So, I can't seem to keep up with this. I'm a bit of a commitment-phobe. I don't like to do things I feel like I HAVE to do, so from here on out I'm just going to post when I have a random though, which is pretty often, ha. I'm pretty crappy at keeping up with the pictures too.

A random though:
I don't like to take showers. This doesn't mean I don't shower regularly, I do, but I really find showers awful and torturous. Especially first thing in the morning, ugh! I'm all warm and sleepy and no matter how hot I make the shower it's jarring. It doesn't help that I don't like hot showers, I'd much prefer showers that are about the same temperature I am. Anyway I get in the shower and I'm shocked by the water, the cold air swirls around and makes me feel even more cold when I'm soaking wet. Then you are standing in the water and only one side of you can be wet at one time, so the opposite side is freezing in the air. I always have the heater blowing because I hate that part, but I still freeze. It takes about five minutes before I'm warm again all over and I've acclimated to the water.

Then when I'm done and I've turned the water off, my whole self is standing, freezing my butt off (literally!) I get wrapped in the towel, but it's not enough to stop me from shivering.

The worst part is when I've shaved, as soon as I get out of the shower I'm cold and I get goosebumps and then my legs are prickly again. How weird that getting goosebumps causes little pokey hair bits to come up, and my smooth legs are no more.

Anyway, now you can all run screaming because I'm a freak, ha.

Okay, so I'm so no doing well keeping up with this thing. I've taken pictures almost every day, but remembering to get on and post them is the problem.

I'll try to do better tomorrow, I promise.

How many days...I already lost count

This is a picture from Halloween. I'm cheating since I didn't take any pictures today. But doesn't she make a cute Aurora?

Today is the first day I'm just going to post picture type stuff, mainly because it is so freezing cold in my house I have no urge to get up and do stuff. I'd rather just sit here and play in photoshop. BRRR. Molly and I have been watching movies, playing with beads and coloring. Tasks where we can stay wrapped up.


So, I pulled up the blinds and set the camera to manual. This pic is SOOC. Nice eye crust there kiddo.

f/2.7 (as low as my camera goes)
exposure 1/125
ISO 400



So I brightened it up, increased contrast, sharpened, and warmed the colors up a little



Then I saturated it a bit more, too much?? I never know. She does look a little sunburned maybe.



The high contrast/saturation was good for a B&W though.



Then I ran an action to make it sepia tone, what do ya think?




So, which one is your favorite? Any pointers? I can't wait till I get an SLR, btw.

I made hot rolls today for the first time. They are pretty good I think. I'm sure I'll improve with time. I always forget about breads when they are rising, oops.

Tonight when it was bathtime Molly went to the bathroom first. Then as soon as I hopped her off the pot and put her in the tub she said she had to go potty again. I thought that was weird and pretty much told her, "um, I don't think you do, you just went." She insisted she did but I didn't get her out of the tub and she didn't pee in the tub so I guess she didn't. Then when Cory was taking her upstairs for bed at 9 she came scooting back down the stairs and hopped up in my lap and said it burned like fire when she peed. Great. So that explains the weird need to pee right after she went. So...we threw coats on and headed to after hours care, because I know UTIs come fast and furious in little kids. She's never had one before and I hope this doesn't start a trend.

So there was nobody at the doc's office and we got right in (hurray!) She talked the doctor's ear off and the doc commented on how well she talked and what a big vocabulary she had for a three year old. The doctor said that her urine sample did have some white blood cells in it so it looked like she had the beginnings of a UTI. Molly being...well, Molly said "hey, you know what white blood cells do??" the doc glanced sideways at us like, uhhh, and said "what?" Molly, very excitedly, because she loves to talk about human body things, said "they suck up all the germs!" I've never seen someone's jaw drop like that, it was hilarious. She was so surprised that Molly knew that. She said she thought we'd be seeing her on the news soon, haha.

So when stopped at Walgreen's and filled her prescription for amoxicillin. Funny, it smells exactly the same as I remember it smelling when I was little.

The weather has deteriorated. It's sleeting and the roads are getting slick. The high tomorrow is supposed to be 17 which is REALLY cold for Oklahoma. The low tomorrow night is supposed to be 1. Just 1. Not 2, but 1. That's crazy.

Here are the pics for today. First pic of Molly after we got home from our late night doctor visit. She's munching on a roll because she swore she was starving.



Second is the chaos that has overtaken our office/playroom since I've been madly trying to de-clutter (de-crap really). I've been trying to consolidate two bookcases into one bookcase. I'm putting away all my school stuff and getting rid of a few books. It's kind of terrible to get rid of books, I'm a big book lover, but we have SOOO many books for Molly and some she's outgrown, like boardbooks. So I went through her boardbooks and kept ten of my (and her) favorites and Goodwill-ed the rest. I have so much of her stuff that she can't use any more and while I want to save it for a future child on one hand, on the other hand I'm failing miserably at getting pregnant and I can't stand having so much stuff in my house!

