Because this is all I do with my life now...

I was contacted by a recruiter in Manchester earlier this week. He was looking for someone to fill a contract-to-hire position at a company in Portsmouth, NH. After talking with him on the phone, he said what I always dread, "I'd like us to meet up and talk about this face-to-face. Can you get to Manchester?" Yes. Yes, I can get to Manchester. It just means I have to rent a car, which isn't a hassle, but having to rent a car every time a recruiter wants to talk to me can add up. I sucked it up and rented a car through Enterprise, which is just a block away from where I live.

So I drove to Manchester today, filled out some survey, waited a while, then the guy came out and talked with me about my experience and the job he was looking to fill. After we talked a while, he gave me a ton of forms to fill out and left me alone in the room to fill it all out. As I was signing my name for the hundredth time, a woman came into the room and introduced herself to me with a smile. "Nice to meet you," I told her. She proceeded to talk about "The Burlington Office" and another company they were trying to help fill a position with. I was interested, because whereas the guy I had come to meet with talked about doing mostly contract work, this lady said she only handled permanent positions. Why was I not meeting with her? I wondered. But the more she talked to me, the more confused I got. She kept going on about "The Burlington Office" and some other person's name who I had no idea who it was. Then she started talking about a job that entailed electrical consulting work, wathever the hell that is. I told her I didn't have any electrical consulting experience, and she made a gesture toward some papers she had with her and repeated the thing about electrical consulting. I looked and realized that what I thought was the details for a job were actually someone's resume. I twisted my head, trying to read what was on the paperwork, and realized that she was talking to me as if the resume were mine... which it wasn't.

"That's not my resume," I told her. She stopped talking and looked at me, then looked down at the papers.

"Alan?" she asked.

"No, I'm Wil," I said, showing her all the hundreds of signatures I had just signed. Her face turned beet red and she got up, trying to laugh it off as she explained that the receptionist had told her that the person she was supposed to be meeting with was in this room. She hadn't bothered to ask me my name when she came in, and I, busy writing my name a hundred times, had not given it. If either of those things had happened, we would have saved ouselves 15 minutes of confusion. "It was still very nice to meet you," I told her, "and thank you for telling me about the Burlington Office." She walked out saying, "No wonder you were looking at me like I had a hundred heads..." I returned to signing my name another hundred times and then handed in my paperwork and left.

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In Katie news, Katie is potty training and doing a great job most of the time. She has also learned a new bad word to use besides "fork"... "bench".

Melissa decided that this week, during her February break, she is going to potty train Katie. She bought little training pants for her, and we have a toilet seat that goes over the normal seat for her to sit on. The plan was to take her to the potty every hour in hopes that she pees in it. She has been surprising us though.

Sunday she had two accidents, early in the morning, where she peed her training pants after we had taken her to the potty. These were morning accidents though, and all the rest of the day she had no problem.

Now, that night she got really sick. I did too. We were both throwing up and not sleeping well. Melissa now suspects we got food posioning, as we both ate the same pizza for dinner that night, whereas Melissa had her own pizza and didn't get ill. Anyway, we weren't expecting much of Katie yesterday because of the sickness and sleep problems. Despite that, she told Melissa in the morning that she needed to poop, and did in fact poop in the potty! She had an accident right afterward, which I chalk up to her not being done pooping before she got off the potty, but the rest of the day she didn't have a single accident, even though I put her in a diaper at nap time and she never changed from it. The diaper was still dry that evening when I put her into her bed clothes. She even pooped again in the potty that evening, tell me in advance that she needed to.

Even more miraculous, she fell asleep on the couch at 5:30 last night (she missed her nap because she threw up right after I put her to bed) and we carried her to bed, where she slept until 8:00 this morning. At 8:00 on the dot, she walked into our bedroom and whispered "daddy?" I had gone to bed at the usual time, despite only getting 2 hours of sleep the night before, and had prayed before bed that she sleep through the night and not wake us up until at least 8! So I'm proud of her for sleeping through the night after being sick, and I'm especially proud of her efforts so far to pee in the potty instead of her pants.

