December Blog Post

I think it's so pathetic that I'm down to only one blog post a month. I still think it's because the laptops are busted, but I do occasionally sit down at my desktop or put the less-broken laptop on that one place on the dining room table where it can get a wireless signal, and I still don't blog. I play Bejeweled Blitz. I might be over that now, though. Now that I have an iPod Touch and can play Bejeweled any time I want, it's really lost its appeal.

Speaking of the iPod, I have finally realized my dream of having the app I've been wanting since I learned there was such a thing as an app, or maybe since Soren turned two: Time-Out. Enter age of child, press the "Start Time-Out" button, and it's on. When the child gets up or hits you as you walk by, you press the "Restart Time-Out" button. The app includes support for up to four children, so when Sigrid turns two, she can, and will, be added to the disciplinary system.

Maybe I've just been too busy to blog. The holidays have been great -- lots of time with family, playing games, eating good food (Christmas goose!), sledding, and relaxing. The relaxing equation may be a little lopsided right now, since Mom, Richard and Kelly Ann are currently taking care of Soren and Sigrid while Chris and I sit in a house in New Hampshire with our friends quoting the internet and pondering cake and eggs for our second breakfast. Thanks, Mom, Richard, and Kelly Ann! I hope the kids aren't screaming too much!

Nah, the kids are really good and fun. In fact, in a cruel twist of fate, Soren hasn't required a time-out since I downloaded the Tine-Out app. Don't think I'm not sitting with my finger on the button, waiting for him to ignore a warning, though. Anyway, Soren has been a lot of fun lately, and really enjoyed last week's snow, especially sledding at the park down the street. He's been way too chicken to enjoy sledding until this year, so it's a nice change. On one run, he even got some vertical going over a jump, then slid into a mesh barrier and fell over; we waited for the crying and demands to go home, but he surprised all of us by jumping up and yelling, "That was AWESOME!!!!!"

Sigrid is proto-walking and proto-talking, meanwhile. She says "MAAAAA-MEEEEE!" in a demanding tone, "Daaaaa-deeee!" in an adorable, loving tone, and "nom nom nom" when she sees food. And "ohhhhhh-ohhhh-ohhhhh BEEEEE!" when she wants to read So Big.

It's been an increasingly good 2009; here's to a uniformly great 2010!

Travels With Children

This is a post about how things go when you have small children. Just precisely this way. I'm letting you know so you'll be prepared.

First of all, Soren, Sigrid and I went to visit our friends Ian and Renee (4-year-old and mom of 4-year-old, respectively). Sigrid napped for a while out in the car (in the driveway, far removed from the road, visible from the window, plus it was National Kidnappers Take the Day Off Day); Soren and Ian occasionally fought but mostly played, as they do; and Renee and I took on the kind of parenting responsibility that we usually adopt in this kind of situation, by which I mean we played Scrabble and told the boys to work out their own disagreements and popped up every few minutes to look out the window and make sure Sigrid was still a) in the car b) sleeping.

Eventually, I had taken a commanding enough lead in Scrabble that Renee wanted to quit, Sigrid had woken up and eaten trace amounts of lunch, Soren had refused lunch, and the boys had started doing more fighting than playing. We then decided it was time to go to an awesome indoor gym for little kids, about 20 minutes away, so the young ones could jump around on large foam things. We checked the gym's web site to make sure they were open, crammed all three car seats in the back of my car, and set off! Merrily!

Shortly thereafter began the screaming. It is not for me to speak of the screaming of the child of another, plus Ian wasn't doing that much of it anyway, so I will speak only of the screaming of my own progeny. There was a lot of screaming, mainly regarding the hunger one can only experience when one has refused to eat lunch. There was also the wordless rage and/or sadness of one who has spent too much time in the car already, or who has eaten only trace amounts of lunch, or who the hell knows because she's only one and can't talk yet. The back seat was a vortex of screaming.

I started playing a Beatles CD to try to distract Soren from screaming. What happened instead was that he screamed a bit, heard what was playing, and then started screaming about how he wanted me to start the song over again because he'd missed the beginning of the song because he'd been screaming.

Renee and I kept our cool. The promise of kids jumping on foam gym equipment stuff was our prize, and we kept our eyes on it.

And finally! We arrived! At the gym! We piled out of the car and ran to the door! And read the sign! Which said, "Closed for the day! See you soon!"

Moms throw tantrums, too, as it turns out. There's less screaming, but just as much pouting, and a lot more brainstorming regarding composition of angry emails to the proprietor of the gym.

Quick thinker that she is, Renee decided we should go to the Kettle Pond Nature Center, which has a bunch of fun stuff for kids to do, and which is also free, so that's a bonus. Perhaps there was less screaming on this leg of the trip, or perhaps I have repressed it. Either way, we arrived, and it was open, and there was fun stuff for kids to do. We colored a bit, and then Soren, Ian, and I did some puzzles while Sigrid and Renee kept coloring. At one point, I thought I smelled a suspicious smell, but discreet butt-sniffing failed to reveal any of our kids as a source; Renee said the one other kid who was also coloring seemed to have had beans for lunch, and we left it at that.

We then moved on to a different room, which featured displays of various local flora and fauna and an aquarium full of frogs and tadpoles. Soren and Ian were very interested in the frogs, and both stood up on a little step-stool to watch them; Renee and I started going through drawers and found fun things to play with, like some little devices that seemed to serve as bird song quizzes. I bragged enough about Scrabble earlier, so I don't think I need to talk about how hard I rocked the bird song quiz. Common Nighthawk BOOYAH.

Then Soren came over and asked, very innocently, "Why is there poop on this stool?" Ignoring the "stool/stool" pun potential, I looked at the step-stool in question and was very disappointed to find that there was, in fact, a little turd sitting neatly on the top step.

Whereupon began the process of figuring out who left stool on the stool: a delicate dance comprising gentle accusations; leading suggestions; point-blank interrogation; none-too-subtle smelling of the butt region; a voyage to the restroom to perform a thorough hand-washing, since he claimed to have touched the poo; and, at last, a visual inspection. Results: Soren was clean, and I felt bad for thinking it was him. On the other hand, I couldn't exactly go around accusing other people's children of pooping on the furniture.

Renee also determined that it wasn't her kid, so we were left with the unsavory task of telling the nature center docent about the poop which was not the fault of either of our children and must have been left by the other kid who had since departed. I offered the docent a handful of paper towels and gave her a look which clearly said Sorry to make you do this, but there's no way I, a mere visitor, am cleaning up some stranger's poo. We approached the stool. And the stool. She reached down with the paper towels. Picked up the turd. And laughed.

"It's scat," she said.

I then gave her a look which clearly said Well -- yeah, I guess, although they don't usually call it that unless it's animal doodie, and what's so funny anyway, and wait, did an animal really come in here and do its business? When? Huh?

"It's a model of animal scat. To help with identification. There are a bunch of different ones - we keep them in the drawers over there."

A fake piece of animal poop. Very realistic, I must add. We laughed, and took our leave.

It would be great to end the story with a hearty laugh about plastic muskrat scat, and singing of Beatles songs all the way home, but all the kids remembered they were hungry as soon as they got in the car, and OH GOD. THE SCREAMING.

Birthday Girl

Sigrid turned one on November 20th, but it's been a Birthday Gala Month full of celebration and pomp.

There was family: Chris's parents came out a few weeks ago to throw Party #1; and a whole passel of my family (my dad, stepmom, mom, sister, and brother-in-law) came for impromptu Party #2.

There were cakes: one a delicious white cake from Providence's best bakery, impeccably decorated with amazing buttercream; and one made by Ichabod House's best baker and decorated sloppily with pretty purple and black icing to try to disguise the messed-up part. But it was also delicious, if I do say so myself.

And there was the birthday girl herself, full of joy and smiles (unless I left the room or tried to cook dinner). It's been an exciting year from the start, in good ways and bad, and we're enjoying her more and more every day as she enters year number two, which frankly I hope is a lot less exciting.

TRICK A TREEEEEAT

I feel slightly ridiculous for dumping photos and a blog post online fifteen minutes after we get back from Soren's preschool Halloween party, but I'm trying to stay on top of things.

