Facebook

So Ted and I both took the plunge this week and signed up for facebook. My friend Heather has been asking me to do this for a while and she sent me a direct invitation this week. So on Tuesday night I signed up. My goodness, everyone is on there. As usual, I am behind the times! What amazed me is that within 30 minutes not only I had tagged a number of people that I knew, people were finding me! People who I haven't talked with in years! It made me really stop and think that one's network is a lot bigger than they think it is. I also really like the fact that there's some security. Any old Joe Schmo can't find me and decide their going to start talking to me, I have to give them permission first. You have to confim everything before it will show up on someone's page, I even got a email that said "Ted Coberly says that you and him are married. You need to confirm this." That gave me a chuckle.

Its Friday for me! And I am looking forward to a four day weekend. Not much planned, just relaxing and catching up on some stuff around the house.

Katherine is becoming a real helper in the kitchen. There's not a meal that can be made until she has pulled her chair over to the countertop (and she wants NO HELP pushing it over from the table...shhhtop Mommi!). So far we've kept her occupied with the measuring cups and spoons, mixing bowls etc. But sometimes a kid just has to make a mess:

And I swear I did not teach her to drink straight from the faucet like this, she figured it out all be herself:

Car Show Season

I heard a commercial this morning for the NC Auto Expo in Raleigh next month. Normally I would go but I don't think the largest Raleigh dealer network participates so the show is missing some important brands. How can you have a car show with no German cars??? I'm sure the 2009 Saturn Vue has a lot of cup holders but I want to sit in an Audi S5. I didn't think this would be a problem because the Richmond auto show in March is much larger and should have all the major brands. But unless I missed something BMW and Audi are not going to be there!?! How is Beth going to learn to differentiate between a BMW 328i, 335i, and 335d?

Look at those tires!

Behold... I know what you're thinking. Ummm...Beth that's your car and I'm not seeing anything special about those tires. Well, repeat after me: Beth and Ted those are absolutely gorgeous new tires for CR-V. As you can guess we had a fun but interesting weekend.

Things began right after we got home from work. While I ran out to fill up the above car with gas, Ted started on dinner with Miss K. as his helper. Well, in the course of helping she slipped off the chair and was obviously really upset about it. I walked in the door in the midst of the episode. So I picked her up and did the comforting while Ted finished dinner. However K. had worked herself up so much that she lost her lunch all over me. Oh, what a feeling! So it was straight up to the bathroom where cleanup ensued for both of us. Here's where we weren't thinking. The kid seemed quite chipper after her bath so we headed downstairs for dinner. She downed three helpings of Kraft Mac n Cheese. Let's just say that it made a repeat appearance...more than once. By morning she again seemed well but we phoned Ted's parents with an update and let them know that we understood if they didn't want to see us. Their response was to come on up and Miss K. was beside herself when she found out she was going to "Papa's House!" We keep reminding her that Gram lives there too.

Katherine was excellent in the car, slept for just a bit but overall was content playing and reading. When we pulled up to the gates of Fawn Lake she knew exactly where she was..."We're at Papa's House!" We pulled into the driveway, shut off the car, Katherine said "We're here" and within 10 seconds threw up all over herself (we were smarter this time, just a bit of juice and crackers all morning). So again right into the bathroom for cleanup. Luckily that was it for the weekend, I think the last few miles of the car ride on winding Virginia backroads got her (I was wondering as we were traveling those roads just whose stomach she inherited as far as motion sickness goes...looks like it might be mine). From there it was full steam ahead as far as she was concerned.

Now the reason for the tire pics. We weren't there for more than an hour at the most when Ted and I headed out to get some things from the car. Ted spotted it, a nail in one of the back tires. Who knows were we picked it up but THANK GOD nothing happened to us on I-95. So he and I headed out to see if we could get the tire plugged. No such luck, the guy at Sears Auto took one look at the size and location of the hole and said no, the tire would have to be replaced. And of course they did not have the same brand of tires that was on the car...and really you should replace tires in pairs...and we have an all wheel drive car...and...there you have it. Three hours of wandering around the Spotsylvania Mall (like we were going buy anything else, we were doing our part to help the economy already!) and we rolled on out with new tires. With our wallets a little lighter, we headed back to Papa's House.

