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letter from isaac

2005-09-25T22:34:00.000-04:00

Ha ha!
Isaac is on his first vacation right now...off visiting his grandparents in Birmingham for a couple weeks.
My parents sent me this "letter from Isaac" (with some unsightly visuals that I will spare you from!) It made me laugh out loud (Oh and by the way, English is far from my parents' first language, so excuse the misspellings! I left them in, because I think its cute coming from them. Just imagine an Indian accent attached to this!):

My dear mommy and daddy,

Cat and the cradle and the silver spoon, Your little Isaac says hello to you.

I am sure you enjoyed seeing the football game, so I had wonderful journey myself. I explored lots of gas stations. Went to Indian grocery store. I was very happy to look at so much of tempting food. Only thing I was worried is although I look like you daddy but I hope that I do not get your stomach.I can not wait till I test the all these Indian testing food.

My car seat was very comfortable that it put me to sleep all the time. Babyma wanted to play with me and she did play with me a lot on the way. She help me strike out a lot so I did not get very tired in the car seat. I never missed a meal. In fact now I did 5 to 6 ounces of milk every time. I think, I have grown some.

In the motel, I slept into he play pen. I had a nice padding of blanket under me and babyma swaddled me with the bed sheet. I had a good night sleep in the motel. I did get cranky a little before I went to sleep. My bouncer, my gym, my playpen and couple of toys were brought in the room for me to be comfortable. Motel did not have a bath tub so I had a sponge bath. Babyma is putting creams and lotion on me. My rash is not there anymore. Although I do have a dry skin on my back but not a rash. Babyma is taking care of it too by applying Aveeno cream. But I think my both grandma will take care of it and problem will be solved.

Oh! did you see my first successful our of potty. I asked Dada to take a photo and send it to you. Did you believe? That sure was a clean catch!! I think I shall use everyday. Want to have some more photos of it? Let me know so we can send you until you are satisfied.

Mama, I like badada's place. I think I will be very comfortable here. I like Tickle-Me-Elmo in my crib. I slept well. I had a 3:30 a.m. feeding and then I was up at five. I was not hungry and sleepy but I did not know what to do so I was moving my hands and legs like crazy. So Dada brought the swings in my room and then babyma put me in the swing and sang few songs and I liked it. Then, I went to sleep till 7:30 AM. Then, I had a first catcheven though my diaper was not wet. I just had an another feeding (6 OZ) andI think I might let them have their tea and breakfast!!

I shall call my Barbara grandma today and say hello to her.

Daddy I like your hometown. I have lot of people to meet here and I have not seen the entire family and friends here yet. I guess I will be busy meeting people. I keep reporting to you as I discover new things. You and Mommy have lot of fun without me. Get all the housework done. Daddy, you catch up with your studies and study more in advance so when I return, we will have good times together. Then, you will not complain that I did not let you study!!!!

I am in no hurry to come home. I like my parents hometown so I intend to hang around for a while.

Catch you later. I want to play now. I love you both.

Your little prince Isaac.

meme survey

2005-08-13T01:33:00.000-04:00

I decided to take the meme survey Rock Chalk posted on her blog, Mashed Bananas. Here you go:

10 years ago:
Good lord....this was my senior year in highschool and I went bonkers. Makes me wince to think about it. Lets just say "responsible" would not have been the term to describe me that year.
I went to a boarding school in my hometown, and I lived on campus that year ... so it is sort of like when freshmen start college and get completely stupid. That was me.
Once I got a full scholarship to college about half way through the year, I stopped going to most of my classes. And one night I remember just deciding to hop in the car and go to Panama City with a guy I was dating, and returning just in time to skip French class the next morning.
Gosh I was stupid. I am not going to give details because there are already enough people who know way too much about all the stuff I did that year that I should never have done.
Luckily, I outgrew that phase by the end of my sophomore year in college. I stopped being a wild child and I started dating a very very nice guy (who I eventually married.)

