Do you love peaches?

On Erik and my first shopping trip together as a married couple, we were browsing through the produce when he turned to me and very matter of factly asked, "Do you love peaches?" It cracked me up that he would use the word "love" instead of "like" when asking about produce, so it has become a running joke to ask in our family.

I gave Alice a piece of my peach today, and while she was eating it, she turned to me and I could just see in a little thought bubble above her head, "Do you love peaches?" Here she is:





She's also invented a new game that I call "aaaAAaa, Bonk". She'll stand at the top of the stairs and throw a stuffed animal down. The whole time it's falling, she'll scream "AAaAAAHAA!" and then when it hits the ground, she'll say "bonk!" It's adorable. :)

Food pick up day!

It's pick up day for the co-op! I always get so excited for pick up day. Here's what we're getting this month:

• 1 lb. lean ground beef


• 2 lbs. chicken thighs


• 4 6oz. boneless center cut pork chops


• 1 lb top sirloin fajita strips


• 6 peaches


• 7 plums


• 6 oranges


• 2 avocados


• 1 bunch broccoli


• 1 romaine lettuce


• 3 bell peppers


• 1 bag carrots (2 lbs.)


• Stone Ground's Artisan Wheat Loaf


• 16 oz. red beans

All for $23 that was paid at the beginning of the month. The best thing is that by this time in the month, all of our money is spent, so it's especially exciting to be getting so much produce. :D

If you're interested, check out http://foodco-op.net/

Babysitting & Big Fat Losers

For the past couple days, I have been watching Suzie's little girl, Elliot for about 3 hours a day. This is going to be a semi permanent gig while Suzie is going back to grad school. I was worried that I wouldn't bond to her because even though I love her and think she's cute, I have heard that it's hard to do in home daycare when you have your own kids. I hear that you don't love the kids and you come to resent them for taking time away from your own kids or from your family or housework or whatever.

Well, Monday was rough. Elliot cried quite a bit and I tried holding her and bouncing her and rocking her, and she would fall asleep but then wake up immediately any time Alice got right up in her face and very excitedly jabbered or said, "BABY!!" to her. Go figure.

Tuesday was better. Elliot had a bottle although not much of it, and Alice went down for a nap about an hour before Suzie came to pick Elliot up, so we had some time to ourselves. I also wore Elliot in the baby carrier that day which really helped me to bond to her because I got to feel her so close and any time she would wiggle, it reminds me of how you can feel the baby move when you're pregnant.

Today, I decided that Alice would be taking a nap at 2:00 every day. That gives Elliot and I about 2 hours of time when we don't have to worry about toddlers being "helpful" and shoving pacifiers into baby mouths or patting baby on the head a bit too roughly. Don't get me wrong--it is adorable. I have a very willing assistant who is unfortunately not as skilled as she thinks she is.

I'm hoping that tomorrow will be good, too. :) She's such a cute little thing! Here she is *almost* laughing at a little vibrating toy that she loves:



Tonight, I made spaghetti for dinner and sat Alice down in her chair with a bowl of chopped up noodles and her spoon. She started eating and immediately said, "mmm... mmMMmmm...MMmmm" over and over until I acknowledged her and said, "is it yummy?" Later in the meal, she informed me "I toot" and when I didn't say anything, she proceeded to tell me 2 or 3 more times until I realized what she was saying and asked, "Did you toot?" She said yeah and gave a little grin and I said, "Oh, excuse you!"

She's starting to put words together into sentences. Yesterday, Sarah and David were babysitting, and Alice grabbed Sarah's hand and brought her over to the stairs, said, "I get you!" and then started running up the stairs, hoping Sarah would follow. It was so funny because we have played like that with her, but always say "I'm gonna get you" or something like that, so her saying "I get you" is really amazing to me because it means she's putting the words together on her own, and knows at least somewhat of what they mean.



