Elfing II: The Tree Pics

OK, a blurry one but cute:
You'll notice the Husband is trying to keep her from actually handling (and eating) the ornaments.

This is Miss Boo in her jammas trying to convince ME that it would be all right for her to eat the ornaments. They're red and shiny, just like apples. I bet they taste like apples, too. What is with my fear of trying new things?

This is the Husband trying again to teach Miss Boo to look at the pretty tree, but not eat it or climb it. She gives him polite attention, but...

...mostly she just wants the "Bretty bretty brrrretty" tree. (That's "pretty pretty pretty", for those of you who don't speak Booian.)

Today we did a little elfing at the store as well, and got gifts for folks... don't worry, I didn't buy anyone a bag of flour for Christmas. (Although how do you all feel about canned peaches? :D I kid, I kid...)

It was 10 F outside when we left this morning, or as we like to say technically, dang cold. Miss Boo was wearing a long jumpsuit-thing, a sweater, two pairs of socks, a hat, and a coat with hood. I was outfitted similarly. It was still dang cold. Makes one very thankful for that nice clicky woodstove and all the wood the Husband chops. I occasionally picture myself as an intrepid pioneer woman and speculate what it would be like to haul my pregnant self out to the woodpile and chop my own firewood...when I wasn't running to an outhouse that is... and quickly come to the conclusion that it is a mercy I was born in this day and age, when if worst comes to worst I can always use the natural gas.

Well, I don't know how much longer Miss Boo will stay asleep on my lap (baby on lap, laptop balanced precariously on knees, put up footrest of recliner, laptop balanced on shins, type without waking baby) so I will end this now-- a relief after yesterday's rant, I know. Enjoy the baby Christmas pics, and maybe I will find some more entertaining philosophical thing to blather about tomorrow. :)

Cheers,

Breanna

Green Christmas

Have you noticed that it's less cool to be "green" this year with your Christmas shopping? Apparently having elected a "green" president is enough for our national psyche.

Those of you who know me know that I don't believe in global warming (you can think I'm koo-koo nutty if you want to) but you also know that we sort of actually do a lot of "green" things accidentally. We limit our driving, hang laundry, reuse containers, use cloth diapers, etc. I don't do these things because I think they'll stave off global warming, I do them because I'm cheap. Really, really cheap. And I don't like the "green" solutions that actually cost more in resources, time, and money than regular options. Like a entryway mat made of recycled waterbottles. Only in these enlightened times is buying new crap the way to justify having bought stupid old crap.

Anyway, this comes up as an intro for a quote I read today from Greg Gutfeld, who comments in the opinion section on Fox News (you may think I'm koo-koo nutty for reading them if you like). I don't agree with everything Gutfeld writes by a loooooong shot, and he has an abrasive, sarcastic style, but I thought this quote captured one reason why I'm so turned off by global warming, particularly this time of year:

"Faced with imminent destruction of the planet due to global warming, farmers are now forced to turn crops into fuel. Ethanol, that is. This has forced farmers to raise their prices, which they don’t mind - and reduce supplies of food. And here’s the heart of global warming theology - and it is a theology: a
fundamental self-loathing for the human race, knitted into an overpowering sense of self-importance. The selfish, all-consuming human is what’s wrong with the world — and hooray for me! — the sensitive, intelligent Prius driver, for pointing it out. Which means –with a reduction in food and rising prices — we’re approaching what the Gores of the world really want — the sacrifice of humanity for a false god: global warming."

For the record, all of the real people I know who are worried about global warming are not Prius drivers nor are they know-it-all jerks. And I don't think Al Gore really wants to sacrifice the whole race, although I've never met him; personally I think he's just into making money out of the global warming thing. But many of the professional doomsayers about global warming do have a very distorted view of humanity, to the point of advocating almost any strategy to ensure that there will be less of us in the future. I agree that humans haven't done their job on this planet, but fixing the sin of greed with the sin of murder -- even indirect murder-- makes very little sense.

So, at Christmas, when we are being reminded of the Incarnation and the fact that God hid Himself in human flesh, a "Green" Christmas that ends in thinking about how much better it would be to get rid of a few billion people is inappropriate.

However, a Christmas that endeavors to not spend beyond our means and, with a small celebration, to focus on the Incarnation, is immensely appropriate. As C.S. Lewis pointed out, Christmas is properly either a pagan holiday (solstice) or a Christian feast. What it has never been until recent years is a commercial exercise; it's foolish to do buying in December that you would never do in February. And if you seek, as I am, to spend rationally this year, you will find that you, like me, are accidentally "green." You'll end up giving things like food or homemade sweaters. (No one's getting a sweater, sorry.) Or you'll choose one well-made item instead of ten flimsy plastic items from China. You certainly won't get someone a mat made of recycled water bottles.