5 years ago:
That was a crazy year too, but for different reasons.
First, I graduated from college.
Second, I went to India for four months to visit my relatives and help my brother get an arranged marriage. We interviewed (that is what they call it) 80 girls before finding my sister-in-law. Then we had a whirlwind HUGE wedding in about three weeks. And I nearly got jaundice that summer.
But that's not all. The week after I came back, I ended up getting engaged, and moving in with my future mother-in-law and my future brother-in-law, who has autism (wow, did I learn a lot from living with him. Gosh, I wish I could understand what's going through that sweetie's head!) And I got baptized in the Orthodox Church.
That was one life-changing year.

1 year ago:
I moved to Orlando, started a new job, survived three back-to-back hurricanes and then discovered I was pregnant (big sweet surprise since my previous doctor told me I could probably never have kids.) I guess that was a pretty life-changing year, too. Oh, and before all that happened, I had finally got the guts to cut three feet off my waist-length hair.

5 snacks I enjoy: Granola bars, baked lays, green apples and peanut butter, baby carrots, Keebler fudge stripe cookies

5 songs I know all of the words to: None. Unless you count "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star."

5 things I would do with $100 million: Pay off all our debt, give a huge donation to the Orthodox Church of America, start a trust fund for Isaac, quit my job, and TRAVEL!

5 bad habits: Spacing out, forgetting names, overfilling the garbage bag, leaving laundry in the washer until it becomes stinky, and getting water ALL OVER the bathroom.

5 things I like doing: Hanging out, cooking, shopping, taking baths and sleeping.

5 things I would never wear: Skorts, capris, army boots, shoulder pads, granny panties

5 TV shows I like: Gosh, I never get a chance to watch TV. But I have a completely superficial love for the Style network.

5 biggest joys of the moment: Just found out I have 52 hours of vacation left this year, my three-month-old son is giggling and sleeping through the night, I can successfully cook fish after many, many disgusting mishaps, I currently have Thurs, Fri and Sat off every week, and I am almost finished moving into our new place.

5 favorite toys: My digital camera, my computer, my webcam, my son's rubber duckies, and .... can't think of another one.

Caught on camera

2005-08-12T17:01:00.000-04:00

I just had to post this pic...it was too cute. Isaac never lets us catch a smile on camera because he gets so intrigued with watching the camera he stops smiling. But he didn't see me this time...He was playing with his pops. Ha! Got him. Just thought I'd share.

Dude, where's my shrimp?

2005-08-03T22:32:00.000-04:00

Ok.
If it is in the fridge, and its not yours ... DON'T EAT IT!
And definitely don't eat half of it and put the rest back!

On the same day my sweet munchkin left that lovely deposit in the bath tub, some moron at work ate half my dinner and put it back in the fridge!

I had made this dish of shrimp, veggies and noodles, and I put it in the fridge at work around 1:30 p.m. When I went to go retrieve my dinner at 5:30 p.m., I discovered someone had decided to pick off all the shrimp, cover the dish with Saran wrap again, and put it back in the fridge in the exact same spot ... like I wasn't going to notice!!

I mean its one thing just to swipe someone's food outright. But I think its even worse to pick at someone's food and then put in back in the fridge! That is just low. Stealing my food, and then making me clean up after you. At least throw the rest away!

And its not like it was a cup of yogurt or a diet coke ... something someone could easily confuse with something they brought ... no. It was a dinner plate covered with pink Saran wrap.

I just couldn't believe it. I then found out that this other dude at work has had 3 1/2 sandwiches stolen recently ... one day the culprit only ate half the sandwich and put the rest back.

Some people at work have made a list of suspects, I am told.
I think we should just plant some exploding dye in someone's food ... or maybe I can just start dying all my food blue so no one would want it.

I said "pee in the bucket" not "poop in the tub!"

2005-08-01T22:02:00.000-04:00

This morning, my sweet little boy had a first that I really hope is a last!
It was bath time.
I have a little pee-pee machine who becomes a fountain the minute he hits the warm water in the tub, so I have been trying to get him to pee in a warm bucket of water before I actually lay him in the tub (so I don't have to change the bath water when he inevitably pees in it.)
But for some reason that is not working ... and he waits to pee until he is in the tub.

