Grandma sent me this picture of Amelia last night. Looks like she's having a lot of fun visiting her grandparents in California. 

A Jedi craves not these things.

Living alone, as a temporary geographic bachelorette, isn't all it's cracked up to be. Mind you, my expectations weren't super high. I wasn't planning parties and day-trips, but I did think I would be spending my evenings in a newly perfectly-clean apartment watching Mystery Science Theater on DVD and grading student papers. That's not too much to ask for.

So far, I've accomplished very little in the way of apartment work. I started re-Monkifying and organizing my CDs Wednesday night, but the task is slow and outwardly doesn't seem to accomplish much. It doesn't help when, after reorganizing a CD case holding nearly 200 CDs, you realize that, "Oh yeah, I have a George Harrison CD around here, don't I? And it was supposed to fit between Green Day and Dan Hicks and the Hot Licks."

I set some lofty goals for myself yesterday. Realizing that all I have really done so far is clean the oven (a miserable job, as we all know) I had big plans for that afternoon and evening. Of course, these plans were thwarted by an unexpected flat tire that required a couple of hours' worth of time to repair. (In my pregnant state, I decided to call AAA rather than change the tire myself, which added to my overall tire-changing time.)

But regardless of all the minor irritations I have encountered since my family left for California, and despite the fact that my apartment somehow looks much worse today than it did when Amelia was here scattering her toys about, I have something wonderful to be happy about...Last night my daughter spontaneously started blowing me kisses from California via the web cam. She's such a sweet and wonderful girl, and I hope her little sister is just as sweet.

Lisa

Preggo, it's in there.

Looking at my pregnancy calendar, Michael read stories about little babies (around Amelia's age) talking to their siblings still growing in their mommies' tummies. So last night he decided to tell Amelia about the little sister still growing inside mommy.

At the time, Amelia was enjoying peeking and poking at mommy's navel. Once she heard that there was a baby inside mommy's belly, she became very serious as if reflecting on this new revelation. Then, looking at mommy's bare belly, she said, "It's in there." She then poked at my navel and said, "Uh-oh."

It was a very funny moment for the family. I suspect that Amelia is confused about how a baby could live in such a small space without any apparent access to food or water. When we discussed the topic again tonight, she repeated her earlier comments then followed them with, "Outside." Honestly, she may have been asking to go outside, but I suspect she wants the baby to come out, so she can see her.

I'm going to miss Amelia and daddy next week. Amelia was extra sweet tonight and gave daddy a hug and kiss good night. She also made a comment about what time the clock said (we have been trying to tell her that the clock says it's time for bed), which I thought was pretty clever.

When I took Amelia to bed and held her in my arms, she gave me a couple of good head-butts. So apparently daddy gets a kiss on the check and I get a head-butt. Well, that doesn't change the fact that I will be a little sad and lonely when she's away.

Lisa

Amelia, seen here with her two best friends, gets a kick out of her Baby Einstein DVD. (Check out her lovely new haircut. Now we can see her pretty face again.) 

An ever-expanding vocabulary

Amelia surprises us, from time to time, with her growing vocabulary. The day after I took her to Supercuts she located a brush, began to brush mommy's hair and said, "Haircut."

This morning Amelia asked daddy if she could watch, "Heph movie" (the Hephalump movie). But I think the best phrase came night while we were wandering around Hobby Lobby. After Amelia and I had cut in front of another shopper in the aisles (toddlers do this fairly often) I was careful to say, "Excuse us." A few moments later Amelia walked in front of another shopping cart, looked at the woman there, and said, "Scuse us." The shopper was surprised and asked, "Did she just say, 'excuse us?'" I grinned and said, "Yeah, she must have just picked that up."

Amelia is a good and polite little girl, though her propensity to repeat words and phrases she hears serves as a reminder to us all to watch the swearing ;).

Lisa

A short short note...

I just wanted to let you all know that I just posted spring break pictures to my web page, enjoy!

Lisa

"See Amelia, I'm going to take this many trips to California this year." 

Racking up the frequent flyer miles...

I realize that it's been a little while since I've written here. It isn't that nothing has been happening these past few days, it's just that the computer has been subject to continual use by people doing (gasp) work.

On Tuesday, Michael received two phone calls from different schools in California requesting that he visit them for second and first interviews. This is exciting for us because both of these colleges are in great locations. Michael and I both agree that these are our number one and number two choices of the schools he has applied to. They're so close (substantively, not geographically) that it's very difficult to say which place we want to employ Michael the most.

These two job interviews will be less than a week apart, so it seems to make sense for Michael to make one trip to California instead of two. Amelia will be traveling with him and staying with grandma and grandpa S. while Michael is actually at his interviews.

