Holpineville

‘Cause I’m a Natural Woman

We camped!  Three nights!  And I had fun!  Really! 

Okay, so it was not exactly roughing it, only a few hundred yards away from a hot (if yucky looking) shower and flush toilets.  The weather was wonderful except when we were close to frozen at night, it was a pretty enough state park, and we found lots to do:  we rode horses!  We rode bikes!  We hiked!  We visited the playground!  We rented a boat!  Carl swam!  (Everyone else was smart enough to stay out of the freezing cold lake.)  The kids played harmoniously together the whole time, and made friends with a girl from the neighboring campsite.  We made a fire and s’mores every night, thereby making sure that I would not burn off one extra calorie the whole trip. 

Even though we all had a great time, and probably we will go again from time to time, camping still seems weirdly fake to me—“let me leave my pampered upper-middle-class existence and go prove I can live without central air…but not without my fancy gear!  And not too far from a flush toilet!”—and I never fail to be impressed by how much hassle it all is.  It took us days of joint effort to plan, shop and pack for it.  We ended up buying more supplies than I thought we would.  Rod barely got everything into and onto his car.  To go when the weather was pleasant during the day and relatively bug free, we had to endure very cold temperatures at night, and even with the ultra deluxe old lady orthopedic camping mattress Rod got me, it was still not a comfy way to sleep.  Imagine me, eyes red from campfire smoke, stabbing pains in my back and legs, huddled into my jacket and three blankets, with one arm pinned between Carl and the cold ground,  the attached exposed hand nearly frozen solid, attempting to will Ruby’s top blanket back onto her body using my brain waves alone, and listening to Rod snore…. Then, there’s all that setting up and taking down, and a giant mountain of laundry to do back at home.

But the days were so nice.  Peaceful, even in a full-up camping area.  Relaxing, mostly.  A good change of pace.

And now we are home, and the kids are at back at school today. I am debating which termite company to hire and dealing with taxes, school committees, errands, summer plans, and many other uninspiring issues.  Rod thinks he’s heading to the UK in a few days, and I am trying to be a brave little soldier about it even though he will be gone at least a week, I’ll bet.  We signed a lease for our rental property, which is a relief.  Of course, it's not my ideal lease, but at least it’ll staunch the financial bleeding for another year.  We’ve been working on little projects around the house and there is another flock of doctor/dentist/etc appointments on the calendar.  The kids have swimming lessons in April, which will suck up a bunch of time.  Writing this all down is not improving my mood.  I think maybe I need a date night?  A fun new project?  (Free) weekend trip?

Just to Cover All the Bases, I'll Ask the Internet

My kids' school needs a new principal, and it needs to be someone really great: willing to get fully behind the Montessori concept, polished enough to be a good spokesperson and promoter of the school, managerial enough to keep the office running well and the budget out of the red, and good at dealing with parents and kids.  Do you know anyone who fits the bill? Send 'em my way, fast. And if you have non-obvious ideas on where to look, do tell.

Last Year is So Over

I read through the Holpineville archives for 2008, and I have to congratulate you for continuing to check in, because it was mostly dull reading.  Here is my summary:

Household News: 

Rod and I celebrated our sixteenth wedding anniversary, and 21 years of hanging around each other.  The Holpines individually turned 40, 39, 6 and 4. 

Rod took about six business trips.  Andrea took three fun trips. We had four family trips, none to anyplace exotic, but vacation is vacation.

Rod worked a lot, mostly on a project he’d rather not have, but also on one at least one he’s excited about.  He got a another pile of patents.  Andrea was busy in what she likes to think of as her early retirement: driving kids around, scouring the Internet and resale shops for bargains, getting pedicures, and reading magazines.  She also was the room parent for Ruby’s class, administrator for a big online parenting community, co-chair of the major annual fundraising gala for the kids’ school, asporadic knitter, and an occasional blogwriter.  

