Tag Archives: Baby Q

Going on and on

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My children are getting older. Of course they are, but it’s the anniversaries of events that mark such growth coming up that make me think of it. My eldest is turning 13 on the 29th. My youngest will be 22 months old on the 23rd.

I’m working on birthday stuff for the 29th. Elections for birthday breakfast and birthday dinner have already been made. I need to decide on what cake to make, and finalize presents. I’ve purchased some decorations and have some presents, need to get some other things accomplished in that vein.

Baby Q is getting so big, and talking more and more, and really understanding vastly more than ever. He’s really cute and quite a ham at times. He’s still my baby, but branching out more towards others. He’s a full fledged Toddler. He gets into trouble a lot too. We have a gate that is frustratingly not a good one though it should have been. I have to re-install it, he gets it opened and goes downstairs and opens the door to the room where the cats are when they aren’t supposed to be out … anyhow, he loves cartoons and “gets mad” if you turn the channel … and some other things make him mad, so that’s the big thing I have to work on with him, and also the others, as they get on each other and it’s just worse right now, with Spring kicking into high gear and things needing done and birthdays coming up and … on it goes.

Travel for business and baseball

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We are in Tampa, as I have mentioned here – in a hotel that isn’t as nice as the one the night before, but that’s that. Embassy Suites in Tampa by the airport is really, really nice. We are now by the bay and it’s a different kind of place, very Florida and a crash pad.

Separate bedroom is tiny. Living room small, with balcony, cruddy but OK kitchen. The nicest thing here is that the bathroom has obviously been redone. [Now that I've written that I recall walking around the maze of outside corridors yesterday and passing some new appliance boxes in front of a couple of rooms. Dishwasher, Refrigerator, etc.]

There’s also a pullout sleeper couch and two narrow bunks intalled in a niche one on top of the other, of course. Plenty of places to put each of our 6 selves, but the bright spot in dealing with it all is the glass sliding door to the balcony. So many rooms don’t have a balcony, and many that do don’t have anything much worth looking at outside.

In this case there is water that sparkles as the sun moves overhead, it’s low tide, then high tide and the changes that brings. It’s interesting at least. Since it’s the Gulf side of Florida it gets too sunny and hot in the afternoon. Yesterday we got here in the afternoon. It’ll be nice to see the balcony all morning this day.

I have some schooling stuff with me, and that’s slated for this day as well (hubby is here for business, so we wait while he works.) We are also preparing for a birthday at the end of the month when my eldest goes from being a tween to a teen. :eyesroll : There’s some manners information we must all go over and practice again. It’s not just my eldest, he’s not as bad right now as some of the others really … and being stuck in a hotel room it’s not so long before someone is crying, another is sassing, another is screaming, another is … you get the drift.

Yesterday we were at a baseball game and today we go to another. I love baseball, and it was nice last night to sit by my eldest, he’s taking a higher interest in what’s going on in the game. Baby Q was a cutie too, but not interesting in the game, just showing off his toddler self to whomever would watch, particularly the row behind us.

I’m still nursing Baby Q at night and at home during the day every so often. I’ve not nursed this long with my others, it is just right for this one. Of late he’s picked up a new word to refer to me when he wants to nurse, ‘dink’ … so last night at the game he kept pulling at me ‘dink, dink’ … ‘Mama, dink!’ and I didn’t let him but awhile later I didn’t feel so “whatever it was” about it and he nursed and was that cute showoff from then on. Little stinker. :smile:

Moving On

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Well today is Friday, the last Friday in February, so that’s nearly 2 full months in 2009 already gone by …

Accomplishing a lot has been my goal forever, but rarely do I see that happen, or feel like it has. Right now I’m a bit bogged down, the weather is dreary today (rainy and gray) and my cycle is near the end (a really bad combination.) The house is just so small for us, and things are so disorganized and our main living space is clogged up with baby toys, things that need to be put elsewhere (but where?) and a huge couch that is so depressive due to being dirty, broken down, and I just can’t stand it anymore, haven’t been able to for a long time, but I’ve made myself live with it, but I’m to the point where I’d rather take the cushions off of it and put them on the floor and throw the rest of it away.

It, the couch, was an IKEA purchase and it was the right thing at the time, but not bought for where it is right now. It was supposed to be in our “basement” and because of things here and there it has been moved up and down a couple of times and has been ruined by jumping children and things piled on it while it sat dormant in the basement for awhile in the past, and just basically the covers are needing replaced. No biggie really, to “refresh” this is not a bad thing, IKEA makes it to be laundered and also replacement covers in many colors and patterns are easy to get, not the price of a brand new couch. Unfortunately I could never convince my husband to get a different set of covers, so these are worn out, stained, the body cover is ripped where it connects to the couch with velcro, and because it was a pain to use since it got older (all the covers) it just sat in the basement and had full abuse from the children and stuff sitting on it and one arm is totally depressed/loose and the seat next to it is sunken, no support in the middle. The lack of support is bad, but the lack of the body cover staying on is way worse, it slides down into the front and pools on the floor, and seat cushions slide forward and hang over the front too far and it’s like a giants piece of furniture (sitting on it with feet to the floor is impossible, it’s too far “out”) and so the whole thing needs to be reset, and that is nearly impossible with the body cover, and any work put into it is wholly defeated once a round of sitting on the couch happens by the family. Not taking into count how dirty it gets, how washing the cushion covers only is nice, but they still look blah, and the body cover is past being able to be washed, so gets worse and worse and the cushions get so dirty so fast that washing them is just not what I’ll do anymore. So now that I’ve given up that for good (crossing my fingers behind my back) I’m having a hard time looking at the monstrosity in my “living room” and navigating around it, onto it, and blech, touching it. :rolleyes: I had tried to revive it by washing the cushion covers again and again in the last month, but when I got everything done and right away it was bad enough that one or two needed it again, and doing just those and getting them back on and then again more and more and again, and again, well, that is enough, no more.

