Transfixed by the Fish, originally uploaded by dormousie.
This is one of my favorite pictures from our May trip to Pine Knoll Shores Aquarium in North Carolina. Seth (like a lot of babies) loves watching the fish and animals swimming in the aquarium tanks. I can’t remember which tank this was, but he loves them. He especially likes watching turtles.
You’re the best Father, husband, and friend … we love you! Love, Erin and Seth
PS – I just pray that Seth grows up to be as wonderful a man as you. Much love to my Poisson Rouge … Eeni.
… I get the chance to sit down at a non-government computer without more pressing distractions like a fascinating baby, a wonderful husband, knitting projects that have taken six months or more to get halfway done, cleaning I’ve avoided, dishes that I try to do sometimes so Will doesn’t, and food that needs to be prepared. Oh, and general fun I’d rather have instead of typing at a computer yet again. It gets really old after eight or more hours a day.
So here I am, and ready to at least do a “Here’s what’s going on with us!” update! Wow. The last time I updated really was almost exactly three months ago. Oops.
I’m still working for the government (thus the not typing things while I’m at work), and it’s okay. Basically, I’m conflicted every day. I love who I work for, I love (for the most part) who I work with, and it’s just a good place to be. There are two issues, one sort of minor and one bigger: I’m burned out on what I do, and I hate being away from Seth. “They” tell you it will get easier to be at work while your baby is with someone else during the day. I think that’s true for a lot of mothers and fathers, but it is killing me. I am so grateful that Will is the one taking care of Seth, because I don’t think I could handle it if it were anyone else. We’ve even discussed postponing having another kid until our circumstances change and I can be the one who stays home. That’s not the ideal solution (because who knows when the circumstances will change) but neither is me crying everyday at work. So, until Will finds a fabulous job that he loves and can support us, I go to work and try to enjoy myself. I’m looking into ways to make it a better fit at work, so we shall see.
Will does get to be home with Seth, and he’s absolutely amazing. I love that Seth gets his daddy, and I love that Will is willing to do so much with Seth. Sorry, everyone, but I really do have the best husband in the world. Right now he’s rehanging our door because the house shifted and it won’t open/close easily. His “rehanging” means taking the doorframe completely apart, taking out the crap other people (read: “lazy builders”) put in, and making it work for now and the future. He knows so many things that are WAY beyond my comprehension. Plus, he’s hot. YAY! I WIN!
Now for the most important person in the family (or so I’ve been told): Clive. Just kidding. Although, Clive does tell me that every day. Clive, Bonnie, and Josie are all fine and dandy. Clive almost went to live with some neighbors or random passer-by after we came home from Alabama and found that he’d peed all over our bed, including the brand-new comforter, the quilt my grandmother made, and our seven month-old mattress. Fortunately, we got over it and got just about everything de-catted. The jury is still out on the comforter.
Back to the important person (who sounds like he might be waking up from a nap right now): Mr. Seth is just wonderful. He continues to be long and skinny. His five-month-old cousin passed him in weight about a month ago. Seth pulls up on everything, climbs everything, and cruises around the room, holding on to whatever (or whomever) is available. We missed uncle Logan’s $5000 bet that he’d walk at nine months, but oh well. We weren’t holding our breath on either part.
Seth is pretty much done with “baby” food now. He likes to feed himself, so we go for small bites of things that he can pick up. Today’s breakfast was half a banana (in pieces) and some oatmeal. Last night he ate banana, blueberry yogurt with shredded mozzarella on top (weirdo), and some Goldfish crackers. It was an odd combination, but since he’s refused to eat solid food for two days (teething), we let him eat whatever he would put in his mouth. He’s usually pretty good about eating what we eat, at least to some extent. We also think (as you can see) that the dairy issues are DONE! HURRAY! Mommy can have cheese and real butter again!! I still think I’ll avoid the real milk, though … I like coconut milk beverage so much. Anyway, Seth has five teeth already (two top middle, two bottom middle, one side bottom) and we think he’s working on the fourth bottom tooth and two more up top. Poor kid … poor parents!
The little baby is officially ten months old and almost close to his first birthday. I can hardly believe that!
I obviously don’t blog here much, do I? I’m more likely to be on Flickr, Twitter, Facebook, or sharing in the Ravelry.com forums these days — if I’m online at all! There’s just something about a small little boy and a wonderful husband that makes me not want to stay at a computer while I’m at home. In any case ….
See that big boy over there? He’s been crawling for about a month now. He eschews the traditional hands-and-knees style for the much harder “butterfly stroke” or “dolphin” style. He pops up on his hands, uses his toes or his core muscles to push forward, and lunges, then repeats the process. He’s getting quite fast at this, so we’ll be in serious trouble when he actually DOES go to traditional crawling.
He has two teeth, both on the bottom. He likes — no, LOVES — to eat solid food. He’s still nursing or having a bottle of milk every three to four hours, but he’ll also have oatmeal or a multigrain baby cereal at every meal and some peas, green beans, pumpkin, or other veggie. We’ve also added bananas (love), plums (eh), pears (love), blueberries (love), and apples (eh) – purees or mashed-up versions, of course. We recently added some finely chopped chicken breast in with the veggies for lunch and supper, and that seems to be a good idea, too. He’s learning to take sips from a lidded cup and thinks Cheerios are amazing fun … and that sometimes they go in your mouth.
