Sexting the Network Administrator

Censored for my protection.

I started the Jillian Michaels 30 Day Shred yesterday, and it was a surprisingly good workout for just 20 minutes in the living room.

I noticed online that lots of her fans like to share before/after pics, so yesterday morning I put on my swim suit and stood in front of the hallway mirror for a couple of neck-down photos. (First time I've ever done anything like this, I swear.) 

For those of you who don’t know me in real life, I’m 134 lbs. and genetically pretty darn lucky. 134 is where I ended up after almost 5 months of eating “whatever” and getting only occasional cardio exercise. But I know how important muscle tone is, especially now that I’ve reached a certain age, and I could use some help in that department.

Anyway, I took two pictures with my phone and emailed them to myself. Horrifically, only 1 ended up in my inbox. Who got the other photo?!?! My mind started thinking of all the most embarrassing people it could have accidentally been sent to…including a possible auto-post to my Facebook page, since iPhone users email their photos to Facebook to post them.

I checked Facebook and it wasn’t there (thank god), so I looked at my sent messages and confirmed that I had emailed it to myself. At my old job. And no bounce-back means it probably fell into the hands of whoever monitors the general email box at an advertising agency downtown. Doh! 

Of course, it could have been worse. My face isn’t on the picture and it’s just some chick standing in a hallway in a swim suit. No one cares about that…right? 

Helpful hint: To remove unwanted contacts and prevent auto-population of the wrong email address, access your Yahoo! email account from a desktop computer and delete those unwanted contacts.

Four Months

At Art in the Park last weekend.

 To celebrate Felix’s fourth month, I thought I’d start a college 529 plan. Turns out it’s this big, complicated investment and not as easy as setting up a savings account, which I thought was the case. So I’ll have to set aside some time later this week to really dig into all the information.

It’s been really fun watching Felix’s personality develop. He’s a smart little bugger. I’ll hear a dramatic cry from the living room, go in to check on him, and he’ll have a big grin on his face while he watches me walk into the room. Little stinker! He’s also extremely ticklish, and he giggles like crazy when I change his clothes. I can tell it exhausts him after just a couple of tickles, so I try not to do it too often even though his laugh is so cute.

He’s also getting better with tummy time, and I learned to stop trying to do it in the evenings when he’s tired. In the morning he’s fresh and full of energy and does a great job lifting his head up. And he’s really mastered the whole grab-toy-put-in-mouth skill.

As I mentioned in another post, I was pretty excited to get back to the gym. The reality, however, is that their daycare closes too early and I haven’t been able to meet my meager goal of going twice per week. My favorite time to work out is after 8 PM, but I have to be at the gym by 7 in order to work with their schedule, and there just isn’t enough time after work for that. And we’re going on week 9 of horrible air quality (thanks to forest fires that won’t be fully out till it snows), so I can’t even go for a jog or bike ride outside. I’ve had lingering headaches, sinus pressure and a sore throat mostly every day since mid-July.

It tickles!!

Next idea is trying some at-home videos with Jillian Michaels. Yeah, never thought I’d be the type to Jazzercise in my living room, but it’s just about come to that!

The Moving Dream

Felix's first look at a cake and candles. Hypnotic!

Last week, the night before my birthday was a restless night for all of us, which sucked because I was way more tired than I wanted to be on my “special” day.

I watched DNC speeches until right before bed, which amped me up and sent my mind replaying the great moments of the night. Around 2 AM, my dog FREAKED and ran downstairs barking and growling her guard-dog bark, so I got all half-awake irrationally nervous about what she (thought) she heard. I actually wondered for a moment if I should start keeping a knife under my mattress! And Felix woke up four times instead of twice, but only ate once. I think his tummy was bothering him because it was bigger and rounder than usual.

When we all settled down around 3 AM, I got wrapped up in my recurring moving dream. It’s usually one of two scenarios: I’ve moved out of an apartment but forget to get the last of my stuff, and I realize that all kinds of junk has been sitting in it for many months…and I still have to move it all and pay back rent. Or, like this time, I'm in a faraway place and I have to figure out how to get myself, my two cats, tons of boxes and some furniture back to Idaho on an airplane. Usually I’m in Mexico, but this time we were in California. 

Interestingly, my cats are always in the dream – I’ve had them for 10 years and we’ve moved together many times. Jayda is almost never in the dream, I’ve had her for 2 years but we’ve never moved together. Something else of note: I left Mexico and California (in real life) when I was good and ready. But I left Texas for a job offer in California, so I never dream that I’m trying to get out of Texas. Perhaps because I wasn’t quite ready to leave there when I did.

Anyway, I spent my sleeping hours trying to figure out how I was going to get two cats on the airplane (airlines allow one cat per person) and what I was going to do with all the boxes. Then I started taking apart some massive bedroom sets and pieces of furniture, so I could somehow get them back home.

The dream itself isn’t surprising. In real life, I moved 8 times during 6 years of college, then moved from Mexico to Idaho to Texas to California to Idaho again in a span of 5 years. And the previous weekend I helped my sister-in-law clean and move a bunch of furniture to sell before their upcoming move, so that explains that. But it’s still exhausting!

