Crawling, standing, walking, talking. All well and good. But not nearly as delightful as the first time your baby picks up your hairbrush and starts dragging it across his downy-bald head. Bonus points if he's never actually had enough hair to merit brushing, but has simply gleaned the purpose of the weird, spikey thing by watching you futilely groom yourself. Or puts your phone up to his ear — or general ear-like area — and says, "abloooh?" "Ablooh? Sorry, I can't hear you. This hairbrush gets terrible reception. Lemme switch to the comb and call you back." Or tries to make sense of a doorknob. He KNOWS what it does. He KNOWS it is the source of his confinement. And he KNOWS to grab it and...and...well. He'll get back to you once he figures out step two. Bonus points for...well. No. No bonus points awarded for this. HE'S JUST A BABY STOP PRESSURING HIM TO BE BRILLIANT ALREADY. (Step three, of course, is: PROFIT!) (And head injuries, probably.) Read more →

Man. Did I really only post two times this week? Did I really have that little say about the ENDLESSLY FASCINATING SUBJECT that is myself? Damn, I am losing my narcissistic grip, or something. It's the week before BlogHer (and even more importantly, one week before SPARKLECORN 2012 OH HELL YEAH), and I'm doing my yearly routine of running around like a newly headless chicken trying to get everything done. It's REALLY HARD to get everything done when you have no head, guys. I really don't recommend it. I have so much to do! So many feelings about things that I feel! Like: My Other Job is consuming my life, but in a good way. (And I'm not trying to be all secretive about it, for the record. I mean, find me on LinkedIn and it's all right there. It's more that it would probably bore y'all to tears, unless maybe you're in the IT field and super geeked about Azure and SharePoint development and hybrid cloud scenarios. Not that there's anything wrong with being geeked about those things. Those things are awesome, frankly. Fuck yeah hybrid cloud! Somebody start me a Tumblr!) So it's weird to suddenly ditch all... Read more →

You know what's even harder than painting your kitchen? Photographing your newly-painted kitchen. I cannot, for the life of me, take an accurate photo of the new color scheme. The walls look too blue (they are grey) and the backsplash looks too yellow (there is no yellow in the backsplash at all, whutdahell). (Here's the before. We opted not to replace the cabinets [cuz $$$$], save for replacing a few damaged doors. We did the backsplash and painting ourselves, so the counter ended up being the only big expense. And even that we got on sale. Thus, more money leftover for booze and fancy cheese.) (INVEST IN WHAT MATTERS, PEOPLE.) (The microwave and the Range What Did Catch On Fire That One Time will be replaced with stainless to match...eventually. 2015, maybe. You know how we do things around here. I don't want to sprain anything on all this forward progress.) The counters are actually a blend of greens and blacks and browns and tie everything (including the troublesome reddish floors) together pretty nicely in person, but in photos tend to either look all black or all green. Whatever. At least the new cabinet handles look mostly like themselves? Another... Read more →

So first of all, this: KEGGER IN THE DINING ROOM, GUYS. ALSO HELP YOURSELF TO SOME TOAST. In what is officially the slowest-moving, most-procrastinated kitchen makeover EVER, we finally got around to painting the damn walls this weekend. It tooks us several more weeks to decide on a color, and then...I don't know. The decision took a lot out of us. We had to lie down for awhile. Or a month. And then we also painted the dining room, getting rid of the gloomy blood-red half-wall that I once declared would be "the first thing to go" when we moved in. (Six years ago.) (But who's counting?) In the meantime, this: TOE VS. SHOPVAC, A BATTLE FOR THE AGES. My toes continue to be reinforced with toothpicks and silly putty, as I managed to fucking DESTROY my middle toe right in the middle of the project by tripping over the vaccuum cleaner. I've never broken this particular toe before, though, so that's fun. Painful, painful fun. Maybe I should put some booze on it. Anyway, as much as I would LOVE to show you photos of the finished rooms, it should come as no surprise that...uh...we're still a day or... Read more →

Not long after the Vet Bill of Unspeakable Horrors — I believe our credit card was still hot to the touch — Ceiba starting limping. Limping isn't a zero to X-ray thing with her, as Min Pins tend to have trick kneecaps (luxating patellas, if you wanna be all science-y about it). Ceiba's knees haven't bothered her in years, at least not as frequently as when she was a puppy, but I still assumed that was the problem and her kneecap would pop back into place on its own, as usual. When it didn't, I stretched and massaged it, then puzzled a bit because her kneecap felt fine, at least to my inexpert fingers. Later I realized that all that stretching and massaging seemed to have made things worse, because her leg was now noticeably swollen and I was an asshole. I told Jason it was probably time to go back to the vet — and while at first he protested with this wild, terrified look in his eyes, like oh god oh no not again with all of the money — he agreed and took her to the emergency vet for an examination and x-ray. Good news: 'Tis merely... Read more →

