happy st. patrick's day!

today's blog is mostly for my very irish grandmother. if she had had her "druthers" (her word, not mine) my name would have been erin riley rosentrater. on monday my dad was in st. pete for some golf disguised as work, so andy, janie and i spontaneously headed over for dinner. we ate at ted peter's famous smoked fish house and ordered exactly what our friend eddie (a 30 year st. pete beach local) told us to. it was probably one of the greatest cheeseburgers and root beer i have ever had. the highlight of the trip was for sure the fact that my dad was wearing green, and we conveniently had janie's shamrock pj's in the car. we are all very in touch with our irish roots, and for that i knew my grandmother would be proud. these pictures are for you, grammy. grampa, let me know when the next german holiday is and i'll be sure to get janie her very own pair of lederhosen.

as you can tell, janie really enjoyed ted peters.

since janie is too young to eat green pancakes, and follow gold coin trails to gifts left by leprechauns, i made myself a fancy breakfast of oatmeal with brown sugar and then we ventured out for some st. patrick's day shopping with lauren. liberty of london just designed a whole line of things for target, and lauren and i had marked the date on our calendars months ago. janie told me that it would make her happy if i used a target gift card she received in the mail for being born on myself, which was very sweet of her. so, we got some super cute storage bins and a dress..or two. when we got home, this handsome man was waiting for us in the driveway.

laundry and other exciting things

i strategically just put a load of laundry in the washing machine on the heavy duty cycle, not because they were extra dirty, but because it will buy me a few extra minutes to waste time on the computer without feeling like there's something more important to be done. i think i forgot to mention anything about our wonderful new washer and dryer. we rang in the new year by getting rid of our 25 year old machines. we had talked about getting new ones for a while, and our decision was made when andy got to work with a giant hole in his shirt from the dryer drum made of nails.

in other news, janie is already 2 months old. her doctors appointment was a great success...she cried a lot when she got her shots, but i didn't, which came as a pleasant surprise to us all. she is growing like crazy...more horizontally than vertically. she weighed in at 11 lbs 2 oz and is 21 inches long, which puts her in the 55th percentile for weight, and 10th for height.

a few nights ago we realized that she seemed really mad at us for waking her up every night at midnight to feed her, so we decided to see what would happen if we just let her sleep. it was a miracle. she has slept 9 hours every night since. it's amazing what a full night of sleep can do.

our good friends goose and minta welcomed their second little boy, eli, into the world on thursday morning. he is a charming little fellow just like his big brother, matias. since goose is a good husband, he wouldn't even consider leaving minta home with the boys to attend a magic game. and since he is a good friend as well, he kindly gave andy and i the tickets for sunday nights game, so we went on our first real date since janie's arrival. all week i looked forward to (in this order) spending an evening with andy sans baby, enjoying a gourmet dinner of hot dogs and nachos, and watching the magic dominate the bobcats. we sat next to a nice young man celebrating his 21st birthday. from what i observed, all he really wanted was for "his man j will to know it was his birfday". despite the challenge of sharing a very limited amount of space with a highly intoxicated 7 foot tall guy, the magic's loss to the bobcats, and the shortage of nacho cheese at the concession stand, we had a really great time. we've decided that when joel and lizzy move back we should go in on a pair of season tickets. then lizzy and i can go to games and eat hot dogs while andy and joel supervise janie and luke back at home.