I was going to post about my business trip, but now it has been so long that it seems silly. Why has it been so long, you ask? Well, as dictated by natural law, the children got ill just as I was leaving, and I came back sick and have more or less stayed that way until now—really, I don’t think any other cough I’ve ever had has lingered so long. I was starting to feel a little Camille-y.

My trip was not all business. I had a lovely dinner with @Amy_Rey (are we referring to people by their Twitter handles, now? It seems we are) at my hotel the first night. Alas, I began the meal by ordering what turned out to be the single most phallic dish in existence, with the exception of, say, an actual braised penis. Thankfully, my main course was both delicious and neuter. Amy is a professional crossword puzzler, and I’d been perversely afraid she’d…I don’t know, quiz me or something (LITTLE RICHARD, FOUR LETTERS) but she didn’t, and all was well.

The next afternoon, I took the El (Whee!) from Evanston back city-ward to drink wine with the incomparable Mimi Smartypants (her real name is Griselda!) (No) (OR IS IT?), whose Online Web Journal was the first I ever read, and whose writing I have been enjoying for about a decade. It turned out to be one of those pleasant occasions wherein you meet a new person and yet feel entirely at ease (a rarity for me under the best of circumstances) and as if you know each other quite well already. This isn’t wholly unheard of, but usually it is someone I’ve chatted with online in one form or another, and this was not that, as I’d previously been too shy to correspond with Ms. Smartypants, online or otherwise. But I knew she’d read my book because I’d seen as much on Goodreads, so when this trip was planned I gathered up my petticoats and sent an email proposing we get together. I wasn’t sure how the suggestion would be received (especially as I may have gone on about beheadings a smidge in my “come meet a stranger!” email, which could potentially have been off-putting), but it all worked out and the evening was so much fun that it made me think I should really look into making friends in my OWN town as well.

Now here, watch this video of my baby singing.

While Simone and I were out one day, Scott put on Kathleen Edwards, and Twyla made a beeline to the source of the music, revealing vocal stylings uniquely reminiscent of a drunken Muppet*. My husband, bless him, managed to capture a bit of it on film.

Twyla Sings from Alexa on Vimeo.

*The phrase “drunken Muppet” made me remember this video, which remains the only thing I like about St Patrick’s Day.

¶ I read the first Tana French, In The Woods, on the recommendation of you fine people, and you did not steer me wrong. I more or less lost two days of my life, however, because I was not capable of putting the damn thing down. I tried! I swear I tried. Actually, several times I picked up my phone and opened Twitter to make a comment about how absorbed I was by the book, and then instead I went back to reading. Too absorbed even to tweet! (It is a hard life I live.)

I found the book at first delicious (the writing is excellent, she creates a very complete world and clear voice to lose oneself in) and then later horribly sad. Part of me would have liked to prolong the first part indefinitely. I am feeling a little melancholy about it all still. Not about the crime itself, but—oh, if you have read it you know what I mean, and if you haven’t I don’t want to spoil things (though really, if you haven’t read it you might want to skip this whole section because I am bound to give something away without meaning to do so).

The Thing That Was Supposed To Be a Surprise seemed obvious from the start, but this didn’t affect my enjoyment of the book much. Occasionally I found it a little annoying or got impatient, and the obviousness did affect my feelings about the main character some, and I did find myself a bit incredulous at the idea that we were supposed to find it surprising, but at least in this case I didn’t know how it was all going to work out. Actually, despite The Thing being obvious, most of the rest remained mysterious until later, which was unusual and kind of great. It seems unlikely that the other central mystery will be solved in a future book, and I respect that this is very true-to-life and kind of marvelous, in its way, but it is maddening because I want to know.

I do not tend to judge mysteries on whether I am surprised by the mystery part, because I never—or almost never—am, I suppose because I read so many of them and have had such a thorough Law & Order education. Usually I don’t mind the mystery not really being a mystery, as long as the rest of the book is compelling enough. A lack of subtlety seems inevitable, especially in a mystery author’s early books: it must be very tricky to trust your reader to pick up on clues—it is always tricky to trust your reader to pick up what you are putting down, so to speak, and I know in my own writing I am always having to go back and take out superfluous/heavy-handed bits that result from that.

