After returning home from a vacation where he was held nearly every minute by a different person every 5 minutes in a different location every 24 hours with new foods and surroundings and an all-out barf-fest on the way home, TheFry will.not.let.go.of.me...or PapaFish, for that matter. Clinging to MamaFish has been pretty routine for the last two months or so, but crying when PapaFish leaves the room, even though MamaFish is holding him, is something TheFry has not really ever done before.

Is this just normal separation anxiety, or is it related to our recent vacation, or both? How will we survive our move to Korea??! How long will it take him to adjust, never mind PapaFish?

*sigh*

Now it looks like we will need to get a sitter just to be able to pack a couple of boxes each night. Looking around our apartment, I realize how much work there still is to do, even though I feel like I've been working endlessly on it for the last two or three months.

Blech. It's 11pm, and I'm going to bed.

I know people thought he was a girl, but this has gone TOO FAR...

The Korean Consulate in Chicago thinks my son is a girl. Okay, he kind of has eartails in his passport photo, HOWEVER, his passport clearly states that he is MALE, hence the "M" in the "Sex" column of the photo page of his passport.

However, when his visa was issued, he was listed as "F". Whattheheck?! So, after dozens of dollars in shipping fees and a week and a half of wait time, I still don't have a visa for my son or for myself. I'm calling the consulate tomorrow at 10am if I can possibly manage it.

At least PapaFish has his visa correct and in tact. Maybe they should issue proofs of the visas via e-mail before they stamp them in your passport to avoid the hassle. I have 2 weeks and 5 days to get this done. Actually, 2 weeks and 4 days, since the last day we'll be staying in a hotel before we leave for Korea.

In other news, we just got back from our week-long vacation to visit PapaFish's side of the family. The trip there was easy-peasy. Did I mention that TheFry loves to ride in his car seat? We are planning on buying him his own seat on the flight to Korea, and I am going to try and convince PapaFish that bringing the car seat is a good idea. Give me a holler if you've done this (bringing the car seat, that is) and what you thought of it. Was it more convenient to strap the little bugger in the seat for an hour or two so everyone could get some much-needed shut-eye, or was it just more of a hassle to carry it around?

PapaFish is leaning towards bringing the umbrella stroller to cart TheFry through the airports and we could possibly use our travel booster seat to strap him down for some time in his own airplane seat. I don't think that the flight attendants will let us do this because it is a flimsy inflatable booster seat and not a government-approved vehicle seat. Plus, I don't think that it would really hold TheFry down because the harness strap is not the most restricting thing in the world. Anyway, here is our travel inflatable booster seat and here is the car seat.

As for our trip home from visiting relatives, it was a 6.5-hour doozy! Usually the trip takes about 3 hours and 45 minutes, but TheFry barfed about 5 times (multiple heaves each time) and had a blowout diarrhea diaper towards the end of it. We changed his clothes twice during the trip. He was exhausted and, quite literally, pooped out. Apparently, he is allergic to bananas. We called PapaFish's mother in the beginning of the trip (after Barf #2, and about 25 minutes of driving) and she mentioned that PapaFish had also been upset by bananas in his infancy - he'd just had the opposite reaction. So there we have it. No more bananas for TheFry until he's old enough to clean up his own messes. Like, until he's 17 or something.

Oi. Right now I'm soaking the stains of various baby clothing items with OxyClean. I have so many things to do tomorrow that I can't think straight about it all. Here's what I have so far:

1. Go to work
2. Give 2-week notice at work
3. Get chip in windshield fixed over lunch break
4. Get car washed over lunch break
5. Call Korean Consulate in Chicago over lunch break
6. Get quarters from the bank after work
7. Clean out inside of car after work
8. Show car to potential buyer at 6:30pm
9. Do laundry
10. Go to bed tired

We'll see how it goes!

*UPDATE*: I got the car wash done before work to lighten my work day a little bit. I also called the Korean Consulate in Chicago, found out my visa is on its way to our local UPS Store, and that I don't need to mail in TheFry's passport again to get his "F" changed to "M". So there we have it. All that and a bag (*snap*, *snap*, *snap*!) of chips.

Happy Birthday, USA!

233 years ago, the founding document of the United States of America was signed. Out of that document was born a nation.

Fireworks are going off as I speak, and people are celebrating. Unfortunately for our little Fish Bowl, PapaFish is working tonight and so TheFry and I are home alone doing absolutely nothing. It feels pretty darn good.

We are deep-cleaning in preparation for our out-of-town vacation to visit friends and also PapaFish's side of the family out of state. It feels good to finally see the white lines on the glass stove top and to be able to vacuum up all that lint that TheFry keeps finding all over the floor.

Yesterday evening there were fireworks, too, and some tentants were lighting off super-loud bottle rockets in the driveway behind our building (near the garages). Thank goodness TheFry slept peacefully through it all. I've been concerned over the changing demographic of our apartment complex over the last year that we've been here, but that's something for a different post. Let's just say that there are about a dozen empty apartments available for rent and that our landlord begged us to stay. Perhaps it's the loud, annoying music, out-of-control children (the kind who are old enough to behave themselves - not babies like TheFry), or house parties going on until wee hours of the morning. Nevertheless, we've had a safe and happy year in our large, reasonably-priced apartment, and I'm sure we'll be missing it come August when the three of us are crammed in that little studio.

Love,

MamaFish.

Vacation in Colorado

Happy [belated] Flag Day, everyone!

And congratulations to my grandparents, who celebrated their 60^th wedding anniversary that weekend. They very graciously flew me out to see them (along with most of the rest of my side of the family), and I brought TheFry with me!

