Linda’s Notes

My husband let my daughter poo on my pillow tonight. I left for 20 minutes to get my eyebrows done and left Adam in charge of our lovely little girl. When I came home this was our conversation:

Adam: She stinks
me: Well, did you change her?
Adam: No, you did that before you left.
me: Have you checked her since?
Adam: No
me: Well, maybe you should have
(Adam had her laying on top of my pillow on the sofa)

two minutes lapse
Adam: I think she poo’d on your pillow

two minutes after that
Adam: Can you help me out with this?
(”this” being a major diaper blowout on the part of our baby daughter)

My pillow is going in the trash.

On Friday, Athena will be taking her first plane flight, which also makes it the first time my husband or I have flown with an infant in tow. We’ve only traveled overnight with her once and that was driving to Lake Tahoe for a weekend trip. This is a 10 day trip and the first involving airports. We can’t just cram all sorts of stuff we think we’ll need for her into the back of the car. We’ll actually have to pack it into a suitcase.

We’ve booked a seat for her because I really can’t justify taking her as a lap child. I think she deserves her own seat belt rather than potentially become a projectile object if someone goes wrong during the flight. I know the chances are slim, but I was on a flight once from Dallas to College Station, Texas, when our plane just about fell out of the sky. Something about wind-shears and storm fronts. All I know is that everything that was not literally tied down went flying to the ceiling only to come crashing down again when the plane stabilized. This happened a couple of times during our flight. I would never forgive myself if something happened and she wasn’t buckled in. Anyway, we get to take extra checked and carry-on luggage this way. So that’s a huge plus!

Athena rolled over for the first time by herself! She rolled from her front to her back while I watched her in her crib.

OK, I know I’m biased, but really, this is one cute baby!

Since Adam had a regularly scheduled dentist appointment on Friday, we decided to take Athena along and have the dentist take a look at her soon-to-be-teeth. Turns out that the little white bump we saw that is about where the edge of her front top left tooth will be is not part of the tooth, but some unexplained white bump that the dentist said not to worry about, as it will go away. He could see her teeth on both the top and the bottom pushing against her gums, so looks like she will have teeth after all. Given that her father has some fake teeth screwed into his jaw, this was somewhat of a concern.

I think it’s possible that Athena’s first tooth broke through on the top… This is really early but it sure does look and feel like a tooth and would explain all the drool and unexplainable grumpiness on her part.

If you have not already voted, please go VOTE! This is the most important election of my lifetime to date and I want to see everyone’s vote counted. Vote for your future, and vote for the future of our next generation. Please.

We were supposed to all get an extra hour of sleep last night because our clocks fell back. But my daughter didn’t seem to understand that so after she woke up early to be fed, she just wanted to play for a while and had no interest in her extra hour of sleep. This wouldn’t have been so bad, if I hadn’t stayed up until 1am for no good reason. Somehow, my nap in the middle of the afternoon didn’t help, and now it’s 9:33pm and I feel like it’s midnight. Since we’ve managed to get Athena to sleep already, maybe I should just go to bed and hope she sleeps a little longer tonight.

On another note, isn’t this cute? Notice the Starbucks cup in Adam’s hand.

We took our first overnight trip with our little 2-month-old daughter. It was quite an adventure. She requires a lot of gear! We had a lot of fun, though. We spent a day up at the Lake Tahoe Nevada State Park, and picnicked at Sand Harbor, then went for a hike around Spooner Lake (where the ranger told me that the easy hiking path around the lake was “stroller friendly”…he clearly has never tried to push a stroller around that path…not at all stroller friendly). On Sunday we drove to Emerald Bay and had some nice views.

I’d run for Vice President if it meant I could have $150,000 in clothes and more than $4000 in hair and makeup consulting!

“The use of campaign funds for items which most Americans would consider to be strictly personal reasons, in my view, erodes public confidence and erodes it significantly,” (John McCain) said on the Senate floor in May 1993.

Don’t know about you, but I think clothes fall under “strictly personal”.

