Miscellaneous Leila Updates

So I haven't written much about Leila recently aside from the tremendous spoilage at Christmas, now have I? I'll just throw out some random points about where we are character and development-wise below:

• She is smart as a whip and does her best to get the better of us. All the time.
• She has fully implemented the if mom says no, I go crying to dad and vice versa trick.
• She continues to resist naps at home, but so very clearly needs them. Some enforcement may have to come into play this weekend. Cesar says he is going to send me away and put her down b/c she has "already manipulated you."
• Continuing on naps, she started crying in bed last night, saying "I don't want to go to school tomorrow because they take a long nap there, and I don't want to take a nap!" I asked her teacher, Miss Sarah, if she had been napping at school and she said "oh, yes, the full two hours."
• And continuing on not wanting to go to school, she cried when I woke her up this morning saying again, that she didn't want to go to school: "I want to go to the playground with Mommy." I tried to coax out of her why she didn't want to go to school and this time, it wasn't the nap, it was "I don't like it when my teachers don't give me a sticker sometimes." I reminded her that, stickers are rewards for doing something good like listening well and participating in circle time. Then I offered to buy her some new stickers today.
• I didn't think I'd be a parent who would cave so easily to bribery, but see last line above.
• The temper tantrums still blow up at the smallest (to a parent) disappointments. Her grandmother Mimi sent her adorably kicky new shoes yesterday and since they're European sizes, they're just a mite too big, but should be perfect this spring. She saw the box they were mailed in this morning, threw herself onto the living room floor, kicked her tennis shoes off and wailed "we forgot to wear the new shoes Mimi sent!" I tried to rationalize with her that Mommy didn't want her to trip and fall running on the playground as she rolled and writhed all over the floor. Then finally said "hey, remember Mommy's coming home with new stickers for you today!"
• I'll be spending lunch buying stickers today.
• Back to bedtime - she's a master of delay tactics. I can finish bath, books etc. and have her in her room with lights out and lullabies on before 8:30, but as soon as I get her in the crib, she pops up and says she needs to go pee on the potty. Last night, it was twice on the potty w/in 15 minutes, and though I fully recognize it as a delay game, I can't rightly say "nope, pee in your diaper" when I'm supposed to be working on potty training.
• On potty training - bottom line is mom is lazy. She's been working on it at school for months and wearing daytime pull ups, but I haven't taken the time to just stay home with her for a couple days, let her run bare bottom or in undies and really see what it feels like when she needs to go, or has an accident. She gets it and will do both functions on the potty when I put her there, but I've been lax about making the final leap. We did put her in a pair of undies for a couple hours this weekend, and as soon as she ultimately did wet herself, she promptly asked to have a pull up put back on.
• She has a new found love for the Food Network. After her bath, she'll ask "is anyone on (the TV)?" because we got in the habit of watching a half hour cartoon special during the month + of holiday programming. And I'll say, no, no special cartoons on tonight. Then she'll counter "maybe a cooking guy is on....maybe Emeril?" It's pretty darn amusing.

I'm sure there are other fun/challenging details to report, but those are kind of the highlights for now.

Randomly Cracking Up

So a pop culture blog* I scan on occasion, referred to this photo from the Palm Springs International Film Festival as "evidence that Sean Penn is now officially a disoriented French intellectual." And I am officially cracking up right now. I am also cracking up at the line "Day-Lewis, meanwhile, was busy building a yurt and cobbling his own shoes at the end of the buffet."




I do love me some Sean Penn though. Daniel Day-Lewis too. And I am now reminded to add 'Into the Wild' to my netflix queue for whenever it may be released. I finally read the book this fall, knowing I wouldn't see it 'til DVD release, and it was a rather engrossing read as most of Krakauer's reporting is.












* http://www.mamapop.com/mamapop/2008/01/teeth-vaselined.html#more

Metro Fare Increase

We knew it was coming. We've read the proposals about it for months. But, ouch! My rush hour commute went from $2.30 to $2.80 this morning. That is .50 cents a trip and an extra dollar a day is not small change! If metro actually functioned smoothly and I didn't have a significant delay each and every ride due to doors failing to close, switch work (whatever that is), sick passengers etc... I might not mind so much. Oh well, I have no idea what if any transportation benefits I'll have at the new gig, so I'll just grin and bear it for now.

