Jinxyisms

We spent last Saturday and Sunday morning in the adorable little coastal town of Cambria.  I love it, I want to marry it and move there.  Or just move there so Waldo can come too.  We were there for Waldo’s cousin’s baby shower so just about all of Waldo’s family was there too.  We all had a good time and we got some great pictures.

Lily played with two of her little cousins, well she played near them and talked to them in some unknown language two or three times.

We're at the baby shower.

We went to the beach.  It was Lily’s first time.  It was magnificent.  And it was a little painful.  The beach has a lot of rocks on it and they killed my feet, but one look at the water splashing on the bigger rocks make up for it.

Lily didn’t hate the beach but she wasn’t sure what to do with it.  Maybe next time we go it will be warm enough to swim in, that might make her realize how fun it is.

Lily's first time at the ocean

I'm trying to explain why the ocean is so amazing. I think I failed to get my point across.

After we got tired of trying to impress Lily we went to the little play area.

Lily got to swing for the first time since her real first time last year and she was loved it.

"Oh this isn't too bad"

"Oh my, I'm going so fast, this is pretty darn cool"

"I LOVEEEEEEeee this"

Do you see the ocean through the fence. The playground is at the top of the beach.

We took her down the slide and then I had the crazy idea to see if she wanted to go into the tunnel that connect the two sides of the play thingy.  I was a little worried that she wouldn’t like it but she loved it.  She was a little sad when we wanted to go back to the swings.  But once she was swinging she didn’t care anymore.  Swinging is good stuff.

Bean, Lily Bean.

She loves these tunnels.

I think the best part of the whole trip was sitting up late into the night with Waldo’s brother, sister and their families.  Hanging out with our families and getting to know them is one of the biggest Pro on the list so it was really nice to really be experiencing it.

Lily's very first time on the swings. She was 8 months old.

My world is a little upside down and I am loving it.

I moved from my Dad’s house in Central California to Northwest Montana almost 14 years ago. I was “in love” and I had always hated my hometown so when I was asked to move to Montana by my then boyfriend I jumped at the chance. I grew up in the same town as almost all of my family and I was pretty close with most of them. We had holiday traditions and parties and someone to pick you up when you needed a ride; all that stuff that makes family so important and special. This same closeness can seem suffocating sometimes too. I was 20 years old and living on my own sounded good.

I loved Montana. I made a life there. I had some really great friends and knew all the good stores. I loved the mountains and trees. I loved looking at the snow, but I really hated being out in it. I knew how to drive in the snow like it was no big thing. When people asked me if I’d ever move back I told them that I’d never move back to California. Montana had cold winters but the summers are pretty darn nice. California is too hot. California has smog and graffiti. Montana has clean skies and walls (mostly).

A cute alley that was part of our almost nightly walk.

A street on our walking route.

After Lily was born I had moments of sadness that she wasn’t going to grow up knowing her grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins like I had but still didn’t want to go back to Cali for all the reasons I just listed and many more.

Then on May 1, 2010 we got some news from a family member that made us think long and hard about life. I believe the conversation went sort of like this**:

Waldo:  So this stuff is happening.

Me: Well, that’s something.  It’s at times like this that I hate being so far away.

W:…

M: !!!

W:???

M:…

A few days later

W: So…

M: Well I guess we’re moving back.

During the few days that it took for us to vocalize our decision we made a couple of pro/con lists and it was just about all that we talked about.  The only pro/con list that got written down was made that first day.  At the top of the pro side was FAMILY.  The pro side also had things like going to the zoo on it.  The con side was pretty short and lost out no  matter what because “family” was hard to beet now that we had Lily.

We had already been planning to drive to Cali for a vacation in mid June so we already had the money for the move put away.  Our lease was to renew in June so I was able to put in almost a full 30 day notice.  We both work for the same company and really didn’t look forward to getting new jobs.  We figured Waldo would be able to find something in the web development field just about anywhere as long as people were hiring.  But we doubted we’d be able to find me something comparable; I work a couple of hours a day from home for a good hourly wage on my own schedule, you can’t beat it. Since we both work at computers all day Waldo asked our boss if we could keep our jobs, we didn’t expect them to say yes but we figured it couldn’t hurt to ask. When Waldo’s text came through that they were going to let us keep our jobs I’m pretty sure I had to physically lift my jaw off the floor and then did a few happy-excited screams. Everything fell into place so easily it was like the move was meant to be (if you believe in that kind of stuff, and I do).

