Pony Express Posts: Belated Announcement

Well, I suppose there's no point continuing to wait for a substantial, creative manner of announcement to float down from the heavens on a golden harp-shaped hovercraft, now that it's been a couple months.

My procrastination has been holding up a backlog of what's been passing for content here the past couple years (since we bought the house), as a lot of what I've thought of saying the past 6 months or so was in some way tied to this news... news which I had been trying not to just throw out there unceremoniously, much in the way I'm about to do right now:

We had yet another baby last month.  

See? That's her right up there, as proof. The second coming of M-, hereby to be known as A-. So we've completed our set of two boys and two girls.*

Yes, that's right, according to most people's reactions, as well as a quick flip through a generation's worth of census data, we are now the modern equivalent of that 8-kid family** people used to marvel at during the Baby Boom and Generation X's heyday.

Do we feel more complete now, you wonder? Have we started getting a human amount of sleep yet? Have we worked out some kind of daily routine now that school has started for J- and the kids? Have we any hope of shaking off the influence of our hypnotizing alien captors soon? Take a glance at the posting history here and then pencil in your guesses before I stop by with the answer key as soon as I can.

In the meantime, with this official notice out here, I should be able to at least get back to posting more lists of tidbits and such a few times a month, with more promises of actual paragraphs and thoughts and time and craft someday, once again.

It's the thought that counts, right?

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* This means I'll have to update the banner again, so soon*** after the last time.

** All I can say is those people are lucky they were able to delude themselves into thinking that small children wedged tightly enough across the bench seat of a station wagon would provide their own restraint in case of a high-speed accident. Otherwise, the country would either be a fraction of its present size today, or it would have been swarmed throughout the '60s with extended vans, RVs, and "Parental Sanity trailers" featuring a half-dozen kids suspended along the walls with heavy-duty straps.

*** Obviously a relative term, given that some of the pictures were several years out of date when I replaced them a couple months ago...

A conversation between M- and D-: Sometimes love just ain't enough

Here's a quick little exchange that pretty well sums up our days at this stage, with my son D- six and my daughter M- now 4.

Me (sick as ever of the nearly non-stop bickering, which apparently I may miss someday): I thought I told you two to go to separate rooms?!

D-: She keeps following me!!

M- (the world's newest queen of drama... bow before her): That's because I love you! I follow you because I love you! (to me, desperately) I follow D- because I love him!!

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You may enjoy my previous (4YO daughter) M- conversations, (6YO son) D- conversations, and (wife) J- conversations.

The ultimate stocking stuffer

Look what I found in my stocking this year:
A two-day-old baby? It's another Festivus miracle!

Editor's Note: He's very tiny.

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Alright, fine, I can provide more information... we'll call him E-; he was born 6lbs, 5oz, and 19in long. Here we go again!

Classic quotes, Vol. 18

I've been a bit overloaded with quotes lately, hence I'm here again less than two weeks later with a few more quotes from my wife J-, my 5-year-old son D-, my 2-year-old daughter M-, and me:

J- (yet again underappreciating my hilarity one night): You're evil! I'm going to bed without you. (remembering) ...Except there's a spider over the bed and I need you to come kill it.

M- (grinning from ear to ear in enthusiastic disbelief about something, several times a day): "Cheese Ma-wheeze!"*

Me (to J-, who was questioning my attention to detail in wrapping a child's birthday present): Well, why make the bed if you're just going to mess it up and have to do it again all over tomorrow?? ...That little nugget of wisdom would probably carry a lot more weight if we actually made the bed every day.

M- (freestyling to a heartwarmed J-, now far outclassed in her impromptu "I love you" contest): I love you, and I buhv you, and I picked you out from the Momma's Day store!**

My sister (recent college graduate, with an elementary education degree, no less): How do you spell "college"?***

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*Actually, both kids have been saying this one for awhile (trying to say, "Geez Louise!", of course), but M- seems to say it more often, and now it's already morphed into "Cheese My-wheeze!" I guess though, when you think about it, it's an equally valid substitute for exclaiming, "Jesus!" outright.

** For those of you who just threw up, I only included this for posterity, as well as for the sizable portion of my readership who enjoys those sappy Anne Geddes babies-in-costumes kinds of things. And who overappreciate kittens.

*** I'd probably be in big trouble if I didn't point out that she was very tired, and merely second-guessing herself as she stared at the computer screen, deep into the spacey depths of Decompression Summer.

