Scootastrophe!

So Noah fell off his scooter yesterday. Skinned both of his knees up.

And you know, THE END.

Unless you are his father. Remember the fruit sticker? This was way worse than the fruit sticker. Because not only was a fall off a scooter -- a three-inches-off-the-ground scooter -- the worst thing that could ever befall one's precious snowflake offspring, it was totally MY FAULT, YOU NEGLIGENT MONSTER.

My fault, his version = holding precious snowflake #2 at top of a deceptively slopey hill, allowing precious snowflake #1 to fly past me on scooter, shouting at him to "turn into the grass" when he picked up a little too much speed instead of...I DON'T KNOW. Dropping the baby on the curb to run after Noah, perhaps hurling my body onto the pavement underneath him at the exact second of impact. Stopping the scooter with my mind powers, thus revealing ourselves to be a family of telekinetic mutants to the entire neighborhood. Writing letters to the county four years ago to have the sidewalks replaced with packing peanuts. Because I really should have seen this coming.

My fault, my version = I think he was mostly mad because I was entirely too calm about it. I made him look totes uncool, you guys. There was blood and and I was all, yep, whatever, that's why we wear helmets, dude, and Jason was all, OMFG SMELLING SALTS.

We brought Noah inside and offered various bribes in exchange for calming down -- ice cream sandwich? candy? chocolate milk? -- and after awhile he mournfully accepted some chocolate-covered raisins. Jason poured himself a scotch while I hissed at him that oh, you know, IN THE FUTURE, I would prefer if he NOT shout "What the fuck were you thinking?" at top volume in front of the CHILDREN, in front of the NEIGHBORS, and on second thought, could he just go ahead and not spazz out over skinned knees, like we have BOYS, TWO OF THEM, which equals about 4,500,075 skinned knees, lifetime. Also: YOU PANSY.

(Also. ALSO! Who is the parent who vetoed the elbow and knee pad set as being "dorky"? And was upset that the bike store didn't have the skater helmet in Noah's size because it was more "badass" than the bike helmet?)

(Hint: The same parent who was now sobbing helplessly into a sofa cushion because BLOOD! BLOOD! HE COULD HAVE BEEN KILLED!)

Noah finished his candy and turned his tear-stained face towards me. I launched into a cheerful pep talk about falling down and getting hurt and the importance of Getting Back On and Trying Again. He nodded solemnly and announced that he also needed that ice cream sandwich, after all.

Later, Jason asked if I planned to "write about this" and I asked if he meant "this" as in, the time Noah fell off his scooter or the time you revealed himself to be a total wuss, worthy of much Internet scorn and derision because HAAAAAAAAAA YOU SHOULD HAVE SEEN YOUR FACE?

The second one, he said. I kind of deserve it.

DONE, I said. Also, you're adorable and I love you.

***

I should probably mention that prior to the Great Scooter Crash of Aught-Nine, we took Noah shopping for his very own big boy birthday bike. (SPOILER: Noah is getting a bike for his birthday. Nobody say anything to him. At least not in the...say, two hours right before we give it to him.) His favorite one was pink and had butterflies on the seat. I hope he won't be too disappointed when he gets the blue version, as I enjoy crushing whimsical individuality in favor of gender stereotyping. I can't raise a boy who screams like a girl at the sight of a bloody knee, you know?

BOY MUST BE WARRIOR. GO OUT AND SHOW THAT SIDEWALK WHO IS BOSS. THEN WE SHALL CUDDLE AND I WILL PINCH YOUR BUTT AND FEED YOU MORE CANDY BECAUSE AWWW, LOOK AT THOSE POOR LITTLE BOO-BOOS.

In Which Wii Bowling Ruins My Life

Or, What Happens When You Let Your Wii Bowling Pro Status Go To Your Head

Or, Not To Be Overly DRAMATIC, Or Anything

Scene, Bowling Alley, Saturday Night

Amy: Ew. Bowling shoes? Hasn't technology rendered community shoes obsolete yet?

