quit work make crafts

Hmmmm. Is anyone HTML-savvy enough to know how one changes the margins on Blogger's templates? My garden blog pictures keep getting chopped off.

( Click for zoodly cuteness! )

Rose just had her first solid food: a couple tablespoonsful of runny rice cereal. I think it was a hit. Mostly she looked kind of puzzled by the whole thing, although she had fun playing with the spoon - nonetheless, most of the cereal actually ended up in the baby (as opposed to ON her).

Can't wait to introduce her to stuff that REALLY haz a flavour.

On the off-chance that anybody wants to follow said garden blog, nova_one has very kindly made it a syndicated thingy, which you can friend at poppycockles.

In other news, the Zoodle has been sometimes protesting bedtime and sometimes conking right out. To my dismay, however, she has been consistently waking up at ungodly hours of morning (3AM, 4:30 AM). No damn way am I attempting sleep training at that hour. I feel whiny for being dismayed by this. One nighttime wakeup, ZOMG, teh horror. That doesn't stop it from feeling like a kick in the head after months of her dependably sleeping right through the night, though.

My mom theorizes that maybe she's just ready for solid food (i.e. breastmilk doesn't hold her through the night anymore). She goes 3h between daytime feedings now, though, so I'm not sure that theory holds water. Well, we're talking to the dietitian at CHEO about starting solids on Wednesday, so we should be able to test it out soon.

Bleah. In any case, I bet she wakes up again tonight, since (not having napped all day) she nursed for all of 5 minutes before falling asleep. Meanwhile it is time for goofy Disney movies and nacho chips. What I wouldn't give for some irredeemable junk food. Goddamn milk ingredients.

Right! My new garden blog, it is up and running. Old garden posts have been transplanted.

You can check it out at http://poppycockles.blogspot.com.

I am thinking of setting up an official, separate Garden Blog to document my obsession, especially since I enjoy reading the garden blogs of other people so much. I could decorate it all nice, transplant my previous posts, and then maunder on at will without cluttering up people's f-lists.

What say you, intarwebs? Good idea, bad idea? Suggestions for a snappy title? (ETA: my sister recommends "Poppycockles". Hee.)

Out there, meanwhile:

* I seem to have hit the midsummer maintenance plateau, which is a little depressing, but I have gotten an awful lot done this year, I think, so progress is progress. I will bide my time for the fall perennial clearances.
* I am doing better with having things blooming later in the season. Sun is helpful that way, since most shade plants are spring-flowering.
* The cleome is just about flowering and is going to be stunning - definitely planting that again!!
* I spent a little while weeding in the front yard; doesn't feel like it made much difference. MULCH MULCH MULCH how I need you desperately. I think I will go to Canadian Tire tomorrow and grab a few bags, since all I would need for the front yard is 18 cubic feet. Next spring I will fork out the delivery fee and get a few cubic yards deposited in the driveway, thus getting the drop on the weeds right at the start of the season.
* I should also get a trellis of some kind for the David Austin rose.

Somewhat related: I want a truck. Not a huge truck, just a nice little haul-my-shit-around truck, like, say, a Ford Ranger. Or I suppose a van would work. Something with which I could schlep a load of mulch or a pile of plants or a tree or an art show display.

Spoke too soon. Zoodle was up at 3AM, and having been changed and fed and put back to bed, fussed until at least 5 (at which point I fell asleep - not sure if it was because she fell asleep or if I just got used to the fussing, which was not constant or screamy enough to warrant going in).

Then she was up again at 6:30 and snoozed with me until almost 9.

That's 6.5h of sleep for me, which is not THAT far off normal, but I feel pretty beat up.

Also, it's raining, and promises to all day.

At least my mom is bringing strawberries.

To my surprise and relief, no problems putting the Zoodle to bed tonight. We were back to our usual routine of NOM...*conk*. And this despite a 3h nap this afternoon. Well, colour me baffled. Maybe her teeth have been bothering her.

We seem to have hit on a naptime routine, too. I was astonished to discover a little while ago that with a soother and blanket she fell asleep while we lay on the futon bed in the project room reading books. I even found this result repeatable. Today we didn't even get to reading the books, she just stared/grabbed at one of the cats for a while and dozed off pretty quickly. My presence seems to be key, but that's OK because I can extricate myself without difficulty once she's asleep. I imagine this will eventually get to be untenable, if only because a daycare provider won't be able to lie down beside her for 15 minutes, but frankly I can't deal with the prospect of sleep training twice in a day, so I'll put it off till later, and we'll see how long this lasts.

