July

I can't believe July is almost gone. It's been so fast and William's been growing like a bean sprout. So I'll catch you all up on what's been going on backwards. So William is 5 months old tomorrow. I don't know where the time has gone, but I blink and he seems bigger. He's starting to teeth too. He's got two sharp little chompers I can feel in the bottom gums so we busted out the teething rings from his baby shower for him. He's not quite sure what to make of them yet and still prefers to chew on fingers. He is a master of facescooting and rolling. Still hasn't figured out that if he uses his arms along with his legs he'd have an easier go of it. He also really loves the bouncer toy that helps him stand up and today he's figured out how to move his feet so that he can spin around in it to reach the different toys on all sides. Right now though he's sitting in it, watching me type, and blowing raspberries me. Raspberries are the most hysterical thing in the world apparently and he sets off in a fit of giggles whenever I return the favor. On the other side of things, ever since we got home from Michigan his sleep schedule has not been very kind to me. He used to be great about sleeping through the night! Now he's decided he must get up every 3-4 hours. Letting him cry it out wasn't working so hot either. He'd start facescooting in his crib, get stuck in a corner, and then get [i]really[/i] upset. So I wind up getting up, cuddling him, inevitably falling asleep in the rocking chair, and then putting him back in his crib when I wake up an hour later with a crick in my neck. Not good habits, but what can I do? I can't have him up and sobbing at 4am when Seth needs to go to work, and I hate when Seth has to go downstairs and sleep in the guest room to get any rest at all. With the teeth starting to come in I think I'm going to try starting him on solids even if he's not six months yet. He's bigger than some six months old and certainly developed enough that I probably could have started it already. Maybe that'll help him sleep through the night better. Our friends whose baby is several months older than William (I always think of Sophie as six months old still, but I guess she must be 8 or 9 months now. heh) have one of those baby food makers that steam and puree all in one go absolutely love theirs so I think we'll get one of those and see how it goes for the peanut. The baby food in the jars from the store kind of freaks me out. I'd much rather get fresh veggies and fruit and things and make my own. I screwed up basic peanut butter cookies this week to an appalling degree, but I can't conceivably screw up pureeing veggies now can I. Even with my kitchen non-skills. So let's see. What else of note has happened... oh! Speaking of William's bad sleep habits, last Thursday night he decided to take the saying 'Sleep is for the Weak' to heart. And didn't sleep. At all. All night. Oh he was happy as a clam so long as he wasn't in his crib and could play with mommy or daddy, but sleep? Ha. It's not like he'd taken any significant naps that day either so I honestly don't know what happened. He was up all day bright and early and of course I hadn't gotten much sleep with him getting up twice in the night so I was tired all day before he pulled this stunt. Thankfully Seth was a super hero and around 2am when I was about to crack he took the Peanut downstairs to play and I got some rest. Seth took Friday off work to sleep. Urk. Well William wants some mommy time so pictures and the trip up North for the 4th will have to wait a bit. Hopefully I can get back to this later today.