My parents drove down from New York on Wednesday to stay with us through Thanksgiving. My sister Julie came down that same night, leaving on Thursday while my parents left Friday morning. Melissa slaved away in the kitchen most of Thursday while we attempted to stay out of her way and occasionally helped with small tasks she required done. She was dead set on having an awesome Thanksgiving and she blew everyone out of the water. Everyone was dazzled by the delicious choices. I mainly wanted turkey and potatoes with gravy. Yum. Even Katie ate some, though she was cranky and tired same as last year because Thanksgiving supper always treads on nap time. After the meal, she passed out and we all relaxed a bit before cleaning up.

After my parents left, we converted Katie's crib into a small bed (basically we took out the front railing part and lowered the mattress). She had fun bouncing in and out of it, and took a nap in it without trouble (except when she woke up and started fussing and I went to get her and found she had gotten out and pushed a bunch of stuff up against the door) but that first night she rolled out of bed, thumping onto the changing pad which we had strategically placed there for just such an occasion and cried for a bit while Melissa went in and hugged her and tried to get back down. So Saturday we went out and got a small rail to keep her from rolling out but not so tall that she can't get out on her own. We also got some Christmas presents (for Katie) while we were out. We got enough that some could be saved and be birthday presents instead!

Katie's still having trouble sleeping in the new bed. Last night she woke us up crying around 12:30. We took her into our bed for a while, then I carried her back to her own bed. I bundled her up with teddys and blankets and she cried once after I had petted her head for a while and whispered to her that it was okay and then left the room, but she apparently slept through the rest of the night without a hitch.

Next up, potty training and teaching her how to turn on Barney all by herself.

Last night after her bath, Katie ran off before I could get a diaper on her and returned with two handfuls of plastic utensils. I had her lay down on the changing pad, and proceeded to get her ready for bed.

"Fuck," Katie declared.

"Excuse me?" I wasn't totally sure I had heard that correctly.

"Fuck," Katie said, looking at me.

"Oh crud."

"Fuck!" Katie repeated, waving her handful of utensils at me. That's when I realized she was waving a handful of forks at me.

"Ohhhh... fork!" I said, relieved.

"fuck!" Katie chirped happily.

"Forrrrrrrk," I tried to encourage her to get the 'r' sound in there.

"Fuck," Katie said in a hushed tone.

"Let's just call it a pronged utensil," I suggested.

I haven't written in this in a while, I know. There's not a whole hell of a lot to talk about that I can think of. I'm still working. Melissa is still teaching. Katie is still growing and playing. She had a bad cold recently and is in the process of getting over it. Very unpleasant.

My brother Jack's little girl seems to be doing okay. She is being handled very carefully but has not had too many setbacks. There was a little trouble with a breathing apparatus being too strong for her little lungs, so they put her on something gentler and she did so well they talked of putting her back on the stronger machine soon. My mom has returned to New York, leaving poor Jack alone in his home while his wife and daughter are up in Indianapolis. I tried calling him on his home phone number last night, but I guess he was out spending time with them or something.

Melissa has gone through Katie's old premie clothes to send out to them. Ceilidh won't need any of it for a few more weeks, but it will hopefully help a lot when she does get that big. We know how hard it can be, having to constantly buy new clothes as the baby swells up.

Katie is saying more and more things. She has quite mastered use of the word "please", using it any time we deny her what she wants. If she grunts about wanting something, I ask her "what do you want?" hoping that she'll tell me since I don't know. Instead I get "pwease" and have to guess at what she's talking about. I've even managed to train her to take her binky out when saying it instead of trying to talk around it. It's nice to come home at night and have her wave to me and say "hi". I only wish that I could get home earlier to see more of her during the week. On average, I see about an hour of her a day on work days. 15-30 minutes in the morning before I have to make my train, and then 15-30 minutes in the evening from when I come home to when she is put to bed. I don't want to compromise her health by letting her stay up later just so I can see more of her. I try to make up for it on weekends.

