General

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Unlike last year, I don’t have any life-altering announcements to make. But Carolyn did play her very first April fool’s joke on me at 3:30 this morning, when she woke up and refused to go back to sleep until 5. Ugh. I was just getting used to sleeping through the night again – she’s been doing this for a whole week – and that made it even harder to drag myself out of bed six times in 90 minutes. I could have (and maybe should have?) just brought her back to bed, but she sleeps so much better in her crib now, and I was afraid she’d wake up tomorrow night too expecting to sleep in the big bed.

Hopefully tonight will be better…

Carrie and I took Denis’ parents to the Rochester Public Market this morning. It was the first time I’ve been, but it definitely won’t be the last. We came home with a ton of strawberries, a half ton of grapes, a few pears and a bag of green beans, all for $7.25.

The strawberries (not unexpectedly) aren’t the sweetest – it’s not as though they’re in season here after all – but one pint of them have already made a very tasty cobbler. I’m thinking of making bread or muffins with more of them tomorrow.

Today was a good day. It was sunny and warm-ish. The Easter Bunny brought Carolyn a basket with the Baby Einstein Neighborhood Animals DVD, a book, and a teething ring. We even managed to make it to church, and we had the best-behaved baby there. Then we spent the afternoon at my grandparents’ house eating way too much food, and now I’m ready to go to bed early!

Denis is off on a business trip in warm, sunny California while I’m stuck here in the cold snow. (Which is melting, revealing a winters’ worth of dog poo.) I’m such a wimp – he’s only been gone for 12 hours, and I’m already feeling the heavy burden of responsibility of being the sole caretaker of two dogs and a baby.

(Ignore the fact that both dogs are sacked out on the couch and the baby’s sleeping soundly in her crib. It’s a very heavy burden. Honest.)

Caffeine is evil. I stopped drinking caffeinated coffee 15 months ago because I was tired of the headaches I would get if I didn’t have the exactly perfect amount of caffeine at the exact right minute of the morning. This turned out to be a Good Thing, since I didn’t have to go through caffeine withdrawal at the same time as morning sickness when I found out I was pregnant a couple months later.

Fast-forward to six weeks ago.

My parents bought Denis one of those pod coffeemakers for his birthday. I stuck to decaf coffee pods. For about, oh, 4 days. Then, after a particularly bad night dealing with a non-sleeping baby, I put in a regular pod. (Oh, just once won’t hurt.) The next week, I did it twice. Then the next week I had regular coffee every morning.

And ever since then, I’ve had awful, awful headaches that no amount of advil or tylenol can cure.

So this morning, I quit caffeine cold-turkey. I didn’t even have decaf coffee lest I be tempted – or in my sleep-deprived state simply put in a regular pod thinking it was decaf. And, of course, I now have the headache to end all headaches. Between that and the coming night of non-sleeping baby duty, I imagine I’ll be waking up in a very sunny mood tomorrow…

(Quick, someone hide the regular coffee pods!)

Since I have rehearsal tomorrow night, we decided to go out to dinner tonight. This was the first time Denis and I have gone out together without the baby – granted, she’s been away from both of us before, but that’s just been for transition times between when I have to leave for rehearsal and when Denis gets home from work. (Living next door to family has lots of advantages!)

It’s not like I was worried about her – she and my mom get along quite well – and I didn’t exactly miss her, because we were only gone for a little more than an hour, but I was very conscious of the fact that she wasn’t there. It’s amazing how last year at this time I didn’t even know she existed (I was just barely pregnant but didn’t know it yet) and now I am acutely aware of her presence at all times.

The baby books I’ve read all say how important it is for the parents to go out together without the baby on a regular basis and – and this is the funny part – not talk about the baby at all. Yeah, right. That would be like going to a party with a pink elephant in the middle of the room and everybody pretending it wasn’t there. It’s not as though we spent our entire meal talking about Carolyn, but she’s a pretty big part of our lives, so of course her name came up once or twice. Ah, well, I guess that’s just further proof that we’re the worst parents ever, since we can’t stop talking about our fabulous baby for even an hour!

(Notice that I can’t even write a blog post without mentioning her at least once, either? Yep, worst mom ever.)

Today is the last day of the year of the monkey. (I think it’s pretty neat the Carolyn is a monkey. I’m a rabbit and Denis is a tiger, which means we shouldn’t be compatible, but it seems to be working out anyway.) My parents know the owners of the local Chinese restaurant, and they invited all of us to their celebration tonight. So, we put Carrie in her new red dress, packed her into the carseat, and went and had yummy Chinese food. (Unfortunately we were running late, so there are no pictures of the cute red dress – by the time we got home it was somewhat covered in drool and spit-up.)

I know it’s cliché, but I’m kind of hungry now…

Yes, I know, they weren’t actually in the superbowl, so it really would have taken a miracle for them to win, but Carrie and I were rooting for them anyway! It was actually a pretty good game, and there were a couple of pretty funny commercials – the ones with the monkey office workers were probably my favorites.