Leap Day Blogging

I figure I can't blog on February 29 for another 4 years so I'd better take advantage of it. I woke up in the middle of the night with a sore throat, so I think I'm coming down with a cold. Ellie had a sore throat mid-week, so I think that I picked something up from her. As long as we don't all get the flu, it will be okay. Nicole has not had her Leap Day baby, but there's still 10 hours left in the day.


I was having sort of an eeehhh day on Wednesday, and I happened upon a link to Jersey. No, not New Jersey. How did I go so many years and not know that there was somplace on earth this beautiful? If I had to make a list of places I wanted to visit in my lifetime, this would place would take up the top 10 spots. I have a link on my internet browser and during lunch for the past two days, I've been looking around the island and dreaming of traveling there. Maybe someday...

Have a good weekend!

There Will Be Date Night

On Friday, my mom and dad offered to baby sit for Ellie while Lee and I went out, so I jumped on the offer. I wanted to see Juno, but we wound up watching There Will Be Blood. And really, there was not as much blood as I thought there would be. It was good to have at least seen two of the movies nominated for Best Picture since the 80th Academy Awards were on Sunday night. We have Michael Clayton at home so we'll be watching that soon too. I can understand why TWBB was nominated, but I didn't much care for it because it just wasn't my type of movie. I start loosing focus and checking my watch after two hours in a theater. Daniel Day Lewis was really good though, so I wasn't surprised when he won the Oscar for Best Actor. After the movie, we had a late dinner and then caught the last part of the Memphis-Tennessee basketball game.

Ellie slept until 7:30 AM on Saturday morning and 7:45 AM on Sunday. SEVEN FORTY-FIVE. For those of you who do not have children, this is like sleeping until noon. Lee and I were trying to think of the last time we slept that late and could not remember. This almost makes up for her waking up at 4:15 on Monday morning. I went into her room because she was screaming, and I found her standing up in her bed clutching the crib rail. She knows how to get down, but I think she just needed to be talked off the ledge. As soon as I gave her the paci and blankie, she was fine and went back to sleep until 6:45.

Ever since we let her "cry it out" for three nights back in December, Ellie has been really good about falling asleep. In fact, I put her in bed totally awake last night, and she didn't make a peep. We read every night before she goes to bed, and right now her favorite books are Touch and Feel Puppy and Brown Bear, Brown Bear. These may not be her favorites, but I get a kick out of reading them to her. When we read Touch and Feel Puppy she has to feel both of the noses of the dogs on the last page - first the left one and then the right one. Then when we get to the goldfish while we're reading Brown Bear, Brown Bear, she pokes it right in the eye. Every time. It makes me laugh.

That was it for our weekend. Lee's back has been bothering him, but it didn't slow him down out in the yard on Sunday. He's been planting a lot in preparation for spring because he wants everything to look really good for Ellie's first birthday party. We also installed a new baby gate this weekend at the top of the stairs and Lucy is afraid of it. She will not come up the stairs now. This morning, she bolted past the gate and frantically tried to paw her way into her kennel in the other room to get away from it. This is the dog we refer to as our "smart" one. And we now have another concert to look forward to... on Saturday we bought tickets to see The Police and Elvis Costello on May 21. Very excited. They came through a few months ago at the American Airlines Center and tickets were outrageous, but Lee and I got lawn seats for this show for only $40 apiece. I thought that was good considering who is playing.