Yesterday, Katie came over to me and grabbed at my hand urgently. "What do you want?" I asked her. "I wan my baf" she said, quite clearly. I was quite awe struck. "Did you hear that?" I said to Melissa. "Hear what?" "Tell Mommy what you said," I said to Katie. Katie looked at Melissa. "I seh pweeeease"

***GASP***

I forgot to mention in my previous post: Katie has taken a fondness to something near and dear to me.

When I was born, my grandfather gave me a stuffed teddy bear which I eventually named Max. If you can see the journal icon I selected for this entry, that's Max waving in it. I've had Max all my life. Once, my mother sewed a little denim jacket for him to wear, that later got lost. It looked really nice. Another time, she restuffed him, as the years of love I had given him had left him raggedy and limp. He now has a soft, little pudgy tummy. Many years back, my brother and I got our hands on some glow-in-the-dark paint meant for clothes. Now, Max has little glow-in-the-dark paws. He's even been immortalized in a comic book I drew back in high school.

The past several years, Max had been hanging out with a bunch of other stuffed animals I've kept and collected over the years. Melissa found him while unpacking some things, and left him on the bed for me. I laid him on my pillow, and that night, when Katie was snuggled and nursed to sleep for bed, she found Max and hugged him tightly to her. When I laid her down in her crib, I saw Max in her arms, and tried to remove him, but she gripped him all the more tightly, so I let her sleep with him. Since then, there hasn't been a night she's gone to bed (or nap) that she hasn't taken Max with her. If she leaves him in her crib, she grabs him once I lay her down in it. If she can, though, she brings him with her for nursies in the big bed.

I used to say that Max was going to be buried (or rather, cremated) with me when I die, but when I see Katie hugging him so tightly, and I think about the years of love and playtime I had with him, I think that if my grandfather were still alive, he'd have said "Pass him on to another who will love him as you did." Melissa points out that for all the stuffed animals that Katie has been given by relatives, it was the little raggedy, brown bear with the scratched-up eyeballs, the poochy tummy and the glow-in-the-dark paws that she has latched onto. I talked it over with Max, and he was agreeable to going with Katie. I told Katie she could have him as long as she treats him with love and kindness. She also better not try to change his name, because he'll get confused if she starts calling him anything other than Max.

By Melissa's suggestion, we made a trip to the Stoneham Zoo on Saturday. It was bright out and it was hot out. Most of the animals we saw (by which I mean, they weren't hiding) were lying there, trying not to bake in the heat. There was a glass enclosure with a couple small black bears that were cooling by the side of a pool. They were a big hit among the little kids, as they proceeded to come up to where the children were and lick the glass. Of course they were licking the glass in order to taste the yummy children, but the kids didn't know that.

There were llamas, trudging from shady tree to shady tree or collapsing in the middle of a field. There was a roadrunner in a big wire cage, seated right next to a small enclosure that supposedly contained a coyote. HA HA. Get it? Because they're competing cartoon characters! HYUCK HYUCK! Hey, next on this zoo design, let's put the crocodile pen right next to the rhesus monkeys cage.

There was a small center for families to go inside and a little area inside for kids, but the only animals inside were a few fish, a couple lizards, tons of snakes, and two cockroaches. Some old lady unrolled a massive snake skin while another painted flowers on kids hands. It was too much excitement, so we got out of there quick.

We caught some glimpses of wolves, saw some bats... the nicest moment for me was seeing a leopard with her cub.

At the end was a massive playground filled with little kids while their parents stood around nearby, sweating. It almost looked like the playground was built first, and the zoo arose around it. If I didn't know any better, I'd think the budget for the playground was more than that of all the rest of the zoo.

So I got some photos of Katie on the playground, and sitting outside a wolf enclosure. The rest are blurry shots of animals hidden behind crisp, focused shots of fences and bars. Oh, and some good shots of dead llamas and one pretty leopard nursing her cub. I'll put them up when I can.

In other news, Katie tripped while getting ready for bed Saturday night and cracked her head against a corner wall in her bedroom. Now she has a nasty gash on her forehead that we kept covered with a Band-aid© until her nightly bath Sunday evening. I think having the Band-aid© removed was almost as traumatic as hitting her head.

