WonderBowl(tm) Strikes Again!

Yes, that is a sweet potato transforming itself from a tuber into a salad. Will the marvels of WonderBowl(tm) never cease?

Its My Party...

Jackson turned 7 months old yesterday, but evidently wasn't very happy about it.



We've had some fussy days, some diaper rash, and perhaps a wee bit of baby constipation. Poor dude.

A Room With A View

This is going to be hard. According to the web page linked in the sidebar, "This year's topic is a 'simple' one: tell us, and your readers, why you're pro-choice." The only simple part is that I know that I have always been pro-choice, and I always will be. Yes, I know all the logical reasons that this is an inalienable right, the Bumper Sticker Reasons, please feel free to check out my favorites. But it doesn't seem like this answers the question of why I am pro-choice.

I have been very lucky in my life. I have never been poor, unloved, or uneducated. I have been able to choose my partners, rather than having anything forced on me. I have a supportive family with whom I can discuss anything, even life's worst questions. (And I do think of an unplanned pregnancy as the worst kind of question.) Yet when I, with my blessed existence, became pregnant at the age of 25, all I knew is that I was alone in making a decision on how to proceed. And that is as it should be.

Yes, anyone in any tough situation can, and should, talk to as many people as possible. Get to know all the options and their pros and cons. But in the end, no one knows what the world looks like from your eyes. And very few get to ask you to justify that view.

So in my situation, I tried to do just that. I talked to the father, my family, and also tried to talk to the professionals. I tried to talk with someone from Planned Parenthood. Unfortunately due to budget cuts and overwork, I didn't get the best reception. Frankly I got yelled at on the phone. The horrifying phrase was "Do you want the abortion or not?!" Which I simply could not answer. I was shocked, and sweaty and frightened. I hung up. It shouldn't be like this. It shouldn't be shameful, or frightening or clandestine. We are all humans. Those who are not can cast the first stone.

Fortunately for me, I lived in a very liberal state, and I got in touch with an amazing open-adoption agency. They advocated for nothing save education for women about all of the options. A woman from the agency drove two hours from her home to meet with me, and talked with me for three additional hours about all of the options. She had once had an abortion, had once given a baby up for adoption, and had then later adopted a child. She regretted none of her decisions.

So that's it. It is one of the worst decisions a person can have to make. Do we really need to make it harder by making it illegal, shameful or life threatening? It will always be one woman and one choice made from the view from her life. Until you have looked out her window for as long as she has, you have no right to make up her mind for her.

Thanks for listening, good night, and practice safe sex!

Breaking News!

As of yesterday Our Little Spud has rolled from his back to his tummy three times! It is a slow and sort of arduous process, and yet I haven't managed to catch it on video yet. I'll keep trying.

The second news story is the Blog for Choice button in the sidebar. I am going to try and get a post of substance written and hope any readers/lurkers/fellow bloggers will hop on board with me.

Now, back to your regular programming...

I Am SO Showing This To Your Prom Date

So the Chub Bub is getting really good at eating these days. So good in fact that he fills his little digestive system right up and um... ahem... has to make room for more. It seems to be rather instantaneous process, as near the end of every meal my charming little son changes from this pleasant critter...


In to this hilarious, florid faced, pursed lipped, bug eyed, drooling, food...uh...processor...

You don't think laughing maniacally at my son while he's relieving himself will give him any sort of complex, do you?

I'm Generous That Way!

This booger has been dangling around in my son's right nostril for the last three days. It is driving me positively nuts and I can't get it out...so I thought I'd torture y'all with it too. Enjoy!

I Shall Call Him Squishy, And He Shall Be Mine

The Hub had a business meeting in Monterey this week, so the ChubBub and I got to tag along. We stayed in a century old hotel right in town, walking distance to not only Fisherman's Wharf (tee hee, the word wharf makes me laugh) but also these nice fellas... (I especially dig the dude "hiding" under the orange buoy.)

