Merry Christmas!

Here are some videos of our Christmas!

Jordan wakes up to see what Santa left for her:


First we play with Stanta's gifts:


Then we go through stockings:


Then we open presents! We shared this part with Brook and Zach over Skype, it worked out great and we all got to share the presents being opened with only half of the mess to clean up afterwards.


Then we play with stuff:


And sample the chocolate marshmallow santas:

Open Season and Other Stuff

I've been thinking about blogging for a long time now, but I didn't want Jordan's birthday stuff to be moved down. The pictures are just too cute. She sure is learning fast these days. It seems like she learns a new word about every day and is looking more and more like a toddler rather than a baby. It's going by way too fast.



It is now open season again. For the mice running around our house that is. Brett has caught two more in the last few days and I don't really feel sorry for them anymore. They keep getting into food. I still don't understand how these tiny little mice get up on the counters and into stuff. We protect most of it pretty well, but there are some things that just don't fit into our cabinet space.


Brett turns 40 tomorrow. HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA. He's soooooooooooooooooooo OLD! We both celebrated our birthdays yesterday by getting massages and going to dinner while Nana and Pop Pop kept Jordan for us. It was a very welcome break.


We were hoping to visit Colorado for Thanksgiving, but I don't think we will be able to make it. There are pretty cheap flights there, but getting back would be more expensive. Oh well. I'm sure we will make it back there again soon.


Well that's all I got. Except for some pictures of Jordan at Halloween. I've got some of those too.

Happy Birthday Jordan!

Today was Jordan's first birthday! It was a good party (though we lost the footage of the cake and candles being blown out!). Here's my favorite picture from the party and a few videos of Jordan enjoying her daddy's chocolate cake.



Jordan begins eating her cake and demonstrates her ability to use utensils (sort of).


Now she's getting into it. This cake and ice cream thing may be ok.


Baby is displeased! Baby smash!

Book Review

The Yiddish Policemen's Union: A Novel by Michael Chabon

My review

rating: 3 of 5 stars
This was the first book from Michael Chabon that I've read. Overall I enjoyed the story and the setting though sometimes the Yiddish slang and terminology was briefly confusing. Though everything was explained in an appendix I think I would have preferred to have them footnoted when they were introduced. Though the story was good it didn't really grab me like I was hoping it would.


View all my reviews.

New Jordan Videos

Here are a couple of new videos of Jordan. First, the most significant, her first few steps!



And next, an epic struggle!

Random Stuff

I have to say that I love my new iPhone! I must be geekier than I thought because I thought the whole iPhone thing was ridiculous when they first came out. Who really wants to stand in line for hours for a silly phone? Yet, there we were... It's like having a mini laptop that just happens to make and receive phone calls. Awesome!

I seem to be driving my boss crazy though when I Google something from my phone. I guess it's still a little too new.

Jordan's been teething again. She now has three teeth on the top and three on the bottom. She's got another one coming in on the top now. Brett thinks that she's having trouble learning to walk because she's a little lopsided in the mouth.

I just had a massage that was very relaxing, yet I feel energized. I had planned on taking a nap afterward, but just can't seem to sleep. I'm always told to "drink lots of water" after my massages. Do they tell everyone that? I was also told that I'm probably having back pain because my "glutes" are too tight. Hmmmm. Litterally a pain in the ass. What could be causing that?

Jordan turns one in just a couple of weeks. How did that year go by so fast? I'm guessing that sleep deprivation may have contributed to my missing much of the last year. I'm really just hoping that it's not because I'm getting old.

I guess that's enough random stuff for one day.

iPhone is my phone

I'm posting this from our new iPhone mainly just to prove to myself that I can. It's not quite as simple as using a laptop, but it sure is snazzy!

