Sunday, May 23, 2004
Evidently, there is a derth of mingo pictures on the web, because people keep hotlinking mine.
# posted by Amanda at 5:02 PM |
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Searching for a more convenient means of transporting your small child? Fed up with space-consuming strollers that require an advanced degree in engineering to unfold and operate? Introducing Toddler In A Bag!
Start with one adventurous, goodnatured 16-month-old (Daddy's shirt optional) and a sturdy handled bag. We used Land's End's large canvas open-top tote with navy blue trim.
Load 'er up.
Firmly grasp bag handles and lift upwards.
Our model Sean demonstrates the compact portability of Toddler In A Bag.
Children and parents alike are delighted with Toddler In A Bag!
# posted by Amanda at 9:45 AM |
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Wednesday, May 19, 2004
There is a certain faction of the population of Dietville that will be totally excited by this news, I know, but to me it's nothing short of irreverence towards the Gospel of Frozen Dairy Goodness that Ben & Jerry's now offers a carb conscious option. My gawd, people, is nothing sacred?! Anything less than total decadence need not apply as ice cream.
# posted by Amanda at 11:41 AM |
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Monday, May 17, 2004
Another picture from Sunday: Sophie demonstrates that she is SO NOT SCARED of cicadas, and in fact enjoys petting the occasional winged new friend. Please note that Mommy used the zoom feature in order to take this photo YET maintain a safe distance from the bug. *shudder*
# posted by Amanda at 9:24 PM |
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Sunday, May 16, 2004
From today's trip to Baltimore, and hence my decision that sandal season will be indefinitely postponed:
# posted by Amanda at 9:12 PM |
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Friday, May 14, 2004
If you like Frou Frou or Delerium and have been searching for new music of that ilk, check out Jem.
# posted by Amanda at 9:15 PM |
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Wednesday, May 12, 2004
If you were - hypothetically speaking of course - doing a little late evening grocery shopping with the family, would you slap your industrial-sized box of super-absorbent feminine hygiene products down on the belt, adjust your surly toddler, smile at the teenage dude directly in front of you who is buying only condoms and ask pointedly, "Big night?"
# posted by Amanda at 6:19 AM |
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Tuesday, May 11, 2004
Colour me disgusted.
First of all, Debbie Harry is OLDER THAN MY MOM, and I'm just not mature enough to be cool about the shocking new details of Granny's sex life.
Secondly, are all things lesbian so much the current media darling that the term "bisexual" is completely eschewed in favor of "heterosexual lesbian"? What the hell is THAT?!
# posted by Amanda at 8:42 PM |
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They're heeeeeere!
The bug guts splattered across my windshield speak for themselves: the cicadas are here. In fact, they're here, there and everywhere, and most definitely will be coming to a tree (or window screen) near you, if they're not there already.
The nymph emergence forecast for Cheezleton Manor calls for much time spent inside.
# posted by Amanda at 11:37 AM |
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Monday, May 10, 2004
Garçon! Cleanup at Table 5.
Have you noticed that there are about 10 words that - used in random combination - account for 90% of all Chinese restaurant names? China, Little, Palace, Manor, Hunan, Szechuan, Panda, Dragon, Wok and Buffet. The restaurant nearest to our house uses two of these words in its name, and probably shares the name with several thousand other Chinese restaurants nationwide. As if that's not generic enough for you, there is a neon sign in the window advertising simply "Chinese Food". However, it's one of the few restaurants in our immediate area that doesn't also sell bait and tackle (or at least they don't admit to it if they do), so we have dinner there about once every three months. We ended up going there last Thursday night.
The previous time we were there, Sophie was still on baby food and let us feed her. At that time, she was a pretty good restaurant patron - neat, well-behaved and irresistibly cute. Now she insists on REAL FOOD, whole chunks of meat and vegetables, and vehemently rejects anything presented on the end of Mommy's fork. (Sean was sitting on other side of the table and was doing his best to ignore us, especially after my inner Beavis prompted me to make a crude remark when Sean misunderstood "plum sauce" as "fun sauce".) Allowing a toddler to feed herself Chinese food is a seriously messy endeavor, but the alternative would have involved a loud and ultimately futile battle of the wills which, frankly, the 16-month-old would have won. (The kid is tenacious!) By the time we finished with dinner, it looked like a rice bomb had been detonated at our table.