Jason: Wait, did you forget to wear socks?

Amy: *pause*

Amy: Yes.

Jason. EW.

Amy: Also, none of these balls have sparkly stars on them.

Jason: And?

Amy: So how will anybody know how awesome I am? That I am their better? They should put my face on a blimp, at least.

Game One

Amy: *bowls*

Ball: *gutters*

Amy: *bowls*

Ball: *gutters*

Amy: *makes lighthearted jokes at her expense, trying to mask how DEEPLY and GENUINELY rattled she is, OH MY GOD, she cannot LOSE AT THINGS, gaaaaaaah*

Ball: *gutters*

FINAL SCORE: 34

Game Two

Two couples arrive, including one guy who is already slurring his words at the top of his lungs, and are assigned to the lane next to us. The one we share tables and a score machine with. I am immediately thrown even further of my game by the presence of other actual human beings who are not part of my Mii gallery and shockingly, do not exist solely to cheer when I bowl a strike. Am so unnerved I send the ball backwards into the seating area on my next frame.

Drunk Asshole: WHOO HOOO WAY TO GOOOOO.

Jason: Hold the B button down longer next time!

Drunk Asshole: (to the waitress) Your goal tonight is to get our wives druuuuunk. The druuuunker they get, the hiiiiiiiigher your tip, okay, Peaches? (continues in graphic detail to describe WHY, exactly, he needs his wife to get druuuuuuuunk)

Amy: *bowls*

Ball: *gutters*

Amy: That one was because of FEMINISM, by the way. Not because I suck at this.

Jason: *not bowling particularly well, but at LEAST manages to knock pins down most frames*

Drunk Asshole: *is obsessed with returning unused balls in our lane to the racks, keeps trying to take our balls away, has also started referring to us by our first names, thus illustrating the reason why you always go with initials-only for the scoring screen in real-life bowling*

Amy: *bowls*

Ball: *gutters*

Drunk Asshole: Niiiice. Try aiming for the pins next time.

Amy: Really? You're going to heckle me? Because...no.

Drunk Asshole: *opens mouth, wisely closes it, appears to sense he has been outmatched in assholery*

Jason: Holy shit, what did you say to him? You actually said something to him? We've been together over 12 years and I've never seen you confront so much as a laundry hamper.

Amy: I hate him. I hate him so much. I hate this game. I hate everything going on right now and WHY AM I SO BAD AT THIS? PEOPLE CAN SEE HOW BAD I AM AT THIS AND IT'S FREAKING ME OUT, MAN.

Amy: *bowls*

Ball: *strike!*

Amy: *OMG POINTS! POINTS! LOOK*

Drunk Asshole: *too busy rearranging the tables to notice*

Amy: *storms back to seat, pulls HER table with HER mozzarella sticks back towards HER side of the lane because it is HERS and NOT HIS and PERSONAL SPACE and ALL THAT*

Drunk Asshole: *bowls a turkey, like an ASSHOLE*

FINAL SCORE: 19

Amy: Fuck this, let's go home.

Amy & Jason: *go home, to find both children still awake and ornery and needy, thus defeating the WHOLE POINT of getting a babysitter, but whatever, our rockstar lifestyle is what it is, yo*

Jason: Maybe next weekend we'll go play some ping-pong.

Epilogue

Amy: *gets on the Wii and bowls a 217*

Drunk Asshole & Co.: *are probably still trying to figure out what was up with that raging bitch at the bowling alley last weekend, Jesus H. Christ, her husband should try getting her druuuuuuunk next time or something*

Weekend Vignettes

For reasons that I believe can go mostly undocumented, we thought the dog had salmonella on Saturday. We found stray mussel shells from a disastrously ambitious dinner scattered in the yard; puddles of sick scattered pretty much everywhere else. She's actually just fine, but I just wanted to mention it anyway because I had to clean up a LOT of barf. You know. Just in case Ceiba ever reads this website one day. I cleaned up your barf, and I didn't like it. And now you never call! Ingrate.

