Scraped From My Tired, Tired Brain

1. It appears, according to a calendar that must be correct because it's been working properly the rest of the year, that Eli is going to be four on Tuesday. He was the first of my babies to have his entire life, thus far, blogged in public. Kind of amazing if you think about it.



Ah, four. Four is... not a toddler. (Though you might not know if it to witness one of the tantrums he still occasionally throws.) It's a preschooler. So, I have a kindergartner and a preschooler and a baby. OH WAIT HOLD THE PHONE. Jameson will be one in a month. Which is... a toddler? Is that RIGHT? What is going ON?! I'm just about fresh out of babies again?! This feeling, this one right here, is why I can understand how it happens that a person could run out of space and money for kids long before they run out of interest in having another baby.

2. Addy starts school next Tuesday. Real school. And I will be outnumbered by boys all day. I'm so happy for her, but I'm a little scared for myself. Also, I'm pretty sure I will cry the first day. I can feel the lump in my throat already.

3. I'm getting so excited for my doula workshop, which is at the end of September (I rescheduled it from November; did I already tell you all that?) It's getting close! I'm also getting impatient for the library to track down the last three books I still need to read before I can go. I mean, it's kind of an honor system, but I am nothing if not honorable, gosh darn it, and I WILL read those books.

4. I've also got a bachelorette party in September, and a wedding shower, and four birthdays in the family. Plus soccer games twice a week, not to mention, you know, getting used to the whole SCHOOL REAL BIG KID SCHOOL thing. I'm just powering through on auto pilot, baby.

5. Also, on leftover birthday cake.

If Only My Backyard Was This Pretty

Right in between the library and the museum, our city has a Children's Garden which is one of my favorite places to take the kids. It used to be funded by the city, but that was cut a few years ago, and for a while it wasn't very well tended anymore, though there were still some loyal volunteers from the gardening club who made sure the place didn't completely fall into disrepair.

This year, though, those volunteers really kicked it into high gear, because it is GORGEOUS. I have seriously never seen it look so beautiful and so well kept up, thanks to these hardworking people who spend hours weeding and pruning and thinking up fun new play areas, all for free and simply from a desire to make kids happy. Whenever I hear about human nature at its worst, it cheers me up a little bit to come here and remember that there are a lot of nice people doing nice things, too.

Love Me Some Jon Stewart

I can't stop watching this; I crack up every time. "There goes Crazy Uncle Ron again!"

The Daily Show - Indecision 2012 - Corn Polled Edition - Ron Paul & the Top Tier
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Just Look, Don't Touch

Ever since Eli moved into a toddler bed, he and Addy have shared a room. But... it was getting to be a little much, those two sharing a room. I probably don't even need to say more than that, but for anyone confused, I will add: kids at these ages are fascinated with body parts and also think there is nothing funnier in the universe than much discussion re: said body parts. When you have a boy and girl, these discussions can get a little weird after a certain point. Ahem. SOOOO, a month or so ago, we moved Addy into her own bedroom, formerly Jameson's nursery, and moved him (and his nursery furniture) into the bigger bedroom with Eli.

I had many elaborate plans for this impending move, including repainting the rooms, organizing the closets, and possibly even refinishing the wood floors. But, only the closet organizing part happened. Basically, Jameson began pulling up, we realized we needed to lower the crib mattress ASAP, and decided that as long as we were dragging the mattress out and fiddling with screws and generally engaging in an annoying activity, we might as well go ahead and just move the darn thing. I had thought originally that we should wait until Jamie wasn't getting up at night anymore, so as not to bother Eli, but then realized: a) that may never happen, and b) half the time Eli gets up at night too, so with all the coming and going in and out of my bedroom (heh, upon rereading that sounds kind of dirty,) what difference would it make? Also, Eli's become a pretty deep sleeper, so it's never once happened that Jamie's nighttime feedings have disturbed his older brother.

ANYways, after everything got situated and cleaned and looking all pretty, I decided to take pictures of the "new" rooms while they were still in all their pristine glory. Behold: (And also try to imagine away all the various cluttery baskets of toys and trash cans and jumbo diaper boxes and fans.)











