Hello Dolly! ...now let me SLEEP!

When James goes out of town I try to look for the positives. This time, it was only a one night trip, which is definitely a good thing, and I was looking forward to not waking up to his alarm, or his shower, or him rummaging around in his sock drawer. I know I'm very lucky to not have to get up and go to work every day so I'm really not complaining but sometimes, a girl's just gotta sleep and I was curious how early Megan would actually wake me up. Most mornings, she seems content to play quietly in her crib until I get her breakfast ready and go up there to get her. Oh and she's all smiles when I walk in. It's so cute ... right ... back to the point. I woke up around 4:45 this morning to dog paws poking me in the back. There was lightening and thunder so my crazy dog had to wake me up to let me know. Was it storming? NO! Did it even rain? OF COURSE NOT! I was up for about an hour before the dog truly let me sleep again. You can't get mad in that situation. You just have to laugh it off. Go figure that the one morning I should actually be able to sleep through without being disturbed I'm up taking care of my disturbed doggie. :-) Whatever rain we ended up NOT getting was a result of the remnants of Hurricane Dolly spinning up in Oklahoma somewhere. Apparently the storms that came through the area just split right over us and left us dry. At least it was cloudy though. We didn't get over 100* today for the first time in a week or so. Good news for our A/C!!

Swing and a miss

About a week ago I thought I would try something new for Megan. I wanted to give her some fresh foods instead of Gerber so I bought a banana and let it get really ripe (soft and squishy). I mashed it up really good with a fork and even mixed in some formula. She absolutely HATED it. I guess it was the texture but she made the funniest faces and even gagged on it. I didn't want to laugh at her but I couldn't help myself. Just yesterday I saw that same face when I gave her some chicken. Obviously since she's only 8 months old I gave her some of the Gerber Chicken in Chicken Gravy. Holy Cow that stuff is foul! It smells like dog food!! Seriously. I almost threw up when I smelled it. By far the most repulsive thing I have ever smelled (even worse than the Broccoli Cheese soup cooking at 8:00 am in the APhi house ... ugh! ... HEY! I was up at 8:00 occasionally that semester!). I'm about to gag just thinking about it.

Who has the time?

I didn't realize it had been so long since my last post. I'm always mad when other people haven't updated their blogs ... then I look at mine and it has been almost two weeks! We've been up to a whole lot of nothing but Megan is giving me a run for my money. She's really crawling around now, still half army-crawling and half real crawl and sometimes she does this one leg up scoochy crawl that looks really funny. No matter how she does it, she certainly doesn't sit still for long. Now she's pulling up on everything. The furniture, the fireplace, me, the dog. She doesn't care what it is, she just wants to stand up. We finally installed the gate at the base of the stairs and installed some cabinet locks in our kitchen. I don't know what else will have to be done to childproof the house but I'm sure Megan will find everything we forgot!!

We've had lots of fun lately. We had some friends in town from Houston two weekends ago. The guys went to some driving range Friday night while the girls and kids all got together for pizza. It was a lot of fun but to those without kids it could have been considered birth control!! Saturday night was more just hanging out with friends. It was a fun weekend!! We pretty much took it easy this past weekend too. James was off on Friday and we went out to eat lunch at a place called Babe's Chicken! It's not for the diet conscious but it was really good. You order your meat (fried chicken, chicken tenders, chicken fried steak, fried catfish, or smoked chicken) and they bring out the sides family style (green beans, corn, mashed potatoes, biscuits, and a whole bowl of gravy) and we also ordered a salad. It was YUMMY but we had to be rolled out of there! After that we finally got new cell phones. We'd had our phones since we moved up here and they were all funky and old. I finally got my Blackberry and I love it. It's still much smarter than I am so I have lots of learning to do to figure out what all it can do but I think I'm really going to enjoy having it! And it's pink and so cute! :-) Saturday night Christy and Larry had a babysitter and were trying to celebrate their anniversary (10 YEARS - WOW) so they came over after dinner and had a few beers with us. We are so boring!! We didn't have plans to do anything this weekend. Yesterday we loaded up a borrowed pick-up truck like Sanford and Son and headed down to my brother's place. He's moving today (Monday) and we gave him a bed and nightstand along with my mom's dinette set and a donated rocking chair from my mom's neighbors. He's renting a 3 bedroom house and moving from a one bedroom condo means he'll have lots of room to fill! We're happy to get rid of the bed. It was in the second upstairs bedroom and we might be needing that room sometime soon. ;-) After we had lunch at Snuffer's (mmmm .. cheddar fries) James and I went to the outlet mall to give a quick boost to the economy. That place was crazy crowded!! I guess maybe back to school shoppers were already out there? Such a great weekend. I'm on my own the next couple of days. My mom is helping my brother move and James will be at work ... with a quick trip out to So Cal for a night.

