So, last Thursday morning (What is it with Thursdays lately?), right when I was about to leave for work, I went into Sadie’s room and discovered this (this is taken a few minutes later):

Yep, Sadie’s crib rail split. We’re not sure if one of us did it, putting Sadie back in sometime in the course of the night. Or if we need to be concerned that The Company is going to come looking for Sadie. Either way, suck-ola. So! I might have been a little hasty when I commanded, TAKE THE DAMN THING APART! I could just imagine Sadie busting through it that night, or gouging her eye out on the jagged wood (and I use the term “wood” lightly here). Sadie thought it was fantastic (say CHEESE):

How fun to have her bed on the floor! I’d been thinking off and on about transitioning Sadie to a low bed, especially since hearing a friend of mine talk a little about what she’d learned about low beds in the Montessori tradition. I definitely hadn’t quite planned on doing it yet, and I really had wanted to be slow and deliberate about it (as I was moving her from the bassinet/our bed to the crib/our bed to just the crib). But I’d just heard how good Sadie has been sleeping on her cot at daycare, so I figured, what the heck. We’ll give it a shot.

So I mulled this over on my way to work. And the whole morning, I kept thinking of how not-entirely-baby-safe Sadie’s bedroom was. Sure, she could hang there unattended for a while with one of us in the house, awake. But the thought of her roaming her room in the middle of the night, with a diaper pail to get into and who knows what else… So, I took the afternoon off. I did a tiny bit of shopping and found at an antique store a little table and stool that seemed just the right size for Sadie. I rearranged furniture and cleaned the floor. I was actually getting a little excited.

I took out most of her toys and left behind just a handful. The Montessori concept as far as sleeping goes is that all children, even babies, shouldn’t be restricted in their movement–night or day. I was prepared that Sadie would likely wake up in the night, as she does in her crib. But I kind of imagined Sadie getting up, playing with a puzzle or baby doll, and then putting herself back to sleep.

I was obviously out of my gourd. That night was a total train wreck. I’m sure that if you start your baby from infancy in a low bed, having a night like we had happens every so often. It took me nearly two hours to get Sadie to sleep, eventually letting herself wear down by running from the low bed to me and back, again and again, nursing every handful of laps. She slept soundly from 9:00 to 3:30 in the morning, but then she was up! Up. As in, took Trevor and me until 5:15 to get her back down. Not okay. And the way we got her back to sleep? Trevor rearranged the room halfway back to how it was and put the crib back together. He duct taped the split part and put that part against the wall. Not exactly ideal, and I’ve got some phone calls to make to see about a replacement part. Some of my work has stayed, though. We all really like the table and stool and the dressing area. Sadie can pick out what she wants to wear, and she even will put her shoes back when she’s not wearing them. She’s definitely a big girl, but I think we’re going to wait quite a bit longer before trying the big girl bed again.

Does anybody have any tips on how to make this transition easier next time? I’m sure just her being developmentally more ready will make a big difference. But I’d love to hear some success stories.

Alright. So, I took down the Fat Goat Challenge page. It was kind of stupid. But I haven’t forgotten about that dreadful picture of Sadie and me, and I haven’t quite stopped my quest at becoming a less-fat goat. Here’s a little update:

• Calorie counting was a total joke. I lasted all of four days. Fortunately, they quit serving those giant cookies at the cafe at work. Unfortunately, my appetite for ice cream (both homemade and Ben & Jerry’s) has continued. I still maintain, though, that my diet is pretty healthy. So I’m putting that stress off for another day.
• The One Hundred Push Ups Challenge is going pretty well. I wasn’t able to do enough after Week 5 to move on to the final week, and I kind of slacked off last week. So I think my plan is to start tomorrow night with Week 5, Day 1, Column 2; do Column 3 next week; and then do an exhaustion test to see if I’m ready for Week 6 after that. I’m not terribly worried about getting to Week 6 in a hurry. Doing 45 push ups in a row is pretty effing hard, and if that’s the best I can ever do… I’ll take it, thank you.
• If you follow me on twitter, you’ll know I’ve been using a C25K (Couch to 5K) app on my iPhone and have been running. I’ve got a friend who lives a few blocks away who is awesome enough to meet me at 5:45 three mornings a week to run/walk. She’s already done a running program, but it’s been a while, so this is good for both of us. I  never, EVER, thought I’d get into running (Well, I could run a seven-minute mile my senior year of high school when the dance squad–shut it–ran in the mornings. But I weighed all of 95 pounds or something stupid like that.), but I really kind of like this process. The few times I have tried to “take it up,” I’ve failed right out of the gate. I would just set out from the house and start running. No plan, no motivation. That might work for some folks. Not this gal. But this app is awesome. Somebody else has already figured it out for me, and they tell me when to run and when to walk. If there’s one thing I like, it’s to be bossed around. Wait.A.Minute… I didn’t mean that. Shut it, you.