We had considered a new couch from Costco, in the warehouse, and talked about it and talked about it, but ended up going with something else for our daughter instead, she needs furniture in her room and they had just a few of something I’d had my eyes on and so often that happens, when I see something I like there, and we don’t get it, when we do decide to get it, then we go and it’s gone. So I was seeing those things and hoping our chances weren’t going to run out, so it came down to “couch or daughter furniture” and we got the daughter furniture. The next time we were there, the couch was reduced and we hemmed and hawed over it and decided to forgo it, it would have been crunch to do it, and I knew it would mean we wouldn’t get it, and sure enough, though we were there again just the next day or so, it was gone. It was a couch that had grown on me, the style being so very modern compared to the things we usually have had. It actually made me think about redoing how I was approaching the living room, and so I probably will go ahead and try to find something similar in the future, and the hard part of that is the waiting and the “what do we do in the meantime” — sigh.

We had another couch years ago that we got rid of, it got ratty, but looking back, it was so much nicer, in many ways, and that feels like heresy to write. That’s how bad this IKEA couch has become.

All of this has just become so urgent feeling because the baby is growing up, time is moving along and four children in a not even 10′x10′ living room is outrageously annoying, and even a couch and wall mount TV seem to be too much there, let alone also having baby toys, an end table, and toddler table for play, Wii system, PS3 system … and all the junk that accumulates … it’s just too much. A couch that is just a couch is one thing, but in this case its a corner+2 couch, a corner with two seat on the right and two seats on the left. It’s a huge thing and I can’t take it anymore!

For the Birds

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I haven’t written much of anything lately, mostly because of my baby/toddler (16 mo. old) keeping me busy and away from my laptop, or him away from my laptop (that’s rather the real thing) and also the desktop being a problem now that the baby/toddler is so much more toddler oriented and picking up anything he can get his hands on. We lost a mouse because of him. Bought a new one, and he got hold of it and broke it. In this process of mouse elimination the mouse pad got eliminated somehow, and now we have two other old wireless mice from other use-age, that are in different states of derelictness and sans mousepad, it’s a nightmare to work on the desktop, plus having little hands reach up constantly to pull on what you are doing … I’m in bed right now, with my laptop, and baby is asleep. Usually, as soon as I pull out my laptop in bed, baby wakes up. I’m fortunate today.

I wanted to write about birds this week, and now that I’m actually writing, I’ll make this post about it, briefly.

A few days ago I looked out on the front porch area through the sidelight to see the temperature on the thermometer and saw something moving out of the corner of my eye. I turned and looked and there was a pretty Carolina Wren with a piece of tissue-looking paper in it’s beak. It hopped around and then suddenly another Carolina Wren hopped onto the porch and immediately a male Northern Cardinal flew into the brush right in front of the porch, so I had these three birds super visible right there, where I usually don’t get such a treat of even one bird in view. It had a special quality about it, that event did.

A couple of days ago I was in the kitchen, me and the children were eating and I was actually standing up at the table and saw something out on the Bluebird box, and looked and there was a diminutive woodpecker hanging out.

I got a good look at him to memorize his features, then ran to get my Sibley guide and found that it was a Downy Woodpecker. I had never seen one in my life, and it was really cool to spot one so close in range. Of course I didn’t get any really good photos, my camera wasn’t around, and the other one that was around is a newer little Fuji digital that just doesn’t have the ommph in the bird photo taking department that my old canon digital rebel does. I’ve yet to download the pictures, so we’ll see what I get.

The Downy Woodpecker pecked around the Bluebird box, then got into the box and stayed inside for several minutes, then started peeking out, then finally came out, walked around the box again for a short time, then flew up into the maple tree that’s nearby and was near the top pecking on a branch then suddenly flew away towards the distant line of trees on the other side of the subdivision.

The next day I saw my supposed Eastern Bluebird couple checking out the box. Mr. Bluebird got in for a couple of minutes, while Mrs. Bluebird waited on a branch of the tree. The usual spring/summer sight, as they get ready to build a nest, except right now it’s November. I guess they are keeping tabs on their nest box and knew they’d had a visitor.

It’s noteworthy also that we see Blue Jays around frequently enough, in the front and even in the back more and more. (So many folks say they don’t like Blue Jays, but I think them beautiful and useful birds, feisty sure, but worth having around, and really, really handsome.)

I hadn’t had a decent birding day at home for so long, and I must say, it was a very decent birding week this past week. :)

I need to get a big bird feeder, like we used to have in the backyard, until it fell down in a thunderstorm and fell apart in a not worth fixing state. I love seeing the birds come to the feeder in the Winter, and also like supplying them with the food they seek/need. It’s been a few years since I have done so. Birding became a great passion of mine when we moved to this house in 1997. I hadn’t lived anywhere with much bird watching ability in my adult years.

Baby Q News and Pics

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Something we’ve learned about Baby Q of late, don’t give him anything to eat with sour cream on it. Just give him a blob of sour cream instead. :rolleyes:

He’s getting more into our meals, table food, family food. He loves some things, but nothing like sour cream. He won’t eat anything of substance if there is sour cream involved, he just wants the sour cream.

I’ve given him plain yogurt before, and I should do so more often, like every day, but I haven’t thus far.

Anyhow, here are some photos of him enjoying the yogurt, from July 5th (2008):

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  1. Baby Q

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