I'm Leavin' on a Jet Plane...

And goin' to the chapel, 'cause my brother-in-law's gettin' mar-ar-ar-ied...

I probably won't be checking in much over this next week, but I will catch up with everyone when I get back!

Right. So I hope everyone had a blessed Easter. We had a wonderful time celebrating the Resurrection at my in-law's amazing, alive church. The entire service was wonderful, and the Tominator was surprisingly cooperative and mostly quiet (after the mass, the bishop came over and said "you were the QUIET baby!") So it was good.

Unfortunately, the little black rain cloud still lingers. So I'm going to accept Bobita's challenge, and tease myself out of it with a meme.

Six weird things about me:

1. I always eat macaroni and cheese with a glass of chocolate milk. I like anything salty/cheesy with chocolate milk. Like ham and cheese hot pockets - better with chocolate milk! Super-Hubby disagrees. He thinks mac-and-cheese goes best with tuna salad. Go figure.

2. I also really like sweet peas. I can eat an entire bowl of just peas. Like a cereal bowl. I eat my peas with chocolate milk, too.

3. My husband used to be afraid to get into bed if I was already asleep, because when we were first married, I would wake up when he came to bed and start "sleep yelling" at him about whatever was on my mind at the time. Sometimes it made sense (why do you have to leave dishes in the sink??) sometimes it was complete nonsense (I told you not to throw the cat in the garbage disposal!)By the way, we don't have a cat, nor have we ever. No animals were harmed in the writing of this post.

4. I have grown to love my husband's nerdy hobbies - StarTrek and superheroes. I even impressed him while watching an episode of Justice League by coming up with a random bit of trivia about Wonder Woman of my own accord. Heaven help me.

5. I can cook a lot of things well, but it took me forever to master rice and Jell-o. That's right. Beef Wellington, no problem. Food that ONLY requires me to boil water? Super challenging.

6. I am a complete television addict, which is why we no longer have cable. We get 5 channels, and only 3 of them are particularly clear. Going on vacation to a place that has cable TV is like sending an alcoholic to a bar with an open tab. I do love me some Jon Stewart.

Ok, I tag:
J-Tron at The Propaganda Box
JKimbro at As told by me.
Stephanie at Creature Bug
Jill at Amphigoria
Judy at Anybody Home
Mopsy at Lifenut

My Own Personal Rain Cloud

"Oh, I'm just a little black rain cloud, hovering under the honeytree ..."

Would someone puh-leeze make this bad mood go away? I have been a grumpy grump for the last three days, and I'm so sick of it I'm ready to run away from myself. I have no idea why this is happening to me.

The weather is gorgeous. Spring has finally arrived. I am going on vacation next week!

And I am exhausted, I don't feel well, and I can actually FEEL the hormone surges in my body. Chocolate isn't helping - isn't even that appealing (shocking, really)- and I just want to have a good long cry and then sleep for, oh, maybe a week. But I have NO idea why I feel like I need this. Life is good! I am blessed! I truly have nothing to cry about.

Ok, sorry for the rant.

Grr.

Just a Medium

Ugh. I thought Medium would be back on tonight, but instead there were two episodes of The Apprentice: This Show Will Never Be Cancelled. Double ugh.

My stomach feels gucky, I am exhausted beyond exhausted, and I just wanted to zone out with Patricia Arquette and her character's creepy dreams for an hour. Boo on The Donald and NBC for not airing my show. Boo.

Monday Morning Confessions

What do you do badly? Everyone has a tale of a project gone wrong, a word misspoken, a Tae-Bo tape that you just couldn't follow without tripping over the coffee table and bashing face-first into the curio cabinet filled with grandma's precious ceramic figurines ...

But before I tell you about my favorite misstep, there are a few things you should know:

1. I am an excellent cook. I learned from my mother, who is also an exceptional cook. I am not being immodest, although I hate to toot my own horn.

2. On my 18th birthday, my Aunt Carol taught me how to make tender, flaky pie crust from scratch. It was probably the best birthday gift I have ever been given. Super-Hubby likes my pies so much that he pretty much refuses to eat store-bought or restaurant-made.

3. This means I should be able to make just about anything, right? I mean I can cook. I can bake. So something easy, such as homemade pasta, should be no problem, right?

Ha ha ha ha ha ha!

Wrong. To read about my lesson in humility, featuring a plate of pasta that looked like this, click here.

Then come back and tell me about what you do badly.

