ugh. monday.

here i am at monday again. another weekend gone by too fast. it was fun, granted, and somewhat productive, but gone too fast.

we had the wonderful opportunity to host a surprise party for our friend karl saturday night. he turned 30 with little fanfare, so we helped his fiance host a party 2 weeks after the fact to change that. we had a modest crowd for the surprise (and he was surprised!) and a fair number of folks stop by throughout the evening, so it was a success. we even resurrected my 30th birthday party theme of "muppets and martinis" to rave reviews. we showed episodes of the muppet show and offered a menu of 6 or so different martinis based on characters (miss piggy was a cosmo, kermit was an appletini, sam the eagle was a classic martini). i was so impressed that our guests actually ventured out and tried some of the lesser-known ones, like fozzy's honey martini. we got lots of compliments on our home, our bar, our dog, even our baby. nissa stayed home that evening and hung out till about 11. she crawled around, ate fried rice and played with fabian and nancy, and otherwise enjoyed herself as much as a 10 month old can. i put her to bed, but about an hour later she was back up and crying, refusing to go back to bed. i brought her back downstairs and we hung out some more. she wasn't fussy and i was ok with having her up, but by 1:30 all of our guests had gone home. adam's convinced nissa's presence scared everyone off. i hope not, but wouldn't be surprised. she's a baby, she'll be fine. don't worry!

and she was fine. we all slept in till about noon and she took a solid 2.5 hour nap later that day and was in bed by 10 (a little late, but not bad), very close to her usual bed time. she wasn't cranky or tired either, much to our relief. nissa even showed off a new trick yesterday; almost scaring me half to death. while i was scrambling around trying to find my cell phone, i wasn't paying as close attention to her as i should. adam was helping me, so also not paying attention to nissa. after a few minutes i look around and see her standing on the first stair to go upstairs, reaching around to scale the next step. i was impressed and petrified at the same time, but i did my best to put on a happy face and fetch her from the stairs as quickly as i could manage. unfortunately, now the stairs are all she aims for if she's on the floor in the basement.

since nissa is so mobile lately, i think we're going to try and take advantage of the clean house and make more of the house available to her for maneuvering. sure, there's no way to 100% baby proof a house, but i think we can make a good effort and at least open up more of the upstairs to her, so she can roam about while i'm in the kitchen at least. we'll see.