As my mother pointed out, yesterday was Melissa's and my three year wedding anniversary. I got to stay home from work for the day, only because I had been given a job to drive out to a client's facility and test a machine that survived a tornado to make sure that the software we had installed on it was still functioning. Katie gave Melissa and me a lovely anniversary gift: the gift of being well-behaved, eating a great dinner, going down for a nap without a struggle, and then going to bed on time and without much fuss. I was really grateful to her, but it helped that she got up at a reasonable hour and only napped for two hours in the early afternoon.

Interesting things to note on Katie for now: she now sleeps hugging a bottle and a stuffed animal, one in each arm. The trick is moving all this from the big bed where she is cuddled down to the crib where she sleeps. Even trickier is that the bottle she is given in the big bed is warm milk, but then you have to switch it for a bottle of water in the crib, so somehow you have to pry the bottle from her tiny hand as she sleeps, gripping it like a miser grips a bag of gold coins.

Also of note: Katie likes mustard! This came as a shock and discovered totally by accident. Melissa went grocery shopping, and somehow a bottle of Honey Dijon mustard got mixed in with her groceries. Now, I am not a fan of honey mustard... I only like spicy brown or standard yellow, and Melissa doesn't like mustard at all, although she confessed that she has never actually tasted it. Katie was not eating her chickens one evening, so I squirted a dab of our trespassing mustard on her plate, dipped a chicken in it and let her lick it. She shuddered and blanched from the nugget, but a moment later, she was taking a fry and using it like a spoon to scoop up mustard and suck it off the fry. So she digs mustard! I think finding a sauce like that is extremely helpful in getting her to eat things she wouldn't otherwise... just add mustard and everything tastes the same! :D

I just came out of a meeting for my department. It was a strategy-type exercise meeting. Basically, everyone was asked to pick four company names from a list and try to come up with some ideas for things we could offer them. It's supposed to be fun and innovative. We were all asked to come with a list of four we had chosen. Names were drawn out of a hat, and as people picked companies, the companies became unavailable for further pickings when enough people chose them. So I sat there, listening as one by one all the companies I had chosen were picked by other people and eventually became unavailable. I just sat there, scratching names off my list, then scribbling out the whole sheet of paper, then just crumpling it up and tossing it away. There were a couple people who weren't at the meeting, so our boss said they'd have companies chosen for them last.

So imagine my surprise when she announced that they would now pick companies for the people who weren't there, and my name still had not come up yet. I raise my hand, "excuse me, do I get to choose eventually?" She realized my name had not been put in the hat at all, so I was given my turn for choosing from what was left. But as I chose the companies, I realized: I could have just sat quiet and gone through the whole meeting without picking any companies at all! Of course, me and my big mouth, I had to point out that once again they had forgotten me when it came to writing down a list of names of people who work here. Doh.

In unrelated news, Melissa and I went and saw Hellboy 2: The Golden Army this weekend, and enjoyed it (though it was not great, it was fun). Unfortunately, when we came home, Katie began throwing up, and she spent almost all of Sunday sleeping or just lying in our arms, making little pitiful sounds and staring off into space. I felt so bad for her. She felt better late Sunday, ate some crackers, drank some milk and water... she even felt well enough to go for a short walk, but she was also totally worn out from fighting whatever it was she had. She couldn't finish the walk, I had to carry her back home, and she ended up falling asleep in my arms again later, and I just laid her in bed, where she slept the rest of the night (though she kept coughing, poor thing, and waking me up via the baby monitor).

I hope she's better today.

Seriously, Katie can't get enough climbing.  Saturday, we took her to a park in Georgetown... GREAT PARK.  I mean it, this park was awesome.  It was by a beach, had a baseball diamond, volleyball court, tons of swings, a huge train made out of wood and tires, about a half dozen slides of different sizes and steepnesses, etc.  Katie became enthralled with one slide in particular, which just happened to be the steepest slide there.  It also had two sets of stairs to get up to it, which I think is why she loved it so much.  There was a path under the slide that allowed you to go up the hill without taking the stairs, but she refused to ever try it.  She LOVED the stairs.