I was asked to join my high school's alumni advisory board, and I went to the first meeting on Monday night. The topic came up that the school now has an Engineering Club and it would be nice to be able to have some sort of a search tool to find alumni who could speak to the group about careers in engineering. I immediately envisioned myself helping to meld the young minds of the best and the brightest at my school with a rousing speech on the joys of science and engineering. Beaming with pride, I perked up a little because look no further ladies and gentlemen - there is a board-certified engineer in your midst. "I'm an engineer. I would be more than happy to speak to your Engineering Club", I said with a touch of smugness. Then I went on to add, "I'm very important. I have many leather-bound books and my apartment smells of rich mahogany." (Okay, I didn't say that last part - Ron Burgundy Channel 4 anchorman did.) Pat, the alumni director, said "That would be great! Let me check with the club sponsor because I know that it's not 100% an Engineering Club. Sometimes they just play ping pong. It sort of alternates between an Engineering Club and a Ping Pong Club". Background - we used to have a club at our high school for the D&D dorks called the Gamers Guild (picture Anthony Michael Hall's nerd friends in 16 Candles). It doesn't take my years of book learnin' to know that it's now morphed itself into the Ping Pong-ineering Club. Distance yourself... "Um, yeah... that sounds neat. Just let me know if I can assist you guys with anything".

Nicole's due date was Sunday and still no baby. Little Evelyn Molly McLean Haley Mary Alice Dijonaise Erwin should be here any day though. My mom had a thought the other day - what happens if E.M.M.H.M.A.D.E. comes on Friday, Leap Day? Her birthday will only come once every 4 years! Stay tuned...

The Class Photo

I have been dying to get this so I could post it:

Here is Ellie's class photo. I don't know how the photographer got eight infants to look at the camera. In the front row there's Isaiah, Jackson, Tanner, and Simon. In the back row there's Mason, Matthew, Ellie and "Madeline Flowers". Ellie's teacher, Tinisha, is in the back left, and Rosa was out the day of the picture so the other teacher is a stand-in from another class. Ellie's buddy is Tanner, the little boy in front of her. He's 11 months, but developmentally they're at the same place so I think that's why they're buddies.

Ellie had her 9 month appointment on Tuesday. I can't believe she's nine months now. I wish my nine month (and one week) pregnancy would have been as fast as the last 9 months. Ellie is 18 pounds 8 ounces (45th percentile) and 29 inches long (92nd percentile). By comparison, I was 22 pounds 4 ounces at 9 months, but I was um... tall for my age. She didn't have to get any shots, but they did a urinalysis. Since it's really hard to make an infant pee in a cup, they tape a bag to her hoo-hoo and wait for her to pee. It's as weird as it sounds. The doctor said that she needs to start transitioning to table food over the next 3 months so that by the time she's a year, she'll be eating what we eat. She's mowing through her Stage 2 foods, I think she's ready for something more. I tried to give her a pea off my plate the other day and she spit it back at me. She's doing well with Cheerios so we'll stick with that for a while.

The Baby Wrangler

First of all, CONGRATUATIONS to Anne Marie and Brett who had a 9 pound 5 ounce baby girl today. Caroline Elizabeth was a wonderful Valentine's Day surprise.

This is going to be long because I haven't blogged in a while. I've been in a project management training class all of this week and it's killing me because it means I've had to use 100% of my brain, and that still isn't enough. Everything has an acronym and there are all sorts of flowsheets and charts with arrows pointing up, down, and around in a circle. And every component has a subcomponent. All the while, the guy sitting behind me coughs and sneezes on my back because he came down with the bubonic plague on Monday. I can't tell if I'm getting sick or if it's all mental. I also haven't been able to go see Ellie at lunch all week, which is a real bummer. I'm so used to seeing my sweet girl every day at noon. But on the bright side, the class has also been really motivating - it has rekindled my desire to become a full time aerobics instructor. If only the pay was the same.

I knew that this weekend was going to be a little different when on Friday morning, I went into Ellie's room and she was sitting up in bed waiting for me. I fed and dressed her and put her down to play in her room when about 30 seconds later, she crawled into my bathroom, grabbed the tub, pulled herself up, and just stood there looking at me. In the short span of a week, I've gone from having a kid who sits there and looks pretty (okay... really pretty) to having the kid who wants to explore every square inch of our house. I should explain the photo - if Ellie gets tired when she's eating, she starts rubbing her eyes and usually a carrot unibrow ensues.

