Okay, maybe that's an exaggeration - but not far from it. Only in Japan! Check out these gross ice cream flavors (up until now, the only weird ones I'd seen in Asian markets were avocado, tarot, red bean, and cheese and corn):
101 Frightening Ice Cream Flavors
The raw horsemeat ice cream sounds especially disgusting. Interesting also were the ice creams made from non-foods (such as the silk and charcoal flavors).
Oh the many posts I meant to write... Posts about E learning to crawl "properly". Posts about E pulling herself up to her knees and then doing the knee-shuffle. Posts about E getting into CDs, books, computer cables and more. Posts about her "calling" Da-Da and Ma-Ma. Posts about her waving hello and goodbye (very cute by the way). Posts about changes in naps. And posts about our new (but accidental and probably not ideal) sleeping arrangement.
Yet alas, what you all get is this quick one about how E is still sleeping in our bed and needing me to remain in the room while she sleeps. This has reduced my productivity and makes me feel a bit trapped. And yet, I guess it forces me to sleep a bit earlier - which considering she is up about 2-4 times a night wanting to nurse, I probably need it.
Actually, I'm very surprised tonight that she hasn't woken to the tappity tap sound of the laptop (which I have in bed in the darkened room) while she sleeps.
This past weekend was pretty fast-paced. Thursday we left for Stockton to stay with my family. Once there, we started off the Harry Potter festivities by seeing Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix at the movie theater with my sister Colleen (her second time seeing it - everyone else had already seen it). It was an okay movie, but it felt a bit too rushed. The next day, Gilda called Barnes & Noble to find out when the Harry Potter book 7 party started since we had seen conflicting times listed. They said the party started at 8pm but that they were starting to hand out numbers for the midnight lines to get the book at 3pm. So we got there around 3:30ish and after an hour or so in line (Gilda mostly holding our place while E and I wandered inside), we procured four tickets for the family (we ended up having tickets numbered in the high 180's/low 190's range).
Later that night, we had a hard time getting E to sleep so the rest of my family went there ahead of us. E , however, would not sleep and not wanting to place a burden on my grandparents (at whose house we were staying), we ended up taking her with us to B&N. There, we met up with Colleen, Drew (my youngest brother - Jordan had to work that night), my mom, and Gabriel (brother-in-law). They had commandeered a couple of tables and some chairs in the Starbucks cafe area and were courageously guarding them. So when we got there, we took shifts guarding the chairs while others went to check out all the other stuff going on. My sister Andrea was working at B&N that night and was doing facepainting for all the "kids" (really, most of the people in line seemed to be pretty old) and they were handing out cute glow-in-the-dark Harry Potter glasses that looked extra cute the few seconds E allowed them to be placed upon herself. There were also some great costumes about. All in all, there were well over 1,000 people in there, some of them looking very hot and/or tired as the night wore on. When they actually started calling numbers, the lines went super-quick and we were out of there within 15 or 20 minutes after they started.
By now, of course, Gilda and I have both finished the book and it's by far my favorite of the whole series. I was pretty happy that I had correctly predicted the basics of the ending! You can really see the Christian and Lewisian influences come to fruition in this last book (I've heard more than once that Rowling has said that she's a Christian, and this is more obvious in this last book than in any of the previous ones - strange, then, the accusations of some well-meaning people (who probably have never read the books) that the books are "evil"!). Highly recommended.
Party pictures forthcoming.
(UPDATE: Pictures are in our Flickr Photo Banner to the right. Click on the pictures and see a larger version. Let's say we had some fun... and E was too cute... but now, a week and a half later, we're still "paying" for it in messed up schedules and sleepless nights. blah)
So this morning, after a glorious night of E sleeping for almost 11 hours straight (7 of those in her crib on her own), we heard her get up and playing in her crib. Ian woke up to get her and came in to find her sitting up (on her knees, I think) with her hands on the crib rail looking up. Good thing we had dropped the crib mattress just two days ago! Gilda was thinking that we should get the mattress lowered, even though she hasn't really been sleeping in the crib for several weeks now (she ends up in her bed and we can't seem to move her without waking her). But last night, lo and behold, she slept - which was GREAT! - but that also meant she was in her crib. And now that she can sit up from a lying down position and pull herself up to a certain height from sitting down (sometimes she can even get to her feet, but that requires the "just perfect" height to grab onto and also her legs in the "just perfect" position. Anyways, I'll say it again, It's a good thing we just lowered her mattress, she might have wanted to "explore" on the other side of the rail and fallen a couple feet to the carpeted floor. I guess it's good, then, that she can't yet walk or climb, of which then we'll have to drop the crib mattress to the bottom most setting.
By the way, if any of you know the Armstrongs, this post might seem a bit familiar, since Luke and E seemed to be hitting some milestones together. Kids, so precocious and curious.
E has been scooting on her stomach backwards, stretching forward as she sits and rocking back and forth half on her knees and half on her butt. But this last week she's been rocking forward even more so that she is actually on her hands and knees (for a brief second before falling to her stomach). Today... as she played on the ground, back at home and surrounded by her favorite toys, E crawled. Of course it wasn't the "typical" crawl, on hands and knees, right, left, right, left. It was more of a "I'm on my hands and knees", "I want to go forward to reach my object of desire" and "I know I can move forward when I use my feet". So as she is on her hands and knees, she uses her feet and pushes off the ground(making her legs straighten out and her knees leave the floor), left, right, left, until she moves forward. She doesn't get far and she still hasn't quite figured out how to coordinate the hands so she can really move far, but it's still quite an amazing thing to watch. And so it's finally happened... E is crawling! Soon, she'll be dashing from one side of the apartment to the other, getting into the bookcases (which she has discoverd has fun books to pull out) and causing all kinds of exploratory mayhem.
