Not one for subtleness

February 10th wasn't that long ago. Two weeks. Fourteen days. Four posts ago. Go ahead, scroll down. You'll see that only 14 short days ago, it was 45 degrees. What. The. Heck.

Douglas Falls

One thing I like about Tucson is that it hides itself pretty well. Yesterday, we went hiking in the Rincons. The mountains in the above picture are the Catalinas, which are relatively close to our house. If we had super binoculars, we might have been able to see our apartment. But, up there on that mountain, looking over the city, you can almost forget that you're looking at over 1,000,000 people.


The whole hike was a complete disaster. Nora started screaming that "RAAA RAA RAAA RAAA RAAA" cry that translates to "I'm ticked and nothing but a good feeding and a nice nap swaddled in my crib is going to fix it" and Lillian tripped and fell on some gravel. We started out the hike with Tyler wearing Nora and I was wearing the backpack with Lillian because the backpack was, it seems, designed for someone of my stature and the hip strap stops before Tyler's belly button. On our last hike, Tyler was very vocal about how it didn't fit and it was very uncomfortable and all the weight was on his shoulders and the only way he could take the pressure off was to bend over, as seen above. So this time, I volunteered to take Lillian. But, turns out, Nora does not like Tyler's rock hard abs, and Lillian is very heavy.


We turned back before we got to Douglas Falls (which I was pretty upset about because we only had 1.3 miles left. Tyler thinks it would be dried up anyway... he's always raining on my parade), and when we got home, Lillian took a nap. Upon waking, she had these red marks on her face. At first, I thought it was a pacifier mark. Then it got redder and spread a little to her eye.


These pictures don't show it very well, but her skin was splotchy around her mouth and up by her left eye.

My best guess, although I'm still not sure what it was all about, is she either 1) ate something she oughtn't have on the trail or 2) had a small allergic reaction to the peanut butter sandwich she worked on in the car but I didn't wipe off her face until we reached home, about 30 minutes later. She didn't complain of it hurting and when I asked if her face itched she replied "yes, no, yes, no... feet," so... I don't know what that means. She's had many peanut butter sandwiches before on the same bread with the same kind of peanut butter. Who knows? It was gone by the time she woke up this morning.

Oh, and because I know I have legions of fans out there who are irritated that they can't get an RSS feed for this blog because it's private, good news: I made it public again. Follow away!

Tumamoc Hill

I used to hike a lot. I used to do an "easy" hike once a week. We decided to do an "easy" hike this past weekend.


There were many strong points to hiking Tumamoc "Hill." Number one: it was beautiful. Number two: it was close. It's in the city, right by A Mountain (which, for the uninitiated, is the name... so it's A, as opposed to B, and not just A, as in one of many). Number three: we saw a lot of wild life, including five deer which we failed to get a picture of.


The website which listed the hike labeled the terrain as 'fire road.' I figured that meant 'wide dirt road' like Madonna Mountain in SLO. Having just junked our jogger stroller, and not wanting to push the regular stroller on dirt, we decided to carry the kids. To her credit, Lillian walked for some, but not much.


For future reference, "fire road" in Arizona, means paved.


The biggest downside, it wasn't easy. OK, well, we did get lapped by the grandmother pushing a double stroller. But, the next day, both Tyler and I were hobbling around like old people. I kept saying, "I didn't used to be so out of shape. When did this happen? When did I become so doughy?" The number two negative is that the name Tumamoc Hill is a total misnomer. You'll notice in the video below a nearby hill. That hill is A Mountain. You'll also probably notice that it looks smaller than the hill we're on. I don't know who was in charge of naming these things, but they screwed it all up.




And, for your enjoyment, Lillian throwing rocks.

Chunky Monkey

We just had our 2-month check up. The results are in:

Weight: 13 lbs 9 oz (99th percentile)
Height: 25 in (99th percentile)
Head size: 15.5 in (70th percentile)

The only slip from Lillian's well baby checks I saved was from her 6 month when she was measured at 25 inches. I've been telling people Nora is a giant, now I have proof.

Snow?

Yes, those are little snow flakes under the weather description. And no, it didn't snow. Well, the picture is of the Catalina mountains from the street by our apartment complex. This morning, the snow was all the way down to the bottom of the mountains. By noon, this is what they looked like.

No snow, but it still is cold and windy. Who knew that Tucson got so cold?

Till Dermatitis Do Us Part

So, I've been wearing this ring for quite some time. Recently, I got a rash under the ring, so I took it off. The rash went away after about a week, so I put the ring back on. Then the rash came back, so I had to take the ring off again. This may or may not have contributed to me getting hit on when I was without children or husband on the UofA campus. I'd just like to think it's because I'm extremely good looking.

Tyler has a nervous habit of taking his ring on and off, on and off. This has started to irritate his knuckle and it's hurting a lot, so he took his ring off to try to retrain his hands to do something else. Thus, for a week or so, neither of us has been wearing our wedding rings.

When I was on my now famous grocery store trip of last Monday, I wasn't wearing my ring and with the elderly Asian woman staring at me, I felt self conscious. I could just hear her thinking, staring at my left hand, wondering why I didn't have a husband. Either feeling bad for me that I was abandoned with two small children, or condemning me as a woman of ill repute.

So, I started wearing Tyler ring as, depressingly, our hands are the same size.

Fake Mustache Day

Do we all remember International Talk Like a Pirate Day? I do. Well, yesterday was International Fake Mustache Day. Tyler brought home "The Bandit."




Of course, we don't look as good as my nephew Jack, but who could?

Grocery Store Fail

My green fingers.

So, we didn't know you were supposed to have 3-D glasses for the Super Bowl. (How were you supposed to know this? Did they tell us on TV? I guess we haven't been watching enough. They were giving them away at Safeway/Von's and Fry's/Kroger, but we shop at Albertson's, so we had no idea.) Anyway, you also need the glasses to watch Chuck tonight, which is one of our shows. I needed chicken bullion anyway, so I thought I'd go over to Fry's to see if I could score some. The bullion located, we headed over to a large Super Bowl display where they had leftover plates, napkins, football-shaped platters, etc, thinking that if they had them, they would be over there. No glasses. But, they did have leftover mini cakes for $1.50. I'm all about that, so I grabbed one. It was about the size of those gigantic muffins that you get at Costco and it was in a plastic 2 piece container that snapped together. Lillian saw it and wanted it right next to her on the seat. Fine. (My mom alarm should have gone off at this point, but it didn't.)

From the time it took me to walk from the display to the check out line, Lillian had opened the cake and dumped it out. Just then, Nora started to scream.

I was standing there trying to hurry with the wipes with a screaming baby while an elderly Asian woman silently looked on from two feet away.

I still needed the bullion, so I got in line. I asked the checker if they had any glasses left.

Checker: The Super Bowl was yesterday.
Me: I know, I was wondering if you had any glasses left over.
Checker: The Super Bowl was yesterday.
Me (Nora is still screaming): I know, but you... (I was going to say you need them to watch Chuck.)
Checker, loudly: It was yesterday, so no.

Ok, no glasses. I did end up buying the cake, but I threw it away right outside the store.

I got out into the parking lot and Nora was still upset. I was set upon by a boy of about 16 who was very dirty and asked if I had anything to eat.

Me as I'm loading screaming Nora into the car: No, I'm sorry, I only bought bullion.
Him: What?
Me: I didn't buy any food, only bullion.
Him: What?
Me: I only have bullion.
Him: What?
Me: Bullion. (At this point, I had loaded Lillian so I just got in the car and left to take solace in Grammar Girl explaining split verb forms.)