NOT FUNNY

So I think I've officially lost my sense of humor about this whole House of Doom and Germs and Fluids Leaking From Everybody's Headholes thing. Perhaps I left it at the pediatrician's office this morning. Perhaps I'll call and see if anyone has noticed the smell of death coming from their Lost & Found.

Today's photo, if I chose to illustrate our plight, which I won't, because it's fucking disgusting, would feature the red oozing eyes of both Noah AND HIS MOTHER, who are sporting matching cases of pinkeye. Noah is also covered in a horrible itchy rash, which I initially brushed off as a run-of-the-mill viral rash, but now appears to be an allergic reaction to -- get this -- the Method Baby detergent I bought for Ezra's clothes.

We typically use the Seventh Generation Free & Clear detergent for Noah's clothes, and YES I KNOW, I don't need special baby detergent, but that Method stuff smells so damn good I was helpless to resist it. (Seriously. That shit will make you LACTATE, it's so baby-fresh-delicious.) But my mother-in-law took control of the laundry this week and actually did laundry so often that she was able to COMBINE Noah's and Ezra's clothing TOGETHER, in one load.

(I am baffled by this concept, since I generally wait until the hampers reach Everest levels before doing anything about it.)

(Another result of this extremely proactive approach to laundry is that we are out of hangers and drawer space EVERYWHERE, since we no longer have half of our wardrobes languishing around unwashed as a space buffer. Huh.) 

Who in the world is allergic to baby detergent? WHO? Noah, apparently. And now we have to rewash his entire closet since no one can remember what's been washed when and with what detergent, because surprise! No one can smell worth a damn, thanks to our colds.  And by "we" I actually do mean "me" because my in-laws caught some kind of stomach bug and are totally puking.

Let this be a lesson to everyone who might think about offering to come help us out with the baby or Noah or laundry or whatever: COMING TO OUR HOUSE WILL PROBABLY KILL YOU. SORRY ABOUT THAT.

And if this weren't ENOUGH to make you grab your torches and pitchforks and circle our zip code while chanting UNCLEAN! UNCLEAN!...after Noah got sent home from preschool because of the pinkeye (don't blame me -- I KNEW that kid had pinkeye yesterday but was completely shouted down by my husband and in-laws who INSISTED that it wasn't pinkeye and made the call this morning to send him to school while I was busy hooked up to the breastpump, pumping milk for a mythical "dinner outside of the house without children" that Jason and I have been trying and failing and canceling reservations all week for), I took him to the pediatrician and was informed that hey! This kid has a raging bitch of an ear infection.

I stared at the doctor dumbly, because...what? Seriously? THAT TOO NOW? He'd JUST BEEN to the doctor two weeks ago and was fine. (Please note that Jason will yell at me for not taking Noah to the doctor over coughs, contact rashes and mysterious fruit stickers on the wang, but thought I was being completely ridiculous today over goddamned PINKEYE.) And he's still sleeping...and not tugging on his ear...and sure, he's had a cold for two weeks but...oh.

"Noah, does your ear hurt?" I asked in surprise after the doctor delivered the news.

"Yeeeessss." he wailed, and covered his ear with his hands.

"Well!" I said. "I sure am awesome at this."

So. We have an ear infection, two cases of conjunctivitis (but only one prescription for eyedrops, because fuck. that. shit. directly.), a really gross-looking rash, four really tenacious colds and two grandparents bravely trying to insist that it's only food poisoning, not a stomach bug, they're fine, really really fine, we should totally go out for dinner tonight, REALLY, they'll stay here in the House of Murderous Microbes with the children, RUN AND SAVE YOURSELLLLLVES.

Oh, and somebody had diarrhea all over the basement steps. Usually I'd just assume it was one of the pets, but at this point, nothing would surprise me, and everybody remains a suspect. Expect a thorough investigation, just as soon as I'm brave enough to emerge from the little fort I've made out of Clorox Disinfecting Wipes and bottles of hand sanitizer.

UPDATE: Noah is not allergic to the baby detergent. The rash is because apparently my poor father-in-law got confused and thought the (oh, God) Clorox Disinfecting Wipes we keep in the bathroom were the (oh, God) baby wipes. And he'd been using them on poor Noah (oh, God) all week.

Robitussinville

Presenting the most pathetic little being on Earth:

Red, swollen, watery eyes, a runny nose and the teensiest little sneeze you've ever heard. Yep, that's a three-week-old with a cold, right there. He put up a good fight all last week, when the first wave of preschool germs took the rest of us down, but THIS COLD, THE NEW ONE, well. Even an exclusively breastfed infant* can't withstand two full weeks of his mother sneezing directly on his head without eventually succumbing to the Ick.

I really wanted to update yesterday -- what a day for radio silence, a day when I finally could write about something other than my children or my boobs or the giant chunk of wall the plumber took out in my living room**, especially with my ultra-conservative in-laws visiting and thus forcing me to scale back my gleeful victory dance back to a small silent one, using only my index fingers*** -- but found myself capable of little more than whiiiiiiiiinnnnning about how siiiiiiiiiiick I was, falling victim to the famed blogger compulsion to go on and on about the miiiiiiisery of our cold symptoms, giving the world more metaphors for post-nasal drip than the whole of Western literature, and probably giving a race of alien beings who are intercepting our Internets the perception that our planet would make for an easy invasion, because goddamn, what a bunch of pussies.

