Levedy

I Like You

I had a dinner party last night for my friends Tom and Stacy who are in town from Tucson for the holidays. There were eight of us and two babies. Dinner was pretty good, considering I threw together the menu a few hours before everyone showed up.

I really enjoy entertaining people. (For dinner, I mean. I’m a terrible juggler and even worse at impressions.) I love having people over for dinner and conversation and the obligatory stomping of cheerios into dust on my kitchen floor. Luckily, Cheerio dust is the exact color of my tile.

I consider myself a generally good hostess, except when people regularly ignore my invitations to dinner. Then I feel self-conscious and awkward.

I want to read Amy Sedaris’ new book, I Like You. It seems right up my alley. I added it to my wish list this morning.

8 Months

Bean, this month�s theme has been mobility. Your crawling has put an end to my setting you on the floor and leaving to pee, assured that you would not move more than two feet in any direction. Now, you sit up, crawl, and stand as if it were old hat.

You started crawling like Lon Cheney. Your left leg would hit the floor with its knee like normal, but your right leg would hit the floor with the ball if your foot, giving you a swagger adopted only by Johnny Depp and zombies. Your arms would sprawl all the way in front of you before slapping the carpet to take a step. That was about three weeks ago. Now you crawl like every baby in the movies (the extent of my baby experience) on both knees and not moaning about BRRRAIIINNNSSS.

The cat still owns the high ground, but as soon as you spot the cat on the ground, you take off on a no-holds-barred rampage after Ruby. Ruby has finally realized that her Laser Glares of Extreme Disappointment, which work so effectively on your father and me, are no match for you. You giggle and titter every time she moves, and it scares the bejeezus out of the cat. Her only comfort is knowing that you adore being caged off in your playpen.

We bought Cell Block B because it�s collapsible and it�s a little bit bigger than a standard playpen. We keep it in the loft to put boundaries on you and your wandering, cat-hunting ways. I thought that you�d hate being confined like that while mommy is typing � on something with buttons! You, however, love it, and while I have you in my lap while I type, you cast your eyes longingly to your cell, and it�s obvious that you�d soooo much rather be in jail than with me. You adore your Cell Block, and both the cat and I are grateful for a moment�s peace while you�re in it, cooing stories to your stuffed animals and chewing the stuffed carrot attached to the bunny board book your Nounna gave you.

You�ve become incredibly attached to me, and squeal and snort with delight when I clamber into the Cell Block to play with you. You cry when I leave the room, which at first was heartwarming, but now just hurts dad�s ear drums while he patiently holds his squalling daughter in the mornings while I get your bottle ready.

You started standing this month, too. You pull yourself up using any ottoman, plastic dinosaur toy, crib rail, or seated human near you. We thought it was really cute to walk into your bedroom after just putting you down to sleep and see you standing, grasping the crib rail and smiling at whoever caused light to shine in your room. But then the unpleasant truth became known: you could stand up, but you could not sit down. And so began the long nights of hearing you wake up, coo for a while, and then holler and yowl until one of us trudged into your room to release you from your standing position and lay you down again, a process to be repeated every five minutes until you passed out from exhaustion. If we, instead, let you yowl yourself into a solution alone, you would fall asleep standing up, fall over, smack your head on the crib rail, and REALLY let us have it.

It took two days of playing �baby uuuup, baby dowwwwwn� with momma on the floor before you figured out that you can get back down on your bottom without taking out the furniture on the way down. You�re a quick study, and ready to bite off more than you can chew at any time. Gee, I wonder who you inherited that from?

You had your first Christmas, and you now have all sorts of toys that make all sorts of noise from your grandmother. There�s the dancing penguin named Pablo, who sings very high-pitched songs about his backyard. Unfortunately, you LOVE him, so dad won�t let the batteries magically disappear from his torso.

Your first Christmas allowed you almost unlimited access to the most awesome substance in your universe: paper. You love the crinkle sound it makes as you swing it over your head and slam it down inches from the cat�s tail. You love eating it, but then can�t figure out what to do with the slobby bits stuck in your mouth. Up to this point, one of your favorite papery treats is my pad of Post-its. I�m forever fishing yellow slobbery bits of pulp from your mouth and your eyebrows.

You�re my sweetheart, my sunshine, and my little little Bean. We�re attached at the hip, and I wouldn�t have it any other way. You can have all the Post-its you want; just marry a doctor and give me grandchildren that I can ply with annoying, noisy toys.

Love,

Mama

Hello Darkness My Old Friend

My body finally decided that, after 30 months of pregnancy, six months of nursing, and two months of missing nursing, it's ready to do the whole process over again.

