You know you're a sucker for your kid when...

. . . you watch a video of yourself and your child over and over and over again, despite the fact that said video makes you and your family look like you are one hilarious Bob Saget voice-over away from being on America’s Funniest Home Videos: White Trash Edition, what with the child being clad only in his diaper, yourself in pajamas that, you are sure, could only look more sad if you had the top three inches of a thong showing in the back, a view of your son’s room which, despite only being about 10 seconds long, will no doubt lead your friend to remark a second time that she is “so relieved to know I’m not the only mom whose house is a total train wreck,” and the nice view of the futon mattress that’s been on his bedroom floor since JANUARY and shows no signs of going anywhere (because padded floors and toddlers belong together). Seriously, all this video needs is the alley-oop whistle sound when D falls over, and it’s production-ready for Fridays at 8PM.

But you watch this video over and over again anyway, because every time you see it, you are sure this child has the best belly laugh you have ever heard. Also because you want to be able to prove to him later that at one time in his life, he was completely entertained by having a parent throw a ball to the floor and yell, “BOOM!”


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Mommymatic's 1st Celebrity Comment and Other Randomness

So remember back when we were having a ton of sleep problems and I wrote this really snarky “questions for the experts” post?

Well, one of them WROTE BACK this week. Seriously! Elizabeth Pantley, author of “The No-Cry Sleep Solution” answered my questions and was, I admit, much nicer about it than I could possibly have deserved. In fact, if you read the comment she left, I think you’ll agree she’s kind of a class act. When I emailed her back to try and figure out if, in fact, it was her and not someone with waaaaay too much time on their hands impersonating Elizabeth Pantley, she confirmed that she was, in fact, who she said she was, and even said we could be friends despite the fact that I do in fact now employ the “Some-Cry Sleep Solution.” So I feel this is a milestone for Mommymatic. My first celebrity drive-by. Woo hoo.

In other news, we in fact have four, count ‘em, FOUR molars currently making inroads in the mouth of one small boy in our house. When I first discovered this tasty nugget o’ news, it made me kind of second-guess the whole 'intelligent design' bit, but then I figured, what the hey, at least we only have to go through it once-ish instead of four. separate. times. And those molars are freaking HUGE. I mean, I had no idea there was that much available real estate in D’s mouth. I thought maybe he was chewing on, say, a hankie or bedsheet or something, but, no, it was just the 50-inch home theater system of baby teeth.

Okay, almost enough randomity. I leave you with two small scraps of cuteness for your weekend: One, we discovered today that D can correctly identify his

• bellybutton


• ear


• nose


• foot


• head


• penis

And two, he now does this when he finds flowers:

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The View from Lambie

So I’m guestblogging for Mommymatic since she’s had what she calls a stressful weekend (stressful-ha! I get dragged around by one foot, gnawed on, tossed to the floor and pounced on, and that’s BEFORE I EVEN GET UP IN THE MORNING). I had some catching up to do myself, since I’m just coming off my 2-month hiatus in Mommymatic’s underwear drawer (yeah, the job is hell, but the vacations make up for it). I’m not entirely sure what happened to my body double, but from what I understand, there was some crotch-diving during a particularly messy diaper change that totally went wrong, so she’s out for a while, so I had to take a few days to acclimate myself.

One thing I discovered is that the Small One has apparently learned how to air-kiss. Of course, I never benefit from this new skill since he’s apt to take my entire muzzle in his mouth when WE kiss, but apparently, it’s cute to the Big Ones, so whatever. He also said his first discernible, meaningful word. I know what you’re thinking: Out of gratitude for all my thankless hours of service here at Casa Mommymatika, it was “Lambie,” right? No? No. It was “bay-bee,” referring, I’d imagine, to that stupid newcomer “Baby Doll,” who is just so smug I could punch his lights out. Oh, the injustice. But you know, I’ve read the Stuffed Toy Manifesto, so I know who’s going to get to be real one day, and it ain’t the plastic baby dolls. We’ll see who’s laughing then.