Important Question: The greatest ridiculous song lyric?

It's time once again for me to turn the microphone over to you, the reader, to help me address a little quandary that has recently locked up dangerously significant portions of my brain space.

Which of the following can fairly be declared the greatest line in the history of love songs?

Bruce Springsteen in Thunder Road: "You ain't a beauty but hey, you're alright."

or

Justin Timberlake in Like I Love You: "Here baby, hold my jacket."

Cast your vote below!

If by some chance, you think you can possibly beat these two contenders, feel free to let me know, and I'll take your candidate under consideration.

Proof I really have children

Since it was pointed out recently that, as a supposed parent blogger, I should make sure to at least occasionally include pictures of the kids, I figured I would take the opportunity to come at this Monday like the office drone I used to be: by spacing out and phoning it in.

So here, to help you exercise your cuteness-detecting glands, is a quick sampling of what my kids look like right now, at (freshly) 5 and 2:

Apparently I broke up some kind of high-powered meeting of executives in the business of making mischief in the house. The one on the right looks offended, but the one on the left looks like he's about to break out some faux-pirate violence.

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My son D- is still at an age where he loves hugging and kissing his sister, though not always on her exact schedule. Also, he hasn't yet learned that he should have told her NOT to stand still for a second while Daddy gets a picture.

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M- with her hair in her face, where it usually is, on a day when she was kind enough to stop making noise for five seconds to let me document how big she's gotten, and what she looks like on a day when Daddy was in too big a hurry to get her dressed.

A conversation with D-: Lion vs. gazelle

The other night while I was folding laundry, my 4-year-old son D- managed to achieve the rare feat of sneaking up on me undetected. His ferocious roar gave me the momentary flash of panic I normally only taste in the air around my own victims, but being the consummate professional* I am, I immediately recovered and so betrayed nothing to my tormentor.

However, after a moment's reflection during a brief unrelated Q&A (4-year-olds being nature's ideal unpaid messengers), I decided not to deny him his rightful victory, so I called to him just before he left the room:

Me: Hey, nice work back there, by the way-- I didn't hear you coming at all!

D- (smiling): I'm gonna scare you again...

Me: No, it can't work now, because you just told me you were doing it.

D-: (pauses) Let's try it again where I don't tell you about it.

Me (laughing): But you just told me about it again! (looks back down toward the laundry)

D-: (begins tip-toeing forward with a large smile)

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* Non-compensated professional, of course, as is the case with most of my careers.

You may also enjoy the other (4 YO son) D- conversations, (2YO daughter) M- conversations, and (wife) J- conversations.

Another way to offend your wife

Publish a post on your blog describing a tongue-in-cheek statement she wasn't all that happy to hear in the first place, regardless of your helpful illumination of the shades of nuance or explanation of the disparity between your implication and her inference.

An important point to note for you all is that since we're talking about a post-Apocalyptic world, "rare delicacies" include not only rationed foodstuffs but also many simple conveniences and various other consumer goods.

So, I guess what I'm trying to mask in a blur of haughty multisyllabic words and my trademark Byzantine syntax is that rather than merely overstimulate some kind of compulsive eating disorder she certainly doesn't have, in this situation, the point to consider is that my wife would quickly become drunk with power in controlling a world-shaping secret, as much as from deciding who lives comfortably and who rots in the mildewous cavern of her disfavor. Also, I am a dick.

One way to offend your wife

I figured it'd be nice to counteract the burgeoning waves of sappiness threatening to spill over here due to my round-the-clock care and constant companionship of my poor, ailing wife for the last two weeks, so I thought I'd offer the husbands out there just one of many clever ways you can offend your wife whenever necessary.

Example Number 1: When taking a pause from reading her copy of a junior high sci-fi novel, such as The City of Ember, turn towards her --doing something sweet and innocent like playing her pink Nintendo DS on the collapsible bed she calls her invalid home-- and lay this truth on her:

"If there was a secret room in our post-apocalyptic world stocked with aisles and aisles of rare delicacies, you'd definitely be the one passed out in the middle of it OD'd on sugar and power."

I'm not sure why my own wife took issue with this earnest observation so strongly, but apparently it's quite a potent weapon to store away somewhere for a rainy day.