That's right, ladies, Aunt Flo's in town again.

Let's all have a moment of silence for the 38 months of sweet, sweet freedom come and gone.

Merry Christmas!

This is interesting

First, watch this:

http://ebaumsworld.com/2006/11/create-a-pop-star.html

Then, go here:

http://www.beforethemusicdies.com/

I knew pop music was bad (Paris Hilton made an album), but WOW.

P.S.- Don't forget to leave advice in the previous post!

Big Spender - please leave comments

There’s a show on cable that I enjoy watching. It’s called Big Spender. This guy named Larry Winget, a self-professed lost-it-all-and-earned-it-back millionaire and convention speaker, ambushes people (mostly women) horribly in debt and makes them watch videos of their friends and family wringing their hands about the financial fate of the ambushee. Then he teaches them some financial skills, makes them sign a contract asking the ambushee to stop acting like an idiot with his/her (mostly her) money, and comes back after a month o see how things are going.

Some people are able to set themselves on a debt-free path, while some people blow him off and still spend almost TWICE their monthly income.

Dimitri and I have worked hard to get and remain debt free, but I still like saving a buck here and there. After all, I was the girl who made a side living renting clean socks to my mother and sister who were too disorganized, lazy, or busy (you pick) to do their own laundry regularly.

And? And I married the man who in high school ironed and starched every hundred dollar bill that passed through his wallet. We aren’t miserly, but we are frugal.

One element of the show, however, puzzles me. He has, on several episodes, completely cut out spending on eating out at restaurants. Fine. That’s money that could go to pay off credit cards. Cool. But he also cuts back the family grocery bill to $100 a week. For four people.

My grocery bill (and I meticulously track this. It’s the sock girl in me) is regularly half again or double that per week, and we also eat out a lot.

I buy things at the grocery store that are proportionately more expensive, like diapers and formula, but I almost always buy store brands, I use coupons, (although I find that most times the store brand product is cheaper than the name brand product even after the coupon) and shop at Costco for shelf-stable things like toothpaste, shampoo, diapers, and formula. (Costco doesn’t make its own toothpaste, but I buy the Kirkland brand of everything else)

The only thing that I’m brand conscious about it our toilet paper, since the FOURTH plumber in two years we called to the house told us that Quilted Northern wouldn’t clog up the works. (He was from Maine, so he told us to stop using Chaahhhmin and use Quilted Naaahhhthern instead) I’m pretty sure that the Costco toilet paper is the same stuff as the Quilted Northern, but we haven’t had a clog since we switched the good ol’ Quilted Northern, and I don’t want to tempt fate.

My question is this: what super grocery secret (other than living off Ramen, rice, and beans) am I missing out on that a family of four can not eat out at all and still manage to live off a $400 monthly grocery bill?

What are your super saver grocery tips? I’m really curious, please share!

You're a mean one, Mr. Grinch.

You're a mean one, Mr. Grinch.
You really are a heel.
You're as cuddly as a cactus,
You're as charming as an eel.
Mr. Grinch.

You're a bad banana
With a greasy black peel.

You're a monster, Mr. Grinch.
Your heart's an empty hole.
Your brain is full of spiders,
You've got garlic in your soul.
Mr. Grinch.

I wouldn't touch you, with a
thirty-nine-and-a-half foot pole.

You're a vile one, Mr. Grinch.
You have termites in your smile.
You have all the tender sweetness
Of a seasick crocodile.
Mr. Grinch.

Given the choice between the two of you
I'd take the seasick crockodile.

You're a foul one, Mr. Grinch.
You're a nasty, wasty skunk.
Your heart is full of unwashed socks
Your soul is full of gunk.
Mr. Grinch.

The three words that best describe you,
are, and I quote: "Stink. Stank. Stunk."

You're a rotter, Mr. Grinch.
You're the king of sinful sots.
Your heart's a dead tomato splot
With moldy purple spots,
Mr. Grinch.

Your soul is an apalling dump heap overflowing
with the most disgraceful assortment of deplorable
rubbish imaginable,
Mangled up in tangled up knots.

You nauseate me, Mr. Grinch.
With a nauseaus super-naus.
You're a crooked jerky jockey
And you drive a crooked horse.
Mr. Grinch.

You're a three decker saurkraut and toadstool
sandwich
With arsenic sauce.

Nope, he didn't call.