New Camera

I didn't necessarily need a new camera for Xmas (though my Canon's probably about due to conk out) but Cesar wanted to get me something for also helping him survive school. I would have taken jewelry, but gadgets are good too. Haven't had much time to play with my little baby pink cyber shot yet, but the drawing feature's pretty cool.


I can add text like this:


or frames:
or just goof around like this:

Next step is to figure out the mp3 features - how to customize music for slide shows etc...

Doing an Obama happy dance this morning...

...and very tired from staying up way past my bedtime watching speeches and commentary. Do I really have to do this again as early as next Tuesday?

Notice has been given...

Phew! Relief. But still feeling slightly nauseous and appetiteless (appetiteless being not entirely a bad thing.) I just informed my boss of 6 & 1/2 years that I had 'rather suddenly' been made a job offer that I couldn't refuse. It went as well as could be expected, I suppose.


I got a pretty shocked deer in the headlights expression and a 'jeez Lisa, when do you have to leave..' for a moment there. I replied that because of the way the government pay periods go, I was expected to start January 22nd, so January 18th would be my last day. Said she would have hoped I could give 2 months (months!) for a big push on client efforts until she could get someone else in, but then it dawned on her that she could snag Morgan (the super intern) full time for her 3 days a week when she's back. Then she actually admitted that this was not a good place to be if you wanted to advance and do policy work, unless you wanted to stick around and start bringing your own clients in and that she didn't think Karin (the other Associate) cared, b/c this was all she ever wanted to do apparently (hah!) but she could understand why I wanted to move on...

So, since I did receive my official employment letter yesterday, I think it is safe to now announce that I will be joining the US Postal Service's Office of Government Relations as an Analyst later this month. Can I get a Woot!? I'll be overseeing response to Congressional inquiries, and while it might not be the most glamorous position, I'll get to once again use that side of my brain that knows how to write and edit, and enjoys doing so routinely.

Happy New Year to me. Now we just need to work on acquiring a new house and all will be good in the world.

Ugh. Back to the daily grind...

You know those nights when you have all good intentions of getting to bed early - I mean you even refrain from any wine - so you can start the new year at work refreshed and energized... your light is out at 9:30 (9:30!)... then you look at your clock and it's 10:45 and you realize that you haven't yet fallen asleep and your husband's tossing and turning and itching and flipping the TV on and off.... then it's 11:30 and you still haven't fallen asleep and your kid is coughing... then 1:00a.m....then 2:30 and you're fighting to hang on to your share of the sheets...then 5:00 and the alarm's going off for dear husband and the kid's periodically crying/whimpering in her sleep... Yeah, I had one of those last night.

Then you race-walk through biting wind gusts to get to metro to wait 10 minutes on the elevated platform for an overcrowded blue line...Needless to say, I'm just thrilled to be back at work this morning!

The holiday break was nice and actually seemed to run fairly long - probably in part because the kid only napped 2 out of 11 days, so we were on the go with her all the time. I got to enjoy two movies, as previously reported. Had the chance to visit with Massi and Carlo. Got NOTHING done in the house, aside from packing up two 70 Qt. bins of clothes Leila's outgrown. Emily and I - native Washingtonians who should know better - took Leila and Henry to the Natural History Museum last Thursday. And I say, we should know better because of the tourist horror - like the rudeness of a family who's only physical impediment may have been that they were a bit overweight, trying to force their way onto the elevator in front of our two strollers (I called them on it and they didn't even apologize), or parents letting their children old enough to know better just sit in the middle of heavily trafficked floors... But it was worth it because the banter between the two of them in the back seat on the way home had us in tears of laughter for a good 15 minutes. I seriously had to wipe my eyes to make it onto the 14th street bridge. Leila's retorts were a bit less sophisticated then Henry's, like "I'm going to tell your dad you said potty", but she was holding her own fairly well. Henry's best line was "I'm going to tell the Dr. to give you a shot and NOT give you a band aid."

And that's about it as far as the highlights go. Oh, and mom had a fairly decent gift haul too w/ her new pink Sony Cybershot camera, a couple new Coach bags from Aunt Nancy and her scrap sale, some $$ from the grandparents to be reserved until she's back down a size, and a sweet new flat screen High Def. TV for the family from Floyd and Carol. We haven't dealt with Comcast on the high def. front yet, because we're hoping we'll be moving within the next several months, but still, Shrek never looked so good even without that capacity enabled.