Happy New Year!
Jan. 2nd, 2007 01:13 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
juthwaraWe're home, although it's only going to be home for another week. Boston went well, as well as all of the traveling. K was a champ, if you define champ as "Dsiplaying a number of annoying and/or disruptive toddler behaviors, but well-behaved when you consider all we've put her through in the past month." She slept the entire flight back, which was very nice.
So we never realized this before, but we've been told by any number of relatives, friends and complete strangers between here and Boston that our child is cute. With so many people telling us that, I guess it must be true. And it's a darned good thing she's so cute, or I'm not sure so many people would have been quite so charmed by the fact that they were meeting her while she clung to me like a limpet and peeked out from my shoulder. I think it was a combination of too many new people and places in the past month, and a natural aversion to big crowds of strangers. Since I have quite an aversion to big crowds of strangers myself, she certainly comes by it honestly. I didn't mind the clinginess too much, but I did wish that she had occasionally found Daddy an acceptable substitute to me. 24 pounds of toddler can definitely get heavy over the course of a reception. Although she was willing to give my arms a break by working my legs instead following her as she climbed up to the fourth floor of the building in which the wedding was held (the Gamble Mansion, which is done up in Louis XV style and incredibly gorgeous). I will note that I wasn't the only parent following a climbing toddler up the stairs that night.
And now, a brief digression where I become very shallow:
I was agonizing over what I was going to wear to the wedding, since I've been trying unsuccessfully for the past several years to acquire a winter dress that a) I like and b) doesn't make me look pregnant. And then on a whim, I pulled out of my closet a dress I got my sophomore year of college but haven't worn much since because the neckline cut into my throat. I tried it on, and lo and behold, it fit. I can't express how triumphant I feel about that, because while my sophomore year was after the freshman fifteen, there have been quite a few points in the past 10 years when I wouldn't have had a prayer of fitting into that dress. Yet another reason to bless metformin. So the dress was elegant, a very flattering cut and only had a minor flaw that I was able to fix with a half hour on my sewing machine. A great dress, a good hair night, a discreet touch of makeup and remembering my contacts, and I have to say, while I have very little conceit about my looks, I looked darn good that night, which is something that hasn't happened much since I became mother.
While I may not be revealing the most attractive part of my personality by admitting this, I was especially happy to be looking good and to have![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
longstrider 's new job to talk about when seeing my family. As a bit of background, my first cousins on my mother's side range from 8 to 16 years older than I am, so I grew up with a young child's hero worship of older kids for them. Their side of the family is wealthy, physically fit and high achieving, which can be hard to live up to. Meanwhile, the last time I saw them five years ago, PCOS was making me very sick but hadn't been diagnosed yet, I wasn't quite at the highest weight I got to, but I was very close, I was closing out the worst year of my life and I was unemployed. So being able to go back at a healthy weight with good news to share (conveniently omitting any mention of the six months of unemployment) and a cute toddler to show off was awfully nice, with the added huge ego boost of the bride (who looked incredible) telling me how good I looked.
</shallow>
And so it's now a new year. While last year had some good points, I feel safe in saying it mostly sucked golf balls through garden hoses. I have some definite changes I want to make in the new year, but they're going to have to wait until after we've moved. I'm hoping a new city and a new daily schedule will help get all of us in better habits.
So we never realized this before, but we've been told by any number of relatives, friends and complete strangers between here and Boston that our child is cute. With so many people telling us that, I guess it must be true. And it's a darned good thing she's so cute, or I'm not sure so many people would have been quite so charmed by the fact that they were meeting her while she clung to me like a limpet and peeked out from my shoulder. I think it was a combination of too many new people and places in the past month, and a natural aversion to big crowds of strangers. Since I have quite an aversion to big crowds of strangers myself, she certainly comes by it honestly. I didn't mind the clinginess too much, but I did wish that she had occasionally found Daddy an acceptable substitute to me. 24 pounds of toddler can definitely get heavy over the course of a reception. Although she was willing to give my arms a break by working my legs instead following her as she climbed up to the fourth floor of the building in which the wedding was held (the Gamble Mansion, which is done up in Louis XV style and incredibly gorgeous). I will note that I wasn't the only parent following a climbing toddler up the stairs that night.
And now, a brief digression where I become very shallow:
I was agonizing over what I was going to wear to the wedding, since I've been trying unsuccessfully for the past several years to acquire a winter dress that a) I like and b) doesn't make me look pregnant. And then on a whim, I pulled out of my closet a dress I got my sophomore year of college but haven't worn much since because the neckline cut into my throat. I tried it on, and lo and behold, it fit. I can't express how triumphant I feel about that, because while my sophomore year was after the freshman fifteen, there have been quite a few points in the past 10 years when I wouldn't have had a prayer of fitting into that dress. Yet another reason to bless metformin. So the dress was elegant, a very flattering cut and only had a minor flaw that I was able to fix with a half hour on my sewing machine. A great dress, a good hair night, a discreet touch of makeup and remembering my contacts, and I have to say, while I have very little conceit about my looks, I looked darn good that night, which is something that hasn't happened much since I became mother.
While I may not be revealing the most attractive part of my personality by admitting this, I was especially happy to be looking good and to have
longstrider 's new job to talk about when seeing my family. As a bit of background, my first cousins on my mother's side range from 8 to 16 years older than I am, so I grew up with a young child's hero worship of older kids for them. Their side of the family is wealthy, physically fit and high achieving, which can be hard to live up to. Meanwhile, the last time I saw them five years ago, PCOS was making me very sick but hadn't been diagnosed yet, I wasn't quite at the highest weight I got to, but I was very close, I was closing out the worst year of my life and I was unemployed. So being able to go back at a healthy weight with good news to share (conveniently omitting any mention of the six months of unemployment) and a cute toddler to show off was awfully nice, with the added huge ego boost of the bride (who looked incredible) telling me how good I looked. </shallow>
And so it's now a new year. While last year had some good points, I feel safe in saying it mostly sucked golf balls through garden hoses. I have some definite changes I want to make in the new year, but they're going to have to wait until after we've moved. I'm hoping a new city and a new daily schedule will help get all of us in better habits.
no subject
Date: 2007-01-02 12:56 pm (UTC)(I need to try to shed a few Christmas pounds and see if I can slither into some old pants of mine...)
My minx was never shy. I cannot remember a single time when she was actually shy. The hard part, now, is keeping her from hugging random strangers
to drain their energy, Impudite style. I would like her to be a little more shy. It terrifies me how much she hugs random people.Treasure the shy.