On Saturday, Lee wanted to take Ellie to her swimming lesson. I didn't tell him he was going to have to sing "Twinkle, Twinkle", "One Little Speckled Frog", and "The Wheels on the Bus". I think he was expecting some hard core backstroke lessons. I picked Ellie up and we headed to Northpark for the Junior League Community Volunteer Fair and then to meet Grammie at the house who delivered a baby gate to us just in the nick of time. After that, I had my picture taken for another group I volunteer with. Poor Ellie - she didn't get in much of a nap because of all of the running around. We topped off the day with a ride in her red wagon to the park. For no particular reason at all, Lee and I opened one of bottles of wine from Napa that night. It was the 2003 Syrah from Bella Vineyards.

We worked most of the day Sunday and Lee did about 8 hours of yard work. It was at about 8PM that he realized he was no longer wearing his wedding ring. There were plenty of places it could have been because he had planted a tree, trimmed some bushes and cleaned out our garage - but he decided that it was probably in the "yard waste" bag, so after work on Monday, he went through all of the clippings and found it. This is the second time he's done this. He promises he's going to wear gloves now.

We didn't really do anything for Valentine's Day because Lee is lucky enough to have a wife that believes that Valentine's Day is the creation of card companies, florists, and chocolatiers. I think it's a fun holiday if you're 8, but when you get to be an adult, all of the commercials make you feel like you're not normal unless you're in a relationship with someone and that's just not the case. I told all I wanted was a card... well, I take that back. On Wednesday night, I told him that a wonderful gift would be for him not to take a second helping of dinner so that we could have leftovers and I wouldn't have to cook on Valentine's night. What can I say? I'm a hopeless romantic.

I've got to wrap this up because it's turning into War and Peace. A little background first... When I was little, my mom and I would go to the movies in the summer a lot because she was a teacher and she was out of school. We would always pay for one movie and then sneak into another. I don't know how many times we snuck into Raiders of the Lost Ark in 1981, but it was enough to make it my all time favorite movie. Thinking back, I don't know how appropriate it was to take a 5 year old to a movie where Nazis faces are melting off, but that's neither here nor there. So you could say that when I found out they were making a fourth Indiana Jones movie, I was beside myself. It's in my Palm Pilot... May 22... I present to you - Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.

Sentenced!

The jury is back and Al received two 30-year sentences to be served concurrently. From the Dallas Morning News:

"An Allen man convicted of attempting to hire someone to kill his pregnant wife received a 30-year sentence Monday .

A Collin County jury of six men and six women deliberated for about three hours before sentencing Albert Jackson Sterling II to two concurrent 30-year sentences.

Mr. Sterling on Friday was found guilty of two counts of solicitation of capital murder -- one of his wife and one for his then unborn child. The trial, which lasted about two weeks, included testimony from Mr. Sterling's wife, his girlfriend and the would-be hitman who alerted the wife to the scheme.

After the verdict was read, the sentencing hearing began. Mr. Sterling, who did not testify during the trial, took the stand during his sentencing hearing and maintained his innocence.
"Do you still maintain that you are not guilty?" asked Russell Wilson, one of Mr. Sterling's attorneys.

"One hundred percent," Mr. Sterling said, his shackled feet hidden behind the witness stand. "I felt I should give you jurors my story and the reason I was communicating with Jeffrey Thompson," the man he tried to hire. "

I guess we won't be seeing Al at the gym anytime soon.

Guilty!

For those of you who are not long-time readers of the Bright Spot, before Ellie was born, I taught aerobics at 24 Hour Fitness and had known Al Sterling for about 6 years. I talked to him every Tuesday after my class and attended his classes. Never in 6 years did he mention that he had a wife or child to anyone at the gym and he was pretty "involved" with a lot of people in his classes. I knew this guy was a b.s. artist when one day he told me he had been absent from teaching because he had been on a secret mission for the government "jumping out of airplanes". Spare me. It all caught up with him because he's going to the big house. Don't drop the soap, Al.

