Fifty Shades of Why-Am-I-Reading-This

My inner goddess, peering shyly through her lashes, would like to apologize to you all for my absence. My subconscious has been scowling at me over the top of her copy of The Complete Works of Someone Who's Been Dead a Really Long Time, admonishing me for being remiss in my posting.

If you haven't read E.L. James' "Fifty Shades of Grey", that paragraph made absolutely no sense to you and you probably think I'm crazy. If you have read it, your own inner goddess is nodding in agreement and calling me a slacker.

These books, you guys. They're so bad, but I can't get enough. I'm a little over halfway through the last one and I'm sort of sad to see the series end because I'm always sad when I've invested this kind of time in a series and then it's over, but I'm also sort of glad because Ana and Christian are really annoying.

I won't go into an in-depth review here like I did for Hunger Games, because, well, there just isn't that much to review. The plot is very simple, the sex scenes are plentiful, the characters are underdeveloped, and yet I can't put the books down.

The thing I do find interesting is how not-scandalous these books are. I had said something on Twitter recently about how maybe I'm just a wanton hussy for not being shocked by the books, but I just really don't find them shocking. Granted, it takes a lot to shock me when it comes to sex (I have friends whose escapades would make E.L. James' inner goddess curl up in the fetal position and cry), but still. When I hear about a scandalous book about two people entering into an S&M relationship, I expect a little more than handcuffs and riding crops. I mean, in the world of bondage, aren't handcuffs the equivalent of second base?

It seems that while the handcuffs have shocked the general public, it's the nature of the relationships that most of my Twitter friends found shocking -- that is, the contract and the punishment. But the contract didn't really bother me -- I mean, yeah, it's fucked up, but the relationship between Christian and Ana started out as a business arrangement, so I actually think the contract was reasonable. And the punishment aspect is, again, fucked up, but that's the way the Dominant-Submissive relationship works.

(Oh, the Google searches that will lead to this entry. Also, oh, the spam. Perhaps I should start using code.)

But as I said, I'm almost done with the books, so here's hoping I will be back to my slightly-more-regular posting schedule soon. Although I am doing a beta read for Shalini, so I'll probably get sucked into that too and resurface weeks later, blinking and pasty and wondering what day it is.

In closing, I leave you with this:

I finally read "The Hunger Games". (Spoilers galore!)

If you have not yet read the Hunger Games books and plan to, stop reading now, because there be spoilers ahead (in abundance). If you don't plan to read them, you probably will also want to stop reading, because you will be very, very bored with this post.

Oh but first, if you liked the Hunger Games books and haven't read "Ready Player One" (affiliate link) by Ernest Cline, go get it right now. Especially if you are a child of the '80s, because the whole plot centers around '80s trivia (specifically, '80s gaming trivia, but even if you're not a gamer you'll still enjoy it).

Overall, I did like the Hunger Games books. I definitely liked them better than I thought I would. But even though I did find them enjoyable in the long run, I had a lot of problems with them.

Before I get into the issues I had after reading them, first let me tell you why I resisted reading them for so long. First, I don't tend to care for YA fiction to begin with, and "Twilight" really soured me on it. So many of my "Twilight"-fan friends told me I should read "Hunger Games", so I automatically assumed they would be about on par with "Twilight" -- no character development, no real plot to speak of, that sort of thing. (Apologies to the "Twilight" fans in my audience, but I really couldn't stand those books.)

Next, I don't like post-apocalyptic stories, really, so that was a second strike against the books.

Third, I read the sample for the Kindle, which is the first chapter, and found myself not really caring what happened, so I didn't think it would be worth my time to read further.

Kevin read it, and told me it got better. Everyone told me it got better. So this weekend I finally read it, and they were all right. It did get better ... halfway through the book.

I get very bored when there is no dialogue, and most of the first half of Book 1 is just Katniss's inner monologue. But once she teamed up with Rue, it got a little better, and once she teamed up with Peeta (whom I loved -- those of you who are Team Gale are  going to have to explain that to me, because I found Gale annoying, though I will admit the actor who plays him in the movie is lightyears hotter than the kid who plays Peeta) I started to actually get invested in the story.

I felt the same way about the second book -- the first half was sort of throwaway to me, but the second half was pretty exciting. I understand why she had to include the two boring first-halves, but I really wish she could've just combined the second two halves of the books into one.

The third book, I hated. I mean, I devoured it, because I needed to find out if they got Peeta back, if they fixed him, if he got the girl in the end. But I didn't care at all about the rebellion and that whole thing. You know, the entire plot of the book.

I also didn't really like Katniss. I found her to be sort of flat and annoying -- I kept waiting for her to get less surly, but the only time she did that was when she was pretending to be in love with Peeta for the cameras, and that bothered me because she seemed to be playacting that very well (which, I know, deep down she wasn't playacting, but she THOUGHT she was, so that's why this bothers me) considering she doesn't seem to be very adept at hiding her thoughts and feelings the rest of the time.

I was mad that the author killed Cinna. I was madder that she killed Finnick -- I LOVED Finnick, and I loved that she let him marry Annie, and I HATED that she then killed him off and then mentioned later that oh, yeah, Annie had his baby after he died. I can't stand stories where women lose the loves of their lives before their babies come, because a parent not getting to meet his child, a parent having to raise a child alone, the whole idea of looking at this baby that is the last link between you and your true love and the agony of missing him that must cause, I just hate it.

I was PISSED that Collin's killed off Prim in the end, because it meant that the entire series had been for nought -- the whole premise of these books is Katniss taking her sister's place to save her life, and to have her sister die off in the very end anyway is just so ... I just felt so let down by the author, you know?

