An Apple Pie a Day...

How do you get rid of many apples? You bake many pies. Last weekend, Amy and I made 9 full-size pies and 5 mini pies. We have given most of them away, but we are still gobbling through the remaining 3. Our nightly ritual of "pie-s-cream" is going to destroy my recent diet success, but it will be worth every moment!

Speaking of diets, it took only 6 months of Weight Watchers, but I finally lost my pregnancy weight, plus an additional 10 pounds! I feel like me again. Okay, I kind of cheated on the last pound--it came off due to the evil food poisoning of last week. I discovered what all anorexics and bulimics have known for decades, 4 days of not eating is an effective way to lose 4 pounds. I can't recommend it though. I felt like crap. Obviously, due to the number of pies I have personally polished off this week, I'm back to my normal self. Shew!

Notweilers

A horrible bout of food poisoning has shed some light on the backyard neighbor with the barking dogs. She seems to have been able to reign them in since that horrible weekend when they barked for two whole nights, so we have been sleeping peacefully. However, we found out that the rumors were false. She has 5 dogs, not 4, and none of them are rotweilers. They are mutts of various sorts. Also, the reason she keeps them locked out at night is that she also has 4 cats. Yikes, too many animals! Anyway, while I was spending a few hours in the bathroom dealing with the aforementioned poisoning (Ug, I'm contemplating death as an escape from the misery.), I overheard her in an hour-long, curse-ridden rant about how her "d*** neighbors" should leave her "poor dogs" alone and keep their "m***** f****** cats" out of her yard, etc. I couldn't hear any other voices, so either her interlocutor's voice was too low to make it through my bathroom walls or she was just ranting like a crazy lady on her back porch. The obscenely large number of animals that she corrals along with her can't-tell-if-it's-stupid-or-southern accent makes me suspicious that there was no one there.

Meanwhile, Tillie is still cute:

Peewee Applause

Tillie is so close to saying her first words. She can understand so many, having just added to her repertoire of nouns she can point to: "tummy" "foot" and "face" -- and verbs she can do: "clap". I'm so proud! Just this week it seems that she is mimicking the first syllables of some of the words we are saying, but I'm not sure. I think she is only weeks away from her first word. What will it be?

Produce Explosion

Our guests Mike and Amy got back from Mike's parents' farm and brought with them more produce than you can shake a stick of cane sugar at. There are four large boxes of apples, two bags of grapes, about 20 zucchini, 20 cucumbers, 20 yellow squash, a bag of elder berries, a box of potatoes, a box of walnuts, a bag of green beans, and Tillie's and my favorite--a giant cantaloupe (basketball size). Now, there are many people who would not think of this as a great challenge that must be met head on, armed with butter, a wooden spoon, and your favorite apron, but hey, I'm that kind of lady. So far in just one week, we have made apple pie, baked apples, apple cobbler, chocolate-caramel apples slices, apple cookies, apple bread, apple butter dip, stuffed zucchini, zucchini-squash-and-corn chowder, squash latkes, grape gin, cantaloupe-tinis, chocolate covered grapes, bread-and-butter pickles, and dill pickles...and we are NOT EVEN HALF WAY through the produce!!!

Pickling Action

Apple Boxes

Grape Gin and Cantaloupe-tinis

And what is Tillie up to during all of this? Well, mostly yelling:

Chubby Tadpole

The merbaby enjoys a good splash.

Hai Dah Dah

Tillie has just started using different syllables together, instead of repeating the same ones over and over. Instead of going "dah, dah, dah, dah" and then switching to "meh, meh, meh, meh" she goes "hai dah dah, hai dah dah". This sounds a bit like "Hi Dada" and we are trying not to get big heads about how sophisticated she sounds when Scott walks into the room and she says this. Baby's first sentence? Well, not quite, I know. Anyway, it is a tiny step towards real language, so it is still exciting for this easy audience. Here's an audio track so you out-of-towners can get an idea of how cute it sounds:

CLICK HERE to HEAR: tillie_haidahdah.mp3

Rott-in-Hell-Weilers

A new neighbor moved in behind our house. She has 4 rottweilers. They bark. They bark all night. It sounds like this: rarf...rar-arf........RARRF, rarf, RarrFF...rarf-RARF! Random and high-pitched. It goes on the entire night with only 10 minutes here and there when they take a little break--maybe their little barking throats get tired and they need to get some water. I don't know, but then they start right back up again. I had murderous thoughts last night--not for the dogs, who were the ones doing the barking, right outside our bedroom window--but for the owner who locked them out two nights in a row. Then, after she has had her luxurious beauty sleep, she lets them into the house for the day.

I'm trying to decide the best approach here. Her son bought the house, so this is a *permanent* thing. She will not be moving away any time soon. This means I have to be nice. I suppose I should bring her some banana bread and ask her nicely if she'll keep them inside at night. But, if she is at all sane, she wouldn't want them interrupting her sleep either. I don't think there is any law against having your dogs in your yard at night doing dog things. This is horrible, though. It made my neighborhood, which is something that I love, turn into something that I hate.

