cousins and palindromic bdays

...this is my cousin jeannie visiting from sunny santa barabara, CA...she's the oldest daughter of my dad's youngest sister who currently lives in connecticut...jeannie's younger brother ben is getting married in two weeks in new jersey, and ted, cadence and i are roadtripping eastward for the wedding and to visit our connecticut posse...

...poor jeannie took the red eye from LAX last night and didn't get much sleep...she's in chicago for a friend's wedding and will be staying with me until wednesday...tomorrow, we're doing our birthdays w/ our other cousin kris at millenium park...jeannie's bday was yesterday, mine's the 26th and kris's is on the 30th, and since this is the first time we've all been in the same town 10 days within all our bdays, it'll be fun to celebrate it together! i haven't seen jeannie in like 6 years, and the rest of my cousins haven't seen her in like 19 years...it's crazy that so much time could have elapsed...man, that must mean we're old...

...so i gave ted his father's day present early...i got him a canon powershot a95 digital camera so that he can take his own photos...but you know what? i really got him that camera because i've been drooling over some of the photos i've been seeing on flickr taken by canon digicams...my nikon is just too damn big to carry around everywhere...i think i'll be "borrowing" this present quite a bit...yeah, that photo up there was taken with the canon...although i finally discovered custom white balancing on my nikon (i'm so technically inept when it comes to photography) and so my indoor shots should look better from now on...

well, in a few days, i'll be entering my palindromic year... THIRTY-THREE ... 33...yikes! that seems like such a huge fat number...i've really been feeling my age lately...now i understand why they say to have kids before you turn 30...your body has a lot harder time bouncing back when your older than that...for my body type, it's even harder because my weight is so dependent on my hormones...i'm one of those that gain on the pill and then lose off the pill...but now that i'm nursing, that makes my hormones a bit nutty too so my doctor doesn't expect me to lose my pregnancy weight until after i've weaned...which is a bummer because i was planning on breastfeeding for a long time...i was recently commenting to another recent mom how my eyelashes don't even curl the same since i've had the baby...oh well...cadence is well worth it...so i look like crap...she doesn't seem to mind, and teddy's pretty forgiving too (thank god!)...

this is indie rock

...'this is indie rock: the best bands you've never heard vol.2' is deep elm's compilation of some of today's best unsigned bands (their compilation series was formerly known as the emo diaries)...chicago's very own maxel toft opens up this album with one of his songs...he also used one of my photos of him to be in the liner notes...i happen to be a big fan of max's music...he's working on an album for each of the presidents, which may remind you of sufjan stevens's project to do an album for the 50 states...but max started his project first...max doesn't know this yet, but teddy and i are going to make music with him someday...

cadence's nose has slowed down to a slow jog, but i'm still sick...i thought i had the flu, but it turned out to be a cold...i haven't slept too well the past couple nights because of my cough...and to make matters worse, i keep waking up cadence too, which can lead to my being awake even longer...hopefully, this cough will go away soon so we can all get some sleep around here...

so i was googling my full name the other day, and i discovered that my dear friend caleb maskell has got himself a blog! for those of you who don't know, caleb has been my spiritual and music appreciation mentor literally since the night my dad died (that's when he sent me an email out of the blue because he saw my bill mallonee photos)...i pay much heed to what caleb says, at least most of the time...

the reason i bring this up is that he has several posts there regarding some of humankind's greatest inhumanities towards humanity...this is a topic that has weighed heavily on my heart ever since my eighth grade history fair which had the theme of 'man's inhumanities towards man'...that was back in 1986, and in addition to the atrocity of slavery, we studied the trail of tears (forced removal of the cherokee nation from georgia to oklahoma), the armenian genocide, the japanese internment in the u.s., the jewish holocaust and the killing fields of the cambodian genocide...it was a sobering learning experience for my 13 year old mind to grapple with these atrocities...

you would think that with the passage of time, the world would learn from the mistakes of history...you would think that with exponential advances in science and technology, we would mature socially as well...you would think so, but we all thunk wrong...

caleb has a link on his blog to this report for the International Labour Orgnanization (an agency of the United Nations) regarding slavery around the world today...how is it possible that in the year 2005, there are over 12 MILLION people trapped in forced labor around the world today? and how is it that 40-50% of these victims are children under the age of 18?

it seems that most of the slavery is perpetuated by the private sector...sweatshops, agriculture, prostitution, etc...yes, there's big money being made here, folks...yet again, the love of money is the root of all evil...

we can no longer plead ignorance in this day and age of instantaneous mass communication...we are responsible...we must be our brothers' keepers...if we don't, we may as well all go to hell in a handbasket...

change in the weather...

it seems that the ever fluctuating chicago weather is taking its toll on our household...cadence's nose hasn't stopped running since saturday, i've got a sore throat, fever, aches and pains, and teddy's feeling under the weather too...we are a sorry lot...

...despite her nose turning into a leaky snot faucet, cadence has had a very important milestone...she's learned how to clap! i've been trying to get her to do it for about the past week, and although it seemed like she was totally ignoring me, all was not in vain...this morning at around 5:30am, she was sitting up in bed playing while teddy and i tried to sleep when she just spontaneously clapped her hands...i was totally surprised! i thought maybe it was an accident, but when i took her out in the living room a half hour later, i clapped my hands to see what would happen, and lo and behold, cadence started clapping along! i can't tell you how excited i was at that moment...this was a milestone i didn't miss by working outside the home...it was so totally worth dragging my ass out of bed for! she is just absolutely adorable when she brings her two little hands together!

...in addition to clapping, she's been wiggling her fingers like she's counting...it's very cute...i've been trying to get her to do the 'twinkle, twinkle little star' maneuver with her hands, and i think her wiggling her fingers is her version of that...

baby teeth!!!

yes, folks, here they are in all their glory...cadence's first toofus'es! she's chomping down on her favorite finger here...aren't they just adorable? they may look little, but they sure pack a punch when she decides to use 'em while nursing, that's for sure...i think we're gonna have to work out a non-aggression treaty between her teeth and my boobs...

happy mother's day!