Friday, November 9, 2007

Once Upon a Chicken

So, yesterday I had a mom's group thing in the afternoon that I was looking forward to. Sadie still doesn't have a real schedule, but I have been able to find some consistency with her morning nap. It's usually roughly 2 hours after she first gets up. So, when she went down, I immediately zipped to the kitchen to prepare a chicken to roast that night when I got home. Nothing fancy; I just followed a basic recipe from Cooking Light. Now, wrestling with chickens is not one of my favorite things - I'm fine with beef, pork, sausages, even lamb, believe it or not. It's just something about the fact that a whole chicken is, well... a whole chicken. Do you catch my drift? I digress. My point is that I was proud of myself.
Sadie slept for over 3 hours, so I was an hour and a half late to the mom's group and I spilled water on someone's jacket and beautiful leather handbag (thank god it was just water) so the day was not going perfectly. There's nothing like life with a baby to make you feel like you're living in a mild state of chaos at all times. Anyway, somehow the thought of my chicken waiting for me at home in the refrigerator made me feel good.
When I got home, I took the chicken out of the fridge, preheated the oven and filled the sink with a couple of inches of warm water. I figured putting an ice cold pyrex dish into a hot oven was not wise, so I put it in this bath to take the chill off. Meanwhile, I was playing with Sadie and doing various other things. I put the chicken in the oven, set the timer and sent a text message to Andrew letting him know when dinner would be ready. I fed Sadie and put her down for the night. I'm so pleased with myself at this point; the baby's asleep and dinner's basically ready. I rock!
When the timer went off, I smiled and walked into the kitchen to take the chicken out of the oven. I opened the door to see my finished product and was not amused to find that I'd left the saran wrap on it the entire time. Yup; there was melted plastic wrap all over the top of the chicken and on the sides of the dish. Nice. We just peeled most of it off and had our dinner anyway.
Andrew coined it "saran chicken", but hopefully we won't ever have it again.

Tuesday, September 25, 2007

The First Hurt

Ouch.
I was warned by a friend that this would happen, and yesterday it did. I hurt Sadie - accidentally, of course. A couple of my girlfriends have admitted to me that their "first hurt" was nipping their baby's fingertip while trying to cut their nails, but this was not the case for me. I was snapping Sadie into her bouncy seat and I caught some skin on the inside of her wrist in the plastic buckle. Immediate shrieks of pain and fear ensued. She cried so hard! It was a cry I'd never heard before and hopefully won't hear again anytime soon (although I suppose if/when we take her for vaccination shots, this may very well become a familiar sound). I reported the incident to my friend Meghan and her question was, 'How long did you cry?' - to which surprisingly the answer was that I didn't. I suspect if the injury had been even slightly more severe, I would have been crying right along with her. Poor baby. Anyway, I held her close until she calmed down a little, and I took care of the small wound with a drop of hydrogen peroxide and some Neosporin, but it ultimately I think it affected her whole day. She was a lot more clingy and nursed constantly. She seems better today; I hope I haven't broken her faith in the world already!

Sunday, September 23, 2007

a few Sadies...

So, it appears that our one-and-only Sadie is not the only Sadie around. (*gasp*) We were at Peet's yesterday morning while Andrew slept in, and there was a cute little family a few feet away: mom, dad and little girl. As engrossed as I was in the Newsweek article I was reading about Hillary Clinton, I thought I heard them calling their daughter Sadie. So of course I asked, and sure enough this 4 year old's name was Sadie. I explained my interest and they proceeded to assure me that "there are a few Sadies out there". Hmph. I'm not devastated, but one of my favorite things about her name is it's uniqueness. So far I'd only heard that Adam Sandler's daughter's name is Sadie - which was totally fine with me, because I love Adam Sandler! Oh well, at least my true favorite thing about her name is something that no one can take away from us: that Andrew thought of it all on his own. I love that fact, and so will Sadie when she's old enough to understand that her father named her. Plus, no matter what, she'll always be our one and only Sadie. And that's what counts.

p.s. this is a cool application on Flickr, isn't it?

letter s A D I E


S a d i e_McElman_070716_2499


S A_McElman_070716_2488 letter d I_McElman_070718_2970 Château de Chenonceau

Thursday, September 20, 2007

My Verifiable Cowgirl


Once upon a time, a very cute and precocious 5 year old said to me "when I grow up, I'm gonna be a verifiable cowgirl. I'll have a horse, and a rope, and I'm never gonna stop livin' that way". It remains one of the best things I've ever heard come out of a kid's mouth and I love telling the story. Well, thanks to one of my mother's long-time friends, I will soon have my own "verifiable cowgirl". I mean, you just know Sadie is going to love clomping around in these someday!

Thursday, September 13, 2007

What the hay...

Well, hello... As you see, I've decided to go ahead and try out this blogging thing. With family and friends far away, I figured it might be nice to have a place designated for frequent (we'll see about that) updates about what's going on with us. I have a handful of friends who have blogs and/or websites that I am thoroughly impressed by, so I decided to overcome my fear and loathing of anything more complicated than email. As most of you know, there's simply no way I would decide to tackle the art of creating a website (me? write code?! ha!) so God bless the people who make things like this user-friendly enough for people like me. All I have to do is click a few things and ta-da! I have a snazzy page with colors and different fonts and everything! Yippeeeee!
With a true computer whiz for a husband, this feels pretty pathetic, but I'm sure I'll get over that quickly. Yup, I'm over it. (I love you, honey!)
Little beautiful sweet Sadie (aka: the inspiration for starting a blog) is waking up from her nap now, so that's it for my first post! Who says new moms can't get anything done?