The April Fools' Day Bitch: Me

Just a very quick post because I'm using Libby's laptop (which has a keyboard perfectly sized for children or someone with lithe little fingers--NOT fat hobbit fingers like I have--so every word I type requires multiple attempts and many unwanted letters).

Sunday, our hard drive in the computer broke. Out of nowhere, it started making a clicking noise which we found out means that something bad is going on. We've given the computer to a friend of the family to work on, but I'm not that hopeful that anything will be salvaged. Which means that we lost pretty much ALL of the pictures and videos of the kids.

In a stroke of extreme irony, just last week I ordered a back up external hard drive that I had intended to move everything onto in the off chance that something happened to the computer. I ordered it from Amazon, which, sadly, meant that it hasn't yet come in the mail, but I fully expect it to today or tomorrow. I can't stop kicking myself for not getting it ordered just a week earlier. The worst part is, it's something I'd MEANT to order back in January, but just never got around to. It just figures that, shortly after I did remember, the stupid hard drive would go. Thus I can only assume that it broke BECAUSE I ordered the external drive and Fate is just picking on me once again. The bitch.

So, yeah, pretty broken up about the hours and hours of videos and hundreds, probably thousands of pictures that we lost. It was like we had a house fire without all the insurance paperwork. I just hope that blogger will let me download the videos and pictures that I've posted on here--which will be nice since I've really posted the best of the best on here for the last year now. That would be something, at least. But I haven't actually tried to download anything, mostly because I'm afraid of what I'll find out. Stupid computers.

Take this as a cautionary tale and back up your stuff!

At any rate, I probably won't post on here again until the computer is up and running again. It's just too frustrating trying to type with this laptop.

She's Mobile!

Tuesday, quite out of the blue, Butts started crawling. I say "quite out of the blue" as if she hasn't been working her way up to crawling for the past month or so, of course, but it still seemed very sudden how quickly she got it all figured out. One minute she was propping herself up on her hands and feet and then sliding forward a few inches and the next time I looked she was crawling. Pretty much within an hour she was able to get just about anywhere she wanted in the living room and dining room.

Then, yesterday, I decided maybe it was time to try the Chair Barrier again. The Chair Barrier was something I came up with to confine Gabe to the living room when he started to crawl. We have accordion gates up between the dining room and my office, the kitchen, and the stairs, but we don't have anything keeping a child from escaping the living room into the dining room (because the doorway in there was designed for double French doors or something and is FAR too big for any sort of gate). With Gabe, my concern was primarily motivated by the fact that we didn't really want to child proof the dining room. I laid two chairs down, interweaving the legs, so that they couldn't be pushed out of the doorway. Then I stuffed the holes with pillows to keep him from squeezing through. It actually worked pretty well for three months or so, until he figured out how to yank the pillows out and get between the chairs, at which point we had to baby proof the dining room.

So, yesterday, I thought to myself, "I REALLY don't want to re-baby proof the dining room, since it's filled with all of Gabe's small toys and other possible hazards. I'll rebuild the Chair Barrier. Gabe's big enough to crawl over it to get from the living room to the dining room. It will be perfect!"

No dice. Gabe COULD crawl over it, and did a few times, but then it became more fun for him to start tearing down the barrier so that he could move more easily between rooms (keeping in mind that he didn't NEED to move between rooms--and, in fact, wouldn't have if the barrier hadn't been there, but, because it was, he HAD to be in whatever room he wasn't currently in). So, Chair Barrier was a non-option this go 'round, sadly. It would have been too perfect, I suppose. So I spent the better part of yesterday afternoon sorting through all of Gabe's toys in the dining room and taking them up to his room, leaving only the ones that were big enough for her to play with and gave her free roam of the dining room as well.

Not surprisingly, this has not been a popular change with Gabe. He's spent the entire morning so far trying to sneak toys down from upstairs (or just throwing them down the stairs when he didn't feel like being sneaky), only to have me take them back up amidst crying protests. It's great fun.

But I did manage to get a little video of Norah crawling.

Before getting the video, I had to take a picture of her with a ring she found in her mouth. These rings were Gabe's favorite finger-toy and we have multiple pictures of him sitting in various places with a ring hanging out of his mouth. For posterity.

Obviously, I didn't have the gate to the stairway closed yet by this point (I did right after, and Gabe has since insisted that he wants to be upstairs or downstairs six times in thirty minutes--where, normally, he might never go upstairs during the day except for his nap).