I guess this means it'll be party time for mommy back in Indiana. I have already made some exciting plans for the weekend: drilling with my Navy reserve unit (whoo-hoo!) I may also go through our storage closet, grade a stack of student papers and finish my old, old incomplete. The fun never ends!

So, this will be Michael's third flight to California in two months...the fourth in four months. Maybe it's time we just all pack up and move to the coast.

Lisa

P.S. Michael got to feel the new little baby move for the first time this week. She's actively thump-thumping mommy every day now.

Ah, another lovely spring day in Indiana. Wasn't I on the beach less than a week ago? 

Back to the ole routine

We arrived back in Indiana Saturday night and everyone has a little jet lag. I thought I was immune to the effects of traveling from PST to EST, but I found last night that no matter how tired I felt I could not fall asleep.

Amelia, despite a little jet lag, is doing well. She's showing signs every day that she wants to be treated like a "big girl." This morning I suggested Cheerios for breakfast and she happily replied, "Ok!" then headed over to the table, leaned over my usual chair and repeated, "Up, up, chair" while trying to climb the chair with her feet. I sat her on my chair and let her eat breakfast like mommy and daddy would. She did a pretty good job, though her chin barely cleared the edge of the table.

Nearly every day, in some small way, Amelia demonstrates how clever she is. Tonight, she developed yet another version of "Old MacDonald" that surprised mommy. I have already been impressed by her singing, "On farm - fish! Swim swim here, swim swim there" and "On farm - butterfly! Flap flap here, flap flap there." Tonight's song was very clever. I thought Amelia had painted herself in a corner when she began with, "On farm - mana (banana)!" but she followed this with, "Yummy here, yummy there, here yum, there yum..." This little girl has a great imagination.

Lisa

Amelia disguises herself as a turtle in order to blend in at the zoo. 

Amelia introduces pig and bunny to the beach over spring break. 

More fun on the central coast

Though we've seen some rain during our trip to California, there's been less rain than predicted. Wednesday it rained all morning, but when we saw patches of blue in the sky we ladies (my mom, Amelia and I) decided to walk over to the local park. The walk was very nice, and Amelia was very excited to be at the park again. However, shortly after Amelia sat down in the swing - her first fun task at the park - it began to sprinkle. Well, we weren't going to run at the first sign of humidity, so we stayed and let Amelia swing as long as she liked. Then we went to the see-saw, rocking "horses", and the slide where mommy's bottom became soaking wet.

Despite the fact that the rain was falling harder and harder, Amelia still struggled and fussed when we tried to get her back in her stroller. She really did not want to go. When we got home mommy, the only person without a hood to protect her from the rain, looked like a drowned rat. Still, we did have a lot of fun.

Wednesday night we all went to the Klondike Cafe for pizza. Amelia enjoyed the place but nothing, absolutely nothing, could distract her from the balloons she didn't have that were placed on a table marked, "reserved." She fussed and fussed and nothing seemed to make her feel better: not the Alaskan art, not the flags and bumper stickers on the wall, not Ms. Pacman, not even the giant moose head with a bear on it's back. Luckily, my mom convinced the nice staff members to give Amelia a big red balloon. For a while she was still unsatisfied because she was hoping to have a balloon for each hand, but she settled down and ate some peanuts (with mommy's help and constant supervision) and pizza after a bit.

On Thursday, grandma came up with the excellent idea of taking Amelia to the Atascadero zoo. Now, this isn't a big zoo or a fancy zoo, but it's usually pretty empty so Amelia got to run around a bit ("walking...walking") and see some animals. Her favorite animals at the zoo were the meerkats and the flamingos. The meerkats were really friendly and came right up to the glass around their enclosure to see Amelia and her toy monkeys. Despite the sheep, wallabies, tigers and emu Amelia's favorite part of the zoo was the plastic chain barrier that hung down as a door at the entrance to the zoo aviary. At first, she felt a little nervous pushing through the chains, but after experimenting and sending her monkeys ahead of her, she started enjoying moving back and forth through the door. Like many other things she enjoys, Amelia wanted to do this over and over again ad nausea until it was finally time to go.

With grandma and grandpa available to babysit, daddy and mommy went out to dinner in Pismo Beach. This was followed by cake at the Madonna Inn. I was really disappointed that the coffee shop was all out of black forest cake, but one of their special cakes du jour was German chocolate, which was an adequate substitute.

Today it's raining again. We'll see what the day has in store. There's a toddler at my elbow crying, "mommy, mommy, mommy," so I'm going to go for now. We'll post pictures when we get back to Indiana.