*They ALL DIED before we could cook them. I set them on a paper towel for ONE MINUTE and every goddamn mussel decided to commit ritualistic suicide rather than face the hot pan of death. I was going to drown you in WINE, you bastards. WINE. We should all be so lucky to die such a death.

***
In other best-left-to-the-imagination news, we have a mouse in our kitchen. And clearly, the most useless-ass pets EVER.

***

Scene: Every Saturday Morning In Our House, Ever

Jason: Anything you want to do today?

Amy: I want to go to Ikea.

Jason: We're not going to Ikea.

Amy: (dramatic flailing)

Fin.

***

You probably know by now that I eat pretty much everything. Food is my hobby, since I don't know how to knit and dislike standing for long periods of time. I'm actually trying to think of something that I won't eat. Wait, okay, I've got it: raw onions, Cool Whip, head cheese. Tongue as long as it still resembles a tongue. I used to not eat rabbit -- because you know, bunnnnnnies! -- until we moved to the suburbs and a goddamn rabbit ate all my flowers and now I will eat the hell out some rabbit. I will eat that rabbit, if my dog ever stops gnawing on diseased mussels long enough to catch the stupid thing. (Hey, here's a recipe!)

Saturday night I ate pork cracklins for the first time -- fancy cracklins, apparently, since they were served on a charcuterie board alongside wee little pickles -- and for the first time in ages I was completely flummoxed by a food item. It was salty, crunchy and aggressively unhealthy -- my top three most favorite adjectives for food -- but OH MY GOD, IT WAS SKIN, RECOGNIZABLE SKIN, THERE WERE VISIBLE HAIR FOLLICLES. I could FEEL the skin-like texture on my tongue, I was Homer Simpson, sampling from the regenerative bacon buffet in the Garden of Eden.*

So instead of eating them, I lined a few up on my arm and asked Jason to get another few orders because the restaurant was chilly and I wanted a cardigan. Jason was all, "give those back, they're delicious."

*If you know what I'm talking about here, congratulations! We can be friends. We'll eat some deep-fried skin and then go get ice cream.

***

On Sunday, we went to a birthday party at Chuck E. Cheese. Noah loved everything about it, except for the animatronic Chuck E. Cheese, whom he eyed warily from the table, nervously eating bites of pizza. When the costumed Chuck E. Cheese (who was missing one furry glove for most of the proceedings) showed up, we had to retreat to a safe distance.

Noah: THAT BUNNY NEEDS TO GO AWAY.

Amy: He's a mouse, sweetie.

Noah: THAT BUNNY MOUSE NEEDS TO GO HOME.

***

As we drove home, Jason and I had a 20-minute unironic conversation about minivans and the many, many attractive features they offer. We're certainly not in the market for a new car or anything, but Jason rode in his coworker's Odyssey and like, maaaaaan, that thing was sweeeeeet. You don't even have to fold the stroller or anything. I remembered the same thing about a friend's minivan in a fit of retroactive lust, shaking my head at my naive young ATTITUDE towards minivans, back when I knew NOTHING about the world and what happens to all your "adequate cargo space" once you have two children.

Amy: I mean, just THINK of all the stuff we could buy at Ikea!

***

We never made it to Ikea. We went to the Big Box Baby Store instead and bought additional baby gates, because our 9-month-old does not have the sense God gave a bunny mouse. While shopping, I was approached TWICE about the Ergo carrier and whether I liked it (yes, oh God, yes), what age I started using it (31) (haaaa, I'm an ass), and then approached again by someone trying to decide between two different floor gyms and which one was better (is it for your baby? no? okay, get whatever one blinks and makes noise.)

Less than an hour after that, we stopped at Whole Foods and a timid young thing in high heels asked me what the difference was between brown eggs and white eggs, and if she hard-boiled the brown ones would they like, be the same? With a white part and a yellow center? She then admitted that this was her first grocery-shopping trip out on her own, and I noticed that her shopping list contained the instruction to "open egg carton and check for broken shells."

