RIP Sonny

Our beloved and dear old cat, Sonny, passed away, peacefully, last night. Despite being an indoor cat, he was a fierce hunter. He developed a keen hunting instinct in his last year of life. He would often wake me up at night with his guttural hunting meows and I'd find him with his recent catch of "snakes" (in the domestic form of pencils and elastics). Some nights, he would catch up to 5 pencils...(don't ask me where he would get them...did he stand on his hind legs and snatch them off the desks with his paws?
He once got outside at our old apartment and when I found him, not 3 minutes later, he already had a bird in his mouth!
He also had an insatiable hunger for corn bread. If you left corn bread out anywhere in the kitchen, you'd wake up to a kitchen floor full of crumbs! I remember once we had a mexican-themed party and a friend made a casserole dish of spicy jalapeno corn bread which Sonny ransacked in the wee hours of the night. I cannot even describe the mess we woke up to! Plus, he must have eaten a TON of it and was really spicy!
He spent his last night sleeping on Orange's bed.
He was a quiet and lion-like cat with an old soul and he will be greatly missed.
RIP Sonny.

Congratulations to my sister!!

My sister gave birth to my first nephew last night after only 2hr. & 15min. of labour.  They almost didn't make it in time!  I'm so proud of her~ she got her VBAC and a fast, natural labour without all that pesky hospital monitoring.  I can't wait to meet him!  But for now, I must go finish my papers for class that I keep on putting off (but who can blame me?  It's not like "genital herpes" and "Listeriosis" are the most riveting of subjects!).

Wow, it's been like over a year since I've posted...damn!

One of my New Year's resolutions (one of many!) will have to be to start (and stick with) a new & improved blog!!  Here's a picture~ the only recent one on my desktop right now.

But for now...a quick update.  Orange is 7 and just as wonderful as always.  She's just such an outgoing & creative kid, I really couldn't ask for anything more (I know this sounds like bragging but it's true!).  She is constantly cutting/ writing/ taping/ gluing/ stapling, etc. just busy making things.  She likes to ransack the recycling bin for inspiration.  Which is fine, except when I go to clean her room and it's, well..full of trash!  She's also getting really good at reading & writing lately.

Ocean is 21 months, which is a fun age.  She's very into "Daddy" and every day, I hear "Where's Daddy?" about a dozen times.  Last week she was sick with a cold, and there was one night where she just nursed ALL NIGHT.  I seriously had about 1 hour of sleep total and she had the audacity to cry for ", Daddy, Daddy!!" first thing in the morning.  No respect!  She's also really into baby dolls (she has a wagon full), which I love as I was a baby-doll lover myself & Orange never really cared for dolls (she was much more into stuffed animals...I was just looking at old pictures from when she was 4 & 5, and in every picture she's holding a different stuffed friend, very cute!).  

I've started some midwifery classes (through the MMA), just because birth interests me, not because I necessarily want to become a midwife (although, perhaps someday...the on-call aspect would not work for us right now with young children).  It's a fun group of crunchy & eccentric women and I'm learning a lot.  At our last class, we practiced cervical exams and blood draws on each other!  Which is something I never thought I would do and quite a far cry from the plastic dummies and oranges we used in nursing school!  

Home from vacation!

We had a wonderful 2-week vacation in New Hampshire.  Some of the highlights were:  Fort Foster in Kittery point (we went on a downcast day & had the place to ourselves, including a gorgeous secluded beach), shopping at the Hanna Andersson outlet (where I found a pair of giraffe-print clog boots for moi for $24!!!), antique shops, lobster (twice!), York's Animal Kingdom, lots of fun at the beach of course, a new baby cousin (Abigail Dean arrived 8/4/8 on her Mom's birthday...how cool is that?!  She is sweet, she looks like a chubby little bear cub), and last, but not least, Orange  & Ocean won "Judge's favorite" for the costume parade contest with our "Purple Urchin" costume that we made by dissecting some purple pool noodles & then hot-gluing them to a leotard & then wrapping with a purple garland.  I thought it came out really good, I was surprised that the glue worked so well, it's like cement (yay for glue guns!).  We tried spiking her hair with egg whites but it didn't really work.  My sister made the signs which came out great!  Ocean was the "Beach Plum" (my Mom & sister made her costume, which was very cute as well).  Eva & Amelia were very cute bumble bees.  They didn't win anything, but they should have!  Next year! 