Sunday, I took her for a walk, and along the way, she noticed that every shop on our path had a small step up to the door.  Suddenly, our speed slowed to a crawl as she insisted on climbing every step along the way and then hopping back down.  She found a triangular set of stairs at a nearby bus station and spent a good ten minutes going up one side and down the other, repeatedly.  When we returned home, she insisted on running down the ramp to the parking lot, then climbing the stairs up to the top again FOUR TIMES.  By the end, she was so exhausted, she lead me away and chose the elevator to get back to the fourth floor instead of taking the stairs up like I had offered.

Melissa had a retirement dinner for a coworker that she had to attend last night, so when I got home, Katie was there with a babysitter. Having already been fed, she just wanted to play for the rest of the evening, but after I got myself a bowl of cereal to eat for my own dinner, she decided she was hungry again. I got out the box of fruit snacks Melissa had recently bought, while Katie watched, noting the box's location in the cupboard. I opened the bag and gave it to her and she started taking the snacks out merrily and eating them. We went back into the living room to play some more.

After a while, Katie wandered off, and I thought nothing of it until she came up to me holding an unopened bag of fruit snacks, making little sounds to indicate she wanted me to open it. I praised her on finishing the first bag and getting another all by herself, and opened the bag, figuring she was okay to have a few more (they're very small bags). She ate a couple snacks from the bag, then wandered off to the kitchen again, returning with another unopened bag of fruit snacks.

Now, I knew she hadn't finished that second bag, and looking around, I noticed several fruit snacks from the first bag on the floor. I told her no no, no more fruit snacks until you finish the ones you have. She didn't complain at me or anything, and followed me as I went to put the bag back in the box. When I got in the kitchen, I found the cupboard open, and the fruit snack box on the floor. I put the bag back in the box, then asked Katie what had become of the previous bags. Suspicious, I went and opened the trash, and found that she had pulled out the drawer with the trash bin inside and placed the previous two snack bags on top of the trash. One was empty, but the other was still mostly full of fruit snacks. I got it out and gave it back to her, telling her she had to finish what was inside before she could throw it away. She walked off, popping fruit snacks in her mouth.

I was pretty impressed that she had thrown away the first bag after she was done with it, but later she took my empty bowl that had had cereal in it, and insisted on carrying it into the kitchen for me. I thought maybe she was going to try to put it in the dishwasher, but she proceeded to open the trash drawer again, and I had to intervene. At least she kind of understands that when you're done with certain things, you throw them away. I just think we're going to have to keep a watchful eye on what she puts in there.

Katie asked me to post this.

hi! i halp momy! i cary the luchbox! its big! i wak funy to cary it to the room thet gos up and don! i cary luchbox to the car! im a goo girl! hi five!

She is a good girl, that little scamp. She has taken on the morning duty of carrying Melissa's lunch bag to the car for her. She loves her new job so much that getting the bag away from her once she's in her car seat can become something of a dilemma. I gave her the bag to carry yesterday as I walked her and Melissa down to the car in the morning, and she waddled along with it, holding it up to her chin to keep from tripping over it. It was very cute. When they came home in the evening (I worked from home), in came Katie, carrying the now empty bag. This morning when I left for work, I left the lunch bag upstairs so she could carry it again.

In other news: tomorrow I engage in the awesomeness of Dungeons & Dragons once again. My best friend Jon has planned out the beginning of a campaign for me and our other friend John to play in. It has been more than a year since we last played, and we are now down to two players (Jon's father will not be joining us this time around). I'm really excited. I've been polishing my dice in anticipation.

I stayed home with Katie yesterday, for she had a temperature of 104, and anything higher than 101 means we can't take her to day care. At 9, I took her outside to let her get some fresh air and play, not wanting to keep her cooped up inside all day, and I wasn't sure if I'd have an opportunity later, with several projects lingering and waiting for someone to tell me to move to the next stage of them.