Our Kids Torment People, Animals, Things, and Each Other

I was just taking a moment to move all of the videos and pictures we've taken over the past few weeks onto the computer, so I figured I would do a quick update so everyone could see them. Here goes, in no particular chronological order.

Gabe eats his first snow. Well, this is the first time he's eaten on purpose, anyway. He's done a fair amount of face planting the other times he's played in the snow. This was from last Sunday, actually (two days ago). We got about three inches of snow on Friday night. It was our end of March snow. Our biggest snow of the year was the last weekend of March last year. I'm thinking a tradition is starting. Anyway, I guess here he's just tormenting the snow, since it has to apply to my theme some way.

Gabe torments Sandy. Sandy spent a chunk of the weekend here. Gabe LOVES Sandy because they spend most of their time tormenting each other to hilarious effect. Here he decided to stack all of his giant puzzles on her then climb aboard. Kids are weird.

Gabe torments a sippy cup filled with chocolate milk. Bit of a stretch, probably.

Norah torments Tsunami. There's two parts to this. We were trying to capture her victory yell--like Xena, sort of. She'd grab a handful of the cat's hair then start screeching. She does the screech a few times in the videos, but without the volume and not right after she grabs the hair. Still, you can see that she's starting to figure crawling out. She does more army crawling than actual crawling right now--pulling herself forward on her forearms. But just in the past two days she has started to figure out that she can move forward more easily if she's on her hands and knees. Squeee!

Part 2. More of the same, really, but still amusing. Tsunami really is the best cat ever. If only she wouldn't crap all over the carpet in the back room instead of in her litter box, then maybe Libby wouldn't want her dead so badly.

Gabe torments Norah. Sort of. She's actually having quite a bit of fun--though we did a terrible job of getting her smiling face in the picture. She likes peak-a-boo and baby-squirming-under-a-blanket-like-an-infant-piglet right now.

Here Norah is getting her revenge for whatever tormenting Gabe has done to her in the past. She is trying to get Gabe's binky, and he is trying to keep her from getting it while still letting her amuse him. They're mutually amused, really. After rolling away at the end of the video, she rolled back and tried some more for a few more minutes.

The Complex Existentialism of Two Storey Houses

Just a little while ago, I had a complicated exchange with Gabe that resulted, ultimately, in neither of us becoming more enlightened.

For some time now, I've been adopting a perhaps unorthodox approach to teaching Gabe. From the time when it became possible to explain things to him, I've always attempted--with my first attempt, anyway--to explain things to him as if he were an adult. To my way of thinking, this will encourage him to think and act like an adult that much sooner, which is great considering adults tend to put far fewer clumps of dirt in their mouths (just yesterday, Gabe "tested" a handful of grass seed for its edibility). Not surprisingly, I've had limited success, and I usually end up having to "dumb it down" to the point where I'm going from something like "We have to be careful with sharp things because your skin is very thin and very fragile" to saying something like "This will give you an ouchie," but I'm persistent if nothing else. Most of our hang-ups tend to stem from various abstractions and his inability to grasp the concepts behind them.

Take our latest exchange, for instance. I put Butts down for her second nap (which I'm a little surprised she seems to be taking--she's been a terrible napper again this last week, sleeping only thirty minutes or so during the day, if at all) about a half hour ago. When I came down the stairs from her room, Gabe was in the dining room crashing his cars together in a decidedly calamitous way. When I got into the dining room, I said, "Shhh. I just put the baby down and we need to be quiet." He made an argument that I interpreted, perhaps incorrectly because it's always a crap shoot, as "Baby is upstairs, and I am downstairs. My noise is in this room, not upstairs."

"But this room is right underneath the baby's room," I pointed out. "So anything you do down here goes right through the ceiling into her room."

He looked up at the ceiling and gave me a look as if to say, "That's a ceiling. There's nothing there. Stupid."

So I pressed on, waiting for the little light bulb to go off above his head. "Baby's room is upstairs, right on the other side of this ceiling. See. Here's baby's room. Here's your room. Here's the landing, and here's Mommy and Daddy's room." I said, going into different rooms and pointing at the ceiling. "The upstairs is built right on top of the rooms that are downstairs."

"Baby's room in the sky," he decided. This conclusion was doubtless exacerbated by the new episode of "Ni Hao, Kai-Lan" we just finished watching shortly before Norah went to bed. In it, Kai-Lan and her friends visit another friend, Lulu, in her house. Lulu is a pink rhino whose primary means of transportation is to fly everywhere she goes, supported by a single balloon tied to her horn. Perfectly logical. So, obviously, she lives in a house in the clouds.

