Casual Thoughts
We are *those* people
Aug 5th
We brought our baby to a bar last night. Not intentionally, but there it is anyway. We wanted to go try out this new place in town that says it’s a pub; they serve pub food and drinks. We have taken James to other “pub-like” places in town. They all feel like restaurants that serve alcohol, so we didn’t think it would be a big deal. But as soon as we walked in I knew it would be weird. And of course the place was almost totally empty, so it was really awkward. We went and sat in the chairs/couch in the corner, and tried to keep James quiet, but we forgot his nook, and he’s at this stage where he likes to scream. He’s happy screaming, but still; it’s a weird noise, and distinctly a baby. In a bar.
I figured we would grab a beer and eat and be out of there quick, but of course everything took longer than it should have, and James started getting a little noisier, and so I fed him. Normally no big deal. But we were in a bar, remember? And I had a beer in front of me. I only drank half of it the entire time we were there, but still. Klassy. With a capital K. Oh well. No one said anything to us about it, and really, for a baby, James was awesome. I took him outside once we were done eating, and waited there for Sam and Ryan to finish and pay, and we said repeatedly that if we ever go back we’ll be getting a babysitter. It probably wouldn’t have been so bad if we had been able to sit outside, but of course the only time it rained that day was right when we wanted to go out.
James & I are heading North after work tomorrow. It is my middle-younger sister’s bachelorette party on Saturday, and Grandma is going to watch the baby for me (and my sister’s kids for her – Thanks, Grandma!). I haven’t been up North in a few months, so I’m excited to go. I’ll try to get pictures, although no promises.
Speaking of pictures, here is one of one of the ships we toured last weekend:
It was cool to see the ships. We only toured 2 of them; the HMS Bounty (from the movies!) and this one – the Europa. It was pretty hot and muggy down there, and there were a billion people, so I was ok with not spending all day wandering. It was fun, though, and seeing them sailing on the lake was AWESOME. One year I want to take the day they come in off work to go see them up close.
I really need to work on figuring out how to end posts. Maybe next time…
Really, Facebook? You think?
Jul 30th
I know we have all seen the funny things Facebook recommends that we will like because we like something else (apparently because I like Stephen King I should like Country Music; who knew one had to do with the other!?). This one, though, I found a little bizarre:
Really Facebook? Because I like The Princess Bride, I might like The Princess Bride? You are so smart!
Ryan says I’m overthinking it; of COURSE you would like The Princess Bride if you like The Princess Bride. Duh!
By the way, in case you missed it, I do like The Princess Bride. The movie is great, but the book is even better.
Fog, fog, go away!
Jun 16th
Duluth has officially had no days that are “mostly sunny” since May. It is now halfway through June. This is unacceptable. However, this weekend is supposed to be warm and at least partly sunny. Heating up just in time for Grandma’s Marathon. Of course. hahaha. Those poor marathon runners.
My sister and 3 of her children are coming to visit us this weekend. They are camping just outside of Duluth (which is good, because inside Duluth is going to be CRAZY). I’m so excited to see them. We plan on checking out the Children’s Museum and the Depot, and going on a scenic train ride. I think they’ll love it. I haven’t seen them in ages, and they haven’t met James, so it should be a great weekend. Photos will follow, I’m sure.
Other than that, there’s not much going on. We are keeping busy with James. He gets more and more animated and funny. He’s really getting the grabbing stuff skills down; he can even reach for specific parts of something hanging in front of him and usually get it. He smiles a lot, and charms people wherever we go. He still spits up quite a bit, but we are used to it and know to expect it (although he does still get each of us good at least once a week when we aren’t prepared). He likes to suck on his fingers, although sometimes when he’s tired he’ll suck on his thumb. It is cute. He’s also been chewing on anything he can get his hands on.
Ryan and I have a goal of walking 52.4 miles before July 6th. So far we’ve gone 21 miles. We have a little bit of catching up to do, since it’s been raining so much. Yesterday we took off on a walk because we knew we needed to get one in. It had been foggy and sprinkling off and on all day, but it didn’t really look any worse than it had, so we just went. And then it rained the whole 3.5 miles back to the house. Whoops. Here we are after getting back:
A bit blurry, but you get the picture.
James stayed nice and dry in his carseat/stroller combo. We opened it up once we got in the house (just brought the whole thing in with us) and he was looking around like “What the heck is going on!?” It was funny. We actually enjoyed being out in the rain. It was relatively warm, and we knew we were going back to a warm, dry house. And leftover chili. That always helps. Yum.
Anyway, time to get back to work. Have you taken a walk in the rain lately? I would highly recommend it.
It’s June! And my baby is 3 1/2 months old already!
Jun 3rd
When did all that happen? Yikes!
