Tuesday, February 28, 2012

score


If anyone is keeping track, Teddy totally won today.

He is adorable and that's a good thing. But my mild mannered baby who used to nap like a champ has started to nap for one hour a day. One. Hour. That's not even as long as it used to be if he only took one nap!

On days like that I'm not the most patient mom. I get no down time.

I think it would be much better if he was his pleasant, happy self all of those extra hours he's awake during the day. But he turns into a whiney, impatient, screechy, manic little guy. If his car is stuck in the garage and he can't get it out, it might be the end of the world. If I have the audacity to make him a meal and not feed him scraps like a dog in the process, it's definitely the end of the world.

So those extra awake hours are not exactly fun for any of us.

I'm sure it didn't help that he started the day by getting three vaccinations.

Bed time came early and I think it's better for everyone involved. Including Mr. Yin who, though he's not here all day to join in the fun, will benefit with some nice hot curry chicken when he gets home.

Monday, February 27, 2012

measuring up



Tiny Yin helping us hang our brown curtains. He's super helpful.

Sunday, February 26, 2012

fitting in

We live in New Jersey.


on your head



He's seriously the cutest little man alive.

(Yes, I realize he's sitting next to an open electrical outlet. I'm an awesome mom.)

compromise

We live in an apartment with huge white walls and they're mostly bare. Most of our art is still in storage in AZ (thanks Brit!), and the few pieces of art that did make their way to NJ (again, thanks Brit!) with Wall-e, were only hung this weekend. We know we're lame. But we thought we were going to be moving apartments so thought why hang art if we just have to move in a few weeks?. Well, we're staying here now. Smokey moved out, and Loud Girl and her parents moved in. (We'll save that for another post.) So we're staying.

Anyway. Living in our white box has us craving a lot of color. Bold color. We decided we'd go for nice jewel tones in our living room. (After we geniusly bought an off-white couch to live in our white apartment. It was too good of a deal, we couldn't turn it down: $388 for a small sleeper sofa sectional from Crate and Barrel outlet? Yes please.) So I made a few pillows with some bold green and purple Marimekko fabric (also from the Crate and Barrel Outlet) to get us started. We got some dark purple curtains at Ikea, only to open them a few weeks later and notice they were more brown than purple. Not just "more brown", they're full on brown. So they got moved to the dining room. And the living room remains curtain-less.

This whole time Mr. Yin and I have been looking for rugs at various places. I insist we get natural fabrics in rugs, so wool was mostly what we were looking at. Bold, wool rugs in patterns we both like are not easy to come by.

One day, Mr. Yin was looking online and found a few modern rugs he really liked. They were wool. For some reason he was dead-set on getting a rug and thought these deals were too good to pass up. I think he caught me on a night I was emotionally spent trying to get the lad to take a nap. And I just didn't care about the colors in our living room, so when he wanted to get this rug, I said fine.



It's Tangerine Tango (or I'm telling myself it is). That means the only color we currently have in our living room is our green throw pillow, our purple throw pillow and our orange rug. That's not exactly what I was thinking when I said I wanted our living room to be accented with jewel tones.

Seriously. Someone make me a mood board for me?

PS I like the rug, it's just asking me to rethink the entire color scheme we have (or don't have) going on here.




Thursday, February 23, 2012

hiding



One way I know Master Teddy either doesn't approve of the food placed in front of him or is done eating food he did approve of minutes before, is his takes it in his right hand, lifts his right leg, and places the food under his buns. And then he starts it over again.

I call his seat the Treasury. It always has a few treasures after meal times.

Sometimes I forget to wipe the seat down after a meal and the treasures wait for me to find them as we're getting ready for the next one.


Wednesday, February 22, 2012

crazy town


I mentioned the other day on my Facebook wall that Teddy Bear gets crazy if he's up for a long time. A long time being around five or six hours. (We're having a rough transition down to one nap, but he just won't take two anymore.)


What I didn't mention is that he doesn't get cranky and whiney and sad, he gets these amazing spurts of energy and is hilarious. Everything is funny to him and there is a lot of giggling. And a lot of wanting to be chased.

Here are some photos from the other night after his bath. He's usually pretty mellow by this point and lays there chewing on his toothbrush while I lotion him and get him dressed. Not this night. He was wired. And every time I stopped holding him down, he'd escape and dart across the room.

He may or may not have been peeing in this picture.


Anyway, he's adorable and hilarious. Especially when he's tired. I hope he stays that way.


WNTW: Europe edition

In Amsterdam, our first stop. In the special pants. 
Mr. Yin and I are going through our photos to (finally!) print some and hang them on our vast and bare walls. Of course that meant going through our pictures from our little trip to Europe 18 months ago.

You may recall, I was barely pregnant. And we had been living on a grad student budget, in Arizona: the most casual place on earth. And my clothes in all the pictures reflect that.

In almost every photograph, I hate what I'm wearing. I can't remember if I did at the time, but then doesn't that mean I was the perfect candidate for What Not to Wear: Baby Mama Edition?  Why didn't someone sign me up!? (I'm still willing if anyone wants to nominate me.)

I knew I'd be getting bigger by the end of our trip, so I knew my clothing needed to be stretchy. What I didn't know is that Mr. Edmund (aka Edible) was going to sit so low in my pelvis making everything of the pant variety extremely uncomfortable, almost from day one.

"Hiking" in the Swiss Alps. In the special pants.

But, seriously, there had to have been a better solution than these pants, right? I mean come on! Is that any better than the times I wore Mr. Yin's shorts? Yes, your read that correctly: I wore Mr. Yin's shorts. In Europe. Not just in Europe, in Paris!