We Need a Little Christmas

I called George, Dimitri’s father, the man who through his own pigheadedness hasn’t spoken to his children in over three years, and who didn’t show for my wedding, Athena’s wedding, or the kids’ baptisms even though he lives a few miles away, and said something like this:

“Hi George, this is Jennifer, you remember me…Dimitri’s…wife, your…er…daughter-in-law. I know that we haven’t talked in a long time but it’s Christmas and we’d really like you to meet your grandkids. We’re going to dinner with Alexa [Dim and Athena’s 13 year-old half-sister through George] tonight and we’d like to stop by after dinner so you can see the babies.

“I know that Athena called you yesterday and asked for a call back and hasn’t heard from you yet, so I thought maybe you didn’t get the message [I thought I’d provide him with an excuse.]. We’d really like for you to meet and play with the babies, but we need to know that you’ll be home first. PLEASE, George, give me at call at XXX-XXXX and let us know if you’ll be home or if there’s another day that we can come by.

“It’s really important for you to call, George, please. Thanks.”

It makes me sad that he is so petty, prideful, and, well, hollow that he won’t speak to his own children for years at a time. I don’t even remember what his initial reason for his silence was. He can’t get over his own ego to meet his grandkids. *sigh*

Realistically, I don’t think that he will call, but I secretly hope that he will.

So, let the raucous sleigh bells jingle,

...Hail our dear old friend Kris Kringle,
Driving his reindeer across the sky.
Don't stand underneath when they fly by.

This weekend was a lot of fun. I love spending time with Dimitri's cousin Peter and his great girlfriend (i.e.-why doesn't he marry her before she comes to her senses?) Aisling (mysteriously pronounced ASH-ling)

Picture here. (pop)

They drove down from Salt Lake for some R&R after a particularly rigorous semester at the University of Utah and to visit the Dental school here in Vegas, to which Peter will be applying soon.

We drove across town to see one of the front-runners for a local news station's Griswold House Decoration contest.

Picture here. (pop)

Bean loves Aunt Shling and Uncle Peter, and was happy to see them again so soon after Thanksgiving.

My toilets, however, are a different story.

The downstairs (guest, I guess) bathroom decided to flood and soak the carpet the day before they came. They were good sports about hiking upstairs to...erm..go until we could fix the downstairs bathroom.

That was, until we discovered the the upstairs (Bean's) toilet already had the SAME problem. We pulled back the carpet and kept a big fan trained on the floor to try to dry things out and stop the wood from warping. We all used the master toilet until all toilets were fixed. Two women sharing the same toilet as two Greek men. Uck.

The whole shebang cost us $24 to fix, since the malfuntioning part was cheap, which is good. We decided to dig deep and shell out the final $8 on the third toilet, since the first two busted at the same time, we figure that the third is flushing on borrowed time.

I'm just glad that we didn't have to call a plumber. That would be crappy.

I kill me.

Hark, the Herald Tribune sings,

...Advertising wondrous things.
God rest ye merry merchants,
May ye make the Yuletide pay.
Angels we have heard on high,
Tell us to go out and buy!

Nana comes home from the hospital today. I know that her cancer is in an advanced stage, but I don't know...no delicate way to put it...how long she has left. Please no sappy comments.

Dim and I are going out! To a movie! I don't know which one yet; there are several I'd like to see. Bean is going to Tia Luli's house to be babysat. Bean loves Tia Luli. (Luisa)

Christmas shopping is done, with the exception of Dimitri's surprise present. He knows what I'm getting for him, but I like to give him a little gift that he's not expecting. It's tough, though, since he is the HARDEST person to buy for. He has very finicky tastes, and if you give him the wrong thing, he'll complain about it. He complains about bad gifts (bad in his mind, anyway) that other people get, too. I know. Tacky.

Any suggestions?

I'm expecting a visit from Dim's cousin Peter and his marvelous girlfriend Aisling this weekend. We're all going to go see the Bodies exhibit at the Tropicana (again.) They're very excited to come to Vegas to see dozens of expertly dissected and preserved cadavers. They're a bit strange, but I love them just the same.

I'm still not talking about it

My grandmother has this, and it really, really, REALLY sucks.

Comments are closed for this entry because I can't handle people trying to be nice right now.

It doesn't matter how sincere it is,

...Nor how heartfelt the spirit,
Sentiment will not endear it,
What's important is the price.

My cold is passing. I got what my friend Tom calls THE LOOGIE. It's that last bit of stuff that your body gets rid of that marks the end of your cold. It's big, it's oddly colored, and it scares you as it circles the shower drain.