Catching Up

Sorry guys, I even did this one on the computer and it still won't do line breaks. Grr. So I'll try to get you all caught up on things here! William went to bed at 11 last night without doing a fake out and getting up half an hour later (yay! progress!) and actually slept until 7:30. Then he went back down for a 'nap' at 8 and is still asleep (it's 11 now) so I've had a very nice relaxing morning here. Got caught up on my sleep deficit for starters! William has been his usual adorable self, charming all the ladies he meets... He's fantastic in the mornings. Definitely a morning person all smiles and giggles- unless like today he decides to sleep in. In the afternoons he starts to get antsy and I usually try to go somewhere with him. He likes seeing new things, being around people, and just moving around in general. Usually it's out with friends either shopping or to lunch, or out for a walk on the trail system behind the house. Last week we went three and a half miles. I just about died on the way back. Urgh. We did get out another day and hit Once upon a child for some bigger clothes for Peanut though- including a cute little polo onesie with an American flag on it for the 4th. We also spent an afternoon out with my VTer in downtown Silver Spring. I'd never been down there before, and it was fun! It's a great little walking district with shopping and restaurants, and they've even got a big fountain for kids to play in. William's going to love it when he gets older. Last weekend was pretty rough though. I caught a really nasty cold and was out of it Thursday night to Sunday. Seth had to take sick leave and come home for me on Friday when I started not being able to keep anything down. Luckly William escaped the plague, but Seth got a light version of it on Sunday, so real fun times around here. Then this past Saturday I was finally going to get into DC and visit the Library of Congress to research that dress since we had a rare day of no other obligations and Seth could take the peanut aaaaand we walked out the door and locked ourselves out. Joy. So the trip got cancelled in favor of sitting outside on the porch enjoying the sunshine (luckily it wasn't too hot out)and waiting three hours for the locksmith to show up. By the time I could have made it into DC at that point, the library would have been closed. The other big thing I've been doing is working on the past couple weeks is losing some of the extra poundage from the pregnancy and what I'd been gaining before that even. I'd really like to get down below 150 again. I wish I could get to the gym like AnnaMarie and Caroline do, but the YMCA is the only gym I've found here with babysitting and they cost $110 a month. I don't know, maybe that's normal for the Y, but it's really expensive. Gyms in general are really expensive and while we could budget that into our expenses if it became that important for us, I'd rather we didn't. So I'm trying to do this on my own now and it's working pretty well so far. I'm using the My Fitness Pal app to watch my diet and change how I eat. It certainly inspires me to cut down the munching during the day. I also got new running shoes! Yay! I'm going to try to start doing the 'couch to 5k' program when Seth comes home in the evenings. It starts you off slow with jogging and walking and works you up to be able to run a 5K over however many weeks the program is. So that should help get me in shape. But as it is, I've already shed about 8 pounds just watching what I eat. I would seriously love to be able to fit into my steampunk Eowyn costume again...

If AnnaMarie needs a nanny to blog more, what does that mean for me?

I do try to write at least once a week though! This past week hasn't been bad. Last night William got up at 1am... and 3... and 5... and then finally 7. At which point I fell asleep holding him in the rocking chair until 8 and made Seth take him so I could get some sleep until we had to leave to go to the airport. He's off in California again for work this week until Wednesday so my fingers are crossed that the peanut will behave himself while he's gone. We've got really good friends here though, so this afternoon I went over to Shannon and Dave's for dinner and tomorrow Shannon's going to come down and go to Ikea with me for lunch and picking up a footrest to go with my rocking chair. Maybe a rug for the basement too. We'll see. I really miss Seth when he's gone but at least the thing he thought they might be doing over the 4th of July is happening now instead of in July. We're really looking forward to our trip up North and for everyone to meet William!

Balticon, Swimming, Etsy and Kickstarter, and Stuffses

So this past week was a big one for William! Memorial Day weekend is our annual geek fest. Balticon is a local convention for all things geek. They've got lots of panels on costuming, the latest scientific developments, writing, readers discussions, movie screenings, and of course the masquerade. It was great to bust out my costume wardrobe though, and to actually fit into them again! And for the first time I didn't have to make a new costume in order to have enough outfits to fill the entire weekend

I bust out the plunderhosen again, and they got several admirers from the historical reenactment crowd. Best of all though, William didn't puke on them! haha.

Seth carried him around quite a bit of the time for the first couple of days. William really enjoys being in the bjorn. :)

We also took him swimming at the hotel. As you know, he loathes bathtime as much as the Wicked Witch of the West hates water. Pool time was quite so bad and while he didn't flip out, he wasn't quite sure about the whole getting wet thing. He was pretty happy when we took him out and he got to sit all bundled up in a towel instead. Unfortunately we only got the chance to take him swimming once during the weekend. The pool hours were pretty late in the morning and didn't stay open long enough in the evening to make going down worth it. Otherwise though, the hotel was super nice. The room even had a separate sitting room area that William slept in. His other achievement this weekend was flipping over! He rolled from his back to his front one morning, and did not like that at all either- probably because his arms were still bundled up snug as a bug. I have no idea how he managed to flip himself over all the way without using his arms though. And then this morning he discovered how to spin around! I put him back in his crib facing one direction after he had breakfast and when I came back for second breakfast a couple hours later he had spun in a circle around to be facing the other direction!