A conversation with J-: Manic Monday

To give you a sense of how a quite-anxious J- and beyond-tired I passed the time while waiting for her to be wheeled into surgery two weeks ago, please enjoy the following conversation I later recorded on a notecard I just found in my coat pocket:

Me: You know, you'll be sleeping the whole time-- I'm extremely jealous.

J- (immediately, giving me a blank look): I'd trade places with you in a second.

Me: I would, too ... (makes Movie Magic sounds while wiggling fingers between us)

J-: (just blinks in confusion and resumes fretting)

Me: We'd better make sure not to touch any potentially magic inanimate objects at the same time. If we do, though, we definitely can't lose it, because I do not want to have a period. Or teach special ed.

J-: Whyever not?

Me: They both involve a lot more involuntary bleeding and discomfort than I'm willing to accept.

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Click to read past conversations I've posted with my wife J-, my 4-year-old son D-, and my nearly 2-year-old daughter M-.

Telegram from Hellegram

I just wanted to post a quick note of very sincere thanks to everyone for your nice comments and wishes for J-'s safe and speedy recovery.

She will be harnessing your words as fuel to cool the flames of rage and hatred for all of creation whenever the Earth absentmindedly rotates under her hip.

We spent Monday night and much of Tuesday in the hospital, instead of going right home Monday afternoon as they had hoped. This is because the universe loves J- so much it wanted to make sure she would sit down and take a breather for a good long time, with a paid, professional staff of enforcers on hand to play the heavies.

By now, she's setting land-speed records for crutch pilots, and she hardly feels those flaming fingers of death ripping her apart from the inside whenever she sits down, gets up, brushes against something, tries to scootch into a more comfortable position, or exhales.

On other fronts, the debilitating full-body itching that nearly claimed the lives of three nurses and one doctor has now subsided due to that trendiest of prescription painkillers, Taking Off Your Pressure Stockings Once Home Because When Pressed The Doctor Suggested You Could At Some Point Remove Them If Absolutely Necessary. Trade name: SorrybitchesIdowhatIwant-ycontin.

To sum up, I'll let J- herself have the last word, absolutely faithfully transcribed from her sudden whisper in her fitful sleep:

Fffucccckkk.

It's hip to be timely

I know I haven't had too much to say about my wife on this blog, but it's not for lack of amusing stories or anything else. I just tend to procrastinate when it comes to writing about important things, and on many occasions I've let opportunities pass by where J- would be revealed as the amazing and funny person she is.

After a month or two of procrastinating, things start to feel stale and tedious and they pile up in my Drafts folder.

Take our fifth anniversary over a month ago-- wouldn't you expect some sappy post with a scrapbook of pictures and such? Or, knowing me, some sarcastic post with one picture, two at most, and a handful of tangential footnotes? I actually have more than a few pictures and a ridiculous story to tell about that day, but there it sits, and probably will for a while longer yet.

But that's not what this post is about.

Since I haven't said all that much about her, you won't mind me completely mischaracterizing her in your minds by way of introducing the subject of this post: almost six years ago now, she violently ripped the lining of her right hip socket while kickboxing.

She has limped along ever since on her remaining hip, which wasn't so great to begin with, trying and failing for various reasons (including lovely insurance debacles and poorly timed pregnancies) to have the problem surgically corrected. As you can imagine, the pregnancies made that hip sing like a finely tuned machine.

She's sleeping as I write this, as I should be, but today at noon she will fall asleep again. While she's sleeping, she'll be sliced open and have her femur yanked out of the socket, to allow the doctors to scrape out the remaining shreds of labrum and grind into oblivion the pesky bone spur on the end of her femur that started all this mess.

Then, assuming all goes well, they'll stitch her back up and send her hobbling on her merry way, to slowly recover over the next month and a half as she avoids putting any pressure on that leg so the bone doesn't shatter before it's completely healed.

Such is the fun she's bravely facing this holiday season, starting with a Thanksgiving spent as the immobile centerpiece for my extended family's celebration at my parents' house.*

Why is this happening now, you ask? Because she wanted to be sure she'd miss as few school days as possible, while not passing up another chance to get this done once and for all by waiting till next summer. She fills me with faith that this world is not completely lost, as she slogs through everything life throws at her without wasting too much time regretting paths she might have taken.

In the last few weeks, she moved from Drone to Zombie mode in continuing to get up at 5AM while staying late into the evening planning* and preparing everyone around her for her absence at this crucial stage of the year, making plans and more, all to be sure that her extremely underprivileged, forgotten students don't stop the unprecedented (and thankfully, quantifiable in enough areas to buy her some leeway) progress they've made since she took this school by storm last year.

