Oh, beautiful sliced cheese variety. How you torture me with your fatty delicious goodness permeating through the glass case of the deli cheese counter. If there was any way to avoid the deli cheese display on my grocery store route, I would do it. Unfortunately though, it's housed in the same area code as the piles and piles of deli meat that are a staple in the Hines household diet. Jude still gets to eat cheese and I'm jealous. In fact, I have to fight and bribe and all but beg him to eat anything but cheese. I wonder sometimes how my kid even goes number two with all the cheese he consumes, and I have to carefully make sure to regulate how much he puts down.
Some days it's not so hard for me to not eat cheese. Some days just the mere word "cheese" makes me want to ditch this whole Paleo diet nonsense and inhale a gigantic stuffed crust 4-cheese pizza dipped in queso and garnished with pepper jack and swiss cheese squares. But, then I remind myself that I must keep on keepin' on. Only 7 lbs. to go till my pre-pregnancy weight and I like how I'm feeling these days. My arteries and colon are thanking me.
Speaking of cheese, my husband can't take a serious picture when we've been out for a grown up night of dinner and drinks with friends. Here we are at Cafe Nova, which started out as innocently enough as an evening of dinner and cocktails then turned into late night cocktails and dance time (that's what we get for going to eat at a restaurant that turns into a club after hours). What fun! How refreshing to be reminded that mommies and daddies can still go out and have this kind of fun from time to time. With the every day every day, it's easy to lose sight of this. I'm working on being diligent about penciling "Fun Time" on my calendar throughout the month. Next to hot yoga and writing, it's "mother's little helper."
Jude channeling his inner Jon Bonham or Keith Moon. Taylor noted, "I think he'd be a great drummer someday." Ehhhh. Having grown up with a father who is a rock and roll musician, I'm thrilled with the idea of having a son who plays rock and roll. I have musician envy. I never played rock and roll, but I've always been a huge fan of it (I played the violin in junior high but didn't have the discipline... plus, already having been in martial arts, I figured one Asian cliche was enough for my tortured adolescent soul to endure). I am also aware of the persona that is often that of a drummer. Wild. Crazy. Trouble. Think Animal from the Muppets, not to mention the hours of drum practice that would rattle the windows of my house. I love rock and roll, but I'm thinking I'd like Jude to be more of the elusive guitar player with mystique...
...Or the moody, soul searching harmonica toting kind of guy. He found a harmonica that my mom got him awhile back and has taken interest in playing it. Now that he's figured out how to make music with it, he is often found roaming the house "playing the blues" as we call it. The "Pookie Blues." The "I didn't get my way again and I'm going to whine a little tune for my cruel mommy Blues."
Baby Viv had her 4 month appointment Monday. We waited for almost 2 hours to get in, which in infant time is an f'ing eternity when you are sitting in a waiting room with a bunch of coughing toddlers and crying new babies. There was a gigantic teenager in there too, which struck me as odd at first. I forget that teenagers can still see pediatricians. With a haircut like Justin Bieber's, trendily dressed, glued to his iPhone and rolling his eyes at everything his trim and stylishly dressed mother said to him, he was all pimply and greasy and overweight and sweaty. I can think of a host of things that must have been ailing that poor boy and I immediately checked off a list of things I now vow to do to keep my son from ever presenting himself in the way that this teenager did.
A chick with a baby, a toddler and a Kindergarten age little boy sat directly behind Viv and I. The little boy was hacking his guts out and kept turning around wanting to talk to Viv, who was perched up looking over my shoulder. Really, chick with the obviously sick child? Of all the empty seats in this waiting room, you sit your coughing kid in the direct line of fire to my infant?
I got up and walked Viv around for a minute, then slowly pulled my stroller over across the way to sit in another seat, far away from Germ Boy and his inconsiderate mom.
Other than those mental distractions, my little butterball is doing fantastic. I love her in this photo, as do many friends and family. I think she looks like a little bitty geisha doll and I am over the moon by the fact that she has taken after my Asian half. Every time I look at her, I see my tiny little Okinawan grandmother, my beautiful mother and my beautiful aunts. I know that someday, when none of them are here anymore, I will see their faces in the face of my baby girl. How priceless. I wonder sometimes how it's possible that she looks even more Asian than I do, when she's only a quarter and I'm half?
Either way, HIGH FIVE FOR LITTLE FAT ASIAN BABIES!
