Snapshots, Part Two: I Hope This One Comes Out Blurry

Friday, 3:00:

I'm feeding the baby. James wants to sit on my lap and becomes slightly distressed that he can't have it all to himself (even though he is, actually, sitting on my lap...there's just also a baby there). Suddenly, he begins to cry hysterically, and the phrase "freaking out" comes to mind. I put the baby down and find a way to prop his bottle (I know, I know, You're Not Supposed to do That) just seconds before James throws up all over himself, the floor, and me, but luckily, not the baby. (See? That was an entirely judicious use of the bottle-propping.)

Also, I am starting to get low blood sugar.

Luckily, Tyler's mom comes to get him at 4:00 (I love you, Fridays!), and Ben comes home early to help us out. After some clean-up and cuddling, James seems fine, although he is still intensely congested. We now have a doctor's appointment for Monday to take care of our mucosal woes.

Somehow, we got through the day relatively unharmed. But that felt like a close one. Really drives home the meaning of TGIF.

Happy Weekend, everyone!

Snapshots

So you wanna know how my days have been going lately?

Here's a little taste, courtesy of yesterday's bountiful givings.

Thursday morning around 11: Zachary and James are playing together in the living room. I'm simultaneously eating lunch and fixing Tyler a bottle. Suddenly, Zachary starts pretty much all-out screaming. Although he is fairly articulate, it takes me a moment to understand what has thrown him into such a state of hysteria: HEPOOPEDJAMESPOOPEDANDITSTINKSANDYOUHAVETOCHANGEHIMNOW
NOWNOWBECAUSEITSTINKSANDHE'SCOMINGTOWARDSMEANDITSTINKS
ANDHEPOOPEDANDAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!

After I recover from a bout of delirious laughter, I explain to him that I can't change James' diaper quite yet...but he only moves on after I promise not to let James chase him around the house with The Stink.

Thursday morning at 8:30, 11:00, 1:00, 2:00, 3:30, 4:30, and 5:30: Tyler needs a bottle. Whoa, growth spurts happen like that in bottle-fed babies too. Apparently you have to give them BIGGER BOTTLES! Case cracked. Hopefully Friday will go a little more smoothly in the I'M STARVING department.

Thursday afternoon, 1:00: James has been asleep for about half an hour when he suddenly wakes up. Oh NO! Worst Nightmare has happened--cranky sleepy toddler who won't sleep and baby who can't be left alone while I cajole toddler to sleep. I spend almost an hour trying everything I can think of, and then realize that he's actually NOT cranky! Saints be praised. I relax and the rest of the day is fine. And then...he sleeps at night! And so do we! And the world is a beautiful place again! Woo-hoo!

Thursday evening, 9:00: Grey's Anatomy is still showing reruns. Because of this crazy writers' strike thing that I've heard about, we are forced--FORCED!--to watch The Celebrity Apprentice. Like we have for the last 3 weeks in a row. Goshdarnit. Television IS addicting. And you know what else? I can't even stand Donald Trump. In case he ever wanted to ask me his famous question--If you were me, who would you fire?--I would be ready to explain that I would fire Donald Trump, because he creeps me out. SO THERE!

All in all, things are going pretty well, don'tcha think?

So Sue Me

I know I have been slacking in my blog-posting duties lately, but come on, people! We've had a lot going on here. Now I present to you a random list of some of that stuff, because I am too lazy and tired to coherently organize my thoughts.

1. Last Friday I started taking care of a new baby, which I will now do most weekdays from about 8 to 5:30. He is 6 weeks old. Again, I'm just crazy! But it went well that day and I have a minute to blog today, so obviously, I'm not fulling regretting it...yet. Stay tuned for more updates on that situation later! Oh, and if you live in the area and want to have a play date..CALL ME! We need to get out more to make the days go by faster.

2. Oh, and I'm also going to be taking care of a 2-year-old on Tuesdays and Thursdays--but only for 4 hours or so each day. I'm not TOTALLY crazy...am I?

3. Ben's HUGE GINORMOUS MOST IMPORTANT TEST EVER starts Thursday. For those of you who are grad-school savvy, that would be his Qual. AAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!
So that's made our life a little crazy lately. People seem to think that with a husband who's a PhD student, I should have it easy because "he doesn't work." They are insane. He works all day, every day, and some nights, and weekends...it seems like it never ends. But luckily, if all goes well, he'll be done in a year and half! Yay!