We spent a lot of time coping with minor illness of various kinds, but overall everyone’s been healthy and happy.  

Holpineville weathered Hurricane Ike with nothing but emotional distress damages caused by nine days without power and the disappearance of our beloved kitty Lizzie in the aftermath of the storm.

On the house front, we replaced some rotting windowsills, created a composting system, made improvements to the garage, and slightly upgraded the family room furnishings.  

Kid Highlights:

Ruby finished kindergarten and went on to first grade with the teacher and classroom that she’ll have through third grade.  Her reading has improved dramatically this year.  Outside of school, she had a lot of fun in dance class and started piano lessons.  She made a quilt and learned some basic crochet and other crafts.  Ruby learned to ride a bike without training wheels.  She lost six teeth this year and sprouted four new molars. 

Carl moved from the crib to a big-kid bunk bed and had his first sleepovers at friends’ houses.  He left his preschool for the same public Montessori school Ruby attends, where he is thriving in the early childhood (pre-k through kindergarten) class.  He learned to write his name and picked up many very interesting facts that he brought home to share. 

Both kids made great strides in learning to swim this year.  They both love Scooby Doo, art, science, and reading, and they have been playing happily together more and more.

I have to say, it was nice to have a rather uneventful year.

__________

I think the party was fun last night; at least I had a good time. We had a huge crowd, and the kids all behaved amazingly well.  Not everyone stayed until midnight, but Ruby and Carl and a few of their friends were still awake to pop the confetti-filled noisemakers and some leftover Christmas crackers.  Here are the kids, in the immediate aftermath:

Much Too Busy

We are busy--busy enough that blog writing as been a little too much of a time-sucking luxury to consider this week.  Nothing terribly exciting is going on, just stuff:

Ruby’s dentist appointment to coat her porous molar, my dentist appointment for hours and hours of drilling fun, getting my car “fixed” (it now has air-conditioning, and the mechanic says it’s okay, but I still feel intuitively like it’s trying to leave me stranded this summer), an epic bowling excursion with the kids, a meeting to figure out why none of the credit card charges from our gala had posted, Ruby’s photo session with her ballet class, the actual ballet class, another charity silent auction run by some friends, a family picnic at Ruby’s school, Ruby’s routine –but- very-long eye exam (20/20, for now), a town hall meeting with our new school board member, a dog-and-pony-show at Ruby’s school for potential donor foundations, haircuts for the kids, a meeting about my upcoming Mommy’s Running Away From Home Trip, the dropping off of a couple of dinners for new moms, and I am trying to get some actual sleep and exercise and eat healthier, which is time consuming. And alas, I still have the taxes to do.

Rod is preoccupied with many very important things at work, and the not-so-important company chili cook-off this weekend.  His team has devised some inedible-sounding recipe and I think they are taking a serious misstep by putting so much faith in Rod’s cooking abilities, but my opinions on this are not really as welcome as you might think.

I unofficially know what teacher Ruby will have next year and I am pleased.  Too bad I can’t tell her, yet.  We received the report from her first big standardized test, the Stanford 10, and it seems Ruby isn’t so terribly smart after all. She’s at grade level on everything, sure, and well above it in a couple of the squishy categories (“listening” and “environment,” for example), but she didn’t exactly blow the curve.  I guess we’ll keep her anyway.

Ruby discovered that she can read Green Eggs and Ham, and has extrapolated from that a passionate love for Dr. Seuss that she proclaims over and over again.  We did check some Seuss books out of the library today that are too hard for her, so the fire in her heart may die out soon; her tolerance for frustration is pretty miniscule. In bedtime news, we have worked our way chapter by chapter through the works of Laura Ingalls Wilder, to her early married days in the First Four Years.  This part of the story is tricky because the romance is not spelled out, at least not for one accustomed to princess movies, so it’s hard to understand Laura’s motivation.  Also, Ruby is worried about Laura having a baby so soon after the wedding, so we had to have another chat about reproductive reality.  She is also worried about Laura wearing black to her wedding, and marrying a farmer even though she didn’t like farming, and we keep going back to the Indian-white folk relations problem. 

