A Woolly What?!

Teehee... Yaaaay monster/ Odd creature stories!

This is the latest one I've come across.

Alleged Woolly mammoth (or maybe just a bear) spotted in Siberia

The Walking Drool

Yep. The Baby Girl took her first two unassisted steps on Wednesday afternoon. Of course I’ve only heard about it. My parents called me to tell be about it a moment after it happened. By the time I got home she wasn’t the slightest bit interested in walking. She was in a huggy mood. Normally I look forward to cuddles, but this was big news damn it, I wanted to see her do her impression of a drunken college student but nope. I guess I’ll have to wait.

The other bit of good news is that she’s sprouting more teeth. She now has a top front tooth and its neighbor is on the way. And judging by how far she likes to cram her fingies into her mouth, I’d say there are a few molars threatening to break through- Poor thing.

Exciting as this all is, it’s also fascinating and disgusting at the same time. I’m not a scientist but I think we should really study the make-up of baby drool. I’m willing to bet there’s money to be made with whatever gives baby drool that amazing elasticity. I mean, this stuff hangs, and hangs but never seems to break. I'm also fairly certain that if the mood really struck her, Baby Girl could probably swing the stuff around to get to out-of-reach items around the house. Gross…

New "Phone"

A few weeks ago my phone died. I mean I couldn't even turn the thing on. So We decided to bite the bullet and get new phones. We also decided to switch carriers because we couldn't get reliable signals anywhere in or around our house.

The only problem is, I never bothered to save my contacts online. Mistake. So I have been reentering all my contacts one by one. Not so bad but it's made for some interesting text conversations. For the most part I am familiar with the area codes so I have a good idea of who it is I'm texting. The problem is, in the middle of all this, I accidentally entered the wrong numbers for a few people. Yeah, you can see where this is going. Pain in the ass. So if you're one of the people I normally text and you haven't heard from me in a while. it's not that I'm ignoring you. I may have just been sending messages to someone completely different. Woops.

A Year-ish In

The baby girl turned one on Jan 19th. I started this entry a few days before then but haven’t gotten a chance to finish it till now. So my apologies dear bloggy readers.

In honor of Baby Girl’s first trip around the sun, here are some of my highlights from this past year.

January, I lost tons of sleep even before the baby was born. I experienced a little bit of remorse about the end of the pregnancy. I was convinced I was going to miss the little one being inside and the middle of the night hiccup-fest. Glad to say, Aaron was once again right on this one, the feeling went away the moment I heard the wailing from the other side of the curtain.

I was extremely fortunate and thankful that post-partum depression lasted all of about a few days, and the worst of it was in the hospital when I ordered a dinner for Aaron and he said he really wasn’t all that hungry. It brought me to tears. To this day I still think that was the trippiest thing I have ever encountered. On the one hand, I totally understood and wasn’t the slightest bit sad about it, but there I was bawling because he didn’t want to eat hospital food.

February brought a whole host of new experiences. First real bath in a tub, first time In addition to being new parents we were now furniture shopping with a little one. I was also getting to the point of delirium. Case in point, I once tried answering my remote control-I wasn’t coming out of sleep. The nifty thing was that we had the first Mommy and baby outing to meet up with some friends for brunch. Firly successful but I learned that there is no such thing as bringing too much milk. I had to make an emergency stop at my brother’s before heading home.

March was fun and a little sad. In the beginning of the month we celebrated Aaron’s birthday as a family for the first time. But, I also had to go back to work. Boo… Luckily, that’s when Mamá and Papá stepped in and thank goodness for that. Baby Girl became a lot more active. She started being able to roll around and became much more interactive. She no longer smiled because she was gassy. She actually smiled because she was happy. Awwww… We also moved into our new home.

In April we had the whole family over for her 100 day for the first time. I think she was a bit overwhelmed at first but eventually really enjoyed it. We also got to celebrate my birthday as a family.

In May we started hearing more definitive “Dada’s” and “Mama,” but not very often mostly, she drooled and cooed.

In June we took our first family trip out to Massachusetts. The road trip was fine. She slept most of the way there and when she wasn’t sleeping she was busy looking out the window. The way back wasn’t so great. We hit a lot of traffic and she lost her patience. I had to crawl to the back seat mid ride to keep her happy.

