General

We’ve had several power outages this summer. I guess the local power company hasn’t upgraded their lines and service enough to accommodate the extra load from all the houses that have been built around here recently, so sometimes they have planned (!) outages and sometimes it just happens. But it always seems to happen when I’m trying to put Carrie down for a nap.

Now, you may ask why it matters whether there’s power or not when putting Carrie down for a nap. It shouldn’t. Granted, I play her lullaby CD, but I’m perfectly capable of singing her to sleep. So really, that’s the least of our worries. It’s everything else that’s the problem.

This afternoon is a pretty typical example of what happens when the power goes out:

1:27 PM – Carrie is peacefully nursing to the sounds of a celtic lullaby.
1:27:30 PM – The power goes down, comes up, goes down, comes up, goes down and stays down, all in a matter of seconds.
1:27:36 PM – Molly flips out because the house fan is no longer running; the UPS in the office starts beeping.
1:27:38 PM – Molly (and Murphy, who’s just nosy) barges into Carrie’s room. Carrie is now fully awake and giggling at the dogs.
1:27:39 PM – Molly tries to climb into the rocking chair with me. Nutty dog.
— at this point, I lose track of time because the clock radio is not functioning. —
10 minutes later – The windows in Carrie’s room are now open to the world, as the A/C is not running. The dogs have been kicked out. I am again nursing Carrie and singing lullabies. She’s started in on those long blinks that precede peaceful slumber.
30 seconds later – The idiot down the street (IDTS) on his mini dirt bike (has anyone told him how ridiculous he looks on that thing?!?) buzzes by like a gigantic wasp, blowing his air horn. Carrie sits up, once again fully awake.
5 minutes later – Carrie is almost asleep. The IDTS has apparently gone around the block, and again buzzes by. So much for those tired closing eyes.
5 minutes later – Oh. My. God. Someone needs to do something about the IDTS or I’m going to find a slingshot or something. Carrie is now completely awake and struggling to get off my lap and go play. Fine. I give up. Go play.
— An eternity passes, during which I try to keep my sanity while watching a child who should be napping because I really really really really need a break. Said child, being overtired, is in extra-cranky-danger-baby mode where she’s super clumsy and also very sensitive to the least little bump or frustration. Not a good combination. —
3:32 PM – The power is back on. The A/C is running. The windows are shut. The IDTS has apparently found something better to do. The dogs are calm. After much wailing and gnashing of gums, Carrie has ceased struggling to get out of my arms to play some more, and is finally almost asleep.
3:37 PM – I tiptoe out of her room. She’s finally napping, two hours after she really needed to.

I think I’m going to send my electric company a bill for the therapy I’m going to need soon. Oh, and for the wig I will need to cover up the bald spots from where I was pulling my hair out in frustration. Can you bill someone for mental anguish?

To the person who dented my car door in the Pittsford Plaza parking lot this evening:

Thank you. Thank you very much. I really appreciate the fact that you dented my new car. Yes, I know it’s a year old, but it’s still my new car. In fact, it’s the very first new car I’d ever owned, and it was – until tonight – in absolutely perfect condition. And the whole not leaving a note thing, yeah, that was an extra-special touch.

The really funny thing is, I can only think of one way you could possibly have used your driver’s side door to dent my passenger door the way that you did. You must have opened it with such force that my side mirror snapped forward. Since it was in it’s normal location when I got back to my car, you obviously very kindly pushed it back into place. I do appreciate that. If I hadn’t noticed the dent and the mirror had been out of place I might have gotten to the expressway and not been able to use my mirror to change lanes.

Now, some would say that it’s only a little dent and I shouldn’t care so much – and they’re probably right. In the grand scheme of things it’s not something to lose sleep over. I’m certainly not going to contact my insurance company over it. And, honestly, if you had bothered to leave a note apologizing for your actions I probably wouldn’t have bothered to contact your insurance company either.

But since you didn’t leave a note, and I can’t thank you in person, I’m writing you this public thank you note just so you know how special you made my evening. I hope your evening was just as special.

Thank you again.
Sarah

Today we had tickets to go see a baseball game, but the weather didn’t cooperate and they cancelled the game. We were all set to tough it out and watch an inning or two even if it was drizzling, since it would have been Carrie’s first baseball game. Thankfully, Denis thought to turn on the radio on our way there so we found out about the initial rain-delay before we got all the way there and paid for parking. And Carrie was all decked out in her adorable little Mets outfit, complete with too-big hat, too!

But it all worked out for the best since we were instead able to go to Henry’s third birthday party. (In fact, I even thought to put Henry’s gift in the trunk just in case – I had a feeling that we would end up at Lisa’s one way or the other!)

Now we just need to find a time to exchange our tickets – although there’s only one afternoon home game left in the season, and a 7:05 PM start is too late for Carrie (bedtime starts around 7:30!) so I guess if the weather’s bad that day we’re just going to have to forget it until next year.

We went to my cousin’s birthday party the other night, and Carrie had a ball with her son’s walker – not the kind you sit in, but the kind you push in front of you. So my grandmother immediately went and bought Carrie this Fisher Price walker, and Carrie has pretty much played with it non-stop since then. It’s only our sixth “battery toy” – that’s a whole ‘nother blog post – but at least it’s not obnoxiously noisy.