A surefire way to get pregnant is to get rid of all the baby stuff, right??

Day 5

Molly wanted to "wash dishes" tonight. Mostly it's taking clean dishes and playing in the water, but she has fun so no biggy.




Cor decided to get all artistic with the CandyLand, that's my husband.





Molly ended up soaking her shirt washing dishes so she spent the rest of the evening shirtless. Her and Daddy played a rousing game of Candyland while I read the Pioneer Woman's blog from 2006-2007. I'm on a kick.





Ha, I messed up Cor's hair and then took a pic. He looks all angsty and annoyed :-P



I baked today. I made wheat bread, which I used to think was hard...before I did it and now I know it's not :-)

Two of my BFFs for making bread. I use 1/2 whole wheat flour so the vital wheat gluten helps it become fluffier, since wheat bread likes to be denser and flatter than white bread. I've also found bread flour helps the texture a bit too.





Anyhoo, Molly went back to school this morning and had a great time. She loves school. I had a nice time vegetating on the couch, and taking a nice long shower.

It's supposed to get crazy cold Thursday and Friday, especially for Oklahoma. We are talking highs around 15 and lows around 4. Our heater is going to get a workout for sure. I know...I'm the most fascinating person on the planet. I want to be clever and funny, I do.

Day 4, 361 days to go.

It was another emotion filled day. I didn't get that job I was hoping for, and it was a pretty upsetting blow. I don't want to talk too much about it though. I'm going to try and focus on the blessings I have in my life.

Anyway pics are of Cory making Ghirardelli (sp?) brownies we got at Target tonight. BTW I'm taking pics with a Canon S5 IS, a point and shoot that is just below an SLR, but still a point and shoot. It has some pretty good features though. We are planning on getting an SLR sometime this year, and I'm really looking forward to it. I end up using flash because oddly enough the pics are better with flash than higher ISO, past 400 our camera gets REALLY grainy and I guess I prefer blown out pics than super grainy pics.




Brownie mix, yum. Also yay for macro setting!



All mixed and being poured into the dish.




The aftermath.



Just a cute, albeit blown out, snapshot of Molly while she was playing with pennies...before the brownie mix mayhem.

forgot day 3 :-(

Shoot, I forgot yesterday! Dang, three days in and I already missed a day.

I'll do double today, I promise!

Day 2, 364 days to go

It's been a heck of a day. I've gone from high to low and now I'm somewhere in the middle. I finished my master's degree last May and I've been a SAHM since then, and enjoying it. We've been trying to get pregnant for close to two years, and one year really seriously with absolutely no success. I've been doing fertility treatments and still no success. I have a friend who has also been experiencing some infertility issues. Her DD is 11 months younger than mine, she'll be three in May. They've been trying for about 8 months and she just got a positive pregnancy test today. She basically did nothing fertility wise, except go on birth control for three months to reset her system and lo and behold, got pregnant the first month off of it. It is heart breaking for me. I've put thousands into treatment and I've got nothing to show for it. It's been hard on me having other friends come up pregnant, but this is just a huge blow. I mean, I'm not mad at her, I know they've struggled, it's just so hard to watch everyone around you get pregnant and not succeed. It's horrible. Her kids will be 3 years, 4 months apart. I always wanted my kids 3-4 years apart, and now with all of my fertility failure my kids will be a bare minimum of 4 years, 4 months apart, and that is only if I ovulate this month on my own...I haven't ovulated on my own since I got pg with Molly. We are taking a break from treatment because we are currently a little too broke.

I swear I'm not super negative, it's just been a rough last couple of days.

The high point is that while I've been a SAHM, I said I would look for a job if I wasn't pregnant by January. We kind of changed that when January got close because I can't just give up trying. BUT, this week a perfect job kind of fell in my lap. It's with a private practice, just two SLPs. They need an additional person. It is really flexible and I'm only going to work 10-15 hours a week. They mostly contract with daycares to screen/evaluate/treat the kids there that need it. So I'll be working Tues/Thurs from about 8:30-4:30 with Medicaid kids at the daycare and two kids at home, 12 clients total, for a total of 12 actual clinical hours a week. The rest of the time will be spent in transit, prep and paperwork. I'll be getting paid for the clinical hours, but not the rest, which is totally fine. The real kicker is how much they are going to pay me.

