Thursday, January 19, 2006

Out

The day before yesterday our well ran nearly dry. It did this a few months ago and we spent a week or two eating off of paper plates and bathing at my in-laws' house. Unsurprisingly, living without plentiful running water is not something we want to do so we stepped up our apartment search and found something. There was scarcely anything suitable out there but we have to get out of here soon so we picked the best thing we could find for now, and will move in six months or so, when hopefully there will be more available. We'll have to move at some point, because the place we found only has one bedroom! Fine for now, not so great when we want to move Pearl out of our room. But it's nice and open and roomy, good light, affordable, even has a yard. It's a house that was turned into two duplexes, and is pretty funky. It is on too busy a street, and doesn't have a washer and dryer, though there are some on-site. Across the street are sloping fields, a wooded hilltop. That piece of land has been ready for development for years but I guess no one has snatched the opportunity yet, so for now it's nice to look out on.

I'll be offline for a while, packing and cleaning and moving and all that. I leave you all with this picture of my one-tooth wonder's one tooth - the second still hasn't popped through! We're in for a long, slow ride with this teething business I guess!


Saturday, January 14, 2006

Self-Portrait Tuesday - Personal History 2



That is my mom, with a red horse amidst the red rocks and red dirt of western Oklahoma, where she grew up. The wind always blows there. I don't know if that was her horse and I don't know if those were her sheds, or if she even knew whose they were. I don't know who took these pictures either, but I've always loved them... the browns and the blues, my mom, so young and pretty. I am a lot like my mom. Our lives have run a lot of parallels, both in ways that one would expect and ways that one would not. Since becoming a mother myself I have a new perspective of her, a clearer understanding of the way she felt about me and my siblings; why she cried when my older sister left for college.

You can find more Self-Portraits here.

Friday, January 13, 2006

My Baby Ate Solids!

We've tried a few things since starting out with avocados: bananas, pears, more avocados, even some "real" baby food. Then today I gave Pearl some Fruity Booty and she liked it! It's the only thing she's had a bite of that she's wanted a second taste of. It's pretty bland; maybe that's why she likes it. Well, to me it's pretty bland, I guess at first she was just getting the fruit specks on the outside, which are pretty sweet and tangy. She wouldn't move them to her mouth on her own, though if I were holding them she would move my hand to her mouth, silly girl. Well, I guess it's not that silly, after all, my body has been her food delivery method her whole life. I feel a bit bad that the first thing she likes is essentially junk food... organic, vegetarian junk food but pretty now in the nutrition department nonetheless. I guess they're no worse than Gerber's puffs.

She's also drinking a bit of water out of her sippy cup now. Getting big.

Thursday, January 12, 2006

A Proud Day

Yesterday, for the first time, Pearl had no wet diapers at all! She peed exclusively in her little potty. She's not 'potty-trained' or anything yet, but I had been looking forward to the day we hit the no-misses mark, and I am very proud!

I am also interested in how mobility will effect her pottying - will she crawl towards the potty when she wants to go? Will she be so busy getting into everything that she will refuse to go?

Wednesday, January 11, 2006

The Hunts Begins

This week we began searching for a new place to live. We went and checked out a few places... a townhouse with scary wooden stairs in a bad neighborhood, an apartment that had a cute, wonderful little kitchen but did not have a washer and dryer, and was upstairs from the laundry facilities. Scanned hundreds of ads, filled with places that were too small, too expensive, that did not allow cats... called about places that were already rented out, didn't have what we need... I'm tired of looking already. Of course, it's the beginning of a semester so we're competing with the college students. Maybe in a few weeks there will be more suitable choices on the market, I don't know. I'm just ready to get out of here.

I think our last apartment spoiled me. It was great. It did not have a dishwasher, or a washer and dryer, but I look back on it fondly. It was very affordable, spacious, it had lots of nice little touches... It had a deck off the bedroom, which faced a grassy area and trees, and was on a quiet street that was near the university and the town square, and only had houses on one side - the other was a stream and a bit of woods on the hillside. The apartments we looked at earlier were surrounded on both sides by more buildings; parking lots. If only our old apartments had two bedrooms and those appliances we long for, I'd move back in a flash.

Pearl is really, really close to crawling, and I would kind of like to get out of here before she does. That would mean I wouldn't have to babyproof this place, which is not going to be possible to the extent that I would like... there is a propane heater on the wall, there are cords everywhere as we have way too few electrical outlets, there are wooden dividers between every room on the carpet... I don't know what you call them but they are totally unneccessary and have sharp screw heads poking out of them. I would like to be able to perhaps section the house off with gates and let her crawl and toddle in that area, hazard-free, but that is not an option in this house. And of course there is the lead issue. This little house is quite old and I am worried about lead in the paint, lead in the pipes. We already do not drink the water because it comes from a well that pulls from the groundwater, and as I've mentioned before we are sandwiched between cow pastures and chicken houses. But how do you keep a very young child from getting water in their mouth during a bath?

So, yes, we're looking, looking, looking, and Pearl is getting closer to crawling. Today, if she is sitting on the floor playing and I am not down there with her, she gets in a crawling position and tries to come towards me, landing on her face and bursting into tears at some point in the process every time.

Did I ever mention that her tooth broke through? It did! My baby has a tooth! It's been over a week now and no sign of a second one - she's a one tooth wonder for now. A very grumpy one tooth wonder.

Tuesday, January 10, 2006

Self-Portrait Tuesday - Personal History

The Squiggle Tan


photo of a photo

My family took many vacations to Florida when I was growing up. This trip, I brought home an interesting souvenir - a squiggle tan. The sun went through my bathing suit in either the green or the black spaces - I don't remember which - and left my skin browned in a squiggly pattern. When we returned home, my older sister made me tug up my shirt and show her friends, like a sideshow freak - but I didn't really mind... I was quite proud of my uniquely sun-adorned skin.

More self portraits can be found here.

Friday, January 06, 2006

Bubbles and a Round Rosy Cheek