Category Archive

I should really be expanding my blogreading horizons. Not that I don’t love my little ‘roll to pieces, but some of you are too nice, some of you have full time jobs, and some of you are a little, um, busy right now because all that adorableness, I’m sure, wants to be nursed right this minute and no, you may not take a shower/eat a sandwich/write an email beforehand.

Plus some of my blog buddies who have a child born around the same time as Miss M have kind of disappeared. As we all know, a lot of people are only in it for the camaraderie of the comments, so clearly paying work and Life Responsibilities trump my need to have confirmation that other mothers’ sanity is also AT THE BRINK.

In a lucky moment today I linked to mothergoosemouse and almost cried tears of joyful recognition at this: “Would you believe that my three year-old cries more than my two month-old?” YES, YES, I WOULD! Would you believe that Miss M, at age three and three-quarters, cries so much more than the 23-month-old whose spoken vocabulary consists only of “muh” “usss,” “Ay-ya-ya,” “isss,” and “(ih)MEH”?* Would you believe that she cannot keep her hands off AM’s person or out of what he is doing or off his damn plate of food oh my lord I cannot stand this another day.

That she, who likes structure and reliability, cries, whines, or throws herself on the floor pouts upon being reminded of her daily routine and what it entails. Things like using the bathroom first thing in the morning and right before bed. Washing her hands with soap. Eating meals. Going to school. Taking a bath in the evening. Getting dressed. And don’t even get me started on the latest wardrobe fights around here. This morning we had the third pants/dress/a jumper is/is not a dress/if you wear that you MUST wear tights/no, it’s not warm out/Hashem makes the weather, not me! battle of the week. Followed by her insistence on wearing mittens with her fleece jacket. And crying when she could not find her mittens after school–because the fleece does not have pockets for said mittens, they went missing.

The whininess extends to me. I am not permitted to: take a shower, go to the bathroom with the door closed, eat something that varies from what the children are eating, drink tea, read my own book, talk on the telephone, or think, really, without inviting comment. Admittedly, many times I am guilty of tuning her out–because there is just so much chatter I can respond to when I am juggling the dozen or so things I am doing/thinking about at any given time. But really, it’s hard to be sunshiny when the first thing out of her mouth in the morning is a demand to nurse, usually followed up several minutes later with “But I don’t want you to take a shower.” This particular morning? Ever? So basically I am seething snit of a mother from about 7 in the morning.

I have been venting my frustrations with Miss M here for well over two years. I suppose it boils down to her penchant for seeking negative attention and my falling for it every damn time. Not enough one-on-one time for the two of us. Too much yelling. Too tired to change.

The thing that kills me is that I know she knows how to be reasonable, how to wash her hands without creating an enormous mess, how to play nicely with AM. All of those things happen all the time–at least once a day. And then they don’t.

I find hope in the fact that the other day she told a little boy at a playspace “Please stop doing that!” when she was upset with his actions, rather than knocking him to the ground and ripping the offending object out of his hands. (As an aside: you will never see adults move so fast as when they hear a preschooler raise their voice and say “Please!” It reeks of desperation in a way that screams and tears do not convey.)

I am not sure where this all is going. I wish I could see light at the end of whatever tunnel we all are in right now. But every day is just…tense. It makes me sad because she really is funny and whimsical and I spend my days frustrated and making bad impressions.

This should have been a letter to Ask Moxie, but it’s just too rambly so instead I am gifting it to the blogosphere for tea and sympathy. Where is my hanky?

* more, nurse, Ariella, ice, Ema

While shopping at that child-friendly mecca, Trader Joe’s, my wee ones demanded that I make good on the snack I promised. (It had been originally, loudly demanded, natch, from the rear while I was driving highway speed.)

I had a large bag of raisins but no way to distribute them in small quantities.* I found some little cups over by the drink machine and snagged two. I guess they are supposed to be used for sampling the TJ product of the day, but nevermind. As I started to put raisins into the first cup, Miss M piped up: “Me first! I’m the mommy!”

“Oh, honey,” I said regretfully, “The mommy always gets served last.”

“But I want to be first,” she explained.

“I know,” I sympathized, as I gave the cup to AM, “but the mommy goes last.”

* Left to his own devices, AM would eat the entire bag and still ask for more, so I have to control the portion.

