Bridget’s Kitchen

So not that you asked, but here is some the result of a nearly all day ikea shop in Mass. No longer do we live 15-20 minutes from an Ikea, oh no, this is a 2 1/2 hour trek, so we made the most of it….several times over.

Behold an $18 rug….um yeah take my word for it, it looks nice in our living room

The main reason we drove all that distance. It’s not all filled up, but you get the idea

The kids love the play rug. All 5 of those bottom row plastic boxes were flat packed and had to be put together, plus the magazine holder things, and the two black boxes.

cool wine rack

spice jars, all filled up w/ bulk spices from Whole Foods. Oh my gosh, they are so fresh when you buy them like that! The rosemary smells fresh picked! It’s also cheaper by the pound than buying at the grocery store, and you can measure out how much you need/want.

And, my new kitchen cart! yippee, more counter space in my litle kitchen! Plus I have always wanted one of these, so extra cool!

There is also a nice coat/hat rack but I am to tired to add that.

My father and husband put the shelves and the kitchen cart and the coat rack and the boxes together. Impressive. We were all very tired afterwards.

Lily is working on understanding that she cannot wake up 100 times a night to nurse as if she were a newborn. By which I mean I am trying to do some weaning.

So I was working on getting her to three times a day morning noon and night. I introduced her to whole milk and she took to it pretty quickly, MUCH easier than Bruce did.  Sometimes she will take a sippy cup of milk and sit in my lap instead of nursing. Sometimes. Otherwise we have had a lot of sadness during the day when I do my best to convince her it is not necessary to be miserable, look yummy cow’s milk, mmmmm.

It does not always go well. Not to mention I sometimes find myself nursing her and think, hey how did that happen….habits are hard to break.

Anyway, we don’t have our curtain rods up yet and so when the sun comes up at some horrid ime like 4:45 or 5am, we often have a round of sadness as she becomes half starved and wants to nurse a billion hours. To solve this she has gotten a lot of whole milk, and of all things, goldfish to tide her over. Seriously, the child is HUNGRY at 5:30 am. oiy.

So I am not yet at 3 nursings a day consistently. The child is only just 13 months old, and I suppose that is much younger than I believe I attempted any kind of weaning with Bruce, so I think we are doing ok.

Love living in Portland! So close to basic things like Whole Foods, and Target and Big Sky bakery…mmmm bread.

Got to hear our baby’s heartbeat today, that rocked, yeah babies.

Have to wear maternity clothes now- non maternity clothes make me look fat, maternity clothes- aw she’s pregnant, how cute

Went to Ikea to this weekend with my folks. Bought a BUNCH of stuff, totally loving it. Especially since my dad and Luke put most of it together. I’ll try to take pics soon.

Since ikea my house is both more and less organized. hmmmm now I have more organizing to do. ha ha.

the accountant says the tax paperwork from 07 is coming this week. As in I will actually know how much of what we saved we owe to the government and the rest we can give to the other people we owe, HA

one of Luke’s clients says his paycheck is coming this week. That is nice since we billed them 4 weeks ago.

we’ll momentarily feel rich.

ok, gotta help Brucie fall asleep so Luke can do dishes. that’s right, no dishwasher here. We;ve gotten good at trading off nights so that is nice. It’s a rough life, I know, washing your own dishes by hand. sigh

Hey another Opinionated Parent contest that seems really useful and cool!

Tooth tissues for brushing your kids teeth or gums with less whining (my kids) and complaining and fighting etc etc etc.

Go here to check it out! 

We have our very own internet, as well as network tv yippeee!

Ahhh technology, our friend

So we’ve got most of our stuff in the apartment, the basement or the garage. We’re digging out slowly but surely.

Cooking takes twice as long since you have to find everything as you go!

We only have internet when some kind person on the street has their wireless on open access, hence the no blogging and very little email. We do have cable as they didn’t shut it off when the last guy left, HA. But we have to wait until monday to get the official hook up from the cable dude.

I think we’re going to be good and cozy here, and we love having our friends be just upstairs, built in friends (and also easy to bug your landlords as they are one in the same ;)).

It’s shaping up to be a good week. Tax dude is meeting with luke to finish our taxes friday , we got a new nephew last saturday, and we have some more grilling planned for the week in our lovely backyard!

