Yahtzee!

And now I have a cold, thus bringing the illnesses I've had in the past week to full Yahtzee! status, as declared by my doctor friend, Jessie. Some say taking antibiotics puts you at higher risk for catching viruses, which would explain why the head cold that's been threatening me for over a week has now sunk its claws into my face for reals. I mean, come ON with the mucus already. I GET IT.

At times like these I find myself wanting to visualize my sinuses, in order to understand how so much fluid can issue from such a mysterious and supposedly reasonably-sized part of my face. Google brought up this photo, which I must warn you, seems to be of an actual person's dissected sinuses. (Image in context here.) The pic reveals that your sinuses are all over your face and head, basically crammed into every non-interesting head crevice and cranny. Then I found this image, which at least illustrates the brimming-with-green-yuckiness that I'm feeling. So those helped. And THEN I found this, and now I feel great, comparatively, simply because that's not happening to me.

Photos! Of Animals! And Halloween!

EDITED TO ADD: I meant to publish this yesterday (that is, Sunday night) and apparently forgot to click the "Publish post" button. Dammit! So here's another post for my NaBloPoMo quota. I didn't cheat, I swear!
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Come! Gaze upon my children in the midst of their harvest frolicks! There's a couple of photos of Lula and Nate at the Orange, CT, Agricultural Festival, and her riding a carousel at same. There are some picturesque photos of Tallulah at the DUMBO (Down Under the Manhattan Bridge Overpass) Arts Festival, and some captured images of the Chicken Invasion we witnessed there. And then there's a slew of pics from our trip to the Queens County Farm Museum, a trip which was hijacked into a trip to the confusingly adjacent Green Meadow Farm and its plentiful petting zoo, hay ride, and pony ride opportunities. The kids loved it.

Then: Halloween. Tallulah was a (scary?) fairy and Nate was a lion. First we had the NJ costume preview and then the real deal here in Brooklyn.

Lastly, in a rush of second-child-photo-deficit guilt, I took a bunch of photos of Nathaniel. Babies are cute.

(NOTE for the lazy/easily annoyed: you can also just go to Scott's photo stream, if you like, and screw this individual-link clicking.

Weekends are hard.

Your schedule is all off. No one goes to work, no one goes to school. There are tons of things you need to get done and tons of things you'd like to do -- not just the things you remember (ever so faintly, now) doing before you had kids but the things you'd like to do WITH your kids. But. First there are the things you need to get done. No, wait -- first you have to keep the kids alive and fed and rested. The child wakes up at 5:10am, the baby (for the final wake-up of the night) at 6:30am; the child watches TV while Daddy naps on the sofa and the baby finds things to mouth on the floor. Mommy is trying to recover and has been up all night with the baby's wakings, so gets to sleep in. Eventually Mommy gets up, lets Daddy have tiny break; back to nap with baby at 9:30am. Daddy takes child to library (yay!) and farmer's market (boo! even if there's cider doughnuts, WHICH THERE ARE.) Mommy and baby wake up at 11:30am; Daddy and child return soon thereafter.

Then: lunch. Child, who has been on a slow-n-steady candy bender since Halloween, is acting crazy-like. Her new tactic: repeatedly shrieking her commands, ie., PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE! or NO NO NO NO NO! As if being murdered, when in fact she is merely being helped with the zipper on her jacket. But anyway. Child to nap by 1pm. Baby is juggled between parents, who attempt to eat lunch and tidy up a little, until 3pm -- afternoon nap time. Mommy (still needs extra rest) and baby go back to nap just exactly as child wakes up. Child goes off to watch more TV with dozing sofa-Daddy. 5pm, Mommy and baby wake up. It is now too late to do anything except the fastest and most essential errands. Mommy preps laundry; Daddy takes out trash and delivers laundry; Mommy makes dinner; family eats dinner. Now: bedtime. Mommy takes baby, Daddy takes child, bedtime prep occurs, good-nights are said. Parents return to collapse on sofa, exhausted. It is 8pm.

We watch TV and browse the internet until way past our bedtimes, because really, there must be more to life than this.

No wonder we're turning into the Bickery McBickersons.

Baby is clapping! And falling.