• Weather: biblical rain with a side of flooding. Snow last night. Icy slush. Yum.
• Gear: Maybe one of these days I’ll invest in one of those pairs of rain boots. I love my Lands End All-Weather Mocs, but on a day like today they just mean wet socks. Actually, today hip waders would be more appropriate.
• Sinuses: uuuuuuhhhhhhh. Ouch. Yesterday morning the relative humidity was 54%.
• Fear of Fire Alarm: meant Miss M had to accompany AM to speech therapy. Her behavior was better than I expected and she wasn’t even that distracting to him.
• Disenchantment with Preschool: I got a call at 11:30 that Miss M was inconsolable. A plumber was doing work somewhere in the school building, making smoke, and causing the fire alarm to go off. Miss M has a well-documented fear of said noise. By 11:30 it had gone off twice and had the potential to go off again. I agreed to pick her up on my way to speech, because I don’t have a solution. What I did not need to hear were the addenda:
• a. That they are short staffed today and the teacher just could not handle this (!) in addition.
• b. That we’re going to have to figure out a way to “work on this” (!) because you can’t even say “fire drill” around her. I don’t know why my 3 year old isn’t allowed to have an irrational fear of loud noises. What if it were a more traditional phobia, like snakes or spiders? Then would it be ok? Her friend A is afraid of sharks. Do you think the teacher even knows? I’d bet no, because sharks don’t come to school and disrupt the classroom.
• I gave in to educational television programming (see how defensive I am?) at 3:00. See above points for explanation.
• Oy, it’s already past 3:30. If you need me, I’ll be hiding under the covers.

Yes, I should be cleaning my living room for company, but honestly this is the daytime cup of tea I have had all week.

• Miss M is by turns infuriating and cute. (What? This is BRAND NEW INFORMATION!) No, really. The cute is that she says funny things and “reads” books to all of us almost verbatim.
• The infuriating is a long list: We have caught her sucking her thumb at night because, we think, AM does it. But he started at three months old. Three and a half years seems a tad late for that, no? She has started dawdling to the max while eating or dressing. Grrr. Her latest response to being told no, or not now, or I don’t think so, is to violently throw herself to the floor. I think this is very obnoxious and will ultimately result in her really hurting herself. But she didn’t ask my opinion.
• AM is getting more defiant by the day. Still very cute, but OY! it is only a matter of time before he gets hurt or I lose my mind.
• I have had to try very hard not to respond to either/both of them with the phrase: “This is SUCH BULLSHIT!”
• Because I’d lose all of my mother of the year votes. So close to the end of the year, it seems a shame.
• We had two therapy evaluators come Wednesday to see AM. The speech therapist gave an initial diagnosis within two minutes. There were a lot of questions about his eating habits, which turned out to be related to her suspicions. He stuffs food into his mouth, which I thought was just a toddler thing, but apparently relates to his jaw musculature and oral sensation.* Also very important was Taxman’s seemingly (to me) irrelevant comment that he likes spicy/garlicky food. That was kind of the linchpin. She was afraid, though, that he would score too high in other areas to get services. “But I only hear him making vowel sounds, so that’s good.” I said, “Off the record, he does make consonant sounds while he is babbling.” “I didn’t hear that!” she exclaimed. Good grief.
• Meanwhile, the special ed teacher was shocked by how good his “play skills” are and his responsiveness and critical thinking and attention span.
• Hey, state of New York, we never said he wasn’t smart. He just doesn’t speak and now we have a good sense of why! If you don’t approve us for therapy we are NOT going to wait six months to re-evaluate. We are going to take our good health insurance benefits and use them!
• (Chichimama, thanks for the heads up on all the qualifying vs not stuff!)
• I have been obsessing about really unimportant things lately. For example, I made a meal for a family who is spending a lot of time at the hospital. I spent way too much time debating if I should make salad dressing from scratch or just pop some bottled Italian into a Dixie container. Because really, when your husband/father is battling pancreatic cancer, salad dressing is what you are going to notice. Of course I wound up making honey mustard vinaigrette from scratch and sending extra brownies; food is emotional comfort, right?
• Both my book clubs pushed their January books to the extreme end of the month. If I read now I will never remember what happens. I feel like I am at loose ends. I grabbed Girl with a Pearl Earring last night, but 15 pages in I am not sure that I will really love it.
• I think I got almost seven hours of sleep last night. Wow.
• I should be less cranky if that’s true.
• I am very torn over trying to nightwean AM. Many nights now, he does nurse but goes right back to sleep without a problem. And he really nurses, as if he is hungry, so I think it is more than just a comfort thing. (Miss M, who we nightweaned at the same age, would wake up, nurse for 10 seconds. That was not worth it.) He often goes 7p to 4a (or even 4:30), which is just so much better than 2:30, somehow. If we do it, there will just be a lot of crying and more disturbed sleep. I am not sure I am up for that.
• I really should go to bed at 10:30 every night. It makes a huge difference.
• But then we’d have to be invited out for Shabbat meals every week for the rest of our lives. Because I can’t get much done when the clowns are awake and climbing the furniture. It took me 25 minutes to put together a chicken marinade this morning–if I had done it when everyone was sleeping it would have taken less than five. So you see my dilemma.
• Ok, 20 crayons are calling me from the floor. “Put us awaaaaaayyyyyy!”
• How’s by you?