So, what’s all this effort gotten me? Much nicer biceps, that’s for sure. Other than that, not much. I’ve stayed the same weight, which isn’t a huge deal to me (I don’t even have a scale, so the only way I know is by weighing myself secretly when I’m at friends’ houses). Sadly, I think I discovered some fresh, new stretch marks. Gag my face off. But, whatever. I’m enjoying being this active, and that’s mostly what’s important. Would it nice to get my before-I-met-Trevor-and-started-eating-like-a-hungry-boy body back? Um, yes. Would any reasonable amount of exercise do that for me? Um, no. I’d have to sell my firstborn to hire Gwyneth Paltrow’s personal trainer. Don’t worry, Sadie…

Photo by Katie Short

Wowza. I’m glad it’s Friday. This has definitely been one of those weeks where, if it’s not one thing, it’s something else. I don’t like being a Master Complainer, but I need to get this off my chest.

This week we’ve:

• Had glass bottle of very sticky soda smash on the kitchen floor. Cleaned it up, but not well enough.
• Woken up to ants all over the sticky mess. Got rid of the ants and the stick mess with the steam mop.
• Cracked two horribly rotten eggs from our darling chickens (first time I’ve experienced that).
• Come home to Willow in her crate, surrounded by a pool of diarrhea and vomit (the crate that’s in the bedroom, our one carpeted room). This led to a multitude of complications, including the house reaching 85 degrees while we attempted to air it out.
• Experienced the at-least-weekly cat vomit in the morning.
• Woken up to another kitchen ant attack.
• Probably had other absurd things happen that have blissfully escaped my mind.

BUT! We’ve had some good, too:

• Sadie and I joined our friends for a end-of-the-summer swim and takeout dinner.
• I went to my second ICAN meeting and felt really good about it. Went more in-depth about Sadie’s birth story.
• Coincidentally bumped into a woman from the ICAN meeting as I was fleeing my poopy house and was invited to my first La Leche League meeting. This provided the perfect escape from the house–Sadie and I were able to eat dinner, play with other babies and talk about breastfeeding while the house aired out.
• As I write this, running late for work, Trevor is kindly fixing me breakfast so I can take a breather. Thanks, love.

Oh, how I hope this Friday and weekend go better than the rest of this week.

Just a preview of the cuteness and fun that shall be the 7th Annual T&A’s Homemade Boat Race and Pirates and Portwhores Party. That is, if I remember to take and post pictures. These are the onesies I just made for Sadie Danger and her BFF, Margie Mayhem.

Does the fact that Sadie talks to and kisses (okay, I might have encouraged that one) the baby on her yogurt cup make her totally awesome or a little bit crazy? She doesn’t even bother learning the sign or word “yogurt;” we’ve just learned that whenever she’s eating and suddenly demands BABY! It’s time to get out some yogurt.

Oh, and Sadie has totally learned to say “cheese!” for the camera n

(In other news.) After quite a bit of a break, I’m back to my workout routine. I just did 91 push ups, and tomorrow morning I’m redrafting my C25k program. This time, I’ve got a friend joining me. It’ll be fun telling her to run and walk like I’m the boss. Too bad it’ll be my phone running my ass to begin with!