The Boy Who Would be a Vampire

Contrary to popular legend, vampires are born, not made.

I know this because I birthed one.

The Tominator has learned how to give wonderful hugs. He makes this pathetic "eh-eh" sound and reaches one hand out to me until I scoop him up off the floor. Then he wraps his chubby arms around my neck and squeezes, a big grin on his face.

Crafty little vampire that he is, he uses his close proximity to my neck to his best advantage: just as I'm feeling all warm and fuzzy from his loving snuggles, he digs his six, sharp, pointy little teeth into my neck.

We have been over the "no biting" thing time and again. He has learned not to bite the toothbrush when I brush his teeth. He has learned not to bite Mommy's er, feeding apparatuses, at mealtime.

But my neck, oh my neck, it is irresistible.

To be fair, my friend calls Tom "Sunny Baudelaire" from Lemony Snicket, because he is the child who likes to bite things. He bites the dog. He bites the dog's bone. He gnaws the rail of the pack-n-play I keep in the office. He chews paper.

At just shy of eight months, he can climb the stairs to the second floor. He does this by pushing to a stand, leaning waaaay forward and biting the stair above the one he would like to get to, then pulling himself up using his arms, feet, and teeth. I kid you not.

I can't wait until he's old enough to learn to say "I vant to suck your blood!" with a creepy accent.

Spring is Falling Down Like Snow

Today is the 5th of April, is it not? I should be seeing cherry trees bursting into bloom. I should be sneezing my head off and finding a fine coating of yellow pollen on my car. I should be basking in warm spring sunshine.

But do you know what I see?

Snow. And sleet. Blowing and sticking to everything.

Blah.

An Easter Story and Some Totally Unrelated Photos

There's a photo album that has a place of honor on my bookshelf. It's my sister's very first scrapbook. I doubt she even knows I have it.

She made it for me when she was 10. It doesn't have the fancy paper cutouts and designs that she does now in her gorgeous books, but it is an impressive collage of pictures of my babyhood, carefully selected and stuck on those old "self-stick" photo album pages.

This is the inscription in the front:

I was flipping through this book last night, and I started thinking about the year that Sheryl saved Easter.

I was seven, and we had gone to Cape Cod for the holiday. The parents had rented a townhouse that was pretty unremarkable except for the lighted closet in the second floor hallway. It was kind of like Harry Potter's room under the stair at Privet Drive, only not under the stairs. But it had a slanted ceiling and a bare lightbulb. I spent a lot of time holed up there reading Black Beauty during that vacation.

That year had been a rough one for my family. My mom had been diagnosed with terminal breast cancer and given six months to live. She fought it, and won, but a year of chemotherapy, a radical mastectomy, and the stress of going through all that while raising two spirited daughters was hard on my folks. They fought a lot. They probably made up a lot too, but I don't remember that part, so much.

Not to say the whole vacation was a bust. That trip was the first time I ever rode in a plane: my parents booked us a whale-watching flight in a little private plane, and I got to play "co-pilot." That was way cool.

But during the week when the shouting got loud and I retreated to my closet, Sheryl came and found me. She would drag me outside in the spring sunshine to go hunting daffodils, or she'd grab her ten-speed and set me on her old banana-seat bike and take me for a ride along the coast.

We hunted sea shells together. We played tag. She made me laugh, a lot.

When Easter morning came I ran downstairs to wake Mom and Dad. I couldn't wait to go hunting for eggs and check out my Easter basket.

But my usually early-rising parents were still in bed. The drapes were drawn tightly against the morning light. I asked about Easter. My mom snapped and said there would be no Easter baskets this year. "Easter is not about CANDY!" she said. "It's about Jesus dying for our sins. We're not doing Easter baskets anymore." And she rolled over and pulled the blankets up.

I was shocked. I'd been to Sunday School. I knew about Easter and Jesus. But baskets were tradition. It was a tough lesson to learn.

Once again, Sheryl came to the rescue. She got me dressed, and wiped away my confused tears. Together we rode down the street to a little market, where she bought me a Cadbury Cream Egg with her own money to make me feel better. Nothing soothes a wounded spirit like a Cadbury Cream Egg.

I was going to put up some cute pics from the album, but Blogger is being dumb. I'll keep trying, though.

Pictures, finally

Ok, the pictures finally loaded.

Here's one of Sheryl holding me when I first came home from the hospital.












And this is Sheryl rocking with me and my crazy stick-up hair.