I had fun taking pictures of the preternaturally clean bedrooms, so while I was at it I took some of our room, too, which I had also cleaned that day. Then I was all excited and thought, "I should do a whole series of Home Tour posts! Then at least I would have a webpage of images of our clean house I could look at to cheer me up when it's a wreck as usual!" And then I thought... maybe that's really lame. So.

I Have No Idea If This Will Make Any Sense

So the other day I was finally putting into albums several stacks of pictures that had been waiting for... a long time. A few belonged in the album which also contains all of Jameson's newborn pictures, and when I flipped it open, oh my... My heart (and uterus!) literally contracted at the sight of the wee little baby, the soft and fragile skin, the dark, downy hair and curled up limbs. Oh, and that strawberry birthmark over his right eye, which has since disappeared, but that I always used to kiss when he was sleeping.


Jamie, a few days old.

This was not a new feeling, this weird wistfulness. I get it almost every time I look at newborn pictures of any of the kids, and I sat pondering what exactly this odd sensation is- so different than the usual "oh look how cute and little they were!" feeling that other pictures of their younger selves elicit. I think I finally figured out what it is.

It's that I wish I could go back to revisit that brand-new baby time, but knowing what I know now about that particular baby. When I experienced them then, all I saw was the tiny, velveteen creature that just days before had resided within my pelvic cavity and was now either sleeping or sucking away my life forces via nursing and sleep deprivation torture. I of course appreciated the giant, blinking owl-eyes and that amazing smell and the general breathtaking cuteness of it all, but I didn't know THEM, those specific babies, yet, and wouldn't for another few months. I knew them on a primal, animal level of knowing, of course, in the way that every mother knows the baby she has gestated, but I knew next to nothing about their personalities. The sound of their names did not conjure any particular character traits or unique qualities in my mind. And now... now that Jameson and of course the older two are just EXPLODING into themselves on a daily basis, becoming these wonderful little people that I feel so lucky to know, let alone parent, the sight of their newborn selves just means so much more to me.


Newborn Eli.

I am so glad there are photos, at least, and that the sight of their thrilling newness will never be lost to me. That I can look at those old-soul eyes in those fragile, swaddled bodies and think, "Oh! That was you!" Not just the adorable, slightly foreign newborn handed up to me in a hospital blanket, but my Addy, Eli and Jamie. So strange. So amazing.


Addy, a few hours old.

In Which I Am Shallow And Also Negligent Mother

I just finished season four of Mad Men Saturday night, and yesterday I experienced a full-on depression when I realized I had nothing to look forward to watching that night. I suppose this SHOULD be the time to ponder my tv addiction and find some more constructive nightly routine, like exfoliating my face or learning to knit or organizing my mysteriously overcrowded-yet-filled-with-nothing-useful-for-dinner cupboards, but all I really want is another show in which to submerge myself. I settled for watching Gordan Ramsay's Kitchen Nightmares last night, and while it was certainly entertaining, I'm afraid that the horrors of undercooked mussels don't have quite the same dramatic pull as Don Draper's skinny ties, endless Old Fashioneds and dubious taste in women.

So. Tell me what to watch next, por favor. And DON'T say Tudors, because I am TRYING to watch the last season, and Netflix is having some kind of problem with that show and the screen freezes every couple of frames while the soundtrack continues unabated. I have been checking it daily for over a week to see if it's fixed, and am getting so annoyed I have to restrain myself from hurling the remote through the screen. I was halfway through this last season when the problem started, so until it resolves, I am just STUCK with all these mysterious loose ends (though, having read many a Phillipa Gregory novel in my time, I am PRETTY SURE I know how things are going to turn out.)

Oh, and as long as you're dispensing advise, maybe you could tell me how to keep my son from jumping into every body of water he passes. Saturday our town had its annual downtown fair, and Eli took the opportunity to hop waist deep into the center fountain as breezily as though he was splashing in a puddle. Then yesterday our family was at the pool for all of fifteen minutes when a storm suddenly rolled into the horizon. At the first thunder crack the pool was evacuated, and a few minutes later when the rain became imminent, they sent everyone home. So we were scurrying around trying to get everyone toweled off and pack things back up, and when we turned around to get Eli, he had flung himself back into the water and was paddling around gaily as a lifeguard approached to fish him out. He was literally the only person in the water, so that was a... proud moment.