So I can wish you a Green Christmas after all-- just the right kind of green.

Don't worry, no more philosophy tomorrow-- just babies. Until then,

Ciao bella,

Breanna

Elfing

So no, the Baby Eye Candy today isn't new, it's from last Christmas when Miss Boo was only a month old, but the camera battery was dead this morning, so I couldn't get a picture of Miss Boo goggling at the lit Christmas tree. It's charging right now, so we should have pictures tomorrow. Anyway, isn't it amazing how much she's changed in a year?

We are elfing today-- that is, we're trying to make the house all Christmasy. All my decorations are in the garage, but when the Husband comes home for lunch I might make him haul them out. I am not going out in the snow to get them with Miss Boo on my hip and Boychild throwing my hips out of whack, so right now I am doing Christmasy laundry (that's laundry while listening to the Barry Manilow Christmas album, for those of you who don't know). It has occurred to me I need more than three Christmas CDs, so I think when I hit Target later for... well, any number of things, based on my survey of decorations... I will grab some of those 2/$5 CDs that have instrumental Christmas songs on them.

We'll post some pictures after we get our elfing done. It's kind of exciting-- this is a bigger house than I was in for any of my previous married Christmases. (My first I was in an extremely tiny house and the decorating consisted of one table.)

More cheer tomorrow,

Breanna

Pink vs. Blue

They make you wait until 20 weeks into the pregnancy to get your ultrasound so you have to go through the obligatory parental purgatory of hearing well-meaning people ask, "what do you want? a boy or a girl?" (or another winner, "did you mean to get pregnant?"). I'm not sure what it is about gestation that makes people who barely know you think they can ask questions that they wouldn't ask their own parents, but there you are. (My stock answers are, incidentally, "someone with human DNA" and "whoops, am I pregnant?")

(This leaves out of course the random old ladies who accost you in the grocery store once you start showing, to tell you 1) you shouldn't eat that 2) you shouldn't lift that 3) if you reach over your head the umbilical cord will wrap around the baby's neck or 4) if you eat that, your baby will have lots of hair.)

Anyhoo, strange people aside, today we finally got an answer for all the folks who ask "are you going to find out what you're having?" and also, "do you know if you're having a boy or a girl?"

Drumroll:

Introducing the Boychild, who is pointing in this fuzzy reproduction of the ultrasound snapshot. He had his chin tucked down to his chest like that during the whole ultrasound, and kept sticking his hand in front of the camera. Either he was waving at us, or telling us to go away and quit bothering him. I suspect the latter. He is already a more mellow child than Miss Boo was at this age.

Everything we looked at seemed to be developing beautifully, brain, spine, heart, kidneys, etc. He was shy and kept squirming his bottom away from the camera, but in the end we were too quick for him. He has perfect hands and feet. We couldn't see Miss Boo's on her ultrasound, since she punched and kicked the camera, but Boychild had very clearly distinguishable fingers and toes.

Well, Miss Boo just woke up from her nap and since she is about to have to become Co-Grand Poobah of the Universe, I will go comfort her. :)

Have a great day,

Breanna

Home Again

The first thing the dog did when we got home was lay down on his carpet and sigh a huge sigh of relief:"My own house... smells like me." I agree, Patrick; it's good to be home.

We spent a great five days split between the grandparents's houses. (Wow, that's a lot of S's in one sentence.) Miss Boo and her cousin ate a lot of turkey, sweet potatoes, and tried on elf hats:


Here is Cousin with the hat, both children fighting naps, Baba trying to fool them into sleeping. They knew that game. Silly Baba.

And here is the ultimate nap warrior, refusing to close her eyes. The magic elf hat wasn't helping. You can see her lunging desperately forward, afraid to lay back lest she be tricked into resting.

But, when all is said and done, home is a wonderful place to be. Believe it or not I missed doing housework, and to be sitting at my laptop with my wheezy crockpot chugging away on a pot roast for dinner, the woodstove clicking happily in the basement as it heats up, and my dishes done, makes me feel very good.

In other news, Miss Boo had a doctor's appointment today for her one-year-old checkup. She is 14 pounds, 8 ounces (only up 8 ounces from last time) but is 26 inches long (up 2 inches from last time). The doctor explained that she has been putting her growth into height. Who knew babies could decide that sort of thing? :) There were vaccinations, of course... which are never fun, but Miss Boo has also been teething for three days. Blech. The Husband looked at us with sympathy as he left for work this morning, secretly glad I suspect that he didn't have to be the one to hold Miss Boo's legs for the nurse to jab. He never does manage to make it to the vaccination appointments-- not his fault, but convienent for a tender-hearted daddy.