Family business presses and stresses today. I'm not ready to talk about it yet (least of all in a post about boogers), so I'll leave you a bean picture instead:

Relations, sparing no expense, 'll

...Send some useless old utensil,
Or a matching pen and pencil.
("Just the thing I need, how nice!")

This weekend, there was a guy selling T.M.X. Elmos out of the trunk of his car by my house. They retail for $40. I don't know what he was selling his stockpile for, so I am still unaware of the price of good parenting and true holiday spirit.

Most of my shopping is done. I still need to buy Chap-Stick for baby Earen. Chap-Stick tubes are his new favorite toy.

I need to wait until next week to buy my friend April her
(perishable) present. She never reads this site (which would require her learning how to turn on a computer), so I don't mind saying that I'm breaking my "No gifts for people that don't share my DNA or my bathroom" rule to get her and her family a gift as a thank you for watching Bean Thursday nights while Dim and I go to Greek School. She loves Vosges chocolate truffles, so I'm going to drive down to the forum next week to buy her a truffle sampler. I don't know about the mixture of indian curry and chocolate, or paprika and chocolate, but she raves about it, so I guess that they're good.

I sent the Christmas card picture off to be developed, and ordered stamps from the post office web site this morning. I just hope that they get here in time for me to dilly dally long enough about getting them out in the mail. I need to build in a "dilly dally" factor to my schedule. It's why I have to get up three hours before church starts. This level of procrastination takes skill, man.

On Christmas Day you can't get sore...

...Your fellow man you must adore.
There's time to rob him all the more
The other three hundred and sixty-four.

I got a CD of Greek kid's songs for Bean in the mail yesterday, and I've been trying to translate the lyrics so that I can sing along with the CD (sorry, Bean).

So far, there's one song that's really peppy: the kind that is annoying at first, but then is catchy and you end up humming it in the shower to yourself. It's called "Ah Kounelaki" which I knew meant "Oh little bunny" so I thought that the rest of it would be a cute, peppy song about being a bunny.

So far, the translation has it that the song is about the singer teasing the rabbit because it's about to get it's ass beaten for sneaking into an orchard. The Greeks have a threat that they reserve for naughty children about to get whooped with a wooden spoon (Greeks use utensils to beat their children, not belts): "You're going to eat wood." Dim heard it all the time from his dad while growing up.

So the song tells the bunny "Oh, the wood that you're gonna eat! You're in the stranger's orchard!" It then discusses the ear yanking, nose tweaking, and the eye gouging that the bunny is sure to experience. Nice.

Interesting note: The Greek word for mouse is pondiki, but the same word is used for bicep. Funny. In English, a body builder would say "Check out my pythons!" but a Greek would ask you to check out his mice.

Kill The Turkeys, Ducks, and Chickens

...Mix the punch, drag out the Dickens.
Even though the prospect sickens,
Brother, here we go again.

I have The Cold to End All Colds. I haven't left the house in two days. I'm washing my hands a brazillion times a day so the baby doesn't get sick (Which she hasn't... yet.)

I got it from my darling husband, who, after only a Sunday afternoon of rest, was right as rain.

He has this really annoying Super-Duper immune system that lets him get sick only once every other year or so. This Cold to End All Colds that has me totally up against the ropes was but a minor pothole in Dimitri's white blood cell highway.

Stupid immune system.

Any hints to speed my recovery? Shaking my fists alternately at the sky and at my husband have proven fruitless.

Christmas Time is Here By Golly

...Disapproval would be folly-
Deck the halls with hunks of holly-
Fill the cup and don't say "when."

I need to get the Christmas tree and yard lights out soon. This will be a solo effort, as I married a man whose idea of Halloween festivities include sitting on the couch in his boxers with the porch light turned off eating the candy meant for the neighborhood kids.

Dim isn't a Scrooge exactly, he likes Christmas, and likes time with the family yadda yadda, but he thinks that putting lights up and decorating your yard for the holidays is stupid. Actually, he thinks cleaning up and putting away the lights is stupid, so why go to the trouble of putting them out in the first place?

The one thing that I don't understand is the prevalence in my neighborhood of the wicker reindeer. It's not so much that people have them, but how in the world do they have room in their houses to store them? Those annoying inflatable Santas deflate and fit into pretty small boxes, so storing them really isn't difficult, but wicker reindeer? They don't fold. Some of my neighbors have four or five of them. Where the heck do they put them?

Oh yeah, they park their $30,000 cars on the driveway, open to the elements, so that they can shelter $20 reindeer in the garage 11 months out of the year. Makes sense to me.