From the Dallas Morning News:

"A Collin County jury on Friday found a man guilty of hiring someone to kill his pregnant wife. Albert Jackson Sterling II was found guilty of two counts of solicitation of capital murder -- one for his wife and one for the unborn child. He was accused of trying to hire an ex-convict to kill his eight-month pregnant wife in Nov. 2006 at their Allen home.

The six-man, six-woman jury delivered their verdict this morning after six hours of deliberation over two days. When State District Judge Curt Henderson read the first guilty verdict, Mr. Sterling blew out a breath, closed his eyes and dropped his head.

Prosecutors said Mr. Sterling's motive was to be with his girlfriend and for the insurance money for his wife's death. They said he lived two lives -- one as a Christian family man and another as a single man who claimed to be a Navy SEAL and taught a marital arts class.

The sentencing hearing was scheduled to begin later this morning. Mr. Sterling could face up to life in prison for each first-degree felony charge."

She crawls!

She finally figured it out. When I went to visit Ellie on Tuesday afternoon, she saw me through the window, so I waved. Then she crawled right over to the door to greet me. I just stood there and stared at her. "When did she start doing this?", I asked. Tanisha told me that she had been crawling around all morning. It's not like she's racing all over the place, but she can definitely get from Point A to Point B now without any trouble. Note to self: babyproof the house this weekend. It's so fun to watch her. Lee will put her 20 feet away from a toy and make her crawl to it. It's like our child-dog has learned a new trick so we have to make her perform it all the time.

I feel like this past weekend whizzed by at lightening speed. We were busy the whole time. My mother-in-law's friend, Fran, was in town from Chattanooga so we met them, Ben, and Elizabeth at Nick and Sam's. Ellie was a sport for about 45 minutes, and then I had to take her home. Lee owes me a steak dinner since I had to leave before we ordered... After I worked out on Saturday morning, Lee played racquetball and Ellie skipped her first February swim lesson to go to a play group with some ladies from my church . We met at the Arboretum because it was so beautiful outside. It got so hot that I was only wearing short sleeves and jeans - pretty good for February 2.

After that, Lee took care of Ellie while I went to a Junior League meeting. Last week, I found out I am going to be the Assistant Community VP for 08-09 and I'm so excited. I e-mailed some of my JL friends to tell them my news and before I did, I had a Dwight Schrute moment.... wait a second - am I the Assistant Community VP or the assistant to the Community VP? I had to look it up, but I was right the first time. We're already working on getting everything arranged for next year, so the meeting on Saturday was with the Issue Area Coordinators to staff the project chairs for the community projects for next year. Very interesting. It's going to be a great year because I already know half of the ladies I'm going to be working with and the other ones I just met are so nice.

This was one of the most uneventful Super Bowls we had in a long time. We watched the game from home and I was busy cleaning and cooking that I missed most of it, but I did get to see the last 2 minutes which was the most exciting part. I was rooting for the Giants because if my man Peyton couldn't make it to the super bowl, I was going to have to root for his brother, Eli. Monday was Ben's birthday so we all met at El Fenix for the celebration. Big #28 for Ben. And I can't believe Lent is already here. I read that this is the second earliest possible start for Lent and the next time it starts this early will be in 2320 or something crazy. Ellie and I got our ashes on Wednesday, and I've decided to give up all sweets for lent. I tried to give up Perez Hilton, but that only lasted an hour. The addiction is too strong.

I got some really sad news last week. The 20 year old sister of one of the ladies who takes care of Ellie was murdered. It's been on the news here - the sister's ex-boyfriend stabbed her and then dumped her body in a field in south Dallas and lit her on fire. I saw her Umicia last week and she was crying, but I didn't know what had happened. Then Ellie's teacher told me all about it. It's so awful and makes me sad for their family. After being gone for a week, Umicia is back at work, and she still smiles more than anyone there. I don't know how she finds the strength to be happy. So if you think about it, please say a prayer for her family.