All this leads up to her, a person about as averse to even the idea of surgery as you're likely to find, getting carved up with only the hope of feeling better at some point next year, even without that last little bit of handy buffer between the bones of her hip joint.

We may be back here some day down the road for the other hip, but hopefully it will hear enough horror stories from this one to shape up all by itself.

As for the kickboxing, no matter how successful her recovery is, I don't think she'll be dropping into any Thai cage matches or ill-advised college P.E. classes any time soon.

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* Thanks to my parents, she has a place to stay that isn't up three flights of stairs, and thanks to them (and my sister), I'll have a little help managing the kids during J-'s recovery.

** Fifteen special-needs teenagers in one classroom equals 15 separate daily plans.

P.S. I squish you

The other day, J- left me a nice note before heading off to work at the crack of dawn (in response to an even better note I had left her, thereby granting me the clear edge here), and while it was, as I said, nice, as we approach five years of marriage and 10 years of knowing each other, we're past the stage of saving every little scrap of everything in a shoe box somewhere.

That being said, I want to clearly state for the record that I would in no way ever deliberately defile or deface a love note from my wife in any way, no matter the size or lyricism of it, except in the rare case that I could do so in a way that was absolutely, unquestionably hilarious. That opportunity has, fortunately or unfortunately, not yet arisen.

However, after her note lies upside down on the counter all afternoon, I think I can be held blameless for later accidentally using it to squash a tiny bug walking across our counter. Our counter! Of all the disrespect for the insect kingdom to show me... my counter! In my own home!! No, I am not redirecting the focus here.

Do you have any idea how many bugs I have respectfully let walk, fly, or crawl out of my sight, probably to be squashed by someone else later that day? But this little guy just strolled along my primary food-prep surface (and you know he was defecating all the way) careless as you please, insulting my intelligence by trying to blend in with the little specks in the pattern on the counter, figuring for some unknown reason that I don't have the peripheral vision of a... an owl? Something with incredible, godlike peripheral vision, anyway.

So, yeah, I grabbed the note and poinked that f***er-- no big deal, right? Tell that to the O in love.

But you know what? Since my wife is first finding out about this right now along with you, let me just take the opportunity to point out here that right amongst a handful of other things at the core of our relationship is her hatred of bugs and my sworn duty to protect her from them. So I'd say that disgusting smear of life's essential gooey parts is a flourish that only a truly loving husband could think to provide, and thus I converted what had been a mere note into a unique declaration and symbol of our love. Before throwing it in the garbage.

I may need to re-spin this.

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Editor's Note: Yes, I'm aware that "life's essential gooey parts" could be completely misread, but since it's also a great name for a band, I'm leaving it in.

Driving: A love story

While I was driving us home from the mall the other day, J- selfishly decided that she and her throbbing brain wanted a time-out from the glorious wonder that is Arcade Fire's Neighborhood #1 (Tunnels), but being a sane person, I reiterated my insistence that it be played at full volume at all times from now until I close my eyes.

So, to compromise, she reached for the Balance knob to push the sound over to my side of the car. We all know how horribly this ruins the acoustics, so you can recognize my level of sacrifice in allowing this.

Then, as her inexplicable treachery was almost complete, a brief insight into the plans of whatever force put us on this Earth was revealed to me, as a clear reward for my Job-like patience and tolerance of the weaknesses of others.

As she rolled through the 7 levels of Balance, for a brief second, a word flashed in my peripheral vision that promised to make the whole ordeal worthwhile. I nearly slammed on the brakes, but instead I continued driving while choking out, "Gobackgobackgoback!!!" In confusion, she complied, and I stopped her when the Balance was towards the Left at level 5.

Sure enough, slicing through the dark night in bright blue capital letters, flashed the word BALLS.

And I love my car more than ever.

Declaration of Independence from posting

In honor of the love of vacationing that I share with all Americans*, I'm going to be lame today and do the blog equivalent of a clip show. So while I run off to the parade and ready myself for those most delicious of all meats, free hot dogs, please jump over to this old American-flag-related post you may have missed. Comment freely, as if it's new, and help complete the charade!

Also, let's all wish a Happy Birthday to the little lady who shares this day with Lady Liberty-- my sister Katie. Didn't anyone ever tell you all those fireworks are for her? Today, she's officially an adult, although, fortunately or unfortunately for her, she'll always be my baby sister. Nice try with all that growing up, sucker!


