I Assure You My Personal Tragedy Will Not Interfere With My Ability To Overdramatize My Personal Tragedy On the Internet

In the end, a busted hard drive turned out to be what pushed me completely over the edge.

On Sunday night my laptop stopped powering up with the battery, or charging the battery, or even acknowledging the battery's very existence. According to the nice man at the Mac Genius Bar, the battery was simply old and used up and long past its time to go live in the country with the iRabbits.The fact that the entire computer froze and clicked and crashed and died a mere five minutes after the battery went? A coincidence. A crazy, unheard of, unrelated coincidence.

(I really wish I'd spent those last five precious minutes frantically exporting photo files to our network drive instead of on fucking Facebook.)

"Is all your data on the machine backed up?" he asked me cheerfully, even though I bet he totally knew the answer. I mean, look at me. I'm standing here with my laptop's power cord wrapped around my arm and my wallet in my teeth while I try not to spill my coffee on anything because I forgot to put my computer in a goddamn BAG. Do I look like the sort of person who would accidentally leave two years of photos and movies, including absolutely every photo documenting the existence of her new baby, just sitting around in iPhoto with absolutely no backup of any kind?

Yes. YES I DO.

Blog rantings aside, I feel like I've done a decent job at taking everything in stride. I've saved my crying for stupid things, like YouTube videos with an inspirational swell of music at the exact right moment, or the Where the Wild Things Are trailer. My father is ailing and my mother is struggling and my son is a mysterious little question mark and my health insurance is a dick (seriously -- they just kicked our pediatrician AND my obstetrician out of network. Retroactively. Retroactively to 15 days before Ezra's birth.) and I'm working really hard to meet deadlines and provide a little extra income for us and I'm not sleeping super well but I am OKAY. I am FINE. I am BLESSED and things will get BETTER and things could be so much WORSE and in the meantime I have the most beautiful babies in the world and I'm not perfect but they sure are, but let me tell you: the sight of my computer booting up with a blinking icon of No Operating System found made me cry like a snot-nosed little toddler.

"My whole life is on that stupid box!" I wailed to Jason around 4 in the morning, once my tossing and turning finally woke him up enough to notice that I was a hot wreck of nerves.

"It'll be okay," he assured me, to which I inexplicably responded with a confession that Max was due for a vet appointment last month and I NEVER TOOK HIM TO THE VET. OUR BABY PHOTOS COULD BE LOST FOREVER AND OUR CAT COULD BE DYING AND IT'S ALL MY FAULT.

You what is nice, spouses? Knowing when to just not say anything back. That, and late-night backrubs.

Anyway, I have since calmed down. I'm on an old laptop that works, despite the space bar being kind of a bitch, and hey! I had Snood installed on this machine! God, I've missed Snood. The repair cost for my other laptop is charmingly reasonable, or at least SOUNDS reasonable after you hear the prices for data recovery. But hey, we're hoping maybe we'll get a bulk discount because Jason has an external hard drive that he dropped and broke -- at the hospital, five minutes after transferring all the beautiful maternity photos he took of me, after Ezra was born and there could officially be no more beautiful maternity photos. Can you put a price on such preshus memories? Yes. Apparently you can. And it comes with a goddamn comma.

Anyway. Um. Go backup your files, chickies, and take your pets to the vet. That is all.

Oh, Hi, Afternoon Nap Just Imploded

Seriously, when you find yourself changing sheets and locking doors and confiscating various toys o' hopped-up stimulation for one kid while trapped in an endless nursing/crib/cry/nursing/crib/cry cycle with the other, eventually you need to come to terms with the fact that:

1) there is not going to be any afternoon free time during which you may flee to the computer and write about your feeeeeeeeeeelings on your blog, and...
2) as soon as you hear your husband's key in the lock you can open a beer without the whole "drinking alone and in front of the children" thing and COME ON KEY SOUNDS DON'T LET ME DOWN.

Happy Friday, bitches. Here's a photo of my baby mid-crazy-bounce in his jumper thing, complete with mid-crazy-bounce eyes.

Hey cool! My mama drinks out of BPA-free bottles too!

In other news that I can type really fast without my brain needing to get involved: a long, long time ago it was decided that I would continue the Zero to Forty pregnancy thingie over at Alpha Mom, in the form of a postpartum guide, just "as soon as [I] settle in and get [my] act together with the two babies thing."

