I forgot to mention...

... the other morning when the maintenance man was here (for a long long time), he investigated the dryer vent and found, not rodents, but a bird's nest. with 5 eggs. They must have been nice and toasty. Apparently bird chirping sounds a lot like mouse squeaking. He moved the nest and covered the vent so no more scurrying around sounds. That's all.

teeny tiny post

• Aleah has been sick since Wednesday. I think overall she's starting to feel better but still is snotty and grumpy. very grumpy. And it's hard to know what's sickness and what's teeth these days. fun. And Dave and I are both flirting with the idea of getting sick too, but so far haven't taken the all out plunge. May it henceforth remain so.
• Sunday was quite the day - in the morning, Aleah was playing in our room getting books out of a crate. Suddenly she was attacked in the face by a falling (rather heavy) journal with sharp corners. Screaming commenced. About 2 minutes later she was playing with a little folding purse mirror (to distract her from the pain in her face) and was looking shocked and distressed. Here she was pinching her little fleshy finger flab between the 2 parts of the mirror - hard. There was a nice pinch mark. More screaming commenced. Later, Dave dumped a bowl of soup on the living room carpet floor (I cleaned it up). Even later, I dropped a jar of jam on the kitchen floor, which promptly shattered (he cleaned it up). Whew! But somewhere in there I got to talk to a friend for a long long time on the phone which was really nice and also in the evening we stopped by the annual church crawfish boil and it was nice to get out of the house.
• It is so crazy easy to steal stuff from Walmart! Twice now I've done it without trying. Yesterday I ran to Walmart to grab some things we needed and picked up some kitchen gadgets. One was a pastry brush. When I got to my car, that thing had slipped between my purse and the cart seat back thing. ARG! I dutifully went back and paid for it. That's twice now. Think if I actually tried to shoplift. oh the money making potential.
• I get to see Bethany G. tomorrow! For a bit, then she comes to visit over the weekend! Hopefully all the illness will be gone from this place by then. Can't wait to hang out with her!! I think that's all for now.

party on dudes...

Some good little Mennonite families have ice cream and popcorn with their kiddies on Sunday evenings. Others.... get stoned.

(no babies were harmed in the making of this picture)

Another country heard from...

So, where to start. I know it's been shamefully long since I've been on here. What can I say ? Life has been pretty hum drum and every time I've wanted to write, I've felt totally uninspired to do so. So I put some pics on Facebook awhile ago and that's about it. But anyway, here I am, still not very inspired but I can always bore you with 20 thousand pics of little missy. Anyway, I can ramble a bit about the total excitement known as life around here. I know present a random, boring assortment of useless facts that will not enrich your life at all, consider yourself warned. ummmmmmm... the other day I was very nearly rear ended right in from of our apartment - heard the screeching breaks, looked in the mirror, and the guy had stopped about an inch from my bumper (I was stopped and turning left to go home, he didn't see me stopped apparently). Again, this would be a truly interesting story if I actually had been rear ended, setting my air bag off, giving me a broken wrist and a huge black eye. But none of that happened and I'm grateful. The other night when we came home after dark, there were a couple of, oh wow, I don't have words to describe them, not nice, bloggy ones anyway, guys in cars and they were completely and utterly drag racing, or would you call it street racing up and down the road right in front of our house. It was loud and weird - and so close to home. And so incredibly idiotic. Thankfully, I didn't read about or hear any fatal car accidents. Dave and I used to be the stereotypical couple when it came to climate control. I was always freezing and he was always hot. Awhile ago that started to change, maybe when I was preggo, I dunno, but it has never gone back. I seem to be always roasting and he has been known to say things like, "It feels like we're trying to store meat in here!" I'm stumped at how this happened. We just came through mardi gras season here in the good ol south. Dave and I had gone to one parade here in town 2 years ago and it was fun and relatively benign, as far as mardi gras goes (ha). So we thought it would be fun to take Aleah to her first parade and all last friday night. oh dear. we got there and it started pouring. That was nice. Then the parade started and it was so insanely loud, everything was really scary, and we wondered what in the world we were doing there with our baby. So we stayed about 15 minutes and then left. I won't be too sad to not go to any more mardi gras parades. I believe we have rats outdoors that like to run around our dryer vent (In honor of the season, I'm striving to write with utmost precision, being careful to follow all paragraph rules very precisely). It's the oddest thing. The washer and dryer are in our walk in closet and on a regular basis, there's this ominous noise that sounds very much like little rodents scurrying around (trust me, sadly I know the sound very well). We have looked and looked and there's NOTHING to be found. Which leads us to believe that it's something outside. The vent goes to the outside, so one day will I find a family of fluffy, dried rats in the drier? SHUDDER. I'm so excited about the company that will be gracing us with their presence the next couple months. My friend Bethany is coming in about 3 weeks, then Dave's parents are coming about a week after that, and then my friend Sue is coming in May. Hoooray for all of that! Can't wait. Maybe we'll do exciting things and I'll have something to blog about other than freezing meat and rats in the dryer. I'm on a mission to get this place organized and spotless from top to bottom! So far it's mostly a mental mission, but I'm hoping actual activity will soon follow. I suppose I have started a little, but there's so much to do and get rid of. I'd really like to have a yard/garage sale. But how do you do that when you don't have a yard or a garage? hmmmmmm.... I did talk to a friend about having one and hopefully that works out at some point. Oh, I should blather on a bit about little poopsie. What a crazy little kid she is becoming. She has been changing SO much the last few weeks that sometimes I feel like I barely recognize this new little person hanging out here. She's still not crawling, but scoots, rolls, and "swims" to get where she needs to go. She's able to get into a sitting position now all by herself which is most handy. Awhile ago I was sitting on the floor with her and she had this doll and I was saying bla bla bla baby this, baby that, and then it was all quiet and she said clear as day "Baby!" Dave was right there too and our jaws just hit the floor. So that goes down as her first word, even though it might have been a fluke. Right around that time, she started consistently saying mama and dada to the right person. Tonight she yelled at Dave and it was hilarious. She was sitting in her highchair getting all squirley and Dave started playing peek a boo with her, which she thought was great fun. Then he walked off. She started crying and in a tone that expressed much irritation, yelled "DADDADDAD!!!!" I suppose it won't be nearly so funny in about 14 years, but it was too cute. Her sleeping habits are very different as well. She used to often fall asleep eating right before bed, but if she didn't, I could put her in bed and she'd be out in about 5 minutes. Now it seems it doesn't matter how tired she is, she can flop around in her bed for way too long. Takes awhile to shut all systems down I guess. She's getting quite a personality and quite a few opinions about how things should be done around here. But she's a hoot and we have a lot of fun too. She thinks it's hilarious to watch me brush my teeth or sweep the kitchen floor - why, I have no idea. She loves to eat and will eat yogurt until it stops being offered. She would rather chew on shoes or metal buttons than any of her toys. We're thinking about giving her old shoes for her birthday. Ok, consider that a 10 month update, since she will be on Monday. gulp. Ok, now for some pics -

Just having a bit of fun with the camera - a couple weeks ago.

She has done this for a long time, doesn't do it as often anymore, but when she's looking at something or listening intently to someone/thing, she'll lean her head to one side.

Dress from Madagascar
It's never too early to start practicing good oral hygiene.

The fun begins. = )

She's saving the zucchini for supper

notice the zucchini shifting to make way for yogurt. and notice all the teeth.

We checked out a new park today.


hey! where'd everybody go?




Okay, that's all folks. If that took the better part of an afternoon to read and you burned your supper or forgot your kids at school, I'm very sorry. It won't happen again.