The rest of the evening was much more entertaining. There was birthday celebrating to do!
Katherine was more than willing to help Papa blow out his birthday candles. And open his presents as well, actually she'd been eyeing those up since we hit the house. The rest of the weekend calmed down from there (except for cold number 4 hitting for me).

I stayed home today to rest and recouperate from cold number 4 and some major eye junk which I think is the result of me not washing my hands last night before I took them out (I know Mom...I know). I had to poke around a bit to get the left one out which of course irritated it and this morning things did not look good. Thank goodness I saved the leftover drops from K's last bout with pink eye, I am on the mend and should be fine for tomorrow.

The Night the Power Went Out...

I uploaded the shorter of the two videos. She's not doing as much with the flashlight but the "Uh Oh" is too cute!

What a Week!

I didn't plan on going this many days without another post. Things just got ahead of us. Wednesday weather around here was weird, just absolutely strange. Freak storms, wind gusts and a rather ominous looking sky. At about six o'clock a strong storm blew through that knocked out our power for the rest of the night. What was really weird is that the power did not just turn off. Over the course of about 30 seconds it flashed on and off a number of times before deciding that yes, it was going off. Thankfully I was with Katherine when it happened because while the initial outage didn't seem to phase her after about 5 flashes, she was spooked. So I groped my way in the dark, with a two year clinging to me for dear life, over to the desk and pulled out the flashlight. Once I turned that on and gave it to her she was fine. In fact she was quite entertained by that flashlight for the rest of the night. I even got some video which I need to check out the quality of and hopefully post later on tonight, we had to wait until she fell asleep to pull it away from her. We lit candles (out of K's reach of course...not that she cared, she had her flashlight!) and read books in the TV room.

Reeses came in the house during some point and preceeded her way up to the TV room as well. She took up a seat on Katherine's table and chairs set. This did not please Miss K AT ALL. She enjoys invading the poor cat's space all she wants but she does not want the cat invading hers. She scurried over to give Reeses a piece of her mind...hand on her hip, finger pointed right at the cat..."Reeses! No touch Katrin's STUFF!" For the rest of the night she was concerned about "My STUFF!"

Needless to say, no updating, or anything involving electronics got done Wednesday night.

Yesterday I was part of an all day training for the Department on how to do a survey. Basically trying cram an entire graduate school course (or multiple courses) into a six hour training. So most of the first half of the work week was spent prepping. I am happy to report that the training, while exhausting, went very well. We plan on making some modifications based on participant feedback and then repeat it in the Spring. I got home a bit later than usual and we called it an early night, especially since Katherine had decided to start the day at 4:30am. Thank God she can't tell time yet, we put her down at 7:30 and she was none the wiser.

This morning Katherine saw her Hello Kitty Halloween basket in the closet and wanted to carry it around like a purse. That's fine until Ted and I without thinking let her take it in the car on the way to daycare. Big Mistake because she needed to leave it in the car once we got there. Major meltdown in the parking lot after prying it from her fingers. Screaming child going down the hall into her room. And of course none of the purses they had there could fully take the place of it (of course not! but if I must I'll make do with this green one right here). She calmed down after a few minutes of being in the room but she still wasn't happy with us and made sure we knew it by giving us THE LIP. Tonight its laundry and packing. We'll be headed up to Papa and Gram Coberly's first thing in the morning...we'll see if the Hello Kitty Halloween basket or another one "Katrin's purse!" has to keep us company on our trip.