If y'all don't think that restaurant management handpicks the fortune cookies delivered to each table, let me share with you the fortunes that we received last Thursday upon the conclusion of our meal:
Sophie: Work hard and you will become more wealthy.
Me: Working hard will make you live a happy life.
Sean: You will inherit some money or a small piece of land.
Apparently, Sean was the only one of us whose mealtime conduct merited a real fortune.
# posted by Amanda at 4:31 PM |
Belated Happy Mother's Day to everyone! Hope you all celebrated in style, whether with your mom or as the mom (or mom-to-be).
Borrowing an idea I saw in The Washington Post, I made photo candles for our moms this year. Here are some pictures from the process:
Step 1: Assemble materials, including clear glass straight-sided votive holders, white glue and approximately $25 of wax and related candle-making supplies. Print copies of your favorite photo and trim to fit inside the votive holder.
Step 2: Working quickly, brush face side of photo with thick layer of glue and press against inside of votive holder, taking extra care to perfectly position photo on first try, as moving the photo against the glass will causing smearing and tearing and render the photo generally unrecognizable. Attach wick to bottom of votive holder and secure wick length with a pencil. Realize that the project isn't going to be nearly as neat or easy as hoped.
Step 3: Enlist assistance of husband to melt wax. His motivation to help may be enhanced by mentioning the possibility that the wax will burst into flames if overheated. (Kitchen fires are cool.) Melt wax and add tint and fragrance. We used yellow tint because the lemon fragrance was on sale. Pour melted wax into prepared votive holders. Allow wax to set before trimming wicks, unless you really want 3rd degree burns caused by fishing for the wick ends in hot liquid wax.
Step 4: Voilà, you now have 6 candles that cost about $5 each to make. Cute little buggers, though.
# posted by Amanda at 7:22 AM |
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Friday, May 07, 2004
Forgive me, I am a mom, and I have momness on the brain.
Whereas most people who caught the series finale of "Friends" probably focused on the whole Ross-Rachel central theme thing, I was fixated on how Monica repeatedly left those babies completely unattended in her apartment. She didn't even take a baby monitor with her when she went to Joey's apartment!
*tsk* That's SO not something a new mom would do.
[Editor's note, 3:43 PM EST: An observant reader emailed to let me know that Monica did, in fact, have a baby monitor with her when she went to Joey's apartment. Still, I'm going to have to stick to my guns here that it was a bothersome scene. My willing suspension of disbelief doesn't cover a new mom getting further than arm's length away from any day-old baby, let alone two of them.]
# posted by Amanda at 9:42 AM |
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Wednesday, May 05, 2004
Potential new parents, allow me to share some rather upsetting news with you. Sometime after babies begin sleeping through the night on a consistent basis, and you've become blissfully reacquainted with the concept of getting A Full Night's Sleep (TM), there's this thing that kids do that is called "teething". Perhaps you've heard of it? It usually begins to happen around six months of age, and continues to occur randomly until the kid reaches two and a half years and 20 baby teeth. That's approximately two years of teething. Twenty-four months.
To put it bluntly, teething sucks, my friends. It sucks for the baby, and it sucks for the parents. OH, how it sucks for the parents!
Your average baby begins the teething process with two of those adorable little bottom teeth. They're sharp and they hurt coming in and sometimes there's puddles of drool and sleeplessness and inconsolable crying and fevers and a runny nose, which, if you're really lucky, can turn into infected congestion in the ears. This happens repeatedly as the kid sprouts fangs on top and a few more tiny teeth flanking either side of the original top and bottom teeth. At some point during all of this, you will get the bright idea to stick your finger in the kid's mouth, which will of course result in your finger getting bitten. If YOUR gums were suddenly serrated, and they hurt like hell, AND your parents kept adding insult to injury by poking around inside your mouth, wouldn't YOU want to bite somebody?
