Come Visit the Land of Bean

It took a little work, but I've got the new Land of Bean up and running. Although this address will continue to operate, I have transferred all old posts and will be posting all future posts at:

www.landofbean.blogspot.com

Thanks for visiting!

Yes, You're in the Right Place

After much blog crawling and soul searching, I have decided to reinvent Bevies of Blevies as the Land of Bean. Its a name I've been rolling around in my head for a while now and have finally decided to pull the trigger. As soon as I figure out how to redirect traffic from the old address to the new one, I'll change that, too. If anyone has any tips on that, I would appreciate them!

Bean is the nickname given to Sophie by my BFF, Aparna. We love it so much that it has become the foundation for many of her other nicknames. (Incidentally, Neil added to the list today with Beanderella.) It seems appropriate that since she is the reason we are now a "bevy" and has in almost every way taken over our lives, that the blog be named after her.

Hillbilly Bean

We've had a couple of major developments in the Land of Bean in the last few days. First off, her third tooth has finally come through. And because my girl refuses to be one of those sheep who grows their teeth in the normal order, it is not one of the expected front two. No, it is her left side incisor. I know I should just be happy that she's getting another tooth, but I have a bit of an OCD thing for symmetry and having this tooth off to the side bothers me. I keep looking at where the middle two will be and thinking, "please come out!" because then she won't look quite so hillbilly. When she smiled with just the two bottom teeth, it was so cute, but now she's going to look like Granny Clampett.

The next big development is that she is beginning to understand that when I put a spoonful of something up to her mouth, that it is okay to let me put the spoon in her mouth. She won't close her mouth around the spoon, though, so I have to sort of scrape the food off on her gums. Clearly she's doesn't quite get the mechanics of this style of food delivery yet, but it's another step in the right direction. We tried peas today and they were not a big success. Although I don't like peas normally, I was so pleasantly surprised by the tastiness of the sweet potatoes that I figured these might turn out to be good, too. Wrong again. They were just as yucky as I expected them to be. No wonder she didn't respond very well to them. I'm going to finally follow everyone's advice and get her some fruit. If nothing else, I'm fairly certain that when I have to show her how, that at least I will like eating them.

Testify!

Yesterday was supposed to be my big day in court. As many of you know, one of the people that used to clean our house took a liking to my fab diamond bracelet and absconded with it. By an amazing twist of fate, I got it back (sometimes I am unbelievably lucky) and they are now prosecuting her for it. Unfortunately, I wasn't the only one, she cleaned a lot of people's houses and liked a lot of their jewelry, too. Well, yesterday was the date set for her trial and I was to go in and testify. (I can't even think that word without hearing a preacher-y voice say it - TESTIFY!) I was pretty excited (and nervous), but when there's a baby involved, planning anything is complicated. Neil had some medical testing yesterday that could not be rescheduled so we had to have someone else watch Sophie. Luckily, Neil's sister, Jen, was kind enough to offer to watch her for the afternoon. This was to be the longest she had been away from both Neil and I.

When I had gotten home from my visit to Aparna's house on Friday, there was a message on the answering machine from the State's Attorney's office regarding the trial. Due to our extremely static-y phone line, I could only understand about every third word (I hate Verizon, I hate Verizon), but the gist of the message seemed to be that he thought the trial would be postponed, either that or he likes peanut butter. It was after hours by the time I got this message, though, so I couldn't call back to get clarification. The trial was scheduled for 1pm on Monday and Jen was planning on coming over around 11:30 to give me plenty of time to get to the courthouse. With no clear idea of what was going on, I didn't want to tell Jen that she was off the hook and then have the trial still be happening.

So, first thing Monday morning I called the State's Attorney office. I wasn't able to talk to my guy, but the legal assistant told me the trial was still a go, so plan on coming in. So, in preparation, I got dressed and squeezed (squoze?) my arse into a pair of pantyhose (blurg). At 11:30 sharp, Jen arrived at our house. As I was closing the door behind her, the phone rings (I swear to god, as good as my luck is, my timing is terrible) and its the State's Attorney calling to tell me that the thief, I mean, defendant, has asked for a postponement because she didn't have a lawyer yet. Now, she'd had several months to make this happen, it's not like they sprung this on her, but clearly she's not the sharpest tool in the box and waited until the last minute. This might be a legal strategy, but what do I know. So, since it wasn't guaranteed that she would get it, they needed me to stay "on call" until 3:30. Fortunately, Jen was able to stay until Neil got home around 2. I finally got a phone call at 4 saying that she had been granted a postponement and the trial is set for July 28th.