This was taken at my grandparents' house in the Blue Ridge Mountains. I was almost one, and Sheryl was almost 11.

Hollywood Smile

In spite of my apprehensions, the appointment went fine. He complimented my "beautiful" teeth. He lamented the silver fillings my childhood dentist put in a few of my molars. "They're just not cosmetic," he said. "With such pretty teeth, they should look virginal."

He told me I had a Hollywood Smile. But best of all, I have no cavities. So it was just a scrape and polish and a compliment on my good brushing habits.

Phew.

No axe-murdering, drill-wielding dentists here, in spite of the gloomy weather.

Drilling for Spring

It feels like spring in England here; I imagine it's what the Pacific Northwest feels like a lot of the time, but I don't know, I've never been there.

The thermometer is hovering somewhere around 50 degrees, and the sky is dark and gloomy, dropping random drops of rain on pedestrians like spitballs. The daffodils are up and blooming, but their sunny faces don't do much to override the quiet dampness that has settled on the valley.

It's the perfect day to go to the dentist. I mean, really, it's like the scene in a horror movie where everything, the weather, the desolation, the creepy music - everything is some kind of forshadowing, the kind that makes the viewer scream to the main character - DON'T GO IN THERE! THERE'S AN AXE MURDERER BEHIND THE DOOR OF THAT CREEPY HOUSE!

So today the universe screams at me - DON'T GO IN THERE! THERE'S A CREEPY GUY WITH A DRILL WAITING TO ATTACK YOUR TEETH! KEEP YOUR MOUTH CLOSED!

I have not been to the dentist in a little over two years, as the result of the spectacularly bad dental coverage offered by my husband's work. Actually, it's great dental coverage - 100% on routine cleanings, 80% for almost everything else. The only problem is that it will only let you go to the dentist the company assigns you to. And the one they assigned us to doesn't speak English. I'm sure he's a very good dentist. He's a nice Vietnamese man, and his office is within walking distance of my house. But I like to be able to understand what the guy with the drill is saying to me before he begins working on my teeth.

Thus, no dental visits. We finally decided just to pay out-of-pocket to go to another dentist in town who we do like.

Today, at 3 p.m., I will once again sit in the scary dental chair to be poked and prodded and scraped. Super-Hubby assures me that this dentist is nice, and very gentle. I hope he is telling the truth. I am praying that I won't have any cavities.

But maybe I should listen to the universe and skip the whole thing altogether.

---

In other news, I have another piece up on Crunchable. Check out The Night of Snow and Vomit.

Falling Down, and Getting Up Again

These are the scary basement steps that our dog, Coltrane, refuses to go down. Nothing, not even a raw steak, will get him down these steps.

These are the scary basement steps that freaked my sister out when she came to visit last June, and she begged me not to carry the laundry up and down them while I was pregnant.

These are the scary basement steps that my son rolled down, barrel-style, on St. Patrick's Day.


I was cooking dinner. Super-Hubby had gone downstairs to get some tools for home improvement. Somehow, the ancient door didn't latch all the way. Our house is 90 years old, and we still have most of the original hardware on our interior doors. It looks cool, but it's not so great for keeping things closed.

Tommy, with his insatiable 7-month-old curiosity, decided to check out the box of corn starch on the bottom shelf of the "pantry." And then I heard ca-thunck, ca-thunck, ca-thunck, followed by some loud, panicked screaming.

I'm not entirely sure the screaming wasn't mine.

We did the broken bones check, the blood check, the bruises check. Nothing. He calmed down within minutes, but I called the pediatrician, just to make sure Tommy was ok. My regular, laid-back, I've-seen-it-all pediatrician wasn't on call, so I was referred to another doctor.

"How, exactly, did a 7-month-old fall down the stairs?" he asked incredulously, in a tone of voice that suggested he thought I might have thrown my son down the stairs.

"He's very mobile, and the door was left ajar by accident."

"It is very unusual for a 7-month-old to be that mobile," he said. "Are you sure that's what happened?"

Because of Tom's age, the doctor said we should take him to the ER for an exam. So we bundled up our perfectly happy, healthy baby and headed out. I was terrified the
ER doctors were going to call Child Protective Services on us after my conversation with the pediatrician, but to the ER we went anyway.

The nice resident at the ER gave my laughing, raspberry-blowing baby a quick once over and said nothing looked amiss. She said we could take him home and monitor him, or she could give him a CAT scan, if we wanted. We opted to take him home.