Oh and also Jameson is crawling around everywhere and it's a lot of fun except that, now that he can sit up at will and pull himself to standing and all that, he views his crib as a the equivalent of a KGB cell. He instantly starts wailing and crying whenever I put him down, even if he was so tired that his eyes were literally falling shut just seconds earlier. This is very distracting when I'm trying to watch Mad Men, as you can imagine. Maybe a ciggy and an Old Fashioned would help.

At The Lake

For those of you curious about how exactly one "goes to the beach" in Canada, here are some action shots from Lake Huron:


You ride in a golf cart down the bluff from the cottage to the shore. You could walk of course, but then you would also have to walk back UP, which might constitute exercise and is not part of a vacation.


You perform water dances similar to those of the Little Mermaid. Maybe several hundred water dances, all of which require an audience.


You gnaw on a plastic shovel for upwards of an hour.


You make sure to bring along a beautiful grandma who also cooks and babysits teething infants.


You enjoy the solitude.


You sit in a chair and read.


You wear proper sun protection.


You play in the clear, shallow water for as long as the grown ups will let you. (And I mean VERY shallow. It's the longest sand bar I've ever seen. To give you some perspective, we were probably a hundred feet out at least and Jim and I were on our knees in this picture.)

Summer. Fun.

The past few months Jim and his brother have been running an informal soccer camp for kids three to six years old. Voluntarily. For free. In... heat. Not being what one would call a big sport's fan OR necessarily an "outdoorsy" type (is there an "indoorsy" type? 'cause that would be more me, in general) I find this very impressive of them. Although after seeing some of the pictures Jim took of one of their recent practices, I can see the appeal. Those sweaty little buggers ARE pretty cute. (There may also have been a hilarious video of Eli sternly lecturing the other kids not to take his ball or he was "going to get very very VERY angry!" but I felt perhaps it would reflect badly on us be unkind to post it.)

Heavy Heart

So besides coming home to dog stains all over the living room (which did not come out all the way, SIGH) I also arrived home to some really bad news from two different family friends. First I heard that Anna, the SIL of my old babysitter, was in the hospital in a medically induced coma after falling off her bike and hitting her head, causing serious brain swelling. The worst part? She was forty weeks pregnant. They did an emergency c-section immediately before performing brain surgery on HER, and the baby is doing pretty well, but of course the family is not. And now they have a newborn baby for whom to care, as well as taking care of her two year old brother. They did another emergency surgery at four o' clock in the morning yesterday to remove more of her brain in an effort to further alleviate the swelling. At this point it seems like she'll make it, but she'll be in a coma at least another few weeks, and once they bring her back out, who knows what the lasting damage will be. It's just... it's awful. The worst part is that it was such a freak accident, and such an avoidable freak accident. It just makes me feel sick every time I think about it.

Then I found out that the sister of one of my high school friends was in the hospital delivering her baby girl at only eighteen weeks because of pPROM (preterm premature rupture of membranes.) This is the second time this has happened to her; her last pregnancy ended at fifteen weeks when her water suddenly broke in a Miami airport on their way to vacation. Obviously, she, and her whole family, are just devastated. The baby was born alive, and lived for a few minutes before passing away, which I almost think would be even more excruciating than a stillborn. I don't know. I just have no context to even imagine such a thing. A miscarriage early on is SO different than actually holding your tiny baby and then saying goodbye. My heart just breaks for them. And I know she's going to be terrified to try yet again, even though they want one more.

So, you know, just please say a prayer or send a comforting thought their way if you happen to think of it. Especially for Anna, for her survival and recovery, and for her family, who are still waiting in a miserable and anxious limbo to find out what their new normal is going to be.

Vacation!