Oh, and I thought that once the Small One started banging his own head onto the floor/wall/window, he’d finally get how I feel for most of the day and we could do a little empathy training, but no—he thinks it’s funny. Naturally. Of course, I have to say I much prefer this new time-to-get-me-out-of-my-crib mechanism than the old one, which was jamming me in and out of the crib slats, so it’s not all bad

And evidently, there was some sort of Chair Strike while I was away, because all the chairs were lying face down my first day back from vacation, and the Small One seemed upset about it. Now they are all upright and clocked back in on the job, though, so maybe they’ve come to an agreement with Management. I think everyone’s worried they’ll strike again, though, because every time the Small One climbs up in them and sits down, all I hear is “Gooooood sitting!” I mean, they’re chairs, people. That’s what they do. Do they really need the stroking? I mean, No one ever says “Gooood comforting, Lambie! Good abuse-taking!.” Hmph. Maybe I need representation.

All boy

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about how incredibly often I do things I SWORE, pre-parenthood that I would never do. Some of these things were fantasies destined to die an early death: I’ll never give him formula, I’ll never sit him in a bouncy chair just so I can check email, I’ll never let him eat the crap that gets stuck to the high chair cushion, I’ll never let him play with inappropriate/disgusting/potentially dangerous objects (tube of sunscreen, bottle with a small cap, the gross and ancient tub plug, etc.). These, as most parents know, are what people think they will or won’t do before they actually have children (and if you actually have children and enforce these kinds of rules, good for you. I’m sorry we can’t be friends anymore, but still—good for you.) As far as I’m concerned, once the baby comes, all bets are off.

But these are more physical-care type oaths that I swore. I swore other oaths, ones that were more a matter of principle or life-ethics, which, at the time, I felt were more important and less likely to completely fall by the wayside than these other, more arbitrary rules about, you know, cleanliness and safety. I’m compelled to try and revive some of these more moral-type oaths now, but I am also very tired and not sure it’s worth trying to fight the vast societal tide that keeps pulling me under.

Let me explain. One of the things I swore as a feminist mom was that I would try really hard not to genderize my offspring. I would buy dolls for a boy. I would teach a girl to play football. That kind of thing. I didn’t freak over but rather joked about D’s early love of horrid, sparkly-furred, Barbie-accessorizing toys. I was pleased when he decided he loved beads and scarves and hairbrushes above most other toys. His lambie is referred toas “she,” and his baby doll is actually an anatomically correct little boy.

But insidiously, the gendering is creeping in. On a semi-weekly basis, people say to me, “Well, he’s just all boy, isn’t he?” when they see him climbing everything in sight, scaling the playground stairs or filling a dump truck with rocks. They remark on his activity level, assume he’s interested in playing with balls and trucks (which, I admit, he is), laugh at his burps and farts (which I do, too, just because he thinks he’s so funny) and insist that we need to get him a dog (which we probably will one day, if only because our Cat occasionally needs backup). But the reason people comment on these things, I think, is because they feel it makes him more “boy.” If he avoided the sandbox, they’d say “Oh, look, he can’t sit still long enough to be bothered with the sand!” But they say things to girls like “Oh, look, she doesn’t want to get dirty; she’s avoiding the sand.”

I don’t get this, and I don’t know how to deal with it. I know it’s not my problem that other people aren’t okay with the fact that my little man isn’t always such a man, but I feel I should speak up—if for no other reason than to make people think for one second about the gender-norming we’re all doing all the time. Is this my responsibility? Is it enough that I remark on girls being good climbers, assume they want to play with the trucks as much as my son and encourage the boys to play dress-up and feed their baby dolls, or do I have an obligation to address the issue in more overt ways?

Oh, and don’t get me wrong: if D ends up being The Man’s Man and doing everything society associates with masculinity (whatever THAT is—burping the alphabet? Collecting posters of scantily clad twins? Wearing baseball hats to every public function he attends?), I will be fine with it. He’ll always have the option to play with dolls, but if he doesn’t take in lieu of some other activity, I’m cool with that. I just don’t want him to do “boy stuff” because someone else brainwashed him into thinking that’s what he should be doing.