Home Sweet Daycare

We had quite a weekend getting ready for a change in our routine and I think we mostly pulled it together in time. Starting yesterday the nice grandmotherly lady that we've been contracting to watch Jordan and Lucy had to move from Lucy's parents house to our house. They're trying to frantically finish renovations so that they can finally sell their house and skedaddle off to Nevada and I guess the girls weren't helping. Over the weekend we had to "OMG FINISH BABY PROOFING" from the living room to the kitchen, install baby gates, put down the play rug, clean clean and clean some more, replace the cheapo toilet seat that broke, vacuum up the mouse turds from the newly discovered ex-hiding places that we found, put the last few boxes away and re-activate our Vonage account since Celfa doesn't have a cell phone. I finally went to bed around 1 A.M. Monday morning after doing the last load of dishes.

The upside is that our house is now clean and baby proofed and Celfa cleaned our coutertops and stove while she was watching the babies. She can stay.

Mission Accomplished

Megan wanted to "cut and run" in typical liberal fashion and call in some fancy exterminator to take care of our "mouse problem". Well let me tell you, 3 weeks and $4 dollars later and I'm saying "Problem solved!". It was brutal at times but freedom doesn't come without sacrifice. I tried reasoning with them, I tried to turn them away from a life of villainy and pooping on my counter tops but at some point you have to have a more pro-active approach to dealing with assaults on your home and that time finally came.

I think for me the final straw was finding that the dog food, which we keep ON TOP OF THE REFRIGERATOR,
had been violated and yes, there was mouse feces there too now. I spent a $1.25 on some old school Tom and Jerry style traps and set 4 of them up in the house. The first night all four traps were either sprung or had their bait removed. The mastermind mouse, a huge beast of a rodent, was caught on the second night. I think this spooked the rest because that day we caught two more in the "catch and release" trap. Instead of dropping them off across the street though, I took them to a park across town. I didn't want to see them again. After that day it was a series of check trap, re-bait and throw out traps that had caught something. We caught a mouse a day for a week solid. Finally I think its over, we're on day 3 now without tripping a trap or having the bait stolen so I'm happy. Now we just have to clean up all of the poop they left behind and try and plug the holes that they entered our house from in the first place (which is icky and full of spiderwebs and gross stuff so I'm procrastinating).

Our life in Muskogee

Anyone remember Bill Murray in Caddyshack? Now picture Brett and our little unwanted rodent house guests. We started with the nice little "catch and release" mouse traps, then graduated to the large "catch and release" trap. I think Brett talked about this extensively in a previous post. Anyway, we are now using the old fashioned deadly traps. I'll let Brett tell how they are working. Just wanted to let everyone know that my husband has officially lost his mind.

On another note, we replaced the Explorer today with a VW Jetta. We did lots of research first and it was rated very high by Consumer Reports. Plus it just looks cool. We got the Blue Graphite color which is a very dark blue. I love the car and it will be much more comfortable to drive then the Explorer.

Nana and Poppy watched Jordan for us while we were car shopping over the weekend. Jordan went to the Renaissance Festival with them today for Nana's birthday. She apparently had a lot of fun and got lots of attention. I wish Brett and I could have been there to enjoy the day, but we spent three or four hours at the car dealership instead.

And the guardrail won...

We put up a good fight, but the guardrail was the clear winner. Poor little "Dora the Explorer" will probably be dismantled and sold. She will be missed... I've decided that our big car seats should be more like infant car seats. Jordan seems to have been very well protected, while I was thrown around the front seat like a rag doll. Anyway, the pictures of the vehicle were posted earlier by Brett, so here is the guardrail.

It's hard to get an idea from the pictures how long the area of destruction really was, but it can give you an idea. I'm not sure how many times we actually hit this thing because it all happened so fast. We were just really lucky that we didn't get hurt worse than we did and that lots of people stopped to help. I'm also very thankful to the Boy Scout organization employees who let Jordan and I wait in their car so that we didn't have to stand out in the rain. They then gave us a ride to Tulsa so that we could get Jordan to her doctor's appointment. I just hope we never have to go through something like that again.