On May 24th our friends helped us load the U-haul with the last of our belongings and we left Montana.

All of our stuff.

We took 4 days to drive and it wasn’t too bad. Lily hates being in the car or her seat or not being held or all of it. We bought Lily a few new toys, I made her some snacks and we had some videos for her, this was our strategy for the drive. She played with the toys a little, ate some of the snacks, watched a few minutes of video (she doesn’t really watch tv and we packed the cord so we couldn’t recharge the netbook oops), but all she really wanted was to be held and nurse. Obviously we didn’t taker her out of her seat but her seat was facing the back so it was pretty easy for me to nurse her so we did that a lot. Luckily we didn’t get a tick for me not wearing a seatbelt and I’m pretty sure I didn’t flash anyone. We had all three of our cats in carriers (well one was in a cardboard box but that’s not important) in the car which we were towing. Thankfully we couldn’t hear them because two of the three hate being in cars and yell the whole time. We had to find motels that allowed pets and that was a little pain but doable. We were very glad to get to Waldo’s parents house.

At a reststop outside Dillon MT

Do you see the little foot?

To be continued…

**I guess I have blocked out that first conversation because I have no earthly idea who brought up moving back or how the whole thing really went. This was my best guess.

My daughter’s crazy laugh

Waking up smashed between Waldo and Lily

Cooking dinner together with Waldo with Lily on my back while we talk about our days

Our family shopping every Saturday

Watching Lily learn new things

Here’s a snippet of our daily life.

Waldo was hanging out with Lily when I went to do the dishes. I walked into the living room to ask a question and found the two of them in front of Waldo’s computer getting ready to watch Yo Gabba Gabba. Waldo wanted to see what Lil would think of the bright colors and what not. Apparently the real person host was singing a bubble song and blowing bubbles. Waldo asked me to grab the bubble solution from the other room. As the host blew bubbles so did I. It was interactive tv to the max.

December has come and gone and with it so has Lily’s first birthday (a separate post to come) and Christmas. These events have brought up a lot of emotion and some questions. Mainly about Santa and weather or not we are going to tell Lily that Santa is a real magical guy or something else. This is something that Waldo and I have talked about since before Lily was born. Waldo remembers his brother breaking the news to him that Santa isn’t real (sorry to burst anyone’s bubbles) when he was about 4 years old and I don’t actually remember believing in Santa ever really. I don’t think that our non-belief in Santa hindered either of us in our childhoods and then there’s the whole issue of lying to Lily which I just don’t really want to do. It’s funny we know that we will just tell Lily the truth about my Mom being a lesbian. It wasn’t a decision that we had to make, we just knew that we wouldn’t lie or try to skirt the subject, like some people we know. So then why is this whole Santa thing harder for us? The only decision that I have come to about Santa is Lily looked really cute being held by him in front of our tree this year.

********

Since Lily’s birthday is three days before Christmas I was having a hard time deciding if I wanted to send out Christmas cards or first birthday photo cards. Then my friend Starr (Gramma Starr) gave Lily a beautiful princess Christmas dress so Christmas cards it was. One weekend we went and bought a Christmas tree and wreath fixings and rented a Santa suit (more on that in a second) and set up a whole scene in our kitchen and went to work. I took like 294 pictures over the course of the weekend. I’m no professional and all I have is a couple year old Sony point and shoot but I was pretty pleased with a lot of the pictures. Lily was a champ and posed for hours.

This is one of my favorites

This was Lily first taste of sugar, it happened totally by accident. We gave her the candy cane thinking that the thin wrapper would keep her clean. We didn’t take into account how sharp her teeth are.

The scene we created on our kitchen table

A couple weeks before our Christmas photo shoot I was telling Waldo that we were going to have to brave the mall one day soon to get Lily’s picture with Santa. He laughed and said that there was no way that Lily would let Santa hold her so (totally jokingly) just rent a suit and I’ll play Santa. He didn’t expect me to run with it. I showed him. I asked on facebook if anyone in our area knew where I could rent a Santa suit and was told to call the local costume rental place. For $25 we got the suit for 24 hours. It was money well spent. We had planned on taking some funny Santa pictures like Santa with his head in the oven but ran out of time.