It was my first time traveling alone with the little guy, and man was he a trooper! Of course, I was pretty laid back about the whole thing (going there, at least—the trip home was another story, unfortunately…)

Here’s TheFry playing on the floor of the Denver airport. No, he didn’t stay on the blanket the whole time, but I tried. He’s wearing his official airplane-trip romper. It has a dinosaur on it and says “Cute-O-Saurus” but still happens to trip people up because of all the yellow. With that and his luscious locks, 9 out of 10 passersby told me I had such a “cute little girl.”

We shared lunch at a “Mexican” food place and I got a fish burrito. I asked for the second-hottest sauce they had, but it was still rather lacking in spice, so I shared some of the tidbits with TheFry. Specifically, he enjoyed the little pieces of shredded fish, black beans, tomatoes, and little clumps of rice. Seeing as how Tex-Mex was my #1 most-craved food through 2/3 of my pregnancy, this comes as no surprise to me.

And now, for the pics!

Here’s TheFry crawling about at my Grandma’s.

And rolling along, as usual…

With Grandma…

And flirting for the camera with MamaFish!

The trip home was nothing short of a nightmare, though we didn’t have the worst of it. The airline was horrible to us, but what do you do? We got home safe and sound, and were able to leave on a very early flight. God provided us a newfound friend who lives just down the street from us. She was able to drive us home so PapaFish wouldn’t have to wake up too early in the morning.

In other news, I tried a white cake recipe again, and it turned out pretty well:

I used the recipe for white cake at the Joy of Baking website. It turned out pretty moist, but I still think I over-mixed it. The taste was good, but I still like the one I made with the cake mix better. I think next time I will try either using cake flour, confectioner’s sugar, or both. Also, I like not having to use the egg yolks, as I think the cake is a prettier color without them. I’m afraid to get too adventurous, though, because I’m not nearly as good of a baker as I am of a cook (meaning, I can fly by the seat of my pants and still prepare an edible dinner, but if I do the same with a cake or a batch of cookies, it’s a one-way ticket to the trash can for those would-be confections).

The filling is a basic, generic-brand strawberry preserves. The buttercream is a Swiss Buttercream recipe from Smitten Kitchen. I found this blog via Google. I am amazed at all the wonderful cooks and bakers out there in Bloggerland. I think that blogs have become my new source for all kinds of amazing information—from networking with other parents, to cooking, to news, to news commentary, to history—people know so many things, and I am happy to share what I know if I can learn something from someone else!

So I thought I should post something

I'm wondering how our mothers/grandmothers/great-(and so forth)grandmothers survived before such modern conveniences:

For the record, I have decided I absolutely *hate* those infant car seats that you click into the base and carry around. The kid ends up getting trapped in them the whole time, and by the time they're a couple months old, that thing is way too heavy to be useful anymore. So now we just leave our infant car seat in the car, and soon TheFry will be too big for it, and we'll have to get rid of it.

So now I'm thinking of getting a convertible booster seat. The first benefit of the one (seen above) is that it can support children from 5 to 40 pounds, and can be either rear- or forward-facing. It also has a base. The second benefit of the one above is that it's only fifty bucks.

Our current infant car seat, combined with the "travel system" (also known as Gargantuan Stroller of Death which barely fits into the car) was about $140. Ouch. We thought we were getting a good deal, and compared to all the other travel systems and just regular car seats (not to mention convertibles, which ran around $200+ at the time we were looking - almost exactly one year ago) in the Target store where we were shopping. I think it's safe to say that I'll be heading off to the Burlington Coat Factory for this amazing deal of a convertible car seat this weekend.

The third benefit of the car seat pictured above is the other gear you can combine it with to make traveling a heck of a lot easier:

Yes, folks - that's a harness you use to strap the kid's booster seat to your roller luggage. So not only do you not have to put up with the crappy, heavy infant car seat, you don't have to deal with the gi-normous, bulky "travel system" (gag me) ever. again.

Can we say FREEDOM? I love the modern age!

Another great thing for travel is this:

Man, my Pack N Play is the best thing ever. I bought it for $70 about a year and a half ago from Target.com. It looks just like the one in the picture: it has a bassinet attachment (you can put the mattress in the bottom part when the baby is too big for the bassinet), a changing table attachment (complete with caddy for changing accessories), and a little mobile with three bears! Plus, it folds up quite compact. It is, like I said before: the best. thing. ever.

Too bad Dexter hates it. He screams like a banchee whenever I set him in there, even if it's with his favorite toys, and even if I'm in the same room putting away laundry or making the bed. Even if I'm talking to him, singing to him, or yelling and crying right along with him (a tactic that works pretty well for PapaFish, but not so much for myself).

In other news, Summer has finally arrived in our neck of the North! Lilacs are in full bloom (and have been for a couple of weeks now), and since they are one of my favorite flowers, I enjoy my walks with TheFry all the more. He has started being more chatty on our walks, laughing at the birds and "talking" to passersby. When we get to see dogs, he is especially happy. And he is especially especially happy if the dog is barking at us like it wants to viciously run us down and maul us. MamaFish is kind of nervous at these latter kinds of dog encounters, but TheFry just smiles and laughs.

So Grandma wins - TheFry is a lover of dogs, even though MamaFish and PapaFish both much prefer cats.

There's not any more pictures, I'm afraid, because of the fact that nothing new has really happened, and also because we have all been really busy with PapaFish's new job. He has been asked to take the Manager Assessment test at his work, and he is also still trying to pass the math placement test for the Computer Support and Networking Administration program at the college in town. But we are thinking of all of you, and love you very much.

Also, as many of you know, we are traveling to Colorado in three weeks, and I will have more info on the above gear and how well it all went, complete with great pictures, once I return!

So now the list:

1. Convertible car seat

2. Car Seat luggage strap

3. Swim Diapers

4. Swimsuit for (chubby) MamaFish. Ug.