Lisa

Surf report

Just a short, short update to my earlier story: Amelia and I just came back from a walk around the neighborhood. She got to pet a friendly cat, but was disappointed that she didn't see any dogs.

As I sat here reading my e-mail she started saying, "No, no" followed by "Big water, big water, big water!"

Michael was here and heard her; we both thought it was terribly sweet. According to weather.com there will be ample sunshine again tomorrow and another chance to see the "big water."

And I have to admit that I have always loved the sensation of coming home and rinsing the sand and salt water off my feet. It just feels so natural, somehow. Let's all keep our fingers crossed and hope the family will be moving much much closer to the ocean this summer.

Well, I have to run. There are burgers on the grill, but more importantly Amelia has informed me that I am sitting in the pig's chair and must move...

Lisa

More surfer girl than Hoosier, I'm afraid.

It's spring break at IU and the family is in California again. There were some flight delays in Chicago and LAX on the way here, but Amelia was a good girl and took it all in stride. She loves watching airplanes, so the delays simply allowed her more time to stand at the terminal window watching planes take off and land all the while exclaiming, "Wow, neat!"

We were expecting quite a bit of rain while here in Morro Bay and it did rain yesterday morning. After the rain there was a spot of sunshine, so we all decided to go to the beach. Amelia had a terrific time playing at the beach. She and daddy held hands and walked toward the waves while mommy held the camera. At one point, a wave caught all of us by surprise leaving us all wet and cold. Amelia had cold, salty, Pacific water all over her legs. She looked like she was obviously freezing, but being cold just isn't enough of a deterrent from getting wet again and again.

Amelia would walk closer and closer to the waves over and over again. As soon as a moderately high wave (about three inches) approached we would say with Amelia, "Oh no, run!" We would then "run" with her away from the water and up to the beach. Of course, Amelia doesn't run very quickly and her curiosity often prompts her to stop cold in her tracks and look behind her as the surf approaches. Add that to the fact that she weighs less than 25 pounds and can be easily knocked over by a three inch wave and you have one wet girl on your hands.

After we had a little fun I noticed that Amelia was starting to shiver. Michael and I decided it was time to take Amelia home. Despite the cold, Amelia was REALLY unhappy to be leaving the beach. She cried and cried, "No, no, wait!" as daddy carried her up the beach. Poor girl - she obviously loves the ocean and the beach, and probably isn't affected too much by the cold. I guess that's why toddlers have parents to decide when it's time to go home and warm up.

After a warm bath, Amelia was back to her wonderful self. I am hopeful that Mike will be able to send our regular readers (a.k.a. the grandparents) a video of our beach escapades soon. Until then, the sun is up, so I'm going to try to get us to the park while I can...

Lisa

"Hi! I'm the new baby. I look forward to meeting all of you in about four-and-a-half months." (Five fingers on a cute little hand...that's a good sign.) 

Otto? Cadence?

Ah, my trip to the doctor's office. It never fails to amaze me at the number of forms they expect one to fill out. Today's form was full of silly questions I could not answer like, "What is your spouse's social security number?" and "What is your emergency contact's social security number?" I guess they think I carry other peoples' personal information around with me in my wallet.

Something that also struck me as funny was the question, "What is your name?" followed by "What would you like to be called?" Since Michael wasn't around to defend himself, I wrote that he wanted to be called, "El Conquistador" (just kidding).

My appointment was for 9:45, and I was seen promptly at 10:45. They asked me what I was there for and why I was getting a level-two ultrasound, and I had no idea. They ask me to show up and I show up. They want blood, I roll up my sleeve. I guess I'm just not nosy enough.

The ultrasound was exciting. I learned a lot of things about a developing baby. The nurse asked if I wanted to know if I was having a boy or a girl and of course I said, "Yes." Eventually we came around to seeing what the baby's sex is.

It's interesting, but I actually had two ultrasounds today. I guess when you're over 35 they like to check and double check a number of things they might not normally bother with. But I guess you're more interested in the baby's sex than about the baby's four-chambered heart (which seems very large, though perfectly normal at one-third the size of the baby's abdomen).

Once I learned the baby's sex, I immediately started to think of baby names. My first thoughts were "Chris" or "Pat." Both of those names seem appropriate, now that I know what variety of baby I'm carrying.

Ok, it's true, I'm teasing you all. I'm keeping you waiting because I know that you want to know that we're going to have a boy or a girl. Let me tell you that I was actually a bit surprised (and secretly happy) about the results of my ultrasound. The result made me think of a rather funny skit from "The Black Adder"...

