Went and bought myself

an 8x8 Pyrex baking dish, because I haven't had one in a long time and when Mikey does the grocery shopping for me he always comes home with the brownie mix that you have to bake in an 8x8 baking dish.

I decided to make brownies from scratch to inaugurate my new 8x8 baking dish, so I searched my cookbooks, found a likely recipe, whipped it up and waited eagerly for the finished result, and was crushed to find that the first brownies ever baked in my new 8x8 baking dish tasted more or less like dryer lint with nuts in it.

Speaking of brownies, I made some one night (from a mix, so they were good) and Mikey sneaked one to Brittany, her first ever. When we went outside the next day, Britt marched straight over to one of my flowerbeds and popped a dirt clod into her mouth. She spit it right out again, but up to this point she'd always been pretty good about not eating dirt, so I could only surmise that for a few glorious moments she had imagined that the ground under her feet was made of brownies, and that she could pick some up and eat it whenever she wanted. What a letdown that must've been!

I'm trying to get interested

in cooking again. I used to have a rep as a pretty good cook but after doing it most days for more than 25 years it's more of a chore than a pleasure. My heart hasn't been in it for a long time and even I don't want to eat my cooking anymore.

So I've been reading through my cookbook collection while sitting out in the Smoke Hole (a.k.a. the garage), trying to get inspired. My big hardback Southern Living cookbooks are the most interesting, full of all kinds of stuff I'd like to eat -- if somebody else did the cooking. There's lots of handy tricks and tips sprinkled throughout their pages, and one of them was a reminder that baking powder and baking soda don't keep forever, so I dutifully went and checked my containers for expiration dates. The baking soda wasn't so bad -- it expired in 2004. My baking powder, however, expired in 1999.

And there was a reminder that herbs and spices don't keep forever, either, but they're not usually marked with expiration dates. My little can of allspice was one of the few that was marked -- it expired in 1987.

Can you tell I haven't done much baking lately?

The recipes tempting me the most right now are the ones for slushy, fruity, rummy beverages. And I don't even drink, aside from champagne at New Year's and a very occasional bottle of wine. Haven't touched liquor in years, but now I'm getting an itch to whomp up a blenderful of Red Roosters or maybe some Lady Birds. Might go on a wee bender sometime soon -- you never know.

Britt experiences snow

up close and personal for the very first time ever:



Shortly after this picture was taken, Britt experienced a mud puddle up close and personal for the very first time ever. Didn't get a picture of that, though -- I had to get busy cleaning her off.

Little Big Sis

Sixteen months old and wearing "high heels" already:



She has a mouthful of teeth (eleven at last count) but the novelty's worn off the tooth-brushing thing and she's so over it. I do my best to do it anyway, but it's not fun.

She's learned how to "gimme five" and "high five."

She can almost say "butterfly" (buh-by) and "paper" (peh-pa).

She discovered her nose during her recent bout with a cold, and now she usually has a finger in it. Caught her trying to shove green beans up into it, too.

Meanwhile, her education in the classics continues -- tonight she danced to Grampa's Stevie Ray Vaughan DVD.

I'm not taking my Christmas shit down

because I didn't put any up this year. Last year it stayed up until March.

You think that's slackin'? Well, my Christmas present from 2004 -- my big beautiful upright freezer -- is still sitting in the middle of the garage. It's never been plugged in. It hasn't been scooted up against the wall to be plugged in yet because Mikey's friggin' weight bench is still in the way. The weight bench that he parks his ashtray and Coke cans on.

(***sigh***)

Peaceful

Spent the weekend with a few of my favorite people -- Mom, Phil and Jamie came down to visit us. Bridget, Chris and Sherri came over, too, but didn't stay to ring in the New Year with us.

Mom brought and cooked enough food to keep us going all week. She gave my kitchen a good scrub, too (thanks, Ma!). We finally ate some of her black-eyed peas for dinner, which were pretty darn good but now I have terrible garlic breath and need to go brush my teeth but I don't feel like standing up that long.

We downed our annual bottle (or two) of Moët at midnight, then watched Steve McQueen and Andy Griffith's girlfriend in The Blob before going to bed.

Yeah, we live big, I'm tellin' ya.

They left (relatively) early this morning, and I forgot to send Jamie's new mop and vacuum cleaner home with her. I'll send 'em with Mom if she comes back next weekend.

It's been a blissfully quiet day -- as quiet as it can be with an energetic toddler in the house. Now the baby's sleeping, I'm playing on the computer and Mikey's reading his Big Book o' Beatles.