Anyhow, I am not going to start the next one yet, because I have deadlines looming and I suspect I won’t be able to get any work done if I do. Also, I think I need something cheery as a palate cleanser first. (Have started it. I have no willpower at all. None.)

I ought to update you all on the books I’ve read this year so far and what I’ve thought of them, but that will have to be another day. (Though I will say The Fault in Our Stars was as good as everyone said it would be, though I kept wishing 17-year-old Alexa was reading it instead, for various reasons) (It was a wee bit precious, and I know that at 17 I would have read it less cynically and likely been besotted with it.) (Shades of Franny and Zooey, I suppose.)

¶ Not all of my current anxious melancholy can be blamed upon my recent reading material. It is very grey here, and the mood-parts of my brain have always been dramatically solar-powered. It doesn’t take a very long stretch of cloud cover to start me brooding and feeling jittery and fragile and as if everything is DOOOOOMED. I guess it is a good thing I don’t live on one of those dreary English moors I was so fond of reading about as a child. (OR DO I?) It is supposed to rain and then SNOW this week, as much as five inches, so I’m predicting at least one weeping episode and two wild tantrums about the state of the apartment, with scattered panicking over my financial future. Happily, when the sunshine does finally break through—which it must do, eventually—it triggers something like euphoria, and I beam at tree buds and sigh at the sound of birds singing and am as frolicsome and insufferable as the star of a tampon/birth control/yogurt commercial. I look forward to skipping down sidewalks and chucking bewildered robins under the chin any time now.

¶ I rarely have social engagements other than the very occasional dinner with my mother, even more rarely social engagements extending past 8pm, and yet last week I went out in the evening on TWO SEPARATE OCCASIONS, for Culture. I accompanied my mother to The Dakota (jazz club) on Tuesday to see Madeleine Peyroux, and a mere two days later I was out again, this time to the Walker (museum) with Scott to see Noah Baumbach’s new movie, Frances Ha. Both times I was away from my apartment until past ten o’clock. Next week on my trip I have plans for two evening outings with virtual acquaintances, and the Friday after I return Scott and I may attend a reading. Step back, Dionysus!

¶ I am looking for some additional freelance work–editing, not writing–and so if you have any lying about, please feel free to send it my way. Most of my editing experience is in the legal and scientific fields, but I’ve done all sorts.
Relatedly, if any of you are writing things (fiction or non) and were thinking of having someone take a look at them with a professional eye—or even two—I am available for everything from line-edits to general “here’s where I think you ought to go with this” type consultations. I’m actually quite a bit better working with other people’s writing than my own, and while I often do this sort of thing for fun (just ask all of my roommates, ever–though I am still bitter about Lizzie’s refusal to let me title her linguistics thesis “Hmong Among Us”), I have decided that this is something I would like to do more of professionally. It makes me feel a tad soulless asking people for money to help them with their personal wordsmithery when that kind of editing is so fun for me anyway (*I* don’t have to do the writing, you see, so it is all reading and guiding and bossing) but there is no law that says you can’t enjoy your work, and I am very good at it, and Spicy Thai Kettle Chips don’t pay for themselves. I’ve written such a variety of things myself now–a memoir, magazine features, essays, etc., that I think I could be useful to almost anyone. (Anyone writing prose. You poets are on your own.)

¶ As long as I am already blushing and feeling squeamish about self-promotion, our beloved NICU (Children’s) is hosting a 3k/fundraiser on June 1st, and Simone, Scott, Twyla and I have formed a team, “Team Simone!” (the exclamation point is part of the name, yes). If you are local and want to walk with us, you can sign up for our team here. There is a party afterward with a bouncy house and face painting and god knows what else, and I am sure it will be an excellent, and finally SNOW-FREE time. Simone has begun to show curiosity about her early/tiny birth, and we’ve been talking about it more and looking at pictures, and she has a Playmobil isolette and baby, of all things, and I thought Team Simone! would be a good idea, for her. (I have more to say about talking to Simone about all of this, enough for a whole fleet of posts, but that will have to wait.)

¶ Frog and Toad are Friends is my favorite children’s book, and to my delight, Simone is enchanted with Frog and Toad as well. We read at least one of the Frog and Toad books every day lately, and the more time I spend with them, the more I think Toad really ought to have his thyroid checked.