Easter Egg Hunt

So, on Friday we went to an Easter Egg Hunt. (Good Friday: Good for the Matics, but probably not so great for, say, Jesus Christ, what with being crucified and all. Thank goodness that story has a happy ending.)

Beth, one of my two live-in-the-flesh momfriends, invited us. Here she is with the inestimable Nina and Sam, her twins who are D's best buds:

While we were there, we met Erin and her son Jack. Again. Turns out we'd actually met in the grocery store when the kids were 3 months old, exchanged numbers and promptly entered into the "I-wonder-how-she's-doing, it's-been-too-long-to-call-now" stage.
Hosting the party was the lovely Shana, who has a rather large 11-week-old Huck strapped to her chest. She also has a 2 1/2 year old, Gus. And yes, Beth is pregnant. I don't drink the water in their neighborhood anymore.

So here is D's version of what happened:

Oh, sweet, there's stuff in here. Do we, like, get to KEEP what we find?
Yep, that's affirmative, Mama. Beth said we get to keep whatever's in our egg. Sweet.
Dude, how did he get an egg with that truck in it?? And all I got was this lousy pinecone?

Ok, big guy, watch and learn: Sam's the master, and if he can get a truck out of an egg, you can too.

Nina, honey, I need your help. Which egg has the truck in it?

Nina, hon, I need you to focus. Which. Egg. Has. The. Truck?

You know what, Nina? I guess what I really want in my Easter basket is...YOU! Grass and all.

Happy Easter, internets. Hope the day brought a resurrection to your spirit and renewal to your mind and body!

Tidbits

Some tidbits that Mrs. Davis, Sofrito Gringo, and Mom-101 evidently thought y'all couldn't live without knowing:

(1) Daddymatic and I met in high school, two years before we actually met. His debate partner and my debate partner 'dated' (which is to say: hooked up on debate trips, made mix tapes for each other, and spent way too much money on pre-cell-phone long-distance calling), and we are sure we were introduced to each other at some point, but neither of us remembers any specifics. We also joke that we “spent the night together” 3 years before we dated b/c we took an overnight train to Scotland while we were on summer study in Oxford. And in case you're wondering, yes, debaters are among the dorkiest humans ever. Even when they're not wearing t-shirts that say "Debaters do it orally." Oy.

(2) I shaved my legs on the Orient Express. There wasn't any hot water on the Budapest-to-Vienna leg of the trip back in '88, though.

(3) In an effort, apparently, to be whimsical, I started my graduate school application for studies in southern literature with this line from an Indigo Girls song: "When God made me born a Yankee, He was teasin'." Seriously. I was that much of a dork. My former advisor still rags me about it, as he should.

(4) Daddymatic and I lived for six months in Suwalki, Poland, whilst serving in the US Peace Corps. The coldest I remember it being was -25C.

(5) I took my second pregnancy test ever in Badlands National Park, South Dakota. I walked back to the tent, shared the news, and Daddymatic and I picked D's name within 5 minutes of said pregnancy test.

(6) For some reason, I can remember almost every line from Eddie Izzard’s Dressed to Kill routine and most of the prologue—in Middle English, no less—to The Canterbury Tales, but I cannot remember the name of the mom I JUST introduced myself to at the park like 5 minutes ago. Or what I wore yesterday. Mommybrain goes away, right?

And because I am always one to share the love, I'm tagging five of you for this meme:
Chris
Emily
Lisa
Kat
Kristin

Your mission, should you accept: Post 6 strange or interesting things about yourself, and then choose 6 people to do the same (I know I only did 5: do as I say, not as I do.). Tell them they are tagged in their comments box. You can report back to me when you've done it or not. Just remember that we're all counting on you.