We wandered around the little park beside the condo, Katie opting to climb into a gazebo as usual, then run around the grass and explore. There's a parking lot right by the park, and she headed there for a few minutes, drawn by a flock of pigeons that she proudly pointed at and yelled "DUCK!" I corrected her, but it didn't do much good. Soon she gave up calling them ducks and started yelling "DOGGIE!" "No," I told her, "Those aren't doggies either." "DOGGIE!" "There aren't any doggies here, Katie." So wouldn't it figure that a minute later, the lady from the condo beneath ours came out, walking her little dog. Katie got excited and started walking over toward the dog, saying "doggie" over and over again. The lady, who later introduced herself as Kim, heard Katie coming and lead the doggie over to us to let Katie touch her pet. Katie became nervous as the dog came closer, and she would only pet it with a great deal of encouragement, but the entire time she just kept saying "doggie" over and over again. Kim seemed rather smitten by Katie, and kept telling her how cute she was. The dog's name was Baba apparently, which I thought was perfect, because Katie knows how to say "baba" too, as it is her word for binky. Baba was a puggle, part pug, part beagle, and only 5 months old, so he was just a puppy. Baba was quite excited by the attention, which lead to him running about and nipping at hands, which made Katie all the more nervous about touching him, but she petted him several times before Kim and Baba said bye bye and went back to let Baba do his business.

"Doggie" is the most complex word I've heard Katie say. She'll point at the cats and say "gat" or "gah" and we know she's trying to say "cat", but "doggie" is two syllables, each beginning with a different letter, unlike "mama" and "dada" and such. And she knows exactly what a doggie is, unlike ducks apparently, or mama and dada, as she'll sometimes run up to me crying "mama" or just walk around with toys yapping "dadadadada".

So let's see, her vocabulary right now consists of:

mama (either parent)
dada (I have no idea what this actually means to her)
hi (said when a phone is put to her ear)
baba (binky)
byebye (with a wave of the hand)
gat (cat)
duck (anything with wings, it seems)
doggie (exactly what it sounds like)
boobie (which horrified Melissa and lead to referring to it as "nursies")
poop (only repeated when asked if she's poopy)
dat (generally while pointing at something she wants you to name for her)

On a completely different note: Today, I was reminded of this cool flash site where you draw in an MS Paint-like program onto a little 2D model that then gets converted into a 3-D dancing paper cutout of what you drew. It's fun and cool, and so I made this drawing of the Quake Marine in it during some off time.

We took Katie to the park on Saturday, where she spent about a half an hour climbing around on the jungle gym. She's a total climber... she climbs EVERYTHING now. I don't know if it's the thrill of climbing, or that she just wants to be up higher, but she climbs on her piano, on her chair, anything she can find a foothold gets scaled.

...but I digress. So Katie was playing on the jungle gym, and she started out the way most children do, by climbing the stairs to get into the play set. Now, she's real hesitant around people she doesn't know, children included, and there were a lot of kids playing on the jungle gym that day. Several of them climbed past her on the stairs, and each time she'd stop and hold the railings and just wait for them to pass. Sometimes, she'd get nervous and stand there for minutes, watching the other children run around. Then again, maybe she was just enthralled by their freedom and ability to run everywhere without falling on their faces.

One little boy, two years old, possibly younger, came up to Katie as she neared the top of the stairs and knelt down and stared her right in the face. Now, that's kinda rude, I thought, but encouraged Katie to just keep climbing. The little boy reached out, and grabbed Katie's arm, and seemed to be trying to help her up. His father gently told him he was nice to try to help her, but that he should let go of her. He tried twice to pull her up the last step, but it just made her hold onto the bars tighter. Finally, the boy let go, knelt down by her again, reached out, and pulled the binky out of her mouth. Well naturally I got defensive there: nobody pulls binky out of the mouth but me, and HEY HE'S GOING TO PUT IT IN HIS OWN MOUTH I DON'T THINK SO. NO BOY SWAPS SPIT WITH MY LITTLE GIRL UNTIL SHE'S OLD ENOUGH TO KNOW WHAT COOTIES ARE. Thankfully, the boy's dad rushed forward and told him to not take the pacifier and give it back and that he shouldn't take things from other people like that. I had already snatched the binky back by that point and given it back to Katie, who was anxiously quiet and just held onto the bars the whole time.

