Holiday Festivities a la poire

Lots of photos to post in the next few days, so I'll get to the point! We went to Hubby Nugget's family shindig the Saturday before Christmas (huge family, and huge scheduling conflicts!) Fun was had by all!

C & D paused mid-snuggle for a photo op!

A rare photo of the elusive Nugget (me--usually the photographer, not the photographee) with my Little Nugget. She wasn't up to snuff that day, neither was I really. I think we were both a little off due to an ear ache that lingered from our afore-mentioned plague.

Uncle N holding the newest member of the family, B. She is such a sweet baby!

Partners in Crime: Little Nugget shares a meal with her cousin K. They look like they are plotting something.

S feeding her new granddaughter, the lovely baby B.

Monkey finally got her spunk on and rocked the cozy coupe all over the place. She pauses here to shout "Yea!!!" and throw her arms in the air like she just don't care.

Five, count them, FIVE generations captured in this pic!!!! Grandpa, GG, C, LN, and baby B!

Back home, the Little Nugget takes her new sit-n-spin for a test drive. She said "Ter-tal gofo ride!!!!" That roughly translates to "Turtle go for a ride!"

More to come!!!!

Nugget

Ho Ho Ho!

Monkey has been chirping "one!" all day today. I'd like to think she's cognisant enough of the whole Santa thing for her to mean that she recognizes it's one more day till Santa comes. But nah, she just likes numbers.


She does know something's up, though. The first clue was the dumptruck load of presents brought over by Gammy and Dapaw:

For the record, two of those are for Me and my Nugget, and two are for Gammy and Dapaw. The rest are to the Little Nugget. They certainly love to spoil their only granddaughter!

She's been amazingly well-behaved around the tree, which is generally not the case for the rest of the house. She's quite curious, so it's quite a shock that she didn't check some of them out prior to the official unveiling.

Prior to her bedtime, we made Santa and Mrs. Claus some hot cocoa and put out a cookie for Rudolph. I know for a fact that the Mr. & Mrs. like a little somethin' somethin' in their cocoa, so I added a dash of Irish Cream. It was yummy! (I mean I bet it's yummy!!! I hope they enjoy!)

"Santa's" deposit for the Little Nugget. Because he is very conscious of the environment and seriously pressed for time, presents from Santa are not wrapped. So this will be what the Little Nugget wakes up to!

Gammy and Dapaw will be coming over to open presents, then we are heading over to L & R's house for some turkey and hanging out!

Happy Holidays everyone!!!

Nugget

More Adventures of the Little Nugget...

With the holidays approaching soon, I thought I would put up some pics of the Little Nugget before the onslaught of Christmas photos buries them in the depths of the "post" folder.


Monkey really enjoyed her birthday book from Aunt J and Uncle DJ--and so did Mommy and Daddy. Very cool book called Gallop. Check it out on Amazon, it's too hard to describe! ( And I'm feeling a bit lazy and tired from all the food I've eaten this weekend at family gatherings)

Sadly, we had to attend a funeral recently for Hubby Nugget's step-grandma, M. Unfortunately, we did not check the length of Little Nugget's (hand-me-down) dress until we were seriously late and had to dress her on the way out the door. Yikes! She looked like a Bratz doll (sorry to offend if your a fan, but I'm NOT)--the fact that I paired biker boots with it didn't help. You can see above that her coat was longer than the dress. Yes, that's her ass hanging out. So of course, she had to roll around on the floor the whole time. It was fun. I won the parent of the year award on that one! Sorry family members I don't see very often, really I don't usually dress my daughter like a skank. For real. That dress was burned upon returning home.

Shake! If Palooza extends her fist in this manner, she wishes to shake your hand, fyi.

We had a genuine snow day this week, so Mommy worked from home while the Sweet Babygirl kept herself occupied for hours (literally) with coloring!!! Her output of work was prodigious to say the least! We had lots of fun, and surprisingly, I got mucho work done! Win-win!

Along with her new-found interest in coloring, she also is expressing a liking of stickers. She likes to put them everywhere. It's awesome. My favorite is when she puts them on herself. She says "I stuck." Indeed.

All for now,

Nugget

The Official Cereal of Team Nugget...

Makes me giggle every time I see it...

All for now,
Nugget

Spreading Preciousness Throughout the Land

One sports bar at a time.

Little Nugget and I ventured out to run a couple of last-minute Christmas errands (we plan to hole up for the next two weeks and let the amateurs fight it out themselves). It's colder than shit, btw, not an important part of the story, just annoying (it's like 5 degrees).

So we go to the post office where there is a HUGE line. I dreaded the whole experience anyway, the post office is bad enough, let alone with an impatient toddler. But she was surprisingly happy about the experience, probably because she had a captive audience. She treated the other patrons to her rendition of the alphabet song, recited colors, and the piece de resistance, her dramatic interpretation of nap time, "Night-night! (followed by fake snoring noises)" That was a crowd-pleaser. Then she finished the show up by making her froggy perform a little dance. Thank you very much! We'll be playing all week!

The show continued at our next destination, a chain restaurant where we picked up some gift cards. These were available in the bar area, and it felt like I was going to be struck by lightning for bringing my babygirl in there. But ok. We belly up and wait while the 'tender was taking orders from the group of burly dudes at the bar. So Monkey looks around for a little bit, looks over at the guy seated a couple seats away from her and shouts to him, "HIGH FIVE!!!" He was stunned to say the least. High fives were exchanged, then she exclaims "YEA!!!!". She then notices that this man is wearing a cap with the logo of our favorite football team, then shouts "GO CHIEFS!!!" and throws her arms in the air. This required another round of high fives, etc. You get the idea. A little charmer this one. She made quite an impression. Even shook his hand when we left.

How is it possible that we produced such an extrovert?

Nugget

Victory is MINE!

So medicine time has been a craptastic shitfest. We seriously break out the booze after we give the Little Nugget her last dose of the day. Sheesh.

I have been a-feared to put the antibiotic in her food, because then she'd refuse to eat anything. Same thing with drink, remember the chocolate milk incident? But I had a light-bulb moment a few minutes ago, why not in her beloved strawberry yogurt? It tastes like her chalky cherry medicine crap, maybe she won't notice the difference. The awesome part is that she eats gallons of the stuff, so this could work out great.

So I waited for her signal, that being a request for "yert!", then I went to work. Kept the refrigerator door open so as to block her spying eyes, then mixed my alchemy. Did a quick taste--I didn't notice any difference--crossed my fingers and slid the bowl in front of her. Then I hid in the kitchen and peeked at her when she wasn't looking--didn't want to arouse suspicion.

She's got a bit on the front of her shirt, nothing unusual there, and certainly consumed more than when we try to shove the syringe in her mouth. She gobbled it down, so I'm calling it good. Bad thing is, we're out of yogurt!

We'll get some more. You can count on it.

Nugget

Snow Day!

I had cabin fever so bad that against my better judgement, I went back to work today despite the warning of this season's first decent snow. The fact that I couldn't wait to get back to work is freaky enough, but in the snow...that's just crazy-talk.

Most people at my place of employ could care less if you show up or not, just so long as they don't need anything from you at that moment. And this being finals week, it's pretty quiet. So why did I go? Why?! Because I care about what I do, call me a stupidhead.

So like a goober, I'm scanning away and S, our administrative assistant/unofficial power source of the department says to me, "Go home! Boss-man would want you to!!!" Can't argue with that.

So now Palooza and I are safely at home (not much snow here, it went south of home and bull's eyed work) and I'm settling in for some cocoa while I work on paperwork. I know, I'm too dedicated to such a low-paying job. But hey, I have a job I like. Just having a job is a good thing nowadays.

Mmmm...marshmallows!

Nugget

A Plague on the House of Nugget, Again

Chez Nugget is teeming with viruses at the moment. Little Nugget was so kind to share her cold with us, and with Gammy as well. Only Dapaw and the canine mascots have gone unscathed by this plague. What can I say, Monkey always has been a good sharer.

No extra charge for the ear/eye infections. Oh wait! Those cost an extra $100 bucks for meds and deductibles. Luckily those are confined to just me and the Little Nugget.

Neither one of us had symptoms of earaches, so I was hoping to avoid that whole scene of antibiotic ingestion. I think Babygirl will tolerate the eye drops, but antibiotics taken orally. Man. Been there. Hated that. Lets just say it will be a very torturous time. I mean, she barely tolerates nose wiping. OK, that's an exaggeration. She DOES NOT tolerate nose wiping of ANY kind. It usually ends up being some kind of commando operation where you sneak up on her while she's distracted by Elmo, or food, or pharmaceutical commercials, or whatever. But she's quick! She goes into defense mode instantly, almost like a boxer: tucks her chin into her chest and throws up her arms. She's a wiley one, that girl.

So Medicine Time will have to be well planned. No amateur attempts like putting it into chocolate milk (which she still won't drink to this day). What can I say, I'm a first-time mom, I learned my lesson.

Tag-team. That's the way to go. And lots of cookies. Cuz nothing says sorry Mommy and Daddy forced ill-tasting substances down your throat like chocolate chip cookies!

Can't wait!

Nugget

What a Strange Child, part deux

The Little Nugget keeps turning the figures around on our Eskimo Nativity. Its not that she's just moving them around, no, she's turning them so they are facing away from her. Maybe she thinks that Eskimo Joseph, Mary and little Eskimo Baby Jesus need to be facing the TV like her so they can watch Sesame Street or her beloved pharmaceutical commercials.

It remains a mystery...

Nugget

Baby Grapes and Some Artsy-Fartsy Nature Pics

Part two of the Thanksgiving festivities involved a walk down the hill to check out how the baby grapes were doing. They were happily snuggling with their cordons. Hubby Nugget joked that it looked like a stick farm. If you click on the pic below, you can almost see the supermodel-thin grapevines. :-)

Oh but they will take off next year, for sure!!! Now that they're woody, the deer won't have much interest in them...Oh wait, is that a deer trail right by our grapevines?! Indeed it is, and there are more where that came from. Hubby Nugget inspects the Bambi freeway to the grapevine buffet:

Faced with such encouraging news, I headed into the surrounding brush to play with our camera's macro setting and captured some awesome sights of the vineyard in winter (almost winter).

I don't know what this is, but it's sure pretty.

Did I mention how much I enjoy a good moss? Only a few times I imagine. Alas, I won't be trying to plant more moss in my garden this spring. I give up! Do you hear me, squirrels?! You won!!! But don't think I won't still throw rocks at you. Oh I will. Right upside the head. You won the battle, but the war is still on. Bring it.

I reached far back into my dressed-in-black, art-school past to achieve this artsy-fartsy pic of whatever that is. No, really I just put the camera down by my leg and shot up. Caught a lucky break and got a good pic! They call that a "happy accident" in art school, btw.

Another one in the same vein. Love the gnarly vines! Who knows what they are: grapes, poison ivy, trumpet vine...they all grow wild here.

Pretty berries...

Back at the top of the vineyard, got shocked back into reality by this little sight: hard to see, but it's a mole hole and trail. Bonus!

Green Acres is the place to beee...stick farming is the life for meee...

All for now,

Nugget