Soren, light of my heart, announced some time ago that he wanted to dress as a leaf pile for Halloween, and that made me love him even more than before. Dressing as a leaf pile is creative, pretty funny, and, best of all, requires no particular sewing skill on my part. Maybe it's weird that someone who's as addicted to knitting and other artistic pursuits as I am doesn't like sewing, but I don't. It's tedious. And I suck at precise measurement because I'm impatient. And sewing machines scare me because they make too much noise, so I have to sew everything by hand.

Oh, so how's this for a backhanded compliment? At the preschool today, one of the Pre-K teachers walked by and said to me, "I love his costume! It's just my kind of costume! When my kids were growing up they were always complaining, 'Mom, why do I have to wear this? You're so bad at sewing!'" Uh. Thanks? Is there even a compliment in there? Maybe it was just a big ol' backhand.

Anyway, judge for yourselves, and then keep it to yourselves unless it's an actual compliment. I think he looks pretty cute, myself.

Blast From the Past

Okay, so I've been wasting time looking at files I archived in 1996. To celebrate, I will now share with you a poem I wrote about my work environment in the dining hall at Brown. Enjoy.

Dishroom: a complaint


As we slump in the dishroom in the morning,
We can imagine the most frigid landscape to be idyllic.
There must be birds chirping out there,
There must be cars honking or people walking,
Breezes blowing or laughter or fun or even sleep --
Something better than the monotony of conveyor belts,
The steam rising from the diabolical dishmachine,
The defective beeping of the soap dispensers.
O you mess makers, you half-eaters of food,
You pourers of excessive syrup,
Takers of a thousand juice glasses --
Who scrapes the soggy pancakes from your saccharine plates?
Who pries apart your bowls stuck together with Cheez Whiz?
Who feeds your soup cups into the infinite, rumbling dishmachine
And retrieves them at the other end when they emerge, bone-white and
hotter than suns?
When you send your silverware through with your tray, who screams in
frustration at your trespass?
We, we few, we miserable few,
Denizens of the humming room, the stagnant, humid room,
We who watch the milk curdle as we mix it with orange juice,
We who sweat and scrape at 8:45 when all of you leave at once to make your
9:00 classes,
We struggle to keep the conveyor belt from stopping.
There is no fun, no laughter in the dishroom --
There are only the conveyor belts.
I would like to write on the conveyor belt
An endless message to travel around and around,
An enduring inspiration for future prisoners --
I would like to write this thing, this monument,
But the conveyor belt runs the wrong way.
My hands are covered with syrup
And they won't even give us a radio.

Little Victories

It's not all failed DMV trips, rotten gutters and busted Hondas around here. Good things happen, too. This week has had lots of little bright spots, which I will now list so that I have something to look back on next time all my tomato plants get completely fungified and have to be destroyed.

• Not only has my tiny orchid NOT died, it has even successfully bloomed and is now gracing the kitchen windowsill with a 1" spike of 1/4" white flowers.
  
  
• I tried making Cook's Illustrated's quick puff pastry recipe for homemade apple turnovers, and even though I totally didn't bring my A-game to the dough shaping, they turned out AWESOME. And then I ate three of them, so I am no longer suffering from a saturated fat deficiency!
  
  
• My much-anticipated root saw arrived yesterday, and I used it to finally remove the 11" arborvitae stump from the front yard. My mystical quest to remove all existing bushes from the entire yard is now underway, and my weapon is called Yewbane.
  
  
• I cleaned the bedroom.
  
  
• Sigrid looks really cute in the dark teal hooded sweater I made for her.
  
  
• I scored a big play rug (printed with roads, of course) for Soren for $10 at Job Lot. This was especially amazing because I went to Job Lot looking for that specific item.
  
  
• Soren got to participate in a child-development research project with a Brown student yesterday (at the Children's Museum). It was pretty cute to watch, and yay for science!
  

Soren's Friend Cheerios

Soren's been composing lots of songs lately, and although they seem impromptu, he clearly puts some work into composing (or at least remembering) them, because the lyrics are mostly the same from day to day. Chris managed to transcribe one the other day; it's about one of Soren's matchbox race cars which is apparently sponsored by Cheerios. And now, without further ado:

My Friend Cheerios

My friend Cheerios
He's the best
My friend Cheerios
He's the best
My friend Cheerios
He can split Cheerios into a bowl
My friend Cheerios
He can string Cheerios on a necklace, as cars do
My friend Cheerios
He can make space on the couch for all his friends to sing
My friend Cheerios
He can have a birthday cake -- but only one

A Penny Saved is a Penny Spent on Something Else

I just thought that up, but I like it.

We're just saving money all over the place this year! The gutters did NOT cost $28,000! The car is still under warranty, so we won't be spending $3800 on a new engine, unless Honda goes through some major contortions to avoid paying out, like declaring that the engine is no longer part of the powertrain! I love the word "powertrain"! And the word "harbormaster"! But that's neither here nor there.

On the other hand, who knew that it would cost so much to have a big pile of branches taken to the dump? And who could have guessed that we would end up paying someone to paint the new (wooden) gutters because we didn't feel like doing it ourselves? Actually, I guessed that last part.

In all, though, if you operate under the "a penny saved is a penny earned" philosophy, we made some decent money this summer, and we should totally spend our windfall on a huge TV and a pony.

Cleaning Conundrums

Paradoxes? Perhaps! Dilemmas? Definitely! Cleaning Conundrum Quiz!

1. What do you do when you want to declutter your old house because you want to reduce the number of potential spider lurking spots, but then you're thwarted by spiders perched on the stuff you're trying to put away?

2. When the baby gets hold of a BJ's bottle of liquid soap and dumps a quarter of it on the floor and starts smushing it around with her hands and feet, is it funny that you then have to mop the floor and give the baby a bath? Or is that just annoying?

3. If you really need to vacuum the baby's room, but only get a chance to clean while she's napping in said room, can you find someone to spin dust bunnies into yarn and then knit it into a sweater while the baby's napping?

When the Laptop Breaks, it's the Blog that Suffers

We have, shall we say, a flight of broken laptops right now: one from the 2004 G4 Powerbook vintage, which crashes every time you even slightly nudge it; one 2007 Macbook Pro, which only gets a wireless signal if it's sitting on top of the router; and one month-old Macbook Pro which is no longer on speaking terms with its own keyboard and trackpad. This is not to say that Apple does not offer a high-quality product. Leave Apple out of this. This is merely to say that my desktop (a delightful '06 Mac Mini) is the only functioning computer in the house at the moment, and it's all the way upstairs in my office where it was really really hot for a couple weeks there, and then we went on vacation to Santa Barbara, and then my older sister came to visit, and that's why I haven't been blogging. I am mainly making excuses for the benefit of the various grandparents who follow this blog. The rest of you probably didn't even NOTICE that there was only one post in all of August, and I think I'll go eat worms.

Anyway, it's been a busy month. The gutters done been fixed, which is great, although now they need to be painted, which I frankly don't plan on ever getting around to, so we'll probably hire someone. A bunch of gross overgrown bushes were cut down during the gutter project, and now the carcasses are sitting in the side yard waiting to be 1) chopped up and stuffed into countless yard waste bags; or 2) dragged across the street in the middle of the night and thrown into the woods, hopefully without any cops noticing; neither of which I plan on ever getting around to, so we'll probably hire someone. To chip everything, that is, not drag it across the street.

Meanwhile, we all went to Santa Barbara and enjoyed lounging around with Gramma and Grampa Richie and Kelly Ann. We experimented for the very first time with sharing a room (i.e. Chris, me, and both kids), and it went well until the last couple nights, when both children took turns crying and keeping each other awake. It's a good thing that didn't happen the first night, or we would have spent a lot of money on some enormous hotel suite for the remainder of the trip. When the room-sharing was good, though, it was very good; Soren and Sigrid seemed to enjoy waking up in the same room, and Soren even sang a few songs to his baby sister. The only one I can recall went something like "The dark night is oooooverrrr, and the sun came up! Yes, the sun came up! Oh, the sun came up!" It was very sweet. When we weren't sharing a room, we were doing all kinds of things like walking to Shoreline Park, driving R/C boats in the pool, going to the Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf, visiting with friends, buying tiny orchids for each other, and waiting for the batteries in Soren's new toy train to wear out. We had a wonderful time, and I'd love to write in more detail, but it would be so much quicker just to post pictures.