Lately, Carl is busy popping out of his bedroom when he is supposed to be asleep.  I really hope this phase doesn’t last long.  He also gets up in the mornings before his blue light alarm goes off and comes in to wake me.  I don’t like waking up in general, but Carl is sort of sweet and snuggly, stretching out next to me or on top of me.  One morning we were cuddled up, and trying to buy a few moments of silence, I told him to listen to the birds.  “That one,” Carl said with authority, “is a robin.  And that one is a kuh-not.”  And as I am unfamiliar with kuh-nots, I asked what it looked like and he gave me a detailed description.  Carl has made up several birds and dinosaurs lately.  I think I told you once about the bonkheader dinosaurs, but we have also been told about others.  The trimantis is my favorite, a dinosaur with bright blue skin with Easter-egg like markings, which "tries" ("That's why it's called a TRY-mantis!") to protect the Easter bunny by eating the other dinosaurs, or something like that. 

Carl is also preoccupied with the plastic light saber he got when he crashed a birthday party at the park last weekend.  He is learning about flowers at school this month, and also bees, which means I am also learning all about them.  After he told me the details of some pre-school playground gang war under the play structure one day, I decided to say more of sort of thing I never really thought would come out of my mouth until Carl: “I don’t want to hear about you fighting at school, Carl, understand?  I expect you to be respectful and kind and gentle with all the other kids.”  I don’t think he’s really the problem child of the group, more a follower than an instigator, but I could see where inserting some strong disapproval into the back of his mind might come in handy later. Still, Carl says he wants to have a “fight party” for his next birthday.  I said I wasn’t sure the other moms would go for it.  Eventually he patiently explained, as if I were just a little too dense to understand properly, that it was PRETEND fighting.   So see?  It will be fine.

Today, according to Ruby and Carl, is Hank the Cat’s birthday.  So they made him a cake using two cans of cat food and some catnip and took it up to him in his little hideaway, the strip of floor under my bed between the storage boxes and the wall.  They sang him Happy Birthday and gave him two hairbrushes of Ruby’s as a gift. Tomorrow is Grandpa Dave’s birthday.  Imagine what they sent him.

Never Enough Caffeine, and, What to Tell Them About Work?

News:

Ruby is feeling better.

The refrigerator is working.  Appliance repair is the upside of marriage to an engineer. The parts were expensive, however, even if the labor was not.

We still haven’t replaced the stolen electronics.  Who needs photos, anyway? This computer is still a barely-functional mess, but I lack the time and energy to shop this week.

Rod is still having a rotten time at work.  He gets a small break this weekend when he goes to his high school reunion.  I hate high school reunions, and there are a lot of things going on with the kids this weekend, so I’m not going.  I hope his old girlfriends turned out to have bad teeth, annoying laughs and really dull jobs.  Is that mean? Probably, since from what I heard, way back before I took over for them, they were perfectly nice people.

Remember my breast cancer walk last weekend?  A hearty thanks to all the contributors.  It was hot and crowded, and I’m so glad I went.  Seeing all the pictures, names, families made me cry, but then again everything does these days.  And the person our team honored, my friend’s mom, the grandmother of two of my kids’ best friends? The cancer killed her on Tuesday.  It’s a very sad week here.

Last night my living room was the speaking platform for the superintendent of schools and our friendly local school board member about a contentious bond issue on the November ballot.  The crowd was smaller than I expected, but people asked intelligent questions and took home yard signs.  The superintendent seemed relieved to be at an event where no one threw food or said nasty things about him.  Several of us stayed up way too late chatting over the last of the wine afterwards.  I’m pretty tired this morning, but I think I managed to decline when they tried to talk me into running for the school board.