* Um, yeah, so I feel pretty dumb/guilty for not noticing and/or not thinking that it was relevant. In my favor, though, I did pick up on the fact that he drools more than I think he should.

Some middle-of-the-night conversations.

Starring AM, self, and other self.*

AM (grunting, trying to hoist himself up onto my bed by pulling on my pillow): Ehhhhh!
Me (reaching over to help): C’mere.

Self: WHAT are you DOING?
Other self: Wha? Whozat?
Self: You are TRYING to NIGHTWEAN him, you DUMBASS!
Other self: Well, it could be 4:30 in the morning. Or even five! That would be ok.
Self: And what time is it?
Other self (propping on an elbow to look at the clock): 2:30.
Self: Put him back in his bed right now!
Other self: I am so tired. I am just going to lie right here. He will settle down.
Self: Whoa, are you stupid!
Other self to AM, who is signing to nurse: Honey, we’re not going to nurse right now. We’ll nurse later.
AM: Waaaaah!
Other self: Shhh….ok, you can nurse, but only for one minute. Ema is going to count to 10 and then you will be all done.
Self: I can’t even talk to you anymore!
Other self: Ok, AM, you’re finished.
AM: Waaaaah!

AM stops fussing, but proceeds to do his usual “I am a honeybee, and I have the pollen 411″ dance in bed.

Other self: All right, let’s go back to your bed.
AM: Waaah!
Self: It’s about time. Although waiting 30 minutes? Bad idea.

Twenty minutes after that.

AM: Eh!
Self/Other self: Lie down, AM! Stay in your bed, please.
AM: Waaahhh!

Ten minutes later, AM is climbing my pillow. Again.

Other self: I give up. AM, you can nurse.
Self: You know, you try to be all smart and read Ask Moxie, but at your very core, you are a dumbass!
Other self: Shut up! I am just!so!tired!
Self: So this is really helping you out.
Other self: Did I ask for your opinion?

At 4, I take AM back to his bed, where he sleeps until 5 and rejoins me.

At 6:44, I hear thud, thud, thud in the hallway.

Miss M: Ema, I want to nurse, please!
Me: Go use the potty. Now. And please whisper–I don’t want you to wake AM.
Miss M (crying): I want to nurse!
Me: Just go to the bathroom!
AM: Ehhh.

Some day, I will spend a night in a hotel. With an Ambien. I will wake up and be a human being.

I look forward to that day.

* Taxman would help if he could, but AM + Taxman at night = unearthly shrieks of displeasure. But when we really go for the nightweaning, I think that is how it’s going to have to be for a few nights. Just trying to find the time to schedule it.

How is it that there is a “popular” group of moms, who have the ear of the preschool director and run the rumor mill?

How is it that I am supposed to do their bidding when they uniformly cancelled the “younger siblings” playgroup that I arranged for today (on a Yahoo group, but still)–”Nobody was going to come,” the host mom explained, “except for you.” Umm…right. That was the point.

I’ve taken it upon myself to make sure that some of the moms who work full time get fuller access to the rumor mill (via me), but really, with all the money we’re laying out, shouldn’t everyone have the same news about preschool? From a reliable source?

Junior high was really not my favorite time of life; do I want to repeat it with my 3 year old?

The good news is that now I am WAY smarter. The whole thing to which I allude is complicated, but suffice it to say that when I am “kind enough” to pass the info to other moms, maybe I won’t be exactly objective. Clearly everyone can make their own decisions, but I am entitled to my opinion too.

A common sarcastic remark out of my mouth is, “Are you new here?”

Meaning, “This has been going on for so long, how could you not have noticed?!”