Don't B A Tom8o H8er

The post title doesn't really mean anything. I just wanted to write "tom8o h8er". Since you asked, though, one of our garden tomatoes is starting to get ripe, which means that the tomato avalanche is beginning. 9 plants X 35+ tomatoes per plant = I am a tomato farmer. Expect lots of pictures of gorgeous heirloom tomatoes soon. In case you hadn't noticed, I <3 tom8oz, and gardening in general.

You will be pleased to know that we have chosen a carpenter, one who did not quote us $28,000, but I'm not going to jinx things by claiming that it will actually cost less than $28,000. The water stain inside my office tells me that there's more than just a gutter that's going to need replacing. And that really worries me, because water stains definitely shouldn't be speaking.

And now, for the grandparents in the audience, stories about the kids. First of all, if you haven't been in Soren's company in the past month, you might not be aware that he can now identify every make of car in the US, or at least the ones we see in our daily travels, by its logo. We were driving on the freeway today, and I could hear him in the back seat saying, "That's a Nissan. That's a Lexus. That's a Bokeswagen." Etc. Some people ask, "Why are you teaching him all the kinds of cars?" Like I'm grooming him to become the world's foremost expert in automotive field identification or something. The kid wants to know what the different cars are called, so I tell him. And now he knows all of them. He also owns half of them, in the form of Matchbox cars. You'd think that with a collection of 9800000 cars, a few might get ignored, but he cherishes each and every one. Very sweet.

Sigrid, meanwhile, cherishes Soren's toys as well, and has been working on getting within grabbing range of them. She can scoot around on her belly with some speed at this point, and is now getting interested in pulling up. Soren's not a huge fan of this, but he still seems to like her. Don't tell him that when he's not around, I plop Sigrid down in the middle of his play rug and let her stick all his cars in her mouth. I wonder what my mom used to let my sister do my stuff when I wasn't around. Parenthood really makes you think.

Gutter Bawl

We have an old, old house with old, old wooden trough gutters which need replacing. To this end, I've been getting, or trying to get, estimates from a number of carpenters. I'm sure you'll be interested to hear my results so far.

Carpenter 1: Can't fit us in until mid-winter and also said that if I happen to know any carpenters looking for work, I should let him know. Good for him, I guess.

Carpenter 2: Won't take the job because it's a historic home and there's too much paperwork involved. Rough life.

Carpenter 3: Gave me a reasonable quote a long time ago and then disappeared off the face of the earth.

Carpenter 4: Tried to convince me that the preservation society probably wouldn't mind if we replaced the wooden troughs with seamless aluminum.

Carpenter 5: Very nice, professional, clearly knows what he's doing, wants the job done right, has plenty of experience with historic homes. I got his quote yesterday. For roughly 120 feet of wooden gutter, with related scaffolding, teardown, flashing, etc., he wants:

Wait for it:

Twenty-eight thousand dollars.

The estimate also specifies that the job will require about 530 man-hours of work.

I am still a little speechless about this, so I will just point out that Chris and I, an economist and a graphic designer, basically built an entire room on our previous house, and while we were lazy about it and took more than a year to get around to finishing the job, I don't think there's any way it took us 530 man-hours.

Here's the main thing. I'd rather spend four thousand dollars every ten years on the gutters than twenty-eight thousand dollars for gutters that will last seventy years. Because I will be dead by then. Also, I do not have twenty-eight thousand dollars to spend on gutters.

Luckily, I have at least one reasonable estimate from a guy who seems like he can handle the job, and a couple more quotes on the way. Wish me luck.

OMGWTFDMV

HOW TO TRANSFER AN OUT-OF-STATE AUTOMOBILE REGISTRATION IN RHODE ISLAND

1. Ensure that you have the correct documents: VIN inspection report; TR-1 Application; Form T-333-1; proof of residency; and vehicle title.

2. Have a full sippy cup and two kinds of snacks ready when you pick your toddler up from day camp, as well as a backpack which unzips to reveal a road playmat; fill backpack with Matchbox cars. This will keep your toddler entertained at the DMV.

3. Set off merrily to the West Warwick DMV, thankful that you don't have to go to the Seventh Circle of Pawtucket.

4. Resist the urge to listen to that voice in your head that starts up every time you try to go somewhere new in Rhode Island. This voice likes to wait until you're pretty sure you've missed your unmarked turn and then start screaming "BAIL BAIL BAIL OH GOD TURN AROUND NOW," and you used to obey, only to find that you hadn't driven far enough yet originally and so you had to turn around again, and lo, there was your turn about 500 feet beyond the point where the voice had started yelling at you. Anyway, resist the urge to bail, and bask in the glory of persistence, finding Rt. 33 East, and not being bossed around by crazy voices in your head.

5. Pull into a vacant spot right in front of the DMV building. Get a bad feeling.

6. Hop out and find that the West Warwick branch of the DMV appears to have been closed for some time, and maybe that's why it wasn't on the DMV web site even though you found it listed on other web sites. Wonder why you had thought there might be some secret ninja DMV branch that no one knows about. These things don't happen.

7. Refuse to dial Information on your cell phone because it costs a dollar, and try Google's phone thingy even though you know it only has commercial listings. Get the result you figured you would get.

8. Decide for some reason that you'd rather go to Pawtucket than spend a dollar dialing Information to find out where the Wakefield DMV branch is.

9. Attempt to be fancy about finding your way to the interstate, while in the process needing to turn around because you ONCE AGAIN mixed up east and west. For the love of all that is good and holy, you have three-quarters of an Ivy League education, so WHY can't you JUST ONCE get that right the first time?

10. Find interstate. Drive north. Stop at Whole Foods to pick up some coffee and a couple cookies -- one for you, and one for the so-far angelic toddler.

11. Make the requisite number of wrong turns in downtown Pawtucket before finally getting to the DMV.

12. See the number of cars in the parking lot. Ask yourself that timeless question that humans have been asking themselves since they became self-aware: Why am I here? Except, in this case, by "here" you mean "Pawtucket".

13. Sigh a mighty sigh and gather up all your children and supplies and head in to the DMV.

14. Where's the thing where you take the number?

15. Well, here's a long line for registrations. This must be where I'm supposed to go.

16. But what if this isn't right? What if I get to the front of the line and they tell me I should have taken a number somewhere and then I have to start waiting all over again some where else?

17. BAIL BAIL BAIL BAIL

18. See that there is really nobody to ask re: the take-a-number thing or the long line. Get back in line.

19. Give the kid a cookie.

20. When he finishes the cookie, open up his backpack and give him some cars, but not as many cars as he thinks you should give him, and then get down on the floor and play cars with him for a little while so he won't start screaming.

21. Bask in the admiration of some women who appreciate that you're down on the floor playing cars with a three-year-old. It's nice to have your good work appreciated.

22. Continue this for, oh, 45 minutes.

23. Finally get to the front of the line and present your complete and thorough folder of documents to the nice lady, who makes some chit-chat about how cool it is that your car is from Alaska and what you think about Sarah Palin.

24. At this juncture, the woman will see that you have everything you need.

25. Except you didn't get the signature of the second owner of the car notarized.

26. Come on, you knew something like this was going to happen.

27. And WHY THE @#&$^%^@# do you even have a second owner on the damn car? Isn't it enough that YOU own it? Why does your husband have to own it too??????? MOTHER$#*&%^&!@#&^&@#&$&&^&$#%^()*@#^&$&%^#

28. Think entirely in swears for about seven minutes.

29. Load everyone back in the car and go home.

30. Blow up your car. That way, you don't have to get it registered.

31. Be thankful for your two wonderful children who didn't throw any major fits. They are the best.

Bum Rap

On a recent walk, Soren informed Chris and me that he needed "a big big big big big big stick to measure your bums." THANKS.

East Greenwich Music and Wildlife 2009

Last year, it was bagpipes and owls and foxes; this year, it's brass bands and hummingbirds and deer. The bagpipers seem to have moved on to another venue, or maybe demand for bagpipe artistry is another victim of this economy, or else they all got some kind of brain infection that caused them to actually hear the instruments they were playing; in any case, Wednesday night is no longer Bagpipe Night at Ichabod House. Bummer. I guess.

I haven't seen any owls so far this summer, but I also haven't been looking for them. On the other hand, I also wasn't looking for a teeny tiny hummingbird nest in our ash tree, and I found that, so I guess I'm doing something right.

