new job!

Well, on Friday I interviewed for and was offered the position of Concert Hall Manager at Stetson. This is a perfect job for me for several reasons. I will only have to be out of the house during the evenings and weekends. It involves music. I can do the organizational part of the job from home. I will be responsible for organizing the work study students who are supposed to work as stage crew or sound crew and making sure they do their jobs. It is a part-time job and the pay is very good. It is actually pretty comparable to the hourly wage of a school teacher. The job is a 10-month position as I can only do my job if something is going on at school! It really has worked out nicely. I'm really excited about it.

sad news

Yesterday morning one of my favorite teachers died. Ken Rogier was the band director at Union Park Middle School. I joined band in 6th grade at Union Park. Mr. Rogier was a great teacher. I can honestly say that if any one person was the influence for me going into music education, it was Mr. Rogier. He had a very gentle way about him. He wasn't one of those crazy band directors. He was patient and helpful. Mr. Rogier was interested in his students. He always made himself available for help or to make progress in our exercise books. That is the kind of teacher I aspire to be.

We'll miss you, Mr. Rogier.

little guys converse

In the last week and a half, Bethany has started projecting conversations onto her toys. By this I mean, she will speak for them and create audible exchanges between two characters without herself being part of the dialogue. Prior to this she would have some role, but I guess she no longer finds this necessary. Subtle, but I took note of it.

For example, tonight in the bath dolphin and fish were talking...

Dolphin: "How are you?"

Fish:"I'm Good."

D: "Wanna swim?"

F: "OK."

Both dive below the water and re-emerge.

D: "You're a good swimmer."

F: "Thank you. Bye-Bye now."

D: "Bye-bye now."

It's a little tough to be sure who said what though; she doesn't modulate her voice between characters. Give her time.

Hello?

This morning I was on the computer and Bethany came in the office. She picked up the mouse, gave it a good look underneath, held it up to her ear and said, "Hi!" Then she put it down and said, "It's not working", and left the room! She is such a hoot!

Fun with animal crackers

Bethany just finished eating lunch so I gave her a couple of animal crackers. She took one that looks like a horse and trotted it around her tray saying, "Giddy up horsey". Then she bit its legs off and scooted it around the tray saying, "Snail! Snail!" I just busted out laughing!

recording session

So I went into my office to get a few things yesterday, including the recorder. We sat down after dinner last night and ran through all the songs that B knows. This includes her ABCs and various other songs she likes to sing. Some require a few prompts from us, which you'll here in the recordings. She's not totally on her own, but she does sing to herself quite a lot now.

As a bonus, we brought out two of her bed time books that she have practically memorized. These are Goodnight Moon and Sandra Boynton's Going to Bed Book. She and I read these every night before she goes to sleep. More and more she has been interjecting bits on her own.

You can check out the results here.

singing those ABCs

I am regretting not bringing my recorder home this weekend. B has started singing her ABCs. She still has a bit of trouble with A through P. E comes out like A number 2. LMNOP is a mess. But once she hits Q, she is on cruise control. Right down to her "next time won you sing with me."

I'll get it recorded soon and posted for everyone to hear. Pretty stinkin' amazing.

games and too much like daddy?

Bethany is hysterical. Last night after dinner she was sitting on the potty. She looked into the bath tub and said, "Where'd they go?" (She was referring to her bath toys. They were in the other bathroom as she had a change of bathing location the day before.) "I don't know", I replied. Since I was trying to get her to poo-poo I said, "Where's the poo-poo?" "I don't know!" I just cracked up laughing. She is so clever.

For dinner I fixed baked penne. But before she would eat it, she lined up the noodles side by side. Gee, I wonder where she gets OCD behavior like that? :)

breakfast favorites

Grabbing breakfast for the 2 of us, like I do every morning. Got our orange juice set up and she tried to feed some to her baby doll. But apparently baby doll was too tired, because B walked her back to the bedroom to lay down.

She arrived back just in time to see me slicing a banana for her. Without a word from me, she said, "That's my favorite."

"Oh, really. You mean the banana?" I replied.

"I like it. It's yummy."

It's fun that we are starting to see on occasion some semblance of a conversation with her. But just to prove see is still a child...

She decided not to eat all of her Cheerios. So I gave her a piece of my bagel with peanut butter on it (a sure-fire hit). The problem is she licks the PB off instead of eating the bagel, so I am currently looking at a little girl with peanut butter all over her face.

"Messy face" as she put it.

"I can't reach it!"