Last spring I was doing my medical internship at a skill nursing facility and when I asked my supervisor how much I would get paid if I worked there she said to ask $30/hour starting out as a CFY (clinical fellowship year, basically a residency for speech paths). I though that seemed really good. So when I was talking with Monica (my new boss and mentor for my CFY) I was assuming somewhere in the $25-35/hour range. Um, nope. $70/hour! Seriously?? How can anything I do be worth that much? It doesn't seem possible, I sure don't feel that worthwhile or skilled. It is weird to think I have been educated in something worth that much...Me, plain old me. It's crazy. So that will be life changing for us. It means we can sell our little condo we live in and get a real house with a backyard and garage and all of those neat things that we don't have here.

Speaking of our condo, my pictures from today are of our kitchen. The smallest kitchen EVAR! It's terrible. A nearly 1300 sq ft condo and an itty bitty kitchen. Our new house will have a much larger kitchen. Even if the house isn't much bigger, I will have a bigger kitchen!!

So the pics are of our tiny kitchen before and after cleaning up. It was a disaster, a real disaster. Holidays, and being out of town and then being tired and lazy, well it all adds up to a real mess. I'd cleaned it a little earlier today, but when my husband cooks he has a habit of destroying everything and leaving a giant mess. I really hate huge messes, and a little bit of a neat freak, but I don't actually like cleaning so it gets a little messy from time to time. Anyway we cleaned it pretty well. I still need to clean around the burners on the stove, and soft scrub the sink, but that can wait.


BEFORE





AFTER


I got that enameled cast iron skillet for Christmas. It's clean, but it has to stay on the stove because I don't have any where to put it.



Now you can play find the differences between the pictures.

Day 1, 364 days to go

Alrighty, here's picture number one.



We had just gotten home from an afternoon out, with our exhausted three year old. We, as experienced parents (HA!) took ourselves to a friend's house last night. They are a couple our age, who got married around when we did and we've all been friends since college. They have an 11 month old son. We tried to put Molly down on their office futon around 10pm so she could get some sleep. Of course, she knew that something was going on and had no part in the whole going to sleep thing. Around 11:30 she was still not sleeping so we decided to call it a night and head home. We made it home and got her in bed around 12:30. I suppose that was the first problem, in retrospect, aren't I bright?

So today she woke up around 9:30-10am. That isn't too unusual, she's always been a late sleeper, 9am is her normal wake up time. We hung out having a slow morning, and then around 2 we left the house to go to the mall. Problem two, I suppose, because it was a MADHOUSE. We got her hair trimmed, picked up a couple of things from Waldenbooks (closing, big sales!) and I got a few things at Dillard's semi-annual "Intimates" sale. While I was shopping Cory had Molly at the play place just outside Dillard's. The whole time we'd been at the mall, Molly had been acting up, acting ridiculous, being rough and generally not listening. She was grabbing all sorts of stuff and generally driving us crazy. She has never been able to keep her hands to her stuff, I swear she's the grabbiest child I've ever known. I thought at 3.5 she might be a bit better about it, but nah, she's still a grabby Gus.

So after we were done there we went to the dollar movies to see Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs. Our dollar movies decided to be $2, lame. She was relatively well behaved there except her seat was squeaky and she thought it was great fun to go up and down over and over and make it squeak like crazy, in the middle of the movie, nice. Towards the end of the movie she started getting restless and said she wanted to go home. This is out of character for her. I wondered if she was going to puke. I have puke-a-phobia, for real though. I start to panic as soon as the thought enters my head. Then I think a bit more clearly and remember that for the last few months she holds her poo until her belly hurts and she starts acting all strange because she really needs to go. Sure enough, Daddy takes her to the bathroom and she needed to go. I know, lovely talk, right. I wish she would just GO, and stop giving me freak outs that she is going to puke.

So after the poop and the movie we go to Cory's sister's (Amy) house to get our Christmas presents. She was a mess. She was trying to wear Amy's hats. Amy is very protective of her stuff, it's kind of ridiculous maybe, but still Molly needs to learn how to respect people's things and their wishes. She was being rough with this red hat and so Amy's husband took it away, she stated flipping out about that and whining. She sat down and they offered her another hat to play with and she very rudely said she didn't want THAT hat, and knocked it on the floor. So we left. She screamed and cried, but dang, if she's going to act like that, we aren't going to stay. Luckily her aunt and uncle love her and can forgive her for being bratty. So it was 7:15 and she fell asleep in the car. When we got home she woke up and ate a banana on Daddy's lap before going to bed, and that is when I took the picture. So, she looks happy, but it had been a bit of a messy day.

Now at 9, she is fast asleep, till hopefully around 9 tomorrow morning. I hope she's less of a grumpy grump and listens a bit better.