Heck, yeah! Summer vacation. The last time I took one of those, I was seven weeks pregnant, got a nasty head cold and spent approximately 96 percent of my time in a dark room watching a marathon of a show I’m embarrassed to mention (and only about four total hours on the beach). Thanks to the oil spill, my family relocated our vacation to Big Cedar Lodge, which is just outside (drum roll, please) Branson, Missouri. Now, I’ve grown up being kind of a snob about Branson (Fawn, I’m sorry. Also, I had no idea people actually came from Branson.). Probably has something to do with the obnoxiously cheesy Silver Dollar City commercials we in Little Rock grew up being subjected to. But the fact that the drive is less than four hours long definitely had its appeal.

Summer being the busier season for the cycling business, it’s pretty tough for Trevor to get time off (Wait, it’s ALWAYS hard for Trevor to get time off. Richard, are you reading this?). Being a crafty gal, I came up with the plan that Trevor, Sadie and I drive up on Sunday, meet up with my family at Big Cedar on Monday, and Trevor could drive back to LR on Tuesday, which meant he only had to take one day off from work. To be fair, I was all, “Let’s go camping!” and Trevor–often the voice of reason–convinced me to stay in a hotel in town. Considering that the heat index was eleventy billion degrees Fahrenheit, this was a good call. So that’s what we did, to much success. Sadie and I stayed on with my family until Thursday, leaving me with a luxurious long weekend doing mostly normal things with Sadie before going back to work.

Being the awesome person I am, I failed to pack spare batteries, so when my rechargeable batteries turned out not to be recharged at all, I resorted to my phone as camera (let’s ignore the fact that when I was unpacking, I discovered my battery charger was in my bag the entire time). We’ll also ignore the fact that the only photos I’ve been taking in the last few months have been with my phone because I’ve been too lazy to charge batteries. AND the fact that I could have surely found four AA batteries, for a princely sum, of course. Hopefully some of the pictures taken by various family members will make their way onto my hard drive. Because I suspect there are some cute ones of Sadie with her cousins.

So! Our trip, more or less:

Sunday night, we went down to Branson Landing. It’s a kind of pedi-mall on the White River. There were lots of shops and places to eat, and we wound up eating in this restaurant that was actually on the river. Why I didn’t think what this would mean to a person like me, I don’t know. But as soon as Trevor pointed out that the light fixtures–and, really, everything–were moving, I knew I was in trouble. Sure enough, by the time I was writing in the tip amount on the receipt, I knew I had to get the heck out of there, or I was going to lose my “Hunter’s Meatloaf.” Sadie had a blast, of course. She’s recently learned how to drink from a straw, so every glass of water on the table pretty much becomes hers. She had a freaking death grip on this one, and did some serious ice crunching.

After dinner, we walked along the river and paused to look at some ducks.

They’ve got this “fire and water” show at Branson Landing, which was pretty cool. This is not the fountain, because we had to skeedaddle as Sadie was a little freaked out by the giant bursts of flames coming from these metal tubes. After this, we headed to Marble Slab for ice cream. This has been my favorite chain ice cream shops since my friend moved to Dallas and I first got to try it. I always get the same thing–chocolate Swiss with cherries. On our stroll, Sadie was more than a little obsessed about all of the babies we saw. She kept pointing, saying, “Bay-bee? Bay-bee!” There was this one little girl walking around with her parents, and Sadie stood stock-still, arms outstretched, beckoning the kid to come to her. Finally, Sadie just ran up and gave her a hug. Fortunately, the girl’s parents though this was cute, especially as Sadie continued to harass her until they went out of reach.

On Monday, we drove to what the map suggested was Branson’s zoo and aquarium. We weren’t sure if we really wanted to go to a zoo or not, but Sadie fell asleep in the car, so we figured the drive was worth checking it out. Um, no. We didn’t even get out of the car. We headed back to downtown for lunch, and then we decided to head on out to Big Cedar Lodge to wait for my family to get there. The building where registration is located has this awesome table of tinker toys. Sadie was all too glad to stick them in her mouth. And to stand in the seat, of course. She likes to stand up on things that she apparently knows she shouldn’t and says, “Shit.” I’m sure she means “sit,” but it’s pretty cute. And slightly nerve wracking.