But this morning I majorly screwed up.

Last night, after the two families we had invited for Shabbat dinner said they could not come, we decided to decamp to my in-laws in exchange for bringing them desserts. (This is a good deal. No cooking, plus we are sure to get naps!)

This morning, somehow forgetting it was only Wednesday and there were still more than 48 hours to go until Shabbat, I announced the plan to Miss M. She was happy, to be sure; so happy, in fact, that she collapsed in a teary heap on the driveway when I told her that no, we weren’t going to the car to go to Opa & Savta’s house because we were going to school. Suddenly Wednesday to Friday seemed very long indeed.

Yes, sometimes I am new here.

Yesterday was the first full day of preschool. Better late than never!

At 7:00 in the morning, I had the following conversation with Miss M.

“Ema, can I watch something?” [I DVR Curious George and Reading Rainbow for her to watch when AM needs to go down for a nap, or on Thursday mornings when I am trying to straighten up for the cleaning lady.]

“No, Miss M. We’re going to get up and have breakfast and get dressed. You have school today!”

“Waaaahhhhhhhhhhhh!”

“Miss M, I’m sorry, there will be no television this morning.”

“But I…don’t…wanna…go! to! school! WAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!”

Oy vey. And there were two hours until school actually started.

So there was a lot of crying. And lots of circular arguments. She didn’t want to go to school because she was cranky. She was cranky because she was sad. She was sad because she was crying. Nothing in particular that she did not like at school, or was afraid of; she just did not want to go.

Nevertheless, we packed up at 8:50 and made our way down the block, with her blubbering the entire way. The teachers met us downstairs; after more hugs and reassurances, I peeled myself away from her and backed out. I heard her calling for me as she was led up the stairs, and another mom reported that she was crying so hard that she was making herself gag. Sigh.

I took AM to the park, clutching my cell phone and steeling myself for a call. When an hour had passed, I then wondered if I should call, just to make sure she was ok. But I knew that they weren’t going to tell me to come get her. This wasn’t camp, understaffed with 20-year-olds. These teachers have been doing this for a long time. I didn’t want to look foolish. I trust them, plus if she was really upset, would I want to know? I’d hear about it later anyway.

Oh, the guilt. The frustration. The rock. The hard place.

So I called my mom. [Just as an aside, how much do I love technology? My mom was not at home, where she often works, nor at her office, but rather had just arrived at the San Antonio airport, in Texas on business, and was waiting to meet a colleague's plane.] I told her that Miss M was a mess at drop-off and I was feeling stuck about it. And I wanted my mommy.

“Oh, honey, she comes from a long line of criers. You cried every day of preschool! And you were a year older! I cried every day of kindergarten, and so did your grandmother. This is much harder on you than it is on her. But obviously with what you’re paying you are not going to give her the option of not going. Plus it would set a terrible precedent. [Pause.] I feel for you, though. I’ve been there.”

We agreed that she’d be fine. It was just nice to hear it from a veteran.

And indeed she was fine. Met me at 2:30 with a big smile and a hug and a list of what she had done during the day. (Which, by the way, is so much better than what I got out of her last year. Usually at the end of her day, when I asked what she had done at school, the answer was “eat lunch,” because it was the last thing she did before pickup.) The teacher reported that she had cried for a while, but when she had snapped out of it, that was it for the day. She also suspected that the tears were, in part, for effect and would lessen rapidly. “We’re old and jaded around here,” she said. “This isn’t new for us.”

This morning was still tearful, but already better. (Perhaps it was my bribe of safety scissors for the first morning she goes off without a fuss?)

Only 15 or so years until the roles are reversed, right? And I am the one crying as she marches off to school?

Snack time. (Hey, I delayed until 9:49! That’s pretty awesome!)

Wheat Chex.

Right from the box.

No fuss, no muss! And even whole grains.

Lunchtime update: I redeemed myself, in my own mind, by making grilled cheese. Miss M’s usual lunch request is bread and cheese, so I upped the ante a little.

And I now have a typical three-year-old conversation to report.

Me (while the sandwich is grilling): Do you want your sandwich in triangles or rectangles?

Miss M: It’s a Grilled Cheese Sandwich!

Me: Yes. How do you want it cut?

Miss M: In rectangles!

Two minutes later

Me: Do you want your sandwich in triangles or rectangles?

Miss M: Rectangles!

Me: Ok, I’m going to cut your sandwich into two long rectangles. All right?

