To recap my last few weeks, I've managed to:

1) Recover from Jamaica
2) lose my phone
3) traveled to Korea again
4) buy a phone
5) PF found my original phone
6) it is now The Beanie's phone
7) because she hid it in our laundry
8) keep my crazy bladder-cat alive
9) my other cat is ridiculously fat and I don't know how that happened
10)Seamas ate a lot of Korean chocolate and scared me to death. I got very little sleep the last few weeks, to put it mildly.

I have dozens of pictures of Beanie. New ones. But they are all on the new phone. And I don't have the power to email it all to myself. I wonder if I can download stuff directly onto my computer through the little charger guy? I should read the manual.

It's a razr. It's pink. Beanie likes it, but she's pretty happy with my old one.

She says "Atum" for "hello" and "goodbye." Atum was apparently the first of many Egyptian gods. This made me nervous when I read it on Wikipedia. Like, "how old is my baby's soul? jeebus." But I got over it. Especially since she will chat on the phone and blow kisses. Her conversations sound like this "Atum. Oh? Mmmm. Oh? E-eye-e-eye-oh. Ah. Atum."

She's quick, too. You can't stand too close to the wall phone. And if you call our house? And it's busy? You can bet that she's been on the phone in the bedroom.

She has started moving her arms to "Wheels on the bus" and will la bamba and disco and monkey stomp. Her dance moves are the shizzle.

Beanie is still nursing at night. She also got me this morning because she woke up asking for a ba-ba. I gave her one. And she finished it and pushed up my shirt. I shouldn't let her do that, but the screams are horrible in the morning. At night, I'm usually asleep or nearly there and my soporific nunus are used and discarded rather quickly since she passes out on them.

Oh, and we just got back from our first vacation as a family. We drove down to LA. It took many rounds of Old McDonald and Ring Around The Rosie to make it there and back, we don't have a cassette or DVD, so that meant I was hoarse. We hung out with my g-pa. He turned 87 on Friday, so we drove down to bug him. My nana is in a hospice care home. She was diagnosed with advanced Alzheimers about 6 weeks ago and has been up and down. Luckily, we visited her every day and she was just as pleasant and sweet as can be. She didn't know who we were, but she loved Beanie and kept saying her feet were "perfect" and that the PF was "A good lookin' man" and she kissed him a lot. My nana is so sweet, I will miss her so much when she is gone.

On the way home we found out we had left our alarm clock scheduled to go off. At full blast. Prompting a call from our management company. And a complaint from my downstairs neighbor this morning. Which, I personally think, could have been rectified easily by our housesitter had we known it was the alarm clock. Apparently, my neighbor was still pissed about it days later. What do you say to that? "Thanks for calling the cops and reporting our alarm clock as a 'house alarm"? "Sorry that happened, we have a baby who likes to push buttons"? "Here's my number, call US next time so we don't feel horrible on our ONLY VACATION EVER"? Anyway. We left the alarm clock on. Apparently, it goes off for 4 full hours every morning at 6:40 AM. That sucks. But I'm still really mad at the management company who said they were calling the cops and who weren't sure if they were calling the right people and who didn't actually call my landlord. But that was the only really annoying thing that happened in weeks.

I took Monday and Tuesday off to drive back at a leisurely pace (we left on Friday night around 8 PM and got to LA at 3 AM due to many, many stops and crying.) We drove up through Fresno (f-no) and hit a wall of storm just north of Visalia. It was pouring when I stopped to visit my cousins and my uncle, who is in remission from Leukemia. I got all the "I may never see you again" visits in. Which made me feel better.

PF is such a trooper. I have a crazy, kooky, sick-and-dying family. He stayed for it all and we didn't even go "out". I had planned a trip to Griffith Park, but it's hard to get motivated when your nana is down in Hawthorne barely remembering to eat. So, he came along on all the visits and chatted with my g-pa. I think we really made his weekend, he loved Beanie so much. I got a few photos, but not on digital so I'll upload one once they are developed and scanned.

Long weekend. Long week. Long month.

I'm exhausted.

How does lunch sound? It sounds pretty damn good to me...

~beanie maman

I am gearing up for another marathon flight to Korea next week. After I come back, I think we will do a family drive down to LA to see my grandpa. He is turning 87. I also want to visit with my nana, who is not herself anymore, and just give her some good energy. She's become very senile and its so sad. I have a theory that she lost a good 15-20 years of quality life when she came down with a bad case of shingles the summer before I got pregnant. I am only grateful she was able to see/meet/hold beanie a few times before it got really bad.

Korea looks like it will be a much more interesting trip than usual; my companion will be coming from a casino in Atlantic City and it's the same gal I went all over Brazil with. She's just a kick in the pants. The bees knees. A hoot and a half. I am looking forward to it!

I will miss Beanie and the PF though. PF won't let me take her with me even though I only have about another 18 months to go before I have to actually start buying her a seat for herself...I'd totally love to go with her. Not to mention, you get on and off the plane first with a kid in tow. The Koreans I work with really want to meet her, they love her pictures.

I've been feeling sick the past two days. Right around 10 AM I don't know if I'm going to puke or crap. And then it passes and I'm fine and I forget about it. Except that it's going on 3 days now. I wonder if there is a moldy plant in our office? I will poke around. I am highly sensitive to airborne mold.

Beanie had a doctor appt today, a regular check up. I don't know if she is getting shots. She should be there right now. She lost some weight from all her antibiotics and meds and sickness, so I hope it didn't put her in a lower percentile. She's so teeny weenie. I hope they say her ear is unfunked too, but something about her ear smells "off" to me, so I have a feeling there's still a crumb left from the infection. The cough is finally gone though.

A good thing, because we are meeting my old pal Chie on Saturday morning and I just made plans with my pal Jenna for a play date with her two gorgeous gals. We don't want to pass the plague to anyone else, so we are on the fast track to Health. My kid will be in hog heaven at the Glama house, they have pugs and toys as well as one slightly older kid and one slightly younger one. She will be grinning like she did on Halloween, I have no doubt in my mind.

The next day, we go to Lydia's bday. Last year we all came down with colds and norovirus at it, but I think we beat them to the punch this time. I think we are all unsicked enough to attend and keep our immune systems boosted. PF picked out the cutest card.

We are the busiest freaking family...is this COMMON in toddler households??? You just go go go forever?

In more news: Elspeth can't say her own name, but she can sign for please and thank you and says "chocolate" and "snacky". For some reason, this always makes my day and I will stop everything to pick her up and feed her a hershey's kiss.

~Beanie's whack-job Mom