Well, it took a while, but we finally seem to have run face-first into the consequences of putting the baby to sleep with teh boobz. She'll still go to sleep readily enough if I feed her, but if I try to put her down, SPROING...and screeeeeeeeam. Last night she was up and down until 2AM, when I gave up and brought her to bed with me. Tonight we exercised iron willpower and waited for 15min at a time between going in, and that worked better - only took two iterations before she fell asleep. Still. OMFG. It is pretty awful. I had always been philosophical about the whole "cry it out" thing, despite the internet hysteria on the subject, because that's what my parents did with me - apparently when my mom hit this problem I would scream for an hour at a time - and it's not like I was scarred for life or anything. Come to find out, though, THEY were both pretty traumatized by the experience. Understandably enough. Even the modified version ("controlled crying" is the jargon, I think) is freakin nerve-wracking. Still, it does seem to be working, and the only other alternative I can think of - co-sleeping, like last night - doesn't so much recommend itself, not on a regular basis anyway.  She snoozes with us for an hour or two in the morning sometimes, but overnight I find it's not conducive to sleeping well - I can't move around, can't get up if I need to pee, and wake up a lot to make sure she's OK.  Besides which, Corey and I get little enough time/space to ourselves as it is.

Ugggggggh.

( Now flowering... )

And while I'm posting pictures, here's some cuteness:

So the kitchen dude came over tonight and is going to send me an estimate in the next few days. I am cautiously optimistic. Fingers crossed!!

The Zoodle barely napped today but made up for it by giggling for like 10 minutes straight this afternoon. She has laughed before - she did it for the first time on Corey's birthday, at around 2.5 months - but generally she doesn't do it often. Today, though, for some reason she just cracked right up. If I talked to her, she'd giggle; if I poked her with my nose, she'd giggle; if I blew her raspberries, she'd giggle; if I laughed, she'd giggle back. It was AWESOME.

( Googly...and stylin'!!  )

( Lately the contents of books have taken a backseat to their grabability. )

Blue Milk has a super-interesting meme about feminist motherhood that I ( took a crack at. )

Well, a 3h nap for both me and the Zoodle was eventually achieved, once again by feeding her in bed. Afterwards Corey and I whipped up some hors d'oeuvres, popped Rose into the dress known as Mommy's Folly (which fits now! and is unutterably cute, pics to follow) and headed to the neighbours' potluck party. Miz Zoodle was pretty fussy, between a ton of strangers, a lot of noise, and (as suggested by chompy-ness) teeth; Corey eventually took her home while I met lots of lovely people and had a very nice glass of wine. Then we switched spots so I could cuddle the baby to sleep (another boob-free bedtime - RAWK) while he went to visit.

Must kick my butt into bed at a reasonable hour tonight. Although going to bed early doesn't help when you can't sleep. Ugh. Fingers crossed.

OMFG I am tired. Couldn't get to sleep until 2AM last night, and then the Zoodle was inexplicably awake before 5AM. And now she's not napping.

Right! So one of the Ikea installers in Ottawa also does the general contractor thing, so I've contacted him for an estimate. Hopefully we can get a meeting organized soon, and hopefully the verdict will not be outlandishly expensive, and hopefully when all is said and done I can get the ball rolling on all this craziness.

Meanwhile I have snapped up a little under-cabinet CD player from eBay to replace my hulk of an almost-20-year-old stereo in the kitchen. The hulk is still a good machine with excellent speakers, although the tape decks no longer work, but it can live elsewhere in the house where storage space isn't at a premium.

Bleah...11:30. I should get my ass to bed. Although the Zoodle went to bed late, so maybe she'll sleep in a little bit. When I first tried to put her down she was more interested in grabbing my face than in nursing, much less falling asleep. Well, she'd last eaten about an hour previous, so maybe not surprising (although she often nurses to sleep anyway under these conditions). But I also think she's teething, since she's been sort of chompy and grumpy today. So when her zoodly goodwill was on the wane again an hour later, I figured she couldn't be hungry, but probably would appreciate something to chew on. So I popped a soother in her mouth, sat down in the nursing chair, and snuggled her close. Her eyes started to flutter closed almost right away, after only perfunctory squiggling. And after about 10 minutes I stole the soother back and put her in the crib. Boob-free bedtime FTW!

Beebsie, Queen of Dirt and Shasta Daisies:


Ajna, DirtyFur Extraordinaire - she likes to loll in the dust like this and then go inside and sit on our bed:


Newly planted maple peeping out from among the daylilies:


Our bare-bum Zoodle:

( Yay for flowers! )

I have decided: tomorrow I am going to go get an itsy bitsy japanese maple, and then I will dig out a space for it among the daylilies in the corner and cross my fingers. I haven't killed any splurge plants so far this year, so we'll see what happens.

( Garden purchases du jour! )