Peekaboo (A Vi PhotoJournal)

Let's play peekaboo!


I'll start...

Where's Munchie?




Here I am!

Supersuprise trip! (A Vi Photo journal)

Saturday I got to meet my Great Great Aunt!



We liked each other a LOT...

This one's for the Nebraskans...

We spent this Saturday up in Brainerd with family, including my grandparents who were up from Omaha. Gramps and I got to talk a little politics, including his dislike of Lee Terry. Since he's already solidly in the Esch camp, I thought I'd pop up a little Scott Kleeb vid to remind him that Democratic Senatorial candidates like his vote, too...

sick , not sick

Not sick




Sick



We think she's having a little relapse today, she's acting a little more snotty than yesterday. But I'm still convinced it's teeth related. Smartie is feeling better today. I'm feeling sick now, but I was told that it's two days, so here's to day one, and hopefully it will wrap up tomorrow and we can still keep our super secret weekend plans intact.

Better?

The baby still isn't acting sick, but her nose is runny and she's coughing a lot. She hates the aspirator now. But if it's teething related, it should be done soon. She did the one thing she always does a day or two before the tooth pops -- developed a nasty case of diaper rash in a matter of 20 minutes.

On the bright side, she has also gotten the courage to push away now and stand on her own. Today she managed to do it a few times, for as long as 20 seconds at a time. She's be better at it though if she didn't go so spreadeagle while trying.

Early to bed. No staying up for the President's speech tonight. Smartie still is sick (the one reason we think the baby really night have more than teething issues), and I'm wiped from long work days.

Pictures tomorrow, I promise.

Zoo days

Sunday, the family went to the Como Zoo. Smartie was feeling guilty because Paul Douglas said in the newspaper that it was the perfect day for it, and since we had tried to go on Saturday and couldn't find parking, we figured it was a sign. Smartie even gave up the Vikings game to go.





And, the best part, in the end, Smartie and Munch got to watch the Vikings win together anyway.


One thing you can't see in these pictures is Munchie's first cold. She was fairly runny nosed Sunday, but today was awful, with nothing but sneezes, snot and coughing. She wouldn't nap all day, and would cry if I put her down (yes, I did 3 conference calls today with her in my lap). We suctioned her nose twice this morning, and you've never seen such a look of betrayal on an infant's face. I may never use the squeeze bulb again.

How do you treat a runny baby nose and how long do colds last, anyway?

A Vi-deo

It's been a long time. But we learned a new trick today...

9 month well baby

Munch had her latest checkup and is in excellent health. She still has her daddy's length, coming in at 29 1/4 inches tall - 95% overall. And we were pleased to discover that for the first time ever, her weight percentage went up. At 18lb8oz she is now 50% weight, moving solidly up from the 40% she was at last time. Her actual spitting up seems to have gotten a lot better -- it hardly ever comes out anymore, although we do frequently get redfaced choking episodes. We've decided that as long as it doesn't seem to be getting worse, especially since she's starting to gain, we don't feel it's worth having her stomach and swallowing tested, even though she still has gaggy food issues.

I was given a sheet with a rough feeding schedule for a baby her age and was amazed -- the amount of formula is about what she eats, but the amount of baby food added in is at least 3 to 4 times what she's eating now. And I'm supposed to be feeding her meat? I don't think I even have her introduced to all of her fruits and veggies yet.

I have this horrible fear that she's never going to get the sippy cup, and that she'll be in elementary school still drinking bottles of formula because she never managed to eat real food without gagging. Here's hoping that maybe the new extra gagginess is due to the top teeth being so close to coming through.

On the bright side, someone has learned to take advantage of unfinished meals. Her favorite for some reason is squash.

Blogger in need of help

Minni, who writes for Michigan Messenger, another one of the CIM sites, got mugged last week and had her camera stolen. She now has a fund set up to buy a new one. Minni is a great reporter who spends a lot of her time doing videos and (wo)man on the street interview pieces like this one.

Any help you can give her to get her to a new camera would be greatly appreciated. Without people like Minni, we may have to resort to reading newspapers and quite honestly, Munchie already destroyed all of those...

A Good Day - A Vi photojournal

This morning I slept until 7 am. We had breakfast, and a piggyback ride..
Then I went for a car ride...

We got out at some weird place with fun music and lots of people and colorful things to look at, but they were all dressed like old fashioned people but they were using cell phones like mommy and daddy had so that was strange.

But it had a petting zoo...

and I touched a goat.