This is what she said to me this afternoon as she was trying to reach my glass on the dining room table. She is saying the cutest things lately. Last night she requested that Nathan play "lion". They crawled on the floor for like 20 minutes acting like lions. Today, she wanted to play "horsey". She started trotting around the house and saying, "Mama, horsey?" So we both were trotting around and I got her saying, "Neigh!" and she was saying, "Giddy-up horsey!" "Bethany horsey!"

Today there was no story time at the library so we went to the park. But instead of going to our local park, we went to Gemini Springs park down in DeBary to do something different. It was really nice. They have a covered playground area and I swung Bethany on the swing and took her down the slides. She had so much fun. I brought our lunch with us so we sat down to eat and then took a walk down by the water. She loved watchin the ducks. "Hi, ducks!" Then when we left she said, "Bye, duck! Bye, other duck!" Then as we walked along the sidewalk back to the car I noticed the pavilions had numbers on them. I asked her to look at one and asked her what number it was. "Five!" Then, "Where's number 4? Where's number 8?" The next pavilion was 2. "What number is that?" "Two! Where's number 4?" "I don't know we'll have to try to find it!" Unfortunately, we never found number 4. Maybe next time.

She fell asleep on the way home (about 1:00) and slept until about 3:30. And then when she woke up, she just played quietly in her crib, talking to her friends and singing. It was so nice. Lately, she's been waking up and immediately crying out for me. So today was a nice change.

oops!

Sorry. I told you the wrong place to go. If you're looking for the blog I told you to go read, go back and click "read mommy's journal about me". Sorry!

twinkle, twinkle

So Amy had a makeup lesson tonight. I fixed a yummy supper of pasta for Bethany and myself. While the meal was winding down, Bethany started to sing. This is something that she has been doing more and more lately. Usually is merely a line or two that she repeats over and over. She has in the last week or two gotten the jist of the first four lines from "Rock-a-bye Baby."

But tonight she laid this on me: Twinkle, Twinkle.

Given my professional training, I expect I will have to defend the authenticity of this recording. There are no edits. What you hear has not been pieced together. The only thing I did was apply some noise reduction and increase the volume.

When she sang it the first time I grabbed my laptop to record her with the built in mic. Fortunately she complied with my request for an encore. What is impressive is that the entire form of the song is there. She's still working on the words (and the pitches), but to have the complete structure of the song learned is amazing!

So I will look into getting her into some music classes next fall. She'll be the youngest Freshman by a long shot.

Soup!

Okay, this is my last post today so if this is the first time you've been here today, scroll down because I've posted a few.

Anyways, most of you know that Bethany is not a great vegetable eater. I always put them on her plate but she NEVER eats them. We can't even hide them in mashed potatoes. She finds them. I guess it's another way she's like a parrot. You know how birds put a whole seed in their mouth and chew through the shell down to the seed and they spit out everything but the seed? That's Bethany only substitute vegetables for shells and potatoes for the seeds. Well, today she woke up with a little cold and I thought a sandwich and soup would be nice for lunch. Now, she has eaten some Broccoli cheese soup before. I think she just likes the idea of soup. Well I had a can of Vegetable soup in the pantry. I cooked it up (because I was going to eat it anyway) and filled a small bowl for Bethany (mostly veggies, little liquid). She LOVED it!!! She ate another bowlful. This soup had potatoes, carrots, green beans, peas, corn, and celery in it. I couldn't believe it. Please pray that this was not a one-time thing. I'm going to stock up on more soup (the lower-sodium versions, though)!

Teeth!

Well, all four molars are in. We never knew they were coming because Bethany never lets us look in her mouth. But last week, there they all were. She had been walking around with her hand in her mouth and there was a lot of drool so we pretty much knew it was coming, we just never saw them!

blabber mouth

Bethany talks pretty much non-stop these days. And she picks up on everything. The other night at dinner, we pointed out a squirrel in the backyard. (waving)"Hi, squirrel! How're you?" But she didn't stop there. Nope. She proceeded to pick up one of her noodles, hold it out and say, "want some? sgetti?" Excuse me? When did she learn that? The other day I heard her say, "Jojo talk". And then she made these high pitched babbles that I could only assume was Jojo talking. I guess she gets that from us talking like the characters.

Nathan was in Minneapolis a couple of weeks ago and one night when he called I asked Bethany if she knew where Daddy was. I told her, "Say Min-ne-a-po-lis". "Min-ne-a-po-wis". ???????? I was just kidding! Nathan heard her and said, "Oh my gosh!" So then when he got home we got her to say DeLand, Orlando, Tallahassee, Honolulu, Waikiki...I think that was it. She's like a parrot. She'll repeat anything.