Anyhow, today was like any other day, where I put him in the bucket and say,"Pee in the bucket, sweets!" and of course he doesn't.
And of course he peed in the bathtub as soon as I transferred him. And a few moments later, I see another fountain of pee shooting up again and I look down and he has not only peed, but POOPED in the bath!

So of course I do what any mom would do ... yell for his dad.

"Oh my gosh! Joel, come here! Now!"
"What is it? Did he pee?"
"Yes ... and he pooped!!!!!!!!!!"
"We knew it was going to happen sometime."

We did? Do all babies do this? I really hope this was a one-time occurrence.

So I quickly get the babes out of the water and stick him back in the bucket to finish bathing him. I first try to get his hands clean (the hands that kept trying to swat the lovely little deposit he made earlier) because he has become the Orlando two-foot hand-eater lately.
And of course, he immediately starts eating his hands, and I worry in the back of my mind that I didn't get every possible trace of ecoli off his hands. But then I reassured myself and said, "He tried to bat at his deposit, but he never actually touched it, so I think we are good."

Meanwhile, Joel scoops that lovely deposit out of the bathtub, flushes it down the toilet and proceeds to clean the mess.

Gosh, I can't wait until my pee-pee machine (who we also call Dr. Pooper) is potty-trained.

Its a girl!

2005-07-29T20:35:00.000-04:00

Just wanted to say I am so excited ... my friend Littlerazz gave birth to a baby girl last night and is doing fine. We are going to go see her tommorow and meet the little one, although me and hubby are going to have to take turns because our little one is not allowed in her room! I am so happy for her!

Moving on up, to the sky

2005-07-25T22:19:00.000-04:00

I don't even know where to start.
I had the most surreal moving experience ever this weekend. We ended up having to file three different forwarding orders with the post office, which probably means we will never get mail again.

Forwarding order #1: On Thursday, right before we were supposed to sign the lease and move into our new apartment, we discovered the apartment was a total craphole. The model looked nice, so we weren't expecting that! The doors wouldn't shut, the garbage disposal sounded like it had an entire set of forks stuck in it, and the apartment looked like it had been run over. We decided not to sign the lease, despite the fact we had already put a forwarding order in to that new address, and left, newborn-in-tow, on a mad rush to find a new apartment ... that day.
This apartment was on the first floor.

Forwarding order #2: So we find a new apartment we liked. Granted, again we could only see the model, but the apartment complex was much more manicured than the previous one and we just had a better feeling about it. Plus, we did not have much choice because we were going to be homeless in about a week. We quickly apply for the apartment and get sent on 9 million errands to get documents we needed for the application. We are told we could move in on Saturday morning, which was great because we already had movers booked for then (and its really hard to find movers on such late notice.) To be on the safe side, we tried to sign the lease on Friday, but the lazy leasing agent at the apartment complex we were moving out of said she didn't have time to do the five-minute rental verification we needed to finish the paperwork. She said she would do it first thing in the morning (liar liar pants on fire) so the leasing agent at this new apartment assured us we could just sign the lease in the morning and move on in. Yeah right.
This apartment was on the second floor.

Forwarding order #3: Ok, I am not even going to get into the rental verification situation. Let's just say it was a BIG hassle, and just barely made it in time (because the lazy leasing agent was asleep on her desk and about to eat a burned bagel ... I am not kidding.) Anyhow, that's a different story. We finally sign the lease, which takes about an unnecessary half an hour due to incompetence (and all the while the movers we are paying $80/hour are just sitting there waiting for us to finish...) and the leasing agent goes to do a last-minute run through on the apartment. He returns to tell us that, oops, our application was never put in the system so the apartment wasn't prepped....we could not move into it.
Excuse me? I don't think so. We have a moving truck outside filled with all our stuff, and we are moving somewhere!
So we end up moving into another apartment in the same complex ... this one is on the third floor.
I don't think this is what the "Jeffersons" theme song meant when they sang,"moving on up."