I also really did not care for the epilogue. Generally, I don't like prologues and epilogues, because I feel it's important to start the story at the beginning and end it at the end, and I feel like the 'logues are cheating. But I do understand that sometimes the inciting incident happens when, say, the protagonist is a child, and then she spends the next 10 years getting to a place where she can battle those demons, and that 10 years isn't really that interesting or part of the bulk of the story. A truly gifted author can tell the story starting 10 years later and work the backstory from the prologue into the narrative in a way that works, but this is hard to do smoothly without seeming like he's saying, "Oh, by the way, when Janet was seven her whole family was killed in front of her eyes and that's why she's the way she is and why her goal is to become a soldier and get revenge," which is such a lame way of getting that part of the story across. So I get why authors do it, but it usually annoys me a little.

Epilogues, though, almost always bug me, and I need to just not read them, but if there are more words to read I HAVE to keep going, especially because I always hope the author won't let me down. But epilogues are so often just saying, "and then they got married and had babies", and I really didn't need to know that Katniss and Peeta (whose couple name on the internet is, apparently, "Peeniss", which will never cease to amuse the 12-year-old boy in my head) got married and had babies. It's understood at the end of the book that they end up together -- you know she can't pick Gale because of his possible role in Prim's death, so of course she's going to pick Peeta. You know she loves him, it's been set up all along for her to end up with him (and thank goodness Collins didn't screw that one up, or I'd be even madder than I was about Prim, because you don't spend three books having the hero defending the heroine and saving her life and declaring his love, and making it clear that she also has feelings for him even if she's not admitting it, just to say "and then she married someone else"), so OF COURSE she was going to end up with Peeta. So why the epilogue? And the babies? I didn't care if they had babies. I didn't understand why Katniss was so against having the children that Peeta so badly wanted even after the Hunger Games were done for good. I didn't like the whole "they're playing on a graveyard" line. You want a book that basically has a happy ending to end happily, and to end it with that just clouds the whole thing. Which, again, I get the point of it, that in that world it was going to take generations for the despair and agony of the Capitol's reign to go away, but still. Just end it with Snow dying and Coin dying and Katniss and Peeta reconciling, and we all know where the rest of the road leads without you telling us, MS. COLLINS.

My final complaint is this -- that last Games? With the Capitol children? That Peeta was so against, and Katniss said "yes, let's do one last Games, for Prim"? Sickens me. And also proves that Katniss's character arc moved backward instead of forward. The Katniss of the first book would never have voted to kill off 24 more innocent children if she could have stopped it. I understand that her sister's death took a huge toll on her, but for her to say, "Yes, let's do one more for revenge" just makes me dislike her even more. Making the Capitol kids fight to the death in the arena isn't avenging Prim's death, it's just adding to Katniss's own body count, which you'd think would bother her given how much time she's spent talking about all the innocents dying because of her, but obviously it doesn't. And I don't like that Peeta was able to overlook that. Peeta is a good person, and for him to still love her even after she does that knocks him down a peg in my book. Because by him forgiving her that act, he's condoning it the same as if he'd voted for it.

All that said, I did enjoy the series overall. Any book that I devour that quickly does get a thumbs-up from me, even if I do have a lot of complaints about it.

So. Now that you've read my diatribe, what did you think of the books?

Friday randomness

I have a lot of little things to babble about right now, so this is going to be one of those posts full of random sidebar items.

***

Have you guys tried LUSH bath bombs? They are amazing. If you ever feel like getting me a present, this one is the best thing ever. (I've actually discovered I like just about anything with bergamot in it. I had a massage recently and they let me pick out an aromatherapy oil, and the first one was lavender and chamomile and it was okay, but the next one was heavenly and it turned out to be the exact same thing plus bergamot).

***

I've been watching a lot of "The Dog Whisperer" lately. Not sure I've actually learned anything (I think I'm just doing it wrong, more than that I haven't learned it) but I'm feeling much better about how destructive Torg can be. Compared to the dogs on the show, Torg's destruction is NOTHING. He hasn't attacked windowsills, furniture, anything like that, and he's not aggressive, thank goodness. Watching this show is making me realize that we have a very good dog, all in all.

***

I was talking to some people a couple weeks ago on Twitter about how annoying it is when people bring little kids into the dog park. Kids under 10 aren't allowed in ours, and people frequently bring their toddlers in. There's even a woman who doesn't even have a dog, she just brings her three-year-old up to watch them, but comes inside instead of standing outside the gate. That bugs me.

But on Wednesday, I was that woman. I didn't mean to be, but I was. I didn't think there would be anyone up there at 9 a.m. on a weekday, I was just going to toss a ball for Torg and let Lorelai watch from the stroller. But shortly after we got there, a woman showed up with her two dogs, and it turns out there's a whole group who meets every weekday morning. At first I kept Lorelai in the park in her stroller, but once there got to be too many dogs for me to feel okay about that, I took her out and then I was not the mom with the kid in the park, but I was the woman who let her dog into the park and didn't go inside herself (which is bad, because if there's a problem, I couldn't get to Torg quickly). We'd gone up the the park so he could burn more energy than a regular walk would so he'd be chill when my mom came to babysit, and by the time we hit the "I have to take the baby out of here" part of the park visit, it was too late to be able to switch and do a long walk, but he hadn't really been running enough to have burned off the energy, so I had to stay. I was horribly embarrassed even though everyone was really nice, so I'll be avoiding the dog park in the mornings now.

