Thunder Up

I know The Hater and I have been too consumed with baby to talk about OKC's NBA basketball team and how much they rock. It's really a shame because they are playing very well this season; we've been pleased with them.

If you'd told us at the beginning of the season that we'd be playing game 6 of the playoffs we'd have likely thanked you for your optimism, but thought that you were a crazy person.

I've warmed up to the name "Thunder", but still despise the logo. The Hater likes Rumble, the mascot, but is weirded out by his bangs. Regardless of our trivial hang-ups, we're pumped for tonight and hoping for the best.

allergic to April

This is the time of year when Sister becomes the epitome of pitiful. Her eyes swell out of her head, the skin around her eyes chaps from the tears, and she becomes a skinny allergy machine. She's learned that she just simply can't touch her face if she's been outside. She has to shower when she gets up in the morning, then again when she gets in to wash off the pollen. She takes the path past the least amount of flowers when she walks out to her car in the mornings. She just says, "I'm allergic to April."

The Hater and I have seasonal allergies, too, but we'll be the first to admit they're not anywhere as close to as bad as Sister's are. I take loratidine year round and add an extra prescription allergy medicine for March until things die off again. The Hater takes three allergy medicines this time of year, too.

We assumed that Baby would inherit some sort of seasonal allergies, too, but we were hoping she wouldn't grow into them until many years from now.

If you remember, Baby has been on antihistamines for several weeks now because of the welts. She's been on Singulair plus Zyrtec, which has made her a little cranky, but relatively fine with it all. We've been none the wiser, too.

Well, last night Mom of the Year forgot to give her the Zyrtec. I remembered about it after she'd already gone to bed, but The Hater and I decided we shouldn't wake her up to give it to her. She woke up later in the night and we decided not to give it to her... Well, this morning she woke up in a fairly good mood. As I was changing her she scrunched her face and looked at me funny before sneezing out a huge wad of snot. That was the beginning of several sneezes followed by several Tablespoons of snot followed by little hands rubbing it all over her face. I gave her the Zyrtec before I took her to day care this morning with apologies, of course.

I really figured she'd be better within a couple of hours, and that's exactly what I told the day care lady when I handed Snotty to her this morning.

This afternoon I picked up Snotty. Her upper lip and cheeks were chapped from the ever-flowing nasal fountain paired with the extra saliva of teeth-cutting (because it'd be too easy if we only had one mountain to climb at a time).

Next week we're going to have to take her off of everything in anticipation of her appointment with the pediatric allergist. I totally dread the experience ahead for her. I can't imagine facing this time of year without the precious antihistamines.

I remember telling the pediatrician last year at her three month appointment that I thought she had the same seasonal allergies that The Hater and I had. He told me that allergies develop after continued exposure and the probability of her having actual "allergies" were slim to none because she hadn't really been around long enough to be overly exposed to things. I questioned this, but, hey, he was the doctor with all that fancy schoolin'.

Baby took her antihistamine about 13 hours late and paid the price of her inherited allergy to April. If they tell me again this year that she doesn't have seasonal allergies I'm going to tell them they're crazy, and I may just say it as plain as that. I've since added "seasonal allergies" to her list of complaints for the specialist.

You will hear every tenacious detail of 1/3 of our home being off of antihistamines soon. I can only imagine what she'll be thinking... My Precious! O my Precious! We wants it, we needs it. Must have the Precious. They stole it from us. Wicked, tricksy, false! Give us the Precious!

dust bunnies

Many things in our life have changed in the last 13 months. Some things, like being able to sleep late, vanished immediately. Some things, like making sure goodies are put away at our hip level, will turn into things being put totally out of sight when she gets older.

Now that we have a toddler, the ability to slack on vacuuming is a new change we cannot ignore. Dust bunnies, pieces of dead grass, forgotten thrown bites of goodies hidden under the high chair - any little piece of anything that can be picked up and eaten will be eaten. Our days of being lax on the floors are behind us. In order to cut down on unplanned non-nutritious snacking, we're going to have to increase the frequency of our floor cleaning.

Vacuuming now is not an easy task. I carry baby in a sling and vacuum while The Hater goes around in front of us and moves furniture out of the way and around so that I can get under and around it. The process takes us about 30 minutes, but it's a really really really long half hour. Baby likes it - the whole thing totally zones her out. However, she's about outgrown the sling, so I'm not entirely sure how much longer we'll be able to make this game plan work.

I've tried the dust mop to pick up between the vacuum-adventures. It's okay in a pinch, and it's certainly better than just letting baby feast on the dregs... but it's not very effective. Because of this we've become the family who makes a concerted effort to steer baby away from the bigger dust bunnies towards the end of the week, the family who believes that a little cat hair never hurt anybody. (Actually, we tell her it's roughage.)

broken hearted bye-bye

This is the second consecutive night that I've had to go back to work in the evening. Usually this only happens a few times a month, but this month it so happened that the nights were consecutive. I'm really tired today, and moreso anticipatorily tired for tomorrow because I have to be at work crazy early for an important committee meeting.

The Hater came in tonight while baby and I were eating supper. After everybody finished eating and cleaning up I really didn't have long before I had to leave to go back to work. Baby was playing with her toys. I said goodbye to her and she ignored me. I kissed The Hater and she continued to ignore me.

As I walked to the kitchen to get my purse I think she figured out what was going on. She started yelling "bye bye! bye bye! bye bye!!" really excited and walked in third gear over to me. I picked her up and she immediately looked at The Hater and waved and said "bye bye" to him. She thought she was going, too.

I kissed her on the cheek and told her that Mommy was going bye-bye and she was going to stay home to play with Daddy. I handed her to Daddy, grabbed my purse, and walked out of the house to her screaming her head off.

Sometimes it's really hard to be 12 months old. Sometimes it's hard to be 384 months old, too.

mystery solved

Tonight as I was getting baby ready for bed The Hater came into the nursery announcing that he had something funny to tell me. Indeed, he solved the case of the missing sippy cup. But in all fairness to us, it really blended in with her toys. (And here's a picture to prove it.)

I'm proud to add that we found it before the ants did.

the case of the missing sippy cup

This afternoon we lathered up in sunscreen and went down the road to the swing-set playground. Baby swang and swang until she couldn't stand swinging anymore. It was much fun, and then we came back to the house. I handed baby a half-full sippy of diluted pear juice and started on supper. The Hater played with her while I got supper together. We ate supper without much fanfare or excitement, although baby went goo-goo-ga-ga over some baked veggie nuggets and steamed carrots.

After supper The Hater and I started cleaning up when we began looking around for baby's sippy cup. Long story short - we have torn the house apart and looked in every nook and under every cranny. Alas, no sippy cup.

We have no idea where the ant magnet could be hiding, but we hope that baby stumbles across it tomorrow... or at least really, really soon.