Cranky baby and the mysterious rash

For all of Millie’s adorable smiles, she’s the crankiest baby we’ve had. She can be full and clean, but still scream, holler and push you away. Especially her sister. She’s very strong willed and if you tell her “no,” it just makes her more determined to do whatever. She thinks she’s something when she manages to get into the bathroom to look around. Or when she gets ahold of your phone or remote control. She can lift the lid of the computer. She likes to play in the animal’s water.
Right now she has reason to be cranky. She’s had a rash for about 3 weeks. She looks like a leper. We took her to the doctor initially and she said it was a viral rash. When it got worse, we took her back and the doctor said it was scabies – a mite and highly contagious. I doubt that, though the medicine for it did seem to work for awhile. If it were scabies, we’d all have it, and we don’t. But it’s getting worse again. It was getting better, now it’s worse.
When I was little I had eczema and the doctor said it was hay mites. I got Millie some baby eczema lotion to help with the itch and it helped for awhile, but it didn’t heal. So I don’t know what’s going on. She’s not sleeping well, which may be related and may not be related. Poor baby. She looks like a leper. We’ve rewashed all of her bedding and stuffed animals. I guess we’ll start tracking her food to see if it might be a food allergy. Sometimes she’s pretty miserable with it and sometimes she’s just fine. It’s back on her face, so it looks worse than she feels now.
Pobre baby!
  

Austin Vacation

The weekend before I went back for inservice, I took another mini vacation to Austin to visit another friend I hadn’t seen in a few (maybe 7) years. My sister-in-law works for a salon in town, so I got into her stylist for a cut and color. It was the most expensive hair-do I’ve ever had and it looked great, but the red has already faded, even with the color-protected shampoo/conditioner. Still I like the dark and in certain lights, you can still see the red.

So after my hair do, I went to meet my friend for drinks. I didn’t take a single picture of her or of us together. Weird, but I didn’t.

We met at Iron Cactus, then hung out at her house, drinking chocolate strawberry wine and port. We decided to go to roller derby the next night.

Saturday, we started out at a Farmer’s Market, which was awesome. They had so much more than ours here in Beaumont, which is not unexpected. If it was my town, I definitely would have gone to town with all of the fabulous goods, but we just walked around. I had a brisket taco, which I have really started to enjoy. We spent a lot of the day in Salido(?) a little north of Austin. It was a really nice day and a really nice little town. We visited the wine tasting room there, ate at a little bakery café and walked around a bit.

We had dinner at Moonshine close to the Austin Convention Center where roller derby was. It’s a popular restaurant and we hit it just right for dinner. The food was delicious, but too much. We had to walk it off in the convention center before sitting down to roller derby. Which was pretty cool. It’s a very athletic sport.

It was nice to get away again and see my friend. I left early Sunday after going to eat breakfast with Scott’s sisters and his parents, who were in town to see the girls. I did not do as well taking pictures of this trip as I did the last one

   

Crafting

I started a baby blanket with this yarn, but it was turning out terribly. I finally ripped it all up and started making granny squares with the variegated yarn, sewed them together in a rectangle, then went around it with the solid light aqua for a border. I don't know why I didn't take a pic of that before I gave it, but I didn't. Summer was busy. I gave it to my college friend who I hadn't seen since Grace was born. She was finally pregnant with her "miracle" baby and I was able to go to her baby shower. Full of joy for her precious little boy. I was able to go back after he was born to see him. So nice. 

Then I found a website with great patterns and tutorials called Attic 24. My mother had given me some yarn she got at a yard sale, so I started a ripple afghan with it. I'm going to use it until it runs out, then figure out things from there. It really ripples, which is exciting. It's also infinitely variable and can be used for a baby blanket too.  

Podcasts, Star Trek Sunday

I've started walking in the mornings. Not fast and  not far, but just moving. I try to get to bed around 9 (ha ha, that hardly ever happens) and get up at 5 to walk. I've been moderately successful. I walk up and down the street 3 times. In the interest in becoming a better person, I've been trying to find free podcasts to listen to on those walks. I've found the 5 am Miracle, Tell all with Ryan O'Connor, Professor Blastoff, the Nerdist, and TrekFM. I really like all of these in different ways, but I've found myself really liking the TrekFM because there are several different ones that each deal with the different TV series. It's been so long since I've seen any of them, much less heard intelligent discussion about the characters and stories. I really want to start watching them again. Hulu has some, so I think we're going to start Star Trek Sunday, watching some episodes with Grace.
The podcasts are on iTunes.  The 5 am Miracle guy is all about personal development, and some of his stuff is interesting. He's a raw vegan and a runner. Tell all is a celebrity gossip thing, but has some interesting guest stars and is really funny. Professor Blastoff is also sometimes funny, though it's hit or miss to me. The Nerdist is also hit or miss, depending on their guests. Some of it I'm just not into. But I'm always into Star Trek of all flavors, excluding The Original Series, though the current movies are fun.

Media

I’ve found some neat books lately.
Dragon Bound is an older book and it shows in some of the dialogue. I’ve read a lot of similar books, but I was so fascinated by the mystery of the heroine, I kept with it. There are others in the series, but I’m not interested enough to keep with them.

This is Nalini Singh’s new release and it rocks. I went to her book signing in Houston and she’s awesome. It’s like number 12 of her Psy-Changeling series and you should read them all. This one is definitely one of my favorites. How many 12th books in a series can you say that about?
I don’t like Seanan McGuire’s other series that everyone else loves, but this one is a lot of fun. It’s a totally different world and the worldbuilding is really great. I listened to the first 2 and really enjoyed them.

Beach vacation

My parents have a time share in Galveston and we spent a few days there when they were there. We went to Schlitterbahn with my sister, bil and nephew, leaving the babies with my parents. That was a lot of fun. Grace was big enough to ride most of the slides she wanted to, but Brady was still too little. It was a long day. We didn’t get to eat dinner until 9 or so. It was fun. I was glad we were only there 2 days. We went to Scott’s parents in Houston the next day.

Mama vacation 1 Day 2 part 2

This area of Texas has beautiful rolling hills and bluebonnets in the spring. After the grape stomping, we went into Brenham proper to check into our fantastic bed and breakfast. I may be a convert after this stay. We stayed at the Ant Street Inn, which was incredible. The whole downtown Brenham area was really nice and interesting. There are a lot of little shops and a few eating places in walking distance. We checked in and learned about the breakfast the next morning, the veranda outside the second floor, the coffee, drinks and blue bell in the fridge, and the wine social at 5:30. We figured we didn’t need to go to Blue Bell to get ice cream, so we went to another winery to see the sights.

 

We had beer and pizza for dinner. The next morning we had that wonderful breakfast then walked around awhile. There was a cute park close by that told an interesting story that started out being about Brenham cisterns then ended up being about arson and looting by the union army after the Civil War. It was very interesting.

I’m glad I went to spend time with Leslie. On the way home I stopped to see another college friend and bridesmaid who had just had her first baby. It was a very nice weekend, and my babies missed me a lot too!