cents on today's historic inauguration

Since no one can escape the big event today, I thought I would throw in my thoughts on Barack Obama's inauguration and presidency. First I would like to make clear that I am NOT a political person, any one of my friends or family will attest to that. I believe that politics, like religion, tend to separate rather than unify. For that reason, I stay out of the arena of politics and do not subscribe to any set faith, I have my own faith, beliefs and ideas that are unique to me and I do not expect anyone to follow it or subscribe to it, it is my own. But it is hard to ignore what is to happen in about thirty minutes from now, the first minority president. It is historic in the fact that for the first time in US history, there is a person who will be in power that is not classified as "white". I embrace this change, but I also realize that this is just a very small step for the US. It is an important step, but one that will help move this nation forward rather than back. What I eagerly wait for is a day in which people do not see race. What amazed me about this election was how the fact that Obama was NOT white was constantly put in the foreground. He is often classified as African-American. Yes, it is true, he is not all white, but he is half white, much like my own son and his unborn sibling, and it bothers me that he is classified by his non-white race. It's almost like because he is not 100% white, he is automatically NOT white. I do not see my children as Asians simply because they are not all white, but I see them as the best part of myself and my husband, the best of both worlds. This nation prides itself as a "melting pot", yet a few years ago a study said that our melting pot was more like a tossed salad. I take pride in the fact that my son and my unborn child are two of the growing number of members in this country's melting pot. I hope that the melting pot continues to grow and that soon race is something that is not seen, but something to learn of in your history class. I'm happy that I can point to Obama and tell my son that, like him, Obama is a "mutt". That what he learns everyday in school is true, that here in America, it doesn't matter who you are or where you come from, all possibilities are open to you if you work hard and want it badly enough. I know that in both of my children's future, people will want to try to classify them according to their racial background, but I hope that they will be able to rise beyond that and maybe, the world will change for them in their lifetime. Yes, today is a historic day, but I remember that it is only a small step, one that is hopefully followed by many other small steps that will lead to a future blind to race.