"Well, sort of," I had to concede. Compared to the ground floor, our second storey IS in the sky, just not very far. "But not really." This last bit had to be confusing, but I'm dealing with complicated issues here, and it's probably best that Gabe is exposed to "grey areas" from early on since life is filled with so many of them. "See the ceiling in this room?" I asked, pointing up. He nodded. "This ceiling is the floor to baby's room. And this ceiling is the floor to your room."

"My room upstairs," he replied flatly. He didn't actually shake his head at my nonsense, but I could tell that it was implied. This teaching moment, like so many before it, had gotten away from me. So I took the easy way out, "Baby is sleeping, we need to be quiet," I amended.

"Shhh. Tiptoe," he answered back. "Yes. Shhh. Tiptoe," I agreed. And that was the end of that. Some day, though, this is all going to pay off. Mark my words.

Gabe Takes a Life

It was bound to happen. I suppose that we've done the world a favor by delaying it until he was almost three, but Gabe finally killed something.

Oh yeah. SPOILER ALERT: The worm dies at the end. I'll put that in there for those people who would rather know how it ends ahead of time than wait for the surprise.

I'm getting ahead of myself.

Libby and Gabe spent the evening out in the gardens yesterday (after Gabe, Norah, and I had already spent about an hour and a half out there--this isn't important to the story, I just wanted to prove that I, too, go outside with the kids and expose them to things other than Yo Gabba Gabba). And Libby got a trilogy of videos that I'm going to post that will tell the story of their early evening in the yard and how it ultimately led to MURDER. If the videos aren't too long for Blogger, that is.

This first video is unrelated to Gabe's crime against nature. It's a video of Gabe doing something utterly frustrating. Well, frustrating to me, anyway. It pretty accurately depicts the difference in parenting styles between Libby and myself. I stop him from doing things he's not supposed to, Libby likes to see how things are going to play out on their own. Anyway, mildly amusing.

As you can see from the video, the worm is still alive, if not well. He would go on to carry it around for another ten minutes or so, mistreating it in many different ways. Unfortunately, Libby brought the camera in after this video. She came in after the damage was done and told me I needed to see it. I brought out the camera and we got some of the aftermath.

Here the worm is quite obviously an ex-worm. Libby said Gabe was swinging it around like a piece of string, which is probably what did the poor little fella in. I, of course, would have put a stop to this much earlier, probably saving the worm's life. Libby, as I mentioned earlier, likes to see how things are going to play out, and this time a life was lost. Hopefully she learned a valuable lesson.

Feeling the Love

Just a couple of quick notes.

This morning when Gabe woke up, I went into his room to get him (he still won't get out of bed on his own, even though there isn't a thing in the world stopping him). "Momma!" he said. "I sleep!" This last bit he is adding right now every time we get him out of bed. I'm thinking he says it as a way to convince us that it's time for him to get up because he's tried to pass it off a few times when he's only been in bed for five or ten minutes and wants to get out again.

"No, it's me," I corrected. "You did a good job sleeping. Are you ready to get up?"

"Where's Momma? She gets me up," he replied.

"She's still getting out of bed herself. She'll follow us downstairs."

This explanation wasn't entirely to his liking, but he reluctantly agreed to get out of bed and come downstairs with me. Libby met him at the doorway, to his excitement, and went downstairs with him while I gathered up Gabe's blankie and the "friends" I knew he would make me go upstairs later to get if I didn't bring them down now.

At the top of the stairs, I heard Gabe say, "Daddy go to work, Momma stay home today." Very matter of factly, as if saying it made it an instant reality.

"No, hon," Libby replied. "Momma has to go to work today." This did not please Gabe. He immediately went to his tested method of getting what he wants, repeating things until they happen. For the next few minutes he kept saying, "Daddy go to work, Momma stay home." Eventually, as he saw that Libby was going through her morning ritual instead of settling into the more relaxed schedule she'd take up if she were staying home, he reluctantly accepted that it would be me, and not her, that would be staying home. Again.

But he wasn't willing to let it go at that. Once Libby left this morning, he took up the call again. "Tomorrow, Momma stays home and Daddy goes to work," he stated. And then I spent the next ten minutes talking him down off THAT ledge.