The masquerade was a blast this year. William and I competed in 18th century attire and our sound was from the Lion King. I riffed on the scene where Simba is being shown the kingdom to instead show William the stage and tell him he could grow up to be a master craftsman costumer too before ending with the whole raising him up for everyone to see. He was pretty darn cute and everyone loved him to pieces. We got some serious 'awww' factor going during the performance, though when the lights went out and people applauded then William got scared and freaked out a wee bit. Poor guy. He was a champ on stage though and had the judges eating it up. :) We wound up taking home the 'Best Historical' prize. Unfortunately, we didn't really get any good pictures of the costumes. I'm really going to have to get all dressed up again and get some photos taken so I can show off my work properly. I'm also starting to turn my talents towards monetary gain. I'm going to be starting an etsy store selling things like non-sized historical accessories and costume pieces. 18th century skirts, hip pads, pockets, etc. I'm also going to have things like purses and bags, and whatever else catches my fancy. We'll see how it goes. My goal is to make enough of a profit to afford an embroidery machine- which would be in the $4,000 range. The other thing I'm doing and that's going to take priority right now is starting research on the piemontaise dress. You know, the pale yellow silk with blue stripes one that I've been dying to do forever. Well, I got in touch with the Head Researcher and curator at the Danish National Museum asking for more information about the dress. He sent me some pretty cool bits that I didn't know as well as the title of a book that was written in the 70s and includes information about the dress (and others from the same collection) Unfortunately there aren't any copies for sale pretty much anywhere so using my google fu, I discovered that a trip to the National Archives is in order! I'm excited to get a look at it, even if the text is all in Danish. Google translate will hopefully not muck it up too badly. Step 2 in my research plan of attack is to start a Kickstarter campaign for funding. Kickstarter is a website that crowdsources projects. You put down a monetary goal ($2500 in this case) and the offer rewards at different donation levels. If people donate enough to meet your goal then your project gets funded. If you fail to meet the goal then you don't get anything at all. What I hope to be able to do with this is fund a trip to Denmark to see the dress (as well as some of the materials for the dress itself). My contact at the museum has already offered to let me see the dress up close if I'm able to go, but the exhibit is only up through October. Don't just think this is a waste of time and a stupid hobby though. (Ok, well you can think whatever you think, but don't voice it. shesh.) I've been eyeing a Historical Preservation Masters program at UoMaryland here. I don't have an impressive work resume and linguistics is hardly a logical lead up undergrad for it. But my historical sewing resume is rather impressive if I do say so myself, and if I can write a cool academic documentation to go with this dress then I think it could be a real attention grabber for an admissions board. Admittedly, getting my Masters is still wishful thinking at this point, but maybe in a year or so when William's a bit older then I could give it a go. If I can get in at all. Admissions are really competitive right now and I'm pretty sure my math skills are severely lacking when it comes to taking the GRE. Anyways, besides my plans for the future, we had a fundraiser for the Scouts and Girls Camp at church tonight! It was really cool actually, and one of the best ideas for a church fundraiser I've ever seen. They called on people in the stake to donate goods or services and then held an auction. I put up sewing lessons (Abbey gave me the idea, trying to find someone in her own ward to teach her :) ) and they went for $80! A couple photographers offered up a family portrait session, a lot of the young men offered manual labor or yard work, some people offered things like their bow flex machine that had been gathering dust, or an entertainment center. What we bid on though was a Friday-Monday weekend stay as a beach house vacation property. Recruiting our friends Jake, Earta, Shannon, and Dave, we pooled our resources and won it! Actually, we got outbid (twice). The highest bidder went to $775 but the owner surprised us by offering a second chance to the other high bidders. His generosity alone pulled in over $2000 for the scouts and young women. We're planning on taking our weekend around Halloween. We were going to do Thanksgiving together, but the Navy Band is going to be in the Macy's parade apparently so Dave'll be out of town. But Halloween'll be fun! We'll do a costume party and have an epic weekend of games and movies and yummy food. Good times.