So this weekend we went to Canada again, to hang out on the beach for a few days with Jim's parents who are taking an (almost) two-week vacation at the cottage. His aunt was there too, a fun surprise, and it was a very relaxing trip except for, in no particular order:

-a baby whose top two teeth decided to start bulging from his gums about a nanosecond after we pulled out of the driveway, and who spent more or less the whole weekend wailing in misery with snot dripping from every orifice in his face.

-a big thunderstorm which killed the power the night of the yearly neighborhood luau (party hosts bravely soldiered on and it ended up actually being kind of fun, thanks to tiki torches and a battery powered ipod dock.)

-a line from the bridge at the border so incredibly long that we estimated, based on previous wait times, that we were going to be sitting there at least two hours. It was nearing dinnertime so we decided to pull out using the turnaround lane at the toll booth, head for Windsor, Ontario, and cross there instead. Except it turned out, after getting firmer directions from several fast food restaurant employees and gas station attendants, that Windsor was a TIDGE further away than we were thinking, so we ended up finding our way to some middle of nowhere, unpronounceable tribal reservation territory and crossing on this tiny, four vehicle FERRY instead, then finding our way back to Detroit where we FINALLY hooked back into our normal route home.

-storms both on the way there and back, the latter one so bad that at one point the car in front of us unexpectedly hit standing water under an overpass, lost control, and Jim had to blindly veer into the next lane to avoid hitting them, just as we ourselves had to go through the same water. I seriously have never felt so close to having a stroke as that moment- I had literally just looked up from my book (in which I had been buried, to distract myself from the stress of driving in the blinding rain) only to see all these cars ahead of us slamming on their breaks and/or hydroplaning, and us headed unavoidably into the same situation. My body tensed so hard before we hit the water that for the next half hour I was working the knots out of my back and shoulders.

-my getting food poisoning within twenty minutes of eating a highly suspect fast food burger. We drove around trying to find a bathroom, and when at last one was located, I left the baby with Jim and bolted from the van. But of course both kids decided they too needed to do Serious Business of their own, with which they also needed help (Eli's help including an OUTFIT CHANGE) all while I was still doubled over with stomach cramps. And naturally, a stranger needed to join us in my personal hell as well. This poor unsuspecting French Canadian woman walked into the McDonalds bathroom only to hear Eli wailing, "Someone come WIPE me!" as Addy held his door shut, snarling meanly, "You can't come out yet! Stay in there!" The woman asked in a worried (heavily accented) voice, "Can you let him out, dear? Are you children... alone in here?"

-finally, returning home to a lengthy note from my mom, who had watched the dog for us, detailing all the different places in the living room Fonz had had violent diarrhea which I am today waiting for the carpet cleaners to come extract from the rugs.

On the up side, I managed to finish Water for Elephants on the (lengthy) drive home!

All Eventualities

So, I think I've mentioned a couple of times that I'm working through the required reading part of my doula training over the summer, right? And that in the fall I'm going to attend my various classes/workshops, and then right afterwards I have my first birth lined up? (!!) I'm very excited for the workshop part. VERY. I would have done it a lot sooner but it's a pretty intensive three day process, and you aren't allowed to bring babies older than six months to the sessions. AAAAAND even if I were allowed, I sure as heck WOULDN'T be bringing my wriggling, squirming, teething, not exactly crawling but sure not staying in one place, either, almost ten month old into a classroom of any sort. So, I'll be going in November, when Jameson will (oh pleaseohpleaseohpleaseohplease) be sleeping through the night, and probably only nursing in the morning and evening; i.e., missing me less AND on a schedule that won't require me to be running back to my room to pump every few hours.

Anyhoo. Long winded introduction to the thing rattling around my brain when I woke up this morning, which was what exactly my goals as a doula are. One of the books I've been reading lately (not actually required but I'm reading anything I can get my hands on right now, basically) is called The Doula Advantage, and something it talks a lot about is finding the right doula for you. Some doulas have a certain agenda, albeit unspoken and probably even unacknowledged in their own minds, of getting all of "their" moms through labor medication and intervention free. That is, it is a failure on the DOULA'S part if the mom ends up needing or wanting either of those things, so she has motivation that goes beyond simply trying to support the laboring mother's wishes.

