Away From My Bug

Image via Wikipedia With the way this blog has been going, it makes perfect sense to whine and complain about something on the last day that it will be an issue. I could have whined about it before hand or from the get go, but I wouldn't want to disappoint my millions of readers. *snicker*

Down to the good stuff.

A while ago, I'd say a little over a month ago, I was given the opportunity to register for the FDA Pacific Region Retail Food Safety Seminar. Of course I jumped at the chance, having had such a wonderful time at the last Farm to Table conference I went to. My request was approved, travel arrangements and hotel stay made and I was on my way! It wasn't until a few days before the conference that I realized the gravity of the situation I had put myself in.

Lily isn't so much a Momma's girl, but Momma is definitely a Lily's girl. We only nurse a few times a day now and I don't always have to nurse her to sleep. Just as often as I do nurse her to sleep, Dadda rocks her to sleep. He's been a dear and since we started crib training has been getting up to stick her pacifier back in in the middle of the night. Sometimes around 2 am she will just not have it anymore and needs Momma to come and nurse her back to sleep. It's really the only time that I can appease her and Dadda can't. Doesn't happen all the time, but often enough for me to say, well crap, what was I thinking? You see, I've never spent a night away from my baby and now all of a sudden I will be spending 4 nights away from her!

After much pondering of where my brain went coupled with much worry and trying to figure out who would come with me to watch Lily in the hotel while I was in the conference, I finally decided that I had to just go for it. I really didn't want to but was extremely excited for the conference so I was hoping that the excitement would help me with the pain of leaving her. It helped that I was able to shave a night off my absence so that I was only leaving her for three nights. Eventually, it sank in that it would be harder on me than on my little bug. At least at home she would be able to stay in her normal routine, play at daycare and play with Dadda.

I dropped my bug off at daycare by myself the morning that I left and gave her much loves and kisses. It was hard not to cry as I left, but I didn't want to worry my little girl so I toughed up. Dadda was a great help because anytime in the evening that I wanted to visit my baby girl, we hooked up the video chat from our computers and I got to see her. We played, sang, clapped together and even ate together. I ate a bagel, she had cheerios and kept staring at the magic silver box, wondering why her momma was talking to her from there instead of at the table. Okay, well I guess I don't really know what she was wondering, but her look made it seem like she was wondering at my sanity.

She seems to be doing fine without me there. She has slept through the night the first two nights (I haven't spoken to them yet today so I'm unsure about last night) and has been eating well. I only have half a day here today and then will be heading home. I am SO excited to see my baby tonight.

In conference news, it has been a blast. The first evening I was here I went cruising around Seattle looking for food. I really only went 3 blocks away but it seemed so far because I was so terrified. I was scared of the people, scared that I would be pick pocketed or mugged even though I was out in full daylight along with many other travelers. I was scared that I would get lost as well. I never considered myself a country girl, but I'm starting to think that I now am. I can't see the sky here for the tall skyscrapers and it is very disconcerting. Since I can't see the sky, I have no sense of direction and have no idea where I am going. I refused to carry a map around because I felt it would make me more vulnerable. Eventually in my wanderings I came across the Westlake Center Mall and grabbed some Chinese at the food court.

Tuesday lunch went better. I tagged along with one person that I sort of know and more people that she knows. We went to the Tap House, which wasn't even a block away. The only picture frmo the trip I have is from here and when I get home I will post it. There has to be like 60 beers on tap right behind the bar. It was awesome! The food was decently priced and quite tasty.

That night I yet again had nobody to go eat with so I came back to my room, ate the rest of my bagel while video chatting with my baby and then went to see The Sisterhood of the Travelling Pants 2. It was a very cute story although I felt kind of lame for going to a movie by myself. I never had before but I think I could do it again if I needed to.

