Strong neck

Harvesting the yard

This photo requires some explanation. This is the front walk to our house, taken actually a couple of weeks ago. I noticed that a zillion of these plants were coming up around the walk and identified them as Miner's Lettuce, thanks to a little botany lesson while geocaching ages ago with Julia. They're easy to spot because their main leaf is almost perfectly round with its stem and flower smack in the center. Very unusual. We had a few of them last year so I identified them this year before their main round leaves even came up. Anyway, they're called Miner's Lettuce because apparently they were used to ward off scurvy by miners. Lucky us, they grow wild in our front yard. I've found references online to people finding them at farmers' markets, so I guess I'm just lucky to have them without doing anything. Tonight I have decided not to let that wealth go to waste and so we're going to have Miner's Lettuce salad. Should be yummy.

Also, I bought my seeds for this year today and hopefully this weekend will fix up the irrigation system with some hose parts I bought today. Also, I'm hoping to have a more sophisticated setup for seed sprouting this year. More on that later.

Two months old

Our sweet child had her 2 month appointment today. She's 80th percentile for height, weight, and head size. (Weight is 12.5 pounds, for those who care.) She got a bunch of shots and only cried for a little while. Also while at the doctors she did her first full roll that I've ever seen. The doctor wanted to examine the baby's back, so placed Geneva on her stomach. Geneva's never been too fond of "tummy time" and immediately rolled completely over to her back. Guess that little game is over. Ha.

Stroller hamock

Sleeping through Dallas

With gram

With Aunt Steph and cousin Grant

Secure baby

She slept through everything at the checkpoint. Like our modified
stroller handles? They make the thing useful to tall parents.

Thoughts while watching the inauguration

How cute is it that Obama's daughter is taking pictures with her camera during the ceremony? You never see the participants of the ceremony photographing it. It's just so... normal.

I wonder if there's some reason none of the participants are wearing hats? It's looks friggin' freezing there. My ears would be falling off.

They called Mrs. Biden Dr. Biden. I looked up her stats and it turns out she has a Doctorate in Education (and her degree is in her maiden name). I really thought only medical doctors were supposed to use the Doctor title socially. But maybe I'm wrong, because surely the announcers at the inauguration would get it right?? Seems like she should have been Mrs. Biden. Or Dr. Jacobs. But what do I know?

Here comes Mr. Obama. Boy. His ears look *really* cold.

Sigh. I cry so easily these days. First all the stories about that plane crash, and now this.

With daddy

Baby video

Heres we gots some baby hiccups and chattering and post breakfast happiness. And lots of goofy babytalk from me.

Sleeping outside

A Process Person

I had this revelation about myself the other day. I am a process person. I first noticed this in regards to my knitting - I have this Stitch n Bitch book that talks about the different types of knitters and I pegged myself immediately as a process knitter. This is someone who looks at a project and thinks "I want to learn to do that." (As opposed to people who see the project and look forward to having the thing, or just really love yarn, or ... there's a bunch of types.) Then I was thinking about gardening and realized that my favorite part is the learning and setting it up part. Last year I loved getting it all going and then when I was faced with 60 pounds of tomatoes I gave most of them away. This year I was thinking about what to plant and trying to figure out what seeds to buy and realized that I was most excited about figuring out how to grow all kinds of different things and didn't really care about eating them. In fact I'm still not sure what to plant to be assured I'm actually going to eat the stuff. I'm thinking maybe stuff I can make into baby food, because those recipes don't require clever combination.

Anyway, this is true all over the place now that I think about it. Work, leisure, etc. I'm all excited about the learning and setting it up, and when it's all finished... eh... big whoop.

I took a composting class today and was thinking about how I was going to process food scraps and garden stuff (weeds mostly...). The worm composting sounded pretty good until I saw it. The woman giving the demo reached her hand down into her compost demo and hauled out fistfuls of the worms and I realized right then I was not a worm compost person. It just looked disgusting. Guess I'll be trying a cold compost bin if anything.

In other news, the baby is still extremely cute. And Chris has a 3 day weekend - woo hoo!! He's off at the moment enjoying the Christmas present I bought him - a woodworking class where he's learning segmented bowl construction. And the weather is amazing here... I'm thinking we should all go to the beach tomorrow because it might even be warm.

Little tongue

Aunt Steph

Happy 2

Happy 1

Aunt Brandy

Starting my own daycare?

New Sweater

I really wanted a cute photo to show off the baby wearing the cute sweater I made her. Unfortunately she has the Gadda family photograph skills... no matter what cute face she was making when I hit the button, I got something... um... more interesting when I saw the photo. This was the best of the many many photos I took.

Nap time

Geek

Thanks Uncle Matt and Aunt Carrie! Although I think dad might be being unfairly singled out. ;-)

Cold face? Hungry face? Funny face.

Family Photo

This family photo is thanks to Stephanie G. Can't believe little G turns 6 weeks tomorrow! She's started entertaining herself in her bouncy chair by kicking her feet and looking at the little animals over the chair. It's pretty cute to watch! We reintroduced bottles this past weekend so that she will be babysit-able. The first run went pretty stressfully but this evening she took a bottle from me with only a couple seconds of beet red face. Also since six weeks have passed since the birth, it's time for me to start on a diet. Woo hoo.

A really cute outfit

Tanning his harblz

Don't forget to feed the baby

After a sleepy 24 hours, G was up a lot of the next 24 hours. Yesterday afternoon she seemed more fussy than usual and Chris and I spent an hour or so changing her, changing the position she was in, trying to get her to take a pacifier, bouncing her, and so on. Nothing. She's still crying. Then I think, well, I could try to feed her (duh). Turns out she's starved. Neither Chris nor I can figure out why we didn't try that first. I'm sure she wonders what she did in a past life to get her born to such novices.

We had a great New Year's Eve. We went to a Greek restaurant on Santana Row to celebrate our anniversary (happy 2 years to us). G was awake but very well behaved through it all. Then we went to the home of the friends of a friend, Maggie and Tommy, for a little party until after midnight. This couple has a beautiful home and two kids already and I was reminded of something Brandy told me years ago. She said that you can have friends who don't mind that you have kids, but there's nothing quite as easy as spending time with people who also already have kids. Like when I'm feeding G and thinking that she might spit up and Maggie tells me not to worry - that the furniture looks nice but it's all been vomited on by 2 kids already.

I started getting seed catalogs in the mail so I've been thinking about what to do with my garden this year. First off I need to fix the watering system since we blew it out last year (note to us: don't put full pressure sprinkler system water through a soaker hose). I'm not sure what system I want to use instead but it's vital to the success of the garden. I get annoyed and resentful towards the vegetables if I have to spend too much time on them late season. (Weird but true.) Next, less tomatoes. They're such a pain to make into anything can-able (even when I'm not doing most of the work!) and so I ended up mostly giving them away last year. I maybe had 60 pounds? And another final 10 just went bad on the vines. Next, I want some better fertilizer for the soil. I'm thinking chicken manure if I can find it. Then finally I want to try some different vegetables and stuff than last year. I'm thinking of melons and potatoes for sure, as well as herbs and some nicer lettuces. The crap lettuce I bought last year was bad about "bolting" - which my seed catalog says means going to flower and seed instead of making lots of leaves. I almost never used any of it and I'm hoping it's just because it looks so unappealing. I'd still like to do carrots but I'm not sure how to make them do better. Maybe carrots are best just bought at the farmer's market. Funny because carrots and tomatoes are the 2 plants that really made me want to have a garden.