Have you ever found yourself in a position where you have to ask someone if they did something that only an idiot would do, and you know that person isn't an idiot, but the thing happened, and you can't think of a good alternate explanation, so you go ahead and ask the person anyway and make it seem like you think he's an idiot? No? Well, anyway, on a related note, I asked Chris last week whether he had happened to swerve wildly the last time he'd mowed the lawn, thus shearing off the tops of all the hostas along the edge of the backyard. With a look that said My God, what kind of idiot do you take me for? he replied that no, he had not shaved all the hostas with the lawnmower. In fact, we have been visited by a deer. I've seen her eating the shrubbery across the road every day for the past week, and the neighbor's hostas have been clipped as well, and I don't think Chris ran next door with the lawnmower just to destroy the landscaping, so all signs point to the deer.

As for the brass band, there was a small brass ensemble playing at the church ice cream social up the street. I don't have a witty story about that. We enjoyed hearing it.

Potty Mouth

I'm sure you'll be pleased to know that this post actually has nothing to do with the potty.

Since Soren learned to talk about five years ago, I've been pretty good about watching my language in front of him. In fact, he's only picked up one curse from me, and it isn't one of the really bad ones, so I consider that a victory. He was taking a bath a few months ago (he's had a couple more since then), and I remembered that I'd forgotten to bring my library books back or something like that and said "Dammit!" Of course, as soon as it left my mouth, I knew it would come back to haunt me, because kids and parrots love to repeat words spoken with a lot of emotion. Leland never did learn any curses that we could decipher, but now "dammit" has entered Soren's vocabulary. He's only said it a couple times, and only busts it out when our friend Bryn is around, for some reason. She must be a bad influence. (I kid)

So yesterday, Bryn and her boys were visiting, and Soren dropped the D-bomb. I calmly called him over and let him know that it wasn't a nice word, and that if he said it again, he would get a time-out. A couple minutes later, whaddya know, I had to give him a time-out.

He sat out his three minutes without much trouble, and when the timer went off, he came down for his usual hug and non-specific apology, which prompts me to ask for a little more detail because I want to make sure he remembers what he got in trouble for in the first place:

"Sorry, Mama."

"Sorry for what?"

You know what's coming, right? Because I did.

"Sorry for saying 'dammit'."

So I sent his butt straight back into time-out.

Awww, no, not really. I just let him know that maybe next time (not that there will be one, right?) he could say "Sorry for saying a bad word" instead.

Blogging is Hard

It involves typing so many WORDS all right after each other. Lots of things have been happening lately, too, which means even more words need to be typed to communicate all the happenings.

Our little boy turned THREE on June 2nd! We went to the Children's Museum with our friends Bryn, Xavi and Maxi the morning of Soren's birthday, so he got to run around and play and get all tuckered out, and then he took a three-hour nap, and then he woke up on the wrong side of the big-boy bed and whined the whole time he was opening his presents from Grammy and Grampy. Besides that, it was a very lovely day. We have since abolished naptime, since it seems to be doing more harm than good lately.

We had a little party on Sunday and invited Soren's friends Ian and Xavi (as well as their associated parents, since they needed rides, and Xavi's baby brother, since he couldn't very well stay home alone). I baked a red velvet cake (Soren had asked for a red cake after I suggested that his original request, a white cake with white frosting, might need a little color), which was well-received even though it wasn't red enough, and the boys played in the yard while the grown-ups ate oysters and grilled pizza and drank sweet sweet sangria. Your typical third birthday party. Hey, we sang Happy Birthday and ate cake, and he got presents and had fun and felt special, so we got the job done. I'll upload the (very cute) pictures soon.

As proof that he is officially a big boy, Soren is fully potty trained! He is completely diaper-free -- even at night, which blows my mind. I'm very proud, and so is he. I still can't convince him to use anything but his potty chair, though, so we'll have to work on introducing him to the full-size toilet unless we want to start carting the potty around everywhere we go. I'm not sure how to go about making that transition -- he's really resistant to it so far. At this point, though, I'm way too happy about his progress to worry about it much.

Schkernky is also doing well, and is working on rolling all over the place and sitting independently. She's also working on making my life miserable by waking up several times a night and being unwilling to fall asleep anywhere but the swing or the car. The potty training success has left me feeling like I can do anything with my crazy parenting skillz, so I am now picking a fight with Sigrid about sleep. She will learn to fall asleep in her crib. This is my mission. It is a mission fraught with much crying and wasting money on expensive Fisher Price Aquarium Bubble And Light Action Crib Soothers That Don't Seem To Be Working. But I will not back down, and I will face these obstacles with back-patting and shushing at intervals of increasing length over the course of each night, as well as a thorough review of Babies 'R Us's return policy. In the end, I will emerge victorious, with a self-soothing baby in her crib and $44.99 credited to my Visa. It will be beautiful. You just wait.

Have I Ever Told You...

... my racy letterpress limerick? You won't get it, but I feel like showing it off anyway. There are a total of 9 letterpress/printing references, including some homophones.

A gal fair of form and of face
You should strive to impress, just in case
She may someday be led
To be tied up in bed
But her type likes the thrill of the chase.

Mainly I'm just posting this so that someone can get a good result if they Google "racy letterpress limerick".

In other news, if it were sunny and twenty degrees warmer, the weather would be perfect.

Go Potty Go Potty Go Potty Go

We've been working on Soren's potty training for the past week, which is a little hard to sustain at the moment because I don't feel like sitting around the house all day for a week, which is what it seems to require. But we'll have to deal with it eventually, so i figure I'll start off with a half-assed effort and see how that works out. So far, it's OK -- he seems to have the necessary control and awareness of the relevant processes, so he has used the potty successfully a number of times, and yet he does not have the ability to put his diaper back on, so there's nothing he can do about his (short-lived) antipathy toward Potty Time. Grammy sent us a couple potty training videos which are purported to be successful, and Soren certainly does enjoy watching them and singing along with the songs and claiming that, like Paige and Parker Panda, he wears big kid underwear every day. That last item is a lie. We bought him some Cars underwear, but he hasn't put it on yet.

Sigrid, meanwhile, is working on the essential skills of eating, sleeping, and not eating when she's supposed to be sleeping. She's being a little difficult about these things (I'd say she's being very difficult, but I know she's being easy on us in the grand scheme of things). I haven't even tried giving her a bottle lately, since I really seem to be getting nowhere with that, and have instead been giving her some solid food. You know, the basics -- rice cereal, mashed bananas, guacamole, that kind of thing. She digs it in theory, but is not very good at keeping the food in her mouth or swallowing it. She usually gets so excited about the food you put in her mouth that she screeches and sends it oozing into her neck folds. We should probably bathe her more often than we do.

She's also being a pill about going to sleep in her crib. She'll do it 5% of the time, although she'll sleep fine in there if she's already snoozing when you put her down. The rest of the time, she will only fall asleep in the swing. For whatever reason, I really want to pick a fight with her about this, so I keep putting her in the crib, and she keeps yelling for extended periods of time with no sign of stopping until we finally cave and put her in the swing. Chris thinks it's more important to get her used to sleeping 7-hour stretches at night than it is to get her to accept the crib, and I know he's right, but it still bugs me. Why don't children just do as they're told????? Punks.

Luckily, they're cute.




I'm excited because Soren has been writing letters and a couple names ("Soren" and "Ian")! It's so cool! He even drew a picture the other day, of "a cake and an animal that wants to eat the cake". He claims to have drawn the picture for his birthday. I scanned his renditions of his and Ian's names:


"Ian" reads from right to left.



"Soren" is written kind of in a circle; the S is sideways, middle right, and the rest of the letters read clockwise from there (the "N" went off the paper a bit).

I'm so proud!

One for the Grandmothers

I'd like to give a shout out to the grandmothers today! I happen to know that Nana (Kathy, my stepmom) checks every day to see if there's something new on the blog, which means she suffers disappointment about 95% of the time; sorry about that. I know Grammy (Margie, Chris's mom) checks regularly as well -- not sure if it's every day or every hour. That's a lot of pressure. Gramma (Claudia, my mom) may be subscribed to the RSS feed, so she gets some kind of trumpet fanfare every four months when I post something. The other two grandmothers might want to look into that to save time.

