We're Back in Business!!

It's been 3 months in the making, but I'm finally ready to update the blog once again! Phew!

I really wish I could have done this sooner, since I had 3+ months off for the summer but now only 3- weeks left before my first year of law school begins...BUT, alas, we were at my dad's beach house in Gulf Shores all summer with NO cable OR Internet access. :-(

So here's the summer in review:
May 11 -- I graduated from The College of Wooster with Departmental Honors in Philosophy
May 13 -- I left my apartment in Wooster and headed back to Birmingham for a while, then to Gulf Shores

Some time after that I entered into somewhat of a legal battle with my former landlady after she attempted to collect double rent from me AND her new tenant...but you don't want to hear about that.

While in Gulf Shores, Izzy LOVED playing in the ocean, and later, in the sand. I took up saltwater fishing and became quite fond of it. I ended up catching a small blacknose shark one afternoon. I literally saw an alligator cross the road. I got quite a shock (but was OK) after stepping on an electric stingray. And I also spotted a 2+ foot long Copperhead snake on the driveway one evening when I was taking out the garbage. Yeah. Good times.

Oh, I forgot to mention the dolphin shows during our last couple of weeks on the beach...we live on a sort of isolated area of Pleasure Island, so we get a lot of marine life down our way (in case you haven't figured that out already). Dolphins apparently love our area, and a lot of folks own sea kayaks that they take way out past the sand bar. Well, the dolphins really increased their shore time those last couple of weeks and grew curious of all the kayaks. They responded by leaping FULL BODIED out of the water, which was amazingly beautiful, for a good 5 minutes or more our last day there. I wish I would have had my pre-capture camera ready. But after that day, I resolved to buy myself a kayak!!

Now I've finally moved into an apartment with Izzy and my mom in Oxford, MS. Yep, that's right, I'm starting at The University of Mississippi School of Law on August 24. Hotty toddy!

Oxford is a cute little town, a lot like Wooster, so it feels close to home for me. The GREAT thing about it is that the Hustwit family's youngest son teaches in the history department at Ole Miss, so they visit a few times a year, which means Izzy and I will get to see them in the fall!! I'M EXCITED!!!! :-D

I'm nervous about Izzy starting daycare in a couple of weeks, but I think it will be good for her. Maybe she'll develop better sleeping habits and become a little less shy. The owner of the center is Hispanic, and Hispanic women ADORE my Isabel, so I think she'll be okay. Maybe.

I have Orientation August 19-20. I bought new "school clothes" recently, which is good because I have to get my picture taken. I'll keep you guys posted this time. Promise!!

I have TONS of pics to post. I'll probably just post upload them to Flickr and post the links here. If you're a facebook user, they're already uploaded in my albums, so just check there.

Later gators.

Izzy is the proud daughter of an honor student.

Izzy has baby allergies!! She's had a runny nose and lots of sneezing for about a week now, ever since the weather started getting nice and spring-like. So it's just seasonal allergies...she has to take 1/2 tsp of orally suspended Zyrtec before bed every night!!

Also, her first tooth (bottom central incisor on the right) broke the skin on April 28!! Does this mean we have more solid food in our future? Maybe! So far she will only eat Original flavor Baby Mum-Mums and rice cereal mixed with vanilla pudding. She is quite the picky eater.

MMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM PUDDING!!!



Today I found out that I got a grade of HONORS on my Senior Independent Study. It's the highest grade you can get, and it qualifies me for departmental honors, which means I get to wear a gold chord at Commencement. I was SO excited -- I wasn't expecting Honors because Barb had me convinced that I didn't make the grade. Shame on her!! Tomorrow is my last day of classes (I only have class from 1-4), and I have one final on Monday morning and another on Tuesday afternoon, and then I'm free for about 6 days before graduation. We're going to pick my mom up from the airport in Cleveland next Thursday...my friend Ashley is going with me and we're going to stop for dinner at The Brew Kettle on the way home. Dad and Sis will be in town next Saturday. Then we're all home to "Bamy", as Ashley calls it.

Last Friday classes were canceled for the Senior Research Symposium, and I presented my I.S. with a fancy schmancy poster that Mom helped me pull together over Spring Break.



Afterwards my friends and I had a cookout on the Kenarden front patio...it was REALLY nice outside, it the high 70s. We had burgers, hot dogs, corn on the cob, etc. Izzy really enjoyed playing outside on her blankie in the sunshine. It was a good time.


^^^ I'm a Grillmaster.


Here is another photo album that I recently uploaded with Spring photos. You can see even MORE pictures of the Izz, including this artsy portrait:

He is Risen!