Ah, my happiness is complete: Mikey just told me he brought home a fresh tub of Bluebell ice cream when he went out for milk earlier. I b'lieve I can get on my feet long enough to get me some of that!

Merried out

It's Friday already? Geez.

After we got around and got exposed to everybody's germs, we've been illin' all week. Mikey has a sore throat/coughing thing, I have a queasy stomach/body aches thing, and Britt has a fever/barfing/snotting thing.

Poor Britt -- it's only the third time she's ever been sick, and she's not sleeping much. Neither are we. She won't eat much, either. Trying to get baby Tylenol into her mouth is like wrestling a bear. She doesn't like the booger-puller much, either, but we gotta do what we gotta do.

I've managed to get through without barfing on sheer willpower so far -- I hate throwing up that much. Finally got over over my anti-pharmaceutical self long enough to pop an Advil for the body aches, and that made me perky enough to try out my new Swiffer Wet-Jet that Santa brought me (yes, I did ask for one). Well, not perky enough to try out the special scrubber pad, so the stubborn spots are still there -- but otherwise my kitchen floor looks pretty good. The rest of the house is a pit, though. It's been a rough week.

Anyway, we took our first long car trip with Britt -- three hours to Tahlequah on Friday and three hours back on Saturday -- and she slept a little and squirmed and fussed a lot but mostly she glared at us like we were the two most heartless people in the world for keeping her strapped into the car seat all that time.

Tried to get her to show off her dancing skills for my family in Tahlequah, but of course she wouldn't do it. Then we spent Christmas Day back here with Mikey's family and she danced her little butt off for them.

Had a couple of misadventures over the weekend -- one of Kenny's boys was chasing Britt around Debbie's sofa and she fell face-first with her binky in her mouth and busted her lip. It bled a little -- all over the front of my new Ralph Lauren sweater -- but she got over it pretty quickly. On Sunday at Mikey's folks', she went to give Buddy the Bernese Mountain Dog some love and he knocked her down and did the Happy Dance on top of her tiny little body -- a horrifying moment because Buddy is one big-ass dog. He knocked me down a time or two while I was trying to grab her out from under him. It's a miracle that there wasn't any damage done -- to her or to the dog.

I was pretty well used up after that but the holidays were not yet over for us. Oh, hell, no, because my mother-in-law's birthday was Monday. We usually go out to a restaurant for a family-only celebration, but Candy and her husband just moved into a new house and wanted have the party there, so we showed up at the appointed time and it was one of my worst nightmares -- a roomful of people I didn't know. And a few people I knew slightly:

WELL, HIIIIII!!! HOW YA BEEN? HAVEN'T SEEN YEW IN AAAAAGES!!!!

(Oh, God, don't hug me please don't hug me don't don't oh nooooooo...)

By this point, I was ready to spill my own blood on my other new Ralph Lauren sweater.

Anyway, we got through it and then we went home and got sick. And that's about all we've been doing all week.

Little Sis says

I want YOU to have a Merry Christmas and a very happy New Year!

Me & Sis went Christmas shopping

yesterday (Mikey's been taking care of most of it, but I still had to do a little), and she was such a good girl. She always is when we go out, probably because we don't get out much.

Her exceptional cuteness was oohed and aahed over by customers and salespeople everywhere we went, to which she responded by waving and blowing kisses.

She sure knows how to play to an audience, Sis does.

Two not-so-fabulous firsts

Britt's been scribbling with crayons on scrap paper, so I thought maybe it was time to introduce her to coloring books. So I bought a couple yesterday and thought we'd have fun coloring together.

We sat down last night to color some kitty-cats -- Britt would scribble a few strokes and hand her crayon to me and fret. I'd scribble a few strokes with it to show her what to do and then I'd hand it back to her. This went on over and over again until she was getting too stressed out over it, so I put the coloring books away for a few more months. I was like, "My word, Sis, don't take it so hard. This is supposed to be fun!"

I dunno what her issue was, unless I have a budding perfectionist on my hands and she just didn't feel like she was doing it right.

The other first: Brittany had her first Happy Meal! I know, I know -- bad Grammy! But the key to handling this child is to keep her on a regular schedule and she was late for her nap after our running around all morning and I didn't have time to cook a proper lunch, so she had chicken nuggets and fries and apple juice. It was also her first experience with a juice box and of course she had to squeeze it and squirt juice all over herself.