4. And then there's always the Anti-Sleeping Toddler. Did I mention that he did sleep through MOST of the night last night, after waking up every 30 minutes from 8:00 p.m. to midnight? Yes, he did...but the 4 nights before that? Up for at least 2 hours, every night. JOY JOY JOY! I love the 18-month growth spurt. It is my favorite thing EVER!

5. Okay, but seriously, at least I can see that he does have all these crazy new skillz now...he learns like five new words a day, and this time, he's actually SPEAKING them. So no, he's not deaf, Devin! =) It is crazy cool how much fun it is to watch my child grow.

6. We just completely rearranged our apartment to adjust to having this baby around all the time. And then our apartment complex asked us if we wanted to move into the newly renovated place downstairs. Oops! So now we have to decide if we want to move or not. Lots of goods and bads to moving. Not sure what we'll do. Just another thing to take up time and mental energy. Hm.

7. It snowed! And James loved it. We even made a (small, pathetic, completely grass- and leaf-filled) snowman. =) See?


That's all the news I can think of right now. Plus I want to go do some other stuff while I get the chance. (Both kids are napping right now, can you believe that? It's surreal to me how well the nap thing is working out...so far. Keep sleeping, babies!)

Cheers!

I know, I'm crazy

I started another new blog.

Are you getting tired of hearing from me yet? Because I don't seem to be running out of steam here.

This new blog is just basically a running list of all the books I read this year. I'm going to let you know what I read and then sort of review it. I say "sort of" because the reviews are not the kind you might read in the newspaper. I just say what I think of the book. I probably leave a lot of important stuff out. But still, you can see what I'm reading and hear my opinion on it, and probably figure out what the book is about from my discussion of it.

Ben and I have recently decided we're going to read a list of classic books together, so that will give me a lot to talk about, but mostly I just wanted to remember a) what books I read this year and b) what I thought of them.

So. There you go. Feel free to go read it, or to ignore it completely. I don't mind either way.

Good night!

Guess which team James was rooting for today?

Don't worry...In case you didn't hear, the Packers won. So Ben's look of alarm was all for naught. And I'm happy to report that the boy is as cute as ever.

I'm off to bed. G'night!

You learn something new every day

Today I discovered that if you type the phrase "giant moose" into Google Images, you get some very disturbing pictures of enormous moose, mostly dead and accompanied by their hunters, who suddenly look very small. Eek and ick and aaah. Distressing. Unpalatable. Offensive. Incommodious. (Can you tell I've been using Thesaurus.com?)

Anyway.

Do you think the boy had fun at Christmas?


How about with his new train that he got from Grandma and Grandpa D?


He's so "amusing, blithe, clever, comic, comical, diverting, droll, entertaining, gay, gelastic, good-humored, hilarious, humorous, hysterical, jolly, merry, mirthful, playful, priceless, rich, riotous, risible, side-splitting, silly, slapstick, whimsical, and witty."

Life Images

Yeah, yeah, I know. You want more pictures. You also want to hear about potty training. Well, more personal pictures are coming soon, and the potty training has been going well. We've always been partial Ec-ers, so it's really just sort of a slow, smooth transition to full-time pottying. Notice my use of the word SLOW. No rush just yet.

But anyway...I found this really fun meme on one of the diabetes blogs I read, so I thought I'd pass it along.

Feel free to do it. You just answer the questions, then type them into Google Images, and you can post anything from the first page of results as your answer. It's really fun!

Age at my next birthday:
A place to which I'd like to travel:

A favorite place:
A favorite thing:
A favorite food:
especially with
A favorite flower:
A favorite color:

The city you live in:Or, for the more abstract:


Name of a past pet:
A nickname you've had:
College major:and

First job:
A hope for 2008:

A New Year, and finally a New Post

Wow. It's the second day of 2008 already.

With the holidays and the tons of guests overflowing our small apartment and the comings and goings and new toys and gourmet meals and the sleepless nights and the potty training and the sniffles and the dishes and all, somehow remembering to blog got put waaaaaaaay down at the bottom of my priority list.

But here I am again, and thought I don't have much time to blog today (see: dishes, sleepless nights, et cetera), I wanted to share a quick pic or two with you.

Do you think James likes his new sand toys? (Okay, secretly they're only new to us, as our friend Christina was nice enough to give them to us since her 4 children have LOTS of sand toys.)


What about Grandma and Grandpa? Do you think he likes them? How about that game they know how to play in the game room? You know, the one where they make the ball pop off of the table and go flying? Man, that game is SO MUCH FUN!


As someone somewhere once said, A Good Time Was Had By All.

More to come in the future...after my nap.

Happy New Year, everyone! Here's to a great 2008.