Outside Moment

I wish I could get pictures, but it's dark outside.

I brought the rug from the master bedroom outside and laid it out in the front yard, to get rained on and to have the sun beat down on it. It needs a good cleaning.

Elijah laid down on it and said he was going to sleep. "Goodnight, Mom. See you tomorrow!"

So we brought blankets and pillows out, and we are now lying down on the rug in the front yard, wrapped in a big Little Einsteins comforter and enjoying bedtime.

I need to thank my mediciation, and FlyLady, and Al-Anon. Before all of that, I would never have let this happen.

Thank you for this moment.

"Cloud fly high up in the sky. Going fast."

"Elijah's scared. It's dark out here."

"Elijah warm." "Elijah's warm?" "Right."

---

This didn't last too long; he decided he wanted water, and to go inside. So now he's in his room, playing with trains until he's ready to go to sleep. But it was such a wonderful moment.

I love my boy.

Goodnight,
Mama Coyote

RPG FTW

I ran Deliria for the first time ever today. I've made attempts in the past, tried to put together players and characters and settings, and somehow I just never get to it. But! Now! I have an attention span! And players, and a fire pit, and food cooked over the fire, and it worked and it was cool.

Today was very full. Things are afoot and perhaps I will write about them tomorrow.

For now, goodnight <3

It was Saturday.

Elijah went to sleep at 7pm today, two and a half hours earlier than usual. It is now 10:45pm, and while he woke up at least twice and fussed himself back to sleep, he has still kept to himself for nearly four whole hours. That's unprecedented, and really quite awesome.

The best part of today: Nursing Elijah back down, lying in his room in the dark, listening to my family sing songs around the firebowl out back, on the patio under Elijah's bedroom window.

Other notable points through the day:
-headbutting one of my Chrises many times
-talking to another of my Chrises for the first time in a while
-seeing little Alex at Gymboree again - that kid is awesome
-Elijah actually being engaged at Gymboree, and running around and playing
-sending my mom lots of Gymboree videos
-showing the Marine the body-sized box of K'Nex he gets to play with until Elijah is old enough to claim them for himself

Quick post today.

Elijah fell asleep in his highchair today, in the middle of eating rice. He's done that a few times lately, if his afternoon nap gets cut short. Normally the afternoon nap is an hour or two, but if it's anything less than an hour, he falls asleep at dinner. And it's really cute.

Hopefully tomorrow we'll have a guest post from B, about things Elijah is teaching himself :)

5Things

1. Plastic boxes with lids (for toy organization)
2. The massive number of YouTube videos of model trains (and 2.5: YouTube on my phone)
3. Cloth diapers (once again!)
4. Honey soap
5. Honey lotion
6. Wegman's
7. Sleep
8. Email
9. Family
10. B having a great job

I want to write about the awesomeness of a house full of people I care about, and observing and celebrating the various relationships, but it is time to sleep.

Maybe tomorrow.

Night!

Post title? Post title.

Today was pain, for approximately nine hours, when the migraine finally broke and post-migraine euphoria slowly set in. Then there was food with a friend, and shopping, and both were fun.

And then there was babyface screaming the entire way home, and that was not so fun. But now he is asleep, peaceful and beautiful, and I can sit and play Pokemon and collapse into a heap.

And my kitchen is broken. Some sort of back-up in the plumbing, so I can't do my beginning-of-week fridge clean-out and scrub-down of everything... the kitchen is currently a huge mess and I can't cook anything because everything is dirty. Sigh.

AND I wasn't paying any attention at all and bought whole bean French roast from Trader Joe's instead of something drinkable. (I don't have a coffee grinder.) It's back to Gevalia with me, I think.

Also: This and this.

Night-night.

[insert blog title here]

[insert blog post here]

(I've eaten too much and Elijah is very excited and I have to figure out how to make it till bed time and my brain is mush and blankets are nice and Marines are nice and food is nice and the baby is LOUD goodnight.)

Good morning, good night.

Today hurts.

I want braised beef.

Babyface is napping with his nose next to MY blanky-blankety-blanket thing (that used to be blue but is now gray) from when I was a baby. He does this a lot. If he thinks he can have my blanket as his blanket, he is crazy. I will make him a blanket. But that one is MINE. *huffy little girl face*

(Wait till the amazing little 4 year old asks for mama's blanket as his own, and we'll see what I'm saying then.)