I have never been one to make a big deal out of routine falls and bumps. When Tommy falls down from a stand and startles himself into a fuss, I clap and cheer. Pretty soon, he is smiling and going about his business - and learning that the little bumps in life aren't really so bad. But I really wasn't prepared for these bigger bumps.

That weekend, we put up baby gates like maniacs. We were extra careful to make sure the basement door was shut. For the first time in my life as a parent, I began to act like all those paranoid mothers I always make fun of, in my head.

And that weekend, Tommy started pulling up.

Enter exhibit 2: The crib that Tommy climbed/fell out of on Wednesday.



I was downstairs folding laundry, and Tommy was napping. I heard him wake up, heard his happy babble as he conversed with his new friends, Kanga and Roo.

Then I heard a THUNK and a scream.

I picked him up, he quieted. My heart raced and my arms trembled. He laughed and pulled my hair, tried to stick his fingers up my nose. My knees trembled.

Somehow Tommy had managed to pull up far enough on his crib rail to flip himself over. It was my fault, because the mattress wasn't in the lowest position. I didn't think he could get out, yet. I was wrong.

My son was fine, but on Thursday, I was still trembling. It's Friday, and I can still feel a quiver of fear sliding up my spine as I write this.

I was reading The Girlfriend's Guide to Surviving the First Year and she writes about how mothers are the ones in society who keep superstitions going. We are the ones that say "God bless you" when you sneeze. We knock wood. We wait, expectantly, for the other shoe to drop.

And so, I find myself waiting for the third fall.

I know it's coming, I just don't know when, or where. And I pray that it won't do anything to seriously injure my precious, precious boy.

Pulling Teeth

I have an article coming out in the lastest edition of Crunchable tomorrow about my abject terror of trains; writing it was a killer.

Believe it or not, I used to be a professional writer. Maybe I wasn't next in line for the Pulitzer, but I was pretty good. At least I could string two sentences together without sounding like Ernest Flippin' Hemmingway.

But now?

It's all short, choppy sentences. No transitions.

The man stood on the beach. He saw a big fish. Then he went skiing and outran some bulls.

Maybe I should just move to Key West and drink myself into oblivion.

Oh wait. I hate Florida, and I don't drink.

Darn it, foiled again.

The Dream Weaver

I feel a bit like Pharaoh asking Joseph "What does this all mean?" as I write this post.

A couple of weeks ago, Kathryn from Daring Young Mom showed up in my dreams. She had invited me to a mommy gift-exchange at her house. She was wearing a teal blue sweater and was very nice to me, offering me refreshments and gifts, even though I was a complete stranger. Her friends were also very nice to me, even though I was a complete stranger to them. Still, I felt like an outsider.

When I woke up, I told Super-Hubby about the dream and he laughed and told me that I absolutely HAD to blog about it. But I didn't, because I thought it would be weird. I mean, I've never met the woman. Doesn't having her appear in my dream make me some sort of weird stalker? (I'm not, I promise.)

So I tried to put DYM and her gift-exchange party behind me. I didn't give it another thought.

Until last night.

Because last night, she drove clear across the country to come to a conference I was hosting, in my dream, that is. She arrived in a black Acura that looks just like the one belonging to my across-the-street neighbor. She had left the kiddos with DYD and was extolling the virtues of sleeping on pool tables. (I have NO idea where that came from.)

Once again, she was friendly, funny, captivating - in short, the life of the party, er ... conference. Crazy.

So, Joseph, what does this all mean?

Photographic Evidence

Ok, so I've been moaning and groaning about those teeth (5!) - and now I have some evidence. Here you go.

I can't help myself. I am supposed to be working, but it is to much fun to crawl around on the floor with Tom, and have him grin at me with his four big teeth in a wide-open smile. I wish I had a camera with me so you could see it, too.

This afternoon he has been investigating the palate and digestibility of common office paper. He has carefully examined all of the legs of the furniture for moving parts.

He is testing his vocal abilities, yelling ba-ma-bam-pa over and over as he scoots around the floor. He pauses, and slurps his hand, alternately blowing rasberries and sucking up his own spit.

He pulls himself around the floor Ursula-style, dragging his feet behind him. He hasn't quite figured out the mechanics of hand-and-knee crawling. But man, he's efficient. And fast.

This morning, he attacked the dishwasher while it was open, pulling up on the door and trying to crawl in to the dish rack. When I opened the refrigerator, he was right there, ready to pull as many items out of the door as possible before I shut it again.

