This Year's Performance

I suppose it's a cardinal rule that if you don't want people to know about your skills and talents, you don't reveal them.

Most of you who know me know that I have little patience for karaoke. I can listen to classical singers who are learning or trying, but drunk people who are singing pop or rock, hideously, no.

Unfortunately, I gave in to peer pressure at a holiday party a couple of years ago, performing the singer's Christmas carol, O Holy Night. (Singers, am I right? Is it not the least cliche Christmas carol and the most fun to sing?)

Ever since then, the CEO has been trying to get me to sing at the Sales and Marketing Celebration that LifeWise puts on every year to talk about the year and recognize accomplishments.

Last year I declined because I wasn't sure how pregnancy would affect my singing (not much, after all). This year I figured I'd better do it or else, so I talked to my coworker Kristin, who also has a music degree and plays the cello. She was so openminded (or flumoxed, like me, by the lack of literature available to soprano and cello) that she allowed me to choose the song AND wrote her own part. Whee!

This year the performances were a talent show of employees, and we were all competing to win $5000 for the charity of our choice. Since I didn't think my choices of Planned Parenthood and Naral would go over well, Kristin chose a junior diabetes organization.

We added some stupid funny to our performance of Verborgenheit by Hugo Wolf, with fake crying, me pulling a tissue out of my bra, etc, and the crowd roared when we were finished. Although we didn't win, someone took a photo and it ended up on our company iWeb. Look at me, all grunge! I wish I'd had a Nirvana t-shirt, my skateboard and/or my big black doc martens.

Cancer Strikes Again

Some of you knew my old coworker, Sarah Breazile, a playful, sassy blonde woman who loved to get people together and have fun. Sadly, cancer took her last spring at only 25 years old.

I have another coworker who was recently diagnosed with breast cancer. She immediately had a mastectomy and just started chemo yesterday. You can read Heather Carlin's public journal on CaringBridge here. Please send good energy to her as she is feeling very sick.

No Paparazzi, Please

Smacky had her first photo shoot! We were put on several mailing lists (thank you, babies R us) and consequently got several postcards in the mail offering us a free 8x10 with no sitting fee.

At first I thought it would be more trouble than it was worth, but after my cousin told me she'd done that with the birth of her daughter, I thought we could see what it was all about. (Plus, what else do I have to do besides take care of the baby and do laundry?)

It was at a studio in the mall that specializes in children, as evidence by all the photographs and rugrats running around. When we were finally called, the photographer was super nice and patient, and she got some really cute shots of Smacky. They made me wait a bit so they could edit them, and when I returned, they brought out 5 or 6 framed shots of my precious baby. They were so sweet that I teared up, which made the saleswoman excited.

"Wait till I tell Jennifer that they made you cry! She loves that!" she enthused.

It was hard to choose but the purple-blanket one seemed ordinary enough but still showed off her personality a little. We have an appointment with a private studio this week so hopefully we'll get some unique photos from that. Then we can compare them all and take our pick. If you'd like to see the whole set, email me and I'll send you a link.

Warm Bottom, Please

Smacky has always been a noisy little creature. Especially when (not) settling in for the night, she has a repertoire of squeaks, groans, mouth smacks (hence the name), and particular sounds that are similar to a squeaky fan belt or a car turning too quickly.

I've learned that these sounds, accompanied by her punching and kicking the air, usually mean something is amiss. If she's glupping and awake, that probably means that she's hungry (again). Or she's soaked through her diaper, through the towel and onto the bed (again). Or she's cold. It's wonderful that there are so few things that can be wrong at this age, isn't it?

When I leave her on the boppy on the couch to run into the kitchen or the bathroom, if she thinks I've been gone too long she'll give a little frustrated shriek. Hey! The photo above is actually her yawning, thinking about crying, but then going back to her happy self.

Smacky really rarely cries. One thing she DOES hate is having her bottom cleaned with a cold wipe. Whoever invented the wipe warmer was a genius!

So Hungry!

Short post- baby is waiting! She just had a ton of milk and is eagerly awaiting either snuggling time or more milk.

Nope, after 6 ounces of fresh breastmilk, she is finally sated. Phew! Growth spurts really suck up the milk.

No More Yowling, Please!

June is flying by, although we've had hardly any warm or sunny days. Today again, it's overcast and the sky is white.


I would be perfectly happy to have a cool summer, since the one 90-degree day we had in May had me stripped to my underwear (at home, of course) and sweating like crazy.


The pregnancy is still going well, although now that I'm in my third trimester things are starting to get a little harder. The baby is tumbling, kicking, and sticking various body parts out during the day and night, but I'm still able to sleep at night and have only just started waddling. I won't go into other TMI details, but if you'd like to hear about them, feel free to call!


Thursday marks my 33rd week. It's hard to believe (and freaking scary!) that in 4-9 weeks I'll have a baby and be a mother. Yikes yikes yikes! Since I didn't find out until 12 weeks that I was preggers, my 6-month gestational period hasn't given me as much thinking time as I would have liked so I've had to cram it all into my brain next to the other changes that have been going on.


Oh! Billy called yesterday and said that Sylvia Snapper had a run-in with the next door neighbor's dog.


She tried to jump off the bed afterwards and collapsed, which alerted Billy to her plight, and the vet subsequently diagnosed a sprained ankle and prescribed her some pain medicine. Poor snapper, walking and jumping around on a sprained ankle. Nobody knows the true story about what happened, but since she and the neighbor dog were on nose-sniffing terms, nobody expected an attack.

In cat news at our house, Gary's socially needy siamese has taken to yowling when we put him in the basement at night if he feels that he hasn't had enough interacting with humans during the day. Unfortunately, his needs are at the bottom of the list so we're going to have to figure out another way to get him to shut up.

Any tips from our experienced cat-owning readers?

Aurora's First Quilt

I made my very first quilt a few weekends ago. Rag quilts are the easiest quilts to make, IMO, and since the seams are part of what makes it pretty and poofy, your cutting lines don't have to be perfect. (This is good for me because I'm not very good at holding the fabric straight when I use the quilting roller-knife.)

Here is a photo of the uber-girly quilt (for me) that took me mere hours to cut, sew, and clip. Please excuse the mistake in the last row. I was so excited about the green that I forgot to pay attention to the other squares.

I had intended to boycott pink as much as I could (which isn't easy, because baby clothes seem to only be made in pink and blue) but my alternate choice of purple had a pretty wimpy showing at the fabric store, and damnit, I like pink!

The top is all cotton, the batting is warm and white brand, and the back is flannel. I would have liked a plain cream-colored backing but I couldn't find any and this worked out better anyway- the burgundy from the back shows through on the front to give it a little more color.

Mittens helped with perspective on the back of the quilt. She's even multitasking. Clever girl.

I enjoyed my quiet time at home with the boys gone that week (they went camping for 5 days) but unfortunately my hormones were raging. I alternately felt lonely that Gary was gone and angry that the place is such a mess with boxes still festering from his move. Stinky old hormones. Good thing nobody was around to feel my wrath. (Mittens is exempt due to cuteness.)