In the Saddle

No, but really…

• aubreyjane said: You’re always welcome to come to the city and play date with my nanny kids! :-)

Oh, Aubs…that’s sweet, but it wouldn’t help the situation. I have lots of friends in other neighborhoods, it’s just kind of hard to break into the mom circle here where I live. I’m starting to think that because it’s such a small town, it’s even harder. Few reasons why:

 First, there are less people (obviously), so less people to meet/make a connection with.

Second, out of everyone I’ve met, I’m the only first-time parent. Everyone’s on their second or third (seriously, everyone here has three. THREE!) and so they have older kids who know each other from school. So I’ve got a few years til that happens for me. 

Third, everyone really does know each other and so, even though they don’t mean to be, I think people can be clique-y. I mean, they’re all really nice and welcoming when I am around (at various “mom group” meetings, etc.), but it’s hard to crack the fully-formed groups. 

Fourth and final, I’m kind of awkward at this. I’ve put myself out there waaaaaaaay more than I’m comfortable with, and it’s still probably not enough to really make friends. I just don’t like getting up in people’s business. I suppose I’m just waiting for it to happen more naturally, but I guess it just doesn’t always. I have to get over it. 

And I’ve come to the conclusion that, for some reason, making friends in the ‘burbs is more crucial than making them in the city. In the city, you can kind of exist in your own little world a little more without feeling totally isolated. Here…I don’t know…it just seems important. I mean, there’s kind of nothing else to do. Ha. But that’s a whole other post. 

Random thoughts from the last few days…

• There’s a cardinal that hangs out in our backyard trees. He (she?) is so beautiful and regal looking. And also, for some reason, cardinals just strike me as being nice birds. Like, wise and calm and good folk. Like, Paul Newman or something. 
• I love Justin Timberlake, don’t get me wrong, but the backbeat of his new song “Mirrors” doesn’t just seem like it sounds like “Cry Me A River”, it seems like it’s sampled directly from it. Like he sampled from himself. Is that allowed? I mean isn’t that just lazy?
• Making mom friends is hard. 
• I haven’t been on Tumblr in a looooooong time. Hi everyone!

The Georgia Report…I have a one year old.

This is beyond a Georgia Report. This is a life status report. This is a marker of how much my world has been rocked in the last year plus of my life. 

But first, the stats. I skipped over 11 months, really because it was such a blur. So this is kind of a combined 11 and 12 month list of likes, dislikes and everything in between:

