Things I'm Excited About Right Now

• The garden plans that are underway: seed packets in the kitchen, a space cleared in the yard, wood in the carport waiting to be built into frames, my new compost pile doing its thing!
  
• An appointment for a consultation with an orthodontist in a few weeks
• Setting up Pearl's room - just mentally so far. Gathering up ideas, shopping around.
• An upcoming day trip to a big aquarium.
• The fact the Spring is very much here:

Uberlist

I was pleased to see that the New Year's theme at Mama Says Om is Uberlist, something they did last year and I was looking forward to participating in this time around. Lofty and lowly, here are some plans, hopes, and resolutions for 2007, in no particular order:

• Create a mixed vegetable-herb-flower garden that is beautiful as well as functional
• Be kinder and more patient
• Eat less sweets
• Learn more about nutrition and put what I learn into practice
• Add lunches to the meal plan so that Pearl and I always have something yummy and healthy to eat in the middle of the day
• Be more diligent about reading nonfiction
• Keep the house cleaner
• Breathe deeply
• Learn to felt
• Go through my bazillion digital photographs and get rid of the cruddy ones
  
• Learn to knit
• Get more bookshelves
• Frame and hang more pictures
• Install a cat door
• Make a quilt for our bed
• Set up Pearl's room
• Start moving Pearl into her own bed
• Make my own greeting cards - enlist Pearl's help on some!
• Do yoga
• Learn to batik
• Start composting
• Write more
• Learn more about my camera and photography
• Go camping
• Take Pearl to a nearby big aquarium
• Bake my own bread
• Attend the UU church, at least once
• Finish Pearl's baby book and have it printed & bound
• Get braces
• Visit my brother-in-law and do some fun stuff in the city he lives in
  
• Plant morning glories along the fence
• Have friends and family over for dinner more often
• Get out of the house by myself more, and not on errands, just for fun!
• Buy only clothes that are comfortable, fit well, and are of good quality... this includes underwear!
• Be more appreciative of my talents
• Research vaccinations and decide what to do about them
  
• Brush up on my espanol
• Find a good family doctor
• Paint. Draw.
  
• Do some volunteer work
• Don't go so long between haircuts that I feel like a total frump
• Get dinner at least partially prepared during the day so I can spend more time in the evening with my husband and daughter
• Remember that all I'm assured of ever getting is this moment

10 Things

Ten Random Things:

1. My baby sister is as old now as I was when my relationship with my ex-husband started. How can that be? She seems so young; I felt so old...

2. This morning I totally forgot and missed Pearl's 18 month well-baby visit. I was very upset with myself as I am anxious about having her turned-in foot reevaluated... the office staff was, as usual, not very kind or sympathetic. I really dislike that clinic. Our make-up appointment is a month and a half away with a completely different doctor than we saw last time.

3. The bank gave us a loan so we can pay off our credit card debt and nip sky-rocketing monthly payments in the bud, woohoo!

4. I am thinking about checking out the local Unitarian Universalist church.

5. This evening when I was moving some cookies I'd baked from the pan to a platter, I placed them in stacks rather than in a pile all willy-nilly. While doing so I had a flashback to my own childhood - standing at just above kitchen-counter height, eagerly watching as my mother placed hot chocolate chip cookies in stacks, one stack for each of us, three cookies each!

6. Wintry weather is definitely here: the temperature dips below freezing during the night and my husband rides his bike through a frosted landscape to work. The trees that line the backyard have lost all their leaves and the sun sets now as I cook supper, watching the pale pink and blue sky through the lacework of their branches.

7. I love the movie My Neighbor Totoro. Sweet, funny, magical. Beautiful artwork. No violence, the 'bad guy' is a real child's fear - the loss of a parent. This is the first anime I've really enjoyed (though I must admit that my exposure to it so far has been limited to Dragon Ball Z, Pokemon, and Sailor Moon!). I've watched it with Pearl a few times - she seems to enjoy it too.

8. We splurged this year and ordered an organic turkey. We're saving it until the bliss of Thanksgiving turkey wears off, then we'll roast it - on the Solstice, perhaps?

9. A friend of mine from high school is expecting her first baby, and I don't know that our friendship will survive it. Her parenting style & choices are vastly different from mine, and it breaks my heart to think of what her newborn will be missing out on. My mind says that I should respect her choices, but my heart cries out that they are wrong.

10. A random photo:



Read ten more things at Blueberry Pie, and ten more still at My Topography.

To Do with a Tot

My husband wanted me to come up with a list of things to do with Pearl when he's in need of inspiration, and these are the ideas I gathered up. I thought I would share them here, too. I found many, many more ideas but pared them down to the ones I thought most suitable for an eighteen month old. Please feel free to give suggestions! This list is a work in progress.



Around the House:

• Build a jungle gym (away from hard corners) out of sofa cushions
• Hide an object under one of two or three cu      ps & have her try to find it
  
• Blocks!  Knocking over the tower is a favorite, but try horizontal 'stacking' too! And sorting by shape.  Someday I want to get some colored ones so we can sort them by color.
• Take her on a blanket ride through the house!
• Listen to music and dance!
• Sing and do the movements that go along with:

• The Wheels on the Bus
• Itsy Bitsy Spider
• Patty Cake
• Head, Shoulders, Knees, and Toes
• Etc

Get a Little Messy:

• Paint! (at the table/outside please!)
• Bubbles!
  
• Color with crayons!
• Texture play - get a few bowls/containers.  Fill them with cheap, differently textured stuff - one or two kinds at a time.  Include measuring cups for scooping; funnels, slotted spoons.  Talk about the color, texture, size, shape, taste if she tastes it!  Add a container of water if you want to get really wild.
  

cornstarch
cornmeal
oatmeal
ice cubes
cotton balls
jello
pudding
dry beans
rice
flour

Get Out:

Go to the park!
Go outside!
Go to the library!