I was really pissed when I saw what her first-ever Happy Meal toy was. It was a little character figure from Narnia. Lucy, I think? I dunno, I've never read any of the Narnia stuff -- fantasy is not my cup o' tea. Anyway, she had a book in one hand and when you move this little button on her back, the arm with the book goes up and down, like a Heil Hitler salute.

We had a helium balloon from one of the stores we went to yesterday morning, so I tied the string around Lucy's neck to see if she would float but she was too heavy. I probably shouldn't let Britt see me exhibiting passive-aggressive behaviors like that because she's such a little copycat, but I was so bummed that her very first Happy Meal toy was so lame.

Grammy's little helper

Brittany's learning how to be a proper little housekeeper, just by watching me.

Hey, quit snickering. I'm a better housekeeper than I used to be, but nobody ever comes down here to see me so how would you know?

Anyway, she helps unload the dishwasher by handing me one piece of silverware at a time. She hasn't figured out the distinction between clean dishes out/dirty dishes in yet, so I have to load the dishwasher with one leg thrust out along the edge of the door so I can block her from grabbing the dirty silverware as soon as it goes in.

She helps me do laundry, too, but if I don't hand her some clean things to throw into the dryer, she'll grab things from the dirty clothes pile and throw them in.

When she's finished eating, she'll yank off her bib and wipe down the tray of her high chair, sending bits of leftover food flying all over the floor.

She takes good care of her baby doll, too. She kisses and cuddles it and feeds it a bottle, just like I do with her.

She'll be stirring a spoon around a bowl at her little play kitchen and she'll come over and give us "bites" of whatever it is she's cooking up. It's awful cute and all, but I'm glad she's too short to help me at the big stove.

Oh, the horror

Took Britt to her 15-month checkup this morning and she screamed, squalled, flailed, thrashed and kicked all the way through it. I don't know if it was stranger anxiety (she acts that way when Aunt Bridgie comes over, but this was worse -- Aunt Bridgie should come visit more often, BTW, so she won't be a stranger) or if she remembered that it's the place where she gets needles poked into her legs, but it was pure hell.

Anyway, she weighed 23 1/2 pounds and was 28 1/4 inches tall -- if they managed to measure this whirling dervish of a child accurately, which I doubt -- dropping her down to the fifth percentile heightwise, meaning 95% of babies her age are taller than she is. I'll measure her myself later and see how close they got.

And yes, she did get more needles poked into her legs, poor baby.

Then we went Christmas shopping for two hours and I managed to get exactly one item knocked off my list. Woo-hoo!

To tree or not to tree, Part 2

Mikey has decided he wants to put up the Christmas tree after all. I said, "How do we keep Brittany off of it?" He said, "We'll just keep telling her no, until she understands not to touch it."

Um, yeah. He means I'll keep telling her no, since he's gone to work all day. I've been trying to keep her out of the kitchen trash can ever since she got mobile, and she's still fascinated by it. I tell her no daily, and it seems to have no effect whatsoever.

Anyway, somebody suggested putting up the tree inside the playpen, where she can look but not touch. That's an excellent idea, except:

1. It's currently being used as a toybox, but we could move the toys somewhere else temporarily.

2. It's currently parked in front of the aquarium to keep Brittany from tipping it over on herself somehow (I'm very paranoid about that), which is not an ideal spot for tree placement.

3. The playpen measures 28 x 40 inches, so the tree wouldn't fit inside it unless we left all the bottom branches off.

(***sigh***)

I'm less than enthused about this -- can you tell?

Brittany the Orange-Nosed Cutie

She has carotenemia, which was pointed out to me at her 9-month checkup by her pediatrician and again at her 12-month checkup. She's due for her 15-month checkup next week and it's still there, even though she doesn't eat much baby food anymore. I hope the doctor doesn't jump my ass about it.

I still think she's a beauty, even if she does have a little carrot nose:



It matches this autumn leaf box hat she likes to wear:



But it clashes with her fuzzy pink hat:



Dunno how long it'll take to fade away. I guess her doctor would know.

Britt has a molar!

Been watching closely for the two lateral incisors on top to come through. They're almost but not quite offically there yet.

In the meantime, she snuck a molar in on us!

PS: Plus a new lateral incisor on the bottom -- just discovered that one this evening.

To tree or not to tree

is the question we're grappling with.

We usually have our Christmas tree up by now, and the only place to put it is in the dining room, but that's Brittany's toy room now and she's gonna think it's a big new toy for her to play with. How do we keep her from stripping everything within reach off of it? The space is too big to block off. And if we do put up the tree, we can't put presents under it anyway because tearing paper is one of her favorite activities.