You Be the Parent: 

How do I justify myself to my child, who wonders quite insistently why Mommy doesn’t have a job?  Ruby was asking if grownups get an allowance.  No, I said, grownups have jobs, where they do work and get money.  Predictably, the next questions were But how do you get money, Mommy? What's your job?

So I told her that I used to be a lawyer and before that I used to help people from other countries’ governments when they came to town. That now we are so lucky that Daddy gets paid enough money that I can be with her and Carl instead of being at work all day.  That I do some work at home and for her school that’s really important, even if I don’t get money for it.  That Mommy and Daddy worked hard and saved our money for a long time before she was born so that we would be able to live this way now.  That my being around home more makes things easier for all of us when Daddy travels and works really hard.  Ruby didn’t really seem to understand all that, but she moved on to asking about loans and mortgages instead. 

The whole conversation left me uneasy.  I couldn’t decide if I was over-justifying myself or under-explaining.  Is it that I don’t wholly approve of myself?  I think every adult should have enough skills to support herself, and that economically relying on a spouse long term is generally unwise.  I think people need to have fulfilling work and that everyone must share her talents and efforts with society.  I have no current plans to go “back to work,” but statistically, most people do as the children get older, so it’s likely I will eventually.  However, with the economic freedom to “stay home” and spend more time with the children that I waited many long years to have, with my spouse’s full support (“whatever makes you happy”), especially when the work I was doing was unfulfilling, is mine such a bad choice?

 

I don’t care so much what the general public and L1nda Hirschm@ns of the world think.  But I do care what my kids think of me.  I don’t want Ruby, or Carl, to think that all mommies stay home, or that mine is the lifestyle they should aspire to.  I want them to have brilliant and exciting careers, although I haven’t quite worked out how they will manage that and still find true love and properly raise my grandchildren.  I don’t want them to think I somehow flunked out of work and that mommyhood is the only thing I could do.

So, if you’re a stay at home parent, what do you tell the kids about it? Do you think they treat and respect you differently than if you worked?  How do you think their ambitions are shaped by your choices?

 

Random Notes Strung Together

Another week gone by, and Carl is Still Not Potty Trained, but he seems to be doing better in recent days, so I am keeping an open, hopeful, and yet non-pressuring mind about the whole project.  He is so cute and chatty now, and this whole boy experience is so different from how Ruby was.  I thought I'd be getting more of the same kind of little kid action with the second child, but it's new in ways both exciting and annoying.

 

Carl’s favorite flavor is chocolate, only he nearly always calls it “black,” as in “black milk,” and “black doughnut” (not that I would ever feed them doughnuts, of course).  He keeps announcing “I have a good idea!”  which invariably involves doing something with his best friend, E.  When he and E play together, interspersed with the fun there is usually a good round of hitting, screaming, throwing toys and general bad behavior.  Then, when it’s time for someone to go home, they hug and kiss each other on the lips.  E’s mom and I are working hard to get some future-blackmail-worthy photos of that.

 

Ruby, by contrast, is potty trained, mostly, and seems to be doing well in general.  At school, she is working on numbers greater than ten, drawing the parts of a flower, and reading and spelling three letter words.  Ruby had her first sleepover a couple of weekends ago.  It was pretty lame, but then she is 4 and her friend is 5, so really, you can’t expect me to roll out the big entertainment guns yet, can you?  They at junk food (homemade nuggets, fries, apples) for dinner, watched a movie (Herbie the Love Bug), and stayed up a good hour or so past Ruby’s usual bed time until Rod the Party Pooper made them quiet down.  In the morning, we had green pancakes and green milkshakes because it was St. Patrick’s Day, and that was that.  She wants to have another one soon.

