Welcome to toast & cereal

On wearing sports-team clothing

We are all hoping to imprint part of ourselves on Viola, and this is my brother Adam's contribution:

This outfit is for cheering games at Wrigley Field. He also gave her an "away" onesie, for supporting the Cubbies on the road, in addition to a complete Green Bay Packers outfit.

Craters

Every time Joe tells me the craters are scheduled to come to M-Space tomorrow, I imagine this:

But it's really just humans who build crates around stuff for shipping. In this case, the stuff is electric glassblowing equipment for a cruise ship. If Joe keeps at this, we will live in a world where not one cruise ship patron has to endure a cruise without watching live glassblowing.

The equipment itself is super cool looking. I wonder if it's ok for me to post a picture here? Joe is sleeping, so I can't ask him.

Uh, it's sideways, but you get the idea. My new computer doesn't have any photo editing software on it yet.

Month four is upon us!

It simultaneously feels like 20 years ago and yesterday that Viola came to join us. This goes without saying, I suppose. And if it seems like a long time ago that I was gigantically pregnant, I have only to glance at my midsection, which looks like bread dough that has just been punched down for the second rise, to remember that it was only a short three months ago that I pushed out a little person I grew in there. Here's hoping that by month six I will be reporting a belly that is, if not taut, then at least non-mushy. I'm not going to lay off the non-dairy Newman-O's to get there, however.

Today I sit in our sunny living room with my daughter sleeping on my lap, feeling victorious

Cruel jokes

As if it wasn't hard enough returning to work today, a) I discovered that the car charger for my new phone was stolen by the thief, b) the highway entrance nearest our house is closed for construction, causing me to take a clogged detour, and c) my favorite NPR affiliate started its pledge drive today. And I already gave to the pledge drive. I should be exempted from being subjected to the banter:

Person 1: "You know, Person 2, that last story was so interesting. It really exemplifies why NPR is so great."

We are nice neighbors

Someone please go to Bellevue next Saturday and buy this house for $1,000. Put it on your credit card. And then occupy it. Then at least one of the four houses between us and 9th St. will not be vacant.

UPDATE: The house has been removed from the auction. Is this because one of you dear readers has purchased it? I will await the good news.

Cooking post-baby

While there have been a fair number of take out meals and quite a few (treasured) dinners prepared for us by friends and family, we have actually managed to maintain a certain amount of cooking in the post-baby era. We are still working our way through the half-o-lamb that we purchased from a local farm last year (unfortunately we are now without its piece de resistance, the rack, thanks to a certain robber; however, our insurance company reimbursed us generously for it).

Viola's animals

Some baby cuteness is called for after the break-in post.

Not the mixed nuts! Anything but the mixed nuts!

Until last week, the home intruders I was most concerned about were of the rodent variety. Long-time readers will remember the mouse graph of 2008, which documented a few rounds of mouse catching at our house. Even after the mouse graph, we have experienced additional breaches of our studio (to access a cough drop) and pantry (to get at a bag of dried porcini).

Mobile:baby::catnip:cat

We just finished making a mobile from the kit given to us by Matt and Carmen before Viola was born. As instructed, we drew pictures on little circles of paper and then hung them from a wire frame. We had no idea what a hit it would be. It's like baby crack.

I drew Obama on one of the circles. Joe drew

More pictures are here

I promise not to do this every time I post photos, but, since people are still getting used to the new site...check out the new album under photos in the top navigation bar (or click here) for some Viola cuteness!