Heh. That title makes me laugh.

Julee and Manda asked me about my minishower. For Manda, you can find installation guidelines here. It was really easy to install, though I did have Erich do the installation. What’s the point in having a husband if I have to do those sorts of things myself? I’m really loving the minishower though. It is working well and I think it was a good investment. Rinsing diapers off does remind me a lot of my work in nursing homes using hoppers, but the smell is definitely not as bad and there isn’t AS MUCH of a mess to clean up, thank goodness.

I’ve set up what I fondly refer to as “the poop station.” Our bathroom downstairs is near the the stairs leading to the laundry room. I chose to place the hopper in this bathroom as it is the nearest to the laundry room and we change most poopy diapers down here. And the occasional poopy diaper upstairs, can easily be transported downstairs. I bought a cheap stainless steel trashcan that has the foot push/lid open system to store the diapers in. I’m going to carry wet rinsed off diapers downstairs nightly to keep little kiddies out and such and so there won’t be so many. The poop station seems to really be working well. Just rinse of the diapers and then drop in the can. Wash hands. Repeat. It makes me really happy, and I have to say that my life is REALLY sad when a poop station makes me happy.

This is what Magdalena thinks of oatmeal and breastmilk. She thinks it was a waste of breastmilk! 

I never told you about the trip to Kansas City. It went well. Magdalena did very well in the car for about 9 hours of the trip and the last hour she was miserable. I think that was great considering both Erich and I were miserable the last hour too. The trip back went the same way, first 9 okay, last hour awful. Erich spent a lot of time in the backseat with Magdalena because I get SO carsick and I still wasn’t sure if dramamine was OK. We made it though. It was fun visiting with family. On our full day there we went to Independence Center and did some shopping. We got Magdalena’s Halloween costume which I’ll have her photographed in probably next week. She’s going to be a lady bug. We also got her baptism gown, which is very very simple but absolutely gorgeous. Erich’s aunt gave me a meat grinder so I’m anxious to take AB’s advice and grind my own hamburger and sausage.

The festival went well and we are glad it was over. Good food was had by all, we visited with lots o friends, and at one point we had 8 babies in our house!

Last weekend we had T with us. Saturday I spent a long three hours running an IV over at my adult sitting job. Joy. It was really only supposed to take like 1.5 to 2 hours. I’ll leave that alone so I don’t get so worked up about it again. On Sunday we went to church and then up to my Mom’s house. We also did some errands on the way back and hit up Wmart. We hate that place, though it seems we go there often.

I caught Magdalena’s scrapbook up. I’m doing the layouts by month. The layouts are complete, I just need to add pictures. There a couple of special layouts like sitting up, teeth, crawling and first solid foods that I need to find something else for. I’ll try to get the pictures printed up soon. I’ve also started albums over at Photobucket. Here is the link for my album, and if you’d like the password please leave your email addy in the comments. Sometime this week I’ll be adding a permanent link on the website somewhere.

Today we are going to the triplets birthday party! Can you believe that they are already a year old? Remember this picture? I’ll get a picture of the four of them today and post tomorrow.

I had my first encounter with Stinky Poop. SP showed up in Magdalena’s diaper yesterday. Those darn organic bananas. I was very very very grateful that Mini Shower is in the mail.

ETA: MY MINISHOWER IS HERE! MY MINISHOWER IS HERE! I live a sad life when I’m excited over a minishower.

As the Princess of this dwelling, we will watch what I deem appropriate on TV. If you were wondering, this remote will also serve as my wand.  

True to my word, Magdalena started solids today. She had some organic bananas and loved them. I feel reassured in my decision to delay solids until 8 months. She didn’t fuss and she knew what to do. After the first bite, I didn’t have to hold her hand out of the way, she just opened wide. Daddy was here for her first meal and he fed her a bit too. (I also did this while T was at preschool so that it would be more of a family thing.)

Magdalena’s first official taste of solid foods. Organic bananas, yum! 

My cousin Pete in Iraq. 

I found out the other day that my cousin is in Iraq. I’m simply amazed. He has already been wounded twice and has gone back for a third time. It really surprised me because when my mom said “you remember your cousin Pete, right?” I expected her to finish the sentence with… he’s in jail. But that didn’t happen. I’m super super proud of him, but very very scared. Iraq has always been this scary thing to me, but it has seemed so abstract until now. Now it seems very very real and very close to home. I’ll post a picture they sent us.

First in a long series.

1) “I’m not a Queen because Queens have servants. God picks the servants to serve the Queen. They come from jail. So when ever the Queen wants something the servant has to get it. Whatever she wants, hot cocoa or some peaches, they have to get it. ”

2) “…But the baby drinks from here *points to breast*. So you mean the baby is going to drink from your breast and eat some baby food too? I’ve never heard of that!”

3) “Did you know I’m smart? I’m smart because I know lots of stuff.”

My baby girl is 8 months old today. **sniff** I can’t believe that time has flown by so quickly. I weighed her the 0ther day at an appointment, and she weighs 16lbs 4 oz and is about 26 to 27 inches long (we think). She is still wearing 3-6 months but I’m transitioning a bit into 6-9 month clothes. Though the other day, I did put her in a 0-3 month outfit and it fit perfectly. heh.

She has been saying Mama and Dada. Usually says Dada when she’s looking for him, and Mama when she is crying. I noticed yesterday that in chatter when talking to me she says Mama, which warms my little heart.