He’s so cute. Have I mentioned that? And he’s pretty much the best baby ever. My sister and her fiance were in town last weekend, and he had never been to Duluth before, so we were tourists all weekend. We toured Glensheen (the historic & haunted mansion!); we walked down by the canal and the lake, and went for dinner in Canal Park; we drove up Seven Bridges Road (and Bill got carsick. Whoops!); we toured the William A Irvin ore boat, and a friend took us out on his boat on Lake Superior; and we ate at Betty’s Pies on the North Shore. We took James with us for all of this, and he didn’t make a peep of complaint.
I was telling my sister that our lives would be very different if we had a baby with a different temperament. James is so easy-going. We take him everywhere with us, and as long as he is fed and changed he doesn’t care. He takes it all in. I can only imagine how hard it is for parents of other kids. And we are definitely spoiled and will probably have a rude awakening when we have another child who is not so even-keeled. But for now we are enjoying our happy baby, and our freedom. Although he did put a bit of cramp in our style, since we couldn’t take him to our favorite bar in Wisconsin (the Anchor). We draw the line at a bar; especially one where they still allow smoking (only until July 1!). ;-)
It is Ryan and my 2nd anniversary next Monday, and so we are both taking the day off work. His parents are coming up Sunday and we will probably go up the shore and do some light hiking on Monday. A fitting thing, since we spent our honeymoon up the shore hiking. I hope the weather cooperates.
In completely different news, I recently deleted everything in my Google Reader. It was constantly at 1000+ items unread, and it was stressing me out. Instead, I marked them all as read and am manually going back to the blogs that I want to catch up on and reading back. And of course trying to keep up with the new stuff in my reader. I may have to remove a couple things from it. Lifehacker, I love you, but your 20 updates every 2 days is killing me!
Anyway, that’s where life is at right now. Busy, especially gearing up for summer, but a lot of fun with this adorable baby around. Hopefully it stays that way!
No baby yet, and my favorite quotes from this morning’s weather guy:
Feb 12th
There’s no baby yet. Ryan and I feel like we need to clarify that right away with whoever we are speaking to (unless we see/talk to them every day). He called his parents last night, and I think he said “No baby yet” before he even said hello. I have a feeling that will continue until he shows up.
I had to laugh at the weather guy this morning. I like this guy; he doesn’t have a weird shtick or make lame jokes (usually), and he can speak well on television (no small feat for some people). The reason he cracked me up was more about our expectations and feelings about what constitutes “nice” weather in Minnesota in February.
*While the television is showing that the current temperature is -5* “It’s going to be a nice day today!” – Why do I have trouble believing this right now?
“The wind is blowing a little around the lake shore, causing windchill factors only 5-10* lower than the actual temperature, so we aren’t getting into the -20’s, -30’s, or even the dangerous -40’s.” – Yes, -40’s are dangerous, but he made it sound like the other temperatures were decent as long as you didn’t get THAT low. And the fact that we wouldn’t be surprised if the windchill factor was that bad…well, I don’t know why we all continue to live here. My coworkers say it keeps the riff-raff out. I have my doubts.
“The air is trying to move toward the lake because the air above the lake is in the 20’s and 30’s due to that NICE WARM LAKE WATER.” [Emphasis mine] HAHAHAHAHAHA. The same lake that in August will turn your feet blue in seconds and has people surfing and using jet skis in wetsuits all summer long. Compared to the air temps I guess it is warm, but the fact that anyone says Lake Superior ever has “nice, warm lake water” cracks me up.
Rereading this it occurs to me that it’s probably not as amusing to anyone else as it was in my head. I think that happens to me a lot. Unfortunately for you, it’s what I’ve got this morning. I got up at 5 so that I could go into work early because I have a LOT of stuff I want to get done before the baby comes and I don’t want to chance leaving it over the weekend. So I’m a little tired, a little spacey from the last weeks of pregnancy (or maybe I’m always a little spacey – but I’m blaming it on the pregnancy while I can), and already thinking about work. My judgment of what is funny is not to be trusted.
Except for this: this is funny. And I will be printing out her pain chart to bring with me to the hospital so that when someone asks me how much it hurts I can point to one of these faces.
This is kind of awesome.
Jan 20th
I lost my phone over the weekend. It totally disappeared. Obviously going without a phone is a bad idea; especially these days. So Monday Ryan and I went up to the Verizon store to beg them to let me upgrade early. They were awesomely helpful, and I came home with a new phone.
I previously had the LG Chocolate, which I liked, but since we were planning on upgrading me to a smartphone when my contract expired in September anyway, I got an HTC Droid. And so far I love it. In fact I’m writing from it right now.
The major downside to this story is that unless Ryan has your phone number I don’t have it anymore. So if you could email it to me that would be awesome.
Anyone else out there have a Droid? What do you think?