Here is a video of 9-month-old Nate clapping. He just started doing this today, and he can do it on command, unlike the "waving" that seems to be just a fun thing his hands like to do in their spare time. The best part of the video is at the very end, when I let him plummet head-first off the sofa (INTO MY WAITING ARMS! I SWEAR!) If only I'd thought to shoot the thing in 3-D, you know?

What's most shocking about the video is that it doesn't include Lula busting in and grabbing the baby/camera/spotlight for herself. She was using the bathroom at the time. She can use the toilet without any parental help! If you don't expect her to wash her hands, that is. Or flush. Or even wipe. (We're working on it.)

My mastitis is getting better, thanks. I still feel pretty damn worn out, and I still have a sore area. And the antibiotics are making my stomach upset -- have to go get some (doomed!) L. acidophilus pills to replace my own murdered intestinal flora. Sorry, beneficial microscopic bacteria. (What would Buddha say?)

By the way, it turns out mastitis is a serious (though not literal) headache for your modern dairy farmer. The top sponsored link on the Google results page for "mastitis antibiotics" is an ad for Hoof Trimming School (labeled with the disconcerting URL www.chutesunlimited.com.) They sell Udder Comfort Sprayable mastitis cream, but I'm hoping it doesn't come to that.

NaBloPoMo plus mastitis.

So back when I signed up to post a blog post every day this month, I was all healthy and full of promise and can-do spirit. Then, the night before Halloween (AKA All Hallow's Eve's Eve) I was felled by mastitis. My symptoms included severe localized breast pain, chills, full-body aches, fever, insomnia, and (best part!) serious bouts of vomiting. It was the worst I've felt since I was in a labor, and I know that's not saying much, since labor is the worst pain ever and the last time I was in it was only 9 months ago, but STILL. It was horrible.

The treatment is antibiotics (got 'em over the phone from my doc, thankfully), hot compresses, and lots and lots of rest. The sleeping thing is hard, because Nate, with his constant state of teething, cold-having, and almost-crawling, has been waking up every hour or so all night long.

OK, so my first NaBloPoMo post is all complain-y and whatnot. I'm hoping to get that sort of post out of my system in the early days in order to let the good ol' funny and true flow forth the rest of the month. And for now, I'm going to eat dinner and watch The Office. Nothing to complain about there.

I don't like you anymore!

Things Tallulah has declared she doesn't like anymore:
Cats ("They're mean; they fight.")
Dogs ("They look at me.")
Nate ("He grabs things.")
Mommy (too many reasons to name)
Daddy (ditto)

There's a first time for everything.

A lot of firsts have happened to our family recently.

For Nate:
First night waking up only once: one night last week, though he then woke up for the day at 5:00am. Still: E for Effort.
First teeth: His two lower front teeth finally broke through this past weekend. They feel like a wee serrated knife. Poor little babe is chewing on anything he can reach and is drooling constantly.
First real food: 3 weeks ago. His response was immediately enthusiastic, with wide open mouth, active swallowing, and reaching both hands out to grab the spoon for more. So far, peas are a favorite, and sweet potatoes not so much, though he'll still eat them.
First "swim:" at Lake George. First exposure to the cold lake water resulted in a firmly negative response (i.e. instant pathetic wailing.) The next day, he was able to be slowly eased in, with a much better result. This baby loves water much like his sister, who always loved her bath, cold water, and getting wet.

For Lula:
First time sleeping with a book: This started a few weeks ago. Books she has bestowed this most high honor upon include Arielle's Hannukah Surprise and an old book of fairy tales titled It Happened One Day.
First time sleeping without wearing a diaper: Started about a month ago as an experiment. She has yet to wet the bed, though we only go diaper-free for naps at this point. She still wears pull-ups at night.

For the whole family:
First time breaking down on the NY Thruway, waiting an hour on the shoulder for a tow truck, and then riding inside the broken car on the back of the flat-bed tow truck (bouncy!) as it drove to the nearest Toyota dealership. Yeah. That was a fun day. It happened just past the Tappan Zee Bridge (coincidentally the site of my only other car-breaking-down experience) as we were making our way up to Lake George. One emergency car rental later and we were on our way. Turns out that when your Mass Air Flow Sensor blows, the gas pedal stops working. And that lesson was brought to you by about six hundo in hard cash money.