Scott was trying to tell me about a book, but he couldn’t remember the title—all he could manage was that it was called “In Praise of [some word LIKE 'whipping,' but NOT 'whipping'].” I went to Amazon and did a search for “In Praise of,” and while I did not find the book he was talking about (chiefly because the book he was talking about was actually called “In Defense of Flogging” ), I did find evidence that beginning a book title with the phrase “In Praise of” is very popular indeed.

Naturally, I scrolled through the first 20 pages and compiled a list of the things authors have deemed sufficiently praiseworthy as to demand a book-length volume devoted to said praise. I included only the books whose titles followed a specific format: “In Praise of _____.” This excluded, for instance “Bitch: In Praise of Difficult Women” (just as well, as I cannot abide Ms. Wurtzel) and similar constructions, of which there were also quite a few.

I’m not going to explain to you why I spent part of my afternoon scrolling through Amazon results to compile this list of Praiseworthy Subjects (though yes, now that you mention it, I WAS avoiding something more pressing, however did you guess?) because surely my hobbies are my own affair. I won’t judge your participation in an Ultimate Frisbee League, and in turn I’d appreciate you reserving comment on the two hours I recently spent with the Wikipedia entry for “List of People Who Were Beheaded.”

So!

A List of Things Authors Have Felt Compelled to Praise in Book Form:

Shadows
Messy Lives
Hangovers
Slowness
Stay-at-Home Moms
Love
Doubt
Reason
Idleness
Spies
Younger Men
Nepotism
Folly
Older Women
Dharmadhatu
Barbarians
Chickens
Athletic Beauty
Hard Industries
Black Women
Krishna
Reading and Fiction
Blandness
The Goddess
Copying
Indecency
The Needlewoman
Tomatoes
Mountain Waters
Prejudice
Commercial Culture
Slow
Imperfection
Jamaica
Plants
The Stepmother
Hiddenness
The Whip
Animals
Christian Origins
Science
The New Knighthood
Oxen
Olympus
Plan B
Women
Empires
The Free Market and Peace
Mother Earth
Nonsense
Speculation
Followers
Pecans
Poverty
Our Teachers
The Crone
Flattery
Antiheroes
Wine
Rumi
The Common
Deadlock
Philosophy
Virtue
The Irish
Nature
Education
The Cognitive Emotions
Plato’s Poetic Imagination
Wild Trout

¶ Satan’s Kernels 2: The Fast and The Furious

The week before last, I took Twyla to the pediatrician for what I was certain was an ear infection. As it happens, you can read all about my reasons for the visit and the visit’s outcome here, in an entry I wrote in 2009 about an identical experience with Simone, because apparently I have learned nothing. Now, as then, the culprit was determined to be NOT the child in question’s ears, but the impending eruption of her first set of molars/Satan’s Kernels. The salient difference between then and now is the age of said child: then, Simone was 17 months/13 months adjusted. Twyla turned nine months old a week ago.

At nine months, she has eight teeth, and now she is growing molars. WHY? What could she possibly need molars for, at this age? She’s like a six year old with an unlimited data plan, or a barista with a corporate lawyer on retainer. They are utterly gratuitous, these molars.

I can’t see them yet, but I can feel their lumpy hideouts, and the pediatrician got a good look in there with her baby flashlight. I can see the drool and hear the screaming, so. If I had any faith at all in those amber teething necklaces I would be draping them around poor Twyla’s nonexistent neck, but I can’t come up with a plausible mechanism by which they would be effective, so we are stuck with ibuprofen and chew toys for now. Unfortunately, that little spin I took through my archives/memory lane suggests that Satan’s Kernels can take months to finally emerge.

It’s a good thing that Twyla is generally absurdly delightful.

(HOW delightful, you ask? Here is a 20 second sample:

You can see why I don’t drown her in the river.)