(***sigh***)

Maybe we'll have to skip it this year. I dunno.

Sleeping like a baby

Finally got Brittany adjusted to her new naptime/bedtime schedule and the past three nights have been blessedly peaceful. The two nights before that were not.

Sunday night she woke up at 1:30 am and didn't go back to sleep until after 4:00. I gave up on rocking her and brought her into bed with us, where she spun and flailed and delivered a hard kick to my left boob that nearly made me swallow my tongue. But she also kissed and patted my face so sweetly that I couldn't get too mad at her.

Monday night she woke up every time we tried to put her down -- Mikey and I took turns rocking her and were so frustrated that we started snapping at each other, which we never do. When I finally decided she was just gonna have to cry it out, she went right off to sleep.

The next three nights she went to sleep right on time, and stayed asleep through the night, so I think we're through the worst of it. I hope so anyway.

The Chair

The Chair has become the bane of my existence. It's the gold swivel rocker in Brittany's room where I spend at least two hours a day rocking her to sleep -- late morning nap, afternoon nap, and bedtime. I get numb from having 25 pounds of baby stretched across my lap for so long.

It's been getting harder and harder to get her to sleep at night. Sometimes when I've rocked her to sleep, she'll pop awake as soon as I stand up from The Chair to put her in her crib, and then I'm back to square one. Some nights it takes an hour and a half -- I'm not kidding.

Anyway, I've been thinking about eliminating one of her daytime naps so that she'll go to sleep earlier at night, say 9:30 instead of 11:00. It would be wonderful to have that extra free time.

So I started yesterday by skipping her afternoon nap, but it didn't work because she climbed up on my lap at 7:00 and fell asleep. I only let her sleep about 15 minutes and made her wake up, but still had a hard time getting her to sleep last night.

Today I skipped her late morning nap and let her decide when to climb up on my lap and fall asleep, which she did at 3:00. Then I went and put her in her crib, but she only slept for an hour so I thought I'd have it easy tonight. I was wrong.

I made Mikey feel sorry for me so he rocked Brittany to sleep tonight. I was so happy -- a whole day with NO time spent in The Chair. Woo-hoo! Grandpa rocks! Then we went out to the garage for a celebratory smoke but our delight was cut short by the friggin' baby monitor.

(***sigh***)

So, I rocked Brittany to sleep again, and when I stood up to put her in her crib she woke up again, so I rocked her to sleep again, and I am damned tired of rocking.

Anyway, there is good news: Brittany's brushing her teeth now! Or rather, I am and she's letting me! To know how truly amazing this is, you have to understand that this child won't hardly let me stick a finger in her mouth to check for new teeth (only four so far), so I wondered how on earth I was gonna manage it.

She loves to copy whatever we do, though, so when she takes her bath I leave her in her safety seat to watch me while I go brush my teeth at the sink, and then I brush hers and she loves it! I'm not sure if it's because it makes her think she's a big girl like Grammy or because she likes the taste of her Strawberry Shortcake toothpaste but, as long as it gets the job done, who cares?

Tiny dancer

Brittany practices her dance moves all day every day, and has added a number a steps to her repertoire. There's the Brittany Quick-Step, which is basically running in place; the Bounce, where she bends both knees to bob her booty up and down; the Rock, where she shifts her weight from foot to foot; the Hippy Hippy Shake, where she bends one knee to shake her booty from side to side; and the Turnaround, which is not quite a spin, but walking around in a circle.

Along with this fancy footwork, she'll slap her knees, belly or chest with her hands, clap, throw her arms up in the air, or try to snap her fingers, but she hasn't really got the hang of that yet.

The music she most often dances to is on our cable music channels. She makes us circle through Bluegrass, Classic Rock, Party Favorites, '80s, '70s, Solid Gold Oldies and Big Band & Swing until we find something with the right beat.

She's been playing music with Grandpa, too. He'll let her strum his guitar until she drops the pick into the sound hole (because she likes to watch Grandpa shaking his guitar over his head to make the pick fall out), or else she'll take off running with the pick, giggling gleefully because she knows one of us will chase after her and she does love to play Chase.

Can't hardly get bored with Sis in the house, I tell you what.

Cutest clown in town

Brittany in her Halloween costume:





She's been saying "Shazbot!" a lot lately, which helped me to finally figure out what language she's speaking -- it's Orkan!

We're down to just one binky now. I've been hunting all week and can't find any trace of the other three, which is incredibly maddening. They have to be here somewhere, dammit!