Well, since Megan is trying to climb my boot I suppose I should go make sure she doesn't fall over and crack her head open!

Dining Out

Dining out with Megan is getting a little more difficult as she becomes more independent (and demanding and active and mobile). Last night was her first trip to a restaurant in a high chair instead of her infant carrier and she had a lot more fun sitting up and chewing on her sippy cup. She started to really fuss about half way through the meal so it was a good thing we were in such a loud place - mmmmm Saltgrass. (When we got her home, she had a dirty diaper so I'm thinking she would have calmed down if one of us had put down our fork and gone to change her. duh!). She goes out to lunch with us all time but dinner time seems to be her fussy time so we don't usually take her out at night. It actually went well last night so I know we can do it more often, as long as she gets that diaper changed! ;-) I have to say I LOVE the Floppy Seat! I can attach her toys with those links so when she throws them to the floor they don't fall! hee hee!

My brother is moving in a couple weeks so that's why we all went to dinner last night. Megan got her last head-pats from Uncle Coach for a while and we all had a good time. He got a job as an Assistant Principal at a high school down about an hour north of Austin and decided a high school was too good to pass up, even if it meant moving away from the big city. He's been working on his Masters for a while, going to school while teaching and coaching, and will be finishing up this summer. His school district has this stupid principal intern program that you have to go through so he threw his resume out there elsewhere and is now moving. His dog will be happy ... instead of being locked up in a condo for some very long days Crash will have his very own backyard!! Lucky Dog!

Megan helping me put away groceries! She crawled all the way from the living room, through the kitchen to the pantry to see what mommy was doing!

Here she is telling Daddy to put his very large shoes away!

I hate ...

Telemarketers!

One of the first things I did when we moved up here was register all our phone numbers on the Do Not Call Registry. Lately, however, companies have started calling us. They have unlisted phone numbers and pre-recorded messages telling you to press "1" if you're interested in "lowering your interest rate" or "more information on window cleaning" or, like the one that prompted this complaint post, "information about some medicare programs". Over the past two days, I have filed two complaints on donotcall.gov and cussed out some stupid lady. Yes, I actually cussed her out so I fully expect to continue hearing from that particular company.

I just don't understand the logic of the whole thing. If my numbers are registered on the Do Not Call list, why would any company think I want to hear from them? Seriously, if their product is so amazing I would have heard of it and researched it and sought out the companies that offer it.

oooohhhhhh ... like the idiotic knuckleheads that ring my doorbell in the middle of the day. grrrrrrrr!!!!!!!!!!!

Am I just a grumpy old person?
Seriously, leave me alone!!
I'm going to use the money I would have given you for your product, service or scam, as the case may be, and buy a gallon of gas!!

Thanks for letting me rant.

Other stuff ...

I just realized when I reread my last post that I never said what we did on the 4th. Some of our friends have a pool so they had a party. All the kids had a blast swimming ... and by kids I mean guys ... and the kids of course!! ha ha ha! It was a hot day but a lot of fun being out by the pool. Megan actually got in for a little while but neither James or I had our suits with us so we stayed close to the edge. I don't do swimsuits around other people. I'm not sure Megan knew what to think of the whole thing and it was time for a nap so she wasn't really into it. Later, we played a little Rock Band. That game is SOOOOOOO COOOOOOOL! I'm ready to go out and buy it all right now ... the game, the guitars and drums and the PS3 to play it on. I only did the drums a couple times but I am absolutely hooked! We headed home early because we wanted to get Megan to bed at a decent hour ... and we wanted to beat the fireworks traffic too. It was a great day and I really like it when the 4th falls on a Friday because we had the whole weekend after that. :-)


This past Saturday we went to see MIL's new house. She's moving up here to my mom's neighborhood in a few weeks. We only found out, through her realtor about a week ago, that she had decided to buy this house and she wanted us to go see it. She hasn't even seen the house yet but it's new construction and just what she needs. It's a nice place and it is only a few minutes from our house. It will be good to have both of Megan's grandmas so close. All kinds of babysitting options for us! hee hee! It will be good to have her out of her house in Houston because it's not in the greatest area (not much of Houston can be considered a great area though, right?) and now that we're up here, James isn't there to help her with stuff around the house if she needs anything. She's being really weird about the whole thing and it's getting rough but it will be done soon enough and I'm betting things will settle back down sometime.


We found a new routine we really like for Saturday nights. We actually went to the Vigil Mass at 5:00 then went to dinner. It was perfect timing for Megan's schedule and fun for us. We hit our new favorite pizza place which is right down the road. It's a BYOB place and almost everyone there had a cooler with them so we'll have to remember to pack something next time. I've been to BYOB places before but have never actually seen anyone bring any B!


