brrrr...

...today is the coldest day of the new autumn/winter season in chicago this year…my hair turned into medusa-like icicles on my brief walk to the metra station…luckily, i found a pair of gloves and a scarf before leaving the apartment…i’ve decided it’s high time i bought a new winter coat, considering i can’t remember the last time i bought one…i’d been avoiding the inevitable in hopes that NOT having a warm coat would force me to move to a warmer, more hospitable climate…alas, i am a home owner now and will most likely be chained to chicago for the foreseeable future…so i might as well buy a decent coat…

it may be butt-cold here, but it sure is sunny…i can only see the left half of my laptop screen (i’m typing this on the train) because of the glare from the sunlight streaming in…i actually had to adjust my margin so that i’m typing on only the left half of the page so i can actually see what i’m doing…this blindingly sunny, frigid weather makes me think we’re gonna have a cold hard winter ahead of us…

so i feel sorry for leaving ted at home with cadence today, and here’s why…i was an idiot on tuesday and forgot to put the milk i’d pumped at work in the fridge that evening and had to throw it all out on wednesday…since i work from home on wednesdays, i couldn’t pump anything and hence poor teddy is stuck home with our baby and no milk…that means he’ll have to give her formula, and she HATES that…she hates the goat milk even more…she’s also been on a bit of a hunger strike lately, mostly in the evenings…i worry because she’s a lean baby as it is, and she flies around the apartment like a little tornado all day, so i have no idea how she’s gonna gain any weight…she apparently hasn’t inherited her mother’s knack for packing on the pounds by merely ogling a kit kat bar…i have a feeling her lack of interest in food may stem from being a bit plugged up…(warning: poop talk about to commence)…i seriously can’t remember the last time i changed a poopy diaper…i’m getting really nervous now because you know that it just gets worse the more time goes by…teddy says he’s going to feed her nothing but prunes until she finally poops…i hope to god we don’t have to stick a suppository up her butt…if it leads to that, her screams will probably cause the neighbors to call DCFS on us…that girl’s got quite the set of lungs, ya know…

who knew that being a parent would mean spending so much time and energy on wishing and praying for your child to poop and calling your spouse every hour to ask "did she poop yet?" and the first thing out your mouth when you come home would be "did she poop today?"

dear lord jesus, please help my poor baby to poop and please don't let it hurt too much...lord knows what a major pain in the ass it is to give birth to a rock through your rear end...

our littlest artist

...we are very proud to unveil the first piece of artwork by our little cadence joy...this photo of the original does not do justice to the artistic genius that is so OBVIOUS in each stroke of the crayon...the use of color is impeccable, as is the utilization of white space...the urgency and fervency of emotion that this piece evokes is quite unexpected and leaves you breathless...

...oh yes...we're framing this for sure...

bedhead

...now THAT's what i call rock star hair! cadence and i were napping saturday afternoon when ted came home from work...i turned over to my right side and this is what cadence looked like...

...i've tried to get her hair to look like that before but could never pull it off! i have no idea what position she was sleeping in to get hair like that...it was quite amusing to wake up to, that's for sure!

the have's, the have not's and the don't want's...

... so there is some heated discussion going on on the latest gaper's block poll called "kids: yay or nay?"...as a parent, i'm a bit biased on this one, i suppose...but i think my answer would have been very different just two short years ago...back in the fall of 2003, i was a happy-go-lucky girl, in love with her boyfriend, going to rock 'n' roll shows until the wee hours, spending countless hours perusing the narrow aisles of the local used record store, jetsetting off to seattle or NYC without a care in the world...i LOVED my life then--the freedom, the fun, the rock AND the roll...if you'd asked me THEN this question about having kids, i would've said NO WAY! i was already in my 30s and quite comfortably set in my untethered lifestyle...i had absolutely no desire to suffer the agonies of pregnancy and childbirth, let alone be responsible for another human being for the next couple decades...that would totally cramp my style, ya know?

well, lo and behold, a few months later i find myself puking all over the subterranean's ladies room...and this time, it wasn't just the booze and cigarettes...two weeks later, i take a pregnancy test just to rule it out before i go to the doctor's to see if i have stomach cancer or something...(i'd been told by my OB-GYN that i couldn't get pregnant without hormone treatment...i guess teddy was hormone treatment enough)...so imagine my shock when i saw that little pink line magically appear on a stick that would indicate my life would never be the same again...

i admit that my very first reaction was fear...good god, i wasn't even engaged, let alone married...but then i had this very reassuring feeling that everything was going to be okay...i don't know if it was the mommy hormones or what, but i knew that in many ways this was going to be the best thing that ever happened to me...

...and i was right...i LOVE being a mom...that's not to say though that ALL women will love being mothers, or all men will love being fathers...and i totally respect people's decision to NOT have children...what i don't understand, however, is people who are so hostile towards kids that they would want to go as far as banning them from public places...or banishing those who choose to have kids to the suburbs...to me, that's just another form of discrimination...nobody appreciates an unruly child or a parent who doesn't seem to care about their child's behavior in public...however, this is no excuse to lump all kids and parents into one generic group and quarantine them from the rest of society...

reading some of those comments made me think of how jesus felt about children:

"let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of God belongs to such as these..."

"therefore, whoever humbles himself like this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven."

"whoever welcomes one of these little children in my name welcomes me..."

children really are precious and wondrous beings...i think our society would be much better off if we could all treat children with the respect and care they need, whether we personally choose to have our own kids or not...

"please, mommy!"

"don't give away this mattress to the salvation army people! it's my bounciest playmat!"

"...maybe if i just smear some boogers all over it, it'll be mine for good..."

"....and if the boogers don't work, i'll just pout!"

we are cleaning house, getting ready for the big move in a month...and despite what cadence may think about the effect of her smeared boogers and pretty little pouting on our decision making process, we are in fact giving away a mattress and boxspring, a dresser, a sofa and 10 boxes of clothes and books and household goods to the salvation army...if they can find us, that is...they were supposed to come on tuesday but couldn't find the address because the entrance to our apartment is not visible from the street...

...cadence is trying to pull her weight (as unsubstantial as that is) around here and is now being employed as our receptionist...we think she does a fantastic job! she's the perfect person to give the phone to if a telemarketer calls...

....so regarding our new neighbor, things sure quieted down lately...last weekend was total hell...THUMP THUMP THUMP THUMP techno music echoing through our ceiling until past 1am on friday night and past 4:30 am on saturday night...i did end up writing a letter (not the one posted below, but one that was still firm AND with a cc: to management) and hand delivering it around midnight saturday...it didn't do any good that night, but there hasn't been much loud music up there since then...cadence was a bee-yatch for several days...we were all pretty sleep deprived around here...things are just getting back to normal, and i can't wait to get out of this building...don't get me wrong...you can't beat the location or the price for the space...but when you're a mommy to a little toddler, it's amazing how protective you become of your child's sleep...mainly because you know she'll be a little mini bee-yatch without it...

and take it from me, a 21-pound-2-and-a-half-foot-13-and-a-half-months-old mini bee-yatch is NOT to be dealt with lightly...