Snippets & More

Elijah's got about 40 signs now. Tonight at Gymboree Open Gym, he was crawling into this platform space under another platform, laying down and signing 'bed' and saying 'ba'. He'd put his head down, signing 'bed' under his head, and talk about it. It was surprising, and very cute.

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From our friend BB, on the drink called Function: House Call:
"It's like having tea with Cthulhu! It's very sweet and genteel and nice, and then... it's /wrong/. And you know you shouldn't like these tastes, but part of me is going, 'It's so gooooood!'"

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I feel like I'm doing something right. My mom asked me what fabric softener I use because she liked the scent so much :)

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SpaceShots: The Week's Best Photos of Our Galaxy - This is pretty amazing. There are some great shots there that I'd love to have posters of.

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At a mall last week, a woman was trying to sell me powdered cocoa butter as a "Japanese sea salt and other awesome ingredients" skin cream. Then she had some sort of glue-like product she said was an exfolliant. She tried to sell that by rubbing it into my wrist, and asking, "Have you taken a shower today?" "Er... yes." "Are you sure?"

Excuse me? Am I sure I showered today? Do you honestly think being rude to customers will sell more product? Really? Is that what they taught you? I bet it's not. Try insulting someone else, lady. I'm moving on.

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I let my email overwhelm me. All the time. I'm subscribed to countless mailing lists because, well, in the gaming organization Brian and I are in, that's what you do. I'm on 20+ that are local to where we live and several more that are not) I'm also on some unrelated lists. And advertising lists for favourite places like L'Occitane and J Peterman. And Flylady stuff. And Daily Coyote. And Chorebuster, Max Barry, Mil Millington, Go Gratitude, Facebook, Saving Dinner, Gevalia, Meetup: NoVA Polamory, Amtrak, my bank, Thrillist.

Trying to keep up with it and completely failing, just letting myself be overwhelmed, keeps me from enjoying the things I really want to do with my computer time, like play mindless games or read my Google Reader subscriptions (and leave comments!) or read servants' manuals from the 1880s or keep up with friends. I really do appreciate the unexpected emails I get from people (hi Phil! <3 ). Please don't take my lack of response as lack of interest. I'm just flaky.

So something's got to give.

I'm going to prioritize, and then I'm going to keep up with the day's email and try every day to clear out a few of the 500 threads sitting in my inbox. I'm going to unsubscribe from a lot of those lists. And then I'm going to hope for a manageable amount of list-type email, and an increasing amount of personal email from friends. Because that's way more important.

Early morning.

It's 7:43am and Elijah and I are awake and we've had breakfast and seen Daddyface off to work, complete with a belly full of breakfast (ham and swiss on a baguette) and plenty of good-morning Frangelico-flavoured coffee and a travel mug of coffee to go and a lunch for today and snacks for the week.

Now if I were reading this elsewhere, I'd probably be rolling my eyes and thinking 'good god stop bragging'.

But oh well. If I have to be turned into a morning person (I got up at 6:53am... around then used to be when I'd go to BED), I might as well make the most of it, and do what I live to do these days: Take care of my boys.

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When Mama Kacy and I took the babyface to Gymboree on Friday, the teacher called, "Mommies and... and adults..." to parachute time. I was amused.

Elijah will move up to the next level class next month. I love going to Gymboree, I love seeing him with all the other kids. The younger ones remind me how far he's come, and the older ones remind me what I have to look forward to. It's pretty awesome.

Delayed post

We've had just an insane weekend. It was good. And then Sunday was chaotic. And then Monday was painful.

And Elijah and I miss Daddyface. He's off to training for work. But we have Mama Kacy! And that is good.

And in a few more hours, we will have Grandmere and Papaw J.

And I think I'll order some lucky bamboo now.

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The above was written yesterday.

Today, we had Gymboree and fussiness and headaches. But some laughs and some lotion and some sleep.

And it's sleep time now.

Goodnight.

Today has been odd, in many ways. It started out way too early, before dawn, with Elijah waking up coughing (though not the barking cough of croup, thankfully). The cough would come and go, but never be gone long enough for either of us to get back to sleep. I don't know how long this went on, but he managed to doze off eventually, and I trembled crying on the couch for a while because I hadn't managed to sleep at a decent hour anyway and my head hurt and my eyes hurt and my right leg and toes hurt so very much and I knew I wasn't going to be functional for the day on just two or three hours of sleep.

And then I remembered I had painkillers, and took them, and curled back up with the by-then calmed and sleeping baby. And we slept till 10:30am, which is about three and a half hours later than usual.

The day itself was comparatively pain-free, though I felt very fragile and tried to take it easy. I got some laundry done and Elijah and I played and watched too many videos on the computer. My kitchen is still broken, and a mess. Roasting a turkey on Thursday is going to be interesting if I have to wash my dishes in the bathtub.

Today was a Gymboree day, which was awesome as always. It was open gym, not a class. I love open gym time. I love watching the varied ages of toddlers and how they interact. It always makes me so tired, though. Fortunately, it makes Elijah tired, too ;)

And he and Daddy are done with bathtime, so it is now nursing time and sleeping time.

Growth

Every morning, Elijah seems taller and more capable. His babble-vocabulary and signing vocabulary seem to grow every day. And he's climbing more and more. We've been to Gymboree four times now--once to get the information, once for a class, and twice for open gym time, and each time he seems to understand more, seems to grow more. It reminds me that I read once that puppies' brains grow bigger if they're well-socialized, with other dogs and with people, than the brains of non-socialized puppies.

My puppy's brain is growing :)

The New Middle-Class Housekeeping: “How I Keep House without a Maid” - I want to take this course! Where's my time machine?

And the "See Also" links at the bottom of the page promise to eat up even more of my time in reading more housekeeping articles...

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Elijah is watching a YouTube playlist I set up for him. Right now, there are loud lundehunds yelling at the camera :)

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Gymboree is fun. We went for our preview class on Sunday, and went last night to open gym. It was empty at first, and then in the last hour more people showed up. Elijah had a lot of fun following the other kids around and climbing on the climbing stuff. I want to set up a gym in our basement now, with mats and slides and climbing equipment and balls and the big airlog.

I think caffeine is in order. Is this post even coherent? Ugh. Well, I think I'd rather start getting out incoherent posts more often than to continue the way I've been going.