We’ll officially start trying solid foods tomorrow. I had to work this morning and I wanted to do it late morning with Erich. So that adventure will unfold tomorrow, which will most likely bring with it some pictures and another entry.

She’s hungry so I need to feed her now and enjoy her last day of being exclusively breastfed. **tear**

a real post. Yup Yup. But I’m tired to write one. I will tell you that I finished off two books in the last week and a half or so and they were grrreat. Midwives and Trans-sister Radio by Chris Bohjalian. I feel like I’ve rekindled my love for reading. It’s so nice. Any suggestions for my next read?

after all you’re just a stay at home mom. You have LOTS of time on your hands.

Obviously by the lack of posts, the above is certainly not true. And I swear if ONE more person says that to me, it’s POW, right in the kisser.

The tooth fairy has visited us yet again. Magdalenas top left tooth has popped through the gum. She’s doing better than me as a child. In my baby book it says I got the two bottom teeth at 6 months and then didn’t pop another tooth until 11 months. M’s been knawing hardcore these days and last night she was a bit restless. Only one real crying episode at about 1am when she didn’t want me to lay and nurse her, she wanted me to sit up in bed and nurse her. And she couldn’t make up her mind about which side she wanted to nurse on, though she finally figured it out and promptly fell back asleep. It probably doesn’t help that last weekend in Missouri and this weekend with the festival has completely disrupted her nap and bedtime routines and set them at weird wonky hours. So, I’m thinking that in the next few weeks I’ll see the right upper tooth just like we saw the two bottom teeth sprout within weeks of each other, but we’ll see.

Life can’t be that bad when you see this everday, right? 

So I confronted T’s mom about the whole Preschool issues we discussed before and it blew up in my face. She doesn’t feel she needs to pay and I feel taken advantage of. I also feel like I hurt a relationship and that is the last thing I wanted to do. I can’t stand confrontation and it took a lot of balls for me to even bring it up, and it didn’t do anything. I don’t make 3.50/hour like most assumed, I make 1.75. And it is sucking hardcare right now.

This will be fast. Since being home, I feel like my list of to do things gets longer and I never get anything done. I’m still feeling queasy, but somewhat better. The weird part of this flu is that I’m still very very hungry. Weird, eh? My trips to the bathroom are less but I still frequent that room often. It is really annoying though, considering my daughter doesn’t want me to set her down after 6pm. Therefore I have to listen to her scream, or take her with me to the bathroom. And considering that it’s the bathroom, I’m puking (gross!), and she is crawling at ever increasing speeds. Right, gross. The latter isn’t generally an option. No Andrea I haven’t taken a test. It would be nice because I’d like babies close together but I HATE taking tests. I took SO many prior to M that the entire experience puts me on edge. AND the darn fargin things are SO expensive. It’s times like these that I am kicking myself for not ordering the batch of tests that are like a quarter a piece online. Maybe I should do that tomorrow (payday!)

Speaking of pay, my cousin rotates the old folks jobs with me. When she doesn’t work at her real job, I take care of the couple. Well, she informed me yesterday that she was getting super tired, which means I could take over full time. While this prospect is delightful, because the money would be, well, it would be heaven, the idea is exhausting. I could pay up some bills and burn through my “I want” list pretty quickly though. We shall see.

The local fest is in town and it is already a madhouse. That is the one thing that I hate. Since we live a couple of blocks away from downtown, and the festival is located downtown, our street gets flooded. And half the streets downtown are blocked and the other half are filled with people making it a bit overwhelming and hard to navigate. I do look forward to it every year though.

M is working on a traditional crawl, but with each passing hour it seems she gets faster and faster at the entire army crawl thing that she just forgets about the traditional crawl idea. And now that she is more mobile than before, she wants to stand. The good part of her crawling is that if she is in the middle of the floor and decides she wants me and starts to cry, she also starts crawling towards me. Ya I know I’m lazy blah blah blah.

Speaking of her crawling, she has her first war wound, a splinter. I guess it only to be expected living in such a big, old house with lots of hardwood floors. She doesn’t want to stay on the carpet, and I can see that the hardwood is more conducive to sliding your tiny body across. Erich and I are going to have to get down on our hands and knees and scuff across the floor and do a bit of refinishing I think. But I only noticed it this morning when she was nursing, so it must not have hurt that bad or something.

There are other amusing things about this crawling business. Ella, my younger dog, is sincerely freaked out that M can actually get to her now. Gracy, the older dog, lets her crawl towards her until she can touch her once, then politely gets up and leaves. And T, well, T is frustrated. At first she thought it was fun to throw an object out and watch M go for it. That was until she was told that it isn’t nice to “tease” her with an object then move it right when she was getting to it and/or taking it away quickly. As I type this, they are on the floor playing. T gave Magdalena some blocks and took some for herself. This would be an ideal scenario, except that M doesn’t want the blocks designated for her pleasure, she wants the blocks that T is playing with. Suddenly, I have a very idea of what it is like to be in the Bean household.

Okay so this wasn’t such a quickie. But I’m leaving now to take the girls to get some lunch at the fest. I can smell the aromas now and they are quickly calling us.

Wanna see a video clip of Magdalena crawling? Go here!

Edited: Can you tell me if that video clip is working for ya’ll?