On July 19th, her 6 month mark, Baby Girl got her first haircut. Mamá couldn’t stand the little strands of hair that got in her eyes so she trimmed it. I still have the trimmings. That reminds me, I have to get laminating materials. But yes, the other exciting thing was, she started staying seated and she got to try “solid foods” for the first time. We started off nice and slowly with homemade pureed peas. A whole teaspoon! The bad part was that we discovered that eating too much solid food too fast leads to vomiting. Not cool. Especially since I was in the car driving home.

By August we started seeing signs of her fist little tooth. But also the first case of croup. I’ve never heard of this but apparently it’s fairly common. Luckily it got knocked out quickly.

By about September she was really on a roll with the whole crawling thing. She was now no longer happy to sit there and play passively. Nope, now she could scoot around.

In October Baby Girl got to see the first hints of cold weather. The later on in the month she got to see her first snow storm. She loved it! Auntie Andrea babysat her that day so she went out to play with the cousins.

In November we took her on her fist airplane ride to California. She did fantastic. She actually really loved the ride out. Thanks to a very kind agent at the check in counter we got a three seat row so we had the middle seat open for her to play in. She also spent a good amount of time playing with everyone on the plane. The ride back was a lot more subdued. Thanks to our friend’s kids, she got her first cold. Not good. The great news was on the 29th, I noticed her standing all on her own for a few seconds. Apparently my parents and Aaron had seen this a few days earlier. Ah well. Thanksgiving as always was excellent for her. She got to spend several days with the cousins. Never slept better. :D

By the time December rolled around she was crawling and inching along on everything. It’s amazing how far she’s come and how many things she can get into. This made me worry a bit about how she would fare with the decorations. But much to my surprise, while she was genuinely interested in the commotion in the house and all the decorations, she was excellent and listened when we told her not to touch the tree. But just in case, I put all the non-breakable ornaments at the bottom. Christmas day was great. She spent the day with the cousins and even got to do her favorite thing in the world, rip up paper. I can’t even begin to tell you how many magazines I’ve lost to her. I think that Aaron put them out there for her to shred so that I have to get rid of back issues. Sigh…

January. So here we are one year in and Baby Girl now has the beginnings of her next two teeth, top fronts and keeps jamming her fist into her mouth to get to the back of her mouth which leads me to believe her molars are itching. She stands for much longer periods of time and hasn’t figured out that she could probably walk if she lets go of things. What’s crazy is that since her birthday, it seems like she has just learned so much more. It’s kind of scary. She now says a whole lot more and expresses herself fairly effectively. She uses sign language for a few things and words for the things she knows; namely milk, ball, no, Papá (to my Dad), and of course Dada. She still doesn’t call me Mommy. She’ll say Momma, when she’s upset, but when addressing me, it’s Dada. I must be the girl Dada to her. We’ve also noticed that she understands Spanish. My parents and I speak to her in Spanish almost exclusively. Aaron and everyone else speak to her in English. It’s working out nicely. She can point to facial features when asked in either language and will also say, “leche” to my Mom.

In her first Hambok (traditional Korean dress). With Tio Alvin, her birthday buddy.

In her other Hambok

CAKE!

















Again, this year has been a blur and I can’t believe it came and went. I’m amazed every day by the new things she picks up and does. It’s like someone flipped a switch and put her into learning overdrive. Still, THE very best thing in the world is just giving her huggles. Especially since she huggles back. Ahhhhhh…. :D

A**HOLES!

Why must people be complete A-holes? I've just been going through some of my old posts to find comments left by some schmuck leaving spam links. My sincerest apologies all.

Tick. Tick. Tick.

Ah yes, despite the warm weather, we’re actually getting close to Christmas. This is a problem. No, not because I’m afraid of a visit form the Krampus, but because I’m still down presents and oh yeah, the cards I bought with every intention of sending out, are still sitting on my dining room table untouched and unopened. What hurts is I have no effing idea when I’ll be able to actually get to any of this. I suppose I could just forgo sleeping. But then again, it wouldn’t help my situation much if I were to pass out in the midst of a card signing frenzy, landing on my pen and wind up stabbing myself in the eye. That’s all I need, an eye patch for Christmas photos. Somehow, I don’t think those come in red and white candy cane stripes for the season. :D

I should say Eff-it and skip the cards this year, but then I’d really feel like a slacker and would have to deal with being reminded of this next year when I come across the unopened boxes of cards. This, of course, wouldn’t happen until after purchasing a new batch. So then I’d feel like a slacker and feel dumb for wasting money on even more cards that can possibly suffer the same fate as their unloved predecessors. Neurotic, yes, but admit it, it’s true.