A little later, and on another entirely different subject, Gabe did something else that I found quite amusing. Over the past week, he's come to love marshmallow peeps. I have very mixed feelings about this. One the one hand, I'm happy to have an ally in the house. I love the things, but Libby thinks they are possibly the most vile creation on the planet. Now, thanks to our superior numbers, we can make her opinion null and void, dismissing it as the rantings of a crazy person (unless Butts jumps on her bandwagon later in life, of course, in which case we'll have to renew the debate). On the other hand, now I have to share my marshmallow peeps, which makes me a little sad inside.

Anyway, I gave him a pink marshmallow chick this morning. He promptly ate off the tail then put the rest in his snack bowl. As I was changing his poopy pants (yeah, potty training isn't so much progressing still), he asked for the peep, so I handed it to him because having something in his hands keeps him from squirming around while I'm cleaning him up.

Then, using a high pitched voice, he said, "Where is your father?" to the peep. He went on to repeat this another three times while I sat there and watched to see how this little storyline was going to progress. It didn't. He left it hanging there. I'm still not sure if he was supposed to be the peep's mom or what because he wouldn't elaborate. Instead of building on the story, he chose the easy way out and ate the peep's head. So I will be left forever to wonder if he wanted to find the peep's father to bring comfort to the baby peep (before eating it) or if he wanted to eat the father, too. Considering how eager he was to get rid of me this morning, I'm guessing the latter.

Either way, it's probably a little disturbing. I'll have to keep an eye on his easter candy eating habits from now on to see if he's enjoying it a little TOO much, I suppose.

I Hate Daylight Savings Time

After typing out that title, my mind started wandering. There is no cute little symbol I can use to replace the word "hate." I mean, there is h8, but since it's only two characters shorter, it's really just a piece of 1337 (leet) nonsense. If you love something, you have the heart symbol, after all, so there should be something like that for hate.

And thinking about that led my brain to remember something that my friends and I always used to talk about doing some day. We were going to go out and buy a mess of card suit stickers (and number 8's) and do some creative adjusting to the bumper stickers that people put on their cars. At the time--more than a decade ago at this point--people were terribly fond of reinforcing their feelings for whatever was special to them by posting it on their bumpers. Wives, children, dogs, cats, pretty much anything--MOST of them should have gone without saying, but the fact that they didn't surely said something important about the kind of people who found the probably permanent defacing of their vehicle necessary to prove to the world that they cared about something or someone. And, invariably, because it's cute, the message was spelled out with a "heart." I "heart" my wife. I "heart" my dog. I "heart" Willard Fillmore Magnet Schools. Whatever. Everyone was hearting things.

And we wanted to destroy that with stickers. Our plan was to keep a handful of clubs, spades, and number 8's in our pockets so we could cover up the hearts with something far more interesting. I "spade" my wife. I "club" my dog (clearly "baby seals" would have been the perfect one for this spot). I 8 my children. Hilarious! Obviously the "spade" my dog one we would have passed on since it might have been confused for an intended message. The possibilities were endlessly amusing to us.

But, unfortunately, we never got around to doing it, and now I almost never see people hearting things anymore. Another opportunity lost.

Anyway, on to daylight savings time. I think it's dumb. Everything about it makes me cranky. First, I lose an hour of sleep, as if I can spare anymore of those. Second, it gets dark an hour later at night, which makes it more difficult to get the kids to bed at a decent time. For the past six months or so, we've been telling Gabe, "If you wake up and it's still dark outside, go back to sleep." What other indicator of bed time could we give him? He can't tell time, so we can't say, "No getting up before 6:30" and expect him to have any idea what we mean. But here it is only March and already it's staying light until almost 8:00--his normal bed time. It will be impossible to get him to bed before 10:00 by June.

Oh, and I saw the obvious flaw in the "telling him to go back to sleep if it's dark" plan from the beginning--plus it starts getting light here around 5:30 in the morning by June, which makes matters worse--but, again, what else could I say? "If you wake up, and you don't hear Mommy and Daddy putzing around in the basement, then it's too early and you should go back to sleep." As if that would work.

Third, it wreaks havoc on the kids' internal clocks. Neither one of them knows what's going on with their bed times right now--they both FEEL that it isn't really bed time yet, so they end up protesting and fighting sleep until their old bed time has gone by as well. You'd think this would buy us an extra hour of sleep in the morning--after all, old 6:30, which is when Gabe usually woke up, is 7:30 now. No dice. He's still up at 6:30 for some reason--6:00 this morning, actually. Ugh.