(This post is sponsored by Hipiti.com.) I get a lot of email. Like, more than that. A lot a lot a lot. This is by no means a humblebrag about how ever so popular I am, or anything. I probably get a very small handful of ACTUAL emails from ACTUAL people who count. Opening the laptop in the morning usually reveals a crop like this: ONE Mamapop distro thread about Sparklecorn 2012/gossip item/posting schedule that devolved rapidly into an animated .gif war at some point the night before and now contains 73 messages. ONE email from a friend, or maybe my mom or sister. ONE email from a nice friendly blog reader. SEVENTEEN DOZEN assorted newsletters I did not sign up for, you rat bastards. SEVENTY-FIVE HUNDRED spammy PR pitches of the Wil Wheaton collating variety (i.e. Hello Blogger Mommy, I have been reading your blog AMALACH for several months now and love it! Your recent post about your dog/baby/houseplant really hit home and is what prompted me to write and offer you the chance to interview Dr. Martin Van Hornsplotch on the role that non-organic orange juice may have played in the TomKat divorce.). FIVE blog-related businessy emails that... Read more →

Two things I have been trying (and failing) to get on video for the past five days for you people (and also posterity and stuff): 1) Baby Ike saying "uh oh!" This is his newest trick, and he loves it and it's adorrrrrrrable and etc. He says it constantly, but most often during the 30 seconds I've decided to turn my back on him, just for the added thrill of wondering if he's using it in the correct context this time because he's...yes, he's knocked over the Lego bin/my coffee/the pets' water dish. Faaaantastic. Uh-oh, indeed. But the minute I stick the camera in his face he goes all serious and looks away, and I can practically SEE his little brain trying to figure out how to roll his eyeballs at me. So I've mostly ended up with a lot of stinkeye footage with a LOOK AT MAH BUTT finale. Yesterday, in the car, he joined in a singalong of Karmin's Brokenhearted (SHUT UP JUST SHUT UP), mimicking the "UH OHHHH" lyrics perfectly. I was delighted and put the song on repeat (DON'T YOU JUDGE MEEEE) so he would do it again and again, but then questioned the wisdom of... Read more →

Noah brought home his first Major Award on Friday from camp. Why yes, that IS a repurposed Sprite bottle painted neon yellow and held together with duct tape Hogwarts House Cup. (Exclamation Point!) Noah won it at Harry Potter Camp, which is an actual thing our YMCA actually offers every summer. "A thing" is as detailed of a description as I can offer, because I have no idea what actually went on at Harry Potter Camp. There was a sorting ceremony, though from what I gather only about four children consented to being in any house but Gryffindor and the sorting hat was maaaaaaybe kind of a pussy about it and gave in. They played quidditch and Noah also came home with a "textbook" that contains two recipes: One for "DRAUGHT OF DEATH" and one for a love potion. I don't know. It's the YMCA. Seems legit, right? Anyway, Noah was very upset during the last couple days at camp because Gryffindor was losing the House Cup contest to Ravenclaw. (Teams gained points by completing advanced wizardry moves like "put on you listening ears" and "don't hit people, you guys.") (So obviously those four little teacher-pleasing Ravenclaw brown-nosers did great,... Read more →

(AN ONLY SLIGHTLY CONNECTED SERIES OF RANDOM PHOTOS) Awwww. Whuuut? Awwww! Seriously whuuuut? Awwww, some more. AwwwwhaaaaahaaaaaaaaHA HA HA HAHAHA. Whuuuuuthahaha, etc. (BONUS: THE REASON I MOSTLY ONLY HAVE PHOTOS OF TWO OF THEM AT A TIME) Read more →

I posted a (filtered-up-to-hell) version of this picture on Instagram a couple days ago, and the response was almost unanimous: When did that three year old eat your baby, Amy? I wish I could tell you it was a fluke-y trick of the light or angle, but no. Baby Ike is not really looking super babyish these days. He's a tall, solid, smirky little thing who looks like I put two parts Noah and one part Ezra in a cocktail shaker and bam: straight-up toddler. Well, pre-toddler, technically, since he's only taken a small handful of tentative half-steps so far. He's very good at standing unassisted and clapping for himself, but for actual forward propulsion he still prefers dropping back to his knees and speed-crawling all over the place. I kind of don't blame him. He's crazy fast that way, plus there's less of a chance of falling and getting his teeth lodged in the outside part of his face. The mouthful of teeth aren't helping in the 13-months-going-on-36 looks department either. His canines cut through last weekend — all four of them, bringing his total tooth-count up to 16. SIXTEEN TEETH. At this rate his "two-year molars" will show... Read more →