Wednesday afternoon I tagged along with a group of State food safety people (talk about intimidating) and again had food court food. That is just about enough food court food for a while. Bleh. For Dinner I drove out to Renton and had dinner at Yankie's with my Mother-In-Law and then joined her at the movie theater to see WALL-E. Oh my lord that was stinking cute! Definitely a must have!

*I just about cried. My browser crashed in the middle of this blog and I thought I had lost the whole thing. Thank goodness for blogger and autosave!*

So that's what I've been doing with all of my free time. I could have visited Pike Place Market or the Space Needle, but without anyone to spend my time with I was afraid of coming back alone after dark. I think I had fun with my time though, so I won't worry too much.

Okay, I really need to start packing up and heading down to the rest of the conference. I'll update on the actual conference as soon as I can.

Standing Up and Falling Down

You know, I really should update more regularly. At work, every Monday we are supposed to complete our time cards and turn them in. Should be fairly easy because my department is supposed to record what we do daily in these little diaries. Yeah, well, I've been forgetting to do it until the following Monday when I'm doing my time card which means that I don't have that to do my time card from. That poses a bit of a problem and I usually end up sitting there for about an hour trying to figure out what in the world I did the previous week. I check my calendar, my email inbox and my sent messages trying to remember what I did for 40 hours. Just like my time card, by the time I get around to updating here, I no longer remember what has happened! I view my recent pictures in an attempt to job my memory and sometimes it helps.

So, what exactly has been going on since last we spoke. In Lilyland, she is one mobile little bug! Two Thursdays ago she learned how to pull up. As in, I saw her do it once before and then all of a sudden she was pulling up CONSTANTLY. I believe it is due to the fact that she was at a different daycare at that time. Her normal daycare was on vacation so Lily went to another daycare. This daycare had a younger child and a baby that is only a few days older than Lily. Something must have happened because she came home that first day and just pulled up on everything. With pulling up comes falling down so we've had to reorganize a little bit. This basically means moving the coffee table. We're moving in a week here so when we move I'll really reorganize to make things much safer for her.

First came the pulling up, then came the falling down and then came the falling down on purpose. This weekend, Lily decided that she was going to pull up on something and then let go, balance for as long as she could and fall with a pretty loud thud on her diapered rear. It looks like it must hurt, but she does it over and over and over again. She thinks it is the funniest thing ever. I'll try to catch it on camera here soon and post it.

What else...ahhh, her backup daycare got sick while Lily was with her so Lily went to the backup's sister-in-law (whose baby is Lily's age). Lily had lots of fun there. She learned how to get up and crawl on her knees (though this only lasts for a few steps and then she realizes that her tummy requires less work for her) and attempted to teach the other baby how to clap his hands. Apparently she would take his hands and try to make him clap. Needless to say, he didn't like that so much.

Lily might have another ear infection. She had a 102.7 fever when last I wrote. The fever went away Friday and then came back Saturday. She was also super cranky and didn't want to eat or sleep. We took her to the pediatrician who, after spending a while cleaning out her right ear, saw that her ear drum was moving okay but still suspects an infection. I'm not convinced but I guess he has his reasons. Either way, she's on antibiotics. I'm not thrilled about giving them to her when I'm not convinced she needs them but I'd hate not to and then for it to get worse.

So that's Lilyland. In other news, a couple weekends ago Grandma came to visit. We had fun. Had breakfast and dinner together, went to see Mamma Mia (Lily stayed home with a sleepy Dadda) and just generally had a good time. Hopefully they'll come back soon. *nudge nudge wink wink*

This past weekend we went to see our other Grandma and Grandpa. We went early and had a nice little vacation. Friday we took Lily to the zoo for the first time. We went to the Pt. Defiance Zoo and frankly I was a little disappointed. For being comparatively priced to the Woodland Park Zoo I thought that Pt. Defiance was not nearly as nice. The next time we go we'll definitely be going to the Woodland Park Zoo. Anyway, Lily didn't really care much about the animals. She liked the walruses because their huge bodies came right up to the window multiple times, but aside from that she could care less. Mamma and Dadda had fun though.

