We've made a few changes. Observe:

Before

After

Old and busted

New hotness

Lame

Sparkly

As far as toilets are concerned, my daughter could take them or leave them. She's doing quite well avoiding accidents for the most part. She'll go through a week or so with none, then spend a couple of days creating laundry for both myself and her babysitter. She's on a one-week-on/one-week-off schedule in terms of wetting the bed.

Sometimes the accidents bother her and sometimes they don't: I picked her up Monday, took her home, fed her snack, and let her play outside, all the while asking her if she needed to go to the bathroom because I kept smelling what I thought was a little pre-poop gas. Wrong. I finally went to put her on the toilet and found we were a little late... She had said nothing to the effect of "Mother, perhaps a change is in order." Yet, a couple weeks ago I went to get her up in the morning and discovered she had peed the bed. I plucked her up out of her crib and stood her up on the floor to strip her down and she immediately began sobbing. "It's OK sweetie," I said. "You just peed the bed." But apparently it wasn't OK. It was a travesty. Through her sobs she yelled "What are we supposed to do now?!"

She has gotten much better at telling us when she needs to go - although sometimes she tells us she has to go and really she doesn't. Like, for example, EVERY TIME we go anywhere. "Mommy, I need to go potty," she says. I sigh. We go into the restroom, just in case, and she immediately renegs: "Um, I don't think I need to go." Not that I can blame her. I tend to hold it as to avoid public restrooms myself.

In fact, the last time Lillia didn't quite make it to the potty was in Idaho. And neither Matt or I were a part of that. Nope. Matt and I had decided to have Mommy/Daddy alone time at the Coeur d'Alene Resort for a night. Grandpa Denny had assured us it would be fine for us to go ahead and leave before his wife Becky was home to help with the child care. So we left. Apparently, Becky was away for a little longer than expected and when she returned, she found Grandpa Denny on the edge.

This is how it went down: Lillia woke from her nap and immediately told Denny she had to go potty. He rushed her to the bathroom uncertain of how he would handle this even if she DID, in fact, make it to the toilet as he has a hard time in the presence of another person's poop. But poop in the toilet would have been much, much easier to stomach than what actually occurred, which was thus: She pooped on the floor and he stepped in it!

It was a bonding moment that will live in his memory forever, I'm sure.

Me, the day after Matt's mom took us to see 'Walking With Dinosaurs': What did we do last night baby?

Lillia: We went WALKING WITH DINOSAURS!

Several varieties of mushrooms have popped up in our yard the past month or so. I don't know if it's just because of all the rain or if we'll get them every summer, but I do hope this is the last year we'll have to watch close to make sure Lillia doesn't try to eat them.

Behold:

I'm expecting a matching range and microhood on Tuesday. It's all a part of my new budget plan: For every dollar that Matt spends on some shiny new thing for himself (have I mentioned his new six-wheeler?), I will also spend a dollar on some shiny new thing for myself. Stay tuned for my next post: Bankruptcy and You.

The last vacation Matt and I took was when we met up with my bestest friend and her then boyfriend/now husband in Mexico back in 2006. It was the "one last vacation" we promised ourselves we'd take before we started a family. We spent a week lounging on the beach and drinking beer all day. Lillia was born in December of 2007 and we've never been more than 100 miles from home with her.

But with grandparents, great-grandparents, and various other relatives in other states, it was evident we were going to have to take her on a real trip at some point. And so we did.

First: The plane ride. It was worse than I thought it would be, but only because I imagined Lillia zoning out on her Strawberry Shortcake movies - like she does at home -the whole way down. She did no such thing. On airplane rides, apparently, reading stories, coloring on window shades, and LOTS and LOTS of snacking is required. Also, she has entered a heightened level of two-ness, and anytime I asked her to stop doing something, she thrashed around and let loose with a blood-curdling scream.

But I only had to ask her to stop a few times, and she did settle in for a nap - about 10 minutes before we landed in Seattle.

So then there was the added fun of carrying her almost 30-pound self from one end of the airport to the other so we could catch our connection to Spokane. Of course, she woke up as soon as we boarded the plane, much to the entertainment of everyone else on board.