***

Speaking of being embarrassed, I got my hair cut on Wednesday (that's why my mom was babysitting). I made her take off five inches, and she told me I wasn't going to like the cut I asked for, but I insisted, so she did it. And then next day I had to call and schedule another appointment because she was right, I hate it and can't deal with it for another two months until my next scheduled cut.

It's not bad, it's just ... blah. I wanted something shorter and faster to dry and style, but I forget that when my hair is this short it's a pain in the ass. Both sides flip to the right, and it takes me as long to get it to do what I want as it took to dry it when it was longer, and by the time I get downstairs it's back to doing whatever it wants. So Tuesday I go back and get more layers put in -- back to the shag I had when I was pregnant, which I loved except it was annoying to pull it back because the short layers were too short and had to be clipped back. But overall it was fast and easy to dry and style, so I won't need to pull it back as often as I have been, so it shouldn't matter much.

So now I am all embarrassed that I have to go back to see her and say, "You were right, I should have listened," and end up spending twice as much for the cut I should have gotten in the first place. But, whatever.

***

Finally, yesterday on one of our walks we saw a Corgi. Torg wanted to play, and it was clear the Corgi did too but his owner said he gets nervous around big dogs and wouldn't actually come over. Torg is flipping around and jumping and trying to play, and on the other side of the street the Corgi starts humping the air (which is basically the same as humping the ground, because his stubby little legs are so low to the ground). Then, and this is the part where I wish I'd gotten video, he starts spinning around, doing this little humping-the-air butt-scoot in a circle, over and over and over. I've never seen anything like it but it was the funniest thing I think I've ever seen a dog do, and it went on for a good two minutes before his owner said good day and tugged him along toward home.

We also saw a three-month-old Ridgeback puppy who yipped at Torg and was the cutest thing ever. Then we went out and ran around in a field and he came home and passed out cold for the rest of the night.

(I have no good way to end this post.) The end.

Spoiler alert: It wasn't the teeth.

We had a rough weekend over here in Kingsville. Lorelai was running a nasty fever and was so.effing.cranky. all weekend, and not sleeping (at night OR during the day). The insurance nurses' hotline said the fever was probably related to the teeth she has coming in (six at once WHY DOES THE UNIVERSE HATE MY CHILD?) (AND ME?), even though she's never run a fever with teeth before, but because she is cutting so many at once, I thought, "Okay, well, maybe."

They said to only be concerned enough for urgent care if she hit 105 and it wouldn't come down. All night Friday she hovered in the 102 to almost-103 range, and it definitely spiked up again about halfway into the six hours between doses of Motrin, and stayed at that temperature until the next dose. She would only sleep if I was sitting up holding her in the rocking chair -- sitting up in bed, where I could sort of doze myself, wouldn't do. Of course.

Sunday evening the fever finally went away, but I'd noticed a bit of a rash on her arms, hands, and chin. (Other moms probably know where this is going.)

Today, I had to go into the office for a bit. Kevin's mom came to watch her, and when I got home Lorelai had just woken up from a too-short nap, and had a rash ALL OVER her face. Tiny red bumps all over, with a few big pimple-looking bumps on her chin and one cheek. This was not normal teething-drool-rash. The tiny bumps on her arms had swollen to large, bright red pimple-looking bumps, and she had teeny pin-pricks all over her torso, legs, and diaper area, with a few more big red spots scattered around.

I took her to the pediatrician, because this was not normal. The doctor took one look at her and diagnosed Hand, Foot, and Mouth Disease.

Which is not as scary as it sounds (it basically means she had a fever and now has a rash), but there's no treatment except to wait the virus out and it's super contagious to other kids so there go any play dates we were planning this week. She's going to be BORED by Friday, I tell you.

As Kevin said to me when I told him what the doctor said, though: This baby of ours, however volatile her fussy patches may be, there's always a good reason. Here's hoping this stupid virus runs its course quickly, because even though the doctor said those spots aren't bothersome to her, they look painful.

Stuff about me.

I think I posted once before about the Crappy Day Present exchange, right? WEll, it's that time again, and we've all been asked to post some getting-to-know-you questions on our blogs to help the people we are assigned to pick out really awesome stuff for us.

So, here is some stuff about me. If you're participating in the CDP exchange (or just feel like answering!) feel free to post your answers (not that these are questions, but whatever) in the comments!

1. I am not a huge chocolate person. Once in a while, I get a craving, but I would almost always prefer gummy stuff like Sour Patch Kids or just about anything by Haribo (they are the BEST gummy candy company -- their gummy cola bottles got me through a really rough breakup in college and hold a special place in my heart!)
2. I think most longtime readers know that I have the worst taste in music. I love the Backstreet Boys, for Pete's sake. Also New Found Glory and Bon Jovi, but those are my "See? I have SOME decent taste" bands. There are a lot of pop musicians I like on the radio now, but generally I only like one or two songs by them. I can't think of the last artist where I actually enjoyed the entire album. I also really like Glee.
3. I am never bare-toenailed. I think my feet look weird without nail polish. However, 90% of the nail polish I own (and 99% of the nail polish I actually wear) is pink or purpleish-pink. I actually have red on now (about once a summer I go through a Marilyn phase and wear red, and this year Smash influenced it early, but I love pink polishes.
4. I always love the idea of chunky, trendy jewelry, but somehow I only ever wear dainty little pendants-on-chains and studs or small hoops. I just don't feel confident in picking out "cool" jewelry for myself.
5. I love to read. A great afternoon in my mind would involve sitting in a coffee shop with my Kindle and a caramel latte, uninterrupted by anyone, for at least an hour. These days I mostly read fluffy chick lit, but my top two all-time favorite books are Jane Eyre and The Great Gatsby. I have never read anything by Jane Austen because I can't ever get past the first chapter. Just not a fan.
   