Then we all went for food but they wouldn't let me have a burger so I ate my feet instead.

But now I'm going to go to sleep because I wouldn't nap even though they tried to make me especially when they were eating and I'm cranky because I have a tooth coming in on the top so bye.

9 months old

Today, Munch is 9 months old. She can cruise down a couch in less than 5 seconds, and make it all the way around the room moving from furniture piece to furniture piece. She can stand independently as long as she thinks you are holding her, or if she is watching SuperWhy and forgets that she's afraid she'll fall down. she has no desire to walk at the moment, probably because she can now crawl faster than her daddy and I tend to walk, especially if she realizes there we left the door to the "forbidden zone" open, or if a cat is trying to get away. She cannot eat cheerios, chunked cheese, or anything that requires much chewing, since she tries to swallow too soon and makes herself throw up. Shredded cheese is getting better, textured fruits, veg and cereal rocks, and puffed wheat and yogurt bites are the best. We've developed a fantastic eating and nap schedule that has been completely destroyed due to a week with grandma now followed by a change at work that has moved my conference calls to different times in the day. Not to mention PBS changing the cartoon schedule on Labor Day, which means she has to struggle to stay awake through the SuperWhy dance party we have every morning.

Tomorrow, a trip to the Renaissance Festival.

Picture dump

Haven't done one of these in a while.






And for grandma F.

Happy Primary!

Now Go Vote!

One last RNC post

I've had some time to decompress ad put everything into perspective. Both conventions are over, millions of dollars spent, and today we have moved on and bailed out the biggest mortgage brokers of our time, only a few months after bailing out one of our biggest investment banking firms in the US. I was hoping I'd at least get a free house out of this -- at the very least I would take the fixer-upper next door.

Anyway, less than 60 days until the election. It's confusing to me to try and balance in here (the internet) with out there (the real world). In here, all the conservatives are enthusiastic about the Palin pick. And polls seem to support that, showing McCain with the post-convention bump Obama never managed to grab.

But out there, in the real world, I can't find any conservatives who think it was a great idea. They either didn't like McCain, and this has made it worse, or they were sort of resigned, and this is tipping them back to the point of waivering. And it's not because of the lack of vetting, the internet rumors, the tabloid covers, and all of the other things that we in the tubes say is affecting public perceptions. It's because of her actual stances -- the book bannings, the push for creationism to be taught in schools, the idea that even in cases of rape or incest or possible loss of life, a woman must still be forced to carry a fetus to term. They feel like they've lost that Republican party that says, "Leave me alone, stay out of my wallet, and let me lead my life the way I want to." The question will remain to be seen if this race will turn into a simple fight over the pocketbook. If it can be framed as that and nothing more, I think McCain will win. But it's a tunnel focus that means that people have to willingly forget that most of them aren't in the top 5% tax bracket, and that McCain's economic policies have very little to offer them.

Want to make it all about the wallet? Go here and see who will give you lower taxes next year. I even give you permission to vote for McCain if you get more back under him...

Anyway, the election is near, and after two years, I can't wait to see it over. Much like I always felt when I was pregnant like I would be pregnant forever, I feel like I'm in a constant state of over-political.

But now the baby is awake, so I should run. I still understand what's truly important.

Reflections

It's 7:15am, and everyone has now officially left my house. I may be too close to, and especially too tired, to really understand and convey what this week was like. In all, the actual convention had a lot more potential for disaster than what actually happened. I think that for those people who were watching on television, catching speeches in primetime and a little of the ambiance in the 30second storylines running in the national news, it looked pretty uneventful. Nothing ever came near conveying what it was really like down in the city, not even the local news coverage from what I could see.

On Monday I witnessed a sea of people marching through the streets of St. Paul. The majority of them were joyful, peaceful, enjoying the camaraderie of a common purpose -- in this case a chance to express the human and financial waste that they feel the war in Iraq has become. I spent two hours in the sun, directly next to the fence lining the street in front of Mickey's diner, with the protesters in front of me and a full line of riot cops directly behind. But while I watched this I was checking updates on my phone, reading about the tiny factions that were breaking from the march, those who were roaming the streets trying to break glass and intimidate. And to be completely honest, a small part of me didn't totally blame them. I never could have done it, or condoned it, but there was something about the way they had fenced off the city, sanctioned it so thoroughly and completely into people who "mattered" that week, and people who were left to fend for themselves, that started to stir that sense of injustice and make me want to lash out, too. The injustice that the homeless at Dorothy Day Center spent the entire week behind the fence of their shelter, black paper draped over the fence to allegedly protect their privacy, in a move that instead cut them off from the rest of the world. The fact that buses were cut off and bike racks removed, streets blockaded for car and walking, making it impossible for some of the most economically teetering people to make it to their jobs, or back home after to their families. Or that while we were hearing about prosperity and economic success, the streets were nearly deserted, the business that we were told would revitalize the area quarantined into a zone of about 4 blocks while the delegates and guests themselves were instead herded into buses and deployed to the next location. The was no feel of jubilation on the streets, just tension and paranoia while helicopters ceaselessly circled and the riot police watched. Nothing justifies damage and violence, ever, but until you've stood in one you can't completely understand the electric air of uneasiness surrounding a police state.

And that's really where we are, and what we dance around. We're afraid to say it was a police state because we understand that as long as we are in this country, we inherently can't have one. But when you are walking down the street and realize that the officers and uniforms are outnumbering you 5 to one, when you start to recognize the uniforms and make a tally based on the dress as to which weapons they are likely to be carrying, when you have a week sandwiched between one of your reporters being gassed on Monday and arrested on Thursday, in both cases while they were just trying to cover the story, or they are practicing with watercannons right across from the building you were just working in the day before, what else can you call it?

I understand that to compare this to real oppression and real occupations is like saying caring for a goldfish is the same as raising a child. This was a blip in time, and I think inherently it was never going to get very violent. The police were skilled and for almost all cases entirely professional. They performed as they were asked to. But something strange happened on the street. The target was the "anarkids," but it still seems that a secondary target was the media. So many reporters were arrested, intimidated, or cut off from their stories. When they were caught in a roundup, they were still charged. And last night they moved them to one side and gave them citations.

It's almost as if they wanted to stop the reporters from covering the streets, which makes so little sense to me. In some small way it had to be the reporters, especially those who were tracking and covering live, who ensured that the violence didn't escalate. Police would have documentation of the incidences, people could be identified. They were playing a significant role in peace-keeping, and for that they were cited with unlawful assembly or worse.

I'm rambling, which I suppose isn't surprising after many days of little sleep. I wish there had been more interaction. I wish there had been less intimidation. I wish that the protesters hadn't gotten in and tried to disrupt the McCain speech. I wish that It had felt more like a celebration somewhere other than just inside the convention hall. I wish I hadn't paid $11 for pad thai on Monday just because it was the only restaurant I could get to that wasn't blocked. And I wish that everyone parked at the party house hadn't gotten tickets for parking facing the wrong direction even though it was a two way street, especially since that only happened the night we put up the "Living Liberally" banner. And I wish that everyone could have stayed longer, but I'm so glad in many ways that they are going home.

I believe we are going to spend a lot of time in the next week examining what when right and wrong in St Paul. We will likely find out that what I have been hearing is true -- that the local police had all operations removed from them and taken over by homeland security, that they were the ones writing the releases and police statements, directing events, etc. And someday someone will analyze the fact that there was not supposed to be marches on Thursday, as far as I know, and that it was a reaction to what many saw as the overreaction of the entire security brigade all week.

But for me, for now, enough reflection. I didn't get arrested or gased. We had a fantastic time at the Liberal Lounge watching speeches and then drinking by the fire pit and dissecting the day's event. And now I need to try and catch up on a little sleep.

After all, Minnesota has a primary in 4 days...

At Liberal Lounge

too much talk about possible issues happening during the 4pm march today, so we're at the SEIU house early, so we don't accidentally get trapped in the downtown. We'll be here for the rest of the night watching speeches and liveblogging as always.

Munchie break

she's having a great time at the grandparents...

at liberal lounge again

but will try to put up pumpkin patch pic later

RNC day two

at the house liveblogging right now.here

super sunburned

ended up getting stuck in about 4 hours total of seperate protest marches. Should have worn sunscreen but couldn't get past riot police when I realized I was frying. Could be worse -- I never saw any pepper spray or tear gas as others (including one of our reporters) did.

Chilling at the SEIU house, which we expect to be pretty calm tonight. Stop over if you are in town.

And so it begins

It's too early -- not even 6 am. We set up the house yesterday, the Iowa independent folks came into town, and we went to a party at Summit Brewery for Utne Reader.

Leaving for St. Paul and Uptake offices in an hour to start first official day of coverage -- boring coverage, since no one is actually speaking anymore.