I've joined a biggest loser friends edition blog with Amy and Brad and Sam. All of you friends should come and join us! The rules are that you weigh in once a week (wednesdays), you have to post at least once a week, and that whoever loses the highest percentage of weight by December 24 (Christmas Eve) is the winner! If you join, then you will have rights to contribute to the blog. So far, even though it's only been 1 day, it's fun to be contributing to a group blog. COME AND PLAY! Even if you only have 5 lbs to lose, we'll help eachother stay motivated. :)

Picture Puzzle

So every day Squirt will do something that I'm either proud of, impressed, or amazed by. Today we were watching Mickey Mouse Club House, and there's a segment called Picture Puzzle, which is just a picture (in this case, a tent) that has been divided into 4 pieces and then shuffled around. There's a little song and then the pieces settle, and Mickey asks, "Does this look right?" At which point, Squirt said, "no". The puzzle started moving around again to the music, and it stopped in the right position. Mickey asked, "how about this?" Squirt said, "yeah".

If she watched this show every day and I sat there answering Mickey with her all the time, then that would be one thing, but she doesn't usually like this show so we don't watch it more than once in a while (every other week, maybe?) so the fact that she got the puzzle right is even more surprising to me. She's getting so big and growing up so much. <3

I think she's teething again. A few weeks ago her top 2 molars cut through so we went through the snotting and drooling like a water fountain, along with the extra crankiness. On Saturday, the face dripping started up again so I am hoping that these teeth will cut through quickly!

I'm realizing that our trip to Disney World is coming up closer and closer, which means that (since we are planning our family around a vacation) the day that we start trying to have a baby is getting closer and closer. I'm starting to get a little anxious about it. I'm remembering all of the hard parts about being pregnant and thinking about how much I love spending time with Squirt and how I don't want any of my time with her to go away, and the selfish part of me doesn't want to spread out my love at all, but to concentrate it on her. On the other hand, I'm excited to get pregnant on purpose and to have a new little tiny baby and have a sibling for Squirt and to feel a baby  move insie of me again, but it's almost like now that I have my baby on the outside, all of the magical parts of pregnancy don't seem as magical anymore... the baby getting hiccups and kicking and the ultrasound and all are being overshadowed by counting carbs and getting fat and feeling sick all the time... *sigh*

I almost wish though that we could just get surprised again because we probably would have put off getting pregnant longer and longer and we might still not have Squirt at this point in our lives if we had actually been able to plan for her. I can't imagine not having her yet though and how bored and selfish Frik and I would be if we didn't have Squirt to keep us serving and working. So I'm trying to not be selfish now and think forward to the fact that I am going to love a new baby. Maybe the horrors that come along with pregnancy will mean something more to me when I am purposefully putting myself through it.

Anyway, that's my rambling thought for the day :) I recently posted a bunch of pictures on facebook, so you should take a look at them :)

Looking through old stuff only causes trouble...

I've been looking through some old documents I have saved and came across some that were funny and some that were embarassing... the one that follows is both of those. I wrote it shortly before I met Frik about my first "make out" experience. It was a class assignment to write about an event that changed my life or something like that, and this had just happened days before the assignment was given. Much to Frik's dismay, my feelings about kissing are still pretty much the same.

Without further ado, here it is:

My First Kiss
I made it all the way to 19.  Not intentionally, not accidentally, I just made it there without being kissed.  Lots of girls I knew had never been kissed—virgin lips.    They were waiting around, wondering what it felt like and hoping it would happen to them.  That’s what made me different from them.  I never cared.  I enjoyed holding hands, walking together, or cuddling during movies, but I seldom daydreamed or hoped or even thought about whether or not he would kiss me.  At the end of the night, we would say goodbye without anticipation.  That “perfect moment” never came, but I went back to my room and fell asleep just as content as ever.  My only thoughts about the future kiss I yearned for so little: whenever it came, it would come—probably with some guy who I had dated for a while, someone with as little experience as I had.  I never expected a perfect, romantic moment, but I thought I would tolerate it.  That’s all I thought about it.
Then one night I sat on the couch reading magazines in German with some guy named Nate…or Craig.  I could barely remember.  I had only met him 3 hours ago.  He didn’t speak German, so he really just followed along while I read, pretending he knew what the articles said.  At curfew, I walked him out the door.  We hugged and then it happened: the moment I had never sat around waiting for.
He turned his head towards mine a few times and looked at me with his eyes half shut like he wanted to eat me.  I resisted, but he finally came at me with his mouth hanging open like a trout right after you take the hook out.  He put his tongue on top of my lips that I kept pursed together.  I didn’t know how to react.  Not only had this never happened to me before, but I didn’t like him or even know him well enough to like him.  I tried to avoid drinking his saliva, which felt surprisingly thicker than mine with a slightly syrupy consistency, similar to the texture and thickness you get from sucking on a cough drop, but without the flavor or the menthol cooling action.  For the most part, I succeeded in my endeavors to avoid fluid exchange, but in the process, his spit spread all over my face, coating the skin between my nose and the cleft in my chin.  He rubbed his rough yet squishy tongue over my lips, trying to shove it between and into my mouth.  He finally stopped, and I put my head down on his shoulder and tried to stifle a chuckle that had built up.  I thought it was over.  I thought I was safe and free, when he apparently realized that he had failed in his attempt to woo me by licking, so he tried again.  This time I just stood still.  When he finished, I wiped my face off on his bristled jawbone and retreated to my apartment, laughing.
My roommates, who watched us through the peephole, tell me that kissing feels good when you actually like the guy and that I should look forward to the next time. I don’t think so.  In fact, any physical contact between a male and female causes a gagging reflex in my throat—Even contact that I used to appreciate or enjoy.  The next day, Nate/Craig came over and tried to snuggle with me on the couch.  Besides my fear the entire time that he wanted to assault me again with body fluid, I got the chills every time he ran his hand up my back or rested it on my shoulder—not good chills.  Bad chills.  Your mother just fell and broke her back chills.  That’s when we talked and decided to end our one and a half day attempt at a relationship.
I can’t even watch movies anymore where people kiss.  I felt especially nauseous while watching the scene in “Spiderman” where Mary Jane kisses her super-hero stalker while he hangs upside-down in the pouring rain.  Wet bodies touching seemed less romantic than ever.  That will never happen to me again.  No, I have vowed never to kiss again.

Can't sleep...

Isn't it just wonderful that as soon as my baby is really sleeping through the night, I fall into a bout of insomnia? Doesn't seem fair... I woke up yesterday at 5:00, worried because i didn't think Frik had made it home, but he was here. I couldn't fall back asleep after that. boo... That was also the first night that Squirt slept completely from 8:30 until 7:00 without waking up and needing me to go comfort her back to sleep. She is growing up so much! a couple of my favorite things she does lately:

She says a new word at least every day, and I'm not talking about mimicking when I say "Say apple" and she'll say apple, but more like she was playing with a friend's scooter, just looking at it, and she said, "bike" or she came up to erik and said, "muhnana" and so he asked "do you want a banana?" and she said "yes" and nodded her whole cute little body.

She has been listening to instructions I give her and then acknowledging me by saying "k". For example, I'll tell her, "Lets pick up your blocks and then we'll eat some lunch" and she'll look at me and say, "k".  Or when I dropped her off at the daycare at the gym, I set her down with some baby dolls and told her I loved her and I'd be back soon, and she said "k" and gave me a kiss.

She has also been so good about going to bed. As i left the room a couple nights ago, she said, "ni-night" to me on the way out.

When she is done eating, she will say "all done" now instead of "da done".

She started saying Momma more intentionally instead of calling me daddy all the time :)

Yesterday morning, when i brought her downstairs, she looked around the corner of the house and said, "Daddy? Duke?" It was adorable and when she says Duke it's the cutest little thing ever.

Some of her words now are book, banana, Ellie (the neighbor's daughter), Belly, eye, nose, mouth, cheek, teeth, ear, cute, pretty, bird, good girl (about a baby at church), blue (actually referring to the color when someone asked what color it was!), phone, and 'one, two, three, wheee!'(which really sounds like two two three whee, but it's still pretty good!)

Anyway, there's my middle of the night update. I'm gonna clean up the front room and maybe get tired enough to fall asleep. hopefully. :(