And, finally, I hate daylight savings time because it's unnecessary. I don't farm. Nobody does anymore. So who cares when it gets dark at night? They should pick the time they prefer and stick with it. Either it stays light later into the evening, or, during the winter, it will be dark until almost 9:00 in the morning, but no more changing the time!

Stupid Ben Franklin and his practical nature. If I didn't respect him for being such an interesting historical figure (meaning, he did a lot of whoring), I'd hate him for his pragmatism. But tradition and his pragmatism is no reason for us to still be doing this at least a half century after it stopped being relevant.

That feels better. It's nice, from time to time, to rant about things you can't change.

Obviously the kids haven't been up to anything interesting, or I would have worked that into this post somewhere. Butts is finally starting to feel better, so we're all pretty happy about that. It's nice to have a quiet baby around the house once in awhile again.

Gabe's Family

For about a week now, Gabe has periodically reminded us who's in our family. I'm not sure what got that ball rolling, but he keeps kicking it along and occasionally adding people, animals, and things to the list (to mix a metaphor with a something literal, I guess). This comes much to Libby's chagrin as two of the first things he listed, beyond our traditional, nuclear family, were our cats (and, now that we have kids, Libby doesn't have enough love left in her heart for our former children--that's just how she rolls, she lives in the "now"--and she's been chomping at the bit for them to get even the mildest ailment so she can use it as an excuse to have them put to sleep). But now that they are officially part of the family as far as Gabe is concerned, their existence is nonnegotiable.

I jest. Libby doesn't want to have them put to sleep. But she HAS said, on more than one occasion, that she can't wait for them to die. Seems a bit like splitting hairs there, but I should be fair.

Anyway. Because it's been pretty amusing when he's gone through his list, I thought I'd try and ask him the question and see if he would spout it out. As usual, he refused to perform. Actually, his reaction to the camera is getting a little silly. As soon as I turn it on now, he wants to see what I've recorded, even though we haven't recorded anything yet (as you can see in the video).

The list usually includes Momma, Daddy, Gabe, Norah, Tsunami, Typhoon (notice I'm using the correct spellings and not trying to spell them as he says them, mostly because it would take too long to do it), his "trucks," which I think includes specific ones that he hasn't shared the identity of with us yet, and as many of his stuffed animals as he can remember the names of (but always Amy Horsey, Burgess Bear, and Soupie, because those are the three that he cares about right now). Good luck getting all of them covered on our insurance.

Oh, and Butts is feeling better. Finally. You want the longest, most miserable days of your life? Spend five days with a sick nine month old. The worst part is that you can't DO anything about it. Very frustrating.

A Right of Passage, a Sick Baby, and Gabe Helps in the Yard

Sunday afternoon, Libby arranged for us to experience one of the many rights of passage for small children--attending a live performance of giant puppets performing for the enjoyment of the children. Specifically, she got tickets to see Sesame Street Live. Going to this performance, she claimed, was something that we had to do as parents because ALL parents have to go through this sort of thing--that's where the "right of passage" part comes into play.

Before going, I argued that a person only ever goes through a right of passage one time--any more and it becomes something else entirely--and, thus, if we were going to do it now, we would NEVER have to do it again, and that didn't seem fair to Norah since she would be too young to enjoy or remember it. I voted that we not go in favor of waiting two or three more years so both kids would remember the experience. Not surprisingly, she didn't appreciate this analysis or my suggestion.

As it turned out, for me anyway, it was a moot argument. Norah was too sick to go, so I volunteered to stay home with her while Libby took Gabe to the show. He had a great time and was even able to stay mostly in his seat through almost the entire program (until Libby noticed that he had had so much soda to drink over the past few hours that he had peed through his diaper and soaked his pants, so she decided it was time to come home after that).

Gabe's souvenir, a spinning Elmo with batteries so cheap that they had already run out by the time they left the place. Probably cost $200 too.


Gabe's first gigantic bucket of popcorn. He did a pretty good job working through it, considering their comparative size.

The schwag counter. Notice the soaked ass of his pants.

And I know my last post was on the subject of Norah being sick, but we got a few more pictures of her--Libby got some last night that were really great. Well, not "great," because she looks like absolute hell, and it sucks when babies are sick, but "great" because they did a good job of capturing just how miserable she is.