This, obviously, is a problem, or at least is a problem if the laboring mother's wishes happen to differ from the doula's. It is especially a problem if the laboring mother's needs change during labor but the doula is not sensitive or respectful to that due to some prior dedication to an ideal of "natural" childbirth. Most doula clients, probably, go into childbirth hoping to avoid medication, but in some cases even the most passionate normal/natural labor advocates will admit an epidural (or a sedative or a shot of Stadol or whatever) can be the difference between a vaginal birth and a c section simply for lack of progress brought on by exhaustion. A dedication to drug-free labor at all costs is an unhealthy and unprofessional mindset for a doula. One of the things The Doula Advantage really stresses is that the job of the doula is to support, empower, reassure and inform the mother, but not to impose the doula's own opinions or preferences on her at any point.

It also talks about how a doula's presence at an epidural or c-section birth can actually be just as important as at a vaginal, drug free delivery, if not more so! Since most doula clients aren't planning for either of those things, they might be upset, feel stressed or confused, and, at a vaginal delivery, need a lot more coaching during the pushing stage if they are still numb enough not to feel the natural urge to push. A c section, especially first time and unplanned, can be very alarming to both parents, but a doula who has experienced this before (or at least studied it extensively) can be a very calming presence for both mom and dad.

This was something I hadn't really considered before, that a doula can be just as useful at a birth with interventions as during a completely drug free labor. This makes me really happy, because the birth I'm scheduled to attend is for a mom in her thirties, who hasn't given birth in almost fourteen years and who I know experienced a long labor the first time around and was quite happy with her epidural decision. Her doctor has told her that since it's been so long in between births, and since she's at an advanced maternal age (worst term ever!), her body may very well handle this baby just like a first baby and that labor may be long/difficult. (I have my own thoughts about practically setting someone up to dread their labor with all this negative talk, but whatevs.) The point is, I think she may be planning on an epidural at this point, and it's nice to know that whatever she decides, I can still offer support and information.

Having had a doula myself, twice, I certainly know what was helpful for me during unmedicated labors and births. When thinking back on the boys' births, these are the things I feel our doula did for me: helped me go over, out loud and on paper, any specific wishes we had re: hospital policy; encouraged me to visualize and discuss ways in which I hoped to cope with labor pain and how I hoped to be supported by Jim and Stacy; during the birth, with massage, counter pressure, company during a long, restless night when I wanted the rest of my "team" to be resting up to help me later (!), aromatherapy when I felt nauseous, reminders to eat, drink, and rest, music (she brought her ipod and speakers,) discussion about pros/cons when we were deciding when and if to have my water broke, position suggestions as we tried to rotate a sideways baby, and then a lot of verbal reassurance during a fairly rapid transition/descent stage, and gentle reminders about staying loose and opening my pelvis during pushing. This was really helpful since pushing is generally the roughest part for me, mentally, and I always go through this little stage of physically resisting it and trying to fight it back.

So now I at least have my own experiences to go on in terms of what was helpful for me, what I might have liked even more of, in retrospect, and also what was helpful/what wasn't so helpful at other births I've witnessed. What I'm hoping you all can tell me is what YOU would have found helpful if you had had a doula present with you for labor (including how you think a doula might have helped other people there supporting you.) Or, of course, what you DID like/didn't like if you did in fact have a doula. I'm especially interested in how your doula supported and helped you if you chose drugs/interventions right from the start, or how she helped you if you hadn't wanted those things but ended up choosing or needing them.

Lord, Beer Me Strength

It is not quite nine o' clock in the morning, and I have already dealt with three separate and distinct temper tantrums, one of which ended with myself being slapped in the leg with surprising strength for a little kid. These episodes were interspersed with your more garden variety whining and moaning about such atrocities as not getting the correct spoon, not finding the favorite pants in the dresser drawer, etc. All this from the same child. Said child has been in time out twice already (once marched there quite firmly) and has had a toy taken away AND has had a couple of come-to-Jesus-style talks with Dad when my time outs were ignored.

Said child has also, while doing somewhat better on the Number One issue, been having some serious issues with the Number Two issue, and I must say that while I anticipated the stress and chaos and toys and temper tantrums, I never, never could have fully comprehended just how disgusting parenthood can be sometimes.