So there you have it -- five things about me that might make it a little easier for my CDP person to put together a package that will make me drool.

What makes you drool?

I have a new blog.

It's not to replace this one; rather, it's to enhance it.

Crap My Dog Destroyed

So far there's only one post, but there are many, MANY pictures on my iPhone that need to be uploaded to it, as soon as the baby goes to bed tonight.

Enjoy. Torg's official new name is Torgerson T. Dog, Destroyer of All the Things.

Office Crush

I'm reading a new blog, Office Crush, and I'm really enjoying it. It's a fictional (she's up front about it) account of a girl's obsession with her boss and her attempts to forget said obsession, by the author of another blog I enjoy, Reading and Chickens.

This blog reminds me how much I enjoy light, fluffy reading. (Shalini, if you are reading this, I hope you are not offended that I called your story fluffy.) It actually inspired me to go pull a light, fluffy novel ("Love You to Death" by Melissa Senate) off my books-to-read shelf and sit down with a real book and read. (And then I finished it in two days. And then I picked up another one and realized it's the second in a series and now I have to decide if I care to purchase the first or if I'm going to go back to not reading for months on end.)

Anyway, if you are in the market for some light, fun reading (that you have to wait for the next installment of [Shalini, why did you not write this as a regular book so that I could flip ahead to find out who she ends up with??] [not that I would do that] [yes, I totally would] [it better be Ian]), go check out Office Crush.

And now, back to our regularly scheduled programming of me bitching about stuff and occasionally showing pictures of my kid.

It's been a week.

I have so much respect for anyone with twins, triplets, and the like. Introducing a young dog into our family has basically given me two toddlers, and it. is. exhausting.

Overall, Torg is a really, really good dog. He's settled in amazingly well, and that's part of the problem. He's been SO good that when he is not as good, it's jarring to me. And most of his "not so good" moments aren't even that bad -- he wants to play at 2 a.m.; he takes Lorelai's toys and snacks from her (in his defense, 80% of the time she has offered said toy/snack to him, but there are certain things we don't want him chewing on, like Hippo and Frog); if we leave the closet door ajar he steals our shoes and creates a shoe farm in the middle of the living room (he doesn't chew them, really, he just collects them in a pile). He's got enough energy in the morning that we've been doing our 9:45 walks at 8:15 or so, and it's been taking me twice as long to get out the door because every time I turn my back to put on a sock or brush my teeth, he's grabbed something he shouldn't have and run off with it.

Still. In general, I can't complain. He's acting like a dog. It's just a little surprising for me because most of the time, he just lies on the sofa, or follows me around and headbutts my hand until I pet him. Also, I've only ever had cats, and cats typically do not steal your shoes.

***

Lorelai is acting like a one-year-old, and I am learning that one-year-olds are really rather obnoxious. She's cutting three molars at once, and I know that's part of it, but damn, she's driving me nuts. She refuses to eat anything that isn't yogurt, cheese, graham cracker, or in a snack trap. I don't really know if I should bother trying to get other stuff into her, or if I should just give up and let her decide when she's ready for something else. (I know I went about 6 months as a toddler where I wouldn't eat anything but Cheerios, and I turned out okay, so maybe I'm stressing over nothing.) My frustration stems from the fact that I feel like I ought to at least TRY something besides yogurt, but she inevitably rejects it, so I give her yogurt because otherwise I have to listen to her scream because she's hungry. So the dilemma I face is, do I offer the chicken and carrots, knowing she will reject it, and then give her yogurt, thus essentially showing her that if she rejects option A she will get what she wants? Or do I just not even bother with the "real" food and just assume that when her body needs actual nutrients, she will reject the yogurt and then I can try the carrots?

Also, the screaming. Ugh, the screaming. I know it's partly her teeth and partly that she gets frustrated when she wants/needs something that I don't understand/won't give to her. Those I understand. I don't like the screaming and whining, but at least I understand why she's upset. But when she does it because she doesn't have my complete undivided attention, that makes me nuts. You'd think she'd have learned by now that there are times when I will be paying attention to something other than her, but she still seems to get irrationally annoyed when that happens. She doesn't seem to be jealous of the dog, though, so that's a good thing.

***

I'm also SO. FREAKING. HORMONAL. right now. Like, my fuse is short, and after I reach the end of it I just sit and cry uncontrollably. I know for a fact I am not pregnant, and it's a completely random point in my cycle so the best I can figure is that it's a combination of the lack of sleep and my general lack of patience for things not going the way I want/expect them to go, and possibly an earlier-in-my-cycle-than-normal hormonal surge. The truly bizarre thing is that I'm having these meltdowns because I'm just so frustrated at finding myself constantly saying "no!" to either the kid or the dog. It's frustrating to constantly be ignored by these two creatures who I KNOW understand me, and just choose to ignore me, and then I get mad at myself for losing my temper because it's a one-year-old and a dog and maybe I am giving them both too much credit for understanding me.

Then, of course, they prove they are testing me by deliberately doing something I have repeatedly said not to do (for Lorelai, it's usually touching the wine bottles in the wine cabinet or playing in the dog's water; for Torg, it's usually taking Hippo away from Lorelai or stealing my shoes), and all the while they are staring right at me, waiting for me to tell them no, and then I get mad at myself for being all, "Oh, maybe they don't understand after all and I'm a bad mom for yelling at them!", because THEY TOTALLY UNDERSTAND. And then I cry again.