7 Months

Bean-

In seven months, you’ve changed from a squalling lump of being into a squalling lump of being – with personality!

Actually, that’s not fair – you’re an EXTREMEMLY well-tempered child, as evidenced by your first Thanksgiving with the Greek side of the family, where you were kept up WAY past your bedtime and held, jiggled, and cooed at by approximately one hundred and seventy two Mediterraneans and never lost your smile. You go girl. Politics may be in your future.

This Thanksgiving I snapped a picture of you being held by your Daddy’s Pappou. I don’t know that he’ll be around long enough for you to grow enough to remember him, although I certainly hope he is. He’s a nice man, and you’d benefit from knowing him. While Pappou held you, and you kept at your primary mission of gathering reconnaissance on his huge nose, I couldn’t help but wish that my grandfather was still around to meet you. I miss him, Bean, and I wish that you could have known him. I know that he would have been tickled pink to have such a faboo great-granddaughter to spoil and force soggy Corn Flakes on.

You eat a stunning variety of foods, more than I do now, let alone in my picky, picky childhood. I remember my mother begging me to eat, bribing me with trips to Disneyland and ponies made of starlight if I would just. eat. one. more. bite. As of now, you eat (in some mashed form or another):

Apples
Apricots
Avocado
Bananas
Blueberries
Broccoli
Brown rice
Carrots
Cheerios
Chicken
Green beans (under duress)
Oatmeal
Peaches
Pears
Peas
Plums
Potatoes
Prunes (albeit unwillingly)
Raspberries
Rice
Squash
Strawberries
Sweet potato
Turkey
Zucchini

And whatever else your YiaYia sneaks to you off her plate when I’m not looking. Even with such a wide variety of food available to you, you prefer barley: plain, dumb barley. It looks and smells like wet newspaper, and you can’t get enough of it. I don’t get it.

One thing that you don’t get anymore is breast milk. You and I made the decision to stop breastfeeding this month. It was hard for me, but you don’t seem to care. You love that bottle, and love slapping my hands away so you can hold it yourself.

I thought that weaning you would put a damper on the closeness that I felt while nursing you. Surprisingly, the opposite turned out to be true. Bottle feeding you gives me something that I never had while nursing you: the ability to cradle you close to me, nuzzle you, and kiss the top of your head. It's incredible.

You have probably inherited my family’s propensity for Macy’s Thanksgiving Float-sized boobs. I’m really sorry, Bean. Breastfeeding you mainly consisted of my laying you on the ground and standing over you trying to get nipple A into mouth B. A lot of the time I felt like the claw machine in the arcade. But now, I can hold you closer to me then I ever could while nursing you, and I really love it. I don’t like your stinky formula burps, but at the end of the day, I think it’s a fair trade.

You’re a clever little girl, and have figured out several ways to make my hair a little grayer. Just to be clear: taking off your own diaper when it’s filled with poop is hereby considered NOT FUNNY.

You started crawling on Thanksgiving weekend. You haven’t mastered it yet, but it’s only a matter of time before you’re making yourself naked and galloping through the house au-natural. Who says that you don’t take after me?*

Your babbling is wonderful, and you say something that sounds like “Hi!” whenever dad or I come into the room. I know that you’re not really talking, but a mom can dream. You also discovered the cat this month: you figured out that she’s not just occasionally-moving furniture. You mimic your father calling for her, and shriek with laughter when she meows in response. I love hearing the two of you: “Ruuuuby”…”Ooooooey” Unfortunately, the cat is NOT amused. She, too, has figured out that you are not occasionally screaming furniture, and is not enthused by the prospect of your pending mobility and fascination with her. There’s paranoia brewing between those fuzzy ears.

You love the sensation of falling, which coincides with my love of dropping you. (KIDDING, MOM and SOPHIE. KIDDING!) You love to be thrown, tossed, and swung. You’ll be glued to roller coasters, I just know it. (Again! Again! Teacups AGAIN mommy!)

You’re the love of my life, and I’ll ride the teacups fifty times if it makes you happy. Okay, forty-nine.

I love you Bean.

Love,

Mama

*I apologize to the Junior-High aged Bean who just read that sentence and cringed.

On the move

Here is a clip of Bean (sort of) crawling. She crawls over to the chair mat, licks it, (I know. Bad Mother.) then tries to crawl to me before collapsing from the effort.

I don't own QuickTime Pro (hint, hint, Santa), so I am unable to edit out my annoying voice and substitute the Baby Elephant Walk music, so you'll just have to deal. Mute me if you have to.

Jumping Nudist

This is SO coming out on her first date: