(sigh)

We all had a happy Easter. Veronica loved her Easter baskets - both the one I got her, and the one from Jason's family that contained two SpongeBob Squarepants DVD's. We got to see Zane, who is amazing in the things he can do; there's not a surface he can't climb or anything he can't open, and he's got an entire Sesame Street DVD memorized. He and Veronica played, and while in Dexter City, Veronica played with her cousin Derrick, who's around 6 years old and enjoyed chasing her around their grandpa's house.

The aforementioned "sigh", however, is for my current work situation. I don't want to go into too much detail. I don't know if I CAN go into too much detail. Suffice it to say, however, that things are really awkward around here (I'm on my lunch break), that this is my last week, and that a lot of things are still up in the air. In summation, it really sucks.

So off I go, back to work, waiting for the day, and then the week, to end. And since I'm still battling the Ohio plague, here's hoping I'm well enough tonight for a beer, because there's one waiting for me in the fridge at home and I sure could use it right about now.

Quick updates:

I'm sick again. A different bug is now going around. I asked Jason, exactly when did Ohio become a giant petri dish?

I may have a new job! Just need to hammer out some numbers. Salary and benefits and all that fun stuff. Still have an interview on Friday morning, and the whole process is still nerve-wracking.

Veronica's new haircut suits her well. She looks like a little kid now. Baby Veronica seems to be gone, and Little Girl Veronica has taken her place. I know I've said it before but I'll say it again: Where did my little baby go?

Carlos said he's heading up this weekend, and we're probably going to see Jason's family for Easter dinner. Veronica has a Dora the Explorer Easter basket waiting for her, with extra goodies to be placed inside (a couple small chocolates, but mostly more toys - a little SpongeBob and a stuffed giraffe, her favorite animal from her Baby Einstein World Animals DVD.)

Also, my old buddy Dave is apparently hitting town with the band he plays with, Edwin McCain (see the link on the side of the blog, I think of everything) in April. I just e-mailed him. Hopefully I can see him before the show or after (although they normally don't hang out a lot afterwards.) It will be the day before Veronica's second birthday, though, so I'm hoping we can still make it.

That's it for now. Still feeling a bit queasy, yet I'm hungry too and we need to go to the grocery store on top of it all. BAH. Off I go to be productive, if I can.

Tonight I took Veronica to a place called Snip Buzz Bangs for her first formal haircut; although Debbie has trimmed her bangs several times, and Jason snipped a bit of her hair less than 24 hours after she was born, she really hasn't had a real cut until now. She was sporting quite the baby mullet, so I took her in.

I was hoping she'd have fun, sitting in a little airplane and watching a SpongeBob video, but she ended up crying most of the time. I felt awful for her. And I kept apologizing to the woman cutting her hair, although the lady was completely nonplussed and even said that Veronica didn't act that badly. (I tend to apologize for my kid's behavior when she's the least bit fussy. I think this is a combination of anxiety that people will think I'm a bad mother or that Veronica is a bad kid. Part of this is my own insecurities, but I think part of it is the fact that few of my friends are parents themselves, leading me to constantly apologize at non-childproofed homes and pull Veronica's prying hands away from something dangerous, breakable, or both.)

I got the first haircut package, which included a Polaroid, a little frame, and a lock of her hair in a tiny ziplocked baggie. The Polaroid, alas, is not of a quality that I can scan. Here's hoping my regular photos will turn out better, and that someday I'll have a digital camera to upload such treasures immediately. :-) She looks adorable. Pardon my gushing, but I really didn't think it was possible for her to look any cuter, and I was wrong. I just can't wait to show everyone how nice she looks. So stay tuned for photos sometime, well, soon.

Like the new template?

I had to make a change, and decided on this one out of all the ready-made ones that Blogger offered. (Sorry, I'm not exactly a whiz at HTML to do my own.) I decided on the pink because I'm the mother of a little girl, and secretly, I probably like it for the Barbie-type look of it. Still a little girly for my tastes, but I really do like it better this way. I'll work on getting something resembling a decent picture of me posted up there later.

And I have comments now! Here's hoping one of y'all actually leaves me one.

More on Veronica later!

Tonight Veronica took her potty apart - first the seat, then the bowl. She then proceeded to run her hand around the rim, repeatedly saying "Wheeeee!" as she did so. While Jason presumed she was playing the world's largest wine glass, I correctly guessed what she was actually doing. "Honey," I told her, "that's a potty, not a racetrack for your cars."

