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... Read more →

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... Read more →

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... Read more →

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... Read more →

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... Read more →

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... Read more →

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... Read more →

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... Read more →

(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... Read more →

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. *** 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? *** (I assure you that last bit had a LOT fewer "goddamns" in real life.) *** 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... Read more →