When we were taking pictures I thought it would be great to do a picture with Lily standing up holding Santa’s hands. Waldo just put the jacket and the gloves on and for some reason it freaked Lily out big time. I was really surprised because she could still see her Daddy’s face.

The next day Waldo let Lily play with the jacket and wig for like two hours before he put them on and then she watched him as he got dressed. She was much more comfortable with Santa this time.

We tried taking some pictures in front of the tree as a family but we had lost all daylight by then so I wasn’t happy with any of the pictures.

*******

Christmas was a nice quiet event at our house this year. We woke up and opened our gifts and then Jack came over for a while. I made dinner for everyone and that was our day. We didn’t very many pictures somehow.

This little car was a birthday gift

It’s funny to remember that Christmas day 2008 we were bringing our 3 day old baby girl home from the hospital. Crazy what a difference 365 days makes.

**edited to add: It was the Christmas pictures that I was hinting at here.

This was Lily first Thanksgiving and it was so nice and low key. We don’t live near any family and most of our friends had family things to do so it was just Waldo, Lily, our friend Jack and myself. Because there were so few of us and it saved money we decided to make chicken parmesan instead of turkey. When we were planning our menu we had decided that my chicken parm is so rich and cheesy that it didn’t need sides, while I was making dinner though Waldo decided it needed something. He made a boxed noodle dish, I didn’t need the noodles the chicken parm was enough for me.

I made a coconut cream pie because it’s Waldo’s favorite. I use a tweaked recipe I got off of AllRecipes.com and Waldo loves it.  I’m not a huge fan of coconut flakes so I take his word for it. I made the same pie last year but it never set up so I let the custard boil a little longer this year and that made all the difference in the world.

I also made some Chocolate Cover Snow Peaks.  Mine didn’t get perfectly dried out but we all thought they were great and I liked that it was nice to have something different from our traditional desserts.  Oh and in an effort to keep things real my snow peaks didn’t turn out anywhere as nicely formed as Tyler Florence’s.  I’ve really got to work on my pipping skills.  While I was googling other meringue recipes I got some inspiration for Lily’s first birthday party.  I’m thinking meringue snowmen with chocolate piped eyes and meringue buttons with a chocolate 1 on them.

I was so busy cooking and having fun that I didn’t take any pictures.  I have plenty of leftovers but now I’m to tired take pictures of food.

We did take a few pictures of Lily before Jack got here and I started cooking.

I am so thankful for my loving husband and our beautiful healthy daughter. I’ve very thankful to Waldo for working so hard so that I’m able to stay home with Lil, money may be tight but it is so worth it. I’m thankful for so much more too but I’ve got a kitchen to clean.

I hope everyone had a good Thanksgiving.

Lily looked so cute in her little Dalmatian outfit. She wasn’t too sure of it at first but got more comfortable with it over time.

Since Lily is so little and we don’t need the candy we only took her to our next door neighbors house so we could get some pictures, then it was home so we could give away a little candy.

I took a bunch of pictures (of course) while we waited for the trick or treaters.

She really had fun playing with the candy but she didn’t get to eat any.

We only ended up with a couple of trick or treaters, this picture was taken right after the first ones left.

Our Halloween self portrait

After the crappy way that yesterday started I have been thinking a lot about things that make me happy. In no particular order…

• waking up being crushed between Waldo and Lily.
• see how excited Lily gets when I come in the room
• days Waldo get to come home for lunch
• being able to stay home and spend all day with Lily
• the silly little face Lily has been making all the time lately
• a nice long shower with a good face scrub
• reconnecting with an old friend (Hi Melissa)
• being able to work a little from home
• brownies
• a clean kitchen, especially since Waldo cleaned it

Thinking about all this wonderful stuff really helped turn the day around.

It was a joyous day last week when I was driving to the pet store and saw a park with a baby swing. I had been looking all over the place for a baby swing because I wanted Lily to have the fun of swinging without being attached to me. When I parked the car I texted Waldo that I found a baby swing, this is how excited I was about it.