All three are clearly devoted to their lovely grandkids, and I should probably post more often so they can get more details about Soren's and Sigrid's daily doings. I certainly wish we could get together more often.

Happy Mother's Day, grandmothers! We love you!

Quiet Time: Now With Less Noise

Soren took an hour-long nap today! Taking all the scatterable toys (i.e. his three sets of magnetic letters and the butterflies from the Elefun game) seems to have helped keep quiet time a little quieter. Chris gets full credit for that idea. Soren spends more time reading books now and less time making crashing noises. I heard him sounding out some words yesterday -- "Ssss....mmmm....eh..ull...ull...yuh. Smelly." Pretty cute.

Last night, Chris was putting Sigrid in her crib, and I wanted to share my observation that she flips onto her stomach in one direction exclusively. If you put her toward the wrong side of the crib, she gets hung up against the bars when she turns over, which makes her mad. My advice to Chris, therefore: "Put her against the far end of the crib so she can move toward the middle, because that's how she rolls."

Aww yeeeeah.

The End of an Era

Soren has always been a good sleeper. He started sleeping 7 hours straight at 7 weeks old, and hasn't made a fuss about it since. He's even been excellent about taking a nice looooong nap (2.5 hours) pretty much every day in the last year.

But no more. He's only napped once this week. He's upstairs right now, actually, in the process of figuring out what "Quiet Time in Your Room" entails. (Hint: it does not entail yelling down the stairs every five minutes that you want to come downstairs)

I don't know about him, but I really need Quiet Time. Ever since he's been out of day care, I've tried to engage with him during the vast majority of his waking hours (except when Sigrid needs something or he's busy playing with other kids). I wonder sometimes if I should leave him to his own devices more often, since he hasn't been playing independently very much lately. Plus I have that other kid who seems to want attention sometimes. She seems mostly happy grabbing her toes and watching Soren do stuff, but I'm not sure that's a recipe for a fulfilling childhood. Anyway, Mama needs some alone time to recharge in the afternoon, and maybe I've been spoiled by both kids napping at the same time, but if it's wrong to be spoiled, I don't want to be right. Because being right is tiring.

We'll see how well the Quiet Time thing catches on. I've noticed he's quietest when he's doing things he's not supposed to be doing. Maybe I should stock his room with Sharpies, jars of rainbow sprinkles, and the diaper bag.

To balance out the universe, however, Sigrid slept from 9:30 to 7:30 last night! I'll take some more of that.

Singer/Songwriter

One of the fun things about having kids is the fact that you can make up weird songs for them and they won't think you're insane until they turn ten. I think my talents as a lyricist have been underappreciated, maybe because my fan base consists of two people under the age of three. But I sure do know what my audience likes. Take the timeless classic The Baby Truck Song, for instance. I've posted the lyrics on the blog before, but why not trot it out again?

[Sung to the tune of Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star]

Baby trucks are very nice
Kiss them once and kiss them twice
Whisper something in their ears
I don't know if trucks can hear
Baby trucks are very nice
Kiss them once and kiss them twice

I've made up a couple songs for Sigrid which don't have set lyrics, per se; they're more improvisational.

[To the tune of What Do Ye Do With a Drunken Sailor]

What do ye do with a naked baby
What do ye do with a naked baby
What do ye do with a naked baby
Earlye in the mornin'?

Put her in her crib until she's sober
Put her in her crib until she's sober
Put her in her crib until she's sober
Earlye in the mornin'!

Hey-oh, and up she rises
etc.


And this one, inspired by her nickname (Schkernky), "sung" to the "tune" of the admittedly vulgar song Berserker from Clerks:

She is wearing stripy pants, a Schkernker
And she has a fuzzy head, a Schkernker
Kicking with her tiny feet, a Schkernker
Does she need a diaper change, a Schkernker

Not all my most popular works are kid-related. There's one I like to sing when we're making toast, because our stupid toaster oven insists on making an annoying ticking-timer sound the ENTIRE TIME the heating element is on, like I need a constant reminder that it's doing something. Anyway, the song goes like this, and is sung along with the ticking.

Making toast, making toast
Here I am, I'm making toast
I hope you will like the toast
That I make for you

Would you like butter on your toast
Or would you like jelly on it
You can have anything you like
On your luscious toast

Now, the tune to The Toast Song.... well, you know the "Helllooooooo!!!" voice on Seinfeld? I think one of Jerry's girlfriends had a weird-looking belly button that looked like it was talking to him, and he made up this funny voice for the belly button, and he and George and Kramer went around for a while saying "Hellllooooooo!" to each other in the weird voice. Anyway, imagine that belly button singing a song about toast, and you pretty much have the tune of The Toast Song.

Of course, I didn't come by this songwriting talent completely out of the blue -- I have to give full credit to my dad, who is bit of an accomplished singer/songwriter himself. I'll leave you with the lyrics to one of his best works. This song meant a lot to Erica and me when we were growing up, and I think I speak for both of us when I say that it still brings tears to our eyes. Without further ado: The Dump Song.

We're goooooooo-ing to the dump
To the dump
To the dump!

We're goooooooo-ing to the dump
To the dump
To the dump!

We're goooooooo-ing to the dump
To the dump
To the dump!

[ad infinitum]

Eye Candy

I have things to write about, such as Easter fun, my deep fear of wind turbines, and an analysis of why Facebook is better now for old people like me than it ever will be for subsequent generations of old people, but I don't have time to deal with any of that right now. Instead, please enjoy some lovely children.

Trash Talk

I was playing Mario Kart last night for Soren's amusement, racing the courses he requested (usually Bowser's Castle and Mushroom Gorge) while trying to hold Sigrid in my lap and keep her from grabbing the controller. So my usually superior skillz were severely compromised. At one point, when I fell off a bridge into a lake of molten lava for the third time, this conversation ensued:

Soren: Mama, what's that sound?

Me: Um, what sound? I'm not sure.

Soren: That's the sound of you not playing very well.

Did I just get smacked down by a two-year-old??? Excuse me? Well, at least we know where he got the sassiness from.

Dear Sigrid

Darling daughter, sweet sweet treasure,

PLEASE start sleeping through the night. It's been at least nine months since I got seven uninterrupted hours of sleep, and holy crap, I want those seven hours. That's what you can give me for Mother's Day. Except I'd like my present early, like tonight. You'll never have to get me anything ever again, as long as you can live with the guilt of never honoring me and my sacrifice on the day which Hallmark hath set aside for such an occasion.

Because I am trained as an illustrator, here is a story illustrating my tiredness:

Last night, I was tasked* with making couscous, and I put the water in the microwave and set the timer instead of the cook time. Then I realized my mistake and turned the cooking magic on, and your Daddy started laughing at me, because it turned out that I hadn't really put the water in the microwave, and it was still sitting on the counter, and I was cooking air. And that's why Daddy and I split up.

In sum, the dents between the fat rolls on your thighs are deep enough to hold a pencil in, which means you surely have enough stores to last seven hours without a meal. And your brother slept through the night starting when he was seven weeks old. Why can't you be more like your brother?

All my love,

Mama



*People who know me will be SHOCKED to see that I am fatigued enough to use "task" as a verb.

More Horrible Parenting on My Part

Sigrid took her first forward-facing ride in the stroller today! She seemed to think it was a good thing, what with all her smiling and foot-kicking and lack of crying, but she's wrong. It's stunting her language development, dontcha know. It is my parental duty to interact with her AT ALL TIMES. Even now. She's been napping in the stroller for a good 2.5 hours now, but I should probably be keeping her awake so I can talk to her and keep her on the college-bound track.

Just think how much more verbal Soren could be if we'd kept him rear-facing in the stroller all this time. The mind boggles.

Big City Adventures

Chris and I got back yesterday from a three-day stay in NYC! Grammy and Grampy were kind enough to come out and stay with the kiddos while Chris and I took a little time away. Sigrid has been a little iffy about eating from a bottle lately, but she apparently chose to break her hunger strike after only six hours, and thereafter took the bottle quite cooperatively. She also slept from 11 to 5 last night, maybe because she thinks I'll leave again if she doesn't start shaping up. I'll let her keep right on thinking that.

So here are some things I did in New York:

• Wore the wrong shoes, as I always seem to do when going to NYC, thus crippling myself temporarily and requiring a trip to a shoe store to get something I could walk in. Nice suede Merrill slip-ons this time.
  