¶ We call it the Pen-Opticon…

Twyla is fast, and I’m not just talking about the precocious tooth development–she moves quickly, scooting around the room sitting up. You’d think the large head that has effectively made crawling impossible would also prove an impediment to speed while seated, in the manner of the ball portion of a ball and chain, but alas, no. I do not remember this being as much of a problem with Simone, which I attribute to a combination of several factors:

-When Simone was a baby, there was no older child scattering dangerous/compelling detritus hither and yon

-When Simone was a baby, she was less determined to put the whole world, piece by piece, into her mouth

-When Simone was a baby, I had a part time nanny (oh, those halcyon days), giving me some guaranteed work time each week (Incidentally, do you know what irks me? Conversations about mothers who stay home with their children or work from home that include snide “not everyone can AFFORD to do that” remarks, obviously assuming that working full time outside the home is always the most financially feasible option, and anything else is a luxury. I am certain that this is true in some cases, but in many OTHER cases–ahem, MINE–day care costs would make working outside the home LESS profitable than part-time-from-home work.) (Not sure where that came from, but apparently it wanted out.)

My pre-tangent point was that I never felt the need to purchase one of those baby-containing cages/pens for Simone. I managed just fine without one, and when Simone was a baby, I was still semi-committed to keeping our small apartment looking like something other than a daycare center. (I have…more or less given up on this, for the time being.)

However, within the last month it has become obvious that for this new model of baby, some sort of kennel was going to be necessary. I am paid by the hour, and if I spend 45 minutes of every one of my hours replacing Twyla in the center of the room and/or removing various choking hazards from her delighted grasp, it attentuates my possible work schedule dramatically, which in turn cuts into my budget for such household fripperies as food and electricity.
Thus:

(Simone, as you can see, is also a fan of what she refers to as “Twyla’s Pen.”)

Do you remember when Baby Simone came scooting over to ask me to read her a certain book and I got these pictures?

I think we need a similar set of Twyla in her Pen, holding a copy of Surveiller et Punir…

¶ Less lion/lamb, more albatross

March is usually one of my favorite months. The snow is melting, the sun is shining, the temperature is balmily in the 40s, then 50s. Spring is coming at last, and I am secure in the knowledge that soon I will be able to wear fetching shoes without ruining them in the filthy slush. USUALLY. This March is different. And by different, to be clear, I mean worse. Bad. Undesirable.

Now, look. I take a sort of pride in our cold, inhospitable winters. As a bookish, fearful sort, I have precious few opportunities to display toughness, and my insouciance in the face of frigid temperatures makes me feel hardy. But in exchange for my tolerance–celebration, even–of Minnesota’s harsh winter, I expect said winter to know its place. A little snow in March is fine. Still having snowbanks as tall as my 5-year-old is not. “Chilly” is fine. Windchills well below zero? NOT. In a fit of pique I googled “when will all the snow be gone minnesota” just now, and the news was not encouraging. The ground is so frozen and the snow so deep that much of it is expected to persist well into April. Damn it to HELL. (Where at least it would be WARM.)

¶ The town will not be toddling, as I am leaving my children at home.

Happily, I do have something to look forward to: my very first business trip! I suppose my book tour was a “business trip,” in its way, but this is a BUSINESS business trip with meetings, and I am terribly excited. I don’t talk much about my work here, but I suppose there is no harm in telling you that I am currently working as a freelance speechwriter. I am going to Chicago for two nights next month, and I am going to sleep for hours and hours with no children. If I find so much as ONE child in my bed I am going to call housekeeping and have it removed.

The trip was supposed to be for one night only, but as my first meeting is early in the morning I am staying the night before on my own dime so as not to risk a flight delay (and in order to get as much fun out of the thing as possible). I will have that first evening in the city to eat an uninterrupted meal and sleep an uninterrupted sleep and then in the morning I will take the train/subway (El? I believe it is the El in Chicago?) to the (reportedly lovely) suburb where I will have my meetings and stay my second night, flying out directly after my last meeting the next day. Technically I could take a cab from the city to my meeting/hotel #2, but I sort of adore public transportation, so I am doing that instead, despite my mother’s insistence that my suitcase will make me A Target For Pickpockets.

¶ Business, speaking of

Lastly, I think I got addresses from everyone who requested a copy of my book in the comments of the last post (I couldn’t just pick two of you, because HONESTLY), and I’ll be sending the packages out early next week. I think this is something I’d like to do a bit more of. I don’t have any more copies lying around, but I can certainly BUY some, and I’d like every possible NICU to have a signed (with encouraging note?) copy for parents to borrow, so if you know of a NICU that might like one, send their information along and I will make a list and mail them out as I am able to rustle up the funds. It seems a little presumptuous to more or less press my book into people’s hands and god knows it has many (many! MANY) flaws, but it is something I would have liked to have at the time, so why not.
(I realize that an author buying her own book in order to give it away to others is not really the customary business model, but there you are.)

