jennanddave.com

My Hair. All I can say is: gah.

I haven't had it cut in a year and a half. When I found out I was pregnant with Holly, I decided to take advantage of the crazy hair growth that goes on. The idea was to have hair that was long enough to actually have hairstyle options beyond: short; shorter; really, really short. Now it's long. And I have no idea what to do with it. Except I've now invested all of this time into growing it, I don't want to make a mistake and get a hairstyle I don't like. So I'm paralyzed. Now I understand those women who have long hair but freak out at the mere mention of taking "just a few inches" off. Well, not entirely, but sort of; I have a feeling they actually like their hair, whereas I pretty much am not loving my hair at all right now. I'm thinking I should just go and get it cut really short again and be done with it.

Posted by Jenn at 11:34 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)

Last night I was SO TIRED! I did my pre-sleep yoga around 8:30 and by nine I was sitting on the edge of the bed reading a book. My face was scrubbed, my teeth brushed, and my eyes getting droopy. I decided to get up to say good-night to Dave and ended up spending the next two hours reading about the top 10 art accidents according to Time magazine as well as every single entry on failbooking.com. I crawled into bed around 11:30. I'm such a jerk. A really, really tired jerk.

Posted by Jenn at 02:22 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Holly officially has one bottom tooth. She seems relieved. I didn't have the heart to tell her about the rest of the teeth that would soon be following suit.

Holly has been able to go from her back to her tummy for months now. Today she demonstrated she officially knows how to go from her tummy to her back.

Henry made it official that although he wrote on his construction paper green eggs and ham craft that he would like "to eat them at Grandma and Grandpa's house", he doesn't actually want any green eggs or ham. Ever. Seriously. Blech. Stop talking about it.

Dave officially stopped a goal with his groin tonight at field hockey. He's very thankful for the invention of the protective cup.

I officially ate too many peanut M&M's this evening.

The word "official" officially has no meaning anymore because I've used it so many times it now just sounds weird.

Posted by Jenn at 08:53 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

Holly has way too much going on right now. She's cutting her two bottom teeth, one of which, when I did the first of my six thousand daily gum checks, I could actually see gleaming just underneath the surface. (Holly's current favorite foods: applesauce, carrot, thumb. Two of these items are usually organic; one is chock-full of preservatives.) She's been extremely fussy the last two nights at bedtime, which isn't like her, and I think it's safe to attribute that to the hard-core teething that's going on.

Right now she's absolutely pooped, but is fussing in her crib instead of snoozing. A minute ago I heard her binky hit the floor, so I went up to give it back to her. When I turned to check her out as I was shutting the door, I saw her hoist herself up onto all fours. Crawling is looming on the horizon a bit sooner than I expected.

Dave is trying to teach her to say "hi". It's very cute. His voice gets all squeaky and he says "Holly! Say 'hi'! Say 'hi' Holly!" and she'll look at him and say "haaa" and then beam at him. Then he beams at her, 100% the proud daddy, and then Henry and I have to shield our eyes from all of the beaming that's going on because it tends to get pretty bright.

I just want her to stay little and fuzzy-headed for a bit longer, thank you very much, but I think she's got other plans.

Posted by Jenn at 01:02 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

It's raining very hard here. It's also almost 60 degrees. I imagine the future flowers that are lying dormant in our flower bed are stretching their arms, feeling a bit groggy, and thinking "Wow, winter sure flew by." On the one hand, it would be nice if this was a sign of more to come, but for now I'm grateful to be able to open the windows and let a little fresh air in.

Posted by Jenn at 09:10 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

dave: It's amazing how well they anthropomorphize the robots in WALL-E.
me: You say this after seeing "Cars"?
dave: Well, in "Cars" they had teeth and mouths but in WALL-E they don't. So it's kind of amazing how by the end of the movie I'm like "Wow, Eve is kind of hot.".
me: ! ...Eve is kind of hot?
dave: *laughs*
me: This is so going on the blog.
dave: Hey, I knew what I was in for when I put it out there.
henry: I'm having "Booger King" for dinner! Hahahahahahahaha!