Haaaallelujah

I actually woke up before William this morning! I woke up naturally (after a bizarre dream in which all of my friends with babies went back to college and we were looking for a dorm to rent) and got to brush my teeth and I stick my contacts in without juggling William! It was amazing. This is a great start to what will hopefully be a great weekend. I'm all packed and ready to go to Balticon this weekend! I'll keep you posted on masquerade results (even if you don't care. Haha) and William's reaction to the pool! He loathes bathtime, but maybe swimming will be better.

Grandpa(s)!

So I've been pretty worn out this past week, which is why I haven't posted about Dad's visit and William's blessing earlier. But here goes! Dad's visit was short, but awesome. Wililam, normally a very serious and thoughtful looking kid was all grins as soon as he saw his Grandpa! I don't think Dad quite quite believed me about how serious he normally is he was grinning so much (except when I got the camera out, of course)

We hung out Friday with just us and Dad, and then went over to the Rockville for dinner at Gordon Biersche. It's a micro brewery/American cuisine place and it was really really good. They even have their own house brew of root beer. William was pretty chill going out to eat, even though the restaurant was pretty loud. The place was packed to the gills, apparently the Rockville town center has an outdoor concert series on Friday evenings during the summer so there were a lot of people there for that. Seth and I are definitely going to have to go again and there were plenty of restaurants around that area too that I'd love to try. On Saturday Dad got to sleep in. I'm pretty sure it was his first time getting to sleep in in years. He came over late morning, and we put together the charcoal grill I got Seth for Christmas this past year. And by we I mean Dad did most of the work and he occasionally let me put a screw in. :) William sat outside with us in his bouncer having a ball and probably swallowing the bugs. Protein, right? Seth got the lawn mowed and did a bit of grocery shopping for our barbecue extravaganza! Our lawn grows like a weed and coincidentally so do our weeds so it was looking pretty raggy in spite of Seth having already mowed less than a week ago. Anyways, we got the grill together, going, and the cast iron grills seasoned with plenty of time to spare before my inlaws got there. Jody (Seth's sister), Alex, Elsa and Lucy came for the blessing, and we were thrilled to see them. Lucy isn't much older than William is, and they got along just fine!

Seth's Dad arrived a bit later. He'd spent most of the day building a new roof for a member of his branch, but we were glad he could make it! William was thrilled to have both Grandpas there too! At one point Dad was holding him and he looked over at Grandpa Pease and gave him a big smile and then looked over at Grandpa Moore and smiled, happy as a clam.

He still wouldn't let me catch him smiling on camera though. I did get this one the morning Dad arrived though. I came across Seth's maternal Grandfather's things, including his Marines hat. It just matched William's outfit so well...

Grandpa Dulany was a pretty amazing man. He served on the Idaho during WWII, was a very successful lawyer, and liked to take Seth and I to the race track to watch his horses compete. In spite of not being a member of the church he helped pay for Seth's mission and some of Seth's undergrad too. I wish he could have survived to meet William, but he passed away a few years ago. Seth's inheritance from him made it possible for us to put the 20% down payment on the house. Sunday! Mother's Day and William's Blessing Day! I hadn't intentionally planned it like that, but it was pretty special. Dad, Seth's Dad, Alex, Bishop Willis, and our close friend Jake (He, Earta, and their kids came down for the blessing :) ) stood in the circle. I tried to take some notes as soon after the blessing was over to make sure I remembered what was said, but I'm sure I missed a lot of it. William was blessed to know that we love him, and to be able to feel the spirit. He was also blessed to have many choices an to know which choice he should make. Most of all he was blessed to have a special sensitivity to those who came before him, particularly those who share his name. Hearing Seth say that confirmed the feeling I'd been given before he was born that his name should be William and that genealogy and his ancestors with his name would be important to him. I'm so grateful that we were blessed with him, and that Dad and everyone could be here with us for this. We're really looking forward to coming out this July! It's going to be so much fun!

That Sneaky Smile

William is a serious little guy. He's got a fantastic scowl he likes to show off, and his smile is pretty elusive. Today he grinned at me around his bottle while he was having lunch, :) I caught him the other night though while he was having fun with Daddy.

That smile just looks like we're in for mischief when he's older...