Pain and turtles and guppies and Mama Kacy etc

Also groceries, amazing cheese dip, DS games, and sleep. Oh god, please to sleep!

Elijah woke up screaming way too many times. 6am was a bit hellish. 9am was too, but at least then he calmed down and could wake up and have some fun. But the day. Ohh today. Has been. Well. A day.

and my shift key isn't working properly, which is driving me crazy.

Anyway.

I think the poor babyface is getting yet another tooth. Which is awesome, but painful.

Mama Kacy is in town, and even that isn't making him too happy, although they seem to have had some happy bath time tonight. I'm glad about that.

I don't have much to say, because you see, my head is growing teeth as well, and trying to consume itself.

Time, I think, to feed the turtle, the guppies, and the dogs, and then watch Phoebe in Wonderland.

Night-night.

Signs of Exhaustion

So. Tired.

So. Much. Teething. Nine teeth now. More coming. So much pain.

Tactical Bacon exists. I want some.

Signing Time with Alex and Leah is wonderful.

All I want to do today is retreat into a world of words, until I pass out. Then maybe, after sleep, I'll have the energy to be Mama.

Pondering doing a movie log, too. Just because.

Elijah is walking, and signing, and trying to talk. He said, "Okay." one day when I said, "We're going to go in here, okay?" He hasn't said it since, although when I asked him in front of Aunt Nicole, "Did you say 'okay' earlier?", he said, "Uh-huh!" and nodded. I don't know whether it was on purpose, but Nicole nearly fell out of her chair laughing.

We're still watching Your Baby Can Read, and any video on ASL for kids that we can find.

I'm compiling a list of the signs that Elijah uses. He understands when I say, "Can you show me the sign for __?" Which means that if I know he knows the word for something, I can teach him the sign without actually having to have the thing present. I taught him the sign for "cat" that way, yesterday. He does it wrong, but he does them all wrong. He doesn't have the manual dexterity for it yet.

However, he knows:
Bath
Cat
More
Milk
Mama
Daddy
Clean
Banana
All done
Change
Water
Eat
Ball

Salt, Teeth, and Cats

It was my intention, when I finally got to settle down to nurse Elijah to sleep, to write about the day, which involved the farmer's market, the grocery store, pizza, a migraine, and plenty of surprisingly calm family time, but I'm afraid that all I've ended up with to say is: Applewood smoked salt. On cucumbers. Try it. Now.

And I'd give you a link to the guy I got the smoked salt from if I'd been smart enough to bring the label (and thus url) in here with me.

And there'd be brand new pictures of the babyface, too, except I wasn't smart enough to bring the camera with me either.

So you'll have to wait till morning.

G'night.

---

(There was all that cranky throwing of soup spoons and sippy cups of Ovaltine at dinner, though, that was finally only quenched with an old leftover jar of butternut squash babyfood. There's one new tooth and possibly some others that are trying to break through, and they seem to be really bothering the poor boy.)

---

Oh! And when watching the Your Baby Can Read video this evening, when they got to "nose", Elijah touched his nose :D When they were showing the other kids touching their noses, that is--not just when he saw the word on the screen. Not yet.

But when he sees the word 'cat', he gets very excited and says, "Ka!"

Nice Saturday morning.

OMG if I don't make this bacon recipe sometime in the next two weeks, THE WORLD WILL EXPLODE!

Srsly.

---

Dear Elijah,

We were up from 5am to 6:30am this morning. 3:30am to 6am yesterday. What's up with this, Elijahface? Can we not do this? If you were screaming and complaining about your teeth, I would understand. But you just wanted to play. When you'd kept me up all night by tossing and turning and demanding more milk than there was. YOU were very fresh and happy and ready to play. I was shaking from exhaustion and ready to cry. How about we try something new tonight? Like sleeping?

Love ya,
Mama

---

While sitting here blithely ignoring the baby while he watched the Baby Sign video and played with loud plastic things in the playpen, THE BABY took his diaper off. Unvelcroed it and stepped right out of it.

So now he's wearing a onesie. And overalls. Because you can't be too careful.

The overalls are kinda a little too big.





And ugly. What was I thinking?

---

Is it time for the explanation of why we're using disposable diapers, when we used to be using cloth, and I was all OMG CLOTH? Probably. I could go and on, write some big essay with justifications and apologies and guilt. But really, that answer is: New house. During the new house-ness and stress and all that insanity when I couldn't do the laundry, he outgrew the cloth diapers we had. And we haven't had a lump sum to buy new ones that are big enough.

Lame, I know. But that's how it is.

(Psst: Also haven't had the desire. But that's just me. I could do it. But my inner yuppie is winning out over my inner hippie right now and the disposables are just /easier/. Not a lot easier, if I'm honest with myself--I don't mind the laundry and cloth is pretty cool. Hey, maybe if I keep talking about it, I'll talk myself right back into it. We'll see. I'll keep you updated.)

---

The reason I was ignoring the playpenned, baby-sign-watching, loud-plastic-toy playing baby was that I was catching up on my several hundred unread posts on my Google Reader list. I'm down to 227. I want to comment on everything I read, but I just don't have the time. Or the brainpower. But once I get my unread count down, and can keep up daily, maybe I can comment again.

Maybe.

We'll see.

---

I need bacon. We have no bacon.

I guess I need eggs, tortillas, salsa and cheese. Because that's what we have.

And the babyface loves salsa.

---

Elijah is trying desperately to keep a round bowl-shaped sorting toy on his head as a hat. It's incredibly cute. And he gets so frustrated when it falls off.

I decided to take a video instead of just trying to describe it. Because, well, that's what my camera's for, right?

Here it is:



And now it's time for breakfast.

Sigh.

Arrrg. I just spent the last three and a half hours trying to help Elijah get to sleep. It took that long for whatever was making him so uncomfortable to subside--I suspect teeth.

But we had a very nice hour or so cuddling on the futon and watching the Baby Sign DVD. I was surprised that he was content to just sit in my lap, playing with my hand and chewing on his hand and feeling my arms around him, while he stared intently at the tv. Amazed. He's never done that before, and it was very nice.

Now it's time for me to wind down enough to sleep. Which is why I'm staring at a blogger window.

Let's clear out some tabs...

From StumbleUpon:
A giraffe licking a very red squirrel.
Street Installations - some of these are oddly disturbing.
The Mapping of a Cat's Brain - Lyn and Jen will like this one :)
Things That Make You Go Aahh - More cute animal pictures. Some amazingly cute wombat pictures, of all things.

I'm hungry. And exhausted. And I have to get up early, because we made plans. Sigh.

But--those plans involve IKEA. So maybe the day will overcome the lack of sleep and be awesome anyway. We shall see. I think there will have to be significant amounts of ibuprofen and tea. I wish I could take Vicodin.

Night night... again ;)