Oh, and one final tidbit: of course we caved and got the Volo. Yes, it's everything Wood, Mom-101, Nancy and Foodmomiac suggested it might be. Of course, it took me 5 hours to figure out that BRU=Babiesrus (probably because we call it "babysaurus"), but once I did, we drove to the nearest one (1.5 hours away!) to comparison shop. Here's the thing: if you don't want to spend a buncha money, don't even LOOK at the Volo. 'Cause it's pretty. And light. And it is sooo well designed. And you will find that you can justify almost anything to yourself, even spending $50 more than you wanted to (or, let's face it, $50 more than you even have) . So anyway, there it is. Thanks for your help; photo essay to come, I'm sure.

Finally, I also have to report that if you're wondering why it takes us so long to get through lunch, this is why:

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So what was YOUR day like?

I’ve been inspired by certain cool, cool, and very cool (had to come back and add Mo-Wo, who my mommybrain had temporarily neglected to remember--sorry, wo) kids who have recorded all their activities on a given day; I felt like their posts gave me such insight as to what it is that SAHMs do that writing one might help me answer the question “So what did YOU do all day today?”

So here it is.

5:30 AM D wakes, fussing. I sigh, remembering that he awoke at the exact. same. time. yesterday, and when we finally got him up at 6:30, he was UNBEARABLE, screaming all through breakfast and generally being such a pain in the rear that he went down for a nap at 8:45. So this morning, we decide to wait it out. After the initial fussing, he calms and begins babbling to himself, fussing again every 10 minutes or so to test the waters and see if now, NOW is it time to get up?

6:00 D is quiet—probably sleeping. Daddymatic also sleeping. In a rare moment of coincidence, so are the cats. Mommymatic is the only one still awake.

6:45 I finally fall back to sleep.

7:15 D wakes again, happy and chatty. No fussing, which means he finally got enough sleep. I go into get him, and I remember why this is my favorite part of the day—he’s happy, smiley, cute. Such a morning person. Worse, he’s threatening to turn me into one.

7:25 Breakfast. I have little appetite, since I wasn’t feeling well yesterday, so I just have half an English muffin and a cup of tea. Normally, I’d follow that with some turkey bacon and several Tastykakes, but like I said: I'm off my feed.

I make Daddymatic some coffee. The moral of this story is when you take care of me and D (which daddy did yesterday) when I’m under the weather, I let you sleep in and will make you coffee the next day. As long as I can keep up with D. This child LOVES breakfast—he eats a ton (waffle with yogurt on it, turkey sausage, scrambled egg, half a banana and some canned pears, yum yum) and is happy, happy, happy about it. He reminds me of the Jonathan Richman song: “I eat with gusto! Damn, you bet!”

8:00 Bottle and diaper change. D commences running around the living room, opening up his tunnel, playing with blocks, and having me read books. I ask him if he seriously doesn’t know yet how Dinosaur’s Binkit ends, as we have read it several hundred times. This morning.

8:30 Daddymatic gets up. I am reminded that he needs to take our car in for its woefully overdue inspection, so I fix him a quick lunch while he gets ready.

9:15 Daddymatic leaves. We watch him out the window, which produces some consternation on D’s part. Not unlike a dog, however, he is quickly distracted from his grief by a toy car, a tennis ball, or the vaccum cleaner.

9:30 I remember that we need to go to the post office, and since it’s close by, I decide that we’ll take the hateful stroller. The MomHair is not doing well, so I get in the tub for a quick wash. D sticks his hands under the faucet and we wash them. He also dumps most of his tub toys in to keep me company.

10:00 Daisy-fresh and blown-dry, we leave the house only to discover two things: One, that the stroller is, of course, in the car. Which is being inspected. I also remember that my wallet is in the carseat because I let D play with it yesterday. I utter several off-limits curse words with fervor and zeal. I then call Daddymatic and utter same curse words to him.

10:02 Change Go To Post Office Plan to Play Outside Plan. D digs in dirt, finds “treasures” (rocks, pine cones, burrs, bottlecaps, other random unidentified bits I’d rather not think too deeply about), carries them about, does several laps around the house. For some reason, I decide it might be fun to blow up D’s inflatable dinosaur pool from last summer. I get halfway through before realizing I can no longer feel my hands. I stop.