(sigh)

Potty training is going to be SO much fun. :-P

Well, since I can only stress out about my job situation and log onto monster.com so many times in one day, I'm going to share some Veronica-isms with the rest of you:

1. Her affirmative answer:

It's not just "yes" or "yeah." It's "yeah, sure." When, of course, it isn't her default answer of "no!" which turns into "yes," or more likely, "yeah, sure." I don't know where she got this "yeah, sure" from. What frightens me is that she probably got it from me. As it stands, my baby sounds like a Valley girl and it's pretty amusing.

2. Her negative answer:

Most of the time it's a vehement "No!", repeated several times as necessary. But sometimes it's "no, huh-uh!" which makes me laugh.

3. Asking you to repeat something.

A video, or feeding her an orange slice - either way, it's always a combination of the following three things:

More!
Again!
(the sign language for "more," which involves her knocking her little fists together.)

All of these are used in combination and interchangably.

4. Excretory functions.

It's a compound word, apparently: Poop fart. She knows what farts sound like and will point them out - usually to me, which means that I can't wait until she says "Mommy fart!" in public - but she considers "fart" and "poop" to be one and the same and therefore says them both to refer to a Number Two. She has explained this logic somewhat, as grabbing her butt when she says this or following the words with "stinky." Well, yes, they both come out your butt and both are stinky. I'll explain the properties of a gas, a solid, and a liquid to her later in life. :-P

5. Blue's Clues

We watched this show today, and I found out that she refers to it as....


....wait for it....

"Cu-coos."

Yes. Like the clock. Or the bird. Good lord...

At least she's learning some new, non-amusing yet good phrases, such as "there you are!" and "I see you!" Plus she's starting to make up some songs that are mostly chants and babbles with references to Courtney, Spice, and "kitty" thrown in. And she's learning new ways to move around. Today she was walking on her knees and laying on the floor, pulling herself along with just her arms. Eh, she was having fun. (And cleaning the floor, apparently.) But I had to take a break to mention these, because they need to be recorded. Too, too funny.

Well, I hate to burst the happy bubble that this blog has been lately, but there has been some bad news this week. I'm being laid off. Not fired, which is good, but I still will not be working at my current position within the next three weeks or so.

This makes me rather sad, as I really like where I work and the people I work with. It wasn't perfect, but it was a really good place and I saw myself making a career there. I can't go into too much detail, but I will say that there's some restructuring and changes going on, and that I and a few other people just won't be there anymore.

It makes me upset too, of course. I know it could be worse, and talk of a severance package is in the works - I won't know details about it until next week - but I still have to go through the search for a new job. And dammit, I hate that. It's so stressful, and I'm not a big fan of uncertainty, especially when it comes to my livelihood and my family's finances.



Add the fact that I'm coming down with this cold/flu that everyone else has and can't seem to shake - Ohio's very own plague, apparently - and I just wanted to shout-out that I might be a bit preoccupied and not updating as much. I'll let all you loyal readers know when things are going a bit better. Or the next time Veronica does something amazingly advanced, cute, or frazzling. Whichever. :-)

Husbands.

Jason was home sick yesterday, so he was there to answer the phone when Squeaky's husband called with the good news about lil' Alexander Gregory, aka Xander. So Jason called me. I came home ecstatic, bubbling over the picture on her husband's blog and talking about their new little family. I ran out in the drizzly weather to grab a card at Hallmark, choosing one that brought a tear to my eye, it was so sweet. (But not cheesy. I don't do cheese. There was one card there that referred to the new baby as their ray of "son-shine" and I quickly vetoed that one. Good lord,who buys that crap?) I posted on my blog and keep going back to see pictures of the kid. In other words, this is big news to me, this is exciting for me, this means a lot to me. And it was all I could talk about yesterday evening.

It wasn't until around 11 p.m. last night that Jason said "oh, the phone number to her hospital room is on the fridge."

What?!

For those who have any idea of the timeline, let's point out that this is about, oh, twelve hours after I'd found out the news of the birth.

"Why didn't you tell me?" was, of course, my first question.

"Because you're not supposed to call today, anyway. They don't want any calls until tomorrow. After 10." Now, I've had a baby, I understand - they need some time to themselves, and after Squeaky went through 28 hours of labor before a c-section, I'm sure she needs even more rest than I did. But I told Jason "honey, you know I would've respected that, why didn't you tell me earlier?"He mumbled something about putting it off, and I said "you just forgot."BAH!