My mom is finally home from Estes Park where her friend is a Ranger at Rocky Mountain National Park. She got to enjoy some cool mountain air while we were here sweating to death and going broke paying for air conditioning. We went out to lunch today. I have missed Mexican food, though I guess it was good to take a break from it for a few weeks. Today I had a taco salad that had queso on top. I'm sure it wasn't very salad-y but it sure was yummy!


That's all for now. I think it might be time to get some stuff done, other than blogging, since the little Moo is napping. She's just getting huge and more and more active and she just wears me out! Maybe I need a nap! zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

Megan loves terrorizing the poor dog!

She's also learning the finer points of the sippy cup!

hi again

I know I've been out of blog land for a while. We spent the rest of our Independence Day weekend just hanging out. We actually ran errands and tried out new restaurants and made it to the early Mass on Sunday. Megan is such a trooper and just lets us take her anywhere. We're not really those "super strict schedule" parents but life sure is easier on all of us if Megan gets to stay on some sort of routine. That was out the window for the whole weekend and she was fine. She's on a hunger strike of some sort right now. All she wants is the bottle. She'll eat her fruits and veggies but she puts her hand in her mouth after every few bites which makes for a l o n g and very messy mealtime. She's cute but I pretty much have to hose her off after every meal. One of our errands Sunday was Babies R Us because we had coupons for diapers there and I finally bought Megan's little floppy seat. That's the shopping cart/high chair cover and I like it because it folds into itself instead of having a separate bag ... which would be yet another thing to keep up with. Megan sat in the seat in the shopping cart at Kroger on Tuesday. I was really happy that I had all the room in the cart for groceries again ... but I didn't know what to do with the bread and eggs since I usually put those in the seat. ha ha ha!

I knew the find at WalMart was going to be too good to be true. The gates are fine (at least one of them is, we haven't opened both boxes) but the one extension I bought was for the short gate instead of the tall one. Stupid WalMart. It's the one that popped up on the page when I was looking at the tall gates so I just added it to my cart without really looking at it. Luckily I can return it to the store, which is right down the street, but they don't carry the tall extensions on their website so I'm going to have to get that one from BRU anyways. I guess I should order that soon so we can install the gates this weekend since Megan is now creeping all over the place. She's still not lifting her tummy off the ground but she's starting to investigate beyond her normal area. I just hear her grunting and I know she's on the move. Silly girl. She's on the move now ... :-)

In addition to her being on the move, and the hunger strike, she's also declared 'nap wars' with mommy. The first couple times I went upstairs every time she sat up and started to fuss. Imagine that ... with a boot on the foot ... not fun! Then I finally quit giving in and just let her kind of cry it out (it wasn't a full on wail ... just a fuss) and she basically just fell over and went to sleep. All these new things this crazy girl is testing me with. Trying to change a diaper is like wrestling an alligator.

Not much else going on here. Obviously, this is an All Megan post. I'm just enjoying reading everyone's blogs and sitting in the A/C because it is way too hot outside to do anything else and I can't go have any fun (er ... shopping) with this boot on my foot!

Happy 4th!!

I just wanted to wish everyone a wonderful and safe 4th of July!!

Hope the day is filled with friends, family, fun, food and fireworks!

Thanks Wal-Mart ... I guess

I hate Wal-Mart. As a retail wife, I have learned that Wal-Mart is evil. Yes, they may be less expensive and have everything anyone could ever possibly need and yes, this may be really convenient. HOWEVER ... they are a giant evil retailer that is in the business of putting the little man out of business. Pair that with the fact that almost all of the Wal-Marts I have had the pleasure of shopping have been dirty and/or stinky and/or WAY too crowded and it's just not my favorite place to go. Tonight, however, I had a problem that only Wal-Mart could solve and it made me so happy I had to share. I may hate the place but I do enjoy saving a buck or two and in this case, I saved $41.65 without stepping foot in their store. Megan is almost crawling and we don't have baby gates yet. We want black ones to match our staircase spindles and the stores don't carry them in stock (jerks) so I have to order them online. I've been shopping around on the internet all week and reading installation instructions etc. trying to figure out what gates will work and how much we're going to have to spend. I finally found some gates I think will work for us at Babies R Us but they wanted $38 to ship them! WTF?!?! I did a search for those gates and Wal-Mart had them for a few bucks cheaper. The kicker is I might have actually spent a couple extra bucks to buy them from Babies R Us (yes, I am stupid and I probably would have ordered other stuff while I was shopping online there too) but the shipping was just outrageous!! Wal-Mart only wanted $2.91. WOW! HUGE difference! Seriously!! I found some other helpful websites with reasonably priced gates but I don't know what they charged for shipping because after I found the gates I needed at WM for a whopping $2.91 s&h price, why continue to look? I don't know how they do it, especially since they're paying $4/gallon in gas to deliver them to me, but I'm not complaining. Not about this right now anyways. ;-)