Karen & Amos

Tuesday, January 26, 2010

the cat is out of the bag... i mean, house...

when i moved in with amos, we had his dog Nippy and my cat Pickles. a perfect nuclear furfamily. that was almost 3 years ago. two weeks before our wedding, we were at the barn/historic civil war plantation where we had our ceremony and reception and we found a family of abandoned kittens. the owners let us take one home. we named him Sparkplug. (we're wierd. whatever). at the wedding, my aunt, who is president of a large animal shelter in new jersey, rescued another of the kittens, took him home to get him healthy, and then gave him back to us a few months later. we named him Gigabit. everything was happy in family land.

then, we went to petco to look at the kitties. well... we walked out with a cat. (not from the store. there was a family there trying to find a new home for their pet since they were moving. i don't believe in buying from pet stores. much better to rescue IMO). great. we named her Sammy. (amos technically named her Samantha Sandwich, but i'm not going there...)

DEVIL CAT. OMG. she has eaten SO MANY of Madelyn's bottle nipples, the rings, toys, everything. all the bottle caps have gnaw marks on them. she shreds paper, eats plastic bags, tore our new curtains, jumps on the counters, unrolls the toilet paper, steals things off amos's desk, fights with the other cats, steals the baby's socks, shredded our brand new quilt my mom made for our wedding (fixed already), eats our food. we caught her once on the stove sitting in the middle of our fry pan... eating our dinner. oh and yesterday she chewed through her THIRD macbook charger. those things are EXPENSIVE. Amos said he was sad she wasn't electrocuted. i *think* he was joking. GAH.

so yesterday we threw her outside. or "placed" outside i should say. placed gently and non-abusively. outside. FOREVER. she's still our kitty. i believe in forever homes and we made the decision to adopt her, so she's ours for life. a very very long life.... anyways. she's got her little collar, and i made a temporary outside shelter for her out of a cardboard box, plastic bag for waterproofing, and an old blanket. going to do something better in a few months when we have dollars to spare for an igloo or something. she loves being outside. i can tell she misses the inside, playing her (the baby's...) toys and everything, but i just can't do it.

last night was great. we left some mail on the dining room table. i left baby bottles on the counter. we left amos's office door open, when i woke up this morning (on my own, not from having a cat claw my eyes out asking for breakfast) everything was still in its place. it was fan-tastic. right now, i'm even using our bottle drying rack out on the counter. with things on it! drying! wow!!

the sad part, is this is "madelyn's cat." we got sammy about 2 weeks before maddy was born. they hang together during tummy time. but i guess an almost-4-month old doesn't really care if "her cat" is outside now. :-)

ahh. sweet relief.

Friday, January 1, 2010

white christmas

this year marked madelyn's first christmas, and it was a great first christmas. it was a little tiring because we had to split it between both families. next year, not so much. we're going to have one family get thanksgiving and the other get christmas, and trade off each year where we do each holiday. i'm putting my foot down on this as it is just too much for the baby (and us) to spend the christmas holiday traveling here and there and doing all kinds of funky hours.

anyways, back to christmas. the festivities started off with amos' aunt's annual christmas eve party. as usual, there was a lot of extra delicious food. we're so lucky to have such wonderful cooks in both of our families, and since they do completely different styles of food, we get a great variety wherever we go. i do have to say, that i love aunt lu's macaroni and cheese. sorry, mom. :-)

maddy received her first gift that night. (well, we had gotten her 3 richard scarry books already, but they weren't necessarily christmas presents, it just happened to be christmas when we got them). madelyn's grammie and grandad got her a beautiful sled! she's a little too small to ride in it now, but next winter will be so much fun. i took the (empty) sled out for a spin yesterday to see how well it did, and it skidded along great. as soon as she can sit up on her own, we'll get a picture of her in it and i'll post it up here.

christmas morning was very low-key at our house. i don't know if it's laziness or apathy, but other than the christmas tree, we didn't do anything this year. lol. i guess with a new house and baby we have plenty of excuses. anyways, we eventually made it over to grammie and pop heston's house for christmas breakfast with the extended heston clean (my mother-in-law's family). after another delicious breakfast by marie, it was present time. madelyn got so many cute clothes and very very much appreciated diapers. :-) diapers are always a big hit as presents. :-) after some family photos and catching up with relatives, we returned home. amos' parents came to pick up nippy and we had another gift exchange with them. madelyn got super cute wrist rattles that have been on her hands almost non-stop since. then, it was time to make the trek down to moneta to the dungan estate.

