My Dream Man

This sounds really sexy to me right now, "Honey, I'll stay in the car with the baby while you jump out and buy the milk."

Liz = Excellent

My new teacher evaluations are over! Now I only have to produce a 1" binder full of paperwork to say that I do all the things teachers are supposed to do, and then I am done with the state for awhile.

Now I only have a research project, six hours of classes, and an internship between me and my masters.

I have nothing really clever to say about all of this, except, "Yeah!"

I also got Sam into a quasi-Montessori daycare today. They called me on accident, but I guilted them into giving me a spot for the fall. It is a way cool place with Internet cameras, so you can see what the kid is up to all day, and it has dramatic play time, puppet time, and reading time.

I am super stoked. I think I might go to bed early tonight to celebrate.

Ready, Set, Spring

Dad planted the garden... Watch out summer produce, here we come! When I lived at the house with Dad I was the assistant gardener, but now that I moved out I'm more like the half ass gardener.

However, I have a single mother, grad student, gardening plan. I'm going to throw out a bag of potting soil and plant some stuff in it. Come April. March is booked.

Seriously, if you don't want to mess with much, you can just plant right in the bag. I saw it in Mother Earth News.

I couldn't get the ME link to work, but here's another one.

Daycare Part Deux

Seriously, shouldn't someone pay me to hang out with this guy all day?

A Case for Taking Welfare

SWF searching for daycare spot for cute kid. Will take any outfit not hiring sexual predators, long walks on the beach not necessary.

When I was pregnant and my mom kept telling me to start looking for daycare I kind of thought she meant I should start interviewing places, taking tours, you know, being the picky Mom all the magazines tell you to be... What she actually meant was ... get one or you'll be left out in the cold.

March is sign-up time, and I am number 90 on a waiting list for one spot... That's my best shot at the moment.

Not to mention that decent daycare costs about $140 a week...

So, you have to beg someone to take your 600 bucks a month, still spend 40 hours a week away from your child (that's about half of their waking time total in a week), and feel lucky that you have a spot anywhere. This is the reality of having a child.

I see why it makes more sense for single mothers to quit their jobs and get welfare.

Pepper's Past

I was cleaning out the old photos, and I came upon this treasure. I spent a lot of time by myself in the spring and summer of 2004. I can't explain a lot of what I was doing, but I think it goes to show, well, suffice it to say that I should have gotten out more.

This is okra.

One Big Boy

Sam had his birthday party today. His due date was close to St. Patrick's Day, and I was trying to convince the doctor to induce on that day, but I went into labor early.

So, Sam will have to suffer for the rest of his life with St. Patrick's Day parties. Although when we went to Party City to get the loot we really only saw drinking games on the St. Paddy Day aisle. OK, kids fill up your shot glasses with Kool-Aid, now you take this quarter...

Sunday was an excellent day for a party. We got to fly a kite, ate some ribs, played ball, blew bubbles. Sam ran after all the kids just clapping and clapping.

One party down ... 14 to go, right? He'll be too cool for birthdays by 15? Maybe I'll let him dye his hair green for 15, but no drinking games. I have to draw a line somewhere.

Feel the Love

This is why I love my family ....

When I went to mow my lawn last weekend-- something that should have been done two weeks ago, but I refused because it was February-- my mower kept stalling out on me. After the fourth restart I was too tired to start her up again, so I left a patch unmowed.

Then I was sad because today was Sam's birthday, and I had to teach all day and then go to night class.

Whenever I can't my family does.

My brother, Stephen, came over while I was at work and fixed my lawnmower, and mowed my unmowed patch.

Then our family friends, who are Sam's sitters, got him a chocolate cake and hung a Happy Birthday banner. My sister, Meri, called and invited Sam over for dinner. My mom picked him up at the sitter's and brought him to Meri's for a crawfish supper while I was at class. Sam ate his weight in the little mudbugs.

When I went to pick him up he was having a grand time chasing his cousins around, his hair full of cake and his shirt caked in crawfish butt juice.

I sometimes get homesick for Kentucky, but then I have a day like today, and I know that I would live in BFE for my family.

**Meri and her brood aren't pictured... they were home with an ear infection for this event.

Doggy Door

Tonight Sam climbed through the doggy door. If we hadn't shut the gate, he might have been halfway to Canada by now.

A piece of motherly advice, Sam, the moss grows on the north side of the tree, so when you are far away from home you'll know to run in the other direction to come back to me.

Mimi

My mom, who is called Mimi by her 13 grandkids (14th on the way), is working towards her RN after retiring from teaching.

I run some tech support for her, as college has become a lot more Blackboard-oriented, and I have to say that I'm proud of all her accomplishments. She can e-mail, watch the Internet lectures for her class, and I'm told she even finds this blog occasionally.

She still writes her papers out in long hand first, and is not convinced she needs a Facebook page, but these are huge strides. The bane of her existence right now is the .docx file.

This is a picture of my mom when she was in her 20s. By the time she was my age she had five kids. Tonight I saw her talk to my dad, eat a baked potato, and keep Sam in a booster seat all at the same time.

Mimi, you totally rock. Don't let .docx get you down, we're all still baffled and pissed about it.

Milkmaid

Sam switched to milk because he will be having a first birthday on Thursday. I thought this whole milk thing was going to be great, but in reality I've already been to the store enough times to justify buying a cow.

Anyone want to volunteer to milk while we go on vacation?

One half gallon lasted us 2 1/2 days... and it is not like milk is something you can stock up on or buy in bulk. I checked with the Internet, and it seems we will not be slowing down on this milk thing too soon.

The kid needs something like 24 -31 ounces A DAY, which really only works out to be three, eight-ounce bottles. Of course... this is not counting the juice and water cocktails he's supposed to be drinking too.

I ask:

1. Can someone not bring back the milkmaid?

2. When calculating total fluids consumed, does bathwater count?

Wedding Redo

My sister, Katherine, got married to her husband Saturday. She's got the official sanction from Rome. All we have to do is get her confirmed. I am her sponsor, and we've only been working on this RCIA thing for about two years now.

As they say, God knows best. Waiting and having a wedding redo was an excellent idea.

None of us really got to attend the first wedding. Fifteen years ago I was in high school, and she and Jay got married in Arizona, where he was stationed at the time. This time around we were all there, save Meredith's family, who was battling an ear infection. One day all us Maples are going to all show up to the same event.


In any case it was a beautiful ceremony, and a good time was had by all at the party.