Amy: Wow, I must look like, really extra helpful today, or something!

Jason: I think it's more that you just look so much like a mom.

Amy: Do I look like I drive a minivan? Because I don't. Yet. Seriously, the back seats FOLD INTO THE FLOOR, OH MY GOD.

***

We've been pricing up laptops for awhile now -- the Macbook's motherfuckingboard was going to cost a motherfucking fortune to fix, plus it seemed like the water damage was pretty damn catastrophic, and the repair couldn't guarantee that other inside-techie things hadn't shorted out -- and I was resigned to buying a cheaper non-Mac, because. Well. Cheaper. I officially put off the purchase waaaay too long, leading to lost posts and enormous amounts of frustration once the mouse key broke, randomly moving the cursor to different parts of the screen while I typed gaaaaaaaaah kill.

So on Thursday we went to the Big Box Computer Store and I glumly pecked on some keyboards and finally declared one "pretty okay." I knew we could get it cheaper online though, so we didn't buy it.

On Friday -- before any of this other stuff happened, even though Jason probably knew it was a pretty safe bet that I would make stupid jokes out in public, that I would bug him about taking me to Ikea, that I would wander around stores looking like a frumpy, frizzy, minivan-lusting mom -- he came home from work and pulled a brand-new Macbook out of his briefcase. I was stunned.

Jason: You use it every day. It's what you do. It's important. You should have the one you want.

Our anniversary is in a few days. Eleven years. Our life is nothing like the one we thought we'd have once upon a time.

(I still have the one I want.)

I Asked a Bottle of Red Wine to be My Life Coach, and Look Where It Got Me

Conclusion to Amy Takes Her Foot-in-Mouth Show On the Road: Holy awkward SHITBALLS, people. She walked by me this morning and didn't even LOOK at me. And then picked her son up EARLY this afternoon. Probably just to avoid me, because I am sure I made that much of an impression and there couldn't possibly be any other explanation, like a doctor's appointment or a vacation or...okay, there are possibly a few other explanations. But me and my mad social skillz remain suspicious. Suspicious and lonely and very glad we were both too lazy to follow-through on the cookie idea.

Over the last few weeks I've read more than a smattering of blog entries addressing the whole "are we done having babies" question. A good number of them were written by women with babies somewhere around Ezra's age. And they of course got me thinking about writing a similar entry, because I haven't had an original thought bash around my skull since at least 2004. (Unless you include the thing with the talking deodorants. Then I am a national treasure of useless creative vision.)

A few weeks after Ezra was born, I tentatively said something to Jason about the topic. Something like, "We're done, right?" And he immediately said yes, we're done.

So I asked him when, you know, he planned on calling the doctor, as per our longstanding agreement on the division of childbearing and childpreventing duties. And then he immediately said, oh, wait, I didn't mean THAT done.

Noah was going to be our only child -- a plan that lasted about five weeks or so. The whole experience was exactly like a roller coaster -- terrifying, thrilling, hard on the eardrums -- and we were already shrieking "LET'S GO DO THAT AGAIN!" before the safety bars had even been released.

And Ezra, of course, was going to be our last child. I tried to savor my pregnancy accordingly: This is the last time I'll feel a baby kicking. The last time I'll prepare a nursery. The last time I'll have the belly and the boobs and the nausea and the fat face and the weird skin and the backaches and the puking for SIX GODFORSAKEN MONTHS.

Right. So maybe I could kind of see the positives of the "no more babies" situation. At times, anyway. Plus, it was finally dawning on me that babies are actually SMALL CHILDREN. Who become slightly bigger children. And that no matter what we do or how hard we pray it to be otherwise, I am going to have to deal with a three-year-old ALL OVER AGAIN.

We're done. Right?

***

Last week Jason and I booked the babysitter and went out for some sushi and a movie. There was a young couple next to us with their baby girl, who was about Ezra's age. I made some kind of involuntary squawk at the sight of her adorable little cotton sundress, and Jason sighed.