"The two were running together; and the other disciple ran ahead faster than Peter and came to the tomb first; and stooping and looking in, he saw the linen wrappings lying there; but he did not go in. And so Simon Peter also came, following him, and entered the tomb; and he saw the linen wrappings lying there, and the face-cloth which had been on His head, not lying with the linen wrappings, but rolled up in a place by itself. So the other disciple who had first come to the tomb then also entered, and he saw and believed. For as yet they did not understand the Scripture, that He must rise again from the dead." - John 20: 4-9

Our Easter Sunday did not start out as we had intended. Last night I set my iPhone alarm to go off at 9:00am, so I could quietly get myself ready to go before waking Izzy and leaving about 30 minutes early for the 11:00 Mass. I remember Izzy sort of half waking up at 8:00am to eat a little, and I looked at the clock on my phone and thought "Okay, I'll just snooze until my alarm goes off in an hour." DIDN'T HAPPEN. Next thing I know, Izzy is waking me up again at 10:19. That's right, 10:19. Only 11 MINUTES before we were supposed to leave for church. I jumped out of bed and checked to see if I had accidentally left my phone on silent. Nope. The volume was turned on. I just never heard the alarm. But there was no time to spend worrying about that, I had to dress Izzy in her fancy gown, shoes, and hair bow, and I also had to (sadly) forego my shower and quickly dress myself, comb my hair, brush my teeth, and make sure the diaper bag was ready to go. My friend Fay (and Izzy's godmother) met us here at the apartment a little after 10:30...thank goodness she'd had a morning malfunction of our own, so I didn't feel too bad about running late. She watched Izzy while I sped around the apartment prettying myself up, and we were pulling out of the driveway at 10:54.

We made it to church just as the 11:00 bells were ringing. Father Dan, the associate pastor, was running outside to tell people that they needed to head into the Parish Hall if they wanted a seat. The Parish Hall was all overflow seating...we were lucky to get there right on time, or else we would have been stuck with the "standing room only" crowd. Yep. There was standing room only in the OVERFLOW section, and the Church itself seats about 500 people. We schmucks who were too late to find a seat in the actual sanctuary had to watch the Mass on a television screen. But Father Dan did come down to administer Communion to everyone, and Izzy was the constant center of attention for at least one 2 year old boy and several old ladies (some young ladies, too, but I think they were mostly moms who were jealous that we nabbed the best looking Easter dress). Mission accomplished.

Afterwards we went up to the Sanctuary and out into the Marian shrine and the front of the rectory so that Fay could take some photos of mother and child. I must say, she did quite a nice job. (Thanks, Auntie Fay!!)



My shimmering Easter frock is courtesy of GiGi ^^^


We also managed to find Father Steve in the Parish Hall after our photo shoot was over. He is SO good with kids!! He baptized Izzy back in September, and he always loves to see her. And he thought her dress was just FABULOUS. (Mind you, this is coming from a man who wears Giorgio Armani eyeglasses, leather belts with shiny chrome buckles, and pinstriped pants for every occasion. Father Steve, is, I believe, what used to be called a "fop." AND I LOVE IT.) Here they are having a little convo about how beautimous Izzy looked today:


After Church, I dropped Fay off (she was headed to Easter luncheon with her husband and his grandparents) and then stopped at the Hustwits' for a bit so they could see Izzy in her dress. They think she's just too much. We went back home after that to change clothes...thank God, because a few minutes after changing Izzy into her onesie I put her in the doorway jumper and she had a Poop Fest that made Woodstock look like a Wednesday night church service. It somehow manage to escape her diaper (but miss staining her clothes), run down her leg, and I swear to you the vast majority made it out of the diaper and onto either the hardwood in the living room or the carpet in the kitchen. Needless to say, it was off with the diaper and into the bath with her, and after I cleaned her up I spent a good 20 minutes wiping off the jumper, the floors, and everything else. Then she went right to sleep. Typical.

At 5:00pm we headed over to the Hustwit household once more for Easter dinner. Their daughter, Holly, was there with a friend of hers and her friend's daughter...John, the next door neighbor, came over for dinner, and then there was me and Izzy. Holly's husband, Jack, passed away from cancer last September when Izzy was about 2 weeks old. John's wife followed Jack shortly thereafter (she had been suffering from cancer for a while, too). Jamie, Holly's friend, and her daughter Ashley had a husband (and father, respectively) in assisted living care for Alzheimer's, and he's only in his mid-fifties. And then there was me, the single mom, and my illegitimate child. That right there shows you how kind and generous and loving Barb and Ron Hustwit are. Having dinner with a widow, a widower, a single mom, a love child, and a mother and daughter who had a very young and very sick loved one with whom they could not spend their Easter. People like us would have been stoned in the olden days, or at the very least frowned upon. Thank God for the Hustwits and their feast of Easter ham, scalloped potatoes, and casseroles. Lest we forget Jamie's deviled eggs (with zucchini relish) and homemade coconut cake. Mmmm mmmm good!