The rain: Ok, so we are finally ready to move in. The movers move a lamp inside and, boom, it starts pouring down rain.
So the movers could either stay and wait out the rain for $80/hour, or they could go get something to eat and return after the rain, not charging us. So they drove off in the truck with all our stuff to get some grub.
The problem is more than two hours later, about an hour after the rain had stopped, they didn't come back.
So we started thinking, hey, did all our stuff just get stolen? We don't even have a contract with these guys ... all we have is a lamp. OH NO!!!!!!!!!!

Whew, false alarm ... an hour later they return with our stuff. They are soaked and covered with sand and dirt....hmmm? Turns out they got stuck in the mud while trying to back out of a fast food parking lot. The truck was so weighed down that they couldn't get it out. So they tried for an hour in the rain to get their truck free. They couldn't call us to tell us because we had no phone. Goodness. Heart attack avoided.
Here is the kicker though ... since they were covered in dirt, and everything we had that they could wipe themselves off with was packed in their truck, we had no choice ... all our stuff got moved in with sand all over it!
They finally finished about 7 pm. They had been working on this move since 10 am. But they were nice, and felt bad for us, so they only charged us for five hours. Thank you!

These are just the highlights of our hellish move....oh, did I mention the toilet in the new apartment flooded while we were moving in? Anyhow, the bright side of things is we really like our new apartment and we figure that living on the third floor will force us to get the exercise we have so much trouble squeezing in (I got groceries today, and oh boy... who needs Billy Blanks? I've got a third-floor apartment and a newborn!)

I wonder who will get our mail from now on?

I love technology, but not as much as you, you see

2005-07-20T22:27:00.000-04:00

Instant messengers are one of the coolest things about the internet.
I have a few reasons for saying this:

1. It is so easy to keep in touch with my relatives in India.
My entire extended family lives there, and I remember when communication with them was such an ordeal.
It either involved one of us spending an inordinate amount of money to shout at each other over the bad phone connection (and combined with the language difference, all we could really say was "Hi, Hello, How are you? Good!") or writing letters.
Writing letters was terrible because it took a month to have any sort of correspondence (two weeks to get there, and if they popped a letter in the mail right away, it would be another two weeks before we got a response.) Not very efficient.
Last year, when my cousin and I were both pregnant, we could chat with each other about all the ridiculous stuff that was happening to our bodies and compare notes. Very cool. If we were doing it the old way of writing letters, we would have only been able to compare notes up to 9 times!
And shoot, the phone? I couldn't imagine shouting out some of the embarrassing side effects of gestation!
Now, I can chat with them as much as I want, and if I am busy, I don't feel guilty about saying, "Can I talk to you later?"

2. My parents, who live 10 hours away, get to see their grandson on our web cam and can chat with us anytime. My mother-in-law has yet to buy a computer, but when she does, she can get the joy of watching who she calls "the wee one" too!

3. I can talk to my husband any time while I am at work, and I don't have to have a conversation the rest of the cubicle world can hear ... if he needs to tell me something, all he has to do is message me.

Very cool! Props to instant messengers!

Why not Mr. Dad?

2005-07-20T21:18:00.000-04:00

We bought a bouncer and it advertises that it is "great for Mom too!"
The hospital I delivered at has weekly brunches for new moms.
The Parenting magazine we get says it is "what moms really care about."

I didn't get pregnant by myself! What about dad?

In this land of equal opportunity, Title IX and such things, why are stay-at-home dads so shafted? I know they are a minority, but is it really appropriate to call them Mr. Moms? People always assume that because I work, my child is either in day care or with a baby sitter. It never occurs to most that maybe the other parent could be watching the babes.

Now, I don't get offended by all this. I mean, most of the time it is the women that watch the kids, and in our situation, if I could, I would jump at the chance. I do believe men and women are wired differently and get satisfaction from different things ... child care being one of them. I am not saying that dads don't enjoy child care, I am just saying that I think women tend to be more satisfied by staying at home then men do. And nursing, something only moms can do, is much easier when you are not working.