This one was taken Sunday while we were working in the yard (it was around 60, so she really didn't need the cap, but we figured she was sick so we'd try and keep her warm). She doesn't LOOK all that sick, but it's a cute picture, so I posted it anyway.

Taken last night about two hours before bed time. In her defense, part of why she's so disgusting looking is because she just had a chocolate graham cracker (that's what is on her sleeper, before anyone gets TOO disgusted). She's been doing some really inspiring stuff with the snot she's producing as a hair gel. You can't really tell from this picture, but her hair is a matted, crusty mess from her wiping her hand up her nose and then into her hair. You couldn't run a comb through it without pulling out half her hair.

And, finally, a little video of Gabe helping Libby out in the yard. We had our first officially nice weekend, so they spent both days out there working on the gardens that Gabe and I had cleaned the leaves out of earlier in the week. Here he's helping to put some mulch down. I was sort of hoping he'd slide, face first, into the wheelbarrow thingy, just for the entertainment value of it being on film, but he didn't.

A Prediction

For a little over two weeks, we've been sick. Off and on, of course, and with different kinds of ailments, but I don't think there's been a day when ONE of us wasn't sick. Currently, we're working through some colds. Norah is the most badly affected.

This picture actually isn't all that bad. She perked up when she saw the camera, and even gave us a little smile. What you can't really make out is the fact that her sleeper is almost entire soaked with slobber and snot--and this after she's only been awake for less than a half hour.

She's miserable. She's all stuffed up and coughing and her eyes are all puffy and she's just generally not a very happy little button right now.

But here's my prediction.

People generally deal with being sick in one of two ways. The first category of people wants to be left alone to sleep and recuperate and convalesce at their own pace. Sometimes this might be because they don't like to be messed with when they're sick, sometimes they just don't like to put the added burden on other people--because, really, who wants to be around a sick person? The second type of person is the kind who likes to share the suffering. If they are sick, then everyone is going to know it. There is no silent suffering. The suffering is big and bold and in everyone's face. The maximum amount of sympathy and pampering is expected.

I fall into the first category. I hate bothering other people when I'm sick. I want to be left well enough alone to sleep or watch a movie or do some reading if I feel up to it. I get my own drinks and crackers or whatever else I feel as though I need. Libby falls into the second category, god love her (hopefully she doesn't read this post . . .). When she's not well, you'd think that her leprous hand had just fallen into her soup, or that her black plague buboes had just burst into her cake batter--every five to ten minutes--with the wailing and gnashing of teeth she produces. Every ailment is epic and she becomes very nearly an invalid until it passes. If there was a way that she could get me to go to the bathroom for her, I'm certain that she would expect me to do it, that's how much she doesn't like to get her own things around (of course, she's kind of like this even when she's healthy--unless she happens to be near the fridge when she wants a soda, there's a 70% chance that she'll ask me to get it even if I'm clearly busier than she is).

Gabe, I think, is still on the fence. He's generally faced all of his colds with bravery, or at least indifference, but he's really only been SICK that one time two weeks ago (well, that he can remember, he had a few nasty bouts of stuff when he was an infant, but he wouldn't remember that). He was pretty needy two weeks ago, but who can blame him for that--he is only two and a half and this was the first time he'd experienced puking, that can be understandably unsettling. So, right now, I feel like he could go either way.

But I predict that Norah is going to be a drama queen when she's sick. I kind of suspect she's going to be a drama queen MOST of the time, but I'm still hopeful that I can steer her away from that over the next couple of years (though I think I might already be failing miserably at preventing Gabe from becoming one, so I might just be a drama queen enabler or something). She is SO put upon right now. She's flailing around and giving us all dirty looks because she's uncomfortable and we're not fixing it immediately. Everything pisses her off. Put her down? She cries and wants to be picked up. Pick her up? She cries and wants to be put down. Play with her and she'll want to be left alone, leave her alone and she'll want to be distracted. And of course she won't sleep because, for some reason, the last thing a sick baby wants to do is sleep.

I took a little video, hoping I'd get some of her sneezing because it's really quite impressive. I'm not sure where she stores all the snot. A few times it's seemed like she must have completely emptied her sinuses considering how much mucous was running down her face onto her shirt. But I didn't have any luck catching anything disgusting. I'll share the video anyway, just because I have it.

Nobody Puts Baby in a Corner (Except Baby)

Apparently Norah has laid claim to her "special place" in the living room: the corner behind my rocking chair. This is the second time I've found her back there after being out of the room for only a few minutes.

