July 9, 2009
Clap clap!
Achtung!
Okay, boys: I’m going to take a quick picture of you together to surprise Daddy for Father’s Day. All you need to do is sit close together for a minute and giggle.
Easy!
Photo Session, Attempt the First:
Not bad, fellas. Not bad.
But let’s try it again.
Maybe you could stand closer together. You know, so your faces are less than two feet apart.
Yes! this is better.
Do you want use the balloon as a prop?
Okay. I guess that’s okay.
Ummmmm…
And, Scene.
Photo Session, Attempt the Second:
Let’s try this outside!
An action shot! Fantastic!
Can we try it again with less jumping on the baby’s head?
Excellent.
Getting closer in this one.
Pitter? Please stop waving.
Patter? Could you stop crawling and look up for just.one.second?
And, Scene.
And I present to you the final, winning shot, given to Sweet Cheeks in a frame a mere week late:
I’m sparing you the images of certain individuals being hit over the head with drumsticks.
The lesson? If I plan on a brotherly Christmas card this year, I need to start working on it no later than September.
July 8, 2009
1. Antibiotics
I came down with official mastitis this weekend (fever, chills, body-soaking sweats yippee) after fighting it last month without medication. This time I needed medication. And, although taking it 4 times a day on an empty stomach makes eating when I’m hungry nearly impossible, and it gives poor Patter terrible poops, it works! I’m healed! And my skin looks fantastic.
2. Pitter’s horrid pre-school room teacher has left the day care center.
We don’t know why. We don’t care. We’re just glad she’s gone.
3. Netflix now has available new seasons of Mad Men, Entourage, and True Blood.
And I just finished up Weeds. What to the hell to the what? with the pregnancy?
4. Another night at the W in Chicago with Sweet Cheeks last weekend.
Mastitis aside, it was a mini-20-hour vacation. Also, Patter slept better for my mother than he does for me.
5. Upcoming bachelorette party in fantastic destination in 10 days.
July 1, 2009
I heard “Advice to a Pregnant Daughter-in-Law” by Charles Darling on the Writer’s Almanac today (July 1). Be not afraid of poetry. Go read it!
It made me cry, partially because I think that aside from being a poet yourself, one of the coolest things in the world would be to have married a man whose father is a poet who writes you poems about hope and beauty while you are pregnant:
Perhaps enough is said
of grief and happiness to realize
that any child of yours will live a lifetime
utterly beguiled (as my child is)
by your bright smile, your wild and Irish laugh.
Sigh!
Also, I cried because I missed the opportunity while I was pregnant to read Shakespeare, listen nightly to baroque divertimenti, to watch clouds pass overhead, and to learn Indian lullabies. What an idiot I was.
If you’re pregnant, don’t make the same mistake I did and waste your time reading Babycenter and worrying about how much chocolate you’re eating. Instead, cup the enchantments the world offers in your hands and drink from the magical concoction of music and wisdom and words deeply and often.
June 29, 2009
Yesterday at 4 pm Patter sliced the base of his thumb on the lip of a soda can. A soda can I allowed him to play with despite the little voice in my head that urged, Pitter cut his finger on a tin once; take this can away immediately!
Fortunately, it stopped bleeding pretty quickly and didn’t even require a bandage. Crisis averted.
This morning at 1 am Patter cried from his crib for a snack/to co-sleep. When we fell back asleep after nursing in my bed I was vaguely aware that he had rearranged himself in an odd position against me: his feet were by my ears and his head was near my waist. A little voice in my head urged, Beware of this! He may scoot down in his sleep!
Surely you can guess what happened next, around 3 am:
BOOM!
WAAAAAAAAAaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!
That’s right: he crawled right off the end of the bed and fell two and a half feet onto the floor.
Fortunately, he woke up this morning chipper and with functioning use of his brain, so second crisis averted.
Mother of the Year I am not.
In happier news, Pitter met his idol, the great PBS character, SuperWhy, this weekend. I imagine this is whom he imagines meeting at the Pearly Gates. If he imagines such things. But he probably doesn’t because we haven’t had much time to explain Heaven with all the threats of Hell we give him for his all-around rotten behavior as of late.
Ha. I kid.
Sort of.
I’ve read some parents who say that age 2 is just the teeniest bit “terrible” compared to age 3. So I’ve been quasi-prepared for a decline in happy days around here. But then recently I read that age 4 has it’s own set of woes and that kids really stable out around 5. NO ONE TOLD ME THIS INSANITY WOULD POTENTIALLY LAST FIVE YEARS! PER CHILD! W.T.F.?
Oh, SuperWhy. We have some Super Big problems to solve.
June 28, 2009
The ladies behind Fightingwindmills, One Brick Shy, DesignHerMomma, Forever December, and Ordinary Days are all pregnant this summer. Some quite so.
And after going for a run yesterday in the middle of the day in 85 degree heat/over 80 % humidity WHILE pushing 50lbs of baby + stroller I tip my cap to them all. Why?
Because I wasn’t anywhere near as hot or uncomfortable doing so as I was simply walking around a playground last summer when I was pregnant.
Gah.