The upside to all of this is that Jen and I got to spend several hours playing with Sophie. And Sophie was loving the attention. Jen would hold Sophie over her head and make this sort of dolphin noise and Sophie would just laugh and laugh. Like about a million other moments, I wish that I had caught it on video, but no. These moments are often too fast for me to go get the camera and recreating them almost never works. I should just keep the camera in my pocket at all times. Yeah, because we don't have enough pictures of Sophie - we had to add another network drive on our computer just to accommodate them all. Anyways, two solid hours of playing with Jen and beanie was TIRED. She slept for almost three hours after Jen left. In the end it was almost worth squeezing into pantyhose to have the whole afternoon to myself. Almost.

Unbearable Cuteness of Being

I know I'm partial, but is this kid the Gerber baby or what?

Another Go

So we gave it another go this morning with the sweet potatoes and I can't say with absolute certainty, but I'm pretty sure she actually swallowed some. Which, compared to our previous attempts, feels like we just found a cure for AIDS and solved the riddle of cold fusion all in one.

She began with enthusiasm:However, there was some doubt:
And some resistance:
And some "what you talking 'bout, Willis" attitude:But in the end, she was smiling, so I don't think she was traumatized by the event:More potatoes tomorrow.

Let's Try This Again

Thinking the rice cereal might not be the most appealing first meal, I decided to break down and delve into one of the teeny tiny jars of baby food. The sweet potato seemed like the best choice. I have never been much of a sweet potato fan, but I was hoping that Sophie would be. Much like the rice cereal, I decided to show her how it was done. Only this time I actually ate it, and I have to say, that stuff is awesome! Why have I been depriving myself of this oh-so-tasty treat all these years? Do all sweet potatoes taste this good or is it only mashed up ones in itty bitty jars? So for every bite I attempted to give her, I think I ate two. I'm working on the theory that she needs to see me eat it to understand whats to be done, so really I'm obligated as a mother to do this.

Unfortunately, Sophie did not go for the sweet potatoes either. However, she did not spit them out over the side of the chair, which I consider an improvement. This time she just pushed it out of her mouth and let it ooze down her chin. So I'm thinking we may be on to something. Tomorrow, more sweet potatoes.

A Visit With Amamma

Before they headed off on a mother-daughter trip to Mexico, Sophie and I went to visit Pinni and Amamma. Of course, I'm terribly jealous that they're spending a week in paradise, and will only be mollified by fabulous gifts from the Yucatan (ahem). Because of the weather, Sophie got to wear one of her cute little skirts for the first time. Of course, I was more excited about it than she was, although she loves having her feet bare.

Sophie was in a rare form for the visit. She was absolutely charming the whole time. In fact, you might even say she was giddy - laughing, smiling, and very playful. She even stayed calm and cool through lunch at Panera. However, in a move starkly out of character, I decided not to push my luck and brought her home immediately afterwards even though a trip to Target was in the plans. Ah, Target, how I love thee, let me count the ways. Oh well, another day.

Thanks, Parvathi, for the super cute outfits for Sophie, I can't wait to get her in them!

Open Mouth, Insert NOTHING

Following our doctor visit on Tuesday, where Dr. B told us we could start feeding Sophie solid food, we were both excited to get the party started. In preparation for this celebrated event, I had purchased rice cereal and several teeny tiny jars of organic baby food on the way home from the doctor's office. Organic because now that I'm a mommy I have converted to the all natural cult. The irony there is that I love, LOVE, Dr. Pepper and will eat the bejesus out of a box of ho-ho's. Whatever. The doctor had recommended that we start her with rice cereal since it has the lowest incidence of allergic reaction and even though I suspect it tastes like poo, I'll take the doctor's advice on this one. (That's Gomez waiting his turn in Sophie's high chair. I'm pretty sure he wouldn't eat the rice cereal either.)

Once we had everything together, we sat her down in her Bumbo with the tray. Then, to whet her appetite I pretended to eat it. I say pretended because I had prepared this fine concoction with breastmilk, and I'm more than a little skeeved out by the idea of eating that. Which is weird because I'm okay with drinking cow's milk and that's pretty nasty when you think about it. Anyways, she loves it and it's a familiar taste, so it seemed the natural base for her first meal.

Well, as you'll see, Beanie watched me mime eating and kindof looked interested. But when it came to actually putting it in her mouth, she was like "unh unh, no way jose." I'm not sure we even got one spoonful in successfully. And her face on that first bite is absolutely priceless. But what I just love is that she leaned over the side to spit it out.



Stay tuned. I have a feeling this isn't going to happen overnight.

Why, Why, Why?

So I know I can't expect the world to stop so that my baby can take a nap, but why the frak is it that just as my darling bean is settling in for a long afternoon nap, the neighbor has to start chainsawing his tree into itty bitty pieces. If he weren't so nice, I'd be out there with my squirt gun.
What? It works on the cats.