This Means War (and I think we're losing)

On Friday as I was playing my nightly marathon of Grand Theft Auto IV, I was interrupted by the sounds of what can only be described as "the sounds of mice humping". I'm not sure if they were inspired by the racy scenes of GTA IV on the screen or if perhaps the ultrasonic mice evaporators that we purchased were, instead of blaring out an ultra-high frequency noise equivalent of mice nails on a chalkboard (which is what I really hoped they were), blaring out the rodent version of Barry White. Regardless, they were making so much noise that I had to get up and go see what the hell was going on. I opened the storage area underneath of our 55 gallon aquarium to be greeted with what can only be described as a small male mouse attempting to pull on his trousers as he scampered off. At first I thought that the large female had been evaporated successfully by the ultrasonic device but on careful consideration afterwards I think she may have been using a Predator like device to become invisible. I never did see either one of them actually run away but I couldn't find either one of them either.


The day after this encounter, Megan found a small mouse turd on top of the tissue box that she keeps on her bedside table. I think the mice have made their feelings on this clear, the gauntlet has been thrown. At this point I think our only options are to either escalate the conflict to less friendly mice removal means or to surrender to our new mouse overlords.

Before:

After:

(These pictures are the right and left sides of the car from today.)

We kind of sort of totaled our car hydroplaning on the turnpike yesterday. Everyone is fine aside from a few bruses and sore muscles (amen for side impact air bags) but stress is high. It has been officially declared as totaled by the insurance company. Hopefully the check will come somewhat close to how much we still owe on this beast though who knows.

Update

Just wanted to drop in a status update since we haven't recently. Jordan is still growing like a cute little weed and has been pulling up on everything that she can reach. She especially likes to pull up on the TV stand so that it can beam its HD goodness straight into her skull. Jaxon and her continue to play the "I'll play with your toys, you play with mine" game. Jaxon loves her Pooh bear and she loves Big Duck, Squirrel and gross badger rags.

We continue to have uninvited house guests in the form of wee little mice. We caught one every day this week until yesterday. Susan Kath suggested we get an ultrasonic rodent repellent thing but since we still had hamsters so we couldn't do that. Since then they've both passed away so maybe now we should get one. I think the neighbors are getting suspicious about me walking across the street with a strange metal box every day.

R.I.P. Boston Baked Bean and Java Bean (burying them in the backyard reminded me of the hamster graveyard in Garden State). I think we'll hold off on any replacement rodent purchases for now. If Megan wasn't worried about Hantavirus, we could just replace them with mice and solve two issues at once...

Quiet as church mice

A couple of weeks ago, Megan and Phil reported seeing a mouse in the house. Being the liberal hippies that we are, we decided to get some live traps so that A) Megan wouldn't have to stumble upon a decapitated mouse corpse B) Jordan wouldn't toddle into an errant trap and get hurt when she put it in her mouth (as she most certainly would) or C) We'd become haunted by cute little ghosts. We started with a couple of traps from PIC. We wound up catching 2 mice in a week or so and released them across the street at the Lutheran church.

Well, the second mouse we caught almost chewed through the trap and I was tired of baiting it with peanut butter (it was messy and gross).

Since I figured we probably would have more mice than traps, I ordered a new one from Amazon. Behold, the mousinator! This thing traps mice like no body's business. I set it out in the morning unbaited. When I came home at 2:30, there were 3 mice inside. Three mice and no bait used. I guess they just cant resist a little tunnel to crawl in.

They were kind of small so I'm hoping that we got their litter mostly captured and released and that they're joining the choir on Sunday like I always read about when I was a kid. Since then we've caught one more. They're kind of jumpy and Megan still doesn't like them much but this trap is a breeze to set up and use.

We'll keep the ticker updated.