But, as it turns out, with my husband going back to graduate school online and me with a good, steady job, it only made sense for me to work and him to stay home. He is an awesome dad, and having him watch after our son makes it much easier for me to come back to work. After I came back to work after six weeks of maternity leave, people said,"It must have been hard to come back to work." It made me wonder if people ask dads that after they come back to work after just one week or sometimes even less time than that!

After I finish this post, I am going to google search "stay-at-home dads" and see what I can find. Hopefully there is some sort of group that gets together around here that he could join. There are a million for moms. Babies are wonderful, but spending all day diapering, soothing and feeding without any adult interaction can get tiring sometimes!

Anyone know of anything?

Not just another pretty face

2005-07-18T22:45:00.000-04:00

Right now the auction is up to $44.77.
This woman was about to cook a potato the other day, a low and behold, she noticed it had a face. Not just any face ... the face of a manatee, an almost extinct-so-ugly-its-cute-relative of the elephant that has its home in Florida.
So she decided to sell her potato on eBay... of course.
Now if she was selling this potato for selfish reasons, I would have no respect for her. But all the proceeds are going to the Save the Manatee Club, so I think its pretty funny and a cute little fundraiser.
The auction ends in 3 days and 13 hours, so if you really want this potato......

Side note: I think I am going to get in the habit of inspecting my food before I cook or eat it ... just in case it looks like someone I know. Who knows ... maybe I will see Johnny Depp on my French toast one day ...

Ha ha!

2005-07-18T16:10:00.000-04:00

I am laughing out loud, and I just have to share. Enjoy:

http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Mitch_Hedberg

Green is the new black?

2005-07-18T15:16:00.000-04:00

"Green is the new black?"
What is that supposed to mean?
McDonald's new advertising campaign is seriously irritating me. The commercials are based totally on stereotypes.
The most irritating ones are the ones that are SO OBVIOUSLY trying to target the black community. Have a little respect!
In case you haven't heard their commercial about salads ... they have this pretty black chick talking about lettuce in a sultry voice like its her soul mate....the worse is "Cobb, you can egg me on anytime." And they aren't even trying to be campy so it might be funny.....they are serious. And then at the end, after the chick says "I'm loving it," where the commercial SHOULD end, she throws in, "Green is the New Black. Don't you know?" What on earth is that supposed to mean? I think a little intelligence is being insulted here.
The other one targeted at the black community that irritates me is the one where this black couple is sitting on an airplane eating chicken nuggets to soul music while everyone else is drooling and wanting some. And then the white steward comes walking along and basically steals the chicken so he can eat some. Come on! Could you be more stereotypical?
The Micky Dees commercial that isn't so much offensive as it is stupid is the one where the teenage girl is trying to explain relationships to the stereotypical teenage boy by comparing girls to food. DUUUUUUUMB.
Get a clue Mickey Dees. You need a more clever advertising campaign ... and whoever decided that this one works needs a head exam.

Moving on

2005-07-14T22:56:00.000-04:00

All right, I've spent the last few years very resistant to keeping a blog or anything blog-like.....no diaries, letters ... no blog. I was paranoid for a number of reasons. One, I remember how I felt when my mother found my teenage diary at age 18 and read it (I swore then never to write anything down I didn't want someone else to read.) Two, I had a crack-head stalker on my tail since 1997, and I made a pledge to myself to stay anonymous.
So why am I starting this blog now? Well, one, I am pretty sure my stalker is in jail for unrelated reasons....he has pretty much fallen off the face of the earth. He would always show up around holidays, but its been more than a year since he has made an unwanted peep. Plus, he does not know my married name or where I live now.... I think it is safe to move on, and this is my way of celebrating. Two ... I keep up with so many of my out-of-town friends with their blogs, and I figure this would be a great way to continue this trend.
Anyhow, it is now time for me to log off and go home. Good night.