Bethany also knows all of her colors. Today at the doctor there was one of those bead toys in the exam room. This one had four different "tracks" - cars, planes, rockets and hot air balloons. She did each one, "Red car, blue car, yellow car, green car." "Blue airplane, yellow airplane, purple airplane." She picked up the colors so fast. One day, everything was green. The next day, she knew them all. I don't understand the human brain!

She's pretty amazing. We find ourselves mouths wide open everyday at the things she can do.

no big update

I've decided that since I'm so very far behind in my posts that instead of doing a huge update, I'll just post little stories. This, of course, is my intention for this blog - to ALWAYS do little stories. Oh well. Enjoy these.

sickness

Okay, so Nathan and I have been sick most of this week. I came down with it Saturday night and Nathan did on Monday night. It's been pretty bad around here. Bethany seems to have fully recovered, though. She's as active as ever. Yesterday driving Nathan to work she was jabbering in the back and I said, "You know, I almost forgot how talkative and active she really is". She's just been out of it. Anyway, so Nathan and I are finally starting to recover. The plus side of being sick and not being able to eat until yesterday is that I lost 3.2 pounds this week. My total is an even 30. I can't believe it. I'll probably go back up a little next week, but let me bask in my 30 pounds right now. I am down 3 sizes. The size I am currently wearing, I have not worn since my freshman year of college - eek - 10 years ago. Funny thing is, I weighed about 20 pounds less in that size before. Makes me wonder if sizing has changed, or if my weight is just distributed differently now. :) Now, according to that chart that shows your "ideal" weight according to your height and age, I could still lose 15 pounds! I can't imagine being another 15 pounds lighter. I'm pretty happy where I am right now but I'll keep working toward that goal. It would be interesting to see myself at that weight. Now that we're all getting better, Bethany and I can start bike riding again. I took her one day a few weeks ago, but that was before she got sick. So, hopefully, being able to go for a ride will help the rest of the weight come off a little bit faster. I just have to commit to doing it everyday - make it part of our routine.

So, yeah me! Hopefully I won't put much back on for next week. Cross your fingers for me!

update, finally!

Okay, still no pictures though, but I'll get them, don't worry.

So, after Christmas we had our floors put in. Bethany and I took off to spend three days with my brother and sister-in-law in Clearwater. They just moved there. Their house is really nice and we had fun hanging out with them and the kids. Bethany and Hope were great. But that's another blog...

Our floors look fantastic. We put 18" tiles in the kitchen/dining room. They make the kitchen look even bigger. In the family room/hallway we have laminate. A really nice dark color that actually has some light and reddish shades in it. In the three bedrooms we replaced the carpeting. We would have liked to have done laminate in the bedrooms as well, but financially it just wasn't doable right now. And we just wanted the old carpeting OUT so we went with carpet in the bedrooms. It's a light beigy color that will work with whatever colors we decide to paint.

Last weekend my mom came up and we started working on curtains. Many of you know that I have been so disappointed in the curtain selection out there and what they cost. So my mother, being good with a needle and thread, agreed to help me make my own. We started with the kitchen and dining. Nathan actually found the fabric for the kitchen. It was in the bargain section at Joann. We bought all they had (about 3 1/2 yards) for about $4. My mom and I found the dining room fabric at another Joann that I really liked and was happy that it was on sale for $9/yard. I needed 5 yards. Okay, $45 still sounds steep to me, but it's cheaper than what I could buy curtains for. So when the chick rang it up it was $18!!! For all 5 yards! How lucky am I???? So we got the kitchen curtains done (SO cute!) and we prepped the dining room curtains. I can't WAIT to finish them.

On Saturday we bought our new stove. It was delivered on Sunday. If you can't have a gas range, at least get a flat top range. It looks soooooo good in there. We had our black micro already and now with the black range it looks really nice. Our next purchase in there will be a black fridge, but not for a while.

Well, I think that's it for now. On our next long weekend we will probably paint the family room and get all the trim repainted. That's the only thing in the kitchen. The paint and the floor looks so nice, except we haven't repainted and replaced the baseboards and trim around the door to the garage and the pantry! Once that's done it will look even better.

Okay, wrists hurting now. Must stop typing.

the day after

Well, today was better. Except that it started so early. Bethany fussed a few times early this morning but got up for good about 6 am (I know, to a lot of moms out there, this is normal - however, Bethany usually wakes between 7:30 and 8:00 so it was early for us). She had some milk and almost a whole cup of yogurt with Daddy then came and laid with me in bed. I'm not sure if either of us slept, but we were there for a while resting anyway. After Nathan left, Bethany watched Little Einsteins and JoJo and finished her milk.