Sunday brought about more fun times. Hubby's cousin got married to her wonderful man in a gorgeous wedding. She was absolutely beautiful and looked like a Barbie doll. As soon as I get permission I'll post a picture or too.

I don't think anything else is really going on. Work is busy. Inspections, writing the newsletter, preparing for the fair and the car crushing event. Should be fun stuff.

Okay, I think I'll pop on some pictures and call it good. Hubby is working late tonight so I'm own my own which means that le babe is currently wreaking havoc on my living room.

Oh yeah, last thing. HELENE'S PROPERTY PLACE SUCKS! The current lease where we will be going is up on the 31st, however we cannot get in until the 4th. This is on a Monday meaning that we have nobody to help us move. No.bo.dy. Yeah, can't really watch a baby and help Mike load a uhaul with a couch and other large furniture. Ergh. Anyway, I called them today to see about getting in just 12 hours early - Sunday evening. I was told that they can't show tenant preference and they need 4 days to clean and do the carpets in all the units and thanks, bye, click. The woman HUNG UP ON ME! There are not many things that peeve me off, but a business hanging up on me is definitely one of them. Stupid B-word.

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Teeth, Swimming, Sunburns and More!

Wow has it been a while! I'm not sure that I can even remember everything that has happened since the 26th (our 4th anniversary by the way). I do know one thing that hasn't happened, however. We have not yet sent in our package to get our voucher for our new crib. Don't get me wrong, we want to participate in the recall, but with moving in two weeks and everything else going on we just haven't got there yet.

What else, what else. Right after my last post (well, that Saturday morning anyway) we left to go visit some friends that had moved away and abandoned us. It was their daughter's birthday party and seeing as how we hadn't missed one in years, we saw no reason why we should start. It was a wonderful surprise to my dear friend and her daughter - who also happened to be the only two people that didn't know we were coming. We had a wonderful weekend catching up and visiting.

A little later, Grandma and Grandpa came up for the Fourth of July for a visit. That was really nice. We hung out at the park, watched Lily eat some watermelon and marveled at the fact that she slept through the very loud band and fell asleep near the end of the fireworks. No joke, we were like RIGHT THERE in respect to the fireworks and the poor bug fell asleep. Silly girl.

That weekend was also a certain husband's birthday. While we hung out on Saturday watching movies I attempted to make a cake. Usually easy enough - rainbow chip cake with funfetti frosting. I decided to get fancy and attempted to make a raspberry preserve and jello filling for the two round layers. It was very messy and wasn't as easy as it should have been but the end product was still pretty and very very tasty. It was nice having family here because we did candles and had a little party. Yay parties!

During this whole time Lily had been cutting two top teeth. Her left front tooth and the little canine right to the left of it. Not too much after however, she cut her other front tooth and is now currently working on the right canine. She's such a toothy little girl! Be careful though, she loves to munch and anything that gets in that mouth is just something for her to gnaw on. Small teeth are sharp too!

As far as life around here, things have been...okay. It's kind of nice having a home routine where most nights we come home, play, make and eat dinner, play, change into jammies, play, nurse or rock to sleep and then sleep in our crib. Before, when that one set of friends was still here (and I wish they still were) we were over there ALL the time. Now that they aren't here, we've been forced to stay home more often. I think it's actually helped our little family. Lily is crib training much easier and the routine means that I actually get some time in the evenings to do things that I need to get done. Crib training itself is going okay. She's usually up 3 times during the night. Usually hubby gets up, shoves the binky back in and the bug goes to sleep. Sometimes, however, she needs me to get up (usually around 2 am) and nurse her back to sleep. I haven't had to do that in the last couple days though. It's crazy actually getting to stay in bed all night. I love it.

