The DieDie Blog

As I look around my toy infested living room, I realize that I’ve neglected to post any baby stuff recently. So let’s dive right in to the amazing and awesome developments.

As of the 20th our little one is now 6 months old. Throughout these few months she’s undergone some tremendous changes. First up on the list is her vocabulary. At first it was strewn with random “mmm’s” which then moved on to “mom’s” much to my smug delight. But it was like a waterfall had been unleashed. Soon we were barraged with strange pterodactyl like screeches, bababa’s and just recently the dada’s. She’s pretty much gone through a good chunk of the alphabet and I’m sure that was helped by our daily singing of the ABC’s to her. Now with the onslaught of words has come a few responses. Or at least we assume that’s what they are. There have been a couple of instances where I’ve asked Amelia to say hi to someone either on the phone or in person and have actually gotten something that sounded remarkably like a “hi”. Even just tonight while Dustin was given her a bath I heard him say something about her duck and quite distinctly heard a “duck” back from Amelia. It’s friggen awesome! I’m pretty giddy at the thought of being able to communicate with her soon, even though I know it’s still a ways off.

The next item on our update list is the emergence of two very white, very sharp teeth. After months of letting her chew on our fingers and hands it was instantly brought to a halt with the introduction of pain as she chomped merrily on flesh. I think not little girl! Boy am I glad I’m not breast feeding anymore. The mere thought makes my eyes widen with fear.

But of course, with the development of these two bottom lurkers comes the cranky times. She’s been pretty amazing with dealing with it, but when no amount of food, sleep, or chomping toys can albeit her crankiness we pull out the Tylenol. I’m not really a big fan of pulling out the drugs to deal with things, but if we’ve tried all other methods and she’s still not getting any relief and I know I have a remedy just sitting in the reserves, damn straight I’m gonna use it. Once she’s had a dose everything goes back to normal.

So now that we have teeth of course we need to introduce food! This I am really excited about. Milk’s all well and good, but there’s a world of culinary delights out there just waiting for eager taste buds to try. And I want to present as many as I can to her. Her first food was a baby carrot. It was not mushed up but just straight from the packet. Our reasoning? Clearly it helps with her gums and teething. From there I moved on to mushed carrots in a store bought jar. With her first spoon full she quickly thrust it out with her tongue and made the sourest of expressions. I laughed and thought oh how cute! Until I tried the mixture myself… YUCK!

After having sweet baby carrots and then trying this muck I could understand why she thrust it out of her mouth so quickly. It was then that I decided to make my own baby food for her. I got some carrots and used my nice new blender and attempted to mush it up. Large chunks whizzed around the glass, clearly not the mushy texture I was hoping for. You’d think that making your own food wouldn’t be that bad, but alas I had no real experience with making smoothie type stuff. I eventually figured it out with adding some water. The blender whizzed happily to life and then I had the orangey mush I had hoped for. Except the taste was very watered down much like the store bought variety. I had a plan! Sugar! I added a small amount and brought it back up to a carroty taste.

Round 2 with the carrots. My homemade concoction worked better. She still pulled faces and got most of it on her face, hands and bib, but she did eat it as well. From here we’ve tried peas though not as successful yet and applesauce. The applesauce is store bought, but it’s a lot better than the carrots. We just had that today and managed to devour half the jar. She’s still a bit rusty with the swallowing, though I know that will come in time and with a lot more practice. It’s still pretty impressive to me.

Lastly, we have movement. This girl can move like there’s no tomorrow. Take your eyes off her for a second and she’s half way across the room. She still hasn’t quite got the concept of crawling, but that doesn’t stop her in the least. She’s moved on from her caterpillar crawl and has learned to prop herself up on both hands and knees. She’s almost got the mechanism down for moving one knee then a hand then the other knee. What usually happens though is that she’ll elevate off her knees and try to move forward with her feet. It works fairly well too. Currently, we have to watch her as she’s trying to pull herself up on everything and walk. That would be our fault too. For a while now, our munchkin has been wanting to stand so we’ve put her on the ground and supported her with nothing but our fingers for balance. Amelia’s learned how to mimic us and put one foot in front of the other and walk. So much so that when she’s excited she’ll run to whomever she wants to see, giving the person supporting her a nice little burst of hunched over walking.

So that’s what’s been going on in baby world in a nutshell. Enjoy the little photo album of cuteness.

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Til next week!

This past Friday I attended our local gym’s Zumba class. I’d been looking forward to this day all week and had even managed to con one of my friends from work into joining me. So as Julie and I stepped into the very purple club with our very purple clothes on (apparently it was just a purple day) we were both giddy as school kids. After a brief stop off at the front desk to pay for our punch cards we were given a brief tour of the Women’s Fitness Company and shown the room for the Zumba class.