***

So. It's been a week. I have opened my final two Crappy Day Presents this week from the lovely Laura Lou (it was cloth diaper stuff and really cute notecards and a cute owl notebook and my favorite kind of pens, and it was just what I needed to perk me up, though I was annoyed at myself for having already opened the package that contained Sour Patch Kids because those are my favorite and it's an eating-my-feelings kind of week). Any week that needs TWO CDPs is A WEEK.

So I'm lucky that it's time for another CDP exchange. This post is already pretty long so there will be another post later wherein I answer some questions that will help my CDP partner put together a package for me, but if you are interested in joining the exchange, go check out the links and sign up! I had fun putting together my own box of CDPs for Tara last time and I really enjoyed opening up my presents from Laura, so I'm looking forward to this exchange as well. You should join, it's a lot of fun!

Torgerson.

His name was going to be Rook, but it doesn't suit him. Torgerson is the name of a former Virginia Tech president, and it lends itself well to the nickname Torg, which will be easy for Lorelai to say and fits his goofy personality. Plus Torg is a main character in a web comic I used to read (and should start reading again; I'm not sure why I stopped), so I like that aspect as well.

He's SUCH a good dog. He's still got a way to go on training, but he's housebroken and he knows "sit", and he's very good on the leash. I think it'll be a while before I can walk him with the stroller -- we'll be doing our morning walks with Lorelai in the Ergo until I can get him (and me) into some training to teach him how to not cut in front of the stroller and that sort of thing.


Lorelai is absolutely nuts over him, and he is fabulous with her.

It's so nice to have a pet again. It's nice to have a furry critter curl up with his head in my lap, and follow me around, and leave chewed-off pieces of Nylabone on my bed (well, maybe not so much that last part).

It's still a little strange, but I like it. And I think the more he settles in, the better it'll be.

Guess what?

BAM.

Saturday morning we are getting a new family member! And now the name search begins in earnest. I feel like we should love his name as much a we love Lorelai's, and we just haven't found that name yet.

In the meantime, come oooooooon, Saturday!

This is harder than naming our kid.

I just typed out a whole post, and couldn't figure out how to close it so I was going to do one of those awkward "And here's a picture of a baby" closings, and when I put the picture in effing Blogpress deleted my post.

The whole point of the post was that while I'd love to name the dog At because it's funny that Lorelai refuses today say dog, one day she will say dog and then we'll have a dog named At for another 12+ years and I don't think it's fair to the dog to make a joke out of his name that will haunt him forever.

Then I said my favorite suggestion so far was Princess Isabella Rocketship, from Kara's four-year-old, so you can see I am taking the dg's name very seriously. (If he was a girl, that name would be seriously in the running. I'd also liked Stella Artois, Zoe, and Moxie Crimefighter for a girl dog. So of course we are trying to adopt a boy dog, because we had a bunch of good girl dog names. Sigh.)

Anyway, keep the name suggestions coming, because I am really enjoying them!

And now, here's a picture of a baby:

Name our dog!

Just a quick update on our dog situation -- we got an email this morning that the other applicant decided to withdraw his application for some reason, so we are currently the only family interested in Strider! It's not a done deal, they need to do the home visit and they could still decide not to give him to us, but I feel much better about it now than I did last night. And we are discussing potential dog names, which Kevin wasn't letting me do before because he didn't want us to get too attached, knowing we likely wouldn't get him.

We're sort of okay with his current name (we talked about spelling it "Stryder" instead, although now that I'm looking at it spelled out the Y looks funny so maybe not), but I'm not crazy about it. I'd really like to give him a name that's from us, you know? I'd suggested Dexter, but Kevin doesn't like that. On the last post, Tara suggested Norbert (after the Ridgeback dragon in "Harry Potter"), and I sort of love that but Kevin is watching "Transformers" on TV right now and did that smile and nod thing that guys do when they're not really paying attention to you. (Oh, he just told me he wasn't doing the "I'm not really listening" smile and nod, he was doing the "I appreciate the joke but we're not naming our dog Norbert" smile and nod. They look like the same nod to me.)

So. Help us out. What would you name him?

ICYMI: We found a dog! Sort of.

If you don't follow me on Twitter, Instagram, or Facebook, you probably haven't seen this photo.

His name is Strider (for now), he is a one-year-old hound/Ridgeback mix, and he is not at all what we thought we would fall in love with. He's probably going to be about 60-65 pounds, a far cry from the 20-30 pound range we started our search with, and he's a little younger than I thought we'd end up with. (I was expecting we'd choose a dog closer to two or three.) But love is love, and all three of us love him.

The only catch is that we aren't the only ones. There's already an application in on him -- they beat us by a day -- but that doesn't necessarily mean anything. The rescue will do a home visit later this week and decide which family is the best fit for him, so cross your fingers for us.

We took him out on a walk and it's clear someone has worked with him. He was so well-mannered, he didn't pull at all, even when he saw other dogs. At one point a Collie mix was barking at him, and he do wanted to go play, crouching down and wagging his tail and perking up his ears, but I told him to sit and he did, and even though he quivered with excitement the whole time, he stayed put until I told him to go and then he just walked nicely next to me like a good boy, squashing any concern I'd had about walking a bigger dog with a stroller.

The two women we spoke to at the rescue are concerned about him being the best fit with Lorelai, and kept trying to push older (six-to-nine-years), smaller dogs on us. They were really pushing a Basset Hound mix, who I'm sure is very sweet but after we met Strider we didn't want to look at anyone else (and Kevin prefers longer-legged dogs anyway so the Basset wouldn't have been one he'd have gone for anyway). So that's a strike against us when it comes to them deciding who gets to adopt him, but I'm home all day, and I take a long walk every morning and we have a dog park a mile from our house, so he'll get a lot of exercise. So I'm hoping that will work in our favor, but at the same time, I'm trying so, so hard not to get my hopes up. But it's really hard not to because look at this face:




How could you NOT get your hopes up about the possibility of waking up to that face every day?

