Well, I finally (!) had my wisdom teeth pulled today, at the ripe old age of 30. While the oral surgeon kept telling me during the consultation that I should have had these out way earlier, I’m rather glad I waited until I was a full-fledged grown-up (admittedly, it would be a touch easier sans toddler).

My wisdom teeth weren’t impacted or anything, so it was a pretty basic tooth-pulling extravaganza. I think the real advantage of having waited is that I was totally able to handle having them out without going under general anesthesia, which is awesome, because “going under” kind of freaks me out. From start to finish, it took about 40 minutes, most of which was spent giving me shots to numb me up. Apparently they have to put adrenaline in the shots, which was kind of trippy. I started shaking a lot and felt weird, and my heart was racing. I thought I was freaking out, even though I wasn’t freaking out at all. Oh, and they let me pick out what music I wanted to listen to. Coldplay, of course. Perfect background music for such an event!

Trevor and Sadie brought me to my aunt and uncle’s house, where I am currently convalescing. My old bedroom is now the playroom for the grandkids, so I’m not having a full-on nostalgic moment, but it does feel nice to “come home” for a couple of nights. I can’t talk properly, of course, but I’m otherwise fully functional. Well, I’m also quite limited in what I can eat. Trevor’s going to keep Sadie at home, because I can’t nurse her while I’m on the hard stuff. I hope she takes it easy on him! The peanut butter malt he was sharing with her when they left me will probably help take the edge off.

I can feel the narcotics taking their hold, so I’d better sign off now. Here’s a picture of me all laid up. Don’t I look like Jacob Marley? Sadly, this isn’t the worst picture taken of me ever in my life…

I was worried Sadie would freak out seeing me like this when I came into the waiting room. Bah! She pointed at the ice pack and said, “I want one. This yours?”

Wow. I feel like things have been going a mile-a-minute lately. Here are some ramblings to catch you up (and so I can at least sort of remember what life was like with a 2 year-old Sadie.

Verbal, verbal, verbal. That’s definitely where most of Sadie’s development has been lately. We’ve gone from simple two-word phrases to full-blown sentences and conversations we can actually follow. There are, of course, still many conversations that leave us scratching our heads. We talk A LOT about what is and is not Sadie’s. She really seems to like knowing what she can claim as her own and what is Mama’s or Daddy’s. I’m trying to work in the categories “Sadie’s to share” and “everybody’s.” Her manners are so cute and funny. She says “sorry” a lot, apologizing to us, to her toys, to herself. The other day she started saying, “Yes, Mama.” and “Yes, Daddy.” And, the very best of all, she’s starting to spontaneously say “I love you.” She’ll even say “I love her,” when talking about her toys, puzzle pieces (?) and BFF Margie.

Sadie continues to be very nurturing with her baby dolls and other toys. Thankfully, she’s getting a little better about petting the cats gently. Though, she’s becoming more and more interested in trying to carry the cats around. For their sake, I hope Sadie doesn’t decide the cats need diaper changes like all of her other toys. Here’s a good example of just how far this goes: Last Saturday, I decided we should make some graham crackers. I mixed up the dough and put Sadie in her Learning Tower so she could help roll out the dough and use her little cookie cutters. We did lots of stars, hearts and clovers. Then she found a tiny teddy bear cutter. I helped her cut one out, and she immediately cuddled it to her chest, saying “Awww, sweety bear.” Then the head fell off. We did this a few times, and then she moved on to just cuddling the cookie cutter. Later, I found her in her room asking the little bear if it needed a diaper change. And this morning she was cuddling a fridge magnet letter I. Of course, when she sets off into a bit of a tantrum, it’s not unusual for her to throw any and all toys on the ground with pretty serious force.

Bedtime and sleeping in general continue to be a struggle. She’d gone so long without fighting bedtime, it’s been hard getting back into the swing of helping her get to sleep. She’s still waking up one to three times a night, which is exhausting.

Yes, she is still nursing. I go back and forth on how I feel about this one. Some days, it’s no big deal. Other days, I wish I could just talk her out of it. She has, at least, become much better about handling boundaries I set about when, where, and for how long she can nurse. Nursing a toddler is nothing if not interesting, I can tell you that much. Tonight, when she was nursing before bed, she said, “I nursing. This my nuhnuh?”

Sadie’s been making friends with the kids in the neighborhood, which has been a lot of fun. They come over to play in our yard and on our porch, and Sadie generally enjoys it. Sharing toys on her turf is, expectedly, difficult. But she’ll get there.

Much to my chagrin, she’s watching more “TV” than I thought she would be at this age. Our TV is still in the closet, so she’s actually watching stuff on the little DVD player for the car and on the laptop. You do the best you can, I guess. Most of our book reading these days happens during meals, for some reason. She’s been on quite the streak with the Lorax lately. Sometimes it’s a great way to get her to focus on breakfast. Take a bite, and I’ll read the next page.