Posted by Jenn at 09:08 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Holly is currently on her third nap of the day. She was up for her usual hour and a half this morning, slept for an hour, was up for about an hour, then took a two hour nap. An hour and fifteen minutes later and she was rubbing her eyes against my shoulder so I took her back up. And I just realized I forgot to change her diaper. Ah well. Such is life.

Henry came down with a cold on Sunday, stayed home from school Monday and Tuesday, then had a double-whammy of a day, where he went on a field trip in the morning, then to his afternoon pre-school shortly after getting back home. It really took it out of him because he slept for fourteen hours that night. It was pretty amazing. He did something similar again last night.

Yesterday morning, I woke up, fed Holly and put her down for a nap, then madly dashed around when she woke up at 10:30 so that we could go to playgroup, called a friend en route and became sorely depressed when I found out she was going away on vacation for the weekend and I was going to be stuck in the 'burg. Briefly thought about impromptu trip to somewhere else. However, things looked up when I got to playgroup. There were only three of us there, so we got to have an actual conversation! For, like, an hour and a half! It was great.

Yesterday Dave woke up with Henry's cold, puttered around the internet until 10:30 when he joined me for the mad dash around the house so that we could go to playgroup, then he worked hard all day, came home, ate a little bit, then collapsed while I hustled the kids into bed. Then he took Flash out for a walk and went back to work. I don't know when he came home, but it was after 11 because that's when I went to bed and he was still out. The man's a machine during the semester.

Right now, I'd be willing to bed that both Dave and I wish we were Holly: on our third nap of the day.

Posted by Jenn at 02:44 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Dave and I have been making good on the resolution where I grandly declared we'd make our own desserts and bread. We haven't purchased bread since 2009 (speaking of grand declarations). The first two weekends Dave made bread, first using the recipe on the back of the King Arthur's Bread flour bag, then using a recipe from The Fannie Farmer Cookbook (specifically the 11th edition; it's our go-to cookbook). This past Sunday I tried out the famous 5-minute boule bread recipe that showed up in last year's Dec '08/Jan '09 issue of Mother Earth News. It lived up to all of the hype, despite a slight hitch involving me losing my temper (I tend to do that with dough).

I also made Cream of Asparagus soup from scratch. I perused the recipe on Friday while Henry and I were sipping hot cocoa and coming up with the week's menus. Never shall I make that mistake again. After I completed the first few steps, I sat down and read the rest and nearly had a heart attack. Then I spent the next three hours boiling, shocking, chopping, simmering, pureeing, sieving, stirring, and salting. Henry came in during the sieving and asked what I was doing. I told him I was taking out the asparagus and onion bits because I knew he didn't like them. He said "Good!" and then wandered off. When I set a bowl full of gorgeous Cream of Asparagus soup (filled to the brim with love, I might add) in front of him, his face crumpled and he said "WHY IS IT STILL GREEN?!?!?" I cannot emphasize or italicize the "green" enough. At least I appreciated all of my effort. Also, I will probably not be making that recipe for another nine years, which is how long it had been since I had made it the first time. Not surprising.

Today Henry and I made cinnamon ice cream. It was crazy good. I asked Henry what flavor we should try making next and he said "A flavor that's green." Then I kicked him in the butt. Not really, but I kind of wanted to. Do you think he does it on purpose?