At the Rodin Museum in Paris, in Mr. Yin's shorts.
He used to tease me about my Old Navy stretchy skirts. He called them my "I give up skirts". You know the one, if you have a jersey skirt from Old Navy, you probably own one. Or many. But the truth is, they look the best in the pictures.

I wish someone had taken me aside and shown me that you can dress cute and be pregnant. I wish someone had taken me aside and given me some ideas on how to dress my growing baby bump. And butt, since mine decided to grow in proportion to my belly.

Rome, our last stop, approximately one month after Amsterdam. In the special dress. 
In the end, this is my favorite picture of me from the trip. And yes, I think I'm pushing my belly out. Something that didn't need to be done a few weeks later.

In the Louvre.



Tuesday, February 21, 2012

naps and excuses



I didn't forget to blog yesterday. I tried to do it from my bed on the kindle, but it just would't work. I decided to just write two posts today instead.

I wasn't going to write anything-earth shattering, only that instead of blogging yesterday during the day I opted for a nap.

It was one of the better decisions of my day, and the lad and I both got in 2+ hour naps.

And now, today we can get some things done.

Sunday, February 19, 2012

mostly for Crit



Critter, I don't know if you read my blog. But!

Today, some guy at church quoted the entire Saint Crispian's speech. The whole thing. At least the part we learned, and a whole bunch leading up to it.

And there wasn't one soul there who could appreciate it in the way that I appreciated it.

"Be in their flowing cups freshly remembered"-------(sustain it)

Maybe those of you who were there for the Great Snow Fort Fight of Ought One (I really have no idea what year it happened) would have had a good chuckle, too.

Saturday, February 18, 2012

a new friend



The Yin family had dinner at some friends' house last week. They have a little boy Teddy's age. And a three year-old. Watching Teddy play with their toys, Mr. Yin and I realized our little lad really doesn't have many toys, and thought we should get him some toys for toddlers. 

Mr. Yin felt so bad for him he went during his lunch break and got a few toys, including Mr. Potatohead (who has had a make-over) (or make-under if you ask me).

Tiny Ted loves his new friend, and all of his pieces. And shows his love by calling his friend "Tato".

Friday, February 17, 2012

Heath's challenge


Unbeknownst to her, I've decided to join Heath on her daily blogging for the rest of February. Does that mean I have tons of interesting things to write? Probably not. Unless you think the daily life of Teddy is very interesting. It's not a bad life, and he seems to enjoy it. But I do feel it might be more interesting if we lived in a city and could get out more regularly.

That being said, we did go into the city twice in one week two weeks ago. There is a bus that stops right in front of our complex that goes to Port Authority in NYC. Easy peasy. Teddy Bear does great on the bus, thanks to snacks and the Kindle.

My only regret about those two trips is that my boy hasn't taken his regular naps since all the excitement. Is he looking for more fun? More friends? I don't know. All I know is he used to sleep twice in the day, once at nine and again at one; both for 1.5 hours.

These days I'm lucky to get one 1.5 hour nap and then another 2 hours of playing in his crib, singing and talking to his toys.

Sounds like he's ready to drop to one nap, right? Well then why is it that when we do just one nap, that nap is only 45 minutes?

Take today, for example. Because of yesterday's disastrous attempt at two naps, which yielded one, hour nap in the morning and only 45 minutes of crib play time in the afternoon, I decided today I'd wear him out physically and then do one big nap in the afternoon. So we went outside. He climbed up and down the stairs on the playground, he swung, he crawled all over the wet ground, played with sticks and leaves, smashed some worms, and then crawled back to our apartment in his wet (from the ground) pants. And that got us a 45 minute nap.

Are you kidding me? 45 minutes? We were done with 45 minute naps months ago! But they've made their return.

I blame the cold. And the tooth. The tooth that has been threatening to make is appearance for almost a month now. A big, nasty bi-cuspid that is still just bulging under his gum, mocking me. The best part? He still has three of those bi-cuspids to go. And then the molars. (Which, coincidently, were supposed to come in before the bi-cusbids. But my boy had never done much in his life that was "by the book".)

Anyway. It's frustrating. The naps. The teeth.

But not the boy himself. He woke up the other morning and I brought him to our bed, like I always do, and he gave both Mr. Yin and I unsolicited kisses.

Wednesday, February 15, 2012

February 14, 2012


Tiny Mr. Yin and I enjoyed our day by playing with his cars and Mr. Potatohead (and I may or may not have consumed lots of spice jelly beans--the only kind in my book).

Real Mr. Yin and I celebrated by joining a CSA for a farm around the corner, and then had surf and turf for dinner. By the time Mr. Yin got home, I had the smashed potatoes, broccoli and steak done, and the shrimp ready to go. I had followed an Alton Brown recipe to the letter and the steak still looked undercooked. Rarer than rare. Mr. Yin came in and browned them for about 2 minutes on each side. 90 seconds longer than Brother Alton said to do. And they were perfectly delicious.

Maybe what makes us work in the kitchen is what makes us work in real life: I'm detailed oriented and follow the rules and he sees the big picture and takes rules as a jumping-off point.

I love both my Mr. Yins.

Happy Valentine's Day!

Wednesday, February 8, 2012

well, it's true

I joined Facebook.

Seriously.

The straw that broke the camel's proverbial back was Pinterest. You have to sign up using a Facebook account. So I caved. In order to keep track of my projects in Pinterest.

Of course right  now I feel so popular because everyone wants to be my friend. : )

Truth be told, I've been going back and forth as to whether to join or stay away. I've lived enough different places to have met tons of amazing people, only to have lost touch with them when I moved. And though I'd rather stay in touch with people through other means, I'm just not very good at it.

So Facebook it is.

Wanna be friends?