Miss M: Yes! (As I’m three-quarters through the cut) Oh! I want triangles!

In which case I am probably several years away from celebrating…

Last year I was full of hope. This year I am full of grumpiness.

My pinnacle of mothering for the year was probably last night, when Miss M opened her hands, leaned against AM, who was standing and not holding on to anything, and pushed him to the floor. My instinct was pretty violent. I managed to ignore my dark side, but instead scooped her up, changed her diaper, brushed her teeth, and left her sobbing in the dark and pleading to nurse.* (She fell asleep in 10 minutes.)

I keep sweating the small stuff, expecting too much of her (like to have common sense–think I’m a little unreasonable? Just a smidge?), and wishing I could do better. Maybe one day I will actually be better instead of just bitching about it and feeling like an idiot for not changing. Stuck in a rut much?

In the meantime, I think the “Mother’s Day” and “Father’s Day” concepts are kind of a sham. I couldn’t do this by myself, so singling us out one at a time is stupid. Taxman is my partner and sounding board. He cleans up my messes. When Miss M woke up and cried at 8:45 (the front door is noisy) last night and she told him the story through breathy sobs, “Miss M push AM! Ema change you and brush teeth and go night-night! Miss M lost her chance to nurse,” he backed me 100%. When she woke up crying to nurse at 4:50 (unsurprising after last night’s debacle), he fielded that too. 

But I still love them. All of them. Fiercely. I hope that’s enough for now.

* I have threatened, on occasion, to put her to bed without nursing, but the hysterics are usually just too much and not worth it. But I definitely needed a time-out from her–so I carried it out.

While I was mulling over this post, AM chewed about half of a cardboard puzzle piece. (The result was gross.) So grains of salt everywhere.

Today at pre-school pickup, as I was struggling to get Miss M into her sweatshirt and jacket while wearing AM on my front, the head teacher approached me.

After pleasantries, she asked, “Does Miss M eat salad?”

“What?” I replied.

“She doesn’t eat vegetables here. Cucumbers, tomatoes, things like that.”

“Well, she doesn’t like lettuce and tomatoes, so she doesn’t eat salad, per se. She does like cucumbers.”

“She won’t eat them here.”

“Miss M does eat vegetables, though. She doesn’t have a huge variety in her repetoire, but she’ll eat a lot of the ones she likes.”

(Teacher looks extremely skeptical, so I actually list the vegetables Miss M eats.)

“Well, ok,” she finally says. “I just thought you should know.”

“I have to be honest,” I say, jokingly, “if you offered me a choice between cucumbers and French Fries,* I wouldn’t eat the cucumbers either. She’s only here for three meals a week.”

I thought that would be the end of it, because I was all clever and disarming. But she went on! “I know that she eats fruit.” (Yes, she does, like it’s going out of style. Woe unto us if we have fewer than three different kinds of fruit in the house.)

Finally, I put it to rest by pointing to Miss M, running around like a lunatic, and saying, “She’s not exactly wasting away. And it’s only three meals a week.”

But, to borrow a phrase from the Grey’s Anatomy writers, Seriously?! 

There are kids who come to school eating lollipops–at 9:00 in the morning. There are kids whose moms are shoving bites of breakfast into their mouths as they run in the door because they refuse to eat at home. There are kids who will only drink juice and refuse water. There for the grace of Demeter go I, clearly, because Miss M is none of these: partially because we don’t allow it, and partially because she’s fine with my rulings (food has never been a huge battleground, thank goodness, although there are plenty of others). 

Not eating cucumbers at school, though. That’s serious business. How many demerits do you think I deserve?

* The lunches at school aren’t anything to write home about, in my opinion. The kitchen facilities are limited, so they get meals from a local restaurant and reheat. They serve cucumbers and tomatoes every day because, I’m guessing, there is very little prep required. They also bake cookies or muffins or a sweetbread at least once a week and eat it at their Shabbat party. So it’s not like their program is the be all and end all of health and balanced nutrition.

Chichimama and I live in the same general area. So our weather is basically the same.

Keeping that in mind, I should have gone to Target instead of letting AM take a nap.

Why? Because Miss M peed on the potty last night. Totally unintentionally and it freaked her out beyond belief (can anyone offer insight on that? the sensation? help!), but she did it.

And I promised her Curious George underpants when she went in the potty.

But it’s snowing.

Ack! Dilemma! I have not had enough sleep to be able to deal with this right now.

