Halloweeny

Two writers sitting on the couch, lamenting on the task of documenting Baby's First Halloween. When Pippa reads this in 16 years she may try for emancipation. Especially when she learns that I ate her special cupcake. Or that I failed to find a pumpkin large enough to carve and we "borrowed" the neighbors for a photograph.


The decorations were purchased a mere 6 days before the 31st and my spooky music was a bust. To top the failure, Pippa fell asleep at 6:45 pm, the excitement of seeing too many goblins an ghosts (actually we got a lot of pirates). When she woke up an hour later we did a quick costume change and tried to teach the concept of handing out candy. She's great at grabbing toostie rolls from the bowl, not so good at giving them to others.

My Little Herbivore

One redeeming quality about our home is the leaves. I've only raked one time, because I thought the neighbors might come after us with pitch forks, but really I love have a splatter of yellow, orange, and red on our walk way and yard.

Today I let Pippa play in the leaves long enough to get dirt on all her white clothing. As you'll see in the photos, she blissfully ignored her mama in favor of munching on some brilliant leaves. Maybe the various colors taste different.

This is sooo not the basement.

Mom's really leaving me here. Alone?!

Yay!

This leaf looks a little big for one bite. I'll have to minimize it.

That's better. No one here to stop me.

Tastes a little earthy and bitter mom, kinda like that oatmeal you gave me.

I refuse to be incriminated by these phot....was that a chipmunk?

Leaves tear just like magazine pages.

Dad would get a kick out of this. Where is he?

Oh well. More for me!

Bananas

We've been experimenting with solid foods, and we've encountered some not so pleasant surprises. Sweet potatoes make Pippa's face pucker. Green beans make her gag. Oatmeal makes her throw up. All this caused a major regression on solids intake, she wouldn't even considered eating her favorite rice cereal. Just sitting in the highchair has become cause for alarm.

Grandma, with her wisdom and bean whisperingness, told me to forgo the expert opinions (cereals, then veggies before fruit, because we now want babies to hate life) and try a banana. Naturally sugary and sweet. Pippa was skeptical at first but then decided her mom was no longer trying to trick her and enjoyed her three small helpings. The last round being right before her bath.

A bath. Where she soaked and played and had her hair washed, multiple times. Someone in our family thought that a bath needed some moisture saving element and added baby oil. Even after washing her hair and rinsing it with clean water, Pippa's hair shines like teenage boy's slicked back 'do.

As annoyed as I was last night, I am confused and thankful this morning. While I was holding her on my lap I noticed a suspicious clump in her hair. A clump of mashed up banana, that should be dried and  gluelike. I braced myself for some tearing as I started to pull the clump out of her hair. It slipped right out. I'm still not sure how it got there, but I'm certain her oiled hair helped the dried food make a clean exit.

Hoodwinked

Who doesn't love a good internet scam? The girl who spends her entire day caught in the interweb of deceit.

Skip gave me his old Mac to use when my Sony became slug-like and lost sound and video capabilities. Now four months later, I am unable to open a browser on Safari. Not a big deal except I work from home (online) and am enrolled in a master's program (online).

So I tried updates, reboots, some powering down time for the MacBook. When I failed as a tech genius I called Apple for back up. Soon I was talking to tech support, who told me they could fix my computer with remote access, for a fee of course. Somewhere in the back of my mind, the sane voice whispered "no" while my outdoor voice said "yes". Within moments I connected to a techy who stumbled through the same steps I had.

I kept explaining that I had already done this and that. Then I problemed solved on my own for a bit and got further then the supposed geek on the phone. By now I was regretting my outdoor voice, but I also thought I was in the hands of an Apple pro and was willing to listen. Then he told me to run a hard drive scan and he'd call me back in 30 min. An hour later, after solving a couple other crises, I decided to call him back with the "direct" number I'd been given. (Yeah, laugh people. I know how it sounds. I too was suspicious.)

A new techy answered and I explained in agonizing detail what was happening. He too was at a loss and had me reboot and try again. Frankly, the computer could be malfunctioning due to the thousands of reboots they had me do. No luck, and the parting wisdom was, "You're going to have to clear everything and reinstall the system with the discs from your original purchase."

Ahhh...right. I'll just grab those out of my pocket. But at least the techy told me I could go to Apple and repurchase the system. wow.

So I hung up. Thought about the cash monies I spent to have someone tell me to go repurchase my computer and thought, "Self, you've been duped."

Then I called Apple (mind you I just hit redial from a few hours previous). Talked to an Apple customer service rep who tells me that he cannot issue a refund because there is no such tech support.

