Look! Christmas pictures! Still relevant because I say so. Notice Santa's ingenious use of the number 4 in the absence of a third A. I wonder how many other greetings she he tried to spell before giving up and going with that. (Answer: SEV3N) This was just a warm-up for the four-foot-tall sugar sculpture (competition theme: winter wonderland) we made later. Noah has been sick for days now. DAYS. I don't even know with what, but it's ooky and sticky and involves a LOT of different ooky sticky areas of the body, if I may help you with that post-holiday diet for a moment. Jason thinks it's molars, finally and truly coming for real this time, as opposed to the teaser appearances that have been plaguing us since September. I don't know what I think it is. I think it's fucking gross, is what I think it is. Apologies to anyone who actually ate these cookies, i.e. my beloved family. My birthday, however, was lovely. Thank you for asking. Noah had the courtesy to stay healthy until 4 am on December 28th. Although one boring administrative note: my birthday present thinks you are all spam. It thinks you are junk,... Read more →

= Me! Yay! I have so much to talk about (no, I don't know if I'm pregnant yet, and no, I don't feel pregnant yet, which means I feel comfortable knocking back my just-in-case-long-shot-in-hell prenatal vitamin with a glass of wine)...actually, I don't really have much to talk about after all. So, here! The thing I was supposed to post on Christmas but didn't because of the aforementioned wine. (No, I don't know why I'm posting random photos of random gigantic little boys either. I mean, who IS that KID?) Noah's favorite Christmas gift was a giant plastic bank shaped like a giant plastic crayon. It cost $4.99 and he sleeps with it every night. Ohkaaaaay. Read more →

(Alternate Title: My Oversharing: Let Me Share It With You) Huh. And now we wait. 14 days. Or so. Not that I'm paying obsessive attention, or anything. Read more →

The first rule is that one should always be fabulous, no matter how early in the morning it is. The second rule is, of course, NO DAIRY. Remember that it is never too early to get good and appalled and throw coffee on an intern. And sometimes you do need to take off your fabulous glasses to get a better look at that atrocious hemline. And when no one is watching, go ahead and stuff your face and make some NOM NOM NOM sound effects. You've earned it, baby. Read more →

So I'm turning 30 next week -- blah blah yes yes whatever not the point of this entry FOCUS people -- and when Jason asked me what I wanted, I did not even hesitate. All I wanted in the world was to not ever go back to the ruddy stinking Lunch Bunch nonsense. He got me a MacBook instead. Oh, I'm kidding. (Sort of. MmmmmmacBook. Shiny!) He took Noah to the class today, alone. I wish my reasons were more admirable -- to expand Jason's involvement in Noah's various therapies, to give him first-hand experience with what we're dealing with, or to maybe see if Noah behaved better without my neurotic self there. All perfectly good reasons, all perfect steaming loads of bullshit. I just didn't want to go. Don't make me. I can throw quite a tantrum myself, actually. So Jason went and I stayed home and obsessed over Jamie Lynn Spears, clearly the current poster child for responsible, involved parenting. It did not go well, again. Noah continued his full-scale freak-out over anything vaguely structured and bawled and clung and thrashed and screamed. Last week Jason listened to my report and wondered if maybe, JUST MAYBE, our kid... Read more →

Well, so much for that hypothesis. Noah seems intent on using the tiniest patch of big boy bed possible. On the plus side, there's plenty of room for me to sneak in there for a little snooze under the tent. God, but I want that tent. Read more →

Dun dun duuuuuun! God, but we're nuts. Noah has been rather ornery about his crib lately -- preferring to sleep all spread-eagle on our bed, to the point of requesting "big bed nite-nite." (Hey kids! Nobody tells you this, but I will: Go and get yourself all officially speech-delayed and I promise you, your parents will JUMP to obey every request you deign to put into words. Fish, barrel, kabloom.) He didn't really care if we were there with him or not, so we wondered if maybe -- just maybe -- our 95th-percentile-for-height boy was feeling a mite cramped in his crib. So Jason posed the question this weekend: "Noah, would you like your OWN big bed? In your OWN room?" Noah thought about it for a second: "Yep!" I was less convinced (last week I asked him if he wanted a knuckle sandwich and he replied, "YEP! WIT JAM!"), but then I remembered that holiday ornaments are currently 75% off at IKEA, and also they look like glass but are actually plastic -- a good call since Noah's obsession with all things ABALL continues unabated. And the front hall closet really needs a Solution of some kind. So we... Read more →

...but honestly, things have been better. But. Whatever. It's been one of those long shitty weeks that just never really got any better and I am sick and tired of listening to my own damn whining. So I will spare you more of my own damn whining, especially since your comments and emails have really been the only bright happy shiny part of this week. Thank you, all of you, the lurkers who have come forward and the regular commenters who always have a similar story to tell -- seriously, there are dozens of lovely little autobiographies being written here, piece by piece and day by day, so this blog has become so much more than my own story and that really impresses me. (Although perhaps you can add "easily impressed" to the pile of Things That Describe Amy, right on top of "whiny," "melodramatic" and "princess of the pity party.") (Oh look! My Us Weekly came! Just like it does every Friday! I'm so impressed! I need to lie down! With my Us Weekly!) Actually, I think maybe there was more than one bright happy shiny part of this week. Yes. There was. Read more →

Noah's occupational therapy has been...not going well. To put it mildly. We've made so little progress -- OT arrives at door, Noah bolts, spends entire session wailing from under the dining room table because he. Does. NOT. Want. To. Ride. On. A. Towel. Christ. Almighty. -- so his therapist suggested moving his sessions to the EI center and enrolling him in a couple structured class-type things. Today was the first of those structured class-type things. The Lunch Bunch, they call it. For kids with oral motor problems and sensory food issues. On paper, it sounds lovely -- a little circle time, feeding plastic food to a puppet, then setting the table and eating some lunch, cleaning up and a story. Every other week the kids make the lunch; other weeks you bring it from home. One food they like and another they don't, which they will then be encouraged to lick or kiss or even just to TOUCH it while putting it in the clean-up bucket. So it's a lot of kids who eat crackers and shriek at the sight of lunch meat, basically. Our kind of people. But...oh God. I don't even know where to begin. There are no... Read more →

I am typing this in bed, but not the NICE kind of bed-typing (sitting up against multiple fluffy pillows in a marabou-trimmed dressing gown while everyone around you murmurs admiring words re: the strength of your will for blogging while consumptive). I'm typing with one hand while my laptop is precariously perched on one slightly raised knee; my other arm is wrapped around a snoring, sweaty toddler with whom I am currently sharing a nasty cold. His head is leaking fluids of various kinds onto my chest. There isn't a stitch of marabou to be found. OK, that paragraph took waaaay to long to type (must I really use words like "precariously?"), so I'm going to attempt a Sleeping Toddler Slide-Off Triple Axel. Please hold. *** Success! He's now dripping snot all over Jason's pillow. Outstanding. *** Anyway. I've been wanting to post a thank you and acknowledgment for all the kind thoughts and crossed fingers you guys left on this post, but since so many of you were all, "Oh, but your sense of humor will obviously GET YOU THROUGH THIS," I kept trying to hide the extent of my true depressive funkitude about THAT WHOLE THING. The Internet... Read more →