my dad's two sisters had come for christmas, which was super great. other than the wedding, i hadn't seen betty since 1999 and jacque since probably 1995 or something. it's rough growing up thousands of miles away from all your relatives. at least we're closer now and maddy will be able to know her whole family. (well most of it. there's still a few people far away)

we left nippy at home because jacque and cliff had brought their two french bull dogs. amos and i totally want a frenchie now, but we need to wait until our current pet situation as decreased. there were 4 dogs in the house, and nippy wouldn't have been pleased.

after a yummy christmas dinner, it was time for presents once more. maddy got several cute outfits, but the winner of the day was her new doll, "dollie," from her nana. (my mom). she is in love with this doll. she hugs it, chews on it, stares at it's face. it's so cute. amos and i have actually started looking for another one that we can have as a spare in case anything happens to the current dollie.

we stayed at my parent's house for a few days. it was madelyn's first extended stay anywhere, and only her second night away from home. but she did pretty good. christmas weekend was the first time she ever slept completely through the night. i'm talking like 10 hours here. she's still doing it now a week later. :-) hooray!

i'm tired of typing so i will end this. it was a good christmas. not that i've ever really known a bad one. the year my parents sold the house in california and we spent christmas in a (very nice) apartment near stanford with no decorations and most of our belongings either in boxes or already in storage in virginia was pretty special though.. lol.

happy new year!

Friday, December 18, 2009

baby it's cold outside....

i'd like to submit my nomination for "mother of the year." this morning, madelyn and i took an early trip out to target and the grocery store to make sure we were stocked up good before the coming snow storm. while we were in target, i heard the unmistakable sound of a baby crapping herself. (and shortly thereafter, i smelled it as well). so when we got back to the car i got ready to change her in the back seat. only then did i remember that the travel changing stuff is at my in-laws right now. so i laid her on her blanket and removed the nasty diaper and then attempted to clean her up with a clean diaper. so of course, she decided to pee all over her jammies and the blanket the second i took the old diaper away... luckily, i had *just* bought a pack of onesies at target, so i grabbed one out of the trunk and changed her. one problem: it was short sleeved. and since she had been in her jammies, she now had no socks or pants or anything. and don't forget she had peed on her blanket too. any other day, i would have come straight home and just done the rest of my shopping later. but with the biggest snow storm in several years quickly approaching, i sorta needed to continue. so here i am walking around with my 11 week old daughter in a short sleeve onesie, no socks, no pants, no hat, no blanket. oh and i failed to mention it was 27 degrees out.

do you think i qualify for this award? lol. i'll get the travel stuff back at christmas, but i probably should have put some wipes in a zip loc bag or something until then. and perhaps i should keep a spare blanket and outfit in the diaper bag as well. in fact, since we now have *3* diaper bags (we bought one and then got 2 as gifts) i should just pack a whole set to keep in my car just in case.

and so marks my return to blogging.

here's a cute pic of madelyn to make up for my absence. :-)

Monday, November 9, 2009

babies!

madelyn elizabeth was born at 6:40am on October 2nd. We've obviously been a bit busy with her (and still moving stuff into the house) so that's why there's been no posts lately. i also haven't been able to update a lot of the side panels, or the weather box (although moving 2 towns over doesn't really change the weather a whole lot...) because my PC has been packed up for months. but now that is set up, and updated to windows 7, and now i have access to all my web files.

i'm still working on establishing a schedule for my own life now that there's a baby involved, so it will probably be a bit before there's regular posts, but i will try!

Saturday, September 19, 2009

mini update

we moved. new house is great. still settling in.

we got another kitten. last one for many several years so nobody panic. more info on that later

we're going to have a baby any day now. i'm tired and cranky and miserable.

better update later after baby is here. for now, i am going to go forage for food. each meal i have could be my "last" before having hospital food. i have to make them count!

p.s. contractions suck.

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