I spent yesterday doing what I always do, the day before his birthday: Frantically trying to collect dozens and dozens of video snippets from a variety of recording devices, cursing myself for having so many dang recording devices in the first place, for not keeping things better organized throughout the year, and for not yet having the courage to say ENOUGH, NO MORE on the dumb montage thing. I came close this year. I really did. Five years seemed like a good stretch, a nice end point, and most of the video footage we took of Noah this year doesn't work with the actual audio stripped away. He's talking in almost all of it, chattering away about Star Wars and Frodo and Harry Potter and dinosaurs and Legos and school and camp and swimming and the beach and fireworks and movies and Ezra and Baby Ike and lost teeth and Angry Birds and and and. This is the first year I've had that problem. And oh, what a good problem it is to have. I flipped through photos instead, surprised at how much he changed this year -- you always think it's slowing down, that they are already "big" and... Read more →

PART THE FIRST: ANGRY BIRD IS ANGRY, MENACING Scene from Ezra's play kitchen this morning: SOON. OH YEAH? FUCK YOU, BIRD. PART THE SECOND: ATTACK OF THE TURBO HORK I am feeling better. But also wondering if Baby Ike had a touch of whatever THAT was, because dear God. IN HEAVEN, EVEN. The happy spitting/reflux/spewomatic reached epic proportions yesterday. Truly Exorcist-levels of bullshitvomit. At some point in the afternoon I gave up on remaining upright and functional and crawled in bed with Ike, hoping he would maybe just let me lie there and doze for awhile if I kept my shirt off and let him drain my life force to his heart's content. He would nurse, then barf. Nurse, barf, nurse, barf. I kept staggering down the hall for more burp rags until I literally made him a nest out of a fresh half-dozen of the heavy duty ones, and still. STILL. We ended up scooting around the bed in search of a fresh dry patch, which would soon be similarly befouled. It was disgusting. It put every hork-o-fest thus far to shame. And then he was all, "Well. That just happened. I'm hungry. More milk, please." And on and... Read more →

Can't blog. Busy clinging to bed for dear life, pleading with room to stop spinning and for bathroom to stop being so goddamn far away. And to also stop spinning. I spent most of the morning in Am I Sick? I Think I Might Be Getting Sick. limbo, not sure if I was just extra kinda tired, or queasy from too much coffee and not enough bagels, and then. Okay. Yes. Sick. Glad we cleared that up. Everything is nice and definitively terrible now. I'm not sure which child brought home the pestilence -- my money's on Noah, who said he felt like he needed to throw up on Sunday but did not actually throw up, because that's how it works. Their mild discomfort is your wishing for death. They sneeze once, your sinuses set themselves on fire and explode out your head holes. Wait. Why am I still talking? Why am I even trying to type right now? Everything on the screen looks like a spiraly black-and-white soup right now anyway, probably full of typos and delirious nonsense about karate kaftan tampon popsicle. Harpsichord! Whatever, ceiling fan ocean farquat tomorrow, zzibbt. Read more →

I know this blog is the equivalent of a crazy person on the bus* forcing you to look at wallet-sized photos of children whom you possibly suspect came with the wallet, but...Noah had another belt test this weekend: Practicing for the big board-breaking moment. Seconds before the big board-breaking moment... And...yes. So that went well. EEEEEEEEEE. It just never gets old. Or maybe it does, sometimes, when it's Monday afternoon and his uniform is in the laundry hamper and he's whining that he doesn't waaaaaaaant to go to karate, and I secretly don't waaaaaaaaant to go either because GUESS WHAT KID, your mom wouldn't mind just staying home on the couch instead of sitting in a chair in a sweaty karate studio, searching for Elmo videos on YouTube to keep your brothers occupied. At least YOU get to take your shoes off and punch things. And then the next belt test rolls around, and we get to watch our kid fly through the air and crack a board in half on the way down, and then watch him jump around like a ping pong ball because YOU GUYS DID YOU SEE WHAT I JUST DID???? and suddenly it all seems... Read more →

We have family coming to visit in about...oh, NOW. Family who have never actually been to our house, live and in person, since we moved here almost five years ago. Which means I have spent the last five hours FRANTICALLY trying to clean and organize everything so it actually looks like we've lived here for five years. Instead of...five hours. It's your lucky day, unlabeled box of mystery that we never unpacked because clearly your contents were never missed! You're finally getting unpacked moved to an out-of-the-way spot in the basement! They have a three-and-a-half year old little girl. So that's four children, all five years old and younger. Here. In the house that I am now questioning cleaning up in the first place. WELCOME TO HELL, NOW WITH 25% MORE PRINCESS CRAP. Even the dog got all fancied up for the occasion. By which I mean bathed. WAT DOIN? WATER MAKES IMPOSSIBLY TINY LEGS MOAR IMPOSSIBLY TINY I HAZ NO IDEA WAT JUST HAPPEND Anyway, I better go take out the last of the trash and re-check that the liquor cabinet is stocked locked. PRAY. Read more →