Oh, and I do even have to say that Said Child is of course also Middle Child? This right here is why I must have four, and why I think perhaps four is our magic number: no middle child. Though perhaps once a kid has been a middle child for any length of time, the damage (i.e. the world is against me and all is unfairness and woe!) is already done. Thoughts? Advice from adult middle children?

Checking In

Um, wow. How long has it been since I even got on here? Clearly that big move to my own site is going to happen any day now, seeing as I barely even bother to check my email most days so far this summer.

But it's good, honestly. This summer has been awesome so far, and promises to continue that way. Such a difference from last year, when I was waddling and contracting and generally miserable by mid July. This year, I am actually able to keep up with the three little sun-bleached blondies who adore being outside and ask for nothing more out of life than parks! and playgrounds! and pools! every day, please. Even baby boy is content to sit outside in his pack 'n' play for upwards of two hours at a time (with a sun cover!) and watch the older ones play while he practices his scooting and crawling skills.

Canada was wonderful (except for oh my word FORGETTING THE CAMERA) and we'll probably be back the end of the month with Jim's parents. We were in Michigan last weekend for a big family reunion/anniversary party, and that we lovely too, with some surprise swimming thrown in for the kids. And in between trips, it's all a giant blur of laundry and juice boxes and sunscreen and parks and pools and oh my, it's time to grocery shop AGAIN for more juice boxes. Time is flying, alarmingly. Addy will start school in less than two months. Jameson will be a year old in less than three. Neither of these situations is in the least acceptable. But I find that pints of Ben and Jerry's Peanut Brittle ice cream do soothe the soul.

I'm.... Not Sure What My Point Was Here

Well, we're off to Lake Huron in approximately five hours! And instead of feverishly packing, or finishing up laundry, or cleaning out the ankle-deep SLUDGE of straw wrappers and ground up Skittles and decaying french fries from the van floor, I am sitting here emptying my Google reader and eating a disturbing number of Chips Ahoy! with Heath bits. Which are a-MAZING. I don't normally buy packaged cookies, in keeping with my only-eating-baked-stuff-if-it's-homemade-and-worth-the-fat rule plus my usual halfhearted attempts to keep the preservative/additive/fructose whatevers to a minimum. I mean it's not like no one in our family is ALLOWED to eat packaged products or fast food (see above as re: french fry detritus;) I just try not to have a lot of it in the house, so at least we're not eating junk twenty-four seven.

Anyways. Tangent. The point was, I did buy a bunch of packaged crap for our trip to the cottage because who the heck wants to spend their vacation stuck inside a tiny hot kitchen while everyone else chills on the beach? NOT ME, that's who. Plus, you know, VACATION, which means rule breaking time. So I bought, and then immediately broke into, these cookies, and my goodness if they aren't heavenly. I didn't know what I was missing. These are in fact just as yummy as any homemade cookie, I must say. I refuse to even look at the nutrition information, though, or I imagine it would spoil my delight. Ignorance is bliss.

Weekend Sugar

Check out all the celebs who've given birth at home! I found some of them pretty surprising, including Pam Anderson!

Spoiler Alerts. Plural.

So I was at the library the other day, officially for the kids to meet Brownie the Amazing Miniature Pony (who turned out to be, I kid you not, no taller than our very own dog... which I think means I win some kind of housekeeping award, considering our home is decent most of the time even while housing an animal who should apparently be living in a STALL) and I quickly grabbed a couple of novels for myself at random, as well as a CD of Elizabeth Berg's newest. I wouldn't ordinarily think to listen to an adult book in the car with the kids, but c'mon, it's Elizabeth Berg. How bad could it get?

Well, apparently I hit the most unsettling topics possible jackpot, because the Elizabeth Berg book unexpectedly led to a girl walking in on her mother swinging from a freaking rope in the garage (fortunately as soon as I realized what was happening I frantically slammed at the volume button until the CD player silenced, while meanwhile chattering loudly to the kids about Brownie the Amazing Miniature Pony.) Then the first book I cracked, Imperfect Birds by Anne Lamott, was just relentlessly depressing, what with its basic tailspin of parental delusion and teenage self destruction and drug/substance abuse the likes of which innocent little me has never imagined. (Did you know BLEACH apparently masks certain drugs in a pee test?!)

Finally, after skimming to the end of that one, I moved on to Every Last One by Anna Quindlen. Which is like a sucker punch to the gut if you, you know, have or plan to have a child, or a husband, or anyone you love in your life ever. I am not even kidding, it's like someone presented her with the writing prompt: "every woman's worst nightmare." And while it was admittedly well written and intensely captivating, it was just gut wrenching and miserable and had me staring weepily at my kids for the remainder of the day, hugging them to me so often they started pulling away and looking at me funny. I just... I don't feel I gained anything from reading it, despite it being, in a literary sense, excellent. I wish I could unread it.

So! I think for my next venture into entertainment I'll go rent Sophie's Choice. Might as well get it over with!

The Usual Format

-I am currently eating strawberry rhubarb pie right out of the bakery box. The kids think it's disgusting because of the way the strawberry juice pools in the pie tin, and refuse to even try a bite. More for me, suckers. If there is a better pie, I've yet to encounter it. I swear, when the strawberries are super ripe and the rhubarb is so tart, the mingled juices almost taste boozy. Or maybe it's just me.

-I took a belly dancing class Tuesday night, you guys! It was so, so fun, and now I'm all sore in my side muscles. I really want to do it again, though. It felt very graceful and sensual, such a departure from the usual Western exercise classes- it felt like something you maybe already knew how to do, and just needed to tap back in and remember it, if that makes sense. And actually, some of the moves reminded me of laboring (friends and family: what doesn't remind you of birth?) So much of the work of labor is moving the baby down into your pelvis, so a lot of the shifting and circling movements we were making with our hips in the class felt similar to what childbirth educators refer to as the baby dance. (Yes, har har, the baby dance that comes forty weeks after doing the original "baby dance.") I decided to take at least a few more classes and learn some of the main moves to keep in my bag of tricks as a doula someday. Maybe saying, "Try this cool belly dance move I know!" might sound more appealing and fun than just "Try rolling your hips."

-Good Lord I am turning into such a hippie.

-Jameson is in such a delicious stage right now. Eating everything in sight, or trying; sitting up and playing with his siblings; screeching with delight about baths and the swimming pool and the sight of someone he recognizes. When he's happy to see me, he buries his face into my shoulder and just nuzzles around like a baby chimp or something, sometimes chuckling with happiness. Oh, I will miss him so much. I'm so ridiculously sentimental that I start to miss things before they're even over. The last few days of a vacation are always half torture because, oh, soon we'll have to go home.

-Speaking of vacation, we're going to Canada next weekend with the fam, and I'm so excited! Jameson's not been there yet, and I know he is going to love the sand and water so very much. How well he'll love sleeping in his pack and play remains to be seen.

-This means I have to schlep down to the health department today and finally get a copy of his official birth certificate so that we can cross the border legally. How have I not done this yet? Get the birth certificate, I mean. I have legally crossed the border before.

-Tonight we're filming a commercial for the family coffee house. Apparently I have been given a speaking part. This is the kind of thing I would have been frothing at the mouth in excitement about as a kid. Now I'm all: is it too late to whiten my teeth and lose ten pounds? Do I need to get my hair professionally blown out for this? Ahhck!

Dad's Day

Happy Father's Day to the man who taught my kids to love Rolling Stones and Smashing Pumpkins (even if they sometimes get confused and refer to them collectively as "The Rolling Pumpkins",) Star Wars (which I personally could live without,) bacon (taught me to love it too, sadly,) and all things sports related. The same man patiently read "Arthur's Underwear" to them tonight when I was tired and grumpy and said no more stories, is helping Eli learn to pee standing up, and started a soccer class using our church's gym just so Eli would get to play this year, too. He is very laid back about all the things I fret about (baths, nail trimming, clean sheets, safety before fun, not jumping on the furniture FTLOG) but his kids love him for it, and seem none the worse for it. Maybe even better.