Before I get too far ahead of myself into present day, I have one more past thing to talk about. This past weekend we again went to visit our friends and accompanied them to the water park. It worked out fairly well because we were able to stagger it to where someone was always watching the kids while others got to ride the water slides. Admittedly some (*cough cough*) got to ride more than others and some hardly got to ride at all, but all in all it was fun. Playing with Lily in the water was fun too. She had an adorable fishy swimsuit and we got her a little green rain forest floaty. You can see from the pictures that she really liked it. We floated with her in the lazy river and then found another small pool with a waterfall and a fountain in the middle that we floated around for a while. I think she really had fun as did I. The only downer was that hubby and I tried an aerosol based sunscreen on ourselves - spf 50 - while she kept her regular waterbabies sunscreen. She didn't color, which is good, and we completely fried. Like, I'm still in pain as I type this.

So that's family life. Work life has been okay. A fair amount of drama and other inevitable things, but like I say, they are inevitable. Inspections have sort of lost their magic for me as I get more and more people that are upset and fairly rude to me. I'm also starting to learn just how the farmers around here view regulatory officials - even some from my own department - so that is hard. It really is not something that motivates you. *shrug*

In other workish news, I start my Masters of Education in English as a Second Language / Bilingual Education. I'm unsure if I ever want to go back into teaching kids, but I still love teaching and whatever I teach this will definitely help me. If I ever have to move and look for a new job I would LOVE to find something in Public Health Education. If not that then some other adult education. I'm nervous about starting classes but I'm only taking a half-time load so it shouldn't be horrible.

Current news involves Lily having a fever. Her daycare called today and said that she had a fever of 102.7. She had no other symptoms so they said she could stay there, but still, it's upsetting. When we got her home it was still 102.7. We gave her tylenol but only after an hour or so did she start to feel any cooler. We did our normal night-night routine but this time, instead of sleeping 2-3 hours she woke up after an hour and then again shortly thereafter. We gave her some more tylenol and she is now sleeping again. It could go two ways - she could sleep because she is sick or she could be awake since she has been sleeping all day apparently. We'll see which it is as the hours go by.

This weekend there is a huge event going on in one of the neighboring towns. Hubby is reserving Friday and Saturday night so that means I'm on my own for those two nights. I know I'll survive, but the thought is still hard. More power to you single moms. I am so spoiled by having hte help that I do. Also, tomorrow I have to go to the event and inspect the food vendors that are there. Sometimes they can be less than honest so with me luck. I wish everyone just realized the importance of food safety and made a concerted effort to keep their establishments safe.

Well, I think that's about it for now. It's past my bedtime and since sleep is a precious commodity around here I really want to take advantage of it.

Have a peachy day!!!

Arboretum

We visited the Arboretum the other day. We took a long walk with Lily in the stroller and stupid me decided to do this in flip flops. Needless to say my calves are still killing me.

It was absolutely gorgeous though and totally worth the pain!

Sleep? Haven't heard of it.

Okay, it's been about 14 days. I know A LOT has happened in the last 14 days, but the chances of me remembering it all is slim. Lily is jumping around right now so I have a few minutes.

So, what has happened since June 1st? Hmmmm. Our dear friends Kelly and Josh left (last day in May). We miss them. That's all I'll say on that otherwise I'll be too teary eyed to keep typing.

Home life has been okay. Frankly, we haven't been used to being home every evening. I'm getting slightly sick of this apartment but without having anyone to go visit (*cough cough guilt trip*) we're kind of stuck. Lily's been doing great eating - she even tried some cottage cheese the other day. She hated it. ;D She loves her jarred food and her cereal as well as her puffs. These puffs come in various fruit and veggie flavors and are made from rice. They melt fairly well although she does munch them with her gums and her front two teeth. She loves to feed herself, but she isn't very good at it yet. She'll get a puff to her mouth and try to shove it in but more often than not it will just get stuck in her palm. It's fun to watch.