On the Computer:

• Explore Flickr - try photos other than those of herself.  Family members is okay but I think better yet would be animals: kitties, puppies, birds.  A tag search for pets and then talking about/identifying the kinds of pets, for example.  Body parts would be another good one (careful with that one though! ;) )
  
• Kneebouncers - this is a site with lots of simple flash games.  Some of them require aiming, but others (the guitar/keyboard/drums one is good) just respond to banging on the keyboard and/or clicking mouse buttons
• Make a Jackson Pollock painting - Move mouse to paint, click button to change colors.
  
• YouTube for Toddlers - This a list full of links of toddler-entertaining YouTube clips.  And let's not forget her favorite, the Silly Kitties video.
• Music Videos on Noggin - Can't go wrong with Laurie Berkner, Dan Zanes, and Elizabeth Mitchell!
• Learn some new signs!
  

Things I Am Enjoying This Week

* The latest crop of aubergines from my garden; delicious when roasted, fried, and sauteed! ('Aubergine' sounds so much nicer than 'eggplant', don't you think?)

* Watching Pearl poke her newly-discovered belly button - so cute!

* An Autumn Mix of Jelly Belly beans that I won in on of last week's drawings on the Urban Baby Runway Blog. I love that place, check it out if you haven't - the ladies there review all sorts of products and services for mamas and babies and frequently give things away. I've won a $65 gift certificate from Kate Quinn Organics there in the past - and now that the weather is cooler Pearl and I are enjoying the clothes I ordered!

* Google Calendar. It integrates nicely with Gmail so I get reminders about everything. I'm using it to keep my activities, appointments, meal plans, and chores all organized. I am lazy, a procrastinator, and very bad at managing my time wisely so it's been very useful.

* Burt's Bees Peach and Willowbark Deep Pore Scrub. I don't know why I love cleaning my skin with little hard particles, but I always have! Burt's Bees also has a new tear-free baby shampoo out that I've been using on Pearl, smells so good and is free of yucky chemicals.

* Cinnamon doughnuts and apple cider!

* Over-the-knee socks from Sock Dreams. Cute, warm socks and tights = me wearing skirts in cold weather!

* This picture, one of several that my sister took of Pearl and I yesterday:

Things I Love Right Now

~* Hummus, especially homemade.
~* The bond between my wonderful husband and my sweet little girl.
~* Buffy the Vampire Slayer. This year we started and completed watching the entire series on DVD, and now we're going back and starting over; falling in love with the show again.
~* Spending time with my brother-in-law, who is moving across the state at the end of this week.
~* The books in the series "A Song of Fire and Ice," which I am rereading. I'm on the most recently published book and am impatient for the next one to be released!
~* Spending time with my mother, who just returned from three weeks on the beautiful Emerald Coast of Florida.
~* These shirts, which I want.

Better Late Than Never, Right?

Sarahgrace and Mama C-ta tagged me for these here two list thingies respectively, a looooooong time ago and I've finally finished them! However it took so much effort that I no longer have the energy to pass them along so feel free to imagine that I am tagging you personally, dear reader, and complete them if you will.

A lot of things about me:

I am - twenty-two!
I want - jeans that fit well. My own forest, with a big stream in it. A never-ending supply of chocolate.
I wish - I could make friends more easily.
I hate - feeling self-conscious all the time.
I miss - having a thousand open doors in front of me.
I hear - the sound of the fan through the baby monitor: white noise to mask the noise I make while she sleeps.
I wonder - what my daughter will look like when she's grown, where her path will take her. How it happened that my cleaning accessories are all neon green.
I regret - always having felt older than my age.
I am not - good at speaking my feelings aloud.
I dance - when neccessary or with a baby in my arms.
I sing - lullabies, made up silly songs for my girl, whatever is stuck in my head.
I cry - over nothing at all, over times gone, more often (these days) with such joy...
I am not always - pleasant to be around.
I make with my hands - meals for my family, piles of dirty laundry, stacks of clean diapers
I write - lists, plans, phone numbers. Memories to keep, moments to share.
I confuse - important things with things not so important.
I need - to call the dentist again :(
I should - bake more, write more, paint more.
I start - chores, projects, lots of things that are never finished.
I finish - my dinner! Often my husband's too.
I need to tag - anyone willing to play:)

Six Weird Facts/Things/Habits about Me:

1. When I was a child I hated mushy cereal - probably because as a young child I couldn't tolerate milk and therefore ate my cereal dry and then once my body could handle milk, the mushyness was just revolting. So! I'd pour my milk into a bowl, put sugar into the milk if it was an unsweetened cereal (ugh I can't believe I did that! The thought seems gross now.), and pour cereal into a large cup. I'd dump the cereal (Cheerios, usually) into the bowl a bit at a time, refilling once I'd eaten what was in there. My favorite cup to use for this purpose was a big insulated mug-type cup that my dad had picked up somewhere with a scantily clad blonde holding a big drill. Not because if featured a scantily clad blonde, because I ALWAYS read while I ate and didn't do much blonde-gazing.

What a weirdo I was! Somewhere along the way I outgrew all that rigamarole and now eat my cereal like a normal person. Kids are so bizarre.

2. I can whistle through my tongue.

3. I can't go to church without getting a serious case of the giggles, very irreverent giggles, which is why I don't go. That and the fact that I'm not religious.

4. I have two freckles on my right pinky toe.

5. I do not shave my armpits.

6. I HATE to be cold. Hate it.

Whew! That was intense.