Seth has learned to express himself more, too. He’ll crawl to where he wants to be or who he wants to be with and fuss until someone helps him accomplish his goal. He gives Mommy kisses (a.k.a. “eats her face”) and will wrap his arms around our necks and bury his face in our shoulders to show he’s excited and happy to see us. He loves his cats and dog, and they are learning to run away now that he’s mobile. Seth is also learning what “Gentle!” and “Doucement!” mean …
He’s still in cloth diapers (Fuzzi Bunz) unless we have a laundry scheduling snafu, and we love them. He’s moved into the 6-9 month clothing, and Mommy is packing away yet another batch of clothes he won’t wear again. We don’t have another well-baby check until May, but he was 27 inches and 16.5 pounds in February. We’ll have to do an informal check for March!
He’s a wonderful, wonderful little boy, and so happy! Well, he has a cold right now so he’s a little whiny, but I can’t blame him!
Can you tell what Seth listens to in order to get to sleep?
Baby Einstein Lullabies
Erin: My email is down AGAIN. Every single Monday!!!
Adelle: OMG. I cannot believe they allow it
Erin: Seriously!!
Adelle: Why do my meetings start in the middle of good songs?
Erin: I hope Obama puts this on his list of things to change about the government. Because meetings are evil.
Adelle: HAHAHAHAHA!!!!!! You should email him. Put in the subject: CHANGE ([Agency] Email)
Erin: HAHAHA!!! If I could email, I would!
Monday was a federal holiday, and our friend Julien was visiting from Australia. We decided to head down to Galveston to see Moody Gardens and whatever else we could find.
Will and I had been to Moody Gardens before, with Kristin, Nolan, and the girls, and we visited the Rainforest Pyramid. Unfortunately, the Rainforest Pyramid was badly damaged by Hurricane Ike. About 80% of the animals were lost and the 10-story pyramid is still broken and undergoing repairs. So on Monday we went to the Aquarium Pyramid to check out the fish and other marine-related animals.
Seth was more interested than I thought he would be! He did really well in the carrier and slept on the way down to Moody and the way home. (It’s about 40 minutes from our house.) I can definitely see us getting some sort of season pass to Moody Gardens!
After we left Moody Gardens, we drove along the Seawall to look at the beaches and the Gulf. Yes, Galveston still has a lot of recovering to do, but it’s prettier than I thought it would be down there!
I forget who tagged me for this one, but I just saw the text file on my computer where I started writing my answers.
This was some meme/survey that went around on Livejournal. Man … I missed a few days of reading LJ posts, and apparently the world went to hell and there was another viral meme! (I still need to do that “X Things About You” one, but it keeps growing, first from 16 then to 25 then to 30.)
Anyway, this one was to answer the questions that the previous person answered. If you didn’t like the question, you could replace it with one of your own. Then you tagged everyone you could think of to do it. Obviously I am on guinea-pig-powered internet time, so I am late and you’re all sick of this one by now. Could you move on the next meme and tag me so I can be behind on that one?
I am still very, very angry over something that happened 2.5 years ago. I’m not going into details, but I’ll just say that it involved getting a bride’s (my) hopes up and then breaking her (my) heart simply by never talking to her (me) about it again.
I know I need to let go of it, but seriously: you don’t mess with someone about their *wedding*. It still burns me to see things related to the person/people involved because they obviously did not care, never cared, and probably don’t even remember it.
I don’t even want payback – because really, how can you fix something related to an event that happened once? I just want an awareness and an apology.
Since I doubt that ever happens, I’ll try harder to just let it go.
The other day, a mom on one of the August 2008 mommy boards asked if she was crazy for already wanting another baby. I’ve wondered if a lot of us get that urge, especially around the anniversary of when we found out we were pregnant this time around.
My clock has been ticking too, but I think it’s mainly due to other things. My maternity leave is really and truly over, my baby is getting so big and active, and I miss the joy and anticipation of pregnancy. I am so jealous of the girls I know who are pregnant now, and I want another baby right now.
But … I finally clued in that, for me, it’s mostly because I miss the things I’ve already had with Seth, not because I actually want another kid right now. I want to spend more time with my baby because it’s going by so quickly. Pregnancy and early infancy were the times where he was almost all “mine”, and I miss that, especially now that I’m back at work.
All that said, we want three kids and I want them before I’m 35 if everything else (money, jobs, etc.) stay okay. I’d love them to be about two years apart (at least the first two). I joked about having one for each Olympics of the next four years, but I don’t think we’ll actually try for that!
We also have to be smart about money and future plans, too. If I want to be the stay-home caregiver, we have to think carefully about adjusting our budgets and where we’re going to live. I don’t mean “house or cheaper house” or even “house or apartment”, but rather “U.S. or France.” It would be much easier for Will to get started in the sort of business he wants to have if we lived in France. We would also not have to worry about health care since the government would pay for all of that. Will has dual citizenship, so it shouldn’t be a problem for Seth and me to be covered. I’m just not ready to move yet, and I’d like at least one more pregnancy with my Houston OB. I’m worried about having the asthma issues again in a country I don’t know, with doctors I don’t know, and a language I don’t speak yet.
We shall see …
Edit: I keep meaning to clarify: Seth is all joy and anticipation himself. Every day is so new and he does so many things quickly, it’s exciting to just be with him. The pregnancy joy and anticipation is another variation of what I feel. In a way, it’s only because of Seth and who he is now that I want to have other children. I know how wonderful everything was with him (seriously, aside from the asthma), and part of me can’t wait to meet our other kids, should we have them!