Jason, honey, I know you'll read this later, and know that I love you dearly, but for crying out loud! Biggest news of the day, I daresay the week (I'm really hoping not to get any news more important than this in the next seven days, because good chance it would be bad news this time around - I'm so sunny), and you forget to tell me. Honey, honey, honey.

At any rate, I got to talk to Squeaky for about 40 minutes this evening - sounds like she went through a rough time with the delivery, but she's happy and doing well, Xander is breastfeeding well, and all is good. I haven't heard her this happy in a long time. I'm so wonderfully happy for her and her husband.

As far as Veronica goes, here's some new things for her:

New words are too plentiful to mention. The nice thing is her abilityto figure things out and apply her new knowledge of language. For example, she knows that a dog says "woof," a duck says "quack", a kittycat says "meow," and a big cat says "roar!"

This one took me by surprise: We took a walk a few evenings ago, and we passed a vacant house with a mailbox that is leaning over pretty far. "Uh-oh!" Veronica said, looking at the mailbox. "I know, the mailbox is falling down, isn't it?" I replied. "That's because - you see that house?" "House?" she said, looking at the home in question. "Yes, that house,"I said. "There's nobody living in that house, nobody to take care ofthe mailbox. They all moved away." Still looking at this house,Veronica asked, very earnestly, "Where they go?" And that knocked me for a loop so much that I just had to stammer "Uh...I...don't...know where they went, honey, I guess they just moved into a different house." I guess that sufficed, she didn't ask again.

She also thinks she owns the TV, and tries to control what is on. She throws a royal hissy fit if she doesn't have access to the DVD player when she wants it, or doesn't get to watch exactly what she wants to see. Fortunately the Dora DVD has left her frequent rotation for the time being, but even so, you can only watch any one of her three BabyEinstein DVD's on a continuous loop for so long before you start going a bit mad. I guess the advantage is that she is learning from them - her new favorite animal is the giraffe, and she knows the colors red, green, and yellow - but Mommy and Daddy are going a bit nuts. Daddy had thea udacity to try and watch an old episode of CSI on Spike TV last night, and she threw a fit like you wouldn't believe. He even had to go to our bedroom to watch Teen Titans, which she normally likes.

I like the fact that she's learning, and that she has very distinct likes and dislikes, that she is clear about what she wants and doesn't want. But please, I'd like to watch "The Apprentice" in peace this week kiddo! Is that too much to ask?

I guess I can tie all of this together in saying that I can't wait to see little Xander and for Veronica and him to meet. I think it will be adorable. She loves babies, and even more funny, doesn't consider herself to be one. :-)

And I'm no longer the only mommy in my old circle of friends. Welcome to the club, Squeaky. :-)

Happy birthday, Alexander Gregory! A lovely name for an adorable baby.

Welcome to the world, Natto. It's a long strange trip. Enjoy the ride. :-)

And congrats to my friend who goes by the online moniker Squeaky Wheel, for all her hard work to produce such a huge, healthy baby. Best of luck to the whole family and love to them all. :-)

Veronica isn't quite as sick now, although she still has a runny nose and a pretty awful cough. But she's still just as cranky, if not more so. Her favorite word this week has been "No!" Right now she's being a little angel, watching her Baby Einstein DVD with rapt attention when she's not leafing through a book or dancing to the music. But this isn't indicative of the rest of the day. I'm thinking now that her crankiness has less to do with her illness and more with her age. Time to start reading up on How to Difuse a Temper...

The worst place she throws a hissy fit: Bookstores. Borders, Barnes N' Noble, wherever. It's because she loves bookstores. If she had her way, every tome would be ripped from the shelves and thumbed through. As this isn't condusive to actually shopping - or actually shopping in the same store again - there's always a battle of wills.

Well, Veronica's over here, throwing a toy car at the computer and talking to me. She gets jealous of my attention to the computer, and it makes me feel guilty. Time to go and play with my little girl. :-)

Veronica is still sick. She is cranky, she is entering her Terrible Two's. She throws tantrums and bangs her head against the wall and wails.

She is currently in the midst of a crying jag brought on by the fact that Daddy changed her dirty diaper, heaven forbid. I know this is a normal part of growing up. But no one ever claimed it was a fun part. :-P