I can sense something in the wind… *grin*

Now that Ivy is crawling everywhere, a whole new world of tasty objects is within her grasp…. including toilet paper! This week she seems to have discovered she likes eating paper. All kinds of paper. Pages ripped from the phone book. Sleeves from CD or DVD. And especially toilet paper!

Okay this is cute, but a little weird. I have heard of people eating toilet paper before. Maybe I heard about it on Oprah or something like that. I don’t remember. But it is a behavior called “Pica” which is the desire to eat things that are not food (more info here… Pica ) Well, in all likelihood, Ivy is eating TP just because it is something soft, new, and goes easily into her mouth. When you are 1 year old everything goes in the mouth! So we will probably just have to put a guard over the TP like they have in public bathrooms. Or maybe buy a TP guard that you can get at a Pet Store to keep your cat from unrolling the toilet paper.

Well, the meeting with the doctor today was fairly uneventful, which is good. Results from the stress test were normal – “no blockages.” In fact, the BP today was great – 118/78 🙂

So, I “just” have a mild mitral valve regurgitation. Cause is not known – could have been congenital, but who knows. The doctor said just keep losing weight to take the stress off my heart, and he wants me to get my “bad cholesterol” down below 100. It was 125 in December (which is acceptable), given the BP issues. That reading was 8 months and about 30 pounds ago, so it may have gone down since then anyhow.

Follow-up appointment in 3 months to take blood work and see how the body chemistry looks. Otherwise, things appear to be just fine with my innards.

I have been a hobby-level househunter for going on 15 years now. It’s taken me from the outskirts of Ft. Bend county where a very early boggy version of Sienna Plantation was under development in the mid-1990s, to now around and in the Heights area of Houston (where we currently rent).

Along the way, marriage and baby (and now two dogs) have entered the picture, so my “ideal” house has shifted a bit. Thankfully, Joey and I are on the same page about two important aspects of a house: we want to stay in the area and we both like bungalows.

The time isn’t quite right for us right now, however. Even though it’s certainly an excellent time to be buying, what with the $8K credit for first-time owners, the good market in Houston, the low interest rates, etc., something in my gut (and Joey’s) isn’t quite ready yet.

In the meantime, though, I’m content to look and read and learn and daydream. We both like the idea of building our own place, starting with an empty lot, and I’m a fan of the Owner Builder Book methods. My current favorite source of inspiration, though, is a restoration project being tracked online at 1912Bungalow.com — wow, finding a gem like that buried under neglect and layers and layers of paint would be just wonderful. That’s the kind of project I could gladly undertake, and put up with hard work for awhile — seeing the personality and nature of the house shine through, while guiding it through our own tastes and style… man.

So, in the meantime, I’ll continue to try things out in my head and on paper. Hopefully the planning will spill over onto this blog (maybe as a dedicated section), to document the birth of our first home.

We drive past it every morning when Joey drops me off at work in the office downtown, so today with things being slow in the office, I decided to walk over to the Houston Heritage museum in Sam Houston Park and take a tour of the old buildings there.

Saw some pretty nifty stuff and learned a few things I didn’t know. For example: in the mid-1800s, houses were taxed based on the number of rooms, not the square footage of the house, and a closet counted as a room, soo… most houses had large rooms with big bureaus or wardrobes in them, rather than smaller rooms with closets.

Also learned that craftsmen who built furniture would take miniature versions of their products around to show potential customers, who would pick what they want and order full sized versions of those. Soon, customers started buying the miniatures as furniture for their children, or for their children’s dolls, etc.

The docent pointed out in one of the kitchens (Note: kitchens used open fires for cooking, which was a fire hazard, so rather than risk burning the entire house down ,most of the houses from back then had separate structures for kitchens, which were a bit of a walk away from the main house) that the table legs were set in a double-lined brass pot. These pots had an inner and outer moat, with the legs set in the inner moat. The outer moat was filled with sugar water, to attract ants to the pots, where they would get in the water and drown, rather than having the ants running all over the tables (which were used for food prep). Cool!

Anyhow, here are a few photos from in the museum an the outsides of the houses. Worth a visit if you are downtown during their hours!

Saturday morning, Holly and I decided to take the whole crew to the beach for some sandy fun. The weather in Galveston was promising to be a little cooler than Houston, so it sounded good to me. We arrived early and found a good place to park. Then, we took a little stroll up and down the beach and let the dogs run free. The dogs LOVED it, as so did Ivy. We let her splash and crawl around in the waves, and even let her go naked for a photo-op. The vehicle parked next to us had two little boys which seemed to be very interested in her. So she did a little flirting (after we put her clothes back on). All in all, she really liked the beach!
Doh! I forgot to bring the sunscreen!

Warning: Explicit Nude Beach Video…

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• beach01
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The day after her birthday, we all went to see the Astros host the Mets at Minute Maid Park. It was Ivy’s first baseball game, and she did fairly well. A bit wiggly, but with all that energy in one little body, who can sit still THAT long. The Astros won the game (complete with a game-winning HR from our starting pitcher, Mike Hampton) so all was well. Joey snagged a couple shots from up in our seats at the game, and a roaming photographer got a couple shots of Ivy and I as we were making our way through the concourse to our seats. Those can be seen here (we are pictures #20 and 21, about half-way down the page… if you have to log in, go to the game on July 24th vs Mets, into gallery 76).

In Arkansas, Grandma Shirley bought Ivy a doll for her birthday. But Ivy is in Houston! So Grandma bought her the doll a ticket to fly to Houston and to be with Ivy forevermore. This is her journey…

Ivy’s First Doll. She doesn’t have a name yet because she’s… well,… a doll. But she is looking forward to meeting her new best friend in Houston. I know because she told me so.

She had a little bit of a wait at the airport in Little Rock. Thankfully, Joey had some good books with him to read.

Finally, the plane was ready to take off, so she and Joey headed over to the gate to get on board… Yay, flying is exciting!

There were lots of people on the plane, and a woman even told Joey that his baby was cute!

So with one last look out the plane window, she said goodbye to Arkansas, and flew away to her brand new life.

After a long, but fun day of travelling, Ivy and her new doll finally meet face to face!

There were a few moments of just checking each other out…

Ivy flashed a big bright smile very quickly and let everyone know she likes her new doll!

Here are some video clips of their first meeting:

• They Meet
• Big Kiss
• Eye Poke

New best friends. 🙂