• Beach Bits,  Bug

    Windy Walking

    It’s been raining here pretty hard here lately. I’m sure lots of people will be making fun of us, how we Californians can’t drive in the rain, how the news makes every little rain drop seem like the biggest story of the year, how our houses are sliding off the cliffs into the ocean… bla bla bla. That’s all true… but the rain to me means: not so much walking outside. And when you have a baby who gets bored easily, this is a very bad thing.

    My two month old gets bored easily. Really! Toby says we have made a monster. She’s a combo of me being high maintenance with a short attention span that needs to be constantly entertained and Toby who has a short fuse and anger issues. So we’ve made a child who gets bored and mad easily. You should see her. She doesn’t cry like a normal baby. No tears and sad faces and distressed sounds. Noooooooo, she yells. She yells in quick loud dolphin-like screeches with lots of air space in between just to make sure her point has sunk in.

    When she gets in this state (which is the usual 4-7pm baby witching hour) I carry her around the living room over my shoulder so she can get maximum viewing capabilities. This is the only thing she likes. Believe me I’ve tried everything. When she gets bored of the living room she shrieks to be walked to another room. We do this with every room in the house and then we walk onto the patio. The cold rainy air doesn’t scare us. We are bored and we must be entertained!

    Yesterday I was itching to get out on a normal walk but it was still pretty cold and windy. I’m sure you east coast readers are laughing at me and calling this weather summer-like but to me it’s a bit chilly to be taking a baby out in. But I couldn’t stand it anymore. All the screeching!

    So we bundled up and out we went.

    I’m so glad we did. It was a beautiful day to go down to the beach. The sun was out and the sky was so blue. The sea gulls were playing games with each other in the giant updrafts off the harbor. The clouds were like castles and the sand was blown into little miniature sand dunes. The waves were huge and tumultuous, you could see white caps for miles and miles. I had a great time snapping photos.

    Baby Bug went to sleep. Of course. That little squirt.

    I’ve uploaded theses pictures onto flickr here for you so you can see what it really looked like, without the slide show dithering.

  • Bug,  Shop Talk

    The Belated Birth Announcements

    I finally mailed out Baby Bug’s birth announcements…. only ten weeks late.

    Sigh.

    I had such good intentions, addressing all my pretty pink envelopes weeks before she was born. A lot of good it did me. Toby and I couldn’t agree on the design of the announcement for the longest time and finally I just went ahead and had them printed without his approval because it was just plain getting embarrassing.

    Many of my friend’s had babies around the same time and all their birth announcements decorate my refrigerator mocking me. I should have just done one of those automated photo cards… it would have been so much easier. It’s just that I’m a graphic artist! I have a reputation to uphold. I can’t not design something. That’s what I do for a living. So I finally banged it out and now it’s in the mail. Done. Phew!

    It’s silly that there’s this unwritten rule that birth announcements need to be timely. I mean, I understand they need to “announce” the event and waiting a year doesn’t really help a baby’s introduction into the world. But still, why do you get a whole year to send thank you notes after you get married? I had tons of free time after I got married. If I was an over achiever, I could have gotten all my thank you notes done on the plane ride to my honeymoon! Hah! Gone are those days. I don’t even know the meaning of free time now. I know it’s been said a zillion times but it really is true that when you are a mom, it’s a major accomplishment to get a shower every day.

    I’m lucky. Baby Bug takes a nap every morning just long enough for me to take the quickest shower on earth. I’ve taken a shower every single day since she was born (I think, there may have been one day I skipped when I was out in Hemet where it’s okay to stink). I have to! Ever since she was born I’ve been the stickiest, smelliest, most disgustingist I’ve ever been. That morning shower keeps me sane. I look forward to it.

    So anyway, the announcements are out. (Yay!) If you’re family or a close friend on my short mailing list, you can expect it in your mailbox in the next few days. If you don’t get one, email me because I have this dreaded feeling I left some people out. Please forgive me! I’m an addle brained mom now. Plus, I ran out of envelopes. But I’ll get some more, one of these days.