Doing Hard Work

This Thursday is the "big day" that will let us know where we will be going for the next four years for residency. Yes, it is the long awaited, highly anticipated "Match Day." We each handle our stress for this in different ways. Daddy's way would be to bask on a beach in Maui. Mommy's way is to prepare for the possibility that we will be moving. Due to time restrictions and finances, Mommy's way has won. We have been repainting, repairing, re-fixing and re-packing boxes every day. It's not that we want to leave our little home, in fact, now that it is in top shape, we'd be thrilled to find out that we are staying. Little Baby Girl has been subjected to Mommy's endless shifting and re-shifting of items as you can view in the above video. We had to move the food storage upstairs to repair a wall downstairs. Then we moved the food storage back downstairs, and, well, Baby Girl had to help.

My First Words

My first word was “DOG.”  An interesting choice seeing as we didn’t have a dog when I was a baby.  However, I still own a stuffed animal seal christened “DOG.”  Booh-booh, at the tender age of one, is a much more social child than either her mom or dad ever were or will be.  It is only fitting that her first word—an actual word used correctly —would be “HI!”  This came around 9 months and quickly became a favorite.  She amused church goers and grocery shoppers alike by indiscriminately greeting all with a loud “HI!”  Some tried to get her to say “goodbye” but all in vain.   And now at 15 months, we have added a few more properly used words to our repertoire. “EAT!”  And then there is “TEETEE,” which is applied to any mammal remotely resembling a feline (foxes, horses).  While I was terrified of the large tiger we encountered at the Alabama Zoo, Eole, with great enthusiasm, met him with “Hi TEETEE!” But none of these words can match the explosive power of The Great Word: the Word to rule them all: “NO!” Or as Eole says, “NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO!”

Monkey See, Monkey Do

You better watch out. You better not cry. Better not pout; I’m telling you why: Eole is watching your every move. Luckily, she is only picking up on the good habits such as brushing her teeth (even using a hair brush to brush her teeth because we certainly don’t use hair brushes for our non-existent hair),

blowing her nose into a tissue, washing with soap, shaving her face with Dad’s electric razor, and of course, talking on the cell phone or IPOD or calculator. 

These conversations will usually begin with her picking up any item that has buttons, pressing a few of the buttons, putting said object up to her ear, saying “Hi?? Glabababa? HAHAHAHAHA!”  I guess I laugh a lot when I’m on the phone.

Full Circle

Apparently, Dan’s father had to travel for work a lot when Dan was a young child. Dan -- or “Danny” as I’m sure he was called at the time-- got so fed up with his dad leaving, that he decided to pack himself in his father’s luggage. Fast forward 27 odd years and Dan now finds himself hopping on a plane weekly for residency interviews, and, well, shall we say that the circle is complete?

What We did over the Holidays

Baked cookies….

Baked more cookies....

Baked Brioche

Baked ALOTTA sourdough bread

Ate aforementioned goodies which lead to the following weight gains:

Eole: 1 pounds

Julia: 5 pounds

Daniel: 10 pounds

Read Christmas Stories

Watch Raymond Briggs “The Snowman” bi-daily, including Christmas morning when the opening of presents had to wait until the 29 minute movie had concluded with, yet again, the tragic loss of Snowman.

Opened presents!! Thanks for the gifts, Santa, et al.

The Gypsy Family

Here is the run down of the Gypsy family that has been on the road since Thanksgiving. We started off our trip with a visit to Utah for Thanksgiving (and interviews). This happened to coincide with the famous Pugmire chocolate-making weekend. The Chocolatiers were delighted to have Eole and her mama there working in the quality control department. I’m sure they will try and get us out every year so we can perform our important taste testing task. On the Geary side, we were favored with private violin concerts, and art shows. Where was Daddy during all of this glitz, glam, and chocolate? Holed up in the garage with Grandpa Dave’s lathe.



It was hard to leave cold Utah for the even colder Wisconsin, but we were off to more interviews. While Daddy interviewed, Mama and baby girl checked out the local mall and purchased these darling squeaky shoes for little Booh. These shoes are guaranteed to help Little Girl learn how to walk, and guaranteed to reduce the scowls her mama gets from other concerned mothers when they see Little Girl out in the cold with no shoes on her feet.



 We hit warmer climates with a trip to Duke where we enjoyed the southern fried everything platter.



Then we caravanned through South Carolina, where we pulled off the road to sample “Southern Delicacies” such as fried pig skin (Daddy refused to try it) and real ginger ale (super hot). The shop keeper was excited to introduce us to “Boll Peanuts”. “What’s a ‘boll peanut’?” we asked. “No, no a BOLL peanut. Like when you put it in BOLL’N whutar!” “Oh, a BOILED peanut.”



With our arteries just a little more clogged we finally arrived in Birmingham, Alabama, and just in time for their record cold winter of 56 degrees. So what did mama and the little Booh do? Hit the Zoo, which was deserted due to the record cold weather.



Exciting news: Baby Girl turned one last month! And what, might you ask, is this big little baby mischief maker up to these days? Well, I’m glad you asked. Oca-doo loves to read her stories. I was trying to clean the floor but with little messer-heels following me around, I wasn’t progressing much. I plopped her down on a chair with an armful of books, and she happily read out loud (ooohh beep bo do wa looo wa noo) for a half hour. (Do I need to increase the monthly amount we put away to her college fund after all?). Eole loves to help in the garden. She’s really good at making sure the hose works properly. She is a mean-green-baby-machine who loves to help her mommy sort the recycling. Eole is also particularly fond of “peek-a-boo,” as the video will attest to. (The video will also attest to the fact that I don’t know how to rotate these darned videos to be upright!). And that’s our Baby Girl at one year.