* Though studies show we don't actually tend to take them, for the legitimate fear of being found expendable and fired. We seem to instead make up the time by "wasting" lots of it while at work, such as by reading blogs. Vive la résistance!

In a tough world, you get first shot at your kids

Do either of these exchanges from this morning make me a bad parent? I'm often struck by that thought after I let loose some of my initial reactions to things.

D- (walking into the room first thing this morning): Hi Daddy, can you make me something to eat?
Me (coughing like I just pried open a dusty old crypt): Whoa, we need to brush your teeth!

This was my gut reaction-- I couldn't acquire enough untainted oxygen to come up with a "Hey, let's go get cleaned up for the day first!" or something else innocuous.
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M- (after reaching up, opening a kitchen drawer, inserting her finger, and deliberately closing the drawer): Oww! Fin-gerrrr!!*
Me: Yes, 'Ow, finger!' indeed. We've been down this road before, many times. (I find it amusing to speak this way to a 17-month-old, on occasion.)

Disclaimer: She closed the drawer pretty slowly, and she seemed to be expressing less pain than disappointment (bafflingly so) with the result of her experiment. She got over it in a second.
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On a similar note, I haven't yet gotten around to writing a manifesto of my parenting philosophies, but this morning I found out I don't have to. The folks at The Art of Manliness (a great site, by the by) have done it for me:

Quit Coddling Your Kids

The only tweaks I can think of offhand after reading this a couple hours ago are that, as seized upon by some people in the comments, they don't mention much if anything about being appropriately supportive of your kids or consistently telling them that you love them. I think they just forgot that since the focus is more on people who insulate their children from everything negative whenever possible, especially by blindly supporting every choice and action, whether selfish, hateful, or otherwise ill advised.

One of the comments mentions world-proofing your child instead of child-proofing his or her world. That just sums it all up perfectly-- it needs to become a new proverb.

That'll learn 'er

Well, she made it.

As of today, my wife J- has 80 days of shore leave before she ships out back into the war zone that is a self-contained special education classroom at a junior high in a, shall we say, less fortunate area. If only she had the time, she could sure write a heckuva blog about her day-to-day experiences.

Instead, she spent the past 9 months waking up at 5 o'clock in the morning to make it to school by 7 during rush hour, and another hour or more in the car on the way home each day, frequently after a couple hours of afterschool meetings. Needless to say, there isn't much time left over, hence she doesn't figure into many of the wacky stories of my antics with the kids during the week.

I can assure you that the stories would be crazier and funnier if she did, because at times she manages to somehow be even more hilarious and more sarcastic than me, and as we all can tell from this self-glorifying blog of mine, I obviously think I'm just the funniest thing since my daughter attempted to murder me slowly via a plastic-snake-induced eye infection.

I must say I feel partially responsible for J-'s lack of involvement, because she often stayed up way too late to spend time with me, so she was even more dead on her feet each morning and in need of a nap once she somehow made it home without falling asleep at the wheel. "Shhh, Momma's sleeping" became a common refrain at our house in afternoons, on Saturday mornings, and on precious sick/personal days.

Sometimes she'd stay up too late not watching movies or playing Nintendo with me, but instead writing up Individualized Education Programs (IEPs), her required daily lesson plans (covering each kid in her class separately, since they're all at such different levels that they're each essentially a class unto themselves), and other various documents needed from time to time for her to be ready again bright and early (or dark and dreary, during fall/winter) the next morning.

So if, like I used to, you're ever tempted to wish you could be a teacher and just work from 8 to 3 and have the whole summer off, you have to realize that teachers instead pack a whole year's work, plus overtime, into 9 months of the year, and then they get a couple frantic months to try to unwind and recharge in time to do it all over again. How someone could take doing this for 45 years is just beyond me, though I can only hope it does get easier as the years go by.

One thing that most, if not all, teachers will tell you is one big thing that would make the prospect of a lifetime of teaching (at least in the U.S.) much easier is the complete repeal or tear-down-and-rebuild of the so-called "No Child Left Behind" act, but that's a whole separate story. With any luck, our new president will hire some competent, qualified people for the key policy-making positions and we can get some realistic laws in education and other areas.