I had a few errands that I had to do, so we did them this morning as quickly as possible. On our way home (about 10:30) I stopped to fill my tires. The back passenger side on was REALLY low. It wasn't even registering on the gauge. Anyway, when I got back in the car, Bethany was asleep. When we got home, I took off her shoes and put her down. Instead of completely closing the door, I left it open a crack so I could easily check on her. She finally woke at 3:00. I had started getting worried and even called my mom to ask her advice around 2:00. But I decided that she got up early, probably from hunger (she only ate applesauce last night) and being sick doesn't help. She could probably use the sleep. She was pretty mellow for about 30 minutes after getting up. She just wanted to hang on me or sit in my lap. Finally she said, "Down, pease?" and I asked if she wanted some Cheerios. "Cheeos? Gape, too?" "Okay, we can have grapes, too." So she snacked on grapes, Cheerios and milk for about 20 minutes. Then she wanted to go in the swing. We spent a good 20-30 minutes on the swing. She was kind of in and out of activeness (is that a word?) this afternoon. She'd be pretty active for about 15 minutes, and then need 15 minutes of cuddles. No problem here!

So for dinner she had about 1/2 cup milk, hot dog (Turkey Kielbasa) one green bean (hey, that's improvement!) and about 1/2 cup applesauce. Then she got bathed and jammies on by about 7:15. Nathan started to put her to bed and I said, "You don't have to put her down yet". About 30 seconds later, Bethany was leaning on Nathan and saying, "Nap, pease? Nap, pease?" Okay, I guess she's ready for bed! She didn't waste anytime giving me a hug and kiss and she was right back to Nathan to go to bed. Poor thing.

I guess it's good, though. She seems to be better today. Not quite so pale and unsteady. I hope she sleeps well tonight and is even better tomorrow. I'm so sad we had to miss story time at the library on Monday. She had such a good time last week. I can't wait for next Monday.

poor bethany

Sorry I never posted about her appointment yesterday. Things got kindof crazy around here. The doctor said the rash was probably NOT Roseola, because Roseola never itches. So that means it's either just part of the cold virus, or she's allergic to the amoxicillin. She told us to continue the Benedryl for her itching and swelling and oatmeal baths and stuff. Once the rash is completely gone (and she even said about 2 weeks from now) try giving her 1/4 teaspoon of the amoxicillin. Just that small amount because if she's allergic to it, she'll react to any amount of it. Ok, so we go home. She eats a good lunch, has a good nap and is generally doing well the rest of the day. Fast forward to this afternoon.

We were out at Target buying a gift for a friend's wedding shower and when we get home I'm cutting up some fruit for Bethany for lunch. As I'm slicing the strawberry I hear her cough. The cough sounds like when a grown up is trying to get up some phlegm. I turn around to look at her and she just starts spewing everywhere! She threw up in 3 different places in the kitchen. She just stood there holding her baby doll under one arm and Ears under the other arm as she continued to throw up. Once she was completely done she just started saying, "Mama, mama, mama!" I scooped her up and took her into the bathroom to clean her up. She was so freaked out. It was everywhere. Down her shirt, pants, socks and all over her shoes. I cleaned them up best I could, I think they'll be okay. I called the ped office (at 12:25) and everyone was out to lunch. The receptionist advised me not to feed her or give her milk and probably the best thing would be to put her down for her nap. Well, I let her watch an episode of JoJo while I cleaned up the mess (and cried my eyes out). She was fine after it happened, but I wasn't. I couldn't understand what was wrong with my little girl. Why isn't she getting better? Why does something keep happening after I talk to/see the doctor? I talked to my mom and she said how she went through the same thing with me. I had a lot of ear infections when I was little. She told me how she would take me to the doctor, give me the full round of antibiotics and a week later, I was back in the doctor's office. Turns out, my mom left work early today, so she came up to hang with me.

I had put Bethany down about 12:50 and she fell asleep pretty quick. Just after 1:00 the NP called me back and told me once she was up to give her 1 Tablespoon of water, wait 30 min then give her 2. If that stayed down, then continue with 2 Tablespoons every 30 min. Well, after she got up I didn't really measure it out or time it. I just asked her every 30 min or so if she would take a sip from her cup. Then she ate some cheerios and a graham cracker. For dinner she had applesauce. She had her bath and went to bed around 8. We should be able to go back to regular eating tomorrow morning. Thanks, Mom, for coming up and just being with me this afternoon. I think I would have been a nervous wreck otherwise.

So, keep praying for Bethany. Obviously, she's not quite done being sick yet. Pray for me, too, that I can be a strong mom and be there for her when she's sick and scared.