11:00 Return inside for lunch. I note that there is decidedly less vigor in D’s eating, probably because of all the yawning he’s doing.

11:30 Diaper change. Avec poop. I signal naptime by closing the curtains, grabbing lambie and a paci, turning on the humidifer (also known by its common name, The Worthless Piece of Crap) and giving it a smack so it sounds less like a dripping-water-torture-machine meets-small-helicopter and more like a noise-masking Nap Soundtrack. And voila, we have naptime. D and I have a deal: At nap, I sing three songs while holding him in my lap. If he can manage to fall asleep before I’m done, so much the better. If not, he goes into the crib anyway for “quiet time.” This day, he barely makes it through the second song before he’s out.

12:15 Daddymatic returns with the car. And my wallet. And the stroller. He returns to school in the other car while I read, clean up a little, eat some saltines. M, the striped tabby, curls up on my chest for a brief nap.

1:45 D wakes, happy and chatty. We have a snack, another diaper change, a little more milling around in the apartment.

2:30 We go back outside. I finish blowing up the pool. Sparky, the friendly neighborhood beagle who lives downstairs, comes out to bestow kisses and be granted some cinnamon graham crackers. We all hang out a little.

3:30 Finally retrieve the loathsome stroller and wallet from the car and head to the post office. We see a horse on the way and stop to pet it. D is enthralled, but perhaps that is because he thinks it’s just the biggest cat he’s ever seen.

4:15 Daddymatic arrives home. We chat while D brings us treasures and squalls when said treasures get stuck inside a flowerpot.

4:45, I hand D over since I have a conference call to make. Daddymatic makes ready to take D to the park, and I drop heavy hints about how I’d love a coke and some fries, which signals to Daddymatic that I am ready to join the land of eating again.

5:35 The boys arrive home, buoyant but starving. D eats massive amounts again—deli ham, carrots, green beans, a whole wheat pancake, toast, apples. I surreptitiously eat fries in the living room while Daddymatic cooks dinner.

6:15 D poops, so I decide to go ahead and bathe him and get him ready for bed while Daddymatic finishes making dinner.

6:30 D discovers a bar of soap, which distracts him from his first love for several minutes. Eventually, of course, he rediscovers the drain plug. Bath over.

6:45 Freshly diapered, lotioned and pajamaed, my clean-faced little guy cavorts around the living room for a few minutes while I clean the Worthless Piece of Crap from D’s room and get it fully functional. Repeat getting-ready-for-bed exercises from naptime, only for nighttime, we repeat Guess How Much I Love You? and Good Night, Moon (sorry, GGC) from memory and sing a song, tell him his daddy and I and his grandparents and aunts and God all love him, and say a prayer. He’s asleep by the time I put him in his crib.

7:00 Daddymatic and I eat a peaceful dinner. We retire to the couch, where I watch way too much TV while checking blogs and email and forget completely about the dishes, the diapers that need to be washed, and the fact that I promised to go to bed early this night.

11:00 I remember dishes. Curse myself for forgetting them. Curse us for using dishes in the first place. Curse the cats for not helping out. Curse the fact that cats have no opposable thumbs. Reconsider last item and realize it’s probably a good thing.

11:30 Decide I need a small snack (since, you know, the dishes are now done). Read for a while and finally retire to bed with my book.

12:31 Daddymatic nudges me to turn the light off, as I’ve been sleeping with it on for approximately 20 minutes.

And you thought my dissertation was boring, huh, Bee-bee?

Yo, internets. I need your help!

I need an umbrella stroller. Nothing fancy, nothing super-expensive (I'm cheap like Dutch), just something that gets the job done, preferably with at least a sun canopy, since we are soon to be moving to the Land Closer to the Sun (at 4330 feet). I have one made by Carter's that I LOATHE because 1) it squiggles all over the road 2) its handles are too short, even for my 5' 6" frame and 3) it doesn't FOLD UP LIKE AN UMBRELLA. Huh?? It seems implicit in the NAME that an umbrella stroller should fold up like an umbrella, no?