He views the dog as Mount Everest, and makes several attempts to scale him each day, usually employing teeth and sharp little fingers. To Coltrane's credit, he just lays there and rolls his eyes while "the puppy" climbs all over him.

I'm sure every mother feels this way, but he is so perfect he takes my breath away.

Filed Under: Ewww, Gross

This afternoon I stopped at the grocery to pick up some sugar. I grabbed a cart from the cart return, and just as I was putting Tom in the seat, a well-dressed man walked up and said "Wait, I'll get that piece of cheese out of the cart for you!" He then pulled a half-eaten slice of American cheese out of the main portion of the cart. I hadn't seen the cheese, but assumed he was gathering up this trash as a kindness. I thanked him.

He turned around and a moment later I noticed him chewing something. I looked for evidence that he was still holding the cheese, but his hands were empty.

I think he ate the cheese.

Eww, gross.

Hunger Force

I am starving. I have been starving for about the past 14 months, more or less consistantly. But this is getting ridiculous.

I finished my lunch (ham sandwich and grapes) and my snack (low-fat string cheese)and have now resorted to digging out the emergency snack I keep in my diaper bag (a package of peanutbutter crackers.) The only problem is that somehow, they got stored right next to a bar of soap - so now they are Cucumber and Green Tea flavored peanutbutter crackers. Nasty.

I'm eating them anyway.

Spring and Other Random Thoughts

I let Coltrane out in the backyard this morning, and there were tiny little snowflakes floating through the air. So much for the first day of Spring.

Luckily, the flurries were short lived. Now it's just cold and windy, but at least it's clear. Spring is just being a tease. Two weeks ago, it was sunny and 70 degrees. My daffodils popped up above the ground sporting big, fat, buds. My crocuses, poor things, bloomed. Now we've reverted to cold, 30 degree weather and my poor flowers are all a-shiver.

Or maybe I'm just all a-shiver.

It is hard to believe that Spring is here. The past seven months have just flown by, and I can't help but wonder if the rest of my life will follow suit. Will I wake up one morning and realize that I am 80 and that my life has rushed by so quickly that I hardly had a chance to enjoy it?

My best childhood friend lived two houses away, and the path to her house lay through a neighbor's yard. I remember one spring when I was maybe 6 or 7, calling her house and asking if she could play. Her mother told me to come over in five minutes.

I ran out in the yard, unable to wait in the house. And there I stood, dancing around, peeking at my digital watch every three seconds, willing the minutes to hurry up and move, already! Five whole minutes was a long time to wait to see my best friend.

But now five minutes passes in a blink of an eye. Winter rushed by so quickly I barely made my hot chocolate quota. Spring has arrived and Tom is blooming and growing so fast it makes my head spin. Every day I wake up and he is less of my baby and more of a big boy. This weekend, his Grammy taught him how to hold on to the furniture and cruise around. He is so good at it!

I don't know whether to applaud or to fear the onset of spring, when the world grows and changes at a crazy pace. Some days I wish I could slow time down. Maybe I just need that old digital watch with the cheap plastic band.

Ow Ow Help!

Disclaimer: This is a post about breastfeeding. It may get detailed. If you think it would weird you out to read about it, then skip this post. Please.

Oh, what to do? Tommy is pretty much refusing to eat any baby food. He enjoys trying to eat finger food, but his four teeth can only chomp so much. And by that I mean that last night for dinner he had one rotini noodle and two green beans and a slice of strawberry. That was it.

This means that Tommy and his four teeth are pretty much relying on my girls for their sole nourishment. And oh, the torture.

I love nursing. I have loved nursing since he was born, despite the frequent pain and difficulty of our early nursing experience. But this, oh my. LLL books say that nursing should never be painful, even when babies have teeth, so we must be doing something wrong. But it's like I've got two little razors biting the top of my nips, and he's somhow increased his suction power to super Hoover. I don't know, but it is torture to feed him. When we finish nursing parts of my nips are frequently white because he's sucked so hard.

Despite my poor, abused girls, I am absolutely not interested in weaning. So what can I do to ease the pain in the mean time?

I am slathering on the Lansinoh, but it doesn't seem to be doing much. Does anyone have any suggestions? All ye other mothers, does this happen to you? What do I need to do to fix it??

Holy Swimmers, Batman

I just found out that another friend (still not me) is pregnant! Whoo hoo! It's raining babies, apparently.

In case you're wondering, the Great Carnac says this baby is a boy.