"We don't have a plan similar to what you're describing."

Apple apparently doesn't charge people for calling with questions, which is what my gut was telling me all along.

And the final zing: my MacBook system is too old for Apple to offer support/protection (at this point we were talking riddles to each other).

So back to the scam artists. I took the necessary precautions with my credit card, refusing payment, canceling card, etc. My credit card company finds the charge under a "legit" tech support company and gives me the phone number. Armed with new information I call and demand my refund.

They would gladly give me a refund, says the ebonics-speaking "helper" who answers my call, but I'd be charged for speaking with a technician. Riiiiiight, who was the technician? The 15-year-old who told me to figure out how to get online so he could help me, or the guy who told me to go to Apple to repurchase my computer software?

A lively back and forth debate ensued during which I was asked if I thought I could return food that I had purchased from the grocery store after I decided I didn't want it.

Yes, I responded, actually I can, especially if it's expired, or an empty cereal box, or has a toe in it, all of which applied to this situation. You see, they offered me the product of remote access to fix my computer. They could not get remote access. I purchased a non-existent product (the empty cereal box).

As I laid out my ace, and she had no retort, she gave in. I had won. And then there was silence. Followed by a reluctant acknowledgement that she could not deny I was right. My refund will be applied toward my new computer.

Hey Jealousy

After we married, Skip caught a little bug called baby lust. He'd see a cute baby with a cute mommy and go nuts then turn into a pile of mush and excitement as he simultaneously become nostalgic and prophetic. Crazy times. I on the other was totally cool and patted his head in mockery.

Now I have my own form of baby lust, or envy, jealousy, otherwise known as competitive dressing with my Bean. Most days Pippa wins hands down. I dress her in an adorable outfit, post a picture and mourn my sweats. Then in a fit of optimism I went shopping for myself and bought a matching sweater jacket. Since it has not arrived I felt unfulfilled.

Browsing online I noticed that Old Navy had some cool new pop color rockstar pants. Hello. Sounds fancy. Normally, when I'm not hopped up on hormones, I wear deep dark colors like black or navy. With a baby girl and her various shades of pink, that is the only color I see. It looks wonderful on a 7 month old so clearly I, too, needed hot pink pants. Done. Pippa and I will match for the next 10 years.

Aunt Amber Said

Sleep training. Ugh.

Let's recap. I suffer with other people's children daily. I force them to learn through tears, screams, kicks, bites and mountains of developmental disabilities. And it doesn't phase me. I walk out the door and smile feeling good about the chaos I created and ended in an hour's time. In fact in my office I'm well loved and hated for being strict and firm. Hard core.

Enter motherhood and an infant that refuses to sleep through the night. Oh trust me I know why. I co-slept for during her first few months, especially when her dad was in Africa and Pippa and I were traveling across the West. Then we came home and moved into a new house, took a little road trip, I started school and BOOM! I was a zombie sloppily wiping sleep from my eyes and drool from my text books.

In a not so rare fit of self pity, I called my sister Amber and asked about her baby who is a two months older than Pippa. He's sleeping soundly through the night. Pippa was waking up every 30-45 minutes and wanted to be fed and held for nearly an hour. And that's when Aunt Amber said the awful obvious truth: Pippa needed sleep training. So we cried it out, for two hours at a time that first night. Every time Pippa took a breath and wound up for another shriek, I just looked her in the eye and told her to sleep "because Aunt Amber said so."

Yep, strict and firm.

Reunited

School has officially started for me, which means summer has officially ended. And in some ways I'm glad. Pippa was too young to wear sunblock, and the humidity out here negates the shade, so we spent most our time indoors anyway. We also fit in two family reunions, one built around my brother's wedding and the other built around a NASCAR detour. Both extraneous events ended with tired eyes and huge smiles and to prove the success of our relations with our loved ones, I'll post some photos.

(Disclaimer: We constantly loose and misplace our cameras. Even when we've packed them in our pockets for the event. So we don't always have pictures of everyone we'd like to. Blame it on bad planning.)

Swimming in the river, a daily occurrence in Arkansas.

Who knew there was great shopping in Mena? These girls.

The non-photo bombed edition. I was in big trouble for ruining the family portrait...

Pippa's blessing the day after Travis and Jessica were married.

Those under 10 nearly outnumber the rest of us!

The Skipper's crew for Pippa watching.

Infamous group hug.

Sister photo. Did I mention we all had babies over the year?

Yai Yai and Papou