Doggie speed dating.

We're still dogless. So far we've seen three dogs and none of them really seems like "the one". (One was actually flat-out terrified of us and everything else in the yard/house/street, and we went to see her a second time, thinking maybe the first time her fear was due to blasting at the military base nearby, but no. She was the same way the second time, and with the other family who came to see her. She's obviously a sweet dog, but we don't have time to coax her out of being afraid -- we have a toddler who doesn't understand "Leave the puppy alone, let her get used to us for a few days," so we need a dog of the "you rescued me and I am SO GRATEFUL LET ME LOVE ALL OVER YOU FOREVER!!!" variety.)

I'm disappointed that none of the first three dogs we met was THE dog. I really thought scaredy-dog would be, on our way to see her the second time, but obviously not. The third dog we saw was perfectly sweet, and we'd be happy with her, but we're hoping for a dog that makes us go, "YES. THAT ONE." instead of, "Okay, she seems sweet enough." We are going to go back and see dog #2 again, because we did like her, but we also have some other possibilities who have arrived at the local rescues since we did our initial search, and we want to meet some of them, too. I was hoping that we'd know by now who our dog was, but that's obviously not the case.

I've decided this is like dating. There are plenty of dogs out there we'd be perfectly happy with, but I feel like when we meet "the one", we'll know, you know? Before I met Kevin, I'd dated guys I'd have been perfectly happy to be married to, but looking back it's so obvious that they weren't it. When I met Kevin, while we didn't have a Hollywood-style love-at-first-sight moment, I definitely remember telling my friends after just a couple of weeks that I was pretty sure this was it, that no other guy had felt so right before. (It wasn't just me who felt that way, either. The first time I met his parents, his dad apparently said to his mom after we left, "He's going to marry her.") And sure enough, the longer we dated, the more sure I was that he was it.

That's what we want out of our dog search. We want a dog that we can't imagine not having in our lives. It may not be a lightning strike kind of zing, but I figure even if it's not love at first sight, we shouldn't be able to stop thinking about the dog after we leave.

And here I thought I was out of the dating game for good. These adoption events and short meetings at foster homes are like speed dating. If you have ever speed dated, I tip my hat to you, because I couldn't do it. It's just too damn exhausting to do it for too long.

A year of baby stuff, part 1: Sleep and sanity

Now that I have survived my first year of motherhood, I thought I'd share with you a list of the items that allowed me to do so.

I don't know what Laura Ingalls Wilder and her cohorts did without all this crap. This baby of mine? Would not have been content with two outfits and a wooden rattle. Girl gets BORED. FAST.

I'm going to break this into a few parts, because otherwise it will be a seriously overwhelming list and I will never finish writing it. Also, all the links are Amazon affiliate links, so if you use the link to buy the item I get five cents or something. Figured I should disclose that, just in case anyone cares. (All the links are also to the item I have, so in some cases there are other options out there but I only know about what I know about, so that's what I'm linking to.)

Anyway! On to the STUFF!

Newborn Sleep Items:

1. The Miracle Blanket. I'm getting another of these for the next baby, because I only have one and sometimes it needs to be washed, and you may as well not even bother with any other swaddle. People told me that, I didn't listen. These things are expensive (as in, if it hadn't been a shower gift, I would not have one, because $30+ for a blanket? COME ON.) but so worth it. Do as I say, not as I do, and listen to me when I tell you that your kid will bust out of every other swaddle in three seconds flat, but will not do so with this one. (Well, I can't speak to the Woombie. I'm not sure Houdini could get out of that thing. But I didn't have one of those.) Lorelai did bust out of it, once, and at that point we stopped swaddling her:
2. Pack 'n Play. It was nice to have a safe place to stick her when I needed to put her down for a few minutes, it had a changing table attached so I didn't have to go up and down stairs 80 times an hour (though before I set up said changing table, I was doing that, and I'm convinced that's half the reason I dropped the baby weight I did fairly quickly). It's also nice to have a place for her to sleep when we travel or go to visit friends/family for an afternoon.
3. Video baby monitor. We keep it downstairs now, to watch her when we're in the living room. We don't even use a monitor upstairs anymore because we can hear her down the hall, even with her door closed, even when we are dead asleep. My kid's got a set of lungs that would make Christina Aguilera proud. Anyway, the best part about this particular model is that it has a function where you can talk to her through it, and it confuses the crap out of her, which amuses me to no end.
4. CD player. I like that this one is also a clock; I used to keep a little travel clock on the table next to the glider but I always knocked it on the floor; this sits on the shelf above the dresser and we play classical music on it. We used to play it on a loop all night, but now it just plays through once, more as a "get in the mood to sleep" thing than anything. Next time, I'll be burning a CD of white noise (I personally like a rain sound) to play, because all the white noise machines we tried died on us after a few months.
5. Baby Mozart. Okay, I know people are going to see this and judge me for letting my newborn watch TV, but whatever. You do what you have to do sometimes. When she was super gassy and inconsolable, this was the only thing that helped at all. When she woke up at 4:30 in the morning, ready to start the day, this was the only thing that got me through it (I'd put it on and doze on the sofa). To this day it's still her favorite Baby Einstein DVD. I know it doesn't make her smarter like some people think it does, but she would squeal and giggle at it, and anything that makes the kid happy is a win in my book.

