where did you come from

we need rain. not only so the garden can get some really serious watering.. but we need to wash away all of the pollen in the yard. it's nice to have big oak trees, but this is ridiculous. the cat sneezes almost nonstop.

well my day was interesting today. after delicious sushi lunch downtown with a friend, i'm driving up a little hill and my engine just cuts off completely. i put it in park, turn it off and turn it back on (meanwhile, there are 5 cars behind me on a windy hill wondering what the heck is going on). it did turn back on and i was able to pull into a neighborhood. but that was no good.

the day ended up fine though. had dinner with a friend and we got my car to a different shop without incident. and before all of that mayhem, i found a tea shop that makes shaken iced green tea that tastes very similar to tea shops in taiwan. it's $3 instead of $1, but it's still a tiny victory. and i had peach cobbler for dinner.. any day with peach cobbler is a good day.

it's going to be lonely without cate this week!

the best thing

todayy i realized that cate smiles when you smile at her. i thought it was random before. apparently jill thought so too. wooo discoveries! 

she was really fussy this afternoon so i put her in the stroller and walked a couple blocks to central market, assuming that would put her to sleep.. not the case. she wasn't very happy in the car seat, so i just carried her around in one arm and pushed the stroller as we walked around the store. 

this leads us to megan's learning experience #489: you really do question a lot, and you do care what other people think. i've been watching tons of bringing home baby on TLC this week (and i admit, i sometimes watch it when i'm not taking care of a baby) and the moms are always commenting on how they're afraid they're doing things wrong. old megan used to think 'when i have a baby, i'll follow my instincts and who cares what anyone else thinks.' ..but i do care. 

tomorrow is our last long day together, so i'm going to try to soak up all of the cries (though there aren't very many at all), burps, and especially smiles. and we're making molten chocolate lava cake. who wouldn't smile about that. 

day 25 of yoga! 

23

today was the best day. at the top of the list, stacy and drew came over to visit, and he said 'cheese,' apparently for the first time. totally nailed the 'ch'. it also gave me a new appreciation for why moms don't want two kids under two years old. it definitely took two of us to wrangle them. but it was so much fun, and stacy hasn't gotten to hold a little baby in a long time. she was beaming.

at a close second, cate was a very smiley girl for a few minutes this afternoon and it erased hours of scowling from my memory. she's generally very easy to please, but she makes the funniest facial expressions with furrowed eyebrows when she isn't sure about something.

it's been nice to have some quality time with a baby. i need a good dose of baby holding every once in a while to remind myself:
i love babies
i don't want my own baby right now
motherhood is hard

i didn't fully appreciate how difficult it is to put on makeup and get dressed or take a shower while you're watching a baby. even if they're sleeping, you're spending that time catching up on all of the general stuff you have to do while you have a free minute. i'm usually the kind of person who jumps out of bed and immediately gets dressed and puts my makeup on. in the last two days, i haven't gotten dressed or done much of anything else until at least 11.

and tonight in yoga, sam, one of my favorite teachers, taught us how to correctly do L pose. i have tried and failed many times, but tonight i did it threeee times! and i felt totally fine. it was a yoga miracle.

[photo from here]

but sam is a testament to what a good teacher can accomplish just based on quality explanations. the reason i couldn't do it in the past (aside from general lack of core/arm strength) was that i didn't know how to do it the right way. she spent the whole hour and a half teaching us to plug in our arms and squeeze our legs.. so then by the time we got to the pose, it was relatively easy. typically when an instructor tries to get a class to do L pose, 1/2 of the people can get up. tonight, i think all of us did it. 

23 days!

odd duck

this week i'm watching jill and zach's baby, cate, while jill goes back to work. i sent her photo updates throughout the day.

she was really good all day. the biggest hurdle was figuring out to open and close the stroller. i never did figure out how to close it.

we stayed in the house all day today, but i think tomorrow we might go on a field trip.

tonight on no reservations, anthony bourdain went to a food trailer in austin called odd duck. the food looked delicious. i feel like i've been missing out.

garden 2011 part 1

faj and i went to home depot this evening to pick out vegetables for the garden. it was a questionable idea to go without majjy (she was busy and not at home), but i think we did pretty well. we bought mostly the same things as last year, plus a few tomatoes, minus the things that immediately died (coughcauliflowercough). 

 basil is so pretty.

last year was more fun to plant because all of us were helping (that was march 28, by the way.)

tonight jeff took 10 pictures and went somewhere. dad went inside to watch the rest of a basketball game. to be fair, we only had one pair of gardening gloves, and faj has very delicate hands.

the sun went down and we laid the soaker hose out, gave everything a drink and said goodnight to the garden. i'll post pictures tomorrow so we can watch everything grow and grow!

miss you again

kid 1: which is the best popsicle?
kid 2: definitely watermelon
me: there are 4 watermelon popsicles. does everyone want one?
kid 3: no, watermelon is red. there's only 2.
kid 1: red is cherry
kid 3: no, red is watermelon
me: what is pink then?
kid 3: i don't know. but red is watermelon.
me: i like purple and blue
kid 1: what about green?
me: lime? lime is ok.
kid 3: green is not lime. orange is lemon. there is no lime.
me: i'm pretty sure orange is orange
kid 1: no, orange is lemon. ask our teacher. ask kid 2. everyone will tell you, orange is lemon

now. i've been trying to teach them that everything doesn't have to be so literal. and we joke about many things until whichever kid who is taking things too literally starts to joke with us. but that was not the case today. they were all being completely serious. unless they've mastered my dead pan.

at this point, i cut open an orange popsicle
me: kid 2, try this.
::kid 2 eats some:: ..yep, definitely lemon.
::megan, exasperated::

bare feet

spring is springin' around here! i missed the boat on pictures of the bradford pears in bloom. i'll make up for it in crepe myrtles. but now a bunch of trees are turning from bright green into apple green and it is beautiful. even the ugly trees in the neighbor's yard.

 and the bush with the white flowers is having its moment of glory.

 don't they look like little bouquets?

 mutti sent maj a box of omaha steaks for her birthday.. and jeff and i had fun rediscovering dry ice.

 we thought maybe if we added dish soap to the water, the smoke from the dry ice would fill up the bubbles as they floated.. but that didn't end up happening at all. jeff had fun playing in it though.

 jeff is a really good person. he often doesn't have two nickels to rub together.. but the other day he was downtown taking pictures and this homeless man called him over.
man: hey, you! were you walking around with a camera two weeks ago? an older camera?
jeff: yeah..
man: you gave my friend two dollars for the bus, and it made her day. she was able to get home that night.