When we got off the plane in Spokane and stepped outside, it was probably 85 degrees. Lillia was all smiles. I was all smiles. We were ALL all smiles. In case you haven't picked up on it, summer at home has been rather lame. Let me put it this way: We broke a record this year for days in a row of measurable precipitation. 31. 31 days. 

We spent the first evening in Idaho on Grandpa Denny's (Matt's dad) back deck oohing and aahing about the weather.

The next day, we took a drive to Lake Coeur d'Alene where Lillia dipped her toes in, ran away from, and finally (accidentally) dove headfirst into the water. It was delicious.

We visited with Lillia's Great-grandpa and Great-grandma on their ranch a few nights. Lillia played in the thick grass, smelled all of grandma's pretty flowers over and over again, and was absolutely enchanted by the horses. She even spent some one-on-one time with Grandpa Denny a couple of mornings helping to feed the animals while Matt and I stayed back at the house. She got to ride Zip one time, and I think it was the highlight of the trip for her.

Lillia's 5-year-old cousin Avery was staying with Denny and his wife Becky while we were there, and thank God.

The two girls kept each other occupied enough that us grown ups were able to enjoy some delicious libations an evening or two. (I have a new favorite drink, BTW: Vodka, limeade, and a touch of cherry concentrate. It's grand.)

Another day, we met a boat load of Matt's family for a sort of mini-reunion at the park by the lake. Becky had been planning it for months. There was a huge turnout. And I thought I was the one with the big family... We brought some fresh Alaska red salmon down with us and Matt grilled it up, to everyone's delight.

On our last full day, we went with Denny, Becky, Becky's kids, and Avery to Silverwood theme park. The big kids (i.e., Becky) enjoyed the roller coasters while Matt, Denny, and I took the kids on some less puke-worthy attractions. Lillia was scared at first on the Ferris wheel, but once it started spinning she loved it.

By the time I joined them on the log water ride, she was giggling on the way down the hill and I was the one screaming.

We ended the day at the water park, where Matt pushed Lillia and I around the lazy river on inner tubes. She wouldn't get out of the water until she found out that Tom Cruise was walking around there somewhere. Or maybe that was me... Anyway, she passed out in the car less than two minutes after we left.

It was a different kind of vacation than our last one. I'm glad we had that Mexico vacation, and I'm glad we had this one. Good times. Good life.

People near me may have noticed a bit of irritability lately. People not near me, if they could hear what was going on inside my car, might have wondered why I drove to work yesterday yelling "I hate you people!" to every vehicle that got anywhere near mine on the way. (In my defense, they WERE driving like dumb asses.) There are a few factors that may have contributed to this bit of a funk. The rain. The failure of not one but two medical facilities to be competent. But mostly, I think I was on the brink of a complete breakdown at the thought that everything on this here blog might possibly have vanished. Permanently.

First, an error message appeared on my admin page. Before I could contact my web host, my login information stopped working, which meant I couldn't post here anymore. A day or two after I started corresponding with my web host, the page, its design, and its contents disappeared completely.

Because the support folks are apparently on the other side of the world, and I've had a hectic schedule with work and family engagements, I averaged about one email a day with them. And the lack of fluency in the English language may have slowed things down a bit too, since some of my emails were used up asking "WTF did you just say?"

At one point, my web host told me they could get the website back up and running, but they'd have to recreate my account and therefore scrap everything I've put into it for the past year and a half. They told me I could ask my site design folks what they could do. I did and, although they were a little slow in getting back to me and I have no idea what they said to me in any of the messages they sent, my shit is back!

So, about that little family vacation... Coming up. Thank God.

I owe a post or two about our First Family Vacation, and it's going to come. But there are more important things afoot. My niece's baby daddy was horribly sick recentlly with sepsis (a blood infection). It was pretty scary there for a while. He's doing better but still in a lot of pain and will be out of commission for some time. The little family could use all the help they can get, so if you're in the greater Alaska area, make an appearance. Good times will be had by all.

BEN-efit for Ben

Beer, food, music, and silent auction

1-8 p.m. Saturday, August 14

Burkeshore Marina, Big Lake, Alaska

$5 suggested donation

How can you resist this little puddin' pop's pleas?

                      Help my daddy!