Posted by Jenn at 09:22 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Friday morning. Removal of stitches. It didn't go so well. Thursday night I went on iTunes and downloaded Henry's favorite episode of SpongeBob so he could have something to focus on while the Dr. removed his stitches. After Henry was weighed and had his temperature taken and we were hanging out waiting for the real action to begin, I fired up my laptop and was told by iTunes I couldn't play the show I had purchased because I hadn't given permission to any computers to be able to play the show. That I had purchased. And downloaded. To my laptop. So that was a big fail. When the Doctor showed up, he showed Henry what medical tools of doom and torture he was going to be using (tweezers, scissors, gauze) and Henry promptly lost it. Oh the hysterical sobbing. Poor kid. The doctor was really great. We tried to find a way to get the stitches out that would comfort Henry the most, for example sitting on Dave's lap, but none of them worked. Plus, when he did calm down enough to where he wasn't crying, he was still doing the post-hysterics reflexive sharp intake of breath which meant the Doctor still couldn't get the scissors in a good position to snip the stitches. Finally he called in a nurse to hold his head still while I held his arms and hands and three seconds later it was over. Henry couldn't get out of there fast enough. He didn't want a rubber ducky for being brave, he didn't want a lollipop or a sticker or both. He wanted to get to the car as fast as possible. So he, Dave, and Holly headed to the car while I checked us out. The nurse at the front desk said that it sounded like it went well. I laughed and said "You heard that all the way out here, eh?" She said they hear it every day, all day. She was also extremely surprised to hear that Henry handled the stitches going in far better than he handled them coming out. My kid: bucking the trends, as usual.

In the car, Henry said "I don't like going to the doctors because they hurt me." Long pause. "I would like going to the doctors if they didn't hurt me." I heartily agreed.

Posted by Jenn at 09:37 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

I've been very stressed and anxious lately which has led to the endearing quality of not being able to focus on anything or anyone. If someone's talking to me, I try really hard to listen and pay attention, but soon enough, I'm right back in my brain, obsessing and freaking out. Part of it is lack of quality sleep. Part of it is worry about things that have been going on. Lately, it's regularly crept up my shoulders and into my neck, and then taken on the form of headaches.

I know I don't take very good care of myself. I don't take any time out of my day to ground myself and refocus. Instead, I gradually get tenser and tenser until I crawl into bed and hope a night's sleep is enough to cure what ails me, but mostly it doesn't and I wake up exhausted.

The last two nights I've stretched out to a yoga dvd before going to bed. I've tried yoga before, but frankly, the sessions take too long. Generally I want lots of results in very little time, even when it comes to relaxation, and wouldn't you know it, therein lies the problem. After the very first session, I noticed a huge difference in how I felt physically. I'm going to try very hard to make that a regular part of my day.

Henry has to go to the doctor's bright and early tomorrow morning to have his two stitches removed. The reality of the fact that he actually has stitches hit him like a ton of bricks when I told him about his upcoming doctor's appointment and he completely fell apart. He was so distraught that when I pulled him onto my lap and hugged and held him while he cried, he didn't try to get away. I talked with him about it and told him all about the stitches I had when I was a kid. It helped subdue him temporarily, but once he started imagining how they're going to get the stitches out (I made the mistake of saying they might use scissors. Why did I think that would help?), a fresh batch of sobs would rear it's ugly head. I've noticed that it's much better to tell him these things a few hours before they happen, rather than spring them on him. This way he can cry, freak out, ask questions, digest what's coming, so that by the time he's faced with the reality of it, he usually handles things pretty well. Keep your fingers crossed for him tomorrow. And let's hope they don't actually use scissors. Let's hope they use magic.

Posted by Jenn at 08:09 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Knowing Henry's love of drumming, Dave's parents got him the Stomp! dvd for Christmas. At first he didn't want to watch it, but then he figured out exactly what Stomp! was and now it's on heavy rotation.

There are two reasons in particular why I love this dvd. The first is, Henry has always been creative when it comes to building drumsets. He like pots and pans, but he's never stopped there, and a lot of the varied things he uses they use in the show as well. The second is he's been completely inspired by some of the things they do to make sounds. A couple of weekends ago we were at the local hardware store. While Dave was looking for some kind of plumbing something, Henry and I found the toilet plungers. We wandered up and down the aisle sticking them to the floor and pulling them off. Guess what he wants for his birthday? Sometimes it's so easy to please my kid.

Stomp! is coming to a local theater. We're thinking we have a responsibility to take him.