But at least for the next 2 and a half months, we don't need to worry about that. And so, after being way more excited about the end of school than any of the kids, little J- sleeps as we drift on a cloud of humidity towards noon. I'm thinking of tiptoeing over to the bed and ringing a bell sharply while shouting expletives and running around the room with the kids.

You know, to help ease her transition.

Winged migration

I suppose this serves as something of a sequel to my post Things I found in my bed last night-- here's how J- got me away from the computer last night while I was responding to all your many wonderful comments on the last few posts:

"Can't you just blog 'Wife found bug wing in bed, must go now'?!?"

This was after much poking, prodding, and begging to this end. She decided she could not possibly sleep in the same bed as a piece of an old bug wing, and only I have been imbued by the gods with the power to flick it off the sheet.

This is actually great progress for her-- in past, better-rested days, she would definitely refuse to sleep in the bed for at least a day after the sheets were changed (and probably burned), and she might even insist on sleeping at a hotel. Now she was tired enough to just be rid of the wing so she could get some blessed sleep.

Although, as it turns out, when I went to the bathroom after The Flickening, she ended up pulling the sheet off the bed and flipping it around to put the apparently toxic Spot Where the Wing Was on my side of the bed instead.

That's love.

Oedipus had it far too simple

Wow, some things are just universal and they astound me. The other day, J- was laying on the couch near D-, holding M- over her head, saying, "One day, you guys are going to find somebody to marry who loves you so much and is so nice and takes care of you."

D- immediately responded, "Probably Katie, I'll marry-- she's nice." So apparently he's got his life pretty well set out for himself, when you consider that in addition to his now-scheduled marriage to his aunt, he's already identified approximately 400 hundred movies he'll watch, many activities he'll perform, and various things he'll learn "when [he] turn[s] 10".

The funny thing is, a well-worn story in our family goes as follows: when both of my brothers (at about 4 and 3) simultaneously claimed the right to marry my mom when they grew up before being informed she was already spoken for, my oldest brother then declared he'd instead marry our cousin, who apparently had the next longest tenure as Girl We Know. My other brother thought for a second and then moved on down the logical line of succession in his mind, and called dibs on her younger brother.

I'm sure somewhere deep down, despite all his happiness in subsequent relationships (with women, of course), my brother must have been just a little bit heartbroken when his backup fell through and my cousin got married, and then somewhat sadly resigned when they had a baby.

Household occurrences likely to revisit me in nightmares

Here are several events at our house, most from this morning alone, that I believe I'll be seeing replayed in some form in the coming nights whenever I manage some sleep:

1. M- firmly poking the bottom of an open box of cereal on the table and me lunging forward to catch it just before it turned upside down. I haven't always been so lucky. (In my nightmares, I'm sure the box will always be just out of my reach.)

2. D- standing on the rug between the dining room and kitchen saying, "I'm having an accident!"

3. M- streaking through the dining room with a Spider-Man fork stolen from the dishwasher.

4. M- climbing all over me like a boa constrictor, onto and off of the chair, moaning, "No, no, no, noooooo!" over and over again for no apparent reason other than sniffles and crankiness (it was before 8).

5. D- holding a ball and taking aim at my happy place while I demonstrate how to stand upon the parallel bars at the park. (Luckily it was only a Nerf ball so it didn't hurt, but still I saw the look in his eye-- it was a vicious one expectant of painful hilarity.)

6. M- taunting D- by walking across the family room with his Corduroy bear and, instead of giving it back as originally ordered, slapping him twice across the face with it (like Monty Python's Fish Slapping Dance) and running back away.

7. Driving off a giant mushroom and falling into a bottomless pit, like I did a couple times last night in MarioKart Wii. (In my nightmares, I'm sure the magic man on the cloud will never come to save me.)

8. M- splashing her hands in the toilet saying, "Pee-pee, pee-PEEEE!" (we've gotten thisclose to it several times now), before bidding it bye-bye while waving as she has been doing for the past few weeks.

9. Closing a fresh, clean diaper, standing up and turning around, and then detecting a dreadful hint of baby byproducts. Yes, M- tends to be picky where she defecates, but then so do some adults.

10. A massacre by a rampaging spoon-spork hybrid. Okay, I only read about it, but I have a very impressionable brain, and things like that tend to stick. At least it's better than a velociraptor attack.

Things that should revisit me in my dreams:

1. M- comforting a crying D- by saying, "eye-ing", offering a kiss and hug, and then sitting down to let him read her the book (Good Night, Maine) they had been fighting over earlier.