In celebration of not being tied to the house by Miss No-Nap, at 4:00 we headed out the door to (The) Costco.  We were out of Craisins, and Cheerios and Craisins are either Miss M’s breakfast (with milk) or a snack (dry), so it is living like a damn fool dangerously to be without them.

While I love that I can put the kids in the cart together, Miss M spent a lot of time squeezing the crap out of AM, alternately freaking him out and hurting him. (She gets really wild and physically pratfall-y when she’s tired.) When I politely asked instructed her not to, she replied: “You [meaning I] love him!” Hard to argue with that. (But I did.)

As I waited on line, Miss M struck up a conversation with the man behind us as I was reassuring AM I hadn’t disappeared:

“Hi!”

“Hi. How old are you?”

“Twoearsold! Turning frhee!” [There are a lot of late winter/spring birthdays in the family, so we've been talking about it.]

The man turned to me, and asked when. “June,” I said.

He nodded. “I have one turning three in April. And another who’s a year and a half.”

“So you know,” I said, suddenly understanding why he was serenely waiting with only a gallon of milk, a bunch of bananas, and a rotisserie chicken in his cart.

“Three is supposed to be a magical age,” he remarked. “I hear they can start really comprehending things. Like consequences for their actions.”

“That would be new and different,” I said.

“I hope it’s true,” he continued. “I’ve got another one on the way.”

Today was actually a good day. The sun was shining, the mercury hit 40-something, and I spent half the day in the company of another adult. Yes, it was my mother-in-law, but we ran errands together, she was a huge help with Miss M, and she paid for lunch.

Miss M’s nap was a total lost cause, though; I gave the kids dinner early and popped her into the bath. I had showered with AM in the morning, so he was pushing a plastic bus around the floor while I attempted to throw in a load of sheets. (Tomorrow is Thursday!) The fact that I left Miss M in the bath unattended isn’t even the irresponsible part; our apartment is only about 1,200 square feet and she is loud in there. Besides, AM was stomping in from time to time to pull up on the tub and cackle at her.

On one of my trips between the bedroom and the laundry closet, I stuck my head into the bathroom; AM was doing a pass-through. I saw a couple of rust-colored drops on the tile floor. Weird. Then I noticed that AM had orange drool. Bright orange. The color of orange Triaminic. (More or less freaky than a mouth full of blood? Discuss.) What the hell was he eating? As usual, I hadn’t a clue. What it was or where he got it. Food? Chewing one of Miss M’s multitude of art projects? A toy?

I flipped out, tried unsuccessfully to retrieve what it was, and called Taxman to treat him to a soliloquy about what a tool I am. I took a Q-tip to one of the drops on the floor, just in case. (Yes, I do watch crime procedurals, why do you ask?)

But AM seemed fine. In fact, it turned out to be the smartest thing he did all day, because the orange streaks of drool down his cute little torso necessitated joining his sister in the bath. I was just the fool who tried to keep him out of there in the first place!

Two weeks ago we hired a babysitter for the first time. She’s in 10th grade, the daughter of people we know (and like) from synagogue. She showed up with a backpack full of homework to a quiet house with two sleeping babies. As we were leaving, I casually asked her to check on AM once or twice, “to make sure he was still breathing.”*

Said babies slept for the entire time we were gone, so Taxman and I thought that it had been easy money for her.

Then today we saw her parents. Her mom mentioned that she was so worried about my comment that she checked on AM every 10 to 15 minutes.

I didn’t know whether to laugh or be thoroughly embarrassed.

 * Tongue-in-cheek much? I just wanted her to check on him once or twice!

I seem to be failing in the mother/wife department.

 To wit:

1. Last night AM skooched over in his sleep and fell out of bed. I woke to the awful thump and accompanying shriek of horror. He recovered nearly instantly, but I stayed awake for an hour. I couldn’t figure out how I had left him on the outside of the bed instead of in the middle. Who does that?

2. I wouldn’t serve Miss M her dinner until she cleaned up her Legos.

3. Taxman’s cholesterol test came back higher than normal. I quickly blamed it on the fact that he’s 99.9% sedentary. And now he’s over 30. But he pointed out that we used to eat a lot better. More fish, more soups, fewer eggs, less cheese. Less pizza. He’s totally right.

I used to get home from work at 5:30 and cook. Taxman used to get home around 7 and wash dishes. We weren’t spending a gazillion dollars a year on diapers. Life was different. I really need to try to get a little of it back.