She had to back up past my chair then turn around while back there to get into this position. And she did it in less than three minutes by my figuring.

The first time wasn't so much fun. I had a pretty good freak-out over it. I left her sitting on the floor, watching Yo Gabba Gabba--her favorite show, which is usually good for about ten minutes of solid distraction. While she was watching, I took the opportunity to do a little laundry. I was out of the room less than five minutes--just long enough for me to sort the kids clothes out of the dryer to bring them back into the living room to fold and to move the next load from the washer to the dryer. I came back into the living room and immediately noticed that something was missing--my baby.

My first thought was that she had somehow worked her way under the couch or our chair--not likely since she's not the slimmest baby and she can't fit anything but her legs under there, but that was my first thought nonetheless. There was no noise or anything, and I'm pretty sure if she'd gotten herself stuck like that, I would have heard something. Obviously, that made me assume that she'd wedged herself under there in such a way that she couldn't breath. I quickly got on the floor and checked under both. Nothing. As freaked out as I was at the prospects of her being jammed under our furniture, I was considerably more disturbed by her complete absence. The baby was gone! Poof!

Then I heard a little "Da da da," coming from the corner behind my chair--just out of view from the rest of the room unless you're right up on the chair. And there she was, smiling pleasantly, like she'd just played a wonderful trick on me. That time, I was so relieved that I didn't think to get a picture.

Today, however, I did get a picture because, well, now it's old hat. I'd left her sitting in the middle of the room again, with a strategically placed arrangement of stuffed animals and toys she could mess with, while I went into the kitchen to warm up some corn dogs.

Let me say this, microwaved corn dogs are an abomination. They should put a warning on the side of the box. I'm not a HUGE fan of the corn dog in the first place, mind you, but I'm even less so of them now. I only ate the things because I saw them in the freezer and figured they were probably about "due." I bought them, I don't know, quite awhile back figuring Gabe would love them--they do, after all, contain two of his favorite food groups, hot dogs and bread. But he hated them, but I tried to feed them to him three different times, just in case he changed his mind. That left two of them in the freezer, which I ate today because I hate wasting food more than I hate eating disgusting food.

Anyway, in the time that it took me to dig them out of the freezer, put them on a plate, and start the microwave, she had once again managed to work her way back behind my chair. This time I knew exactly where to start looking and, sure enough, there she was, smiling up at me again.

These kids, I swear they do things just to teach me lessons. Too bad I'm too stupid to learn them.

Streamlining Bath Time

This post is what, I believe, they call a "fluff piece" in the biz. You know what I'm talking about. It's been a slow news day. Nobody has been murdered, there is no local politician to be outraged by, and there's been a decided shortage of major accidents. But you have news time to fill. What to do? A "fluff piece."

Does someone have a squirrel that can water ski? Like to take your dog for rides on your motorcycle? Or do you have an infestation of Canadian Brown Finches (I know this one sounds stupid, but you must watch it)? Then have we got one minute and thirty seconds of fame for you!

But what can be done about it? News time isn't going to fill itself, so sometimes you have to promote the truly un-newsworthy--and sell the hell out if it if you're going to convince anyone that they haven't just wasted a portion of their lives watching something that should never have been produced--to keep from having to show five full minutes of local car ads to fill the last few minutes of your broadcast.

And that's pretty much where I'm finding myself right now. Granted, ALL of my posts tend to loiter right around the Pointless sign, but at least they usually have the intention of spray painting rude words on it when nobody is looking (like spraying over the "oi" with an "e," and the "tles" with an "i"). Not today, though. I've got nothing of particular interest.

So what I'm going to do is try to pass off this picture:


as being more noteworthy than it probably is. It's our kids in the tub together! Something we're now able to do, to save us about five minutes of time, because Norah can sit up in the tub!

Actually, it's a good thing we can sit her up in the tub now. The hair on the back of her head was getting ridiculous. She HAD a bald spot back there, from rubbing her head on everything all the time (since she spent her life on her back for the first five months or so), but now these little wispy hairs are starting to fill in, and these hairs are BADLY mistreated by her (again, since she still spends a goodly portion of her time lying on her back). The end result is that the back of her head looks like a toothless dog has been massaging her scalp with its gums. And having to bathe her in her little tub didn't help since we couldn't really get under her head to try and work out some of the knots.

But no more!

News!

Hopefully something more interesting will develop as this week presses on.