Perhaps I'm being too literal.

Anyhoo. We had a wonderful Gracosaur (thanks to Mo-wo for that name) that I liked, even as bulky as it was, but we've loaned it to some really cute kids who are even cuter and more po' than we are, so I'd feel like a class-A jerk to ask for it back, and plus, I'd like something a little more travel-friendly, what with The Big Move coming up and everything. So I figured I'd turn to my trusty internets and ask y'all. Do you guys own an umbrella stroller? Do you love it? Did you pay less than, I dunno, $75 for it? HELP. I've gotta Ebay or online-order it, most likely, because the State College Retail Philosophy is, apparently, "If You Can't Get it At Wal-Mart, You Don't Really Need It." (we do have a Tar-zhay, but it's one of the smaller stores and their baby section is kee-rap).

Any helps? Oh, yeah, and you get bonus points if the stroller you rec either has a shoulder/5-pt. harness or can be easily adapted to one I've made myself (I know, I know. But D thinks it's best to ride in a stroller with his face INCHES from the ground. Sigh.)

When the cat's away...

While we were househunting, finding a preschool and (at least on my part) begging for a job in SLC, the highly lauded and soon-to-be-beatified Bee-bee and Grampy came to care for the Boy Wonder and his feline friends, because they need a highly qualified staff to attend to their needs and are used to a high level of service (though the cats will have you know that the service has REALLY slipped around here in the last, ph, 15 months or so). We left a disposable camera laying around, and when we developed it, we found a photo essay of their visit together, most of which apparently consisted of D playing at the park. You can view the rest of the collection by clicking the flickr thingy on the sidebar, but for now, I will confine my creative juices, such as they are, to providing commentary on the pix:

My visit with Grampy and Bee-bee
by D

You may already know this, but in case you don't, my people have a thing about photographing me in or near this tunnel. Myself, I'm not sure why. I mean, I do LOTS of other things at the park!

Like using very small hills in the sandbox to prepare for the advent of my ski-jump training once we're withing spitting distance of Park City.

Or testing to see how well they sanded the benches in the little league dugout. Smooth as a baby's my bum, it turns out.

Or what about swinging? Is it totally gauche to swing now and no one told me?

But no, they prefer to get shots of me in the tunnel. Always with the tunnel!

I can hear them now, "Oh *snap*! Looks like D's going in the tunnel!"

I mean, I can't even stand UP in here, for pete's sake.

Luckily, grampy rescued me from that mind-numbing, frighteningly hamsterlike tunnel exercise and we got to do some man-stuff together.
Like hugging and watching construction vehicles. Manly. And sweet. Kind of like the Village People.
And here's Bee-bee giving me my first chocolate chip cookie. Right after this was taken, she muttered something to Grampy about "thanks for capturing her violation of the Daddymatic no-cookie manifesto for posterity," but Grampy explained that with mommy as my Other Parent, liking cookies is kind of my destiny. They are helping me get in touch with my mother's people, he said.

Okay, Grampy didn't really say that. He's never said that many words voluntarily in his life. But that's what he was thinking, I'm sure of it.

Where the baths have no water

Friends, I am concerned. My child is obsessed (obsessed, I tell you!) with, of all things, the tub drain and its plug. The second his feet hit the tub water (and it’s only feet, peeps—the only water that butt sees is whatever I slosh on it with a washcloth), he reaches for the plug and pops it out. And after a few seconds, plugs it back in. And then takes it back out. Lather, rinse, repeat. He. will. not. stop. As in, I could have a laser-light-show-making, show-tune-singing, sequin festooned tub toy that is the envy of all children in the universe, and he would completely ignore it. As in, not even the cute bubbles I blow with the wand that comes in the California Baby bubble bath distract him. As in, I bought a SECOND plug in a weak attempt to keep some of the water in the tub for more than say, 15.6 seconds, and he grabs it, too whenever I try to sneak it back in there. He howls in protest if I hold my hand over the plug so he can’t take it out, but would happily stay in there forever once all the water is drained out. Even the spurned tub toys merit a second look once the tub is empty.