Today is Parents of Preemies Day.

Five years ago today, Simone was a little over a month old, and I posted a letter I’d written to her for the occasion, about her first failed extubation.

In the letter, I wrote:

“It seems impossible, but someday your breath will be effortless, unnoticed. Someday we’ll both take it for granted.“

It was less a prediction, really, than a plea. It was an excruciating time. I remember secretly wondering whether Simone would ever learn to breathe on her own, secretly worrying that, in fact, she would not. (Spoiler! She did.)

I am extraordinarily grateful to be able to say that most days, now, I DO take Simone’s breath for granted. But even five years later, I still have days where I cannot. In almost all respects, my time in the NICU made me a less anxious parent, but Simone’s respiratory system remains the one exception. I may be sanguine about fever, about injuries and assorted childhood hurdles, but when it comes to breathing, I am incapable of reason. Simone had her adenoidectomy a little over a week ago, and in the days leading up to it, I was jittery and unsettled–not because of the surgery itself, but because she would be intubated again, because I worried about her airway and the anaesthesia and how her lung damage–the price she paid for the ventilator that saved her life–would affect it all. When Simone has a virus and her asthma acts up, I lay awake for hours at night listening to her cough. I wonder whether, when she is grown up and living on her own, the sound of her cough over the phone will have the power to make my heart skitter and my stomach swirl. I suspect it might.

I think a lot about other parents who have children in the NICU right now, who are still far from confident they will bring their babies home at all. It is difficult to communicate just how emotionally taxing it is to love and mother a baby that might die–not in the abstract, in the sense that “nothing is certain,” but rather with sickeningly immediacy, as in “within the next few weeks.” I have always maintained that it is excellent conditioning for acceptance of the more pedestrian contingency, the nothing-is-certain that is present for every parent, but it is a grueling, even cruel, way to arrive at that acceptance.

I’m co-hosting a Twitter chat this afternoon (and THERE is something I never thought I’d type) for Parents of Preemies Day. There are Parents of Preemies events in several cities around the country, but parents of current and ex-preemies who are either not in one of these cities or are, like me, averse to leaving the house, can join me to chat from 2-3pm EST. If you register here, you’ll be entered to win a signed copy of my book, but you certainly do not need to register to join the conversation (hashtag #parentsofpreemiesday).

The Internet is more or less closed on weekends, so I’d imagine there are only a handful of people reading this. But if you are reading this, and you know someone who has or had a preemie, today might be a nice time to bring them a some coffee and a pastry or two.

I’d also like to give away another two signed copies of my book to current NICU parents, so if you know one, or are one yourself, tell me in the comments. We can all take a minute to send encouraging thoughts to those parents and their babies, and I’ll randomly choose two (parents–most babies cannot read) to receive books on, say, Wednesday.

Simone has an imaginary friend. Actually, this is not her first. Her first imaginary friend, Jumping Girl, wasn’t around for long.

(When I inquired as to her whereabouts one day, Simone replied: “Jumping Girl got MARRIED.” So.)

After that, there were no more imaginary friends for a while, until Kristin showed up. He (yes) seems to have staying power. Kristin is a constant presence, now. And as you’d expect, I’ve learned quite a bit about him.

Kristin:

Has 100 teeth

Is stronger than Simone

Has more bones than Simone

And do you know what KIND OF BONES Kristin is made of? Dog bones.

Kristin is NOT a dog. Kristin is a person.

Kristin is 67 years old.

He doesn’t have a car yet. He will have a car when he is 100 years old.

He loves to play in the leaves when it is fall.

While Simone can’t play in WET leaves, Kristin can, because he is older.

He can jump as high as a giant (Ed.: Whether this means as high as a giant can jump or as high as a giant is tall remains unclear)

Kristin came from a farm when he was a baby, a long time ago.

His birthday is Valentine’s Day.

Is a 67-year-old man with extra bones the imaginary companion I would choose for my daughter? Perhaps not. But Simone seems to expect us to include Kristin in our daily lives. At this very moment, she is setting a placemat for him at the table.

