Most of my future posts will be public posts. To leave a comment here, you can either comment anon, which will be screened until I read the comment, use the openid feature, or you can create a livejournal user name. If you wish to read the occasional locked post, you will need a lj username and friend my journal. Eventually, my archive will be mostly public again and properly tagged.

It took a lot of work and effort, but we managed to get our belongings into storage. Major furniture that was broken and needing to be replaced was given the proper furniture funeral.

On the 31st, we were finishing removing our belongings and hit the road. The funny thing is when I was packing clothes for this move, not all of them fit into suitcases or a box. My pants in particular were the items I was really concerned with not making it into the van. "This stack has to go in the van." "Don't forget my pants." "I won't have anything but undies to wear if you forget MY PANTS."

As the van was packed up tight with stuff, one box didn't make the trip and went into storage. The following morning as we were getting dressed for the day, Homer asks where *his* pants were. Um... well... let me look. Eeep. Sorry Homer, your pants were in that box you didn't want to take in the van. You have nothing but undies and suit pants to wear. HAHA! I was such a harpy about my pants.

The nice part of this move is the general mood of our family has changed for the better. While each thing we are doing down here would have been done up there, each step is sort of energy and emotionally draining. If we were still up there, I'm sure our rebound back into action each day would be much more difficult. Here our funk lasts maybe an hour or two and then we are back to enjoying the move and different scenary.

Homer is invited to interview at his preferred location to work, and is going to go attempt to do that today. Cross your fingers!

Health status of the family since Saturday:

Homer - has an infected tooth, is on penicillin and vicodin now

MagicPointeShoe - pink eye

Juliet - healthy but suffering from a severe case of stir crazy from boredom

Serafina - has had a blocked sinus cavity since late Friday night, but it finally cleared today. watching her face swell up on one side, plus puking, plus a constant fever was overwhelming considering the above.

Athena - healthy

In non health related news, we have been blessed by kind friends with some new to us furniture. Homer's friend delivered to us a nice dining room table with four chairs. Combined with our two thrift store dining room chairs, we actually have a dining set to have dinner around. Our dining room is also finally free of moving boxes!

Also, Homer's mom's friend's friend was getting rid of her leatherette couch and chair. So in our family room we now have a more comfy arrangement. I especially like the chair for nursing the baby in.

And in non-health related news and non-furniture related news, our baby is almost ONE YEARS OLD! Egads, when did that happen?

Sorry I've been away. Things keeping me away for the moment:

1. Serafina has become a borg and is obsessed with all things kid related on the interwebs.

2. Serafina has also become potty trained, but there are a million zillion, "I HAVE TO GO POTTY!!!" followed by "No potty in my butt."

3. Athena is moving from full force crawling, to cruising while hanging on to everything in site. Also she is biting only me a lot. Apparently Homer is too hairy and possibly wrong tasting.

Anyway, that is the boring update of my life. I must attempt to regain access to the borg collective from my child.

OH! And for lent I have given up soda. I'm actually rather pleased with my body reaction. No migraines and the urge to sleep during sleeping hours is lovely. On the other hand, having Homer keep looking for Mexican Coca-cola to drink while I am giving up soda is the suck.

This week has been the week of phone tag. Each and every phone call has been me needing to then call someone else to get a suitable answer and then that person referring to someone else. Most of the time the phone calls have been circular too, ending back at the first person called. Some of the calls I wasn't allowed to speak because they wouldn't accept verbal authorization from Homer, which was entirely frustrating. When we were first married, Homer had no patience for making any phone calls in which things needed to be resolved with companies. It would take approximately two minutes of discussion and Homer would blow his top. Over the years, he's mellowed out a bit and is able to make basic request phone calls without losing his cool, but definitely nothing like the wild goose chases that happened this week.

Unrelated to the wild goose chase phone calls, I am within a spits distance of transferring schools. All of the course I am registered for this semester are actual degree required courses, and the application period for transferring comes up this August for Spring admission. I am thrilled.

I have a picture post coming up soon from pictures taken on Sunday. Over the weekend, Athena decided that two bottom teeth were not enough and grew four additional teeth on top. Her smile of pure joy turned to an embarrassed painful awkward smile.

Athena has slowly started eating regular food. Because of the family histories of allergies, I am pretty methodical about what foods are given and when so that I can watch for a reaction. Also, because of Juliet's texture aversions when she was little, I also give the girls a chance to really acclimate to the foods for seeing if they are chewing or swallowing alright before moving on to the next food. Athena basically for the last few weeks has been experimenting with rice crispies. In the last week or so, she's finally figured them out and how to eat them, so I've been contemplating which food to give her next.

Earlier this week I baked up a batch of the most awesome tasting Sugar Cookies ever. I promised the cookies to Homer, Juliet and Serafina before Christmas, and well it took until earlier this week to finally bake them. But it was so worth the wait! Each of us really had this look of utter content while eating these cookies, and the sad sack of Athena baby gave us either the look of disappointment she couldn't eat the cookie too, or it was the look of frustration that demanded we hand over the damn cookie already.

