I Can't Believe That She is Ten!

Today is the 10 month birthday of our Little Miss. J is blown away that she is 10. Concept of time is still a bit tricky, so even though he knows that she is still a baby, he can't quite comprehend how she has a larger number than he does. He acts like he gets it when you explain it, but then he says stuff like, "Yeah, kind of like having one week and then 30 seconds in a year." I have no idea what he means, but if it works for him, I just go with it.

As I was attempting to get my daughter to eat some pieces of elbow macaroni, all she did was pick them up and then smear them across the high chair tray. This got me thinking (yet again)about how much more difficult she is to feed than J. Once in awhile I can get her to try a bite of something, but it usually ends up on the floor or in her seat. This girl is tough! It took me forever to get her to eat more than a teaspoon or two at every meal, and I thought that she would go to true solid food and abandon baby food altogether, but I think she is just very slow and picky. She seems to be one of those babies that you have to offer a food to at least 20 times before she will accept it. The tough part about it is once you offer her something that she doesn't like, she signs that she's all done and then nothing else is getting into her mouth whether she likes it or not. The only exception to this are bananas. She will eat a banana if it's mashed, pureed, cut up in chunks, or right out of the peel, anytime, anywhere.

The funny part about this strange little eater of mine are the combinations she will accept. In some ways she's quite the bougie eater. She's not a fan of carrots, but she LOVES a combo of carrots, apples, and mangoes. Will she eat mango by itself? No. She won't eat squash on its own either, but pair it with apples and it's going in. She will suck down blueberries, especially the tiny, wild, organic, frozen ones from Costco. I can mix blueberries with green beans and I might be able to get her to eat a few spoonfuls. She's not a fan of pears by themselves, but she will grab a whole pear out of my hands and suck all of the juice right out of it. She only has two little teeth buds right now, so we'll see what happens when she gets more.

I've been feeding her more meats because her iron levels came back a bit low at her last doctor's visit. They seem to be her thing. I can mix up some ground roasted chicken or turkey cutlet and put it into anything and she will barely bat an eye at it. That texture is fine, but she hated when I offered her couscous. I don't get it. Last night she finished all the chicken and carrots I made her and she still wanted more, so I was feeding her the chicken dry. She kept eating it and washed it down with a little water. Mmm, mmm, good! It really looked disgusting. We won't be repeating this tonight because she woke up at 1:30 last night with the biggest diaper and I am pretty sure it's because she ate about 3 times more than she usually does at dinner.

Little Miss has finally taken to the idea that books can be fun. She has been sitting for 15-20 minutes at a time for the past few days as I read to her. She's figured out how to sign "book" and while I repeated the book "What's On My Head?" for what I think was the 10th time in a row, she signed "thank you." It was so sweet. She did it every time I started reading the book again.

This weekend we have two birthday parties. One is downtown at a park and the other is in the complete opposite direction an hour later. I have yet to figure out how we are going to go to both, but we'll do it somehow. J has to make three birthday cards this afternoon because the second party is actually a double birthday. These parties make numbers 4 and 5 for March. J has probably eaten his weight in cake this month.

We also have a lot of yard work to do. All of the rain left us with a ton of weeds and other dandelions. We need to get a bunch of dirt and put it in the beds near our foundation because we have gigantic puddles. Our garden isn't even started yet because we have sprinkler issues that are going to be addressed on Monday. It's going to be 80 degrees tomorrow and it's gorgeous today. I'm pretty excited about that.

Well, I hoped to be able to share a pic of J and S today, but the computer still does not have all of the stuff I need on it to download stuff. Right now it is basically an Internet machine. We'll try soon. In the meantime, please send good labor vibes to my friend, B in CA. She's not in labor yet, but would really like to be, and she's pretty much run out of labor inducing things to try. Since I have sooo many readers, I thought I would just put that out there for her.

And How Was Your Day?

This impromptu song that J was just singing as I was putting S to bed pretty much sums up today:

I feel like making bad choices. Oh yeah! I feel like making bad choices. Oh yeah. Should I make bad choices? Oh no! But I feel like making bad choices!

I hear it's going to be made into the four year old theme song and be played on all of the major kid networks.

The wine is in the glass. Now.

9 months (a little late) and Could You Say that Price Again?

Little Miss has had one cold or another for over three weeks. I feel so bad for her because it seems that all I do to her lately is wipe her nose. She also had pink eye last week, and now she's holding onto a cough that just won't give up. It's not an awful cough as far as coughs go, but it was annoying enough to wake her up about 6 times last night. Of course, that also woke us up.