Standing Room Only

And because you really came here for the pictures of Tillie...here she is watching TV the new way, while standing:

Home Depot Tastes Good

I finally figured out why I don't feel so desperate anymore. We just recently doubled the amount of hours that we have a nanny come watch Tillie--from 10 to 20 per week. We really can't afford it. I mean, it is crazy expensive. However, I'm actually getting work done, so in theory I will eventually get paid enough to afford it. (It's a ramping up process, so we'll see.) Before this whole nanny increase, I just didn't ever feel relaxed in the evenings or on weekends because every spare moment *could* be a moment that I was working. Now, I actually can relax. Yesterday we took Tillie to the bookstore and I watched a movie with Scott. Today we took her to the pool and she had a blast splashing around. I can't believe I squandered a whole summmer working and worrying about not having enough nanny time when I could have been taking my little tadpole to the wading pool down the street from our house! Alas, next summer we'll have to do double time to make up for it. When I get pictures from the pool uploaded, I'll share them. In the meantime, here's what Tillie thinks of hardware shopping:

Plaid-y-pus

Tills woke up at 6 am this morning and couldn't go back to sleep. Her newfound career as a food critic wakes her every morning with a starving hole in her tummy from not eating enough the night before. Ouch, do I look/feel old in the morning! Well, the upside is that she and I went for an early morning walk and got to all the garage sales before they had been ransacked. Here she sits with our awesome find, and it was only a dollar!

PS. Love the mismatched plaids that daddy picked out for her.

Neighborhood Watch

My little material scientist is turning into a social butterfly. Whereas she used to ask "what is it made of?" "what does it feel like?" "how does it taste?" "what happens when I bend it?" "can I clank these two things together?", now it is all about people and participation. The burning questions now seem to be "who is that?" "what are they saying?" "is that funny?" "why won't you listen to me?" "doesn't his beard look suspicious?" "what are you eating and why aren't you letting me eat that too?".

Fetching New Puppy

When he was in California, Scott met Chovy's new puppy Luna, who is I guess my niece (my 1st canine one!). They played fetch.


Sometimes Luna has her own plan.

Fun with Visitors

Amy's Sundae Party

Molly Meets Baby Dash

Meeting Unka Xaq and Tia Ines in Florida

Unka Xaq Coaches

Can't Stop the Splash

Hotel Lobby Funhouse

Sisters Cruising in Mexico

Underwater Adventures

Tillie Takes Cuba

Chomping, Signing, Standing

Someone's mom has been a little busy lately, but she must now post some Tillie pics in order to soothe the angry, commenting masses.

Two Front Teef
Tillie's two bottom chompers finally busted through. Now she makes clicking noises when she mouths things and leaves the tiniest little bite marks in bits of cheese and apple.

This Is the Sign for Hat
Tillie can do the baby signs for dog, hat, book, hi/bye, and gimme five. Now, before you get too excited and start calling your local Harvard representative, she doesn't necessarily know what these words mean. She definitely knows what "dog" means. The others she just does on verbal cue. Her two favorites are "hat" and "hi" - which she sometimes combines into "hi-hat" for both salutations and exclamations. Our house guests Mike and Amy are trying to teach her the sign for hammer, a very important word for conversing with them.

First Pullup - a Victory
Tillie used to do a lot of grunting and straining to get into a standing position, but now she does it almost effortlessly.

Baby on Board

Tillie at Sea

Shew!

Two months after Scott and I married, we refinanced our house. For some reason, that was the day that I felt the real impact of our commitment. It was the first time that we really combined our finances, which was somehow more stressful than committing to someone emotionally for life. Plus, there was a new couch purchase and we couldn't agree on how comfy or funky or leathery it should be--basically a bunch of mundane things that didn't seem as important as monogamy became much more important than the whole marriage decision. I remember thinking after the whole thing settled that I was a real idiot for having married a guy before sorting all that out, but wasn't I super lucky that he was a good guy after all?!

Well, it happened again. I had a kid with someone (probably the biggest commitment of all) before finding out for certain that he is in fact the best father I have ever known. How lucky I am to have found someone so devoted to our baby and so good at playing with her and feeding her and keeping her happy and healthy! If he asked me to marry him today, I would certainly say yes and I would know that it was the smartest decision I could ever make.

Strawberry Short Stuff

I had a burning desire to do something domestic this past week. I made cherry cupcakes kind of for a birthday and kind of because I missed my mixer. (Dieting is the one thing you can't mix with your KitchenAid mixer, har, har.) The cakes were lovely as individuals, even lovelier in a bunch, and off-the-charts lovely when packed in a little pastel box.

Another shot that shows that I busted out, count em', 5 colors of frosting!

What did Tillie do while I was frosting them? She ate strawberries. She was a mess afterwards, but she smelled so good! My new name for her is strawberry short stuff.

Tillie inspects the fabric of her new party dress.

Kerry holds the newest of our friends--week old Luca. His mommas ate the cupcakes, which means that a few molecules of their sweetness will be infused in him. I feel so honored!

Still Little, Kinda

I got to peek in on a week-old baby today. He was so tiny. He was like a cute little skin bag of gristle and sweetness. That doesn't sound as cute as I mean it. Words aren't cute enough to describe how precious he was. I remember how beautiful it was to care for something so precious. I can't believe that Tillie was once so wee.

Here's what she looked like then:

And a few months later like this...

And now she's GIANT and she's gonna come getcha!

Strollin' Strollin' Strollin'

Someone forced her parents to go on THREE walks today. Even grandma got in a few hours of servitude at the feet the tiniest despot. I never thought that someone so small could be so bossy. She uses the stick, not the carrot.

Flags Are Fun Sticks

Our neighborhood had a little parade, ending in a park where watermelon, lemonade, and tamales were served. Tillie likes America now. I can't wait until she is old enough for her first fireworks show.