cathryn

Well, we pulled it off. With tons of help from my mom and MIL, we hosted Thanksgiving for about 18 people. My turkey was even MOIST.

( Pictures of our house-turned-giant-dining-room )

Denver has a toy - the octopus from the Wiggles. She's terrified of it.

I just watched a kid I know from KCAI on COPS!! So weird.

Hubby and two good friends have a new music blog. They share an excellent taste for new and interesting albums and songs. Check it out:

Theosony

There is a person in our extended family who refuses to user Denver's name. This person has decided to only user her middle name. She sends cards with the middle name written in them multiple times. Different people have told her that D goes by her first name, bur she's decided to not use it.

It's so weird! Yes, I'm kind of offended, but mostly I just think it's strange. Has anyone else experienced this?

A while ago some of my friends were talking to this girl I don't like much in a bar. Somehow my name came up. Apparently she said, "Oh, I was invited to her wedding, but I didn't go." I hardly know her, and our wedding was a small private affair with 73 guests. She was NOT invited. I don't know why this bothers me so much, but F her.

On Saturday my MIL came over and helped us paint. I'll put some pictures under the cut. Our color was bluer than expected, but we love it anyway. Denver didn't take any substantial naps the whole weekend. I felt bad for her yesterday because she had to deal with so many people - BIL's birthday and then some friends came over. She had trouble sleeping, but today she didn't wake up till 11:30! She's napping now, too.

She got some early gifts from my in laws - a kicking piano and a light up rainforest musical thing for her crib. She actually spent some time in the crib today, playing. I'd love for her to be comfortable sleeping in there some day. It's slow going because I'll never force it.

Chris sold his old Taurus today. I donated mine a while ago. Now we are down to 2 cars - yay!

Today I got my aunt (who has my grandmother visiting till tomorrow morning) to download Skype so I could show Denver off. It was so sweet. D squealed and smiled and was happy being help up awkwardly for the webcam for at least 20 minutes. My grandmother was cooing and talking to her and crying. I'm devastated that my Gran will probably never meet Denver unless Chris and I can somehow get money together and take a trip to South Africa in the next couple of years. She's 88 this year, so time is marching on.


My grandmother is the one person I wanted my daughter to know, and it's kind of hard to get used to the idea that my mom will be her grandmother, and my grandmother won't really be in her life.

( My Denver )

Just some very recent pics of Denver, three months and one week. She's starting to laugh more often now, and loves to be involved in whatever I'm doing. Her favorite things are baths and listening to me make up silly songs about whatever we're doing. Her weight has evened out - she's not SO CHUBBY anymore, but she's really long.

Sometimes I set up Denver in her baby gym that attaches the the Boppy so I can do something else, only to come back and find that I've left the tv on and she's been watching it the whole time. She LOVES the tv. It's horrible.

Chris left again this morning. When he gets home on Friday, I have a guaranteed two weeks with him at home. There's always a period of time in the evening when I want to shower or eat and D won't leave my arms and I get upset and lonely, but it passes, and she calms down. Denver is THE most talkative baby right now. I love it. I also think she is teething! People look at me like I'm crazy when I say I will still breast feed if she gets teeth, but I already proved everyone wrong when I weaned her from supplements, so why stop there? I'm so proud of myself for that, by the way. While people were telling me it wouldn't be the end of the world, Denver and I were spending whole days together working on our nursing skills and my supply.

I'm trying to introduce methods of soothing that aren't the boob, because that's the only thing that puts her to sleep (literally) and the only thing that calms her. I want her to be able to feel better if she gets upset when on of our moms is watching her without giving her too much to eat from a bottle. It's hard to reconcile my attachment-parenting style with Denver's need to have comfort when I can't be there.

I am hosting my first Thanksgiving. 20 people will be here! I need to get window treatments up and paint before then.

I got angry with Dr. Phil again when he and the mother of some girl-in-trouble were scolding her for being asleep with her baby at 9:15 am. The mother said, "What baby sleeps till 9 am? Something's going on!"

Well, my baby sleeps till ELEVEN, and today she pretty much slept till TWO. I had to wake her up, and she kept drifting off. So I'm pretty lucky! I think the cosleeping is partially responsible for such good sleep. The other night I put her mattress on the floor and nursed her to sleep there, but she woke up all the time and I kept having to go down there. Eventually I just brought her back to bed. It was just an experiment.

Sometimes support communities can be so mean. Yeah, I obviously don't give a shit about my child because I didn't portion my milk properly. Call CPS.

So I finally found perfect curtains for the three rooms I need to curtain. But as I was going to order them I noticed that the sheer panels for the dining area are on backorder till January! I want to have them up for the Thanksgiving I'm hosting. Boo.

I keep posting, but I have a lot going on. Denver went to sleep at nine pm, which is unheard of. Usually she nurses on and off for most of the evening till about one am, at which point she falls asleep in bed with me. She's sleeping in our bedroom and hasn't woken up! I think she's tired because she had a bizarre crying/screaming fit last night till two in the morning. I ended up crying, too. It sounded like she was in pain. She kind of whimpered every time she woke up after that. My dad told me she might have had a headache, which sounds unlikely, but now I'm paranoid.

I took her to JCPenney today to check out the living room curtains I wanted to order. They aren't as nice as they were online. I'm glad I looked, but now I can't seem to find anything online that I like. Here's what I want: 4 108 inch panels - dark slightly bluish grey velvet, grommet top. I don't want rod pocket or tab top or rings. I finally found custom drapes online, but the site gave me a quote of 500 dollars! Um, no. I'll just keep looking, I guess. The curtains I have look totally lame in our bedroom, so I might look for different drapes in there. I ended up buying a really nice trash can instead. It matches our appliances.

I absolutely LOVE being a stay at home mom, but sometimes I wish I had a job so I wouldn't have to spend my husband's money. At least he's on the same page as far as wanting our place to look nice and "finished."

So we're in the new house. After some...issues...with Comcast, we finally have internet again. I'm still getting used to the carpet everywhere, but I kind of like it. Chris is in Maryland for a couple of days, so my parents brought my BROTHER over for dinner! He's never interacted with Denver aside from glancing at her once when she was a few days old. He held her, and laughed at her. Things went well, I think.

The house seemed smaller without our stuff in it. Now I really enjoy all the space. Our bedroom is HUGE. I keep trying to conserve space while unpacking, and then realizing I can spread out.

Six months ago everyone was bugging us to buy a house. I was completely opposed to the idea, thinking we were rushing. Then Chris was pre-approved at the bank, and everything happened so fast. This year we got married, had a baby, bought a house, and some other stuff that I won't go into here. Phew!

D is at a stage where people talk about giving her solids - little tastes. I'm going to do some hardcore research to throw out so I can prevent this from happening.

We did have an incident - D was chewing on her blanket for a long time before i realized there was SAUCE from chinese take out on it. Man.

My poor dad drove all the way to Logansport after work (without us asking him to) to get us a giant trailer thing so we didn't have to hire a van. He and Chris took a huge load of furniture over there tonight.

Last week we dind't think Chris would have a business trip till the second week of November. Then we found out he has to leave on Sunday. Then we found out he doesn't have to leave on Sunday. I'm still a little confused, but when he comes back from getting us some food, I'm going to ask for clarification. He has so many projects going on.