However. I recently left Simone to spend the night at my mother’s, and as I was departing she sent Kristin home with me, so that I wouldn’t be lonely without her. Besides, I was carrying two bags and Twyla, and he’d be an extra set of hands. “He can carry a bag for you,” Simone said, pointing.

When I spoke to her on the phone before bedtime, she asked after Kristin, and I assured her that we’d both made it home safely.

“He was a BIG help,” I enthused, “Kristin carried that bag for me all the way up the stairs!”

For a moment, there is silence at the other end of the phone. Then, slowly:

“Mom? Kristin isn’t real.”

“Oh.”

“Kristin is pretend.”

And yet: here she comes, asking for another napkin and a set of silverware.

¶ Still Ill

The day after I posted about how sick we all were, I wrote this:

UPDATES

Simone: Better
Twyla: Worse
Me: Worse
Scott: Unchanged/Unafflicted

PREDICTIONS

Simone: Will be fully recovered in time for birthday, but will retain alarming-sounding cough, as is her wont, so that parents of her party guests might judge/seethe at me.

Twyla: Will be too ill for party and have to be left with my mother for the duration OR will be on the mend and able to ride out party in sling as planned, but still sufficiently snot-nosed as to incite judgement/seething (see above).

Me: Illness will reach its peak on Friday, Simone’s actual birthday, and the day on which I have promised to make her a cake with “Diego and flowers” on it, leading to my spending the afternoon half delirious, weeping, and covered in confectioner’s sugar.

Scott: Will remain unscathed until Sunday, then will fall dramatically ill just when the time has come to try to put our lives back in order, ensuring that illness will continue to impact our household for as long as possible.

Then someone started crying and I didn’t get a chance to post it, which is a shame, as it would have been novel to have evidence of my predictions being TOO dire. I was sickest Friday but not terribly, Scott did feel unwell Sunday but recovered quickly, and even Simone’s cough was better than expected. And by time of the party, Twyla was indeed on the mend.

Alas, what I did not predict was that before being “on the mend” Twyla would get much, much sicker, necessitating a trip to the ER after an innocent call to a triage nurse ended with her brusquely instructing me to dial 911. (I did not dial 911. We live down the street from the hospital, it was faster to scoop and run, and anyway it turned out she was being a bit alarmist as dictated by her triage computer instructions.)

The consensus reached by the ER doctor and Twyla’s pediatrician was that she had RSV, and after seeing how sick she was, as a perfectly healthy term baby—not to mention how sick my big, FIVE-YEAR-OLD former preemie had been all week—I am full of renewed gratitude for the quarantine and Synagis shots and plain old luck that kept Simone from getting RSV that first winter home. At the time, Simone’s doctors made it very clear to me how serious it would be, that it would mean hospitalization, probably vent time, and, you know, could kill her. I believed it. But…well. I felt very, very fortunate all over again.

Happily, this

Was soon returned to this

And all was well.

So naturally, on Monday Simone started feeling feverish, and by evening her nose was running.

¶ Love, Reality, Twyla

Twyla bites. Me. She bites me with her four strong, hungry baby teeth (and there are more on the way) and I have an ugly bruise on my arm as I type this. She doesn’t mean anything by it, she just likes to chew on things, and I am so frequently within reach that it would take tremendous willpower to resist. Babies do not have tremendous willpower.

Short of coating myself with something bitter tasting, I am not sure there is much to be done about this, but I felt the need to complain about it to someone sympathetic. I will say it makes my frequent pangs over the fact that nursing ended so much sooner than I’d hoped somewhat LESS frequent, so that is something.

¶ I Have a Dream

While cleaning out Simone’s preschool binder, I ran across one of the “Weekly Update” letters from last month—one that I’d missed, obviously, because I am certain that I’d have remembered it otherwise. Here is an excerpt:

“We had wonderful group time discussions on how important Martin Luther King is to all of us. We asked the class to draw and tell us about their dreams for the world and what they would like to see.”

And a photo, so you can see Simone’s vision for a better tomorrow:

I was so touched. I was also pleased to see that poor Summer got a mention, and I think “Colors, Beanstalks, Me, and a Deer” deserves extra points for originality.

My mother and I found the whole thing an endless source of mirth. And it was pleasant, when out for dinner with her on Saturday, to feel I was fulfilling my daughter’s dream for the world.