Stuff You Should Get to Stay Sane:

1. White Noise Lite app. It's free, it makes her sleep, download it. (This could have gone above but I had an even five things so it goes here because seriously, this thing KEPT ME SANE.)
2. Netflix app. The only way I stayed awake to nurse in the early weeks, before I figured out how to nurse lying down, was to watch TV, but there's no TV in the nursery and I didn't want to stumble downstairs half-asleep with a baby in my arms. I watched all of 30 Rock and the first two seasons of Sons of Anarchy this way.
3. Bouncy chair. (Not exactly the one I have, mine has turtles on it, but close enough.) She never slept in this but it was a great way to keep her from getting bored being on her back. She hated the toy bar, though, so we had to take that off. A lot of babies will sleep in this thing, but we used it more as a way to keep her near us when we were in the kitchen and she wasn't big enough for the ...
4. Bumbo. When she was old enough to sit in this, she loved being able to sit upright. We have a tray for it, and she could feed herself puffs and play with toys and be sitting right there with us while we cooked or whatever. I also sometimes sat her in it in the shower with me (not often, because she HATES the shower, but sometimes).
5. Pedicures. No link for this. Just get them. Also, coffee, but that's sort of a no-brainer.

Squirrel! SQUIRREL!!!

Yesterday afternoon Lorelai was being cranky over nothing, so I did was I usually do when she gets like that -- tried to distract her. One of my favorite methods of distraction is to say, "Hey, Lorelai, are there any dogs outside?" And then she toddles (TODDLES! My baby TODDLES now!) over to the window, saying, "At! At! At!" (I'm sure I've mentioned that she refuses to say "dog"*, instead saying her baby version of "cat" which also means dog, bird, ball, hippo, Backyardigans, and "What is that amazing shiny thing over there?"). There are hardly ever any dogs outside, but it's a good reset button, and you never know, there MIGHT be a dog outside to look at. (This technique may fail to work when we actually have a dog**.)

So she's at the window, saying "At! At!" and I said, "You're like a dog who sees a squirrel. One-track mind. 'Squirrel! Squirrel! SQUIRREL!'"

And do you know that baby looked at me and said, "Oorl. Oorl oorl."

And I called out to Kevin, "Did our kid just say 'squirrel'?" And he said it sort of sounded like it. So I said it again. "Squirrel! Squirrel! SQUIRREL!"

"Oorl."

"Lorelai, you said 'squirrel'! What the heck is that? You don't even know what a squirrel is!"

"Oorl. Oorl!"

Kevin said, "Uh, yeah, that definitely sounded like she was trying to say 'squirrel'."

"Oorl!"

I looked at her. "You'll say 'squirrel', not even knowing what a squirrel is, but you refuse to say 'dog', even though you see dogs every day and positively vibrate with excitement when you do?"

She looked back at me. "At," she said, and wandered off to play with her ball.

*She actually did say "dog" the other day. We were outside, I was sending a text to Kevin, and a neighbor walked by with her Yorkie. And I heard Lorelai say something, and then I stopped typing and really listened, and she was saying "Og!" and I said, "Did you say 'dog'?" and she looked at me and said, "At." But she DID say 'og' at least twice, before refusing to ever repeat it.

**Oh, yeah, we're getting a dog. I probably haven't mentioned that. We had it narrowed down to four from two different rescue groups, we've met two of them, are meeting the other two this afternoon. Then we'll probably re-meet the top two candidates, and hopefully by this time next week I will be able to tell you which dog we are getting, even if we do not actually have that dog at our house yet (both groups have to do home visits, vet reference checks, etc., so it usually takes about a week from when you say "I definitely want this dog, here is my adoption fee" to when you get to bring said dog home).

Hopefully this won't be like the last time I said we were getting a dog. I mean, last time it was because I got pregnant right before we went to meet the dogs and decided to hold off getting a dog since we didn't know how having a baby would impact our lives, and while I wouldn't mind finding out I was pregnant right now (spoiler alert: I'm not pregnant), I'm hoping that we get the dog first so we don't talk ourselves out of it. Because if we keep waiting till the time is perfect to get a dog, we'll never get one. It's like deciding to have a baby. The timing is never "perfect", you're never 100% "ready".

One year.

Amazing, the difference a year makes.

Thus little lump of a newborn has turned into a walking, sort-of talking, cupcake-loving toddler. And she's a pretty awesome kid.

It's funny, I've been out of the office for over a year now, and not once have I questioned my decision to stay home. I mean, yes, there have been days when I've thought, "Man, if I was working I would not have to deal with this tantrum. That would be nice." But even through the tantrums I know that staying home was the right choice for me. (Though I do miss showering first thing in the morning.)

Lorelai, it's been a fabulous first year with you, munchkin. Happy (belated, because I did not post this on your actual birthday) birthday. I love you!

11 months.

Oh, hey. My kid turned 11 months old three weeks ago and I'm just now getting around to talking about it. (Just now, a week before she turns ONE YEAR, ohmygodIamsonotreadyforthis.)

Yesterday was one year since my due date (which, if you'll recall, Lorelai decided to ignore last year). Next Tuesday, she turns one. Holy cats, you guys. ONE.

As you may have noticed, I have not blogged much recently. That is because this child has me so.busy.all.the.time. She's into everything, is no longer content to just sit there and play by herself while I blog (instead preferring to stand next to me and shriek at me till I put away the computer and pay attention to her ... or stand next to me and shriek while simultaneously "helping" me type). Which is fine -- she's a lot of fun right now, and I like playing with her, so I don't really mind that I'm running out of time to blog and am so exhausted by the end of the day that I couldn't put a coherent post together if I tried.

