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Yesterday was a strange day. I didn't sleep well from what I thought was a regular stomach ache (they are common for me). After getting up and showering, I was shaking from being cold, then hot, then nauseous all with a bad headache. My reaction was just like when I take a pain pill - more misery than whatever pain came before. So I stayed in bed and slept and slept. After eating a bagel, soup and some aspirin I braved going into work. Things mellowed out so I'm going to blame it on the Indian food. Which is odd, because it was just a jar from Williams Sonoma and was on the bland side.

That night I went ahead and went to the art class I had signed up for even though my friend canceled on me. I didn't want to loose another $35 (Jeff was sick for the other one I signed up for). I'm glad I went, I sat with some other ladies I know from work and I do like the painting. My only complaint is that the room was so crowded, there was not space to get up and look at your painting from afar. So now I can see my hazy circle is a little crooked. I still like it though, just not sure where to hang it.

The next movie in the Twilight series comes out today. I have not read the books and I'm starting to feel left out of society. There are Twilight products everywhere. Bath and Body works even has a lotion. Seriously. Do you want to smell like vampires, or is that their way of saying it has a magical ingredient to enhance your olfactory senses to be closer to that of a vampires? Even my sister has read the books, just so she can know what her daughter is talking about :) I said I'd read them if a friend loaned them to me but I wasn't going to buy a teenager book. I can see the appeal though and a vampire love story seems to get reinvented every decade or so. Though I'm not sure why this one is making such big waves. Yeah, the characters are good looking but I think they could have found hotter ones. And honestly I don't think the main female character is a great actor. I'm hoping she improved for the second movie. I may go see it Monday night with some friends. Gotta keep a foot into popular social norms at least.

So I was googling how to child proof a Christmas tree and an article that was not helfpul at all did have a great idea in the comments section. Get big cardboard boxes, fill with heavy books and wrap them in Christmas paper and place around the tree. This just might work! (this year anyway :)

That stands for cry it out. I learned that on some baby blog. At the time when I read it, I had a perfect innocent baby. Now that baby is starting to get smarter and wants to manipulate her parents.
This past weekend I don’t think Allison was feeling quite herself, probably getting over a stomach bug, has 2 teeth coming, ran a fever one day, etc. So when she was overly tired and couldn’t fall asleep, I helped her with some cuddle time. Monday she had a great day at daycare, get home she’s fine, we go through the nightly routine (still trying to be consistent with this) of playtime, dinner, bath, book, bottle, bed. She fell asleep after the bottle in Jeff’s arms but as soon as she was put in her crib she forced herself to wake up. I think she has learned that playing is much more fun than sleeping. So she screamed. After a couple minutes we came in, gave her the pacifier, flipped her on her back and left. Scream again. Wait a few minutes we come in, and she stops immediately and smiles at us, like yep, you’re a sucker for this cute face. So we finally shut the door and waited and about 20 minutes of crying and screaming later she collapsed from exhaustion and feel asleep with only one slight blip about 1 am which was fixed with a pacifier. Up until this point we’ve never had to let her cry for anything (excluding that first month of pure shock which doesn’t count).
In conclusion – parenting just got harder :)

life is a bit hectic right now, so just a quick blog update that will most likely not be in complete sentences (just to drive my tech writer friends crazy)

Sister-in-law Claire "officially" announced she's pregnant. yeah! Can't wait for the newest baby Machamer in May. (http://clairemach.blogspot.com"). Claire keeps finding questions to ask me and somehow I've already forgotten some of them. I'm pretty sure though that my pregnancy was easier than what she's going through. Here's to an easier labor for Claire ;)

Allison is 8 months old today. She's still the cutest and happiest baby ever but I think I've written all that before. She's just working on that first tooth, but that darn tooth is causing some stinky explosions in another part of her body. OMG - why! She's still not crawling yet - just going backwards, but just yesterday she was up on all 4's rocking. She's not pulling up in her crib, but she'll get on her stomach and lift up to look over the edge and scream. She does alot of screaming. Usually not mad screaming, more like she's just checking out her voice. Jeff heard that babies cry to develop their lungs, so maybe since she doesn't cry, she's screaming to help in development. I'll take a loud happy baby any day over a loud angry one :)

I'm not sure I've written about it here but I've had foot pain for while. It was never enough to bother with a dr till Saturday. So what do I do, post a comment on facebook and what do you know, I have a diagnosis in a matter of minutes. hehe. I went to the dr on Wednesday and she confirmed Plantar Fascitis. So I have stretches to do and shoe inserts to wear. In the meantime, I came to work today in high fashion - slacks with tennis shoes. I match several engineers out here. Oh, and I ordered FitFlops. I know my mother-in-law just let out a happy scream. I'll keep you posted if they fit my skinny feet.

On the growing list of things to do....
Jeff and I are looking at windows for our house. Yes our 5 year old house has wood windows that suck. I also need to get new tires for my car, hopefully before the drive at Thanksgiving. I'm planning 2 baby showers (one at work and one for a friend). Work is super busy right now which is disappointing b/c I was hoping to do the above item at work. I still have some Christmas shopping to do. Jeff has a work trip in a few weeks which reminds me it will be his 3rd week without baby duties while I've only had one night off. I'm still looking for a girlfriend weekend to give him his payback.

ok, finished lunch, back to work.

For Allison's first Halloween she was a pink leopard. It looked like an easy onesie type of outfit and well anything with a hoodie with ears is going to be cute on a baby, so I got it. Maybe next year the ladybug costume will fit. We went to Keith and Angie's (the party house) and they had a houseful. Keith rigged up the John Deer lawn mower to pull a trailer with hay, so we had a hayride. I thought it was cute and got a big laugh when there were 2 much bigger trailers in the neighborhood decked out with lights and decorations holding about 15 people on them. What ever happened to kids having to walk to get candy?! Allison was a great baby and we hoped that keeping her up 2 hours past her bedtime would help her adjust to the time change but we're not sure it did. She didn't sleep good that night (could have been the over-stimulation :) and she still got up the regular time which today was 5am. Fingers crossed she makes it to 6 am tomorrow.

On her other updates, she's still just scooting backward, not forward. So far no big fussiness from the tooth that is breaking through. She's babbling alot but hasn't said momma or dada with intention. I think she's been trying to kiss us lately - she'll just come at you for a head bang with an open mouth, it's pretty funny. And sometimes if I'm holding her with a tanktop on, I swear she's trying to scratch off my freckles. I'm not sure how much she weighs, maybe 18lbs, but it's a great size for a hug and snuggle.

Today we tried out hiking with a very nice backpack my friend Stacy gave us. It was a little cold and windy (probably high 50s up on the mountain) but Allison did great. I say mountain, but Monte Sano is really just a big hill, but the only mountain we have around here. Hopefully she'll enjoy many more hikes and camping trips in the future.