So of course, every tubbie-time begins with either daddymatic or me holding our little paws over the plug, insisting that “we need for the water to stay in the tub, D” enduring said shrieks of protest and much clawing of toddler hands. After five minutes of this, we give up, allow him to let the water out while swiping him off with a washcloth so he doesn’t reek of sweat/poo/encrusted food, and let him play in the empty tub for several minutes before proceeding with the rest of the evening routine.

So at this point, you might be asking, “why don’t you just stop wasting so much freaking water and put him in the dry tub, swipe him off with a washcloth and cut your losses?” My only answer is because, well, it’s weird. It’s weird to take nothing but what my friend Laurie used to refer to as “ho” baths (but what the more genteel of you might call “sponge” baths). It’s weird to be able to play fairly normally in a pool, play with water all day long but then become unable to function in a tub with a plug in it until that plug is pulled out. I know it is a battle I will lose, and I know in the grand scheme of things, it’s not a big deal, but it bugs me. If for no other reason than the sheer weirdness factor.

However, it is every bit as cute as it is weird. So here is your penis-free (can’t wait to see what google searches THAT merits) video of Bath With No Water. Oh, and Kristen? Daddymatic’s singing on this one as a tribute to the Flock of Seagulls hairstyle he gave D. It’s just for you, girl.

For the record, yes, D is pulling at his, ah, personal “plug” as we end the scene, and I am the person having trouble with the English language. Enjoy.





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Where I've been

I’m not dead. I’m here, I’m trying to catch up on blogreading, so if I haven’t left a comment, it’s only because I’m lazy and not because your wit isn’t as sparkly as it used to be. Although to be fair, blogger has been peevish lately, so often, it’s not even that I’m lazy.

I’ve been away, and while I’ve been gone, you people have been busy. Many of you have been frittering slaving away the hours describing the reality of motherhood as compared to the propaganda cover-up we got from books that actually say things like “you will wonder what you ever did without a baby” (I mean, come ON, I love my son deeply [ah, the phrase that MUST precede any complaint about the difficulty of motherhood] but yes, I remember what life was like before baby: lots of sleeping in and having sex/watching a movie/eating junk whenever we wanted). Even more of you are talking about—or at least around—the now-famous post by my girl MIM, and a very lucky, select group of you punks actually got to meet each other! No fair!

But the Parent-matic Whirlwind Western Wandering has been completed and I’d say it was a qualified success. First, we found a most excellent preschool for D. I love this place so much that I am seriously considering applying for a job there if things don’t work out elsewhere [more on that later]. They use the Reggio Emilia method, which might as well be called How Mommymatic Would Run a Preschool if She Knew Anything About Kids. I have mentioned my lack of enthusiasm for daycare in my personal family situation (that’s what we call a disclaimer, kids: I don’t mind daycare in general, just am not crazy about it in my own sitch), but this place made ME want to bring my blankie, plunk down for ‘music and movement’ and ask “what’s for snack?”

Also, and perhaps most excitingly, we are Under Contract for this totally adorable house (yes, it's pink. But did I mention the fireplace in the master bedroom?).

For those of you who don’t believe in God, the fact that we found this house could easily be, as Anne Lamott says, called “Exhibit A.” Seriously. The day before and the day of finding the house, I SOBBED IN DESPAIR over the offerings available in our price range. Anything that didn’t have a creative interpretation of the words “3 bedrooms” (actual utterance by Daddymatic: “doesn’t it need to at least have a door and/or a closet to be a bedroom?”) was really, really far from Salt Lake proper and whatever native charm it might have had was sucked out by freeway noise and the presence of strip malls on all sides. So we got lucky with this baby. I don’t want to jinx myself by going on and on about how nice it is, but dude, it is. Decent location, nice remodel job, good space in which the Wee One can play, etc., etc.

So that's where I've been...I have other stuff percolatin', so I hope to have more updatage this week. But enough about me...how are YOU?