Paternety Test: Passed

Papa Phil is watching Jordan this afternoon. I stayed home with her this morning because she was sick and I was feeling too lazy to drive to work in the rain. As she started to feel better I got less and less work done because I was playing "No no, that's not yours" and chastising the dog for continuously bringing his toys to her so that I'll take them away from her and throw them (I'm learning to just take them away from her and keep them instead). Phil agreed to watch her this afternoon so I could actually get some work done (excluding me blogging this *cough*). A couple of minutes ago I got this email from Phil:

Your daughter just crawled over and got the X-Box remote and turned the X-Box on.

She is so obviously my daughter. Good job kiddo!

Jordan becomes mobile

Here's the first and second time our daughter ever crawled. She loves the little yellow shapes that fit inside her red and blue shape globe thing so we used them to lure her into crawling. She's an old pro at it now though so we started baby-proofing the house and getting ready to make more changes in our lives.

The first time she ever crawled:



The second time:

Couldn't we just have a dog for mayor?

It appears that we may be joining the ranks of small towns with odd mayors. In the election yesterday the old "good ole boy" mayors were shot down by a 19 year old kid with ambitions. Since no one had > 50% of the vote, we're going to have a dance off or something to decide who wins. I can't wait for the montages!

Evidence Mounts

Further proof that I am a stranger in a strange and scary land. Megan sent me a link to this opinion letter in the Muskogee Phoenix, our local paper:

http://www.muskogeephoenix.com/opinion/local_story_086175730.html

This guy is probably my neighbor. For those of you like me who don't happen to have passages of the Bible memorized, let me save you the trouble of looking up Leviticus 20:13 that he references in his editorial:

If a man lies with a man as one lies with a woman, both of them have done what is detestable. They must be put to death; their blood will be on their own heads.

Nice, real nice.

Good news for lesbians though I suppose. Apparently they get off Scott free but I'm sure that they can be stoned to death for much lesser offenses, like having vagina's.

Stranger in a Strange Land

I live in the wrong place. I feel like a spy behind enemy lines and I hope that no one notices when I'm out in public lest they turn and point at me and start screeching. You see, I'm a fairly liberal democratic atheist and I live in Muskogee, Oklahoma. For those of you not "from around here" allow me to explain.

When you meet someone for the first time they ask not "How are you today?" or "How are you feeling?" but more often they ask "What Church do you go to?" and on one occasion "So, were you raised in the Church?". Fortunately we're friends with a pretty hip Reverend at a church here and I do sometimes attend to make the wife and mother-in-law happy so I have some level of plausible deniability about my church attendance.

The other thing that has me worried recently is related to Oklahoma state representative Sally Kerns' most recent paranoid speeches against the "homosexual agenda" (whatever that is). The thing that really scares me about the whole situation is not that a federally elected representative could think some of the things that she does (like that early childhood education is a tool for the homosexuals to indoctrinate our children) and its not that she hasn't been called on to resign for practicing paranoid hate speech hidden behind a shield of religion. No, what really scares me is the fact that the majority of people in this state seem to agree with her from the polls that I find. I think that there's the distinct possibility that she really is a good representative of the people of Oklahoma. When driving home from work last week I passed a car parked outside of the liquor store in our neighborhood and written in soap on the rear window instead of "Go Roughers!" it said, "Amen Sally Kern".

Please send help.

Of course, there's also the possibility that along with some other infamous outspoken Republicans against homosexuality that she is as gay as drag queen bingo during pride week.

Red Green Velvet Cake

Megan signed up for the St. Patrick's day pot luck at the health department and by "signed up" I actually mean that she signed me up to make a "Green Velvet Cake". Now, bringing a velvet cake where each slice is probably 700 calories to the "health" department may seem odd but the first Red Velvet cake I made came out incredibly good (even though the icing wasn't quite as fluffy, creamy and delicious as it should have been) and this is Muskogee Oklahoma where healthy is a relative term.