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...

---

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

---

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.

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

Morning, and Boys in Pink

Cheerios - check
Baby Sign DVD - check
Dogs have gone out (all four of them) - check

Whyyy did we get up at 7am? Especially when we were tossing and turning all night? My eyes hurt.

I should point out that despite recent evidence, Elijah and I usually sleep very well. We cosleep, as I'm sure I've mentioned before. He nurses once or twice during the night, and we don't fully wake up for that. I get 7-8 hours of (lightly interrupted) sleep a night. I could get more if I went to sleep when he did (and if I'm particularly exhausted, that's what I do). But lately, for some reason, I haven't been sleeping so well. He's been fine; it's me. And last night, he wasn't sleeping well either, whether from having caught my mild cold, or because I kept waking up, I don't know.

Either way, my eyes hurt.

---

Yardsales and thrift stres are amazing. This weekend's haul has gained us, for under $100: A 20 gallon long aquarium, for the turtle; 25 DVD movies (Charlotte's Web, Fifth Element, Stardust, The Day After Tomorrow, the Lord of the Rings movies, Donnie Brasco... lots! Full Metal Jacket! Apocalypse Now! Some of my favourites :) ); jeans and shirts for me; jeans and overalls for Elijah; some plush animals; some books; and Elijah's pink fedora. Amazing :D

---

I had other things I wanted to ramble about. What were they? Hmm.

Oh! Susan Boyle.

Although I don't know what to say about her. I wanted to tell the story about how I don't have a TV (rather, we have a TV, but it's purely for watching DVDs and playing video games--we don't have cable), but I do have YouTube, and my mom gave me a name. And I fell in love. And if my head hurt less, maybe I could tell that story. It involves the faces of friends of mine going from skeptical to OMG baffled. And it was beautiful.

Anyway, her debut album is out, and I need to remember to get it one of these days.

---

Elijah has gotten the sign for "Daddy" confused with just pointing at his head. Like his head is now called "Daddy" and "head". I'm not sure how to fix this :p

There are a couple of signs he's doing regularly that we haven't taught and I can't figure out what he's trying to say.

---

But you're really just here for the pictures, aren't you?



I was trying to get a shot of him sitting on the futon like a big boy, but he decided to climb around instead.


TURTLE!


CAT! (And HAT!)


The turtle now has what will become a nice terrarium :)


Tiny turtle :D


Hugging the giant ball :)


All clean. And drinking water.




I'm making up for the last of breastfeeding shots in this blog :p




Pirate!


There's that hat again!




"Yard sales are so. boring."


But the cat is cool!




He needs more pink clothes.

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.

It's a day.

There are new videos at our YouTube channel.

---

We're watching B5 again.



"You understand?" "No. But understanding is not required. Only obedience."





We have cookies.


Beanie looks comfortable. And confused.



I've done a lot of laundry today, but I didn't take pictures of it. Also cleaned the kitchen, slept, played with the boy, and whined a lot. And took considerable amounts of ibuprofen.

Vet bills and vet bills, oh my -.-

At the end of this week, we're headed to KY for a wedding and to take Remmy to the vet. He needs dental work and shots, and, well, we'll be there, and I trust my vet out there, and it'll be a LOT cheaper.

So of course tonight, Remmy went and got himself bitten or stung on his left front paw by something, and was lying out in the yard looking forlorn and not wanting to put enough pressure on the paw to walk into the house.

So one emergency vet visit later, I've found a decent vet in the area to stay with, and Remmy's been to the vet twice as many times this month as he was supposed to be.

A poem on the wall of the exam room I was in made me want to be a vet tech. For about five minutes. Until I remembered that I cry if I have to make a phone call, get migraines from fluorescent lights and cleaners and bleach and other strange chemically things, and shake if forced to meet and deal with new people.

Elijah enjoyed the vet waiting room. Until he got bored and started screaming.

I need some sleep.

G'night.

Morning, and time for rest.

It's nearly 9am and Elijah is still asleep--but I've been up for an hour. This is unusual, strange, and kind of nice.

I'm sitting here trying to put together a coherent article for Squidoo, and going through my email, and drinking tea, and watching Remmy chew on a piece of rawhide. What I really should be doing is waking Elijah up so we can go for our morning walk before the plumber is scheduled to be here, but, well, I just don't want to wake him up. Who would? He's so sweet and cuddly. Mostly I want to just curl back up with him and go back to sleep.