*God, I know, right? That's so obnoxious sounding, the way I just slip that in there, all FYI style, like hooray! My boobs WIN. Where's my MEDAL. Pass the damn INFANT NOSEBULB SUCKERTHING.

**A hole that was only required to repair the leak that he caused three days earlier, which we discovered via the water pouring into the basement. Dear Alien Overlords, please take out the plumbers first.

***And to think, it used to blow my mind that my boys would grow up never knowing what life was like before you could pause live television. And now this!

Housekeeping Not Involving My House

Honestly, I could do an entire photo essay about nothing more than the various large, gaping holes in my walls and ceilings at this point. There are at least seven of them, and I am getting better at ignoring them every day. It's like hands-free breastfeeding. It just takes practice.

Anyway. Website housekeeping! Exactly the kind of post everybody hates, but please. I just had a baby. I bought clothes and diapers for a linebacker and gave birth to a peanut. I thought the two Miracle Blankets we received as gifts (thank you Michael and Amy!!) would be enough but now! I know! You can never have enough Miracle Blankets! Miracle Blankets are a gift from God himself! The gift of sleep and silence and showers -- all in a miraculous blanket form!

I came into the bedroom this morning to find the dog sleeping on our LAST! CLEAN! MIRACLE BLANKET! and I nearly killed her right then and there, but then I remembered that Ezra is our second child, and that I could maybe use the lint roller on the blanket instead of rewashing it, but then I couldn't find the lint roller and just sort of shook it out real vigorously for a minute before reswaddling His Delicate Preshusness.

Wait. I was not coming here to write anything today. Was I? No. I was not. I was coming here to say:

• That I will be back posting at Mamapop as of today. Hooraaaaay pop culture drivel! And subsequently getting my writerly ass handed to me by all the other amazing authors over there! I've missed you, babies.

• Guest authors continue over at the Advice Smackdown, for just a little longer. But I really doubt anyone is missing me over there, because the guest authors have all been supremely awesome and interesting. This week: Holly from Nothing But Bonfires writes about how to maximize your pre-trip neuroses (and possibly, How Not To End Up In Newark, AMALAH), Isabel from Hola Isabel reviews some super extra crazy cheap lip glosses, and Nicole from Not Perfect returns to talk about knocked-up bridesmaids.

• HOWEVER, lest you think that I have just been laying around eating Halloween candy for close to three weeks now while I let other people care for my Internet Empire, I somehow got talked into writing stuff over at this site for Luvs. It's a once-a-week thing for two months, and I'm supposed to write about valuable tips to help save you money and time. Which is probably not my forte, since it is currently 11:41 am and all I have managed to accomplish is four nursing sessions, two cups of coffee, seven emails and adding fourteen more Miracle Blankets to my Amazon cart. Miracle Blankets that I CANNOT PAY FOR, UNLESS YOU VISIT THE LUVS SITE AND LEAVE COMMENTS AND YOU WOULD IF YOU LOVED ME! WHY DON'T YOU LOVE ME? IS IT THE CAPS LOCK SCREAMY THING? IS IT?

• Ahem. My money-saving tip for this week involves stealing shit from the hospital. Free maxipads, people! Shove one package in your suitcase and pretend you used them all! And then they'll bring you ANOTHER PACKAGE!


• You are welcome.


• (I really have been eating a lot of Halloween candy.)

• (He also really does love the Miracle Blanket. Usually.)
  

Not Ezra's Birth Story

I've officially started working on Ezra's birth story. So that's...coming up. And all. Just FYI.

So, fine, technically all I've done so far is write "Ezra's Birth Story" in the title box and saved it as a draft. What? I didn't say it was coming up in like, the next five minutes or anything.

In the meantime, HERE! HERE ARE SOME PHOTOS! BECAUSE I NEVER JUST FUCKING POST ENOUGH PHOTOS!

The Storch is strong with this one. I'm not entirely sure my genes were even in the room this time. Family members agree that he looks a lot like his Great-Great-Uncle Morty. Who looked exactly like what you would imagine a Great-Great-Uncle Morty looked like.

When I was a little girl, I used to pretend that I was a mommy to identical quintuplet girls. Their names were Priscilla, Penelope, Tiffany, Princessia and Rosepetal. I'm thinking that real life turned out much better.

Noah's also been much better. When he acts up (and it's nothing major, like hitting or running out in the street or drag racing down at the old culvert for pinks), we ignore him. Turn our backs, leave the room, refuse to acknowledge the Fit of Brat. When he does anything vaguely nice or lovely, we make a huge deal out of it.  Turns out that it's totally our attention that he wants! And he'll do whatever seems to get our attention! Good or bad! This is parenting rocket science here, folks. Don't be intimidated by my advanced discoveries or anything.

He's really, really enchanted by Baby Brother.

(I have about 5764635258 photos like this, by the way. And I will most likely force you to look at most of them.)

Occasionally I make it into the photos too. This is also a pretty common pose, minus the bed ever being made.