I have not gotten my act together by any stretch of the imagination, and yet, Bounce Back launched today. New entries will be posted on Tuesdays, just like the pregnancy calendar. Yes, I certainly do have a lot to say about this reproduction business. In another six months I'm clearly going to need a new angle, as there's always someone funnier, younger, hotter, and way pregnanter than you out there on the Internet these days.

Anyway, it turns out postpartum is a difficult topic to write definitively about, since everybody's experience is so different, so even if you haven't had a baby super-recently I'd love it if you stopped by and chimed in on the various subjects with your own personal no-holes-barred and lochia-is-not-sparkly-unicorn-poop story. The plan is to turn Bounce Back into the most real and informative and UNIVERSALLY TERRIFYING record of what happens to a woman after giving birth in all the land. Together, we can stop the global population crisis! Huzzah!

Asterisk, Asterisk, Asterisk

For the past three days I've been secretly dying -- quietly, and with dignity, and lots of moaning -- from what I was sure was cancer of the face bones. The pain started on the left side of my face, right above my teeth, coursing through my cheek and nose and temple and ear. It didn't particularly hurt when I bit down, there was no swelling or redness in my teeth, yet the pain would not go away with regular old Tylenol so therefore: CANCER.

(Was someone saying something about drama queening? What? Me?)

Okay, so I didn't actually think I was actually dying. Maybe for five or 10 minutes, tops. With two of those minutes happening sometime after 3 am, and who DOESN'T occasionally lie awake in bed in the middle of the night and diagnose themselves with cancers of various kinds, I ASK YOU. Therefore, those particular minutes do not count.

I was far more terrified of the prospect that there was something wrong with my teeth, something that would require a trip to the dentist and horrible invasive procedures involving pointy metal things. So instead of calling the dentist I simply brushed and flossed and used a lot of Listerine, hoping that whatever the problem was, it would be impressed by my Hail Mary attempt at dental hygiene and go away, content with the fact that I had clearly Learned My Lesson.

Anyway, it turns out it's actually a sinus infection. So there. Fuck you, teeth. I'm off to drink high fructose corn syrup right out of the bottle.

So sinus medications have been helping, except that they make me really, really sleepy. I fell asleep in the middle of writing yesterday's entry, for an hour. I woke up all, what the fuck was I talking about? So anytime you see me do this:

---> *** <---

In an entry, you now know the truth. I either can barely generate enough interest in my own topic to stay awake long enough to write it in a fully cohesive manner, or else I'm darting from topic to topic because of all the corn syrup.

***

(OH. HA. I'M TOTALLY THE HILARIOUS.)

***

Anyway, yesterday's post was entirely too heavy and depressing and made too many people cry. Let's bring on the ridiculous! Like this post over at Alpha Mom, which is essentially the Deodorant Wars series, only with baby bottles. That's right. I got someone to pay me to pose inanimate objects and make them talk to each other, and in this case, stick earrings in baby bottle nipples. LIFE IS GOOD.

***

Wait! Let's get depressed again, for no particular reason at all. I just very randomly came across this photo, from October 2007:

I'm pretty sure that just killed me dead.

Stop it, you.

Square One

Our insurance company finally reviewed our claim for Noah's proposed speech therapy plan.

Denied.

Thanks.

Assholes.

I...I just don't even have the energy to get worked up about it. We'll appeal the decision, of course, but Lord. We waited close to two months for the initial evaluation. We waited another two months for the insurance company's decision. And now. Pfft.

There's a "private" rate for the therapy, of course, but I know it's more expensive than another speech/OT program in the area, a program that I think is more comprehensive, a program that I didn't contact initially because...they don't accept our insurance. Our insurance which, on paper, offers fantastic coverage for speech therapy, so it seemed like a logical trade-off. But if we're going to be paying out of pocket ANYWAY...I should...we should...should we? And then there's another, even better program in the city, which we could afford if we downsize to a condo and reduce our mortgage and again, if we're going to be paying out of pocket ANYWAY, if Noah ends up needing private schools ANYWAY...should we? What if Ezra needs early intervention? What if Ezra doesn't?

The school district evaluation has become our own personal red wheel barrow glazed with rain water.

They graciously offered a private screening, since they typically start with big group clinics where kids play together and there's chaos and lots of transitions and redirection, with one skill set being observed and evaluated right after another. In other words: a total freaking nightmare for a sensory-senstive child, and likely to set off a number of Noah's triggers. They said they'd be happy to adjust their tactics and conduct the evaluations one at a time, in our home. I said no, thank you, I'm sure Noah will be just fine.

I know he won't be fine. I'm practically counting on us being dismissed from the clinic setting early with appointments for private screenings at home. I need them to See It. I need them to see him Fail.

***

We took Noah to Barnes & Noble the other night to pick out some new storybooks and play with the train table. I sat and watched him and paged through a towering stack of parenting books. Books about Raising Your Quirky Sensory-Sensitive Spirited Unpredictable Out-of-Sync Different Child, books that promised Practical Simple Solutions To Everyday Challenges, books that promised to Fix It.

Of course they don't. They look substantial but spend chapter after chapter rehashing the same information, the same in-depth scientific descriptions about Vestibular Systems gone awry. You find some comfort in the anecdotes -- kids who sound so creepily like your kid, parents who also admit to snapping and scolding and just being so tired -- but then the actual strategies are all the same ones you've read about before and tried already. Social stories, check. Take breaks, trust your instincts, shaving cream and bread dough and electric toothbrushes and above all, the right kind of therapy. Which: dooood. I am trying. Two paragraphs about choosing the right preschool (Trust Those Instincts! Talk To The Teacher!) are followed by sections about elementary school and junior high and high school and oh, God. It just doesn't end.

Noah came over to show me something. "A gween train, Mommy," he announced. Two feet away another little boy rolled his eyes and muttered a correction. "Not gween. Green." Noah didn't seem to hear him. He honestly didn't even seem to register that another child was there.

I ended up putting all the books back on the shelf. As I tried to remember where I'd gotten each one, I stared at the rows and rows of parenting books. Books about diet and discipline and how to get your kid to do this and that and coping with this and that. Bullies, anxiety, allergies, learning disabilities, illness, grief. It's tough for everybody, the books seemed to say. It's a terrible business, this raising human beings thing.

***

We got home and put the boys to bed and I stood outside Noah's door for a bit, listening to him talk.

"Not gween. Geen. Not geen. Guh-een. Guh-reen. Guhreen! Good talking, Noah. Not gween. Guhreen."

Pansy

I spent all weekend planting things. OUTSIDE things. OUTSIDE, where there are bugs. Worms. Dirt. Nature.

After working diligently for two whole minutes I commented to Jason that this wasn't so bad. This wasn't so bad at all!

We've spent the last 10 months or so going back and forth about whether we really want to stay out here in the suburbs -- we kind of hate it, honestly -- and we were *thiiiiiis close* to making an offer on a condo in our old neighborhood (hell, practically in our old building) right after Ezra was born (hell, he was still pruny and gory) but then waffled for five minutes because HELLO, pruny gory baby and our house wasn't ready to sell (despite our best psychotic nesting efforts) and then the condo went under contract and All The Stuff With Noah happened and finally we both admitted that yes, we really really really do want to move back to the city but it's just not the right time yet, maybe next year, in the meantime, let's get outside and plant some goddamn tulips.

So there I was, planting things -- some bulbs for next year, some shrubs and groundcover and a million and four purple and yellow pansies -- and after I planted the third bulb and STILL hadn't gotten bored and/or irritated enough to wander away from the project, I degreed that yardwork really wasn't so bad.

That's when Jason noticed that I was planting two-year-old dead and dried-out husky shells of bulbs instead of actual living bulbs that would...you know...grow. He suggested I move on to the pansies.

I spent hours planting pansies. Yellow, purple, yellow, purple. We dragged Ezra's Jumperoo out onto the lawn with us, using him as bait to Finally Get Our Neighbors To Talk To Us, while I planted and planted and every exposed inch of my skin broke out in various kinds of rashes (when I was in elementary school and was quizzed on my extremely long list of allergies I usually gave up halfway through and simply said I was allergic to "OUTSIDE").

(Photo not actually representative of this story, but inserted anyway because HELLO TALKY.)

When I was done, I had several garden beds of somewhat pathetic little lines of droopy pansies -- nothing like those landscaping shows that I watch whenever I'm in a "let's make the best of the suburbs!" mood. (Whenever I'm in a "screw this, let's move back to the city!" mood I watch shows about real estate, and whenever I'm in a "we probably couldn't move even if we wanted to because goddamn this economy!" mood I watch the Food Network for 76 hours straight and order a lot of pizzas.)

We still decided it was a Good Start, since the previous owners hadn't exactly exerted a ton of landscaping effort either -- when we visited an area nursery soon after we moved in we found a clearance table all the way in the back that featured every single plant and shrub currently residing in our yard. Next weekend we mulch, or something, I don't know, and then after that we start on some serious vegetable container gardens in the backyard. Or something. I don't know! Last year we grew herbs and tomatoes and this year Jason bought a book and is growing salad and peppers and is promising me all sorts of amazing things and I think he may very well have lost his goddamned mind.

Meanwhile, every indoor plant we brought here from our old condo has died of root rot. I feel very responsible. My misguided belief that we really needed More Closet Space led to plant genocide, including my favorite jade plant, which was the first one to die, and at the time I was all, "oh well, who cares, I have extra bathrooms!" but I've never stopped thinking about that plant, because I loved that plant, and I miss that plant, and how lovely it always looked on the windowsill at our old condo. And while I'm no gardening expert or a pyschologist, I get that it's probably not REALLY about that plant.

Meanwhile, I have a splinter in my foot and my back hurts and I couldn't sleep last night because I was stressing about how we need to cover our new plants with some sheets tonight so they won't freeze and do I have enough clean sheets? But I suppose that's preferable to stressing about April 16th, the freshly-set date for Noah's evaluation with the school district -- speech, motor, hearing, vision, social skills, sensory issues, the whole shebang -- an evaluation that will likely decide for us whether we belong here or elsewhere, whether the district will help him or if we remain on our own, whether it's worth staying where we're unhappy or time to move on, Montessori vs. special needs vs. something in between, public vs. private, suburbs vs. city, whether or not we'll still be here next spring when the periennials return.

So Get Out Your Strollers and Jump Around

Today I am going to write the post I intended to write yesterday, before it got understandably bumped to make room for the whole near-death-by-Archer-Farms-Organics thing. Once you read this post, you will understand why comments along the line of "wow, you're really good in a crisis" cracked my shit up PROPER, because: no. Just no.

(And now that I've gotten the whole third-grade writing assignment "this is an essay about frogs and why I like frogs and in conclusion frogs are cool" format out of my system, on with the show frog blog!)

Imagine! If you will! Noonish on Wednesday! Preschool pick-up timeish! I head out to the car, baby in tow, and hit the remote to unlock the doors. No response. I try again. Nothing.

Awwwww hell. That's a dead battery, right there.

I unlock the door with the key and try to start the engine anyway, but la la la, it is indeed dead as a doornail.

"Well. Crap!" I cheerfully remark to Ezra, who is sitting in his car seat on the ground. Luckily, we bought a gadget just for this very problem! A handy portable battery jumper that plugs into the cigarette lighter, because Jason said he preferred if I WASN'T hooking stuff up to the actual battery, LIKE HA HA, VERY FUNNY.

Like I even know where the battery is. Whatever.

The battery charger was in the trunk. So I hit the trunk button on the remote. Oh, right, duh. I hit the unlock button on the door, still obviously new to the idea of "power" and "electricity" and "batteries" and look, I have a degree in COMMUNICATIONS, people. I minored in ENGLISH. I'm barely qualified to DRIVE.

So I walk around to the trunk and try to open it. Locked. And yes, I totally tried to unlock it with the remote. Again. I also don't really know how to override my brain's auto-pilot.

I go to use the key and...huh.

Where do I put the key?

(Background: it's a Subaru Forester. We bought it last summer, and until this very moment I had never opened the trunk with anything but the remote.)

Looking for all the world like a person Who Just Does Not Understand How The World Works, I search and search all over the trunk door, randomly poking the key at anything resembling a lock. Nope, that's screw. And that's another screw. What the fucking fuck?

I climb back in the driver's seat and looked for the manual trunk release. I manage to pop the hood and the gas tank and readjust the steering wheel, but there is nothing for the trunk. I look in the glove compartment, vaguely remembering a car I once owned that hid some important button in there, though I forget what it was. Batmobile-warp-setting? I look all over the floor and at this point I'm getting a tad WORKED UP because PRESCHOOL! PRESCHOOOOOOL!

Okay, fine. We'll do this the hard way. The hard, awkward, grunty way that will probably result in me flashing mom-ass-crack to the neighborhood while I climb over the backseat to try to open the trunk that way.

(The battery jumper was not just *in* the trunk, of course, in an easily accessible area -- it was buried in the bottom of the storage area under the floor, blocked by 1) a floor panel, 2) a hard plastic mat designed to protect that precious fucking floor panel, 3) two dozen reusable grocery bags, 3) a stroller frame for Ezra's car seat, 4) a single Maclaren umbrella stroller, and 5) the biggest heaviest goddamn fucking double stroller on the market today: the Phil & Ted's.)

I huff and puff and reach around all this garbage, desperately trying to reach the door, which...does not have a latch or a handle or a lock or a release button or OH MY GOD YOU HAVE GOT TO BE FUCKING KIDDING ME.

I give up and call Jason to explain the situation. He doesn't believe me about the trunk thing. I go back to inspect the back door again, just to be sure, just because I have an incredible track record of finding the exact thing I swear is lost forever when I'm on the phone with Jason screeching about how something is lost forever BECAUSE YOU MOVED IT WHERE DID YOU MOVE IT YOU MUST HAVE MOVED IT SOMEWHERE I SWEAR TO GOD I'M GONNA Oh. Look. Here it is! Never mind! Loveyoubye!

He suggests just getting the stupid jumper out of the trunk by way of the backseat. I whine about all the stuuuuuffff back there and how I can't put the backseat down or anything because then I'd have to take out the car seats and that takes forever and seriously I have to pull that heavy goddamn stroller over the backseat and that's going to be harder than you think because it's heaveeeeee.

"Yeah," Jason agrees. I swear I can hear him shrugging.

Because he is not giving me the sympathy for How Difficult Amy's Life Is Sometimes that I desire, I hang up on him.

I start pulling the big stroller over the seat, struggling to get a good grip on it, as my knees and legs are wobbling all over the base of Ezra's infant seat, but then I finally get it up and over and...wedged in by the back headrest, which it hadn't really occurred to me to remove. I push the stroller back into the trunk, remove the headrest and try again.

It takes a few good yanks before I get a good grip on the stroller and manage to get it up and over the seat, but I do, and at the last minute I overestimate the amount of force needed because OH CRAP THE WHEELS INERTIA HALP and the next thing I know the stroller makes it all the way over and falls on me, knocking me off my unsteady perch and my ass falls into the space between the driver's seat and the back seat and let me just tell you: my ass is too big for that space but I fold up like book anyway and end up wedged between the seats, with my ass dangling a couple inches off the floor, my back pushed forward by the recline of the driver's seat and OH HELL MY LEGS are buried somewhere under a ginormous, bright green stroller and my baby is still sitting on the asphalt in our next-door neighbor's parking space and I STILL HAVEN'T FIGURED OUT HOW TO OPEN THE TRUNK.

(I have, at least, figured out WHY the car's battery is dead: the ceiling light in the trunk got switched from the "turn on when the door is open" setting to the "be on all the time" setting, like WHY would anyone need that setting, that's a battery-killing stupid setting and if I had to guess how the setting got changed I would lay the blame squarely on the giant stroller currently cutting off the oxygen supply to my feet.)

I wriggle and wiggle and manage to get out from under the stroller and pull a few more items out of the trunk without further incident, and ta-da! I lift the floor panel (which only opens in the direction of the unopenable, Pharoah's tomb-like back door, OF COURSE) and blindly reach around and get my fingers on what I think is the battery jumper. And it is! And look! It still has the instructions attached to it. Oh, fucking happy day.

Step one! Turn unit on by pressing the ON/OFF button.

*press*

*press press*

*presspresspresspresspresspress*

Step two! If the unit does not turn on, you probably forgot to charge it up, moron.

Step three! Stand in the street looking pathetically around for someone, anyone who could give you a jump the old-fashioned way, provided they jumper cables, because you, of course, don't have jumper cables. Who needs jumper cables when you have an awesome portable battery jumper? You just keep in the trunk!

Step four! Call husband, have him leave work to go claim poor, abandoned child at school, take baby inside and search for the charging adaptor for the battery jumper, which you won't find but you WILL come across a six-inch solid chocolate Santa that your three-year-old got in his Christmas stocking.

Step five! Eat the aforementioned chocolate Santa. It's really the only logical conclusion to this mess of a story.

The Best Answer To That Annoying "So What Do You DO All Day" Question Yet

I snapped this photo as evidence that I Am Getting The Hang Of This Two Kids At Home Thing, slowly but surely. Since reducing Noah's preschool attendance, Tuesdays and Thursdays have not exactly been my favorite or most productive days. But here! Look! The whole still-in-pajamas-thing aside, this is a nice little moment. Two brothers equally intrigued by Elmo videos on YouTube, and no one is crying or whining or jumping on the baby's head. (Full disclosure: that kind of happened yesterday.)

30 minutes later I was performing the Heimlich on Noah, who thought it would be fun to shove an entire fruit bar into his mouth, bit by bit, chewing but not swallowing, forming a golf-ball-sized gooey mass of airway-blocking goodness. And THEN he thought it would be even MORE fun to run away from me when I realized what he'd done and instructed him to spit it out before he choked on it.

And then he choked on it. Not gagging, not gasping, just a few seconds of terrible silence while his eyes bugged out and his mouth hung open and his hands flapped in a panic. And I thanked God for all those painful mornings at my old office when I stood in the kitchen and stared blankly at the Emergency Medical Procedures posters on the wall while waiting for the stupid coffee to brew. I calmly whacked on his back and then thrust up on his belly until we both sat panting on the floor and there was vomit everywhere and the mass formerly known as a fruit bar and I realized it had never even occurred to me to be scared until it was all over and HOLY SHIT THAT JUST ACTUALLY HAPPENED.

Noah wanted a hug and another fruit bar. I told him he could have the hug.

Adult supervision required.

Exhaustification

Oh my God, y'all.

So Monday night* the phone rings, it's my mom, my dad is back in the hospital. Irregular EKG, lung problems, dizzy spells with chest pains and problems breathing, yadda blah etc. By midnight, he's been admitted, by Tuesday morning the doctors are all, MEH, go home, it's all probably nothing. Have some more Xanax. (My mother is EMPHATIC that these episodes are not panic attacks, as he already HAS panic attacks and takes Xanax for them but there is also Something Completely Different going on that no one seems willing to get to the bottom of.)

Oh, but before you go home this here nurse is gonna draw some blood and slap a bandage on you while completely forgetting about the massive amounts of blood thinners you're on and WHAT DO YOU MEAN YOU ARE THINKING WE ARE ALL MAYBE LESS THAN COMPETENT?

I was all set to do that EVERYBODY! IN THE CAR! NOW! thing that I do, but I woke up with a cold, another blablittyblatbitch cold, hopefully the last one for winter (just in time for ALLERGY SEASON!). But still. Two topics that this blog has covered a few too many times in recent months: mortality of aging parents and mucus.

AND THEN! Something weird and complicated and completely boring happened with my phone and a voicemail from LAST THURSDAY suddenly appeared in my inbox and lo, this phantom voicemail was the school district, calling at long last to schedule Noah's evaluation. And I immediately called them back, all AAAAEEEIIII and OMGGGG and the nice lady who answered informed me that "everybody" was out at clinics that day and could I call back on Thursday? And then I said, "Sure! No problem!" And then I went home and bit my pillow and my brain leaked out all over it so FINE. NOW I HAVE TO DO LAUNDRY.

And then I thought to myself, "Self, you should just not write about any of this and hope that by Wednesday morning everything in the world is just magically all better."

(My optimism! It borders on deranged.)

Anyway. Hi, Wednesday! You sure did turn out to be overrated.

Here: Have a baby story. Ezra officially clocked in at five months old on Sunday, and according to my email newsletter of things to obsess over this month, he should be fully rolling from front to back by now. And I thought: Hmmm.

He can roll from his side to his front, but I'm not sure I've ever seen him roll back over from tha- OH LOOK THERE HE GOES.

So now we're at that delightful stage where I put him on a blanket, on his tummy, like I've always done because he actually really loves being on his tummy, only now he rolls over immediately and then squawks in protest because he hates being on his back WHY AM I ON MY BACK HALP HALP MOOOMMM!

And then I flip him back over and put a toy in front of him and he's all YAY I LOVE THIS TOY I'M GOING TO ROLL OVER WITH JOY OH FUCK NOW WHAT.

Therefore, I don't feel guilty about slapping bibs on him that represent my own personal belief system and values. He can't even READ yet. God. Those baby newsletters a load of crap.

* I know, I know. The recent-ish compulsion to start sentences off with "so" is SO on the top of my list of non-adorable grating blogging tics** to get rid of, along with overuse of "apparently" and "totally" and of course, ending every sentence with CAPS LOCK, but I am apparently totally unable to DO THAT, SO...

**Oh, God. I bet a good 25% of you never really noticed that I do those things all the time but now it's going to drive you completely batty everytime you read an entry here, sorry.

Things I Would Have Twittered On Saturday If I Hadn't Left My Phone At Home

(But I did! So today you get a whole bunch of sentences I thought of at the time but had no way to immediately share them with the world, the horror. Lucky you.)

amalah is going to the aquarium today. It's like the fucking zoo, but with fish.

(That last tweet goes out to anybody who did not know what an "aquarium" is. I'm just here to help.)

Humbling Parenting Moment of the Day: just threatened to NOT go to the aquarium unless Noah took one single bite of a goddamn McNugget.

Before I had any babies I thought kids would eat sushi if you just never fed them junk like McNuggets. I was one smug-ass piece of crap.

Ezra, on the other hand, just ate an entire jar of carrots, then tried to eat the paper towel I wiped his face with.

Jason is unimpressed by my rendition of "Good Morning Baltimore." Points out that it's the afternoon, and dangerously close to naptime. Pffft.

Oh, my God. Is that the line to get in?

Oh, my God. That's just the line to get tickets. THAT'S the line to get in.

What's the deal with that members-only entrance? Overpriced season passes? Do we get jackets?

GUESS WHO JUST SIGNED UP FOR AQUARIUM MEMBERSHIPS, BITCHES.

Aaaaaaand. The camera. Is at home. Probably getting it on with my slut phone.

Just explained "hold hands or ride in the stroller" rule to Noah. Just realized you can't take strollers inside. This trip is made of fail.

(Thank God I brought the Ergo. Just saw another mother lugging huge non-walking baby in arms, cursing Stroller Check to the skies.)

Noah wants to go swimming in the sting ray tank. I told him to ask me in an hour or so.

HOLY FUCKING EEL.

AAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHH SHARKS AAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHH

According to Noah, every fish in here is either a Nemo or a Dorrie. Take THAT, marine biology!

Ezra likes the fish too. Likes the boobs more.

Seriously though, this place has a lot of ramps. Confusing, curly, circle-ly ramps.

OH MY GOD SHARKS AND GIANT EELS IN THE SAME TANK UNHOLY UNION OF TERROR

Just changed cloth diaper in public restroom, got compliments on Cuteness, Earth Saveitude. Am smug piece of crap once again. Aaahh.

Aaaaaand. Ramps ultimately proved irresistible to three-year-old. He's off and running.

Would it be wrong to tell him that they feed lost children to the sharks?

Re: right or wrongness of Shark Threat: TOO LATE.

Aaaaaand. 90 minutes later, we're back in the car. Took us 45 minutes to drive here. Hooray for math!

Everybody is crying. EVERYBODY.

Sooooo happy we bought those memberships and can go back as often as we want! I think we'll alternate weekends: Aquarium, Zoo, IKEA.

(FIN)

A Million Tiny Updates

My coffeemaker randomly overflowed AGAIN this morning, despite my remembering the inner basket and the filter and the carafe and it wasn't my fault and basically I HATE IT AND ITS ASS FACE.

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The unthinkable (yet long-predicted-by-readers-of-this-blog) thing finally happened last night: Jason and I both turned to Noah -- our precious little speech-delayed child -- and begged him to please, just shut up for a goddamn minute, just be quiet, oh my God, my eardrums cannot take another second of full-volume chatter about goddamn Corduroy and his goddamn button and HERE COMES THE CAT! HERE COMES THE CAT! HERE! COMES! THE GODDAMN! CAT! and seriously, child, do you ever stop to breathe anymore?

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(I assure you that last bit had a LOT fewer "goddamns" in real life.)

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I went ahead and sent in our deposit to the Montessori preschool. I just don't feel -- right now, anyway -- that Noah's little quirks and "issues" and "whatevers" are enough to justify pulling him out of the mainstream. I...yes. I feel that. I'm still not totally back up to my old confidence levels regarding my decision-making skills for him, but I finally pulled my ass out of that "paralyzed by past actions into complete inaction" sinkhole I've been in for a few months now. If he succeeds at this school, he could potentially stay there through sixth grade. If it's still not the right fit, well, we've still got two more years until kindergarten to figure this shit out, and hopefully by then Ezra will be off the boob and Mama will be on the Xanax.

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My dad came home from the hospital yesterday. YESTERDAY. It's been...I don't even know how long it's been. It's been a long bumpy story with no end in sight and more collapsed lungs! and pneumonia! and infections! and heart palpitations and chest pains and breathing treatments and incompetant cardiac rehab centers and...and...is it okay if I just mash my fingers down on the keyboard for a bit? Yes? Okay. OSFHGOSDHFOASJDASLMAEOHRHFFOEIJDJGPS.

Thanks. I feel better now. My dad feels better to be home, I know, but...he's not really better yet. He is and he isn't. I don't know. There's a lot of medical equipment in the house and therapy and my mom is pretty scared and I haven't been talking about it because it's hard to talk about because I'm NOT THERE and haven't been able to be there and I don't feel like I have a good grasp on the situation. And MAH GOODNESS, if I could get a good grasp on one! single! fucking! situation around here I WOULD APPRECIATE VERY MUCH, UNIVERSE.

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Wait. Hang on. There is one thing going ridiculously well, provided this next paragraph doesn't up and jinx everything: Ezra is sleeping through the night, allllll night. Every night. In his crib. 9 pm to 8 am, at least. Unswaddled, even. He's gotten mighty proficient at getting his thumb into his mouth (with a bare minimum of face-and-eyeball poking from bad aim), and is completely in love with Noah's old Fisher Price crib aquarium. (We also took down his mobile, which apparently was scaring the crap out him.) We bathe, we rock and sing and nurse, and he just...goes to sleep, like a perfectly reasonable person. I keep the video monitor aimed direction at him (we're getting some rollage, people, and he's developed quite a penchant for tummy sleeping) all night, but with each passing night of solid, uninterrupted sleep and waking up to a perfectly contented and alive baby, I'm relaxing about it. Ever so slightly, with maybe only ONE nightly jerking awake in confusion because OH MY GOD WHERE IS THE BABY DID I JUST KICK THE BABY OH WAIT THAT WAS THE CAT.

SORRY CATZZZZZZZZZ.

He's also taking predictable daytime naps -- two nice ones, the second of which often overlaps Noah's nap (which is hit-or-miss some days, but at the very least involves a decent chunk of Quiet Time In Your Room Reading Books I Do Not Care If You Sleep But By God You Will Stay In Your Room Until Mama's Eyelid Stops Twitching).

My only guess as to the cause of this belated Christmas miracle is that we've been following Ezra's lead when it comes to solid food as opposed to the books and rules and such. (Within reason, of course.) He wants solids twice a day. He wants his cereals chunky and substantial and not thinned out (the initially rejected barley cereal became a runaway hit once it spent the night in the refrigerator and got really plump and sticky). He wants to hold and gum on his own rice rusk, dagnabbit. He wants MOAR SWEET POTATOES and you BETTER be planning to share that avocado slice from your sandwich, missy.

And because I am frankly, fresh out of Fretting, we go with it.

(I still have a really good supply of Hovering, of course, ready to whip out at the first sign of gagging or choking or...uh, allergy-ing. Although mostly I Hover to prevent sibling grilled-cheese-related plate swipings, because HOLY CRAP, this baby likes food.)

He still lovvvves nursing, even though I do miss the exclusive closeness we had before, even though my head sometimes spins by how quickly it's all happening this time.

He is still such a darling lump of baby, though, with insane little thighs and cheeks and funny squawks and faces, whose needs are uncomplicated and whose happiness is infectious, whose whole face lights up everytime I simply walk into the room. It's been a long winter, and I cannot even imagine what these past few months would have been like without the wonderful ray of sunshine that is This Boy.

(And that goes for this crazy monkey, too.)