Minutes later, after Katie had finally ascended the stairs and was wandering aimlessly about the upper floor of the jungle gym, a girl came up to her and without warning or hesitation, GRABBED THE BINKY FROM HER MOUTH AND STARTED TO WALK OFF WITH IT. Now, excuse me when I couldn't help but say "what the fuck?" in front of all those kids, but seriously: what the fuck. What kind of upbringing are these kids getting that they casually walk up to strangers and take shit that doesn't belong to them? Katie has a habit of taking things out of hands and mouths too, but there's no way in hell she'd do it to somebody she didn't know. She's clearly afraid of strangers, which is good. The girl's mother ran over and made her give the binky back and I was satisfied, but it is rather odd that twice in less than a half an hour, two children casually came up and took the binky from another child's mouth. I wonder somewhat if they felt comfortable doing it because she was so much smaller than both of them. I doubt they'd go up to a bigger kid and take the binky. That'd get them a punch in the nose, no doubt, and if it were my kid who punched a little thief like that, I'd almost feel obliged to tell the parent their kid deserved it. I'm against violence, but I'm also against passively letting someone else just come up and take what belongs to you. Sometimes a punch in the nose from another kid is needed in order to teach a child not to do things.

In other news, Katie's new hobby is block stacking. She has managed to stack blocks ten high without them falling over. She's getting quite good at it. Last night, I had a dream that she climbed into my lap on the couch and started talking to me in this clearly baby-pitched voice, but the words were not struggled or babbled. She was talking to me, and all I could think was, "Is this what she's going to sound like? YIKES." I woke up thinking she had actually talked to me the night before, but couldn't remember what she'd said. Damned dreams.

Time for a Flickr blast of photos taken this past weekend!

You can find the whole set by following this link.

I worked from home on Friday because there was a train derailment on the commuter rail track Thursday afternoon. An Amtrak train apparently spilled chemicals all over the place as part of this, and they had to bus us from Andover to the final three destinations. Not wanting a recurrence of such troubles, and concerns about the condition of the track, I stayed home.

For the weekend, rather than a Mother's Day, I decided to make it two days, trying to keep track of Katie so Melissa could relax and just enjoy herself. Unfortunately, she had a headache most of the weekend, possibly due to a cold or allergies.

Saturday, Melissa went shopping after relaxing most of the day.She left after Katie got up from a very long nap, and was gone for several hours. I actually got kinda scared because it was going on 8pm and I called her only to get her voice mail. Eventually she showed up, feeling slightly guilty because she'd had so much fun she lost track of time. She came home with a ton of new clothes, not just for her, but for Katie and me as well.

Sunday, we all went out to the Salem mall to pick up Melissa's fixed watch from a jewelry store, then drove to The Longhorn Steakhouse for dinner. Katie was exceptionally good, only fussing once when I picked her up to get in the car when we were done. I was sure she'd be a wreck because she had gone down for her nap before noon, and didn't get up until almost 5pm, so she had had no lunch. She ate a lot, even using a fork that came with her napkin. She managed to spear a piece of chicken and bring it to her mouth, catching the notice of the restaurant manager who was walking around to hand out Mothers Day gift cards. He was dazzled that this little baby was using a fork to pick up food and put it in her mouth... then the piece of chicken fell off her fork and into her lap as she tried to get it in her mouth. Oh well. A little girl sitting at the table next to ours kept turning around and staring at Katie too, which Katie noticed and stared back. I was sure they were having some sort of telepathic conversation.