Izzy, of course, was quite entertaining as well. Even though she wasn't in her beautimous dress anymore, I adorned her with bunny ears that Bella (my mom) sent her in the mail a while back. Her babysitter, Carissa, was also kind enough to give her a plushie Easter lamb to play with after the Easter party at daycare. So sweet!

Even though the day didn't start out as early as we had planned, and even though it was interrupted by quite a raucous Poop Fest, I think we had a pretty picture perfect Easter. But it's not over yet!! There are still 40 more days of the Easter season left, and plenty more to blog about. So stay tuned...you never know what might happen, maybe someday I'll even learn how to wrap text around my pictures so they don't make my posts a million pages long!!

Here is our Easter album on PicasaWeb. I hope you enjoy looking at them as much as we enjoyed taking them. Thanks for reading!

"Almost Mexico"

EDIT: Full Photo Album

Spring Break was hardly over when Izzy and I took off once again, this time to tropical south Texas for the Society for Student Philosophers Annual Conference at The University of Texas Pan-American. I was invited to present a paper there that I wrote last year for Ron's class. It was called "'Have You No Aidos?: The Positive Value of Shame in Homer, Plato, and Aristotle", and the conference attendees received it very well. I WAS A HIT!! As always! :-p


The trip down to McAllen, TX was an absolute chore. We flew from Cleveland to Houston, then from Houston to McAllen, and together our flights totaled about 4 hours. I actually had to wake Izzy and leave the house at 5:30am that Thursday to make it to Cleveland in time for our 8:30am flight. We met my dad in Houston and hopped the same plane to McAllen. We were at our hotel, The Renaissance Casa de Palmas (which was very nice), by 2:00pm. PLUS we had a poolside room. We took our time getting down to the conference on Friday, since I wasn't scheduled to present until 4:00. We basically spent Thursday, Saturday, and Sunday morning touring the town of McAllen, which is actually pretty amazing. It's so close to Mexico that the border patrol office is stationed right outside of the airport. We were actually questioned by a border patrolmen in the airport security line on our way back. As expected, Dad gave him a hard time, because he hates the border patrol. Anyways, McAllen is so close to Mexico that Dad and I ended up calling it either "Pseudo-Mexico" or "Almost Mexico", depending...

The best part of McAllen is (a) the extraordinary Mexican food, and (b) the kitschy little shops that sell artificial flowers and ridiculously glamorous children's dresses and are run by women who don't speak a lick of English. We bought an Easter dress at one such shop for Izzy, a BEAUTIFUL peach satin dress with a brown satin sash. I'll post pictures after Easter weekend for sure.

But the #1 highlight was definitely taking Izzy swimming for the first time. Even though it was a smoldering 97 degrees or so outside everyday, the water in the pool stayed cold because it was shaded by palm trees. And I wouldn't be surprised if this kid turns out to be the next Michael Phelps. Seriously. The child is a FISH. Check it out:

On one of our sightseeing tours, we traveled down to San Juan, TX, to the Basilica of Our Lady of San Juan de Valle - National Shrine for the vigil Mass. Apparently people are healed there -- they had quite a festive healing service after the Mass, and they also have a "Miracle Room" that is PACKED with photos and clothing and locks of hair and prayer requests that people have written in Spanish on long ribbons and tied to the arms of saints. The Miracle Room was definitely my favorite part. The National Shrine is really something -- if you're ever in south Texas, you should make a point to go there.


There's also an EXCELLENT little taqueria on Chicago Avenue called Maria's Restaurant, which we made the final highlight of our trip. The menu was entirely in Spanish and our waitress spoke ZERO English. IT WAS AWESOME! Aside from us, there was only like one other white person in the whole place, and it was PACKED for Sunday brunch. (We knew it was authentic before we even went inside, because it's located between two taco stands.) I wanted to go there because I had read about it in an online archived issue of Texas Monthly magazine from 1986. That's right, Maria's Restaurant has been going strong for over 20 years! And now I know why...they serve homemade tortillas and smoky refried beans (possibly the best I've ever had). I ordered the Barbacoa plate, which they only serve on weekends, and Dad had his favorite -- Huevos Rancheros. He gave me one of his eggs, and they were really well prepared. Too bad most white folks are probably afraid to set foot in that place...they're really missing out on a hidden gem!!

P.S. Their pancakes were nice and fluffy, too. Izzy really took to the maple syrup!