I may do that.

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 ;)

Friday! It's Friday!

And I'm still Pollution, but I'm doing better today. So much less pain...

---

We received the Your Baby Can Read DVDs in the mail today :D I am ridiculously happy about that. Elijah watched through most of the first DVD before getting bored. He laughed at most of it. Hopefully he won't be completely uninterested as the month wears on :) The program says to watch the starter DVD twice a day for a month. I figure it's worth a shot :D

---

11pm - Day == success.

-kitchen cleaned
-dinner made
-some laundry dealt with
-bedrooms cleaned
-livingroom cleaned
-diningroom cleaned
-floors swept
-birthday party attended (briefly)
-home time w/ B

Time to go get the boy from his Marcian adventures. Then. Then sleep.

Night night.

11am
Sitting in Elijah's room

Elijah's got his last burst of crazy energy before naptime, so he's laughing his head off at me, at Remmy, at everything. Then finding something to cry about for 5 seconds. Then laughing again. He's crawling around the room, carrying things.


10pm

I find that we are in the same position that we were at 11am--he's being obnoxiously energetic before bed, playing with toys and my camera, and talking a lot.

And now he has hiccups, which is adorable :)

Update-ish thing?

9:30am
Home
listening to the stream at InTuneWithSpirit.com

The house is coming along. I'll have pictures... some day.

My brain hurts today. I'm really only here at blogger because it's morning and my head hurts and I don't want to go out into the sunlight for the morning walk we've been taking lately. But I will. In a bit. When the tea kicks in.

Elijah is afraid of the Swiffer Sweeper Vac. It seems like a pretty decent tool so far, but he screams when I use it, even if I'm carrying him in the Moby Wrap, so I'm not sure how much I'll be using it.

If I haven't said, the sheep of a tiny dog that was Remmy is now the new and improved Remmy--shaved down to less than an inch, pink skin showing through the bright white fur. He had an oatmeal-shampoo bath yesterday and was not pleased about.

---

Breakfast: Leftover saffron rice with lots of butter, and an egg, cooked in the toaster oven (because our stove isn't hooked up yet).

---

Elijah is currently alternately playing with his toys in his playpen, and standing up to fuss at me to throw soft jingly balls at his head. For some reason that's quite a fun game.

I need drawers. And a wardrobe, because the closet that spans the entire width of our bedroom is not big enough for the two of us. Seriously. We are LARPers, and both have more costuming than everyday clothing. And I was raised by my grandmother, so I have an awful lot of everyday clothing... I've already gotten rid of everything I'm willing to get rid of, so at this point it's a matter of organizing it so that 1. I know what I have, 2. It stays clean and relatively wearable.

---

11am

Elijah woke up from his nap, rolled over, and hit the space bar on the laptop, successfully unpausing the Sisters of Mercy. Then he smiled at me.

---

1:12pm

Morning walk completed, late. Salsa consumed. Katamari played. Elijah is playing in his playpen, putting toys into the dog bowl. My tongue is burning.

---

3:43pm

Elijah is napping. Logically, after a mostly sleepless night, I should be as well, but the ibuprofen and tea and regular infusions of protein have done their job and I am more or less functional right now... so I am putting pictures up on Facebook. Why not Picasa? Oh, who knows. I'll put some up on Picasa later. I think I'm just craving comments.

I made fresh bread! Praise be for the bread machine (which was free). This is happiness, for the moment.

---

4:20pm

Sometimes I feel like some sort of uneducated imposter because I've never watched Julia Child or read any of her cookbooks.

---

10pm

Bedtime. Cuddling with the squirmy boy while he nurses, hoping he'll sleep soon. I want a clove and some icecream and t sit in the rain with the dogs. It's an evening of feeling sorry for myself for my lack of freedom. But it's okay. Or rather, it will be okay when the discussions of what other people do with their freedom fades, and when I've had a night's sleep.

Goodnight.

---

Today's food, from Twitter feed:

Dinner for me: Tom gha gai, rama noodles with a little broccoli. For Elijah: Plain noodles.

Snack fr me: Fresh bread with butter.

Snack for me: Ham, then icecream.

Breakfast: Leftover saffron rice w/ egg.