To make sure that a green velvet cake is as palatable as its red brother we decided that a test cake was in order (either that or Megan was just really craving another cake). So last night we got all of the ingredients out and threw it together. This time I creamed the bejesus out of the icing and I must say that the results were fan-freaking-tastic. This cake is GOOD. So good in fact that I may have to throw the other half of it away before I find myself eating cake for breakfast (did that today), lunch (probably will today) and dinner (almost certainly will).

Yum!

Babies are GROSS

Now I think everyone knows this in their head, but I don't think you really get it until you have your own very gross baby. First of all, there is a lot of saliva coming out of Jordan constantly. Sometimes she mixes it up by adding lots of snot too. Disgusting!!! But we really should have taken some pictures of the child tonight.

Nana Pam was visiting and had fed Jordan while Brett and I ate dinner and watched Big Brother (we got an antenna until we decide between cable and satellite). So she finishes eating and I go to get some pajamas for her. Nana asks if she needs a new diaper, but Brett and I both say "no." She'd just been changed about 30 minutes ago. Nana notices that she smells a little and holds her up. The child has poop going up her back and down her leg. How does that happen?

No. Really. How does that happen???

We had to spray her down in the tub while I was gagging from the smell. A seven-month-old child should not have that kind of smell. Now what makes this even funnier to me is that I had just read Jorge Garcia's blog earlier tonight which said something along the lines of his needing to grow up because he found http://www.smellypoop.com/ funny. I actually went to the sight and it was also disgusting but at least it didn't make me gag. Now I have to admit that after her bath, Jordan was just a cute as ever which I'm hoping will help me to forget how disgusting babies can be. Look at how cute this child is...

Happy Leap Day!

I meant to blog something clever about leap day but going through my mental Rolodex of witticisms it appears that not much has been written about the subject there. The best I came up with was a take on the old Christmas joke about it only coming once every four years and how glad I am that I'm not a leap day but that's pretty "meh" overall. Anyway, enjoy this extra day because you won't get it back when it's gone.

Not Forgotten

Not only did I not forget about the blog, but I've decided that I will actually attempt to add to it occasionally. I have been inspired by Jorge Garcia's blog. For some reason I keep going back to his blog to see how his grass is growing. Check it out. It's pretty funny.

http://dispatchesfromtheisland.blogspot.com/

Jorge Garcia plays my favorite characters from both Lost and Becker and now his blog is also entertaining me. We haven't been watching Lost because we got behind during the first season and each year now we have to wait until it comes out on DVD. We're really behind now because we haven't set up our cable since the move. It's been a month already and we haven't been able to watch TV. We have been watching Big Brother though. It's available on line, so instead of the nice, new, plasma TV, we are watching a tiny little picture on the laptop. It's a good thing that the baby is so entertaining...

Forgotten

And here I'd thought that Megan had complete forgotten about this blog. We have a couple of videos (now a couple of months old, time flies) of Jordan really enjoying some food for the first time so I might as well put those here

Part One:


Part Two:


She still makes these faces when she takes the first bite.

So... We moved to Muskogee. I'm not sure how this happened. It's frightening to think about the impact of the decisions we make when terribly sleep deprived. I didn't realize how sleep deprived I am on a regular basis until last weekend when I got a lot of sleep. I was a totally different person. Apparently I'm also incredibly obnoxious when I'm back in my normal state. Brett mentioned that several times over the weekend and threatened to take my sleep back. Not very nice. At least I'm back to my sleep deprived state now and don't have the energy to be obnoxious anymore.

Jordan will start crawling any day now. She has figured out that she can get up on her little hands and knees, then fall to the side to move around the floor. It's pretty cute but I worry about her little brain sloshing around each time she does that. I guessing that it won't do any permanent damage. I remember one of my brothers banging his head against the wall as a child. I think he may have lost some of his "social" neurons doing that. So, I guess I'm just hopeful that Jordan will learn to crawl soon. I would prefer that she get along with others and not have to spend her life at the south pole (nothing wrong with that though).