The Return of the Noo Noo

About a year ago at this time Katherine was really into Teletubbies. She exclaimed "beebee" when the sunny baby face rose up in the sky at the beginning and was tuned all the way until the last teletubbie (Po, I think) said "bye bye". Sometime this past summer or fall Teletubbies was no longer on demand. We didn't take much notice, Katherine seemed to have moved on to become a die hard Sesame Street fan.

This past weekend she came up to me while I was on the computer (I can't usually get a moment alone on the computer as long as she's awake) and said "Noo Noo?" It took me a second to realize what she was referring to. So we brought up the teletubbies website. In particular this page. Not only does it feature the Noo Noo doing what he does best, it also makes some pretty funny noises. Needless to say, she's hooked again. Only this time we don't have the convienence of On Demand Teletubbies. Saturday I spent a good 30 minutes with her sitting on my lap (this is a long time to have a 30lb two year old on your lap!), in front of the computer..."More Mommi, more!" If I dared to try to turn the chair to get interested in something else..."Turn around!". We had a repeat on Sunday. We got her distracted briefly with Thomas the Tank Engine because Thomas bears a slight resemblance to the Noo Noo but our smart girl caught on pretty quickly that it wasn't the real thing.

Happy New Year!

Welcome to 2009! We spent a very quiet New Year's Eve at home with some sushi and champagne for the adults and some chicken tenders and sparkling apple cider for the two year old. It goes without saying that we didn't make it until midnight, we're too much of early night people and the champagne made us a little too sleepy. I needed to venture downstairs for a cough drop around 11:00pm and I noticed that the lights were on in most of the houses around us...oh well. Considering my wake up came at 6:30 this morning, I'm happy I didn't ring in the New Year in person.

So what's in store for 2009? Well, I think that calling them resolutions almost destines them to be forgotten by the end of January. So instead, I'll call them goals. Here goes, Beth's goals for 2009.

1. Katherine's baby scrapbook. My intent is to scrapbook her first year and I've got it all laid out. However, at the rate I'm going she'll be in college before I finish it. So over the next year I need to get crackin'. I even have my own little place set aside in the guest room to do this:
2. Learn to use Ted's ipod. Lately I've been thinking that it would be nice to have an ipod of my own. But I'm not without access to one now, Ted owns one. However, being the self appointed technological laggert that I am I have NO CLUE how to use the thing (yes, I just heard the gasp that just came from some of you). I'm even fearful of touching it, for fear that I will break it (those things are tiny!). So before I venture down the road of getting one for myself let's learn how to use the one that is available to me. So my goal is to make up my own playlist on itunes, purchase some music that I like AND actually listen to it on the ipod. If all goes well and we start fighting for time with the ipod I'll consider getting one of my own. Baby steps here people, baby steps.
3. Keep in better contact with family and friends. This blog actually accomplished some of that but I'll admit it that I can be slack in this area. Send me an email and I'll get back to you...eventually. And calling people to chat, well, I've been terrible at that one. So let's see if I can improve in this area. Let's face it, we have a two year old in house, so don't expect a miraculous turn around. And while there are means to get me more "plugged in" and connected with people, i.e. twitter, facebook, etc... I refer you to #2.
4. Get involved with something around here beside work that allows me to meet a few people. Not sure what exactly that is but something. Ted and I have few, if any close friends outside of work that live in this area. You'd think that after 9 (yes 9!) years of living around here we would except that for the first 4 years we were each in the area we were in the military (Ted) and in graduate school (me). While this afforded quite a few social opportunities at the time most of those folks have since moved on to different places. Since then we got married, bought a house and had a kid...all while working full time. That kind of cramps your social calendar (especially the kid). I'm not looking for anything really time consuming, just something that allows me to meet people in the area.

So there's my goals for 2009. I could also mention the standard ones, exercise, eating better, etc...but I think those are better off not said and if they are accomplished, all the better! Now that their written down and you all know about them, I'm more likely to work at them right?

Well, Katherine's napping so I'm off to my "hole" to scrapbook! Happy New Year everyone!