On Sunday afternoon Waldo and I packed Lily up and drove the 10 minutes to the park. The poor girl really dislikes the car and was crying within minutes of taking off. I kept telling her the torture was going to be worth it when she was flying freely on the swing and that we would be there in just a minute.

We pull up to the park and I’m surprised by how few trees there are, I guess I didn’t really notice the other day because I was driving and trying not to crash.

As we get out Waldo asks me if I’m going to put a blanket or something on the swing, even though he knows the answer. I tell him of course I am, I don’t want her touching the dirty swing or especially trying to eat it. He says don’t you think people will think you’re weird when they see pictures of her with the blanket. I reply that I don’t really care I’m just keeping Lily safe. Even I have to admit it sometimes that I’m a little crazy about washing my hands before I touch Lily or putting a blanket down for her, not OCD crazy but a little crazy. But you know what? I don’t care.

So I grabbed the blanket and her hat and he grabbed Lily and away we went. I tucked the blanket in and we put Lil in and I excitedly pushed. She couldn’t have cared less. She wasn’t upset but she wasn’t excited either.

We would have let her swing till she got tired of it but we didn’t have any sun block (I don’t even know if she can use sun block now or what kind to get if she can use it) and the sun was directly on us. It was HOT so we only stayed out for about 7 minutes. Then we had to put her back in the car and you guessed it, more crying on the way home. It was like a big tease. Poor kid.

I have been so inspired by Maia‘s love of the swings that I plan on trying a couple more times before winter, hopefully Lily will start to enjoy them.

A couple of years ago we took my cat Jingle to the vet because she was vomiting (we call it haurking) more often then normal. I have to put it that way because this cat has haurked all her life and she always does it in threes. The first one is the biggest, then she’ll walk around to a clean spot on the floor and do it again and then just for fun she finds another clean spot and dribbles a little more. Sometimes there’s something to clean up at all three spots other times there’s nothing but foam that soaks into the carpet before I can get a paper towel. Anyway she was doing this sometimes a couple or more times a day so we took her to the vet. He couldn’t find anything wrong with her but gave her a worm pill just in case she has some kind of lovely parasite and prescribed this super expensive cat food.

We have three cats that have free access to food, so all three cats had to start eating this super expensive cat food. None of them liked it but they had no choice, we don’t feed them people food so it was eat the food in the bowl or don’t eat. By the way they are indoor cats, so they don’t have the option of fending for themselves in the wild.

After a couple of days Jingle was better, just haurking once or three times a week which was pretty normal. We were afraid to switch from the super expensive cat food in case that was the key for Jingle besides we knew from past experience that you shouldn’t just switch a cats food, you should slowly incorporate the new food in with the old food.

Then one day we got home and there was a bread bag in the floor of the living room with bits of bread everywhere. It looks like Hansel and Gretel had been by. Since we weren’t there to know who or why no cats got in trouble. Things like this started happening more often. Then one day I was home and heard a noise from the kitchen caught Waldo’s cat Kitty eating bread or tortillias. So we started putting all that stuff in the fridge (because they could open the cupboards). And then a month or so later we noticed Kitty was very lethargic and getting skinny.

To the vet Kitty went and she stayed there for a couple of days because she was almost dead and had jaundice. They weren’t sure what the problem was. Apparently when a cat gets unhappy and doesn’t eat for a couple of days their livers and kidneys start to shut down and they well… they die. Something like $900 later and a feeding tube for two weeks Kitty is fine.

All of this is to say that we are very careful about what we feed them now. Since they all hated that super expensive cat food we switched over to a less expensive but still pricey natural cat food that everyone seemed to enjoy. Well no one has died from it yet so I think we’re good. But I don’t feel they ever loved it like they loved the food they had before all this vet stuff started.

So a couple of days ago Waldo and I decided that we couldn’t keep spending so much money on cat food and we needed to switch back to Purina. I went to the pet store and bought another bag of the pricey natural stuff and at Target we bought some Purina. When I got home I pulled the super huge bowl out and dumped both kinds of food in and started mixing it. Kitty though she had surely died and went to heaven.

I missed the picture of her taking a bite before I shooed her away so I could put the food away.