  
• Didn't take any pictures. See next item.
  
  
• Left the backpack containing the camera (the point-and-shoot, not the SLR, thank goodness), Travel Scrabble, OH AND the breast pump on the Metro-North. Still no word on whether we'll be getting it back -- it takes a few days for the MTA to process found items.
  
  
• Bought a new pump -- a manual one, in case I get my fancy electric one back.
  
  
• Saw this at the store where I got the new pump. Whiskey Tango Foxtrot.
  
  
• Saw the orchid show at the Botanic Gardens.
  
  
• Felt all snooty about the people taking pictures of the orchids with their little pathetic cameras. Honey, you do NOT have the minimum focal distance to pull that off.
  
  
• Tried a couple different bagel places. Ess-a-Bagel was pretty good, but freaking crowded.
  
  
• Kicked a Jaguar (car, not cat) whose driver was trying to verrrrry slowly mow down a crosswalk full of pedestrians in Times Square. Felt good.
  
  
• Bought socks at Bloomingdale's.
  
  
• Strolled the MoMA.
  
  
• Tried out the whispering arch in Grand Central.
  
  
• Saw Coraline 3-D, which was AWESOME.
  
  
• Slept. Oh hell yeah.
  
  
• Ate at Babbo (Mario Batali's restaurant). The food and service were excellent! I'll write more about it if any foodies care.
  
  
• Failed to buy Soren a toy taxi. I'm sorry!
  
  
• Missed the kids just enough to come home.
  
  

It's good to be home! Please send backpack-retrieval vibes.

Spring is Coming...

IMG_1890.JPG
Originally uploaded by kirsten.anderson

This is Why We Can't Have Nice Things

See, this is what happens when I try to take advantage of a teachable moment when Soren expresses an interest in both measuring things and going outside. I hand him my good straightedge and tell him we're going to measure how deep the snow is, and let him outside while I'm putting my boots on, and then when I come outside he asks me where the ruler is, and I ask HIM where the ruler is, and it turns out he's dropped it into the crawl space under the deck, and I'm not going under there because there are dead spiders, and so my good straightedge is gone FOREVER. And I have to buy a new one. That's it! No more learning.

Note: Comments pointing out that I shouldn't have given a toddler my good straightedge will be deleted.

Postcount++

Splitting my thoughts up into several short blog posts makes me seem so much more productive, if blogging counts as being productive. It's certainly more productive than Facebook Scrabble. I have six games going at once. What? Shut up.

We had something of a "Kids Say the Darnedest Things" moment yesterday. I had to take Soren and Sigrid along with me to a doctor's appointment in the morning, since the law has things to say about me leaving them at home alone, and they were their usual charming selves the whole time. Soren brought his lizard Beanie Baby (named, incidentally, Lizard Patrick Lizard) with him and made conversation with everyone who expressed an interest in him, Lizard, or Sigrid. Eventually, he remembered that doctor's visits generally involve lollipops, so I produced a root-beer-flavored Dum Dum pop for him in order to buy further good behavior.

When the visit was over, we got into the elevator with one of the receptionists, who asked Soren all the de rigeur questions about his sister ("Her name is See-gwid!") his lizard ("Lizard is my best friend!") and his lollipop. A transcript of the lollipop conversation follows. It is mercifully short.

---
Receptionist: Hey, is that lollipop good?

Soren: This lollipop is brown! Like your face!

Me: Uhhhhh...

Elevator: Ding!
---

Now, it is true that the lollipop was brown, and the receptionist also happened to be brown. And she laughed, which hopefully means she wasn't offended. And it's not like it was offensive, right? I hope? I mean, it's not like the time when I was four and I told one of my mom's friends that she had a fat butt. If he'd said something like that -- or should I say WHEN he says something like that -- I would feel horrible and might actually die right on the spot. I think it was his wording. "Like your face?" Really? He couldn't just say, "Like you?"

Okay, I can't decide whether to feel bad about it or not, so I'll stop thinking about it.

Squid Hat Claims Second Anderson Child

The squid hat lives!

Why Smoke Crack When You Can Knit

I bet the two habits cost about the same. I have nothing of note to report -- no current or pending hospitalizations, although I still can't hear out of my left ear -- so I figured I'd post some pictures of the stuff I've been knitting. And then you can leave comments telling me how cute it all is. I live for comments.

First: hats. I am knitting baby hats like a crazy person. I am currently working on my fourth Sweet Baby Cap, and will probably make a few more before I decide I'm bored with that pattern. It's just so cute! And stripy! And it makes Sigrid look like a spaceman (well, spacewoman)!



I also made a Bobble-Textured Hat a few months ago with some lovely merino-possum blend yarn (Australian possums, not American opossums). It finally fits Sigrid, sort of, so here's a picture.



I've also knocked out a couple sweaters... boy, it really sounds like I have too much time on my hands, doesn't it? Anyway, this one was made with the kick-ass alpaca that Amber spun and dyed herself. Talk about an awesome Christmas present. Sigrid says the sweater makes her feel super.



Finally, a moss-stitch cardigan from the supremely lovely Rowan Pipsqueaks pattern book, which is second only to Rowan Babies. Kim Hargreaves is a fantastic designer -- simple, classic sweater designs. I think I'll make a few more of this design as well to give as gifts.



Okay, now I'm going to go tell Soren to stop kicking the wall. He keeps finding new things to do in place of napping. I think I prefer it when he sings the alphabet song.

Nope, Can't Catch a Break

Soren, Sigrid and I all took a fun and, ultimately, pointless trip to the "Express" Care clinic at Kent Hospital yesterday, since I've had a raging sore throat and no voice for three days, and Soren has been sick since time immemorial and finally tripped the "Go To Doctor" switch by chundering all over the coffee table yesterday morning. Sigrid, however, was just along for the ride, since she's been on amoxicillin for her ear infection and doesn't seem to have caught any major viruses in the meantime. Atta girl.

I called and made doctor's appointments for me and for Soren, which was a nice thought but very inconvenient, since they were half an hour apart at offices in two different cities. I would pay good money, incidentally, to have the pediatrician swab me for strep after taking a look at Soren. It would have saved us so much hassle. I mean, I understand why the doctor can't examine someone who isn't his patient, but that won't stop me from complaining about it.

So, yeah, I made appointments for the afternoon. In the meantime, I decided to try out the only place where someone would see both of us at the same time: "Express" Care. I should really put more quotes around that word. I guess it's technically faster than waiting for a doctor to randomly wander into your home and ask you what's wrong, but there's really nothing Express about it.

Here is the part of the story, however, where I stop complaining and start throwing praise around like it's going out of style. My two children were absolute angels while we waited a million years to be seen at the clinic. I am especially proud of Soren, who can actually make a conscious decision whether or not he wants to be good, and chose goodness despite being sick AND missing his nap. He sat nicely in the chair next to me for a while, playing with trucks, then played with trucks on the floor, then took off for the door while I was nursing Sigrid (okay, that part wasn't so good, but a helpful stranger stopped him from escaping), and then serenaded a really old guy with a charming rendition of Old MacDonald.

We were there for 2.5 hours before finally giving up and going to our appointments (Chris was good enough to come home early and take Soren to his doctor). In the end, I was a little annoyed that we waited there for nothing, but since Soren was playing happily the whole time, it almost felt like I could classify it as our outing for the day. It's just as well, since we can't really go anywhere that's actually fun until we stop shedding horrible pathogens.

As an added bonus, he likes the bubble-gum flavored amoxicillin, so there are no fights about taking his medicine. And he swallows it, unlike Sigrid, who seems to enjoy the flavor so much that she grins hugely and lets it all dribble out of her mouth. Sigh.

For Your Amusement

A limerick, inspired by Sigrid's ear infection:

There once was a doctor named Titus
Whose laughter was boist'rous and riotous
He about blew a gasket
When a patient once askéd
"Tell me, why does my ear hurt, O Titus?"

Go Ahead. Guess Where I Was Yesterday.

No, really!!!! Guess!!!!!!!!! I will give you ten million dollars if you guess wrong!!!!!!!!!!!!