Yesterday Denis did a ton of yard work, weeding the front garden and everything. It now looks like actual people live in and care about the house. (Thankfully, all of our neighbors have been very understanding about the jungle. I suppose none of them are in the process of trying to sell their houses so it’s not that big a deal.)

And today… Today we went to a sprayground. What’s a sprayground, you ask? Why, a playground that has water! Carrie took a little while to warm up to it, but once she decided it was fun we could barely drag her away. She really enjoyed walking through the short jets they had, and stopping when one was spraying right up her swimsuit. I can definitely see going to this park many many times a summer when she gets older!

(Kids in motion tend to stay in motion!)

We had family visiting for the weekend, so Carrie got to play with four of her cousins. She absolutely loved it, and the kids were all really good with Carrie – they’re all old enough to understand that you have to be gentle with a baby and that babies don’t know how to share, so they were very tolerant of her grabbing toys and pulling hair. The dogs were also on their best behavior, and took the extra petting, ear-pulling and water bowl invasions without complaint.

Friday everyone played in the backyard and on our little play structure, and went swimming. I have to admit, seeing the older kids run around with the dogs in our fenced-in backyard made me a little teary – it’s exactly what I had envisioned when we bought this house and started dreaming about our family. I can’t wait until Carrie’s old enough to run around back there too!

Saturday we visited the Strong Museum, which is always fantastic. I think when Carrie turns two – and no longer has free admission – we’ll probably get a membership there. Right now she’s a little young for most of the activities, but she did enjoy the play areas set aside for crawlers and beginning walkers.

It was a fun but extremely tiring weekend, and I think I need to go to bed now!

That was not exactly the easiest upgrade ever. In fact, there were quite a few heart-stopping moments where I was frantically wishing I’d done a full backup instead of my lazy version of a backup. But it’s all better now, and Tiger is definitely a worthwhile upgrade.

Oh, and since my laptop was pretty much out of commission yesterday, I just published Carrie’s 9-month birthday post. And…a new feature this month: a gallery! I downloaded a fantastic (and free!) app that creates web galleries from iPhoto, and I like it so much that when I have time (hah!) I’m going to go back and create galleries for Carrie’s first 8 months as well.

Carrie had her first visit to an Apple Store today, while we fulfilled our inner geeks and attended the opening. We ended up standing in line for close to an hour to get in. I felt a little like a bad mommy, because Carrie ended up missing her morning nap for it, although she literally fell asleep within a minute of having this picture taken and stayed asleep the whole time we were wandering around the very loud and crowded store. She didn’t wake up until we went to put her in the car! We all got free t-shirts, including Carrie – the guy nearly dropped the box on her head when he handed it to me, so he gave us an extra. I’m contemplating turning her adult XL t-shirt into a onesie…

We also bought Tiger, which I’m going to install right now. Well, as soon as I’m done blogging and my partial backup (pics and music: the really important things) is done.

One of the really neat things about Netflix is being able to get TV series DVDs. It works out especially well for us because it’s not a problem to fit in a 45 minute show after Carrie goes to bed, but a 2 hour movie keeps us up too late. The first series we tried out was Firefly, which we just finished tonight. I really wish I’d known about this series when it was on, and I wish even more that it hadn’t been cancelled after the first season!

I guess there’s a new movie, Serenity, coming out in September which is based on the series. Time to line up a babysitter!

Wow! Three entries in one day – can you stand it?

Anyway. Earlier this evening Carrie and I were sitting on the couch together watching one of her Signing Times videos while Denis was working on dinner. In fact, in a weird coincidence we were watching the Silly Pizza Song segment while he was making homemade pizza! Denis calmly asked from the kitchen, “is it a bad thing if the oven’s on fire?” Um… I scooped Carrie up, took a peek in the kitchen, saw the bright yellow flames in the oven, and advised him to turn it off (duh!) and close the door, hoping that it would burn itself out. Meanwhile, I threw on my shoes and went and stood outside the front door with Carrie so she wouldn’t be treated to all the lovely smoke invading the house. The flames went out pretty quickly, and I brought Carrie over to my parents’ house so I could help Denis open up the house and get the smoke under control.

So, there we are, running around the house, when the power takes several hits. The dogs start going berserk, I start worrying that somehow the fire had re-ignited and caused the oven (it’s electric) to trip the circuit breaker, the UPS upstairs starts frantically beeping…I run back next door, the power’s out there too.

At this point we have an uncooked pizza, a stove we can’t use for various reasons, smoke filling the entire downstairs, no electricity for fans, it’s dinnertime for Carrie and we can’t microwave her frozen purees, and the dogs are going nuts because of the beeping and the distant thunder.

It ended up working out though. Denis grilled the pizza – it actually came out quite well that way – my mom and I thawed Carrie’s food in very hot water, and just as Carrie was starting to get really tired the power came back on. Even without the fans, the smoke had pretty much dissipated by the time I brought her home, and she got to bed at a reasonable hour.

And now I need a break. What a way to start the week!

I just finished Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. I don’t want to give anything away, so I’m just going to say that I’m very sad. It was a good book, but not a happy one.

One more book to go before we find out how it all ends.