Confession time: I really let Ezra down this past week, during the beginning of school. I mentioned already that sometimes I FORGET. I forget that for all of his highly-verbal-ness and typical-development-ness and bubbly cheerfulness, I can't go and turn on the auto-parent cruise control. Too often, Ezra is The One I Don't Worry About. I mean, not really. That sounds worse than what I'm really trying to say. It's just, as a younger sibling of a special-needs child, each new stage of Ezra's development was met with a big sigh of relief. He talks! He eats! He runs! He holds a crayon! He uses utensils! He thinks other kids are fun! He has a wild imagination and an even wilder appetite for full-tilt adventure and destruction! At some point, I was just like: Okay. We're good. I can stop looking for things. I have conversations with Ezra that you wouldn't even believe. I feel like I haven't even come close to capturing how amazing he is through my own words here. At not-even-three, he is better at expressing his emotions and telling you about his day than Noah is at almost-six. His occasional toddler stubbornness and temper outbursts are... Read more →

THING #1: LIFE INSURANCE. WAIT WHAT? In perhaps the ultimate "try to make THIS topic interesting" challenge ever, the folks at Lifehappens.org asked me to contribute a blog entry about life insurance. How did I do? Don't answer that. But maybe just go read it? It's about Ceiba? Remember her? She remembers you. Aww, wookit. THING #2: SHOPPY SHOPPY SHOPPY And then! In perhaps the ultimate "Amalah can be bought very easily" example, Old Navy sponsored a series of posts over at Babble Voices about going shopping with your children. So I went shopping with my children. Then I wrote about shopping with my children. See how that works? ASTOUNDING, I KNOW. My post went up today. And while I don't want to spoil anything for you (since my blog posts tend to be so high drama and suspenseful and all), Ike totally got a onesie with a mummy on it. Dude, don't move, but I think Mom has finally gone up and around the bend with this stripey clothes business. THING #3: BOOBS Yep. THING #4: TORNADOS WITH FRICKING LASER BEAMS ATTACHED TO THEIR HEADS It's Back To School Night at Ezra's preschool. I hope there are snacks. There... Read more →

Not going to lie: Running out of steam here. I committed more words about cloth diapering last week than any sane human being ever should. (I even went off on a whole big woolie-pant tangent at AlphaMom. SOMEBODY STOP ME.) I kind of just want to go lie down and not listen to myself for awhile. But okay. Ike is now three-and-a-half-months old. This is what my diapering stash/area/fortress of crazy looks like... ACTUAL DIAPERS: Two dozen newborn-sized prefolds Nine one-size fitteds Six one-size FuzziBunz Two one-size Charlie Bananas (hand-me-downs from Ezra) One GroBaby all-in-one (same deal) One BabyKicks hemp fitted (one of Temerity Jane's cast-offs, similarly not adored here, but used) COVERS: Two Thirsties Duo Wraps, size one Two PUL covers from Fluffy's Diapers, size small Three upcycled wool covers from Ocean Babies, size small Four fleece covers from Pumpkin Pants, size small STILL NOT YET IN FIRST-STRING USE: 12 refurbished one-size bumGenius 15 FuzziBunz, size medium Yes. This is (wait for it) a shitload of diapers. This is way, way more than I need. Way more than anybody needs, for just one measly baby. This is, however, NOT some damning proof that everything sucks and is wrong and... Read more →

Okay, so no part three today for the cloth diaper thing. I'm sure there are entire threes of you feeling something vaguely akin to disappointment, or maybe it's just indigestion. Or maybe your refrigerator died like mine did yesterday and you're having to sniff its contents and deciding if stuff is "okay" or not and maybe you made a bad call about the mayonnaise. I can't say for sure. BITCH I DON'T KNOW YOUR LIFE. Anyway. I decided to take a certain blondish gentleman (and another small bald companion) out for a very special Pancakes & Strawberries For Lunch For No Particular Reason celebratory outing after preschool today instead. WORTH IT. (I did write a new post over at Amalah's West, though, lest you accuse me of being a COMPLETE slacker, or even worse: A well-adjusted person who is perfectly able to get through a single day without feeling compelled to plaster long rambling blog entries across half the websites on the Internet. How dare you, sir. HOW DARE YOU.) Read more →

ZOMG, YOU GUYS. So immediately after finishing my epic manifesto (or at least PART ONE of it) (and I don't think "finishing" is correct, because it was more like I ran out of time and simply had to STOP TALKING SO MUCH and hit the Publish button), I dashed out to meet Noah at the school bus. While I was waiting, I pulled my blog up on my phone, just to double-check that everything had published okay...and to start spotting the inevitable typos that always suddenly become SUPER obvious the second after I've convinced myself that I've proofread enough. And that's when it fully hit me JUST HOW MANY WORDS I'd committed to the topic of cloth diapers. By the time I was done scrolling through all those many, many paragraphs to the comments, MY THUMB HAD A FUCKING CRAMP. Then I did this embarrassingly audible snarf-laff at myself, because FUCK YOU, BREVITY, and another mother gave me a look and asked what was so funny. I opened my mouth, ready to explain that "oh hi I just wrote a Great American Novel's worth of text about my infant's diapers on the Internet for no real reason," but then thought... Read more →