Queen: Oh. Do you think he would spend more time with me if I was a boy?
Melchett: Surely not madam.
Nursie: You almost were a boy, my little cherrypit.
Queen: What?
Nursie: Yeah. Out you popped, out of your mummies pumpkin and everybody shouting : "It's a boy, it's a boy!". And somebody said "but it hasn't got a winkle!". And then I said "A boy without a winkle? God be praised, it is a miracle. A boy without a winkle!" And then Sir Thomas More pointed out that a boy without a winkle is a girl.

So, it's true...Amelia is going to have a baby sister! I know some of you were completely sure we would have a boy this time, but another little girl is here to surprise and delight us. I guess this means I won't be giving away all of Amelia's old baby clothes, after all.

Michael has been told and he's happy. We're both very happy and looking forward to meeting our new baby girl...ideally in July.

Lisa

"I think mom's losing it..." (Not bad for a 'hold the camera at arm's length, guess and shoot' photograph.) 

Cold nights in Indiana.

First, let me tell you a story. Sunday morning as I was leaving my car to go to work I heard the morning d.j. on "the loop" say, "Led Zepplin's morning chant...maybe you can hum that one later when you're shoveling snow." I had no idea the guy was predicting snow to fall that afternoon! Because my reserve unit was conducting lunch-hour training I didn't leave my windowless building to get food so when someone coming back from a smoke break told us, "Hey, it's snowing out there," I was a little surprised.

The drive home from North Chicago (on my birthday, mind you) was lousy. Poor visibility and snow followed by poor visibility and hail followed by darkness and sleet and finally rain to a drizzle to nothing.

Still, it wasn't that cold last night when I arrived in Bloomington, but today it was really cold. Amelia was very bored in the apartment, and since boredom usually leads to her creating a huge mess in the living room I thought I would let her walk around outside for a while. She spent some time walking and playing "ready, set, go" before her nap then asked to go outside again as the sun was setting. We put on our winter coats and went exploring. Amelia was having fun walking and looking around, but it was clear, by her face, that she was not liking the cold. When I asked her if she wanted me to carry her home, she did not protest.

She's finally asleep now. Michael's away in California, so I've been holding the fort (sort of) by myself. Tomorrow is the big day...Tomorrow we should find out if Amelia will have a baby brother or a baby sister (unless the baby is excessively modest, which has been known to happen). Once I've called Michael and let him know about the little one, I'll post the results here.

Lisa

Oh, speaking of postings, my web page has been updated tonight despite a dozen toddler-related interruptions.

News on the little one...

I had another doctor's appointment today and everything went smoothly. Amelia slept in this morning and was a good girl at the doctor's office. The little baby's heart beat was nice, strong and regular once again.

I also found out during the exam that my triple test results were normal (I think that's what it's called). This means that there's a 90% certainty that the little one does not have any genetic abnormality of any kind. I also confirmed that my first gestational diabetes check was okay.

Right now, Amelia is resisting taking a nap. I guess that's what happens when you sleep in like a college student. Soon I'm going to have to pack for my birthday weekend in Great Lakes. I'm going to try feeding her left over Chinese food and see if a fully belly makes her sleepy or not.

Lisa

Separated at birth? Amelia Mae and Brian Setzer (check out Amelia's great pompador!) 

Dining with Amelia

Though trying our best to save money by not eating out, we've been dining out these past couple of nights. (Sometimes, the time needed to prepare a meal and to clean up afterward is more valuable than the money spent on the meal itself.)

Monday night we all went out to eat at, you guessed it, Texas Roadhouse. While we were there I noticed that Amelia seemed to be a little sleepy. It wasn't long before people at other tables noticed her sleepiness as well, because while she was shoving macaroni and cheese and green beans into her mouth, she was starting to nod off. It was the funniest thing watching Amelia continue to eat while fighting off sleep.

Last night we went out for Chinese food, which is a fairly common occurrence after a trip to the park. While Michael was away from the table the waitress came by and I placed our order. As soon as the waitress left I asked Amelia (not really expecting a reply), "And what would you like, Amelia." Very clearly and without missing a beat Amelia replied, "Rice." I was very impressed. She knew that she would get rice at the Chinese restaurant and she spent a lot of time scanning and neck craning looking for the rice until it actually arrived with our meal.

One thing I do like about taking Amelia to the Chinese food restaurant is that she probably eats more vegetables there than anyplace else. She loves the broccoli (and even likes the carrots) that comes with their beef and broccoli. She also loves rice, lo mein noodles and Chinese fortune cookies. Amelia's fortune, on the "learn to speak Chinese side" told us the word for "daughter." Coincidence? Who knows.

Lisa