Spring Break and I.S. Monday

Bella and Grandaddy got to visit us for the second week of Spring Break!! YAYYY!!! It was SO much fun. I finished my I.S. the night of March 16 and turned it into the Registrar on St. Patrick's Day after having it printed and bound. I was #122 out of 416 students, which is within the top 30% of the class. Not too shabby for a single college mom!!

We celebrated with lunch at The Pine Tree Barn, and can I just say that their peach sour cream pie is FREAKING DELICIOUS. And, of course, Bella and Grandaddy had plenty of quality time with The Izz.


After the I.S. march on Monday (March 23), I went to the way too crowded pizza party/reception at Kitteredge, and a girl sat next to me and was like "Awww!! Who is this?? (pointing to Izzy)"
I said, "This is my daughter." Her jaw freaking DROPPED open and stayed on the floor for a good 60 seconds AT LEAST.
"Do you go to school here?" she asked.
"Yeah."
"Are you a Senior?"
"Yeah."
Then she just kind of stared for a while before leaving to mingle elsewhere. That's actually the second time I've run into that kind of reaction around campus...the first time was when I took Izzy to my math class the day before spring break started.
STUDENT: "Awww, is that Professor Meech's daughter?"
ME: "No, this is actually MY daughter."
STUDENT: (after picking her mouth up off the floor) "Are you a student here?"
ME: "Yes."
STUDENT: "Do you live on campus?"
ME: "No, I live in an apartment about 10 feet away from campus."
STUDENT: "Oh."

These kinds of social interactions boggle the minds of my friends. To be honest, they sort of boggle my mind, too. Aside from being completely awkward, "conversations" like that, if they can even be called conversations, are just plain wrong on a level. I mean, it just seems like the wrong way to go about things. I feel like so many more young girls who find themselves in the crisis of an unexpected pregnancy would be far more likely to resist the lure of abortion and opt to keep their babies if only people had faith that success in school and in the workplace IS possible during and after pregnancy. I've proved it. I stayed in school during and after my pregnancy, raising a baby by myself for the greater part of my Senior year of college, I'm graduating ON TIME with my class in May 2009, and I turned in my Senior I.S. early at #122, in the top 30% of the Senior class. I've also already been accepted to four law schools, one of which is a Tier 1 institution. SO SCREW YOU PRE-LAW ADVISING PROGRAM FOR NOT AWARDING ME THE CARPENTER PRIZE THIS YEAR. There, I said it. I'd like to see your Moot Court golden girl do what I've done this past year...

Anyways, the I.S. march is a very unique Wooster tradition that every Senior should experience. But in all honesty I found it a little scary. I was pushing Izzy in her stroller, and she was all dressed up in her Loud McLeod kilt and matching bow (plus a Tootsie Roll of her very own), and in addition to about a million ridiculously drunk people stumbling over both of us, the bagpipers scared the living you-know-what out of the poor child. Of course it probably didn't help that I parked the stroller directly behind them while she was napping. But as soon as they started playing, I looked down and Izzy was screaming and TREMBLING she was so scared!! I felt so bad!! I immediately picked her up, and after that she was fine. Thank God Ashley was there to use the stroller as a shield to guard me and Izzy from the drunkards. Seriously, that was a life-saver!! Thanks, Ash!!

Here are a couple more photos from I.S. Monday:

Yup, she was a vision in plaid!! :-)

Things We Love: Zutano Diaper Covers

I remember seeing these things at The Children's Shop in Corsicana, TX, when I first found out I was pregnant. And I thought they were the CUTEST diaper covers EVER, but I promptly forgot who made them and haven't been able to find them anywhere since. UNTIL NOW!!

I just tracked down Zutano diaper covers at ComfyKid.com. They even have some ON SALE!!! And boy, are they awesome. Check these patterns out:

Sick on her 6 month b'day? Oh no!!

Izzy is OFFICIALLY 6 months old today!! YAYY!! We made it through half a year!! Can you believe it??
But her fever has not quite broken yet...it's still at 99.3...and she woke up today with a snotty nose and a congested cough. Not good!! Especially when bronchitis has been going around her daycare. So it's off to the doctor with her at 5pm. I'll keep you posted, so stay tuned for updates.

UPDATE: It seems like every baby in the WORLD was sick today and seeing the pediatrician after hours, so we had to wait a while to see the doc. But when the nurse checked her temperature it was down to 98.1, a far cry from the 99.3 it was this morning, so that's good. The doc checked her out and said her lungs sounded GREAT and her ears looked GREAT, so we're not worried about bronchitis or ear infections. He said that she just has a little head cold, and he expects her to be over it by Friday since she seems to have coped with the fever well and is continuing to cope very well with the cough and runny nose. Honestly, this hasn't seemed to bother her at all...she's playing, laughing, having fun as usual!!

And she weighs 17 LBS. 9 OZ.!! WOW!!