She’s got an interesting mix of bravery and fear, which I assume is pretty typical. She’ll put herself into many precarious physical situations without a second thought (using her little rocking chair to reach things that are up high). But then she goes on and on about the turkey she saw three weeks ago and how it scared her. We do our best to take these in stride.

Her much-loved teacher took a new job a couple of weeks ago, and this has been very hard for Sadie. She talks about her just about every day. Drop-off at daycare has become tearful again, which is so very sad for me.

Okay, enough about Sadie! What about the rest of us?

Trevor is doing well. His grandfather passed recently, and Trevor flew to be with his family in Maryland for the funeral services. His grandfather was a dear man who had lived a full life. I am glad to have known him even a little and that he had the chance to meet Sadie this past Christmas. It’s mountain bike race season again, so I’m hoping we can do a little camping with Sadie for a race or two.

I am Busy at work. Busy. And at home, too. I’ve been doing a lot of kitchen “projects,” trying out new recipes in the hopes of eliminating more and more processed foods from our regular diets. Kale chips were a total bust, but I’m going to try these cinnamon-honey roasted chickpeas a second time and see if I can get them a little crunchier. Tonight it’s frozen yogurt! I’ve got the seed planted in my head to do a Parenting from Scratch e-book, if I could ever get myself to set aside time to think/work on it. I’ve recently discovered Glee on Netflix. I know, right? Whatever. What I desperately want is a family vacation. But it doesn’t look like that’s in the cards for us this summer. Ugh. I am scheduled to finally (!) have my wisdom teeth removed in two weeks. Good riddance, I say.

The animals are mostly good. We lost a chicken a few weeks ago. As in, she literally vanished. I had a horrible nightmare about her last night. SCARY CHICKEN.

I took Sadie to Riverfest this weekend, which was a good mix of fun and crazy. Sadie really liked the drums. And I got to introduce her to my formerly annual favorite, Filipino barbeque shish-ka-bobs. Sadie also had a blast watching the various performances, especially the gymnastics. I’d have taken photos of that, but I was so busy trying to keep her off the stage.

When your toddler says her first swear word.

Sadie, Trevor and I were having lunch yesterday at the cafe at my office. Sadie wanted to take over peeling the orange, so I handed it to her. After a few moments, she accidentally dropped it on the ground. “Shit,” she said. “Shit. Shit. Shit.”

I looked at Trevor. “Did she just say ‘shit?’” “No, surely that was ‘sit.’ Sadie, sit?”

“Shit.”

Well, you’ve gotta hand it to her, that was impeccable context.

Fortunately, swearing isn’t the only verbal development Sadie’s had in the past couple of months. Her vocabulary is exploding, her grasp of syntax is improving, and it seems like every day she’s got a new phrase.

Sadie do it.
I like it.
I don’t want it.
I need some.
I try it.
Come on, Mama.
Okay, guys, that’s enough. (Where on Earth did she get that one?)
Hear me?
I watch the pig.
A little bit more.
Bye, everybody. (That was today’s.)

We’ve also been up to other, more physical shenanigans. Like these:

Just a quick preview of the sweet new penguin exhibit opening at the Little Rock Zoo.

I’m waiting on an info sheet with more details about the penguins and the exhibit, and we’re going to be out of pocket this weekend, so this will have to hold you over.

Principles of Healthy Diets.

This is really fascinating stuff. I’ve been thinking more and more lately about my diet (and Trevor’s and Sadie’s), and while I think we are generally doing really well, I think there’s still room for improvement. I’ve become increasingly bothered by my cravings for sugary foods (I’m not even sure if “cravings” is a strong enough word), and I wonder if some of it might have to do with my overall nutrition. Another thing that has recently occurred to me is that, while I felt like I fed myself decently during my pregnancy with Sadie, I’d like to be in an even better place nutritionally whenever I become pregnant again.

So, I think I’m going to make this a challenge for myself. As the primary meal-preparer in the house, this will obviously affect our entire family. Maybe I’ll tackle one of the guidelines a week (of those we don’t already follow). I think the biggest challenges will be that I really do rely on the online meal planner I use (though I think the recipes are mostly adaptable to this kind of eating, I may just have to get creative), this will likely cost more money than we’re already spending on groceries, and I know I’ll have to cut out a lot of the “convenience” snacks we’ve been using for Sadie (while the graham cracker sticks and bunny crackers are natural/organic/etc., they’re still way processed and contain white flour and sugar) and replace them with snacks I’ll have to make myself.