 

We (meaning mostly Rod) have been trying to get Ruby to ride her bike more, but she doesn’t seem very into it, and won’t go more than about .035 miles per hour.  At this rate, she will never learn to do it without training wheels, although a bunch of her friends can do it already.  By contrast, she and Carl both like riding the two-or-three-wheeled scooters some of the other kids have, so we will probably get some for them soon.  Rod wanted to do it already; I am being the Grinchy Voice of Delayed Gratification.  This week’s sticky topic of conversation with Ruby was Sex, including the inevitable “how exactly do the sperm get to the egg?,”  “does it hurt?”  and “did you do that?”  We also touched briefly on puberty, and she was very amused to know that grownups have underarm hair.  What do you figure she’ll be going on about this week?  Drugs? Domestic Violence? Fundamentalism? Campaign Finance Reform?

 

Rod spent long hours scouring the Internet for welding gloves in Ruby’s size and building a welding table than can be adjusted to her height, and he was finally able to give Ruby her first welding lesson the weekend before last.  She seemed happy, if rather less impressed than Rod might like.  Rod has repaired a few pieces of Montessori equipment for Ruby’s teacher lately, with Ruby’s help.  Ruby seemed very happy to be out in Rod’s shop, trying out the new small-sized hand tools he’s bought her, and helping him with the glue and the Dremel tool or whatever.  Ruby’s teacher reports that she is now trolling the classroom, actively looking for things that need fixing to take home to Daddy, saying “how my Daddy makes the world a better place is fixing things for people,” which only swelled Rod’s head up a moderate amount and has ensured that Ruby will be dragged out to work in the shop again, and again, and again.

 

Rod is leaving town again, this time to give a speech at some geek conference.  I am completely unable to judge his performance as a public speaker, especially to a room full of fellow nerds, so he hasn’t rehearsed in front of me.  It’s not that I don’t appreciate Rod’s brilliance, rather that I’ve become accustomed to it.  Plus, we have non-overlapping senses of humor; I get in trouble for not laughing at his jokes (although friends tell me he’s very funny), and then once the science gets above about the 10th grade level, I can’t follow him anyway. Then after that speech, he’ll be back, and then he’s leaving again, then coming back, then leaving again, repeat, repeat, repeat.  We’ll just keep the suitcase in the living room for a while.

 

I have been very busy trying to get my mom’s house up for sale, even though mostly I am just talking on the phone a lot and sending e-mails.  It’s very frustrating, not being on site to handle things and having to ask my poor sister to do it all.  I am also drowning in tax returns (ours, kids’(!), dead mom’s, sister’s) and above all, the fundraiser I am co-chairing for Ruby’s school.  My, but I hate committees, databases, and people who think they’re in charge of me, and it’s only going to get worse between now and April 14, the Big Day.

 

The other hard part is adjusting to an interruption filled life:  in the old, pre-child days, when things were really busy at work or even in law school, I could just buckle down and work long hours with only short breaks for sleeping and showering and saying “hey,” to Rod as we passed in the hallway.  I didn’t cook, clean, run errands, or do much of anything fun.  It was a soul-sucking drag that made me hate my life, but I was sure efficient.  Now, that sort of focus is not even possible; too much of the day is automatically devoted to childcare and related household maintenance.  This is good, of course, life is a lot more interesting and fun in general now, but it’s requiring changes to my work habits and mental processes that I didn’t really foresee.

 

So if you notice I’m posting even less in the next couple of weeks, that’ll be why.

My Mouth Hurts

....which is a secret phrase meaning, I'm really quite tired Mom, and by the way, I'm about to barf bread, juice, chocolate cake and hot dogs all over the back seat of this car, just so you know...

As I was telling Rod, I'm not sure whether to throw up or cry today.  To outline my reasoning:

Rod just left.  For Two (Insert Expletive) Weeks. 