"You want a girl, don't you?"

Do I want a girl? Do I really want a girl knowing how hard it is to raise one in this culture of over-sexualized Princess Dora Bratz dolls and Mean Girls and eating disorders and oh God, the INTERNET? Do I really want a girl, a teenage girl, who may end up being exactly like me, or nothing like me, but either way will be all but guaranteed to hate me for at least a few solid good years? Do I really want a girl to come along and blast me out of the comfort zone I've created as being the mother of boys?

"Yes. I think I do."

Jason sighed again and admitted that if we KNEW we'd be guaranteed a girl, he'd love to have another baby. And before I could even mention the A-word (a complicated discussion we've had many times before, for the record) (edited to add: ADOPTION, holy crap, not the other A-word), he went on. "Whatever. Even if we had another boy, I'd be so happy."

He then went on to wax rhapsodic about Ezra, sweet Ezra, the baby who at one time Jason hoped would be a daughter, but who is a son and who is exactly who he is supposed to be and who our family needed, because HOLY CRAP HE IS SO AWESOME.

***

Okay, so maybe we're NOT done. At least, as Jason said, not THAT done. But I am not in a rush, far from it. We have a few more years before my (admittedly already erratic) fertility clock winds down, so perhaps it's best to simply say we're not ruling it out sometime in the future, when the boys are older and a little more mature or at least capable of wiping their own butts. Perhaps, as Noah's issues become a little more understandable and a lot less of a question mark, we could adopt, thus skipping the fairly awful process of trying month after month after month to conceive. Perhaps we will rule it out later down the road, but for now, let's not rush into anything. Let's just leave everyone's anatomy as-is and...you know...BE CAREFUL in the meantime.

Yes. Good plan!

***

So of course this means that I -- she of the 75-day cycles, the wildly erratic and oftentimes completely absent ovulation -- would suddenly start getting regular periods. Like clockwork! Like birth-control-pill regular, down to the HOUR. Down to the hour BEFORE, when I suddenly realize that I've been a raving bitch all day and developed a single angry large pimple right in the middle of my forehead. Of course.

See, here's the thing: When you don't ovulate, you don't get pregnant, even if you want to! And I've spent most of the past six or so years of my life wanting to get pregnant, TRYING to get pregnant, but only very rarely actually succeeding in getting pregnant. And even before that, I generally viewed my condition as a plus, a perk -- who cares about birth control! I've got your birth control RIGHT HERE! <points to barren, uncooperative womb area, ohhhhh yeah>

And here's another thing: As a relatively-inexperienced regular-period-type-of-girl, it turns out that I am also really terrible at math.

And...dates. And...calendars. And stuff. I pulled up my old fertility-charting/period-reminder program this morning and entered in some data and...oh. What? This weekend? When we...and we didn't use...and...oh. OH.

Cough.

No. I don't have any big announcement to make. NO! As I scan what I've written so far I realize it totally sounds like that's what I'm leading up to, but no.

I'm just a 31-year-old mother-of-two in the midst of her Very First Pregnancy Scare, on the short end of the first Two-Week Wait where she honestly has no idea what outcome she's hoping for.

On the one hand: SPECTACULARLY TERRIBLE IDEA.

On the other hand:

I wouldn't kick another one out of bed for eating mini-waffles, you know?

Monday Hodgepodge

Picture of the day:

I would have cut the crust off your sandwich for you, kid. All you had to do was ask.

Secondary picture of the day:

<insert BANG BANG THUMP THUMP WHO THOUGHT THIS WAS A GOOD IDEA before viewing>

Story of the day, in which my husband goes to extraordinary lengths to conceal the fact that we'd forgotten that the refrigerator repairman was coming to the house and were not home at the agreed-upon appointment time:

We were at a park with the boys when Jason's phone rang. He recognized the number and was all, OH SHIT OH RIGHT THAT, but instead of answering like a grown-up and admitting that hey, we're not home right now, something came up, give us 20 minutes before you send the guy over (as they were only calling to confirm our at-home-ness before dispatching the repairman), he inexplicably launched us all into a confusing campaign of intrigue and subterfuge, opting to call them back once we were on our way home to claim that oh yes, my wife is at home, I don't know why she's not picking up the phone there, maybe she's outside! Let me try to reach her.

Then he hung up, waited five minutes and called them back to say that yes, my wife is at home, send the repairman over. And he drove on, confident in his strategy of deception because the office was XX minutes away and we were only X minutes away, and when I pointed out that they probably just dispatched the guy from wherever his last job was, which could have been around the damn corner from our damn house for all we damn knew, Jason looked a little concerned, but still maintained that his plan was masterful and brilliant, if possibly a tad pointless, because I didn't quite get WHY we were going through all this, since I was pretty sure this was why the company had the call-before-dispatching-even-if-you-have-an-appointment policy to begin with, BUT ANYWAY, there was no reasoning with him, he was either posessed or mad with power or both, plus it was kind of amusing, especially when I turned around to remind Noah about the importance of always telling the truth, except for when you forget to update your Google calendar. The Baby Jesus says it's okay then, and that's the real reason why Easter is always a different date every year.

But then! Just when we thought we were going to get away with our evil scheme! We pull onto our street and realize that the REPAIRMAN WAS ALREADY THERE. OUR WEB OF LIES WAS UNRAVELING BEFORE OUR VERY EYES. So Jason drives by really fast and goes around a little loopy cul-de-sac thing, stops the car and orders me and Noah out of the car and instructs us to walk the rest of the way home and claim that we were playing outside around the corner, and then Jason drove back to the house and pretended like he had no idea where we were and let the guy in. The guy who:

1) I'm pretty sure saw our car sort-of pull up and then speed off to hide around the corner, and
2) Probably passed the very area where I claimed Noah and I had been playing, and
3) Was very grumpy, and probably more than a little pleased to report that our refrigerator is actually quite fucked and must be replaced after all, you lying sacks of shit.

THE END.

The Life Less Documented

Funny thing about using this old laptop: I don't like using it, therefore I turn it off and put it down a lot. I wander away from it -- and the Internet -- in favor of shit like laundry or unloading the dishwasher or those-bananas-are-ripe-I-should-make-some-banana-bread-type whims. And while I doubt anybody is coming here to read about my super-extra-hot-damn-exciting life or anything, believe me when I tell you that WOW, this week has been boring. I've been boring. I've transcended boring. I've actually died of boredom and then risen from the dead to become boring's own personal messiah.

Although last night Jason and I had a date night, and on the way home Jason was challenged to a fistfight on the Metro by a tweaked out meth head who thought it would be a good idea to start calling a fellow white dude the n-word and then scream I'M FIVE FOOT EIGHT, MOTHERFUCKER repeatedly until the next station stop, where Jason told him to get off and wait for him on the platform. "I'll be right there," he said. "And we'll go at it."

The guy did, although his hopped-up excitement quickly turned to confusion as he watched the train pull away and leave him behind. Jason merrily waved at him through the window while I finally got brave enough to pull my head out of my handbag, where I had been "busy" looking for my "phone" during the whole ridiculous encounter.

***

Ezra would like to report that he discovered his toes, and they are FABULOUS. He is also blowing raspberries, eating us out of house and home (I'm glad I pledged to make his baby food this time because this kid would have a serious 10-pack-a-day Gerber habit), and just being all-around fabulous in general.

Significantly less fabulous: his two (TWO!) bottom teeth making a joint appearance, green beans (whatever, dude, I'm hiding them in your yams and there's nothing you can do about it) and any moment in time where Noah is not in his line of sight because Noah is TOTALLY the coolest.