Posted by Jenn at 05:02 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

On Saturday afternoon, around 4PM, the time of day when everyone's a little punchy from boredom or is in desperate need of a nap, Henry ran down our back hallway, tripped on our runner, and smashed his forehead on the door that leads down to our garage. He immediately started wailing and crying. Dave was outside taking down Christmas lights at the time and instantly knew from the sound of Henry's hysterics that we would be heading to the ER. When he came in, I was still trying to figure out what had happened. I was hugging Henry, who had his hand over part of his forehead. He told me he ran into the door. I figured a bruise would be about the extent of it until he took his hand down from his face and I saw the blood. Then I saw the wound. That's when I knew he'd be in for at least a few stitches. Dave hustled the kids into the car while I ran around the house stocking up on baby toys and turning off space heaters and generally trying to be organized and thoughtful while in actuality being pretty much neither. When I got into the car, Henry said from the back seat "Guess what happened to me on the way to the car?" "What?" "I fell down and hurt my butt!!!" *giggle* *grin*

Once we got on the road Dave wanted to know who wanted to stop at Burger King for an ICEE. I was all about getting to the hospital asap, but then Dave, who's old hat at this by now, said we'd have a long wait anyway, we might as well be sipping ICEE's while we were there. So we stopped and got one for me and one for Henry. We registered at the front desk of ER then headed for the kid's play area. Henry showed me around. Then we were called back to the intake office where a nurse asked Henry all sorts of questions about what happened. During a lull in the conversation, Henry leaned forward and said "Hey! Hey, Doctor? Guess what happened to me on the way to the car?" "What?" "I fell down and hurt my butt!!!" *grin* *giggle*

We headed back to the play area, picked out a few books, had some Cheetos, finished our ICEE's, then were shown into an exam room. Dave found some SpongeBob and all was good with the world. The Doctor came in, took a look at his wound, and determined he'd probably need two stitches. During a lull in the conversation, Henry turned to her and said "Hey! Hey, Doctor? Guess what happened to me on the way to the car?" "What?" "I fell down and hurt my butt!!!" *grin* *giggle*

The doctor put some numbing gel on for about fifteen minutes, then came back and injected a more potent numbing agent directly into the wound. Henry was crawling up the bed while she was doing that, mostly, we think, because it felt weird as opposed to it actually hurting. It took some coaxing to get him to lay back down, but he did. He focused on SpongeBob while the Doctor did her best to make sure she kept her needle and thread out of his line of sight while she was sewing his stitches. When she was done, he had no idea what had happened. While we were waiting for discharge papers we told him we'd take him anywhere he wanted to go for dinner. He chose a local BBQ joint. On the walk back to the car, he started running. I told him not to because we didn't want to have to take him back inside for more stitches. He stopped, whipped around, and said "Stitches?" I told him never mind, and off we went to dinner.

Henry really pulls it together during times of high stress. It's absolutely amazing. He handles these things better than I do.

Posted by Jenn at 04:21 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Not long ago, Dave was scritching Flash when he noticed a bump on her side. So we decided we needed to take her to the vet to have her checked out. A few weeks pass, and Dave notices another lump. We decide we really, *really* need to take Flash to the vet. The other day, Flash suddenly leapt out of her bed, skidded on our slippery, newly sanded floor, then couldn't get up on her hind legs and sort of swam/commando crawled into the dining room where we were all sitting. So we called the vet.

Because aging is glamorous, Flash was thrilled to hear that the official diagnosis was warts. Some of them even had fluid! And needed to be drained! The vet said she'll probably be getting more of them and will have to have some of them drained every once in a while. She also said there wasn't anything wrong with her hind legs, so who knows what the crawling thing was all about. Dave thinks she may have had a bad dream and had a tough time snapping back to reality.

While Flash was having her warts drained, Dave held out a stick covered in spray cheez to distract her. Apparently it worked very well, so I have decided the next time I need to get a shot, I'm definitely bringing a can along with me.