It's way too hot to be sitting inside on the computer, so I'll keep this short and plan to write several more posts about this, our first family vacation, later. Lillia's first plane ride was...interesting. She hated the airplane toilets (weird, right?) but we managed to make it the whole way with zero accidents. I think that fact alone = success. That, and the part where we got on the turbo prop for the second leg of our trip, she yelled "Here we go!" at take off, and it was loud enough to have the ENTIRE plane erupt with laughter.

It's happening. Almost six months, thousands of dollars, and two noisy roosters later, the hens are laying eggs.

Well, one of them is, anyway. Snowflake presented us with a single little pink egg yesterday. Matt heard the chicken cackling up a storm, went out to check the coop, and found it buried in the sawdust. He came rushing in to show me and promptly dropped it. It cracked, so he cooked it up right away as a pre-dinner snack.

About 3,000 more of these and we might be getting close to "worth it."

OK, look. This summer has been crap. It started out pretty fabulous: 80 degrees on Memorial weekend in Alaska? Unheard of. I was all "Yaaaaay! This is going to be the best summer EVAR!" But I was wrong. Rain, rain, and more rain.

And when you suffer through nine months of winter for the sole purpose of experiencing some of the very best and most beautiful summer weather in the world, as I do, and then that weather never comes? Insanity ensues.

First, you try to stay positive. "A little rain will just make everything greener and more fabulous and happy happy happy!" Then you think you'll just try to enjoy these couple weeks of wet weather, because any day now it's going to be scorching. Helps keep the wildfires at bay. But pretty soon after that, when the rain has stretched on through July and you know damn well that any real "summer" weather in August is unlikely... Then you start getting a little desperate. Panicky, even.

So a few weeks ago, when it was a little drizzly and Matt was off being an Alaska man in the woods somewhere, Lillia and I sat around reading stories. Then we ate. Then we watched a Strawberry Shortcake movie. Then we ate some more. Read more stories. By the time she went down for her nap - and left me all alone with my boredom - I was on the verge of institutionalization.

So when she woke up, I gave her a snack, put on her coat and shoes, and we drove over to the little local annual festival down the street. She rode a pony named Fireball. She went on a carousel. She went on the big slide. Three times. She won a little stuffed penguin at a fishing game booth and named it Gloria. She ate cotton candy. Then she started throwing fits so I knew it was time to go home.

      

But. Weeks later, she is still telling people about the "Fegetable" and Fireball and the big slide. And the fact that the sun wasn't shining doesn't seem to have made one bit of difference to her. The festival helped calm me down for a while, made me feel like we had some fun this summer.

But that was weeks ago. And it's STILL RAINING.

In order to escape the monotony this time, we are taking it to a new level. We leave for Idaho next Tuesday morning. It may not be a tropical vacation, but it's sunny and hot. And that is fan-freaking-tastic.

Last Saturday was hot and sunny, so Lillia and I had our lunch outside. Then we had popsicles and ran around the yard. Matt and I did yard work and then at dinner time, I grilled up some chicken and, once again, we ate outside.

It's a good thing we spent all that time outside on Saturday, because it has barely stopped raining since. Ninety-degree Idaho, here we come!

Lillia loves bubbles. Washing her hands tends to be a five-minute ordeal because she insists on playing with the bubbles that remain in the sink once we've turned the water off. EVERY TIME.

That love has become Shakespearean, apparently, as evidenced by a scene that played out in her bubble bath a few nights ago:

   Lillia: Mommy, where did all the bubbles go?

   Mommy: They are going away honey. They don't stay forever.

  Lillia, scooping up a handful of the few bubbles left in the tub and holding them in her outstretched hand: Goodbye, bubbles!

Then she kissed them gently and hugged them against her chest, eyes closed.

And...scene!

I'm pretty sure this kid is going to make me millions.

Lillia, after another round of nebulizer treatments: I love this daddy! My daddy is the best! Oh, there's Maccy dog! I love him!

Matt: Man, I want some nebulizer. That stuff's like baby ecstasy.

Yay! My first video post. Unfortunately, I still can't figure out how to load a Flickr video on here, so you get a link to YouTube instead...

I recently had a near-panic attack when I realized that we had a year's worth of Lillia footage on our recorder that hadn't been saved anywhere else. Matt loaded it all up on our computer and, last night, I decided to watch some of it.

I started sobbing when I saw this one. My baby, less than one year ago and so, so much more of a baby than she is now.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GKqsE3xt8hw