We had dinner at the fancier restaurant at the resort on Monday night. Sadie is stinking cute in her new moccasins, isn’t she? They’re a little big, and she won’t really wear them until it’s cold anyway, but it was fun to have her wear them a couple of times. Dinner was, shall we say, a total nightmare. Our reservations weren’t until 8:00–already a catastrophe in the making. Then, the table that was supposed to seat all 20 (21?) of us wasn’t ready. I don’t know what time it was when they finally seated us, except that it was meltdown time. Luckily, we were with family who were willing to give us a break from trying to keep Sadie happy, so we were able to scarf down our meals and get out of there.

We played a little miniature golf with the little cousins while the older kids did this Kids’ Camp thing. Miniature golf is on the very short list of things I suck at yet completely enjoy doing anyway. It was crazy hot, though. We kept the babies cool by strolling them into patches of shade as we found them.

Boating! On both Tuesday and Wednesday afternoons, we went out on Table Rock Lake on a couple of party barges. I was a wee bit nervous about how Sadie would react to being on a boat for four hours. As you can see, it was a hit. The first day, she wasn’t so crazy about getting in the lake with the life jacket on. She didn’t seem to mind it when we were in the boat, but once we were in the water, she wasn’t a happy camper. Wednesday was a different story. She really seemed to like watching the water as we sped through it. And I can’t even imagine what she thought at the sight of me tubing.

(Aren’t her little crossed feet the most nomable things ever? I swear, this must be a genetic habit–my feet are crossed the same way right now–and pretty much all of the time. We are ladies.)

In all, it was a totally fantastic vacation. Sadie had a blast with her cousins, and it was so much fun to watch her interact with them. Hopefully this will be something she gets to do ever year.

I just wrote a massive blog post about our vacation to Branson. But I don’t want to publish it just yet, in the hopes that I’ll score some more/better photos from family members in the meantime. So here are some tidbits about how things are. Because I’m still alive.

• Apparently we’re in the hottest summer ever or something. I don’t watch the news, but it’s been effing hot around here.
• Sadie was so excited to see her pets when we got home from vacation yesterday. She just kept yelling, “Kittie!” at the top of her screechy lungs.
• Tomorrow Sadie and I go to our first parent-child dance class. I’m pretty pumped about it, but I’m a little worried about Sadie’s morning nap. I think I must also be a bit anxious about starting the adult ballet class next month, because I totally had this messed up dream about it last night. As in, I was being attacked by a mob of angry kittens while I was trying to change into my leotard, etc. (the leotard alone is worth being anxious over, I believe).
• I did not do my push ups while on vacation. I totally planned on it, and think I would have had Monday night not been such a disaster (after finally getting Sadie to sleep at 11, I was all, “Fuck push ups,” as you might imagine). So, back to those this Monday night.
• And back to running Monday morning. For real. I think my knees are better enough to figure out if it was the running or the squats that hurt them in the first place.
• My girls-only vacation is booked for early September. I’m excited and nervous and all sorts of things (particularly as Trevor’s car just needed a bunch of unexpectedly expensive work). This is a post of its own.
• And, to wrap up, I seem to have a plugged milk duct or something. Oh, the pain. Hot compresses aren’t doing a darn thing about it, either. Here’s hoping it doesn’t turn into mastitis. Yikes.

Here’s a picture of Sadie from one year ago. It was her first swim in the lake. Oh, those fat rolls were so cute. Now she’s just got a couple left. I am trying to treasure them as best I can.

Is not that hard to make. I recently made my second batch, and I remembered to take some (not so awesome) pictures while I was at it.

All you need to do is:

1. Get a clean container and a scoop;
2. Grate one bar of plain Ivory soap, and put it in the container;
3. Add one cup of washing soda;
4. Add one cup of Borax;
5. Add one cup of Oxyclean (the kind without fragrance or any other extra stuff);
6. Put a lid on the container and shake to mix;
7. Add, five drops at a time–shaking to mix between–15 drops of tea tree oil; and…
8. Wash your clothes.

It takes maybe 20 minutes to do, and our first batch lasted a good long while. I’ll see how long this batch lasts.

There are a lot of homemade laundry detergents out there, even liquid, if that’s your thing. Here’s where I got started.

This can be messy!

Contrast between washing soda and grated soap.

Oxyclean.

Ingredients and finished product. I can get all of these, except the tea tree oil, at my nearby mainstream grocery store.