I’ve heard from my aunt in Austin, that my cousin who lives in Oakland (yeah, as in 20 miles from here - news travels in a round-about fashion in my family) had a baby boy yesterday. No details yet, but Buttercup has a baby cousin!!

On another note, this is currently one of my favorite photos of Athena.

Athena has Playgroup every Tuesday afternoon. Which basically means that we get together with other moms and their babies who are all about the same age as Athena. It is so great for me to have other moms to talk to who are going through the same things with their babies! This is Sienna…our playgroup has mostly boys, but there are two other girls in addition to Athena.

There are so many cute photos of Athena these days that it’s hard to pick just one. I like this one because Athena is basically refusing her bottle and just looking at her Daddy like he’s trying to play a funny trick on her.

Qantas passengers tell of horror plunge
“Passengers told Wednesday of their terror as a Qantas jet plunged dramatically in mid-flight, slamming them against the cabin roof, breaking bones and causing spinal injuries.”

This happened to a plane I was on in Texas when I was in college. I was on my way back from somewhere (New York, I think) and had changed planes in Dallas en-route to College Station. They put us on a small plane that had one seat, then an aisle, then two seats with about 15 rows. Part-way through the flight we got a lot of turbulence, then suddenly lost several thousand feet in a few seconds. It was one of the few times in my life where I truly thought I was going to die. We were flying through an area where two weather fronts met, and a windshear nearly took us down. I was really thankful to get off that plane. A couple of our fellow passengers actually knelt down and kissed the ground on the tarmac after we disembarked.

I saw this on a very conservative news website. So, it appears that even the right-wing crazies don’t like Sarah Palin. Well, what can you really expect from someone who honestly believes the earth is only 6000 years old? What does financial crisis we are currently in have to do with healthcare reform? Ask Sarah Palin!

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(Palin’s) quotes come out like a completed Scrabble game. There are plenty words on the board, but few coherent sentences.

Unfair? Make sense of this answer from last week’s interview on whether Palin supported the now-failed $700 billion financial sector bailout.

“That’s why I say I, like every American I’m speaking with, we’re ill about this position that we have been put in where it is the taxpayers looking to bail out,” she explained. “But ultimately what the bailout does is help those who are concerned about the health care reform that is needed to help shore up our economy. Helping the — it’s got to be all about job creation too, shoring up our economy and putting it back on the right track. So health care reform and reducing taxes and reining in spending has got to accompany tax reductions and tax relief for Americans and trade — we’ve got to see trade as opportunity, not as competitive, scary thing, but one in five jobs being created in the trade sector today — we’ve got to look at that as more opportunity.”
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This is just another reason to choose local and organic foods. I suggest trying to incorporate at least a few ideas from the slow food movement into your daily life. Less chance of tainted milk from China or poison peppers or tomatoes from somewhere else, that way. Maybe try something from one of the many local farmers’ markets.

Yesterday was my birthday, so we went out to celebrate and I had some cake and a birthday candle. I made a wish which I hope will come true this year. Last year I made a wish that did come true. Any guesses what it was?

Wouldn’t these be great for a visit to Texas!

- 125 pair limited edition, numbered, custom made boots - once sold, never available again
- Crafted of only the finest American belly alligator leather in your choice of Lucchese Classic toe & heel silhouettes
- Boot arrives in a matching, numbered 125th Anniversary Edition tooled leather boot box
- Includes a photo journal recording the production process of your Lucchese 125th Anniversary boot

Interesting article on childhood nutrition and mistakes parents often make when trying to feed their little ones. One (ok, I’m sure it’s actually a lot) lucky pre-schooler had a mostly chocolate diet!

It appears that some tagless infant clothing is causing chemical burns or severe allergic reactions in some infants. It looks like this is due to certain chemicals used in the production of the ‘tag’. So, beware if your kid develops a weird rash right where the tagless part of their clothes touch them.

Picture of what the tagless tag did to one child:

Reported at www.zrecommends.com