Monday, October 17, 2005

Weekend in Review

Beyond the tree trimming and jailhouse talk, the weekend was pretty sedate. On Friday night, we watched Kingdom of Heaven and ate pizza. Saturday, Evelin went to a children's clothing sale in University Park and picked up a coat and some other duds for Celeste; we followed that up with a trip to the Friends of the Takoma Park Maryland Library book sale. Evelin found a few things for herself and a couple of books for Celeste. All I ended up with was Beyond the Last Village by Alan Rabinowitz and A Dictionary of Named Effects and Laws in Chemistry, Physics and Mathematics by D.W.G. Ballantyne and D.R. Lovett.

On the way back from the library sale, we stopped at the local volunteer fire department for it's open house. Celeste was happy to get a balloon, but wasn't willing to give the stop-drop-roll drill a try. We ran into one of Celeste's friends there. K--- is about a year older than Celeste, and was much more into the big trucks than Celeste was. Plus, Celeste was moving into a pre-nap tired phase.

Dinner was a Trader Joe's special: chickpeas, spinach, and raisins in Trader Joe's Punjab Spinach Simmer Sauce over whole-wheat couscous with a dollop of Celeste's ΦΑΓΕ yoghurt. Pretty much everything except the olive oil and extra spinach came from Trader Joe's; I don't know why, it just worked out that way.

I had a lot of trouble sleeping Saturday night at least in part because I was wondering if the tree trimmers had damaged the roof at all. Since we moved in to the house, there has been this big dead limb hooked onto a live limb over the roof. I've tried a couple of times to dislodge it, and bits have broken off over the years, but the tree guys had better tools and the ability to get up to the limb to knock it down. Unfortunately, it did come down on the roof. There was big bang that give Evelin a start, but it didn't wake the napping Celeste. I didn't worry about it ... until I tried to get to sleep a bit past midnight. I ended up spending a lot of time reading that night.

Sunday morning, of course, Celeste wanted to get up early. After her breakfast and some playtime, I went into the attic to see how things looked from the inside ... there weren't any visible problems. As soon as Celeste went down for her nap, I went up to clean the gutters and to check things out on the outside ... once again, it was fine. There were some bits of sticks in the gutter and some detritus where the limb hit, but the roof and shingles were solid.

The rest of the day was a typical Sunday: farmers market, grocery store, forgetting to return the DVD on time, and big nap to try to make up for the previous evening. Dinner was roasted root vegetables (what with the cooler weather and the parsnips at the market and all), and Evelin made some pumpkin-gingerbread muffins.

It seemed like it'd be a calm night, but Celeste had other ideas: Around 9:27 p.m. she started wailing an inconsolable wail. I was no use to her. Evelin managed to calm her for a little while, but then the crying started again and came close to reaching tantrum levels. Finally, after a mini time out by herself in her crib, I went back in and somehow managed to soothe her. I gave her back one of the pacifiers she'd thrown everywhere, made sure she still had her blankie, and then told her I'd sit in the room with her. A little quiet singing, and she stopped the crying. (The same routine had not worked 10 minutes earlier.) I stayed with her for about 15 minutes (until 12:01 a.m.), and I'm not sure she was all the way asleep when I left the room, but she did sleep through until sometime around 6:20 a.m.

Leap? Teething? Upset stomach from the pumpkin muffins and/or the straight canned pumpkin? I don't know ... Evelin said she had some quiet time, but no nap, this morning, and was down for her afternoon nap a little before noon. We'll see what tonight brings.

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