We stayed an extra day and got to spend a family afternoon at the aquarium...
The fish behind my baseball becapped husband in the picture below are Tuna, and if anything the picture makes them look smaller than they were. So yes, these fish were bigger than my son. Scawy fish!
My favorites were the jellyfish, and I have to confess that they were all swimming upside down so I have flipped the pictures, because it just looked weird the other way...

Here's my cue ball headed son with some big narsty stringy chaps

Here was a really pretty (I say pretty because I am behind an inch-thick honking plate of glass) blue baubled jelly who was also swimming upside down. All the better to see up his colorful skirts, I say.

I just have one more multimedia presentation in my show and tell today, of cute little zippy jellyfish. I always think of them as languorous critters, but not these! The red one at the beginning bonks into the glass and flattens his wee noggin for a sec, before swimming on...

Its Not Easy Being Green

I do not have the greenest of thumbs, but I really do try. Unfortunately all of our houseplants seem to be suffering from one form of stress or another. Wilty brown bits...


Stack o' dead leaves co-habitating in the pot...

Been resurrected from death's doorstep at least twice...

Flat out vegetation murder... (Its a succulent fer frack's sake, aren't those things supposed to be hardy and drought tolerant?!)

So what then happens with an unused holiday onion? Sitting in a soil-less bowl on the kitchen counter, with nary a drop of water...

It thrives. Go figure.

And on the subject of green things... the newest food, peas, were met with a studied display of infant ambivalence

Can't you just hear him saying "feh"?

GMWAS

For those of you who have been following along, you might have realized that we are taking this baby food thing sort of slowly. So we have finally reached yet another baby milestone, the one where we fed him his very first "vegetable". That is if you think of sweet potatoes as vegetables and not a sticky sweet starch product. Anywhoo. The very first spoonful of sweet potato was met with, I kid you not, an actual shudder of revulsion. Have you ever seen a baby shudder? I have. It's actually pretty cute. So day one, we have ChubBub 1, Sweet Potato 0.

Day two its back to rice cereal only. Day three, we warm up our gustational athlete with the ol' familiar rice cereal, and then bring in the big sweet potato guns. Hey Mikey, he likes it! Sort of. Well he seemed to like it, he kept opening his wee maw for refills. Only I guess he wasn't really swallowing much, because there was a tiny bit of gagging...



So we have now learned to follow every few spoonfuls with a chug of water (did I mention that he drinks from a cup?!) to wash the whole mess down. Sort of. Some of the potato ends up backwashing down into the cup, making a sort of watery sweet potato smoothie by the end. Yum! And he also has a hard time deciding between eating spoonfuls and sucking his thumb, so he sort of ends up with a food stalactite dripping down his pudgy arm. But all in all he seems to be really enjoying the wacky sport of eating. See...



Funny though, I don't feel hungry at all...

We Sure Had Fun Today, Didn't We Stimpy?

It may seem that my New Year's resolution is to post less than ever to this here bloggy, but I swear that is not the case! To make up for it I've got a slew of pictures for y'all! First the Christmas Cute...

Requisite goofy bow on head picture.

A boy and his tree.

So then the lil' nuclear family spent New Years in Tahoe, which is exactly as awesome as it sounds. The fabulous Karelypants had her 40th birthday bash, the Blumes put us up in their adorable house, and the Hub, Bub, and I got out for a cross country ski (with the oh so cool Chariot Carrier).

And one additional outcome of the road trip was that we traveled through real cities, will stores and everything! And now that the Bub is eating stuff off a spoon, we thought it might be time to get him one of those crazy new fangled high chairs. And these days, let me tell you, they are new AND fangled. We went to some Babies R Us or Superstore or somethin' and they were all over $150! Fortunately our travels also took us relatively close to an Ikea as well, where we picked up this little "Antilop" gem for less than $25! Of course we spent the rest of that $150 on other vital items at the old-blow-the-budget Ikea. But boy was it fun.


So on to current news! We woke up this morning thinking we had a dusting of snow on the porch from the storm last night...


But lo and behold, it wasn't snow, but an awful lot of hail!

Looks pretty though. Happy new year, y'all!