So I realize I am grumpy because the progress on our moving has been postponed, and, quite frankly, it’s raining and probably will all day which is no good with two small kids, especially when most of the toys are ALREADY at the apartment.

HOWEVER, most of the children’s programming on the Disney channel is so utterly annoying I felt the need to blog

Let me say that the Mickey Mouse clubhouse is fake-educational. And I could go on, but let;s not be too negative. I just feel that my child loses brain cells when he watches it. Even though today he learned that if you have a GIANT candy cane you can rescue a dog from flying around holding onto balloons. I am not sure where he will gain such educational insights once we no longer have fancy cable.

You see I called the evil cable empire that we have in Maine, and they offer  3 tiers of cable.

1. you get the networks and shopping channels for $13

2. you get 75 channels for $52 (including NESN for red sox viewing)

3. You get a universe of digital cable for $60

for additional fun, if you want a handy dandy dvr you HAVE to have fancy digital cable AND pay a monthly dvr fee.

so the super duper cable with dvr and high speed internet (the only part we really have to have for Luke’s employment) is $114. HA

So since my darling Lily was SCREAMING in the other room and it didn’t seem like a big deal to pay $8 more for super douper cable…blah blah blah initially I sign up for the outrageous cable.

then I thought, hmmmm that is a LOT of freaking money for tv service.

We were thinking we would just cut off the dvr and super douper digital blah blah blah, so we could have NESN and watch our beloved Red sox. For $52 a month. Yeah, seems steep to pay $52 largely for the sake of our baseball watching.

SO after hemming and hawing and trying to decide how much debt we are willing to accumulate for cable, we decided, HA, down with you evil silly cable company, we’re getting $13 cable. so there.

Which happily means no Disney channel. Oh thank goodness.

Back to this channel.

As if most of the shows weren’t superficial and annoying and fake-educational enough, they have these in between segments that are terrible. Either, filled with men in their mid 30’s-40’s singing bad kiddie tunes (today’s group were wearing shirts that spelled out RALPH, which is what I felt like doing when they were done singing) or the awful “Choo-choo soul” segment where they sing terrible little diddy’s which only sometimes have anything to do with trains and there is usually someone poorly rapping and that sort of thing. shudder

However I will give props to Handy Manny. This show lacks a real theme song, they just sing Handy Manny over and over, but otherwise it is cute, not very annoying, and not fake-educational. There is no screaming-at-the-tv -articipation required (yes I am glaring at your Dora/Diego), they don’t try to solve problems with candy canes and baby elephants (cause apparently based on Mickey mouse’s show, there is almost always a baby elephant around to help you solve your problems) and it is generally not spazzy.

Plus they have this character that is stinkin hilarious. It’s this middle aged white guy with a bad comb over who is a serious mama’s boy and it is just hilarious. Sometimes his comb over blows up in the air with the breeze, and, oh I could go on. It’s great.

Anyway. I will be sorry to not have Nesn. But I will NOT miss the Disney Channel.sigh of relief.

dear weather.com, last night at 10pm you said there was a 30% chance of rain today.

you lied

this morning you said that it is 55 and raining, then as the forecast for the day you said there is a 60% chance of precip. Um, if it’s RAINING isn’t that a 100% reality of precip?

you are fired.

and now my bed and other furniture/lg items have to stay in Naples another day, and I can’t go sleep in my new apartment, and we have to pay extra miles to bring a big uhaul truck to naples for my bed after Luke and his friend drive up from providence with all the rest of our worldly belongings. grrrr

I am bummed. Moving in the rain is no fun, but at least it’s easier if you have a truck with a roof rather than say, a utility trailer a kind person was going to bring to use. grrr again.

nothing is going as planned for the last 14 months.

I know, I should be packing, but this is more fun.

So, the contest now is to give away this nifty little plate mate contraption to help toddlers use utensils on their own easier. I had to go to the site to understand it (so I’m slow) but it looks actually useful, especially given how incredibly messy my kiddos can be!

so head over to theopinionatedparent.com and sign up to win one! COme one, free stuff is fun

From guess where, yes, theopinionatedparent.com

They are giving away these stuk on U sleepers that have velcro instead of zippers and snaps and apparently you can unvelcro just the diaper area if you need to just change a dipe. BRILLIANT.

So this one is a weekend giveaway, so if interested go now to sign up before sunday at noon!