***

Noah would like to know why nobody ever told him about Little Einsteins. Mommy would like to know who the fuck thought up the concept of a cartoon rocket powered by preschoolers patting on their thighs and the rocket has a jet for a nemesis and they plant seeds that sprout fucking harpsichords and why is the theme song so damn catchy and seriously, if I ever meet the person responsible on the Metro I actually WILL meet them on the platform and go at it.

("We're going on a trip in our favorite rocket ship." It's DRUGS, people. DRUUUUUGS.)

***

And here is where I was going to include a cute little video as atonement for the silence-y week around here, but it turns out my camera hates this laptop as much as I do. I've spent 45 minutes trying to at least get the two of them to acknowledge each other to no avail, and look, there's banana bread in the kitchen and you're lucky I've managed to pay attention to this post long enough to finish this last sentenc

A Bunch of Turkeys

(Photo-heavy post warning. Click below or skip it completely. It's like your very own Matrix blue pill/red pill conundrum!)

NOT FUNNY, CONTINUED

Well. We're all still alive. So that's something.

I'll spare you most of the slightly horrific, nose-blow-by-blow details of my weekend, except for:

1) Chest cold, i.e. coughing up my fucking toe bones.

2) Sinus infection, i.e. OH MY GOD EVERYBODY PLEASE STOP HAMMERING ON MY FACE.

3) Double ear infection, i.e. Noah no longer getting any sympathy for his SINGLE ear infection, like WHATEVER.

4) Pinkeye, i.e. or possibly "just" the double ear infection leaking out of both of my eyes.

5) Hives from an allergic reaction to the doses of antibiotic I swiped from Noah, i.e. HIVES? YOU THINK I GIVE A SHIT ABOUT SOME PUSSY ASS HIVES AT THIS POINT? Show me anaphylatic shock and then we'll talk.

Yeah.

My spirit was officially broken around 5 am on Sunday morning, when I woke up with both eyes sealed shut, realizing just how sick I still was, and trying to cry because I just wanted to feel better, but being unable to cry because my eyes were fucking sealed shut.

Luckily, darkest before dawn and all that. I am feeling better, save for the sensation that the left side of my face -- from my eardrums down to my back teeth -- is being used to banish contestants from The Gong Show.

Jason and I had our dinner out on Friday, even though I wasn't feeling very well, but I was worried that we only had a short window before my in-laws' stomach bug came and wiped us all out. I was also possibly a little feverish, and thus convinced that my house had turned into the hotel room from Ocean's Thirteen, become sentient and hellbent on my ultimate destruction.

But! Feeling better. I'm pretty sure. Noah is much better (including the rash/burn/horror of the Clorox Wipes Incident, for which my father-in-law is still apologizing and I'm still struggling to achieve balance between "honest mistake" and "OMFGWTFBBQBZZZT"), Ezra is the healthiest person in the house, and Jason is messing it all up by JUST NOW coming down with the chest cold that started all of this. I've offered to squirt breastmilk in his eyes in case he gets the pinkeye part, but I think he's leaning towards using Noah's leftover eye drops. (I used both, oh yes I did.) I did not extend the same offer to my in-laws, who just officially left us to parent our children, OUR PLURAL CHILDREN, alone.

And I'm pretty sure that no one else is going to come help us out. Not now or not ever. Because we lure you here with the promise of cuddly newborns and hilarious toddlers and homemade eggplant parmesan, and then we just sit around and sneeze on you for eight straight days.

That, or we force you to ooh and ahh over barely perceptible differences in the baby's facial expressions.

Flashback! Noah at pretty much the exact same age. That outfit still swallows Ezra whole.

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.

Four, Three, Two Days

Yep. Still pregnant. TiVo has two more days to come out peacefully before we go in after him.

(Comparison shot at 40 weeks from last time, although slightly more STRAIGHT-ON CLOSE-UP OH-THE-HORROR.)

And yes! These were taken in the same mirror as every other belly shot I've taken over the past year. The completely different furniture? Yeah. I did that. It needed to be done. The itching and the leg twitching and the terrible, terrible screaming wouldn't stop until I could say that truly, we have officially rearranged the furniture in every damn room in the house.