Apparently Miss Boo is ahead on language development and knows more words than a one-year-old has any right to. So, brag away grandparents.

Miss Boo is fussy again now so looks like we have some rocking chair business to attend to.

Happy December,

Breanna

Things to Ponder

Benjamin Franklin, who wrote an astonishingly transparent biography for the eighteenth century (he was a...er, cosmopolitan young man), also wrote a practical book of money wisdom called "Poor Richard's Almanac". This contained such nuggets as "Early to bed and early to rise/Makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise" and "A penny saved is a penny earned." He was one of fourteen children and turned out in the world to support himself at an early age, so he should have known something about economics. All the things in his book are about personal habits. I don't remember the exact year the almanac was written, but the fledgling federal government of the USA was not even sure it had the right to charge income tax, so that should tell you something about non-interventionist policy. (As a bonus, if you read the book, you will discover that the word "fart" meant the same thing in the eighteenth century that it does in the twenty-first.)

All of which is a lead-up to: I saw an article on a news site this morning that said, "Can Barack Obama Fix the Economy?" I didn't read the article, but I can answer the question for you:

NO.

(Though he may possibly fufill the campaign expectations of some of his supporters and make sure every American gets a new puppy for Christmas.) And John McCain couldn't either, if he'd been elected.

Think about things like this, my version of Poor Richard:

Why do we buy labor-saving devices and also exercise machines?

Why do we watch five hours of TV a day but then say we don't have time to cook from scratch?

Why do we, when we need to lose weight, pay extra for "diet" food instead of just eating less food and therby saving money?

Why are we currently (or at least the media is) bemoaning the fact that people, when faced with a recession, are spending less this holiday season instead of more? Isn't that the smart thing to do when you have less money?

Things to ponder indeed.

You can probably guess what Breanna's prescription for economic health is. It's as simple as the Cave Man Diet. ("Don't Eat Too Much.") My prescription is: spend less than you make. "The economy" is one of those things like "society". It's easy to talk in generalizations, but in the long run neither the economy nor society is something that happens to us, it's something we do.

Which can be seen as discouraging, but can also be encouraging. Because if the economy is something I do, then spending less on stuff at Christmas will enable me to spend more time doing things that matter with my family. Spending less on food and cooking more will automatically improve our health. If gasoline is expensive and I have to walk to the store, score double points for exericse AND fewer trips to a place where I spend money.

So just do what you can with what you have, and remember, you never had more control over the economy than Miss Boo does anyway. :)

Ciao,

Breanna

Happy Birthday, Miss Boo

One of these days I will learn to upload pictures in reverse order. In the meantime, here is Miss Boo's first birthday, starting with the last picture and working our way up to the first:
This is a cloth book from Wyoming Great-Grandmother, who must know something about kids in church and what makes a good quiet toy. :D

This is Miss Boo saying: I'm a little tired of cake. I ate too many green beans.

Trying cake for the first time. Judiciously. Never know when that mama person will feed you something that is gross. She tried to feed you mandarin oranges just the other day.

The ugly-but-delicious birthday cake mama made without realizing she had no wax paper and so the cake wouldn't come out of the pan whole... but it was delicious.

Auntie, Miss Boo, and the contribution of Miss Boo's uncle to the festivities: "The Li'l Pounder". Not sure why, but apparently every baby needs some pounding implement. She's been using it a lot lately, so apparently there has been a great lack in our equipment for some time.

Opening the present with Grandma for the seventeenth time (this was the favorite box to open). Never let anyone say that socks are an unromantic present! It was permanently exciting to discover socks inside the box. The socks were also very good impromptu puppets in the church foyer this Sunday as mama tried desperately to keep Miss Boo distracted but within earshot of the speaker in the sanctuary. (Miss Boo had decided being quiet inside the sanctuary was something for little babies to do, not big one-year-olds like her.)

Opening Auntie's present-- a toy cell phone that rings, vibrates, and lights up. And interferes with the TV signal, which makes me wonder if this phone has some sort of calling plan we didn't notice because we threw the packaging away right away.

The best part of birthdays is RIPPING THE PAPER!

It seems so amazing that she is a year old already. In some ways it seems like she's been here about two weeks, and in other ways like I've known her forever. As she learns to communicate more and more, it's astonishing to find out just who this little person is. She has such determination like her daddy-- she climbes OVER things, she doesn't go around them-- and she wrinkles her nose up just like me.

Well, she is currently hugging the dog and banging the toy cell phone into his head, so I had better rescue him. There will likely not be a lot more posting until after Thanksgiving, as we shall be eating and cooking and taking lots of pictures.

See you in the Christmas season,

Breanna