It was dark much like a club would be and lit by a foreign ambiance, also very club like. With the promise of burning calories to some awesome dance moves, we quickly shed our purple attire and got dressed in our Zumba outfits. Julie’s was far more appropriate than my very loose shirt and pants, but as I’m the fat one and she the skinny one, I felt no shame in my choice. I was after all there to shed the weight anyhow. We stepped back into the room and it was already going. A woman stood up front on a raised platform and the Latin beats blared out across the room.

The room itself was pretty full and finding a suitable place to gyrate took a minute of adjusting, especially when the arms began to flail about. But soon we were frantically trying to mimic the movements of the lady in front of us. It was clear right from the start that this was not the beginners class or at least most of these people were pretty quick to catch on. There was no audible lead, it was merely monkey see, monkey do. And while that’s all well and good, it took me more than a few tries to get some of the moves down. Luckily, there was a lot of repeating so if the first 2 or 3 times didn’t click the 7th one would.

Before I knew it, I was tired. My legs were bitching at me in the most sordid of ways, exclaiming that they thought they’d been retired. And the rude awakening of jumping around without stretching was a breech of contract. Never the less, I huffed and puffed on. Was I having fun? Hell yeah I was! So while I was sweating up a storm and quickly tiring my rarely used muscles out, I was still enjoying myself. That was the point after all. Get a good work out without the bore of actual exercising.

After about 30 minutes I was dying, so I ducked out of the room and to the most beautiful thing in the world: a water fountain. Slurping up the delicious wetness, I remembered that I hated the taste of water. So back in the room I went. Song after song went by with Latin dance moves, tribal dance moves, semi street moves! It was awesome! Until I saw my jiggly dancing butt in the mirror. I’ve always despised that about gyms. Sure when I’m beautiful I’ll enjoy it, but not when I’ve got belly fat flopping all over the place. Luckily, there were people in front of me and a simple half step slide cured me of that for the rest of the class.

I wish I could tell you in depth what moves or dances we did, but I can’t. I don’t know the names of them and I can vaguely recall some if you’d like me to jiggle it out for you. Honestly, if you’re really intrigued I recommend you go try it out. It is fun for those of you that would like to work out in a dance club type setting. The moves weren’t too hard, but it was the pace and the constancy that made me sweat and then later on hurt. But, it was nothing a nice hot shower couldn’t cure. So Zumba, you I like. I’ll be jiggling and wiggling again this Friday.

This past weekend Carly and I attended a mini wedding expo. Apparently it’s a prelude to the much bigger one coming on the 23rd. Thank goodness I say to that as the one we attended was.. well very mini. It was held at one of the local hotels here and had just enough booths to get you wondering. But not enough to actually plan anything.

The first booth we ran across was of course the gym one. Get yourself into shape so you don’t look like a fat ass at your wedding! Yeah, I gotta agree with that. After packing on the pounds it was definitely something of interest to me, but not something I wanted to dive right into and investigate. I mean I was there for the wedding stuff after all! So we by pass the fitness guru’s and dive headfirst into the frenzy. What are we greeted with first? Why cake of course! There were little slices of every cake to choose from, but we held out. There was still so much to see and the runway show had already started.

We crowded around to the edge of the stage and watched in hopeful fascination of the dresses. But alas, neither of us were too impressed. There were flamboyant dresses which resembled albino peacocks to short Sunday dresses for the more casual or boring. Nothing even remotely had a splash of color beyond a different shade of white. Bleh! So the wedding dresses were a bust but there were a couple of bridesmaid dresses that weren’t too bad. Either way we stopped watching about half way through and started to check out the booths around us.

We had a couple of photo booths, David’s Bridal, Avon, and a sound system booth right by us. We headed out of that aisle after signing up for a chance to win some free stuff and looped around to the middle aisle. Here there was another photo/video booth, make up booth, and an insurance booth. We stopped here as a we were now directly in front of the runway, and decided to watch the last of the show. Still nothing of worthwhile mentioning presented itself and Carly and I both were disappointed in the lack of styles for our personal tastes.

Then the announcer introduced the girls from the Women’s Fitness Company. They were going to demonstrate Zumba to us. The music cranked up to a hip hop latin beat and the girls wasted no time jumping into the thick of it. I was enthralled. It was a cross between a hip hop dance video and a street dance. I liked it. Carly frowned at the popping ladies clearly unimpressed and stated that only people that liked Dancing with the Stars or those dance movies would like this. I of course grinned at her and let her know I liked those things and I did enjoy this Zumba routine I was baring witness too. After the demonstration ended we wandered around the last aisle of booths. Still nothing spectacular. We did see a few unique cake toppers though, but everything else was far too girly for our tastes.

So with our bag full of flyers and business cards we slipped out of the ballroom and I made a bee line for the WFC booth. Zumba had definitely caught my attention and I wanted to get as much information on it as I possibly could. While there we also signed up for a drawing for a free year membership with spa/massage benefits. Hey you never know right? While I didn’t sign up right then and there I do have a date with a Zumba class this Friday with them. I’m looking forward to it.