The only damper on the whole evening (that's a pun you'll et in a moment) was when Melissa picked Katie up to let her walk around some after dinner while I waited to pay the check. Melissa checked Katie's bottom to make sure she hadn't flooded her diaper again (which is becoming something of a habit for her... perhaps we need thicker diaper pads) she declared her "dry" while I sat there looking at her bottom and thinking to myself "dry? It looks like her entire bottom is wet instead of just the normal spot by the diaper leg hole!" Of course, I figured I must be mistaken, and that it was merely the shadows playing a trick on me. However, when I had paid the check and got up to leave, I found Katie with Melissa by the front door, sans pants (that means without pants). Fortunately, I had put a dress on her as well as the pants, so she wasn't walking around in just a shirt and diaper and looking ridiculous. I think it's great that Katie's drinking so much... it's good for her after all... but man, she has started going through three to four pairs of pants a day. I thought boys were supposed to be the ones who pee all the time, but apparently our little girl can outpee anyone.

So, GTA4 arrived Friday, and I got to play it some. It's definitely fun, though it takes some getting used to using a controller instead of my keyboard and mouse.

Saturday morning, Melissa and I cleaned the apartment in preparation for my sister and mother coming to visit that afternoon. They showed up while Katie was napping, so I walked with them so they could get some lunch, and afterward we woke Katie up so she wouldn't miss out seeing them. All in all, she had fun with them both and they seemed quite enamored with her. The highlight of the visit was definitely dinner though. Katie was having a hamburger and steamed broccoli, and out of the blue, she picked a piece of broccoli from her plate, and with slow, deliberate care, reached over her head and carefully placed the broccoli on top of her head. She then sat there with a look on her face like she had no idea what was going on while everybody cracked up. Unfortunately, I looked up only to see her with her hands over her head and the broccoli sitting there, so from the look of confusion on her face, I assumed that she had tossed the broccoli in the air and it had miraculously landed on her head. I am still unsure as to why she decided to put the broccoli on her head, but it was very amusing and cute so I shall not worry about it unless it becomes habit.

After dinner, my mother and Julie and I went and saw Iron Man. We tried to make the 7:40 showing, but when we got there, there was the longest line I'd seen at the Methuen theater, so we bought 8:20 tickets and then walked over to Borders to look at books before going to get seats at 8:00. Even going 20 minutes early, the theater was packed before we got there. The movie was good, though not mind-blowing.

Sunday we just relaxed inside. I was rather disappointed with the bad weather, as I had been hoping to take Katie to the park and get photos taken. Katie was in good spirits at least, and seemed only once interested in the outside and all the water falling from the sky.

I took Katie to the park yesterday, where she played on a jungle gym for the first time, and had such a blast that she would throw a tantrum if she thought I was taking her away from it. According to Melissa, she had taken Katie to the park before and Katie was afraid of the jungle gym, but when I took her this time, she saw other children on it and seemed to have no fear at all. In fact, I was the one having little panic attacks when she'd managed to climb up the steepest set of stairs on the gym and got out of my reach. I could have climbed up, but didn't know if adults were allowed on the device, since nobody else seemed to be getting even close to it.

There was a jiggly bridge that spanned from one section to the next, and Katie spent most of her time walking back and forth across that. She would turn to me and laugh really loudly. Several times, she would return to the stairs or to another set of stairs, and start going down them, often needing my help. Once she went down before I was ready, and found that her foot didn't reach. She ended up hanging from the metal banister for a few seconds before I got her and helped her down. She was quite strong to hold herself up hanging like that for even a second.

She twice went down one of the slides, holding my hand both times. The first time I had to get her to sit down, as she didn't understand it wasn't a place to be standing up. She squealed with delight on the way down, and then wanted to climb back up the slide and do it again. I tried to explain to her that she'd have to take the stairs to do it again, but she didn't understand. Eventually, I picked her up and carried her to the stairs, resulting in her screaming. I had to get her out of the way though, as other children wanted to go down. She only went down the slide one more time, apparently forgetting where it was for a while. After an hour and a half or so, she lost interest in the jungle gym, came down, and started walking around the park. It was coming up on dinner time, so I picked her up and carried her back to the car and we went home.

Oddly enough, she flipped out when I tried to put her in the swing.