The cookies ran out by late Wednesday evening, but around the house Serafina left a partially eaten cookie or two around the house. Yesterday morning Athena was crawling around the bedroom floor getting into her usual mischief when I noticed that it had gotten really quiet in the room. The kind of quiet that means your child is up to no good. I peer over the end of the bed to see what the baby is up to, and next to a low coffee table, Athena baby is laying on her back with the most awesome happy face ever as she has clenched in one of her fists a petrified partially eaten sugar cookie. Athena happily gnawed on that cookie with smug satisfaction that she finally got one.

I picked Athena up and took her downstairs to show Homer what had happened, and we were in giggle fits over her determination. Homer battled it out with Athena trying to get that cookie out of her fist. She held tight while trying to cram that cookie back into her little open birdie mouth.

but Serafina is napping. Her teeth took all of maybe ten minutes to install into her mouth. She wasn't terribly pleased while it happened, but within a half hour of leaving, Sera was quite impressed with her new teeth. Since she saw her reflection in the mirror away from the dentist's office and decompressed from feeling overwhelmed by when they put it in, she has been all smiles.

Her eating has already started adapting to be able to bite off foods from the front again, but her speech will take some time to adapt to the new teeth I think. To go from very little talking to talking our ears off after the teeth were removed, now she has to get used to having that word use with teeth being in the spot where they weren't before.

Homer was a doofus though when I took Serafina back for the dentist. He took Juliet next door to the gas station supposedly to get water, but then got talked into getting Juliet chocolate milk. =o/ Chocolate milk on an empty stomach that is easily triggered for throwing up, and then starting the van and driving was definitely a doofus choice. He's downstairs now with the spotbot trying his best to get the smell and mess out of the van carpets. Juliet throwing up in the middle of the day also solidified my choice in deciding to keep her home from school again tomorrow. I'll worry about how the recovery is going come Sunday.

Just a heads up to those who still think I'm very early in my pregnancy... tomorrow I will have completed 19 weeks.

So. In attempts to amuse myself and you all the following is a very short list of possible names. Keep in mind that I am still working my way through the Baby Name Bible and rather popular names have not been crossed off. All names thus far on this list have been given a passable rating by Homer.



Boy names:
Archer
Aristotle
Bartholomew
Cedric
Eugene
Malachi
Matteus
Matthias
Mattias

Girl names:
Athena
Cecily
Isabel
Magdalena

Vote or don't vote... it's up to you.

AAA website lists 431 schools offering some sort of Anthropology type degree. Each page holds ten entries. I hope to have a shorter long list by the end of Sunday. Wish me luck.

I have this goal of tagging ten past entries a day. If I go all crazy above and beyond that, I would burn out and stop tagging entirely. So ten is spiffy.

Today I learned that three years ago I was just starting out on journaling through "Self Matters."

I also declared at that Thanksgiving that I would probably have my next child when Juliet was around three years old.

My dad was complaining about 16 by 9 televisions.

And more fascinating, Homer broke his elbow! This entry gave me the giggle fits all over again!

I figure if I find gold like that elbow doctor post, I'll probably link you all up as I go through this tagging fun.

Someone new is now the size of a kidney bean. I’ve managed to catch another cold from Juliet over the weekend. So I’m feeling a bit run down, but not so much pregnancy wise I don’t think.

Homer’s vacation ends tomorrow, thank goodness! As much as I love Homer, having him around all the time can drive me a bit batty. I am thankful that my dad managed to take him off my hands for a few days to build a TV stand.

In other news, we have come to a conclusion to our housing dilemma. I took a good look at our situation with our income and what that means on the rental market, and what that income means if we were to get into the buying market. While the rental market isn’t the greatest right now, it is a much better option than the housing market. What we can afford in rent could pay for a two or three bedroom apartment in a nice neighborhood with washer and drier, and in a relatively new complex. Where as the same amount of money when put towards a mortgage in this area with low interest programs would afford us something on the very low end of the housing market. Urgh. It appears this just isn’t the right stage for us to buy right now. While at first this was a bit of a disappointment, we both know that this is a goal that isn’t too far off.

With that in mind, we still aren’t sure we will move when our lease expires in April. It really feels like we have finally are moved in to this apartment. Moving for an extra room that Juliet may or may not use at this point just seems like extra work, lol. Just thinking of the logistics of moving is tiring!

It is her first cold, and it's making her and I miserable. My mil and gil gave it to her over the weekend. They had been fighting cold and both had a nasty cough that they say is allergies. =oP

Anyways, Friday night we go out to dinner with them and just before they show up, Homer picks a fight with me and I get really mad. I was mad because I knew he was going to get mad cleaning the kitchen and it was why I offered to clean it while he watched Juliet for a few minutes. "Oh no, I won't get mad, I promise" =oP

So, mil and gil come in the middle of me getting mad at him for getting mad at me. Dinner sucked and they snap at me to over Juliet playing with a spoon. I tell them to back up with their words, I'm too stressed to bother with it.

I guess they decided that I need a break from the baby, which really I need a break from attitude from Homer. So they insist on carrying her all through Sam's club, and thus now the baby is sick.

And now she's throwing up the cold medicine we are giving her. I'm going to get a refund.