We had our 9 month visit to the doctor today. She's 27.5 inches and only 17.5 lbs. That's average height and 25% for weight. J was like that too except he was even taller. So she's a sweet petite, but as someone said to me the other day, "But her smile is as big as Texas." I smiled back at the lady and thought to myself, "Well, as long as her smile is like that and not her ass, she'll be fine."

J is becoming a bit bipolar. One minute he's super sweet to us. How many four year olds thank their parents for making a lovely dinner? The next minute, he's whining up a storm and throwing himself on the floor because he was asked to throw something in the trash. It must be so hard to figure out this big world of rules when all you want to do is play. Oh, and the foot stomp has become one of his favorite signs of disapproval. Perhaps I should enroll him in tap dance classes?

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So in between drafting the first part of this post and today, we've had another computer break, a car battery die, two teeth pop through, high 70s weather, and mid 30s as well. The runny noses are still everywhere. We have no idea if they are allergies or just one cold after another, but we're all feeling well enough to play a lot.

I had a great time on Monday. Monday was window day. Back around Christmas we had a guy come out to give us an estimate for new windows for our house. I should clarify that these people solicited us to come and give us an estimate. We figured we'd let them because we knew that windows could be expensive, and it would be a good thing to know the ballpark we would be in when it came time to do that sort of thing.

The estimate was $12,000 for the house. Brett and I kind of chuckled and said that there were plenty of other things we'd like to do first.

Last week the same company called us back and said it was kind of slow for them and they'd love to work with us on the price they quoted us back in December, and could they come out and talk to us again? We figured why not. I also called another company that I knew would be more expensive and asked them to come and give us an estimate as well. Both people came on Monday.

The first guy to come was the expensive guy. We were told that the talk would be between an hour and an hour and a half. When we had to cut him off at two hours to pick up J from school, he still wasn't finished and we still didn't have a price from him. We tentatively agreed that he could come back and tell us all about how much better his energy efficiency was next Monday, but in my heart, I knew I would be canceling that appointment. If you can't sell me something completely in two hours while I feed a baby, change a diaper, dress a baby, and hold a baby in my lap for most of your yapping, you don't get my business. I guess he was trying to build a relationship with us, but it didn't work.

Later that afternoon we revisited with our friends from earlier in December. It was a new guy because the old guy was "no longer with the company." I told them this surprised me because I thought his dad owned the company. The guy said while that was true, he was trying out something else. New guy asked what the old guy quoted and we told him. He said, "Well that sounds about close. Let's take a look and see what we can do for you." I should also mention here that he gave us a fabulous presentation with a heat lamp that went up to 400 degrees and when you put their top of the line glass in front of it, you couldn't feel the heat. Brett and I know what glass we'll pick when we go live closer to the sun!

After much measuring and figuring, the new estimate with all of the "marketing" discounts came out to...... wait for it.... okay.... here it comes.....

$24,000.

And the guy was actually brave enough to ask us if we wanted to sign up for his financing plan that had no payments for a year. No really, he did.

Now you know me, I often say what's on my mind. So I asked the obvious question, "Why in the world is your price double?" He told me it's because we have 31 windows that would need replacing and that's a ton of windows. I agree that's a lot, but how is it double? He said the other guy must have made a mistake. Of course. Blame the guy that no longer works for you.
I told him that is the price of a car. He said, "But these will last longer." I told him that's a year of college at most schools (Colgate not included, of course). He didn't respond to that.

So then he said, "You've invited us to your home two times. You obviously want these windows. Why can't you give me an answer right here and now? (Brett said that we would "think about it"). I told him, "You just gave me a quote that is double what you originally quoted us and you say that this is the lowest possible price you can do? For that much money, I would hope you would let me "invite" you to my home 4 or 5 times if need be." He yessed me up and down and gathered up his stuff to leave. I know he was pissed by the original quote and couldn't figure it out. I don't know if the first guy messed up or what, but we will obviously not be getting new windows anytime soon. The best part? A cute 4 year old who thought he had to be completely charming to our new friend as he left. "Bye bye! It was nice to meet you! See you again soon!"

I can only imagine what that guy was really thinking as he said, "See ya later, buddy" and drove away.

We went inside, had a good chuckle, and opened the windows for some fresh air.

S is ten months old on Friday. Maybe I'll get some pictures up soon.