Ruby threw up three times last night, then woke up a few times moaning.  Today she hasn't barfed but seems a little feverish and asked to take a nap at 10 a.m., which is never a good sign.  Carl's nose is running, and he woke up at 5 and just would not shut up and go back to sleep.  Rod is also sick (only a cold, so far) and since I was merely exhausted and queasy, I got to get up and deal with Carl.  To be fair, I did manage to get Carl to go back to sleep around 6:30, and Rod got the kids up and dressed so I could sleep until 8.  I'm not sure whether I have a cold or a stomach problem or both, but I'm not quite right either. 

My work situation is making me unhappy right now, too.

For the person led her by a search engine while looking up "how to handle tantrums in child of under four years," I wish I could help you but we mostly just improvise here.  What I really need to know is how to handle tantrums in other trial lawyers...

I am bursting full of child observations which I will have to share soon.  But, Carl just woke up from his refreshing 15 minute nap, so I must sign off.

Whoops

Sorry. Apparently I broke Typepad last night.  I lovingly wrote a long and heartfelt update on the state of the household, and I clicked "publish now," and suddenly all of Typepad was gone, completely inaccessible.  So now I have to apologize for not only leaving you so long without news, but also for the disappointing quality of version two, and for breaking the system.

The last couple of weeks is one big chaotic blur in my brain, and if I owe you an e-mail, phone call, thank you note, or anything else, I am sorry for the delay and will be in touch shortly, I swear.

So, to recreate in brief: Santa was good to us.  We had, by our standards, many beloved visitors over the past week or so.  My fantasy of hosting the family at Christmas has been fulfilled, more or less. No, it wasn't perfect but it was pretty close, at least for the turnips and me. There were tantrums, but not many.  I probably offended, disappointed, bored or insulted various people sometime, and if you were among them, I apologize for whatever I said, didn't say, did or didn't do. 

We shopped, we cooked, we ate and ate and ate, we drank and drank and drank, we took photos.  A train took over my living room, a lovely new kitty arrived, a dog visited, we played Scrabble (I don't really like it, but if you make me play, watch out), the Inaugural Christmas Day Barbecue was held, Ruby learned to salt rim glasses, I incinerated Rod's birthday cake, there were lots of new books to read, toys to play with, and clothes to wear. The biggest blot on the whole holiday season for me was work.  I had planned to be off duty but for one meeting, and yet somehow I ended up being quite busy right when I meant to be playing with my nieces.   It ruined both my mood and my schedule and has brought on a whole new round of "What the Hell am I Doing With My Life, Anyway?" navel-gazing.  I am dreading whatever it is I am going to have to do this week to get back on track with my various assignments. 

New Year's Eve is my least-favorite holiday, but in a fit of holiday mania, we hosted an impromptu party and it was really wonderful.  There was way too much food, children racing around with noise makers, and seven bottles of champagne consumed per nine drinking adults, plus however much funky beer Rod handed out during his tasting session.  Ruby stayed up to nearly 11 p.m., her latest night ever.  I was able to avoid almost all hangover symptoms yesterday, thanks to the length of the party, my time-tested hangover-prevention techniques, and Liver of Steel.

Rod, however, was not so blessed and spent much of New Year's Day looking green and bleary. In fact, the whole day was kind of a write off, as we are all trying to get back to normal life.  Ruby and Carl are still on daycare winter break, and at present they are mourning the recent departure of their slightly-older, and ever-so-cool, cousins.   

Ruby was tired from the big party, yet refused to nap, and then there was this exceedingly gross incident, which I will spare her the future embarrassment of recounting for you now. Carl was well rested, but he's at this stage of life where he has no impulse control whatsoever, and he desperately wants things, so you have to make him cry about 746 times a day, as you gently pry his fingers off the knife, or scrape the potting soil from his mouth, or free Ruby's hair from his grasp.... He also falls down a couple hundred times a day; he's not clumsy really, just overly ambitious and unfamiliar with the laws of physics.  And finally, although Carl's starting to say some words, he's really not capable of expressing his deepest desires, or just how pissed off he is when you've managed to guess what he wants but have denied him it anyway.  I tried to get them to help me plant some pansies and they fought over the digging tools, Carl ate dirt and rolled in it.  Then I argued with Ruby about why we need to take down the Christmas tree, and we finally gave up and went to the park. 

