Valentine's Day

Well, I hope everyone's Valentine's was wonderful. We had a very nice day, complete with a surprise. Earlier in the week, Emma & I had made some cards to send out to family, including one from each of us for Jeff. Emma was very proud of hers. She had done a really nice job on it. I had made one for Jeff, only because I had been under the impression that we really couldn't afford to do much else for each other. Well Jeff had been scamming me. He got me a CD (the one I'd been begging him for), a box of candy, and had a dozen red roses delivered to our house early on Saturday morning. I was completely shocked & surprised. But, of course, that made my homemade card & plans for a really nice dinner seem very lame. It seemed his plan to make me think we were too broke to do much backfired. But he was very generous about it. Even after our "nice dinner" didn't happen until almost 8pm. I blame it too much preparation needed for what should have been a relatively easy dinner. We had cream of carrot soup, breaded pork chops, green beans amandine, and french bread, with chocolate dipped strawberries for dessert. I thought it was very romantic, but then again, it's kinda hard to be romantic when Emma keeps coming downstairs asking for juice and another quesadilla. Well, you make do with what you have.
I know that probably sounded bad; there we were, having a nice, completely balanced dinner & Emma's eating a quesadilla. It's not as neglectful as you think. I know for a FACT that Emma would not have eaten anything I made, so I was just saving us all the drama that forcing her to sit down & eat with us would have produced. At least for one meal. She's got plenty of drama in her little body to last until she graduates...from college.
I think we've found Emma's new favorite place to be. It's the childcare area at the local Indian casino. We went there yesterday afternoon to watch a friend of Jeff's from work do some DDR. That's the Dance Dance Revolution game, where you try frantically to follow arrows in the screen & step on tiny squares that coincide with the arrows & stay on the beat. It's really hard, even on the easy levels. I should know, because Jeff forced me to do it. I'm sure I was a sight. A 7-months pregnant woman, trying to have rhythm, and not fall flat on her face while jumping around, stepping on squares. In a child's arcade, no less. Yeah I'm sure it was funny for all concerned. Not mention the fact that I was standing next to Cia, the guy from Jeff's work, who is an expert at this. So I'm sure I looked doubly stupid trying to do my lame little level, while he's practically breakdancing on the pad next to me. I think at one time he got an 128 combo, which means he successfully completed 128 steps without screwing up once. But, hey, I got some exercise. Even Emma tried a little bit, but she got kinda shy when people started looking at her & saying how cute she was. Yeah, all that attention can get a little nervewracking.
Afterwards, we were going to take Cia out to lunch. On the way there, we saw that they had a childcare area. So we went in to see what it was like, how much, the hours, etc. Well, as soon as we got in there, Emma was begging for us to leave her there. It's relatively inexpensive (cheaper than most babysitters would charge) and they have tons of stuff for the kids to do. You can even give the kids a spending limit on snacks that they can have while they're there. So, we decided to leave her there, and go have lunch. We figured we'd get Emma something on the way home, since she obviously wasn't interested in eating with us at that time. So, we go & have a nice lunch. We go back to pick Emma up & they call her name on the loud speaker. We see her walking up towards the front of the place, and she gets about 50 feet from us, sees us & we're waving and saying, Come on Emma, it's time to go home! We mistakenly thought she'd be happy to see us. Uh, no. She sees us, has this really upset look on her face and TURNS AROUND! She walked back into the play area, and was obviously not ready to leave yet. Jeff & I just started laughing. It took the staff about 10 minutes to get her to come back out & leave. One staff member said to us, You're going to have to come back because that's the only way I was able to get her to come out. Emma was sulking the whole way home. I suppose it's better that she really liked it, rather than coming out to us running & screaming to take her home. She apparently had a lot of fun. Which is a good thing.
Ok, now some bad news. I have lost all of my contact information that was on the computer. Everyone's e-mail addresses, physical addresses & phone numbers that were on the computer are gone. Long story short, computer basically say "I don't like you, you smell", give us the virtual finger & make big crash. I lost everything. So, if you all would be so kind as to email me at coolmommy99@scalablenetworking.com and send me all of your information, I would greatly appreciate it.
I would like to thank everyone who has put in guesses at my expectnet.com game. All except my "thinks he's funny" husband, who put in a ridiculous guess, and if it comes anywhere close to that, I'm going to blame him. Everyone else's guesses have been great. And hopefully we'll know at least one part of the puzzle by this Friday, whether it's a girl or a boy, when I have my ultrasound. I'm thinking the baby turned yesterday. My belly looked an odd shape & it was very painful, like the baby was using my lower intestines as a foothold to change position dramatically. Not very pleasant. But I guess we'll see this Friday.