I’m a Monday-starter for projects, so I think I’ll get going next week. The first guideline (“Eat whole, unprocessed foods.” ) is a bit too general. So I’ll start with number two, “Eat beef, lamb, game, organ meats, poultry and eggs from pasture-fed animals.” Obviously we eat the eggs our chickens lay, so that’s a gimme. But we don’t eat game pasture-fed meat every week. In fact, sometimes we’ll go quite a while without cooking meat at all. But we might eat meat while dining out–and we can pretty much guarantee that’s not healthy meat.

So the change for week #1 is to prepare and eat our chickens’ eggs at least three times a week (we go in and out of this pattern anyway), to prepare and eat at least two meals with game or pasture-fed animal meats, to entirely quit eating meat from unknown sources (of course, I’m not going to MAKE Trevor do this one, but hopefully he’ll consider it), and to quit feeding Sadie the lunchmeat I’ve been feeding her (it is free of additives and preservatives, but it’s a far cry from what I should be feeding her).

Potential roadblocks for this first challenge–getting sick of eggs; the cost of adding pastured meats to our grocery list (this is usually more of a treat); the temptation provided by things like Purple Cow’s chicken salad sandwich or my Aunt Margie’s pot roast; my inability to prepare our dinner while caring for Sadie–I almost always have to fix her a quick dinner (mostly steamed veggies, cheese, fruit, etc.) and then do the more labor-intensive cooking after she’s asleep; and the common problem of not having any meat left over from our previous night’s meal to give to Sadie, which led me to the lunch meat in the first place.

Otherwise, this should be plenty of fun. We enjoy eating meat. We like good meat.

For the most part, the fact that I never get around to posting hasn’t meant too much. In other words, although Sadie is cutely chugging along through toddlerhood, most of the things in our lives are pretty much the same.

Well, there are actually a couple of things that I’ve wanted to write about, but haven’t gotten around to doing it, so now you can have them at once, because they’re kind of related.

First! Trevor’s lovely sister, Gwen, has recently moved to Little Rock. As in, she arrived Wednesday night and is going to be living in our garage apartment! This is awesome on many levels. One, Trevor will finally have an immediate family member within hollerin distance. His family is pretty tight-knit, so it’s been a big deal for him to be so far away (Have I mentioned that I hijacked him to begin with?) Two, Gwen and I really get along well. We’re actually closer in age than Trevor and I are. So it’s like having a fun friend living in the back yard. And three, we are going to be taking Sadie out of daycare, and Gwen will be keeping Sadie at home four days a week. Needless to say, we are all very excited. Of course, you’d never know it in person, because I think Trevor and I might be the least outwardly excitable people alive.

Gwen and the Sadiebug.

P.S. Gwen comes as a package deal with her dog, Omie, who looks like Nari’s cousin and will be a great addition to the pack once she calms down a little about the cats (Sadie suddenly decided that the cats are now “Cats!” and not “Kitties!” the other day.)

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Second! Tomorrow, I am leaving for a very exciting, pretty selfish vacation to Orlando. My college roommate and I are celebrating her graduation from pharmacy school (amazing) by going to the Wizarding World of Harry Potter (and also the rest of Universal Islands of Adventure and one of the Disney parks). OMFG, I am so excited about this. We made these plans when Universal first announced they were going to open the WWHP… back before Sadie was even a sparkle in my eye (gag).

Leah and me in our glory days of youth.

So… Sadie is staying home. The plans were back and forth for a while about whether or not she’d come with us, and it ended up working out logistically best for her to stay home with Trevor. This will be made possible, too, by Gwen’s presence. I am all kinds of mixed up about this emotionally. She’s too young to understand that “I’ll be back in a few days” doesn’t mean “I’m never coming back.” She’s not weaned in the slightest. I recognize that this might be a total disaster for everyone involved who isn’t going to Orlando… and I’m really nervous about it. This is probably the least Attachment Parenting thing I’ll have ever done. But. I’m going. It’s happening. Everyone will survive. Just some of us will have more fun than others (and this is usually not me, so that’s probably why I’m having such a hard time wrapping my head around it). I’m ridiculously grateful to Trevor and Gwen. And to Leah.

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.

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.

Trevor shaved his goatee (affectionally known in this family as his goat beard) this morning. He last shaved his chin before moving to Arkansas to volunteer at Heifer Ranch. Nearly SEVEN YEARS AGO. I have never, before now, seen his face totally clean-shaven (other than pictures). Handsome, let me tell you. Handsome either way.

It’s the end of an era.

Until he changes his mind, that is n

Turns out I’m not the only one in the family blogging. Well, I guess I’d have to actually post to be “blogging.” I’ll get back in the saddle here soon, I promise. I hope. I think.