Then one day the drooling dries up and you gaze upon your spawn's new teeth with pure parental pride and take pictures of the kid just so you can show everyone the new teeth. Those teeth cost you some precious hours of sleep and very nearly your sanity too, so BY GAWD, everyone damn well better appreciate THE TEETH! You heave a sigh of relief, remove the waterproof clothing from the baby and resume your uninterrupted sleep schedule. The teething experience begins to fade from memory.
Enter the molars.
It's not demonic possession, it's just a new depth to the horrors of teething. Each one of these molar things has four - FOUR! - sharp prongs. For added fun, they erupt in pairs---one tooth on each side of the jaw! Here's where you learn what inconsolable crying REALLY is.
Sophie teethed late to begin with: she cut her first tooth at 10 months. Now she's teething out of order with molars erupting before all of the incisors have come in. (I think it's only two molars on the bottom, but yesterday I tried to check her upper gums and ending up having my finger chomped, so screw that.) The molar teething experience is so bad that it's setting the bar for all other child rearing "war stories". For about the past three nights, the poor kid has woken up shrieking in pain several times a night between 11:30 PM and 4 AM. Each time, we'd rush in, haul her out of her crib and try to rock/walk/feed her, with limited success. After a while, she'd just give up on us and indicate that she wanted to go back to her crib. (Sorry, kiddo, we're new at this, and it's all on-the-job training!) Neither Sean nor I are at the top of our game when roused from a deep slumber, so it was just last night that we realized that, hey, maybe giving her some baby Tylenol would help matters! It did, but it was already 4 AM by that point and morning comes around 7 AM at Cheezwerks HQ.
Today, morning hurt for all involved. When I went in to wake Sophie up - at the latest possible minute, I might add - she protested with something that sounded like a pterodactyl scream. Believe me, the feeling is mutual. I'm realizing now that if this teething boo-hockey goes on for much longer, there's not enough caffeine in the world to keep me on my feet and functioning.
# posted by Amanda at 11:32 AM |
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Tuesday, May 04, 2004
Wined, Dined AND Salaried at Market Value!
One week into Sean's new job, and we have an invitation to dinner on a yacht with a major client. Whee! Being drunk on the excitement of having an occasion to get glammed up in a cocktail dress and spiky sandals and do the whole introductory thing, I'm much more excited about it than Sean is. I've been warned that there will probably be questions about Baby Cheezleton. Well, get yourself a complimentary beverage and have a seat right thur, because I'll have three boat-bound hours to kill!
Sean and I had a little snickerfest remembering some of the other times we've been on boats for company events and wedding receptions. Those things make for great contained people-watching experiences! Maybe not quite as entertaining as a WalMart at 5 AM on the day after Thanksgiving, but still pretty damn good. If you ever have an opportunity to go to such an event with the general masses, bear in mind that bringing a camera along to preserve the good times is an absolute must. Anybody want to see a picture of the company mattressback trying to do the Y-M-C-A on really badly DJed boatride? I've got one, courtesy of a horrified boatparty-attending friend-with-camera! If you look closely at the picture, you can even see her belly button POKING THROUGH HER SPANDEX DRESS. Fortunately, we can expect a higher caliber of attendee for the upcoming event. The camera will remain at home in good faith.
Dovetailing with the dinner invitation is the implementation of our new Arms Length Coworkers policy. Simply stated, former coworkers-cum-friends will be grandfathered into a privileged position in the Cheezleton Inner Circle, but henceforth new coworkers shall be treated as coworkers. Typical office pleasantries and obligatory parties notwithstanding, interactions will be primarily work-oriented, and will take place in the office ONLY. That means that this newest batch of folks won't be popping up at our barbecues or meeting us for lunch in DC, but then again we also won't have to hear about chronically unemployable spouses, or who does what with whom during business trips, or which newlywed had an affair even before all the wedding cake was eaten (shh! we said we weren't going to talk about the business trips!). I'd say that being free of the sordid knowledge is more than worth giving up the amusement factor of the daily soap opera.
# posted by Amanda at 11:35 AM |
Monday, May 03, 2004
Over the weekend, I completed sh1ft.org's latest project, Q&A: The Photographic Interview. You can view my submission here.
# posted by Amanda at 7:31 AM |
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