Having been disappointed with the not so impressive wedding expo Carly and I decided to head over to a shop in Phoenix that has Alfred Angelo dresses. Both of us have our sights set on that particular makers style. But before we entered, Carly had a tale of caution for me. The online reviews for this place stated that the owner was a complete bitch. A very bossy, her way, rude type of lady. So armed with that knowledge we braved the ice waters of the bridal store.

This shop was overflowing with bridal gowns. From every style to designer, this lady had it stacked! I was impressed with the sheer amount of wedding gowns that overflowed from the racks. You couldn’t move around without pushing aside a gown of some sort. We had hope of finding our dresses here and so we dove in to begin our search. About half way through out pops this elderly lady in a bright red jacket. She looked harmless enough, that was until she opened her mouth. She asked us if she could show us anything and we explained that we were just looking and that our wedding dates were still a bit out there. This lady’s response? Well I’ll tell you right now, your just wasting your time. Whoa! Seriously? Did I just hear this old codger right? Yes I did. Clearly she didn’t want us in her shop unless we were ready to buy, as getting an idea for your dress is not the way to go. We were probably wasting her time, oh the nerve of us brides.

Obviously, I was put off but Carly decided to hear her out and we did end up getting a nice tour of the store and where to find gowns of certain material. So the old bitty did do something nice there. We looked around and then low and behold stumbled across Carly’s dream dress. It was the one she’d seen online and the instant she saw it in person she knew it was the one for her. I tried to convince her to try it on, but to no avail and I can’t blame her in that store. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to find the dress I’d picked out online but that didn’t matter. We’d at least found one of them. The old lady came up and commented on what a beautiful dress it was and here I had began to hold out some hope that maybe she wasn’t so bad after all.

She then asked me when my wedding date was and I explained that I was going to wait a couple years so that our 5 month old daughter could participate. “Oh you don’t want to wait that long.” She replied. I protested that I was going to be with the man for the rest of my life so a few years wasn’t anything to worry about. It was then that the old lady disappeared and the wicked witch of the west returned. Out from her mouth spewed forth words that I could only guess were fueled from past failed marriages.”That’s only if the marriage vows hold up.” Ok, you work in a bridal shop, where hopeful women come to you for the ultimate dress. And this is the attitude you have? Clearly you don’t want our business. We left shortly after.

Now, I don’t care that she’s the most stocked bridal shop in Southern Oregon, with treatment like that I’m not going to be buying jack shit from her. Plus with all the negative comments on her site I’m wondering how in the world she stays in business. If anyone opens up a shop in competition and is welcoming and more relaxed they’d make a killing and run that old bag of pretentious crap right out of the valley. I wonder if it’s the fact that she’s the biggest store around Medford that made her that way or if that’s just how she is? Hmmm. Either way, if your to the point of getting fed up with brides then get the hell out of the business and hand it over to those cheerful bubbly sort. Don’t piss off the customers that actually have the cash to buy the expensive dresses from you just because you think you know what’s best.

That’s my piece for tonight. Ranting is done and I’m looking forward to some ZUMBA!

DieDie's Engagement Ring

My New Year’s Eve was slightly different from previous years. I did have it in my mind to describe the awesome party, the toasts, or whatever random acts our friends got in to. Instead I ended up experiencing one of those once in a lifetime events that made the whole world shine just that much brighter.

On New Year’s Eve, we had Amelia dropped off at our friends house so we could have a couple of hours to ourselves. Our plans were to have dinner and then to head back to get Amelia. Dustin had also just gotten a package in the mail which was my final Christmas present so I would receive it at dinner. After we had dropped Amelia off we went on our way and Dustin said he needed to make a stop first. While driving he handed me a book to read as the first part of my present. It was a custom made book he had created of our memories together throughout the last year. I started to tear up the moment I began reading it.

I read through almost half the book when we arrived at our location. It wasn’t the sushi restaurant though, it was a spot on the mountain behind our house that overlooks the city. It looked amazing at night with all the twinkling lights. Dustin paused my reading and said he wanted to give me a hug. So we hopped out of the car and hugged each other. I had completely forgotten that he’d said this was the “first” part of my present. He took the book from me and flipped to the last page to read aloud a speech written on it. Dropping to one knee and pulling out the ring, this is what he said:

“The event that will go down in our life on this day is when I got down on one knee to spill my heart to you. I couldn’t help but fall in love with you when I finish my speech I asked if you would honor me and become my wife. Diane will you marry me?”

With tears in my eyes I said yes, I will.

It was truly a perfect moment in my life. I dare say The perfect moment. So I welcomed 2010 in with teary eyes, the love of my life, and a huge rock on my finger. 2010, you friggen rock!