(Last night I had just upended both of our bedside endtables [the doors were opening the wrong way and each needed to be swapped to the other side, but of course that meant the contents needed to be swapped and while I was there I MIGHT AS WELL completely purge and reorganize them, I mean, really] when I realized that I was supposed to be meeting a bunch of bloggers who are here for the DC BlogHer mini-thing going on, which of course I didn't register for because hello! Still pregnant on October 13th? Fuck that idea and you and everything else in the entire world grrrarrr.)

(I made it to the dinner on time. I'm sure I was fucking DELIGHTFUL ray of sunshine. I ate a burrito and later woke up at 4 am timing what I hoped were contractions but were probably just gas.)

Now.

I know we've all had a lot of laughs at my expense regarding the crazy, crazy nesting thing that I do. I fully own up to the fact that I go way beyond nesting. Fuck twigs and feathers and dusting the baseboards -- I'd probably up and build a house from the ground up if you'd let me. Unhappy with your home renovation project? Don't hire just another contractor to take over -- get yourself a nine-months-pregnant lady in there. Extreme Nesting: Hardhat Oh-My-God-How-Am-I-Not-In-Labor-Already Edition.

But.

If you want to know why there is currently about five or six inches of a metal drill bit sticking out of my roof, let me assure you that I had NOTHING TO DO WITH IT.

Okay, maybe a little bit, since it was my idea to turn our cluttered, unused office area into more of a dressing/walk-in closet area, and this meant we also needed to rearrange the rest of the bedroom furniture, which meant moving the TV, which meant the cable outlet was now on the wrong wall, which meant a visible curling cable wire snaking across the room, lying in wait to jump up and snag you in the ankles, POSSIBLY WHILE YOU WERE HOLDING A NEWBORN, which meant we needed to run cable into a different wall.

Jason was all over this job, because POWER TOOLS. In particular, his BIG FUCKING ASS DRILL BIT, long enough to drill through walls and God knows what else. Lesser men's egos, perhaps.

It actually seemed simple enough, what with a closet on the other side of the wall and the attic above and he started drilling through the closet ceiling and then heading up to the attic to check for the hole to drop the cable into and...hmm. No hole. Must drill more! Harder, deeper, MOAR.

This went on a few times. No hole in the attic flooring. More drilling. Then...the drill bit got lodged in something. Jason guessed a two-by-four. And he couldn't get it out. The drill's motor coughed and choked and then gave up the ghost.

"Goddamit," he said. "I think I have to go buy a more powerful drill."

Needless to say, I was annoyed, because we really don't have the money right now for a more powerful drill. In my mind, since Jason told me we didn't have the money right now for a trip to Ikea for Storage Solutions (thus necessitating the relocation of old beat-up dressers instead of the actual walk-in-closet coordinating system of my organizational wet dreams), we don't have the money right now for ANYTHING. Especially drills that I will never use and will not help me categorize my shoes by heel height.

Jason left to go the hardware store. I continued sorting my pajamas in nursing-friendly and non-nursing-friendly categories, then got to work on my annotated and footnoted list of things that need to go into the hospital bag right before we leave.

(Samples: iPOD & HEADPHONES --> buy that damn Kid Rock song off iTunes first okay shut up; PILLOW & NURSING PILLOW --> pack in shopping bag for swiping hospital supplies later.)

A few minutes later he came back inside.

"Well. Okay." he said. "I realize why I couldn't find the hole in the attic now."

"And?"

"The hole is...in our roof."

So. Yes. While drilling through the closet ceiling, my husband drilled too close to the edge of the house and into a front vestibule-ish thing and THAT is why there is a drill bit sticking up out of our roof right now.

(Alternate caption: Luuuucyyyyy!)

I think that's all I need to say about that, except that I laughed and laughed until tears poured down my face and I could only barely manage to tell Jason that while I don't think I've ever been this furious with him, the thought of him having to call a professional roofer and explain this one makes it all so completely worth it.