So my birthday cake making efforts met with mixed success. The cake itself (banana cake) was really good - nice and light and just right. Unfortunately, the cream cheese icing was too too sickly. We just scraped it off and ate the cake naked. Maybe a chocolate icing would have been nicer. I'll have to do some research before I make the cake again
To Petra. She's two today. And now I have to make cake.....
For the past couple of months, Travis and I have watched "The Seven Ages of Rock", a BBC music documentary in seven parts (oddly enough), every Monday night. It finished up this week with a look at Britain's indie scene and the Brit Pop explosion of the late 90's. While I'm not sure that a scene that boasts Oasis and Blur as its best moments merits a whole episode, I came over all nostalgic at the footage of The Smiths (the godfathers of indie cool) performing This Charming Man on Top of the Pops some time in the early 80's. The quiffs, the droopy unbuttoned shirt, the waving gladioli (Morrisey's protest about having to lipsynch - he held flowers instead of a microphone), Morrisey's voice, Marr's guitar, the seedy sexy lyrics, and the general air of dissipation, - fabulous stuff.
As a teenager, I loved The Smiths for their campy over-the-top angst. Morrisey might be the gloomy king of adolescent loneliness and awkwardness, but he's also knowing and witty and wordy, which is just my thing.
I'd post a video but I can't get at Youtube. Vox is having trouble with its connections it would seem.
I thought that babies changed a lot in their first year, but I think now that the difference from 1 to 2 is even more dramatic. A 1-year-old is still a baby, while a 2-year-old is a little girl. Petra's baby fat has given way to a much more upright and sleek child build. She's beginning to look the way she will for the next few years, until the ravages of puberty hit.
Here she is then - November 2008.
A Petra update because I haven't posted one for a while.
She'll be two on Sunday. Already. This time last year, she was a fat baby who'd just taken her first teetering steps. Now she runs, jumps, balances on one foot, climbs stairs without holding on, climbs up onto everything she can, and yesterday rode her bike down the hill at Nanny's (much to Nanny's consternation). Petra's very poised physically and very confident about her abilities - she's only to happy to give things a go. She might just have some of her father's daredevilry in her.
She's also a big talker. We have long conversations about things like the helicopters that fly over and the house truck that occasionally parks outside our house (she's having a toddler vehicle enthusiasm at the moment). She tosses out her words and phrases - truck, copter, noise, look, etc, etc - and I translate them into whole sentences for her. We then repeat and repeat until we've thoroughly canvassed the subject. She has a few whole sentences at her disposal as well. The things she's figured out how to say give a nice insight into the egocentric workings of the toddler mind - "I will do it." "I don't want it." "I will get it." "Pick up, pick up," said with upraised arms and urgent hand gestures. "Come here" and "in here," used as she leads us round the house.
This morning, I noticed that someone from Riyadh had looked at my latest blog post. This is what the blog looks like for them.
Stephan LOVES Christmas. He sees the displays go up in stores and gets excited. We were walking through Kohl's a couple weeks ago and he saw their Christmas area and exclaims, "mommie, it's Christmastime here!"
Friday night I was out with a friend and we stopped in Target (the one near me is attached to the mall), I found a small tree that was $9. Didn't quite want to get it right then, but I knew that Stephan would probably love to have "Christmastime" in his room. I talked to Andy about it and we both agreed the tree was worth it. So after nap I said I wanted to go to the store and get a surprise for Stephan. He of course wanted to know what it was. When I told him I wanted to get him a tree for his room he didn't seem super enthused about the idea.
However, as he realized what I was saying he got a little more excited about things. When I showed him the little tree he got very happy and decided he wanted colored lights. We usually have white ones on the big tree, and I figured the colored ones wouldn't be as bright to leave on at night when he's going to sleep. We found the tree, the lights, a mini tree skirt and a few ornaments.
When we got home, the first thing we had to do was set up the tree, and put on some Christmas music. Stephan's a riot.
Everything always seems so much livelier through the eyes of a toddler.
That I am in fact still here. I don't have an ergonomic computer setup at the moment so I'm not doing much typing, lots of surfing, but no typing.
In my virtual absence, life has been going along quietly here. It's spring and the rhododendrons are blooming. Petra and I walk round our garden most mornings looking at the flowers. I haven't had a garden for 10 years and had forgotten the deep satisfaction to be had from pottering amongst the plants even in a garden as tiny and down at heel as ours. 70-odd years worth of over-ambitious gardeners have crammed it to bursting with too many, too big, too close together trees and shrubs. Our gardening efforts so far have been very Costa Rican - we've taken to the bushes with saws, loppers, and secateurs, and have removed three trees so far. And I plot further destruction in my walks with Petra - she smells flowers while I pick shrubs for the chop. All the camellias and a couple of sad-looking rhododendrons are on my condemned list, and I plan to prune the hell out of the remaining rhododendrons next autumn.
- 04:45 Just uploaded 12 new photos to my SmugMug "Music > HDH próba Pilly nélkül" gallery: bit.ly/3IjE5y #
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I haven't done this in FOREVER, so here's a few at least.
- Thankful that our ultrasound went well yesterday. From what the tech said, baby is healthy. We enjoyed seeing the baby and trying to pick out all the organs she was showing us. The heart is by far the coolest.
- Thankful Andy made it safely to work. He had to go out in this awful snowy mess and not only made it all the way to work but it only took him an extra 15-20 minutes, which isn't bad when it's almost a 60 mile trip!
- Thankful Stephan seems to be napping. Most of the sledders out there aren't being too loud and I turned his music up pretty loud and have the wash going, just hoping he's able to get a good two hours before something wakes him up!
- Thankful for my new phone. While I've yet to find a shopping list program I'm in love with, and am still using my old Palm with HandyShopper, I like everything else about it, well everything except that the battery life isn't the greatest, but I'm working on figuring out how to make it last longer.
- Thankful I've not had to worry about work. We are on fall break, so now bonus snow days, but at least I don't have to worry about whether or not they are going to close my school for the day.
That's pretty much it. I've got to get some lesson planning done. Sunday I'm teaching our class. Going through the book of Esther. I worked on it some yesterday, but need to get my thoughts better organized still.
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