• as of a year, she is 31 inches (still rocking the 95th percentile) and 21 pounds (slimming down to the 50-75th percentile…she’s always on the go, this one).
• she’s cruising…loves pulling herself up on everything and walking around, holding on to edges. 
• favorite games: opening and closing drawers, taking everything out of said drawers, taking every book off of her book shelf…you see where this is going.
• favorite toy: at 10/11 months, it was her Laugh and Learn little doorway/house thing, which is a huge Fisher Price monstrosity that has horribly annoying (and annoyingly catchy) songs and sounds. She looooooved it though. Still does, but not quite as much. Now it’s all about musical instruments. She has two little drums, a tiny xylophone and, her first-birthday-gift from her parents, a toy piano. And it would seem music continues to run in the family.
• favorite books: still loves Chicka Chicka Boom Boom and all Curious George books. For a while The Snowy Day was her true favorite; now she loves all lift-the-flap books like Dear Zoo and Where’s Spot and all that. We got a ton of new books for her birthday, though, so she’s discovering a lot more. She’s a reader, this one. It’s a good thing!
• favorite songs: We’re moving along in the James Taylor oeuvre with Sweet Baby James and Something in the Way She Moves. Recently, we’ve discovered she likes Elton John, so Your Song has been on heavy rotation. And just the other day, Jonny discovered she loves ELO. Chick’s got good taste in music. 
• and she’s back on bananas, ladies and gents! 
• loves lentils. LOVES. LIke, her favorite thing. 
• also? Loves pasta. But then, she IS my daughter, so…duh.
• still hates eggs.
• loves all kinds of soup…the heartier the better…split pea, butternut squash, lentil…she’s definitely got the savory palate going. 
• that said, it would appear she’s like her father and loves chocolate. 
• word count: mama, daddy, Baboo and Poppy (my parents), Nana and Papa (Jonny’s parents), baby, books, hi, bye, Georgia, Jessa, up, apple, pear, banana (kinda sounds like ‘nana), water (wawa), pasta (my favorite), no (her favorite), and this really cute version of “I love you” that’s more imitative of our tone and sounds than expressive of the actual words.
• Seriously, her favorite word is no. No all the time. No no no. Nooooooo! Sometimes it sounds like she has a cold and it’s “Dooooooooooo!” Sometimes she nods yes while saying no. It’s at those times I think of The Princess Bride and say to her, “I don’t think it means what you think it means…”
• one of my favorite things that she does is, while she’s in her high chair, she will always put her feet on my knees. She just likes to be touching, I guess. She’s generally very affectionate and loving. It’s heart-warming. 
• Her sleeping is better, but still fairly unpredictable. We’ve gotten used to it, I guess; we know that pretty much every couple of weeks she’ll have a bout of waking up for three hours a night, and then she’ll stop doing that but her naps will get screwed up, then her naps will resume and everything will be good for the next week or two until the cycle starts again. So I guess it is predictable, kind of. Whatever, I’m tired.
• She is still just a lovely, lovely, mellow, sweet, hilarious, lovely baby. 

Generally, her mind is just amazing and watching her learn and realize things is really cool. Little things like how she isn’t fooled by the decoy remote control anymore. She gets that the point of the remote is for it to make stuff happen. She looks at the decoy when I hand it to her and is like, psssssssshhhh, mom. Really? And she has preferences! One of her toys plays this funny little song that, apparently, she only likes the first 15 seconds of. So she’ll press the button to start the song, dance for the 15 seconds, and press the button again to start it over once it gets to the part she doesn’t like. 

And dancing! The dancing. All the time dancing. I just….it’s just…sigh.

There are seriously so many things to share about her. So many little details. But to sum it up….she’s just the best. The best best best. 

You know…this was gonna be a dual Georgia/Saddle update post, but I think we’ll just leave it at this. 

I love peplum.

That is all.

The moment when you forget you ate asparagus and wonder why your pee smells.

Happened.

Wherein I am seriously an old fogey

The original New York real world is on MTV (hash tag retroMTV. Omg my life is now retro) and its so amazing to watch now, 21 years later. The familiarity and the feel of it. It’s making me so happy.

But they’re simultaneously showing previews for the latest installment of the real world. And here’s the scene where Julie is bringing the cameras’ attention to the homeless problem in the city, and there’s a little side box with previews of the new one and in every cut in these previews, there are half naked people making out. This is not a new thought, but it’s insane that the show really has gone in this direction. It’s just dumb.

I’m nostalgic for the days of smoking in bars, no cell phones, and people were just being normal attention whores on tv, as opposed to the super-sexed, super-drunk, super-ultra-ridiculous attention whores we get now.

Is that too much to ask?

The gamut…

T and I went out for a three-hour dinner tonight. It was awesome. 

Something that struck me funny later on was thinking about the people at the tables on either side of us. The tables turned over a few times, so in the span of our meal, we had the full spectrum of Friday night diners. From the beginning of our meal at 6:45 to the end at 9:45, there was (in order):

• parents with two young boys, finishing up and paying quickly as we were sitting down and ordering our food.
• another pair of friends around our age.
• a foursome of late 30-something to early 40-something couples.
• a young couple on a date.

And we outlasted them all. Sometimes, you just need your friends. 

Today in housewifery…

It takes me an inordinately long time to make the bed.