All the exclamation points are probably a clue to the level of crazy to which I have been pushed. Yes, friends, the answer is: The Hospital. &*^#$%*&^#$%

Sigrid was absolutely inconsolable yesterday morning, except at a few key points which I will get to later. Mainly, she was screaming a lot and refusing to nurse. So we called the pediatrician's office and got an appointment to come right in. Yes, on a Sunday! How sweet is that? A very nice feature. But you know what would be a nicer feature of this particular office? If the pediatrician on duty would actually do a thorough freaking examination before deciding she doesn't know what's wrong, but since Sigrid is clearly miserable, she needs blood work and a spinal tap (SPINAL TAP) and should be taken to the ER.

When a baby is miserable for no apparently acute reason (i.e. no wounds or broken bones), it's probably one of a few things: ear infection, UTI, or hair tourniquet. The doctor barely looked at Sigrid's ears, mentioned the possibility of a UTI but didn't do anything about it, and never even looked for a hair tourniquet (I didn't look either, but I'd forgotten about that possibility -- the ER nurse did a thorough hair-tourniquet search, though). I was a little too frazzled by the screaming baby to realize how half-assed the exam was, so when the doctor said we should go to the ER, I figured it was just the way my universe has been working lately, so I went.

When we got there, there were two kids in hospital beds IN THE WAITING ROOM. And a million other people in chairs. This was pretty much looking like a six-hour wait, which I've experienced before, and it's not fun, especially with no food or distractions -- I hadn't exactly planned for this when leaving the house.

I went up to the registration desk, and of course, Sigrid was sleeping peacefully at this point. Babies are a lot like cars that way. They work great when you bring them to the mechanic. The nurse asks why we're there, and I have to explain that it's because my daughter is inconsolable, except for the fact that she's, you know, sleeping peacefully. So I look like an idiot. Great. And there's always the possibility that I AM an idiot, and she was just a little fussy and is fine now, and I'll be sitting in the ER waiting room for no reason. Kind of like the person next to me, who was there because her four-year-old had a 1/2" cut on his forehead that wasn't even actively bleeding. Maybe she just really wanted to get out of a Super Bowl party or something.

Luckily (?), Sigrid started crying again right on cue when she was taken into triage, so we managed to convince the nurse that there was probably something wrong. She was having trouble settling Sigrid down enough to hear lung sounds (the non-screaming kind of lung sounds, anyway), so she called in another nurse with a Baby Whisperer reputation, and that nurse did an OK job of quieting Sigrid down, but then pissed me off by suggesting that it was probably gas. Everyone blames crying on gas. Whatever.

There was a lovely moment in all this, though: after I'd been walking around with poor screaming Schkernky for a while, a woman came up and gave me a bottle of water, totally out of the blue. That was really kind. I'll have to pay that forward.

And more kindness: Chris drove all the way up to the hospital with food and distractions (knitting, video games) for me even though it was Soren's nap time and there was a risk of wrecking the rest of the day by screwing up his nap. Thank you, dear. I'll plan on paying that back rather than forward.

After not too terribly wrong -- perhaps they wanted to move the screaming to a different room? -- we got a triage room in the back and were seen fairly promptly by a doctor. This doctor did wacky things like cleaning the wax out of Sigrid's ears so she could actually SEE something with the otoscope! How crazy! During the ear cleaning, the screaming increased a hundredfold, which was a clue to the problem, and then the doctor finally saw that there was inflammation and gross stuff in there, so it was ruled to be an ear infection with ruptured tympanic membrane, which sounds awful but is apparently routine. Some Tylenol, bubble-gum flavored antibiotics, and we were on our way. Except for a crappy period today when I waited too long to give Sigrid her dose of Tylenol, she's been feeling better. End of story. All's well that ends well. Oh, except for the four-hour wait and hundred-dollar copay that we could have been spared if the pediatrician had examined Sigrid's ears. Right. I was holding on to my anger about that long enough to blog about it, and now I think I can let go. Closure is a beautiful thing.

Happily, we got to go up to Brian and Edith's house for a Super Bowl party in the evening! It was really nice to get out of the house and see friends and eat pigs in blankets. Much nicer than being at the hospital.

Countdown to Crazy

Having a two-year-old has really changed my standards; somehow, being at home all day with a newborn is pretty much like being at home alone. It must be all that sleeping. And the lack of tantrums, movie requests, snack spills, and refusals to put on one's shoes.

My "alone" days are coming to an end, however -- next week is Soren's last week of daycare. Originally, I was actually working while he was in school three days a week, and then it was really handy to have a familiar place for him to go while everyone else was busy being hospitalized, but now the funding and excuses have dried up, so he'll be back with boring old mom full-time. I want to make sure I don't completely give up on giving him structure (i.e. bossing him around and making him do activities) during the day, since I think his time at school has really given him better listening and social skills, but I'm not totally sure how to do that at home; maybe I should set up a "school" area somewhere in the house. Or maybe I'm overthinking this.

I also figure the recipe for stay-at-home-mom success is not to do too much staying at home; we'll be going to lots of play groups (I'm a member of three local Meetups... and haven't done anything with any of them for three months, but I have great excuses) and will spend lots of time wandering around our fabulous neighborhood, with its kick-ass new and improved playground. I have really high hopes for that playground. I think it'll be a good place to pick up chicks.

It sounds like I'm totally dreading this transition, which isn't really true. First of all, Soren is a complete laugh riot/sweetheart/amazing supergenius, and I love hanging out with him 97% of the time. The other 3% tends to use up 99% of my patience, of course, but I'm working on that. I'm looking forward to taking him out and being more social with other moms and kids, and if I can get my act together, I think we'll have a good time doing school-type stuff together (lest you get the wrong impression, let me assure you that he'll be slumming it with all the other public-school kids as soon as he turns 5... I wouldn't want to disappoint you, Amber).

Look how cute he is!



As for the other child -- the one who sleeps so much she still barely counts as company -- she's doing quite well, and has completely recovered from RSV and bronchiolitis. She does have two major periods of wakefulness during the day (morning and evening... such a reasonable schedule) and tends to be really jolly during both. I still haven't managed to get a good picture of her insanely cute open-mouth grin, though. It's hard to look away long enough to go get the camera when she's feeling super happy. This is the closest I've gotten:



Which is a big improvement over this:



Chris is back to teaching again, which fills him with joy, because he lives for nothing more than watching the spark of knowledge ignite in an undergrad's eyes. Right, dear?

As for me, I'm doing only kind of OK health-wise, and have found myself in the weird position of being glad to find out that I've had C. diff for the past three weeks. The first C. diff test, a couple weeks ago, was negative, which meant that I was having symptoms of an ulcerative colitis flare that weren't being helped at all by crazy doses of steroids and mesalamine (have you ever taken 7.6 GRAMS per day of any particular drug?). I didn't really like that concept, because there's really not a lot more they can do to control a flare. So when I was retested for C. diff and it finally came back positive, I was bizarrely relieved, since I can take antibiotics for that and it will go away. And probably come back again later. But whatever.

Ooh, and I have a colonoscopy coming up on Monday! Because I am now old and have old person health problems! Prep involves drinking a gallon of salt water in the span of about an hour. But the salt water comes with flavor packets! Cherry, orange, pineapple, or lemon-lime! Thrilling. Maybe I'll mix them all together to make fruit punch. It couldn't possibly be more disgusting than one of the flavors alone.

On the bright side, being sick for so long has gotten me back into my pre-pregnancy jeans faster than I ever thought possible. Hooray for being thin at any cost! I have my priorities straight!

When the Cat's away...

When Soren and I went to the bookstore on Thursday (a common retreat where he can play with their Thomas set and I can get coffee), he wound up sitting on the story stage and sounding out the name of a book-of-the-week, "If You Give a Cat a Cupcake." This is one of the installments of the "If You Give..." series, in which the title is an opening line that leads to a series of ludicrous events. The second page suggests that if you give a cat a cupcake, he will surely want some sprinkles to put on it.

--- --- ---

I took Thursday mostly off from work to give Soren a mental health day, because he's really not up to doing school more than two days in a row, and he'd gone Monday-Wednesday. I slept until he called me in the morning, since I spent the previous night at the hospital, which was less than completely fulfilling, sleepwise. After breakfast, I left Soren to watch his alphabet movie (Leapfrog's Letter Factory, which he loves) so I could take a shower. When I came back downstairs, the living room was empty, and it was eerily quiet.