Conversations
Jan 5th
Ryan: I have to go up to [apartment complex his workplace services] today after work. I’ll drop you off at home and head up there. (We carpool to work)
Me: OK. How long do you think you’ll be?
Ryan: Between 20 minutes and 5 hours.
Sadly, this is not a surprising answer, and he wasn’t really joking. It’s been over an hour so far. This does not bode well for the apartment cleaning we were going to get done, although the overtime is nice. Especially with my maternity leave coming up.
What’s that? You think I should do the cleaning on my own while he’s gone? HAHAHAHA. I can barely put my own socks and shoes on these days so picking stuff up off the floor is definitely out, and I can hardly reach the faucet to turn on the water, much less stand over the sink to do the dishes. I was going to sweep/mop and dry the dishes after Ryan washed them, so it’ll have to wait.
In exciting news, the cloth diapers we will be using arrived in today’s mail, and they are SO CUTE. Seriously – adorable. We have 6 different colors, and I like them all. I’m sure they’ll be much less adorable once they are in use and full of poop. We ordered the BumGenius 3.0 diapers. We have some friends who use them, and they like them a lot. I’ll try to remember to let you know how they work for us. One word of advice they did give us was to not let the diaper pail sit for more than a day. Apparently it is not pleasant. I can only imagine.
We also had my 34 week appointment today. The baby is head down, and I’m measuring exactly right. The Doctor asked if we had the hospital bag packed yet. We don’t, and she suggested that we should probably have it ready by our next appointment in 2 weeks. That makes it all even more real. At most I have 8 weeks left of being pregnant. More likely it’ll be less than that. Yikes.
Well, I suppose I should get to the picking up I can do around here. Ryan just called and is on his way home with Erberts & Gerberts (only an hour and a half tonight! woo!).
Happy New Year!
Jan 4th
A few days late maybe, but better late than never. We’re trying out a new theme for the new year. Let us know what you think. (For good or bad, it is one of the most popular themes on the WordPress site right now)
Christmas Meme
Dec 20th
I got this from Swistle, and it looked fun. Also, I am too lazy to write a real entry tonight. I’m playing the pregnancy card.
Eggnog or hot chocolate? I prefer hot chocolate, although I do like to try a glass of eggnog once a year.
Does Santa wrap the presents or leave them open under the tree? Santa hasn’t visited Ryan and I at our apartment, since we always are at one of our respective parents’ house for Christmas. At my parents’ house Santa doesn’t wrap gifts – he leaves them under the tree with our names marked on them or in our stockings. At Ryan’s parents’ house he wraps them – even the ones in the stockings. I’m not sure what will happen if he ever visits us here…maybe some of each?
Colored lights on a tree or white? We have some of each, and I like it that way.
Do you hang mistletoe? Nope.
When do you put your decorations up? Since we are usually out of town for Thanksgiving we don’t usually put them up until during that next week or the following weekend. Whenever we get our tree from Pappy’s Trees (this cute old guy that sells trees out of his yard).
What is your favorite holiday dish? Lefse. Mmm…real lefse with butter and sugar (probably made by Lutherans in the church basement – that’s the best kind, you know).
Do you open a gift on Christmas Eve? My family opens our gifts on Christmas eve, after a light dinner (usually just hors d’oeuvres) before Midnight Mass. Ryan’s family opens gifts on Christmas eve too. Christmas day is for Santa/church/relaxing.
How do you decorate your Christmas tree? Usually I string lights right up next to the trunk and then come out from there, so there are a lot of lights all through the tree. Our ornaments are mostly things that we’ve gotten as gifts. Last year it was pretty sparse, but Ryan’s sister got us a few boxes of pretty ornaments to add to our collection, so this year it’s much better.
Snow: love it or hate it? I love it as long as I don’t have to deal with it. Especially now that we have a 4-wheel drive vehicle. It’s the cold I can’t stand.
Can you ice skate? HA. I grew up in a town where the high school hockey games were THE events to be at. We went skating for gym class in the winter, and until I was in 7th grade we lived next to a river and would make our own rink on the frozen river every year. I’m not very good though, for all that learning.
What is your favorite holiday dessert? Pie. I love pie. Although the candies my mom makes are a close second.
What is your favorite holiday tradition? Eating a light meal on Christmas eve for dinner before opening gifts. Cheeseball and crackers and meat and candy. Yum.
Candy canes: yum or yuck? Traditional ones are ok. I really like the Starburst ones, but I don’t buy candy canes because the stickiness drives me crazy. There’s no good way to eat them without getting completely sticky.
Favorite Christmas show? How the Grinch Stole Christmas. Always the cartoon version. Although A Christmas Story is a close second. “You’ll shoot your eye out!” HAHAHA. My sister and I got bb guns for Christmas one year. I don’t think anyone told us that though. And we were (are) good shots.