Jim, you are a fun loving, wise, patient and unselfish father, and I hope you know how lucky your kids and I feel to have you. Every morning after you leaves, one or both of them inquire, "Will Daddy be home soon?" And you always are, but never soon enough for their taste. I can't imagine what we would do without you, and I hope we never have to find out. We love you!

The Livin' Is Easy

Oh dear, where to begin? I am still planning on making that move to my own site, yes I am, but holy heck things have been busy and crazy around here. Good busy, but still. See, all last summer while I was hot and pregnant and contracting and semi-bed resting and then total bed resting, I was all, "Next summer is going to be the BOMB! I am going to be super mom and we are going to do Fun!Stuff! and Be!Outside! all the time!"

I am keeping my little vow to myself, but I realize it doesn't leave a lot of time for, um, anything else. We have road tripped to the zoo multiple times already, got a membership at the kiddie spray park/pool, been on neighborhood walks and playground adventures and ice cream trips and picnic play dates and gone to nature exhibits and summer library programs and blah blah blah bestmomever. We are having a ton of fun, myself included, but yeah... I am falling into bed exhausted most days, just after I finish scraping the nastiness out of Jameson's high chair. He is at long last joining the world of food eaters, and while I am super happy about this since his weight was slipping down the charts there for awhile, I forgot how time consuming and messy and what a lot of extra work it is to have a baby eating with you at mealtimes.

Additional bits of stuff:

-We got viruses on both our computers last week, so half the time my internet is not available to me anyways. Grr. Sorry if you've had an email waiting forever for a reply. I shall check it today!

-I feel frustrated right now, because in the last week or so I had so many post ideas drift through my head. I tried really hard to sort of tack them in there so I could go back and gather them up, but of course as I sit combing my brain right now all I can think of is, "Do we need more sunscreen?"

-I think I spend approximately an hour a day just sun screening kids and then scrubbing them down at bath time. No wonder summer flies by so fast.

-Our landscaping actually looks kind of nice this year. We also put shutters on our giant front window, and it looks so nice I can't believe it took us six years to get around to it.

-I am in the process of finishing all of my required reading for doula training. It's great but it's so hard for me to simultaneously read and be engaged in real life. I get so lost in books.

-Speaking of, while at the library checking out my required books, I also grabbed a few novels. I absolutely loved "My Name Is Memory" by Anne Brashares. She also wrote "The Sisterhood of The Traveling Pants," but oh dear, don't judge by that alone. I mean, I never even read that book, I'm sure it's good; what I'm saying is she's much more than YA fiction and even though this book does deal mainly with fairly youthful characters, it is in no way exclusive to them as an audience. My teaser will be that it deals with the concept of reincarnation, which found me completely engaged despite the fact that I was raised in Judeo-Christian tradition and never once gave reincarnation a serious thought.

I loved the idea of time being only a minor constraint, a movable, shifting element rather than the most finite and concrete aspect of any of our lives from the second we are born and the exact time is recorded on our birth certificate. If you liked "The Time Traveler's Wife," you'll LOVE "My Name Is Memory." (As soon as that sentence entered my mind, I saw it written out on the side of some drug store imitation cologne bottle.)

-I am running out of ideas and motivation for dinners. I just want to make salad ever night, but the kids won't eat it and anyways, we aren't rabbits, after all. But other than cook out stuff, which gets old pretty quickly, I never know what to make in the summer. Can't we just exist on watermelon and Popsicles? And, um, wine?

Location, Location, Location

Dear Blogger/Google Reader,

You are killing me. I can't mark-as-read, I can't comment on half of my peep's posts, and I can only occasionally even get into my own account to post the last week or so. I think this might just push me to finally USE that domain name I've owned for a year now and move my blog to my own site. (Though that won't help at all with the mark-as-read problem.) I do appreciate your free services and ease of blog set up, though, dear Blogger, and will always think of you fondly.

Love,

A no longer QUITE so desperate housewife

P.S.
You guys WILL bear with me if I'm MIA for a few (more) days as the hubs helps me set up a new local, right? Also! Blog design ideas/recommendations, anyone?