The only one person I have actually finished shopping for is the one little person who won’t even know what’s happening, and why she’s all of the sudden encouraged to rip up paper and resulting ribbons fly as of shot out of a confetti gun. Hell, I think that’s the only thing she may enjoy, which brings me to my next point; why the hell am I spending oodles and oodles of cash on the little one when she already has more toys that she will ever play with? Most of the time she just wants to eat and/or preferably, shred the newest magazines that come in the mail. Yes, there seems to be a difference. The attraction is lost the moment I finish reading any given magazine. I don’t know how she knows the difference, but she does. It’s amazing. But I digress. I have been buying her Christmas gifts since before Halloween. Yes, I fell victim to the marketing traps. From the moment I caught a glimpse of fake snow-covered shelves and detected the sounds of jingle bells being pumped through the speaker systems I felt compelled to buy, buy, buy.

Coincidentally, this is also the reason I have to relinquish control of my credit cards till the suckers are paid off. I have been hemorrhaging money through these things. It’s not going to be an easy thing to do since I feel as attached to my credit cards as Gollum did to the one ring, but I need to do something. I have never had this much debt in credit cards. Feck me!

Have Yourself a Terrifying Little Christmas

There are things that will forever be imbedded in my head as uniquely Christmas. These memories are your typical, warm and fuzzy memories of waking up entirely too early (likely an hour after my parents brought out the gifts.)

Sounds lovely, so what’s the deal with the title?

I’ll explain. Last year was the first time I ever even heard of the Elf on the Shelf. He’s supposed to be a spy for Santa that watches your child to make sure your little one behaves. Parents are supposed to move him around to make the kid think this thing comes to life in the middle of the night and in the morning goes back to being a mere doll. This year, I’ve started noticing that the Elf has grown in popularity and the more I think about it, the more confused I become over why this is. The thing is creepy. From its Bob’s Big Boy eyes, “It’s a Small World” figurine-like apple cheeks, and slightly hunched up shoulders, that are supposed to express a feigned innocence, the bastard creeps me out.



I am alone in this?

Personally, if I were a child and my parents brought in a possessed toy to “spy” on me, all the while wantonly flaunting the fact that it doesn’t care if evidence of its demonic linkage is known, ignored, and yes, even encouraged, I’d shit myself. I wouldn’t have found it endearing in the slightest. If anything, this creepy little bastard reminds me (yes, even now, as an adult) too much of the damn Poltergeist clown to be remotely cute.



Go ahead Google the thing and look up pictures of it. There are even sites dedicated to how “creative” some people have gotten with this thing. Evidence of the Elf’s mischievous nightly romps have been documented by sick parents (who I whole heartedly believe have too much time on their hands). They have made their children believe that the possessed elf has been rummaging about their homes, wreaking havoc by doing things like messing up coloring books, toilet papering the tree, dangling from a chandelier, using the toilet OUTSIDE, posing with other stuffed animals, and the creepiest of them all, resting atop of sleeping children’s heads. Seriously?!

Now, yes, I know what you may be thinking; it’s supposed to be a fun thing. He’s helping Santa. And this brings me to my next creepy thing. What the hell is the deal with the Krampus? Since when did Santa/St. Nick have a scary-as-hell demon following him about, eating naughty children?!


You’d think that somewhere in all the carols, and poems there would be a rhyme or a line about the bloodbath and the trail of destruction that was left behind as a result of naughty children being slaughtered as Santa flies through town with a monster in tow. You don’t hear a single mention of this in the “Santa Claus is Comin’ to Town” song. Nope! The song only says, “you better watch out. You better not cry. You better not pout.” I think it would be a much more effective warning if it mentioned, kiss your ass goodbye if you don’t behave or the only thing left behind will be a puddle of gore and bits of you stuck in the monster’s teeth. Holy shit! When the hell did Christmas get outright scary?!



What happened to the days of, the three ghosts will visit you and help you find a way to redeem yourself? Back then Dickens’ story was as scary as it got. Holy shit! No wonder kids are seemingly getting more violent. .They aren’t raging against anything, they’re trying to protect themselves from the possessed Elf that will tell on them and eventually lead to their demise as a snack for the Krampus!