This late in the game, it seems sort of silly to recap Lorelai at 11 months, so instead of a full recap let's just hit the highlights (which I would bullet, but Blogger freaks out when I use the bullet function and make the text white and links gigantic, so let's just pretend there are bullets):

She crawls, incredibly quickly, everywhere. She's taken a few steps, cruises like crazy, and walks with her push-toys all over the house, but I think we may be a few weeks (or months, even) away from real walking yet.

She loves pulling books off the bookshelf. She'll go over to it, run her fingers along the spines of the books, babbling quietly to herself, and then select one to pull off and throw on the floor behind her. Some she throws to the left; others she throws to the right, which no readily apparent pattern, but she clearly has a plan. When she has taken down all the books she wants, she sits and chooses one to flip through, still babbling. Generally she's very good with the books -- she does tend to pick them up by their covers, so some of her more favorite paperbacks are looking a little worse for wear, but she's only ripped three so far, and not on purpose. (Well, one was on purpose.) I keep meaning to get video of this process, but I'm so fascinated by it that I forget to record her most of the time. The few videos I do have are not very good. I will keep trying.

She knows the words for most of her toys. She doesn't say them, but if you tell her to go get her hippo, or her zebra, or her frog, or a ball, she will. About 75% of the time, if you ask for a certain color ball, she will deliver to you the right color. (She gets red and orange confused, and sometimes blue and green, but if you put out a red ball, a blue ball, and a yellow ball, she's pretty good about giving you the one you ask for.)

She gives kisses on command, though more often to her toys, pictures, or furniture than to people.

She knows where "mirror baby" (her reflection in the floor-length mirror in our room) is, and will go give her kisses if you ask her to. Even if you're in another room upstairs, she knows that mirror baby lives in our room.

She thinks the Backyardigans theme song is the greatest thing ever, and was pissed that it wasn't nominated for a Grammy.

She gets really excited when we pull up Netflix on the Xbox, because the Backyardigans live in Netflix. (I do not let her watch TV all the time, by the way. She gets maybe one show a day, and it's not always Backyardigans. She just learned after about three episodes that the Netflix screen precedes Backyardigans. Smart kid.)

She knows where her feet are and will grab them if you ask her to find them. We are working on her nose and her belly. She also knows "How big is Lorelai? So big!" (and other "how ___ is ___? So ___!" variations).

She loves raisins. She ate half a pork chop last night. She likes meatballs, and anything with cheese on it. Yogurt and yogurt melts, and graham crackers, are her favorite foods in the entire universe. Oh, and olives. The child loses her damn mind over olives.

She smiles all.the.time. I mean, she has her cranky moments, but in general my kid is really, really happy. Especially if I sit her on the bed, count to three, then pull on her feet so she flops onto her back. That's a great game that will keep her entertained and giggling for half an hour or more.

This week has been rough with her sleep, due to either nightmares or a growth spurt, I'm not sure. She's been up multiple times in the night, fighting naps, refusing to go back to sleep unless I am holding her. In the middle of the night, this is annoying. In the middle of the day, I don't really mind, because I don't get snuggles like that very often and it's a good time to get some reading done, even if it means I get nothing else done around the house. I'm willing to let the dishes stay in the dishwasher for a while if it means I get to snuggle a sleepy baby. (Well, okay, I'm willing to let the dishes stay in the dishwasher forever, because I hate unloading that thing, but that's neither here nor there.)

Eleven months has been pretty awesome. If the next kid (no, not pregnant, just hypothetical at this point) is even half as cool as his or her big sister, I can totally see myself going the route of Michelle Duggar. If you make awesome babies, why would you want to stop?

I totally lucked out with this kid. And her dad.

I've only been *really* sick a handful of times since Lorelai was born, but she is always SO GOOD when she knows I don't feel well. It reminds me of how my cat used to crawl in my lap and put her head under my chin and purr when I was sad, because there's no way a cat or a baby could really know I'm not feeling well, but they do anyway. I am currently in the middle of Stomach Virus 2012, Take 2. And that little girl entertained herself all morning long while I lay on the sofa and moaned; she was all smiles and kisses, didn't fuss once, and then took a 2-hour nap.

And now her dad is watching her while I watch Friday Night Lights and try not to die. Even though he has a cold and feels lousy too. I am a very, very lucky woman.

New glasses! And a glitter hippie update.

I have been trying to post this for a week and keep getting errors from BlogPress regarding the status of my blog server. And it's not really trying-for-a-week level exciting, so I ought to just give it up, but at this point I'm Jutland determined to beat BlogPress.

I got my new glasses! And I love them! They are purple!




You can't tell in the photo but I was having a fabulous hair day. Even though I had not washed my hair that day. My limit seems to be two days before we hit ponytail territory, but still, that's better than I'm used to!

Also, I am wearing no makeup at all in this picture, and six months ago I would never have even considered posting a no-makeup photo on the Internet. Now, I routinely consider going to the grocery store with no makeup, be clause the OCM has been so awesome to my skin. Yes, I have some dark spots from healed pimples (I had a wicked hormonal breakout right before PJs at TJ's and that type of thing takes a while to fully clear up even after the pimples themselves are gone), but overall my skin looks so much better than it ever has before. If you're considering the OCM, I highly recommend it. It may take a few weeks or months for your skin to fully figure itself out but once it does, man. The freedom! Makeup-free grocery runs! Makeup-free Internet pictures! There's no limit to what I can do now that I have good skin!

Now, let's see if BlogPress will let me post this thing. (Anybody have recommendations for blogging apps for the iPhone? I'm not in love with BlogPress but it's the best one I've found.)