The "Beach Plum" is the name of a popular ice cream shop on Rt. 1 & the "Purple Urchin" is the name of a seafood restaurant conveniently located directly across from the judging pavilion.   We were a big hit.  The owner came over, offered us lunch (which we declined because we had to get back for Orange's party), and took pictures of the staff with Orange.

We won 2 restaurant certificates (she treated us to lobster one night & got her own for the very first time!) & one for the grocery store, and a "grab bag" of little toys.  Plus she'll get her picture in the newspaper!  I don't really have any pictures yet off our camera but here are some my aunt took (that's her with Ocean).

Baby food stuff: note to self

We plan on doing baby-led weaning, so we're going to skip the processed cereal crap & purees and go straight to "real" foods that she can pick up & eat herself.  This really makes sense to me as who would want flavorless mush repeatedly shoveled into their mouth?  By letting them decide what & how much to eat or whether they even want to at all  (it may just be an art project the first few times and that's fine!), you can foster healthy attitudes about food & eating right from the get-go.  There is definately mess involves but that is part of the process as baby explores the different tastes & textures.  Anyways, I'm not afraid of a little mess.   Actually, I'm usually the one who encourages mess.  

Some ideas for first foods:

bananas

avocados

sweet potato

blueberries

watermelon

pears

hummus

yogurt

beans

steamed broccoli

and some good sources of iron (since I'm skipping the iron-fortified cereal) include pumpkin, buffalo, beef, and egg yolks.

I'll add to this list as I think of more ideas.  I also have the Super Baby Food book by Ruth Yaron that I read when Orange was a babe.  I should dust that off & flip through it, I know she had a lot of great insight.  I'd also like to read Child of Mine by Ellyn Satter.  Oh, and I'd like to get one of those mesh feeders.

Ocean is showing some signs of readiness.  She can sit unassisted for a few minutes before toppling, "chews" & drools when she watches us eat (it's really cute!), and I think  she's outgrown the tongue reflex.  I offered her a bite of banana a couple of times she sucked on a stalk of broccoli once and a bean from our garden.  She doesn't have any teeth yet (although she seems to be working on it), so I'd like to wait a bit longer before "officially" offering solids.  I've read that the first teeth coming through is associated w/ the production of more digestive enzymes and thus an indication of readiness.  Makes sense.  Also, I want to breast feed as long as possible, of course.  Maybe not the 4.5 years that Orange had, but at least 2 years or longer. 

Look at this eggplant!  Isn't it gorgeous?  Wish I could take credit for it, but Connie picked it up at the farmer's market.  Let's hope it tastes as good as it looks.

We went to HELL, uh, I mean the Children's Museum yesterday.   Fun for the kids, not so fun for the mom.  It was sooo hot & over-crowded & so many tantrum-ing brats (not mine)!  And it's a  long T ride there, which was packed (and hot & smelly as the T usually is). Orange had a lot of fun, though.  She especially likes the rock climbing wall, which she did over &  over (and over!).  And the recycle shop, where she filled a bag & I picked up 23 of these little guys.  They are sad on one side and happy on the reverse.  I have no idea what I'll do with them, but they were calling out to me with their sad (and happy!) little heart-shaped faces.

And no complaints on the Ocean front, she seemed very content in the Beco all day.  And they have a designated "Nursing Room" there complete with dim lighting, a couch, and a bunch of pillows which provides the perfect excuse to escape from all the museum mayhem.

What babe? The babe with the power...

Don't you think Ocean sort of looks like Toby?  And I, like Sarah, sometimes wish the goblins would come and take her away! And if only Cory looked that good in tights...!

Just kidding. 

kind of.