We Found Felix's "Twin"

They say everyone has a twin. Most of us will go our whole lives without finding ours, but lucky little Felix won’t be left out. We found his “twin” last night!

We were at a neighborhood block party on the other side of town, and I spotted a cute little guy who looked so much like Felix, I just had to go say hi.

Turns out, the boys are only 3 days apart in age. And just when I started to wonder if they really might be related (birth mom has relatives in the area), Baby M’s mom told me where she’s from – the SAME town in Mexico where I used to live. And we lived there at the same time! This means we probably frequented each other’s places of business and most likely share mutual friends. The block party music was too loud to really get into a detailed conversation about it, so we exchanged info to get together later.

I asked her permission to take a picture and she agreed (but I’ll respect their privacy and not share names here.) She and her husband both just stood there in awe looking back and forth between the two boys. Felix is definitely chubbier with more hair, but when M catches up, the resemblance might become even stronger. 

Baby M is on the left; Felix on the right.

ABC has a neat little clip on the “twin” phenomenon: http://abcnews.go.com/2020/video?id=2912467

I’d love to hear if anyone else has found their twin!

Fun with Garage Doors

Tagged in April - "Nute Gingrich"

Short-term solution.

Semi-long term solution (I primed it myself).

Four months later, the whole building is finally painted! I'm really liking the less-ghetto look.

I'm almost 420 months!

Felix at 14 weeks and 5 days, sporting
a cute hand-me-down and headed to the fair.

I always sort of rolled my eyes at parents who gave their babies' ages in weeks instead of months, or months instead of years. I never understood why. Twelve weeks? Just say "He's 3 months old." Geez.

Of course, now I understand it perfectly. Not all months have exactly four weeks, and people tend to have very set expectations for every month of a child's age, with respect to both physical size and skills.

For example, Felix will be 16 weeks on Sept. 3, but not "four months old" until almost two weeks later. And babies learn a lot in two weeks! So it's understandable that a new parent wouldn't want to make a child sound older than he actually is...heaven forbid they appear to be behind schedule to all those busybodies who have to ask. I've already had people ask if Felix can sit, crawl, hold his bottle, say "mama" or eat real food, all skills that are beyond any three-month-old.

Either way, I think it's time to graduate to saying months. And somewhere around 18 months, I'll switch to "a year and a half". Anything over 18 months just sounds silly to me. And it's a little sad when parents refer to their older children as "38 months" (yes, I've heard that one!) I think those kids are more likely to still have binkies everywhere they go, like the parents just don't want to let go of the baby stage.

Okay, rant over.

Felix and I have a fun week ahead of us, with a Meetup, a political picnic, the first BSU game and my birthday party on Friday. I'm celebrating a week early...technically I won't be 420 months until September 6th, so please try to keep your expectations of me in check. :)

Randomness

Waking from a nap while I worked on
a translation project.

No big news here, which is fine with me! Felix is doing well and growing like crazy. He laughs a lot and thinks it’s hilarious when I change his clothes, and he finally dropped a night feeding, so now we’re “only” up at 1am and 4am. 

And I ordered a jogger last week, since he can sit up pretty well and our Snap N Go is hard to push on grass. Boise is known for its parks and we have a number of festivals and fairs coming up that will all be held on grassy areas. The Bjorn is still good, but he’s now 14 lbs and increasingly wiggly, so I’m not sure how long I’ll be able to keep that up. 

I recently joined a Meetup group to connect with other parents of young kids. Unfortunately most of the events happen during the day, and the weekend ones are often “no kids”, so I haven’t gone to anything yet. I looked into a single parents’ group, but their focus is dealing with divorce, sharing custody, etc. I haven’t given up hope yet – there are a couple of promising events coming up.

And in case you’ve missed the national headlines, Idaho is on fire. Boise has been full of smoke (can’t see the foothills, reminds me of L.A.) for a few weeks. My throat has been very sore and it’s definitely limited our outdoor time. The largest fire, Trinity Ridge, was only 3% contained last I heard. It could end up being a very long August! 

It’s also been ridiculously hot. I started refinishing an old baby dresser in the garage quite a few weeks ago, but the chemical stripper is most effective at 85 degrees or cooler, and it hasn’t been getting that cool before I go to bed every night (our hottest day was 108). So I haven’t been using my garage and Felix’s clothes are still in sized piles across his bedroom floor.

Speaking of my garage, it’s finally getting painted this week – the whole building, actually. You may remember it was vandalized with “Nute Gingrich” in spray paint in May. I’ll share some before/after pics later for your viewing pleasure.

And finally, Monday night I got back into the gym for the first time in months. They were kind enough to let me pause my membership when I went to get Felix. I felt a bit guilty putting him in even more daycare while I worked out, but it’s something I really, really need to do. It’s my quiet time and stress relief. I have my workout down to 45 minutes and of course everyone at the Kids Club loved him – such a good baby, such big smiles, etc. – so that made it easier. He has started showing a smidge of stranger anxiety lately (it’s a normal developmental phase), so I figure the more people he can get to know now, the better. 

 That’s all for now – hope everyone is enjoying their last few days of summer!