What else? We went to visit Grandma and Grandpa from Papa's side this last weekend. Lily had fun playing with the various toys that they found for her. She also LOVED it when Grandpa made funny noises. While there, on Saturday morning, Lily just put her hands together and started clapping! She hadn't done it for us before and her daycare says she hadn't done it there either. I'd been trying to get her to clap, but she always pulled her hands away from me. Must have wanted to do it on her own.

She had her pediatrician's appointment this past Wednesday. Holy cow she's a big girl. She's 30 inches long, 23 pounds and her head is 47.5 centimeters around. She's in the 100th percentile for all three and the doctor said she is basically the size of an 18 month old. I think she's going to be big like her Papa. While there she didn't have to get any shots, but she did have to get her finger pricked to check her iron levels. She did great with that and we got to find out that her iron levels are great. No anemic baby for us!

In other, less happy news with her - we've been trying to get her to sleep in her crib more. Unfortunately that has meant a fair amount of crying for us and her. We don't let her sit there and cry it out in her crib; instead, we have been sitting there and patting her back, occasionally putting her pacifier back in her mouth. She has been crying for about an hour before going back to sleep which upsets me, but I try to remember that we are there with her so she can't think that we've totally abandoned her. I don't know if we're going about this the right way however. She seems to be sleeping shorter amounts of time now before waking up and just screaming her head off (maybe an hour or so). She's apparently also crying now when she gets laid down at daycare. Ergh. Seems like we can't do anything right in that apartment. I would let her continue to cosleep, but anymore she's too hot, too squirmy and wants to nurse ALL NIGHT LONG. Which means that I'm uncomfortable and unable to sleep most of the night.

In work news, things have been going okay. There are growing pains with the old director leaving, but I have total confidence in the new director and think he will do just fine. I've been doing a lot more inspections on my own now. I thought that the more I did the more comfortable I would feel when I go in, but that hasn't happened yet. Every time I finish up an inspection and leave, I remember something that I missed. The next place I go to, I make a point to remember whatever it was and then I miss something else. There's just no saving me from myself. Oh well.

One awesome thing that happened this week actually is my ServSafe certification. My boss wanted me to take this ServSafe class online through the National Restaurant Association. It was expensive and very very detailed. It's designed for food service managers so it was interesting to see how things are discussed from that side of the clipboard. The point of taking the course and the exam was that if I scored high enough on the exam (75/80) then I could become a ServSafe proctor. Apparently my boss has been trying to get two ServSafe proctors for a while (he is one) so that we can start offering the class in the county instead of referring people to Spokane. I finished the course two weeks ago and took the test this past Wednesday. I got *drum roll please* 77/80. Woot! It was really tough and I was under a lot of pressure so I'm glad that I did so well. The certification will last for 5 years which is also awesome.

What else has happened in work? I got some angry phone calls and had the comissioners called on me, but that's all a part of the job (the solid waste part). Apparently people don't appreciate the suggestion being made that they have a solid waste problem on their property. Fair enough.

Okay, I think that's about it for now. Oh! I did forget something. We finally found a place to live! Tomorrow we are signing the lease on a lovely two story, 3 bedroom, 1.5 bath duplex with a decent sized living room, dining room, kitchen and washer/dryer hookups. There is also a sliding door to the backyard with grass we don't have to mow and a cute concrete patio. I was originally going to detail everything we're NOT going to do on Father's Day today because we have to put down around $1500 for the duplex tomorrow. Needless to say (again), we unfortunately won't be doing anything for Father's Day. *sigh* Double the income and still no money!

Also, we found out that we can't get a car anytime soon which is really depressing. My car has decided to stop shifting into reverse so we need something ASAP but because of our credit and our student loans, nobody will give us a loan. We have to consolidate our loans first which will take quite a while (or we can wait until this fall when I start my Master's and my loans go back into deferment).

Okay, I really think that might be it for now. I shall attempt to add some pictures and a video now. Let's see if Lily will let me!

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