I walked through and searched the dining room and my office for my charge, and finally checked the kitchen. Soren wasn't immediately visible, but the baking cabinet was slightly ajar. (The baking cabinet is the one he's standing in front of in this picture, so he could (almost) entirely conceal himself; the child lock had been left ajar--as in the picture--by a certain resident of the house who responds to Momma.)


What could be in there? The goldfishies are in the other cabinet. This one has, mostly, 1) bread 2) single malt scotch and 3) vinegar.

I approached the cabinet and called out, "Soren." He immediately turned around, with the door swinging open, and asked, "Can I have a roll?" pointing the grinder rolls near where he was standing. His fingers, however, told a different story. They were, though he was looking at me, plunging in and out of a half-gone jar of multicolored sprinkles (jimmies, for those of you from New England) resting on a chest-height (to him) shelf; he was hiding in the cupboard and eating sprinkles out of the package whilst I was cleansing myself.

I was utterly unsure what to do. My first reaction was that this was hilarious and I should take his picture, but the tone was entirely incorrect because what he was doing was wrong, and he clearly knew it. However, he had not received a warning about the specific behavior of eating all the sprinkles, which is prerequisite for a two-minute time out, the capital punishment of toddler sanctions. So, I had to choke down my laughter and somehow express disapprobation. He had, fortunately for me, spilled quite a few a of the sprinkles, so I was able to focus on the mess he made (after throwing out the rest of the bottle), and his responsibility for helping to clean it up.

But I did have to call Kirsten to get the laugh out.

Home!

Sigrid is home! Yay!!!! She's currently enjoying a little wiggle time on the living room rug, staring at the ceiling beam. Ah, the comforts of home.

Moving On Up

...to the fourth floor! Sigrid's out of the ICU!

When I walked into her room last night after my stint at home, it seemed like she looked a little different -- it took me a minute to realize that was because she didn't have anything on her face! They'd taken her cannula out, and she was breathing room air again (and a lot happier for it). She's been off oxygen since then, and has only required one breathing treatment (epinephrine at 5 AM), so our doctor says she's on track to go home tomorrow. Yay!!!!

Sadly, we're back to sharing a room. I'd figured we 'd be shoo-ins for another single, what with the whole contagion issue, but apparently they're not concerned about that. Oh well. It's not so bad in and of itself, but there's no window on our side of the room, so it's a little... dark.

Well, I should go make sure she's sleeping and not forcing her nurse to be on paci duty. As always, thanks for all the good wishes.

Improving+++

Sigrid is moving out of the ICU and into the regular hospital this evening, ahead of schedule. Everyone is very pleased with her progress from where she was Monday.

I decided the trick with the chair is not to think of it as crappy bed, but rather like I somehow wound up in business class. I used my airline eye mask and ear plugs, and just like on the plane, there are a lot of bonging noises, babies crying, and people to bring you water.

Improving++

Sigrid's oxygen has been turned way down, and she gets to nurse again! She may be able to move out of the ICU tomorrow and onto a regular patient floor, and then... maybe a day or two until she's free? I don't want to jinx anything.

Last night, I got to sleep in my own bed while Chris took one for the team and slept on the Chair That Turns Into What They Call a Bed But Which Is Pretty Much Just a Flat Chair. So I'm grateful for that. I'm back on third shift tonight, but hopefully Sigrid will be more comfortable than she's been the past few nights.

Improving

Sigrid is looking better today -- her breathing is a lot less labored, especially when she's sleeping, which she's been doing all morning. We had a rough couple hours last night between 2 and 4; she was hungry (they'd shut her feeding tube off yesterday just in case they had to intubate), which understandably made it hard for her to settle down and sleep, and she was coughing a lot. I tried to hold her to help her settle down, but she just got madder, probably because my main role in her life is feeding her when she's hungry, and I keep refusing to do that for some reason. Chris apparently gets big smiles when he shows up; I get looks that range from mild puzzlement to YOU IDIOT WHY AREN'T YOU FEEDING ME?????????

Anyway, she was worked up, and I was worked up because I couldn't calm her down, and they had to suction her a couple times, and it was all a big mess. They finally decided to start feeding her again, perhaps at my insistence (I'd been asking them to do that all afternoon/evening, since it would help her sleep and stay calm), but probably because it was the Medically Right Thing To Do.

We both managed to get some rest eventually, although I did feel the need to get up and not look like an uncombed hill person by the time the doctors were making their rounds, so I've gotten significantly less sleep than Sigrid has. They're hoping to wean her off the high-flow oxygen today and maybe let her nurse; keep your fingers crossed!

This is Getting Ridiculous

Could I have jinxed everything more effectively with the first paragraph of my previous post? Cue the medical emergency. It's Sigrid this time; seems the girls are in charge of the medical drama in our household. She contracted RSV from The Vector (by which I mean Soren), which manifests more or less as a cold in children/adults, but which can cause bronchiolitis in infants, as is the case here. She's not in any danger or anything -- she just needs regular suction and some supplemental oxygen to keep her from tiring out (her breathing is very labored). She was admitted to Hasbro on Saturday, and I'm not going to venture much of a guess about when she'll be discharged except to say that it won't be tomorrow.

It's hard to explain how I feel about all this. I'm sad that she has to be here, covered in wires and unable to nurse, and I really want to bring her home and make her smile again... and at the same time, I'm not worried, exactly, which seems strange to say when my baby is in the ICU. I guess I've just heard enough reassurances about RSV and the way it runs its course to feel okay about her being treated here. The illness generally peaks in severity around day 5 (which is today, I think, but I'm not positive), and babies with RSV just tend to need medical care during the worst part so they don't get a more severe infection or get too worn out to eat. So here we are. Wish us luck.

Happy New Year!

2009 has been a lovely year so far. There haven't been any medical emergencies yet, Chris found some dry aged ground beef at Whole Foods last night, and both kids are napping at the moment. That's my recipe for a good year. Oh, but we're out of rum. That's not so good.

Anyway, we've had a busy couple weeks, what with the holidays and all, but we not only survived -- we enjoyed ourselves! A lot! Grammy, Grampy, Aunt Rachel, and Uncle Dude came out to visit for Christmas, and we enjoyed a lovely, low-key holiday with them. Soren and Sigrid were treated very well by Santa and pretty much everyone in the family except their parents. Well, that's not totally true -- Chris made an awesome Lego table for Soren, which is the first decent gift he's gotten from us so far in his lifetime (besides love and a college fund, but we'll see about the college fund... it's not doing so well at the moment). Anyway, Chris and I didn't give Sigrid anything for Christmas, because we are lazy, and because she is a baby and was destined to get a million presents from everyone else in the world. The siblings exchanged very thoughtful gifts; Sigrid gave Soren a set of translucent Duplo blocks for building on his new table, and Soren gave Sigrid an Uglydoll which he picked out himself. The Uglydoll is actually quite a sweet gift, since Soren has loved his own Uglydoll (which he named Mimi) since he got it from Grammy and Grampy in 2007, and he wanted to get Sigrid one to match. He brings Sigrid her Mimi when she gets upset (and occasionally when she's not). What a good big brother. Here they are with their Mimis.



And here's the only decent family portrait we managed to get, with the requisite crying baby and uncooperative toddler.



A couple days after Chris's family left, we packed up the kids and went up to New Hampshire for the annual New Year's festivities. We'd originally thought we weren't going to go, since two kids seems to be a lot, but then we realized that we were tired of sitting around at home, we wanted to see our friends, Soren could probably handle a few nights in a twin-size bed, and Sigrid sleeps just fine in her car seat whether she's in her own room or not. So we went for it, and it worked out pretty well. We took up more than our fair share of space, since Soren really can't sleep in the same room as a baby that needs to nurse and have her diaper changed twice a night, but Seth (and everyone else) was quite gracious about us taking up half the house. We all quite enjoyed ourselves during the day as well; various people were happy to play with Soren and hold Sigrid, and I was happy to let them do it while I played games and knitted and generally pretended I didn't have any kids. Soren took a few walks outside with Chris, Adam and Margot, and Chris got some great pictures:




There's more, but Soren's awake and yelling "MAMA WHERE ARE YOU RIGHT NOW I'M ALL WAKED UUUUUUP," so perhaps I should post more later on.