Posted by Jenn at 08:19 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)

Henry's pre-school has a month long hiatus for Christmas. It's a bit of a drag because he's high energy and I'm not good at coming up with ways to wear him out. On Tuesday I came across this post on my friend's website and thought that it looked like it would be a lot of fun to do. She has links to two other sites that have lots of fun crafts and I decided that I would have to make more of an effort to start planning out projects for the days when the weather's bad (ie. all of January and February, and most of March) if we're going to make it through the winter. Some of you may be thinking "Well, duh." but honestly, doing projects and crafts with my kid is not a place my brain goes to naturally. I don't think it is with Dave, either. Sometimes I think it's hilarious we even have kids. Anyway, back to the portraits. I took profile shots of Henry and Holly, traced them out onto contact paper, cut them out with a razor knife, then stuck the cut-out onto a piece of canvas. Initially I asked Henry what colors he wanted to paint his silhouette with, and he said blue and purple. Then he saw the other five colors and decided he would like to try all of them.

Here's a picture of the artist at work:

And here's the final product:

They came out pretty cool. I've saved the cutouts in case we want to do it again on paperboard. I got reusable contact paper per the suggestion of one of the other websites who describes the process, but it didn't stick very well to the weave of the canvas, hence the smudge of blue on Henry's forehead. If we do it again on canvas, I'm going to use the stickier contact paper. And possibly watercolors.

Posted by Jenn at 04:25 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)

Holly had oatmeal for the first time yesterday evening. It's got her insides completely bound up. We're opening each diaper with great trepidation and secretly breathing a sigh of relief when it's not "The Big One" while desperately hoping that when it finally occurs, it's on the other person's watch. I'm betting it's going to happen approximately twenty minutes after I go to sleep tonight. Nothing like handling something like that whilst groggy and disoriented.

Posted by Jenn at 06:01 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I'm a little sad to be packing up the Christmas decorations. The holiday's were so much fun this year. The other night I tried to pinpoint exactly why that was the case. Partly I think it was because of our amazing trip to my Grandmother's house early in December. She had already decked out her house in holiday finery and that, along with the view from our hotel room of Pittsfield's huge lit tree and Berkshire Bank's giant lit wreath, plus a snowstorm to make everyone feel cozy thrown in for good measure, was definitely enough to put a girl in the Christmas spirit. Also, I really stuck to my decision to not overdo the usual Holiday shenanigans. That's something I'm going to make an annual tradition. Nixing expectations, sitting back, relaxing, and enjoying the season. Who would have thought?

Today I'm going to start the taking-down process, although probably the tree will be up for another day or two. Let's be realistic shall we? I've never been a fan of the quick removal method when it comes to band-aids, so I'll just carry that notion into the de-holidayification of our house.

Posted by Jenn at 11:35 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Goodbye "Girl's Next Door"...

Hello "Twilight"...

Let's see...new resolutions...hmmm. A list, shall we?

1. Actively making an effort to reduce the amount of chemicals we're being exposed to, particularly in our foods. I read this article in Mother Earth News, and it scared the living daylights out of me. Most of it I knew, but some of it I didn't (ie. canned foods have Bisphenol A in the lining. Argh.) Which brings me to number 2.

2. Amping up our garden. We had huge (and sometimes surprising) success with our potatoes, tomatoes, various herbs, peppers, summer squash, and onions last year. Most of what we got in the CSA we joined last summer were things we didn't particularly love, so we're going to go try and grow the things we did like, like Swiss Chard. Lots and lots of Swiss Chard.

3. Dave and I have a sweets obsession. So instead of making grand declarations about what we will and won't eat sweets-wise, I'd like to make more of our desserts at home, because store bought just isn't that satisfying. Also, I'd like to make our bread at home, too.

4. I'm pretty happy with my weight. I would, however, like to get my stomach muscles back. They disappeared sometime in February of '09, with good reason, but I kind of miss them. So does my lower back.

Posted by Jenn at 07:47 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)