“I never thought I’d see the day,” Mother said, no doubt remembering the world of her own youth, when a Mommy going out for supper was still illegal in many parts of the country.

“To dreams!” said I, and we raised our wineglasses and cackled.

(It is awfully nice to have her home.)

January is over! Thanks be to god.

However.

The other night, Simone was sick, with that alarming scalding hot fever skin that children get making you certain death is imminent, despite the thermometer’s insistence that their temperature still hovers around 102, and she draped herself over me in bed, where I was holding Twyla with my other arm, and there was sleep moaning (Simone) and sleep wiggling (Twyla) and lots of sticky, airless heat-generating (Everyone), and then Simone was awake and crying and Twyla was awake and making baby sounds at me, and this was about the thirteenth time this had happened, so I asked Scott to check the clock while he was out in the kitchen fetching a bottle, thinking surely, SURELY, this sleepless hell night must be nearly finished, and LO! It was 1:30.

Naturally I broke things and stomped my feet and threw a tantrum, because my GOD, these children! Everywhere, children! Hot and damp and ON ME!

Alas the tantrum only happened in my head, because, well.

Instead, I handed Twyla to Scott and got up to measure out more ibuprofen and returned to rub Simone’s hair and say soothing things, and then I took the baby back, (because only I will do as far as Twyla is concerned), and patted her while making shhh-ing sounds, like the sea, and Simone coughed wetly into my eye, and all was as it was, is, and ever shall be.

As dreary as it is to read about other people being ill, I’m afraid that’s all I’ve got at the moment. Simone was scheduled to have her adenoids out last week, but instead she got sick, and was in fact SO sick, for a while, that I was wringing my hands and having visions of Lavinia Swire. Then she was at last improving, but yesterday slid downhill again in the afternoon, and so while she seems dramatically better today, I am regarding her progress with a jaundiced eye.

Twyla has come down with whatever it is, and is miserable and bewildered as only a sick baby can be. I’ve got it as well, though my case is still in the very early stages and so I am trying to stave it off with extra liquids, denial, and sloth.

Simone’s fifth birthday is Friday, with her party on Saturday, so it is a fun exercise to speculate about which of us will be ill, then. Will Simone be fully recovered? Will Twyla? Will I have fully succumbed, prophylactic sloth notwithstanding? Will Scott be felled as well? Many possible combinations to consider, which is exciting.

(So pathetic!)

¶ I felt like a Fairytale Witch

The other day I was making this little beef tenderloin roast that Simone adores beyond reason, and I am trying to lose weight, so I was calculating portion sizes. I was squinting at the package, figuring out how many ounces were in the roast based upon its weight in pounds, and all of a sudden I realized it was EXACTLY one pound, ten and three-quarters ounces, and if that number sounds familiar it is because HEY! I was hefting newborn Simone, nicely seasoned with salt and pepper.
It was rather an unsettling train of thought seeing as I was about to surround the thing with onions and put in the oven.
(It was delicious.)

¶ Speaking of…

The losing-weight thing is a pain in the ass, honestly. I lose weight very, very slowly, and my thyroid fights me bitterly for every ounce. But I am sticking with it, and doing it sensibly and sustainably, and feeling much more committed than I ever have before. I think this is because I came out of my pregnancy 20 pounds lighter than I went into it, putting me only about 20 pounds away from my goal weight. Losing 20 pounds sounds doable. And the difference in how I feel at this weight versus 20 pounds heavier is dramatic, like a free preview of what my reward will be when I’m finished. Besides, it seems like it would be a shame to waste all the progress I unwittingly made while gestating Twyla. Theoretically, I could just have one more baby and voila! Goal weight! It’s as simple as nine months of intractable nausea and vomiting!

The second day was the hardest, and that evening I found myself running up and down the hallway of my railroad-style apartment, trying vainly to get my Fitbit to register enough activity to net me, say, a bowl of potato chips. I had no sports bra, and thus was forced to clutch my bosom to keep things from bouncing. I can’t imagine what the people below us thought I was doing, but am gratefully certain they could not guess the reality. The reality being, to reiterate: running up and down my hallway–up and down, back and forth–holding my breasts. For potato chips. There are surely many sins of which I am guilty (gluttony springs to mind), but pride does not seem to be one of them.

¶ I was going to put ONE baby picture in here, but I got carried away.