So we have moved on, to sobriety, early bedtimes, sensible diets, packing up decorations and paying bills and all that.  Rod leaves for another long trip on Saturday and I am dreading it.  I don't really do New Year's Resolutions, but I am in this contemplative funk and am taking stock and making lists.  The last few years have been so good overall, that I can't shake the feeling that I'm headed for a long patch of yucky sometime soon.  This year, I either don't know what to wish for, or I have no clue on how to get to what I do want.  There are some good things on the horizon, too, though, and soon enough we'll be back in the swamp of busy, so I'll snap out of it. 

I hope to have photos for you soon.

Lactose Free!

Carlitos is about 36 hours into his lactose-free diet.  I don't know if it's working at all, because thanks to the miracle of daycare and a tiny bit of luck, I avoided all poopy diapers today.  Daycare teacher says they're still giant packets of gross mush, however.  And she's worried that he's not eating much.  I spent a long time on the phone yesterday with the doctor's office, discussing Litos' butt problems....'What does it look like, welts or little red dots?" "Both, I'd say."  "Have you tried X?"  "Yeah, it made him scream."  "What about Y?"  "More screaming..." 

The final pronouncement was that we (meaning me) need to be more consistent, so I made a very expensive trip to the grocery store for supplies (various butt pastes in duplicate for home and daycare, soy toddler formula, soy milk, lactose-free regular milk, soy yogurt...).  And now we are glopping on the hydrocortisone ointment (not cream) for three days and Aquaphor besides, and then we will confer again with the nurse if it doesn't improve sufficiently.  I still think there's yeast involved, too, but time will tell.   

Promotions

Ruby and Carl moved to their new daycare classes this week.  It was more of an upheaval for them than I'd been expecting.  I thought Carl wouldn't notice much at all, but his teachers told me he cried a little when they left him to visit in his new class on Thursday, although he did recover pretty quickly and had fun.  The next day (yesterday/Friday) he spent the whole day in the new room, and the report I got was that he had a great time exploring and was not at all fussy, but he only slept 15 minutes.  I believe that's a new record of nap-free behavior for Carl and I felt really bad for him.  That night, he fell asleep in the car on the way home, and I put him in bed and he didn't get up until 5 a.m., and then he even went back to sleep until about 7:30, also late by his standards.

Ruby seems to like being a big-kid Starfish now, but apparently the first day of it freaked her out, as she had one of her rare potty accidents, and then that night she wouldn't go to sleep or stay asleep.  She sneaked up behind me when I was on the phone an hour after I'd put her in bed, and startled me bad.  Rod found her camped in our bed a little later, and somehow she took off her Pullup at some point and then wet the bed, and then next morning she was up and in our bed early.  Later, as I put some stuff away in her room, I found a pillow and a bunch of binkies in her closet, so she must have been in there part of the night, too. 

I didn't work as much as I had hoped to this week, but one interesting thing that happened is that I now have a lawsuit filed where I am the only attorney of record.  This is a milestone, but don't be too impressed because it's a very simple case.  I just hope it doesn't turn messy in some way I can't even foresee because I still feel like I'm winging it all the time.

Since I am trying hard not to spend money these days, being house rich and cash flow negative, naturally it was time for me to be forced to do so by accidentally murdering my poor decrepit cell phone.  (No, I didn't drop it in the toilet.  If you really must know, I poured most of a Diet Coke into my purse and marinated it for several minutes before I noticed I had done that).  I really do have to have a phone these days for work and daycare acessibility. So now I am having fun with my new gadget, taking photos, checking e-mail, and making Rod jealous.  Here are my first two photos. 

This one is my "office" at the law firm I do work for...glamourous, isn't it?

And this is an unflattering shot of Binky Girl: