Infant solidarity

If you like babies, biodiesel, and Bostonians, you would like Jbeeky. And if you love swearing as much as I do, you'd LOVE her.

Which brings me to my point: the woman is suffering. She is in the process of adopting a daughter, Ellen, from Taiwan. And she has been waiting forever for the approval to fly over and bring Ellen home.

In the meantime, the folks caring for Ellen in Taiwan keep sending her images of her beautiful daughter. But there are little worrisome elements of these images that are making the wait even more torturous. For example, they sent her a picture of Ellen with her onesie unsnapped. And a video of the baby, stunned by the video equipment and on the verge of crying.

I mean CHRIST, PEOPLE. It's enough to make a mama burst out of own skin in frustration. It's not OK to have a baby halfway around the world and to be prevented from picking her up and comforting her, or snapping her shirt! And Jbeeky is weathering this storm with impressive fortitude, waiting for the adoption agency to give her travel dates, so she can finally fly to Taiwan (probably with her own maternal wings, like a gelfling... if you recall, only female gelflings have wings, and I'm going to guess they are suited to this exact transpacific purpose).

In the meantime, there is nothing to do but wait... But, wait! There is something we can do. Baby V is demonstrating.

Yes! This is for YOU, Sister Ellen. All hail the unsnapped onesie, popular with Californian babies around the world.

Much love from the Mama Family to the Jbeeky Family...

Chebbles is tired of being at home

Chebbles just can't wait for preschool to begin.

She is chomping at the bit to interact with other kids, despite my throwing her into every playdate/playgroup situation I can manage. Yesterday she spied on our neighbor's house until their car was in the driveway, then she shot out the door calling for them.

Luckily, they like The Chebs, so they had her over for dinner. As is typical, she and the neighbor girl held a complicated jewelry exchange, and she came home with a brand new tiara and a gorgeous rhinestone ring, both of which were worn around ner neck (?) at breakfast this morning.

She's a social person, our Chebble. From a very early age, she was injecting herself in older kids' play situations, and thank goodness she's now learning to pretend and suggest fun activities to others.

I remember how tearfully grateful I was, when she was about 13 months old and insisted on playing with some older kids at the playground, when they actually included her. She had walked straight over to their sandbox, where they were playing "farm" -- someone was the mom, the dad, the cow... you get the picture -- and she started trying to talk with them and get involved. So one little girl said, "OK, you can be THE BABY," and Chebbles fit right into the farm scene.

Now she embarks on huge play scenes by herself in her room, but her favorite thing is still to goof off with her friends. So when we return from Germany, and after we celebrate her third birthday, she's heading down the road to preschool. So nine hours a week, she'll be with her kind.

Or is it just ME who can't wait?

Pacifier Plan

Although it's been well established that I HATE pacifiers, I've made a decision about Baby V's, which is, it stays.

She loves her "Kitty" -- the Wubbanubs in her crib -- a little stuffed animal with a pacifer attached. And, most importantly, she doesn't lose it in the middle of the night and scream for its return. She can find it herself, or she falls asleep and it falls out of her mouth (weighted by the stuffed animal), and peace reigns.

She doesn't want it outside of her crib, and although she's now five months, and I'd resolved to lose the pacifiers by four months, we're keeping it. Because it works and it's not a total pain in the rear.

(Thanks for the question, Amy! I've been meaning to come clean on this subject.)

Otto's treasure hunt continues

I've mentioned before that our cat wears a magnetic collar. I had purchased it for him so he could activate our raccoon-proof cat door. Unfortunately, Otto lacks the mental stamina to brave the raccoon-proof door.

However, I've left the magnetic collar on him. Because he is picking up every rusty nail from our backyard and the surrounding yards, so that children may play barefoot without worrying about emergency tetanus shots.

My report today is that he brought in THREE RUSTY FISHHOOKS. They were ancient-looking, these little hooks. Many years ago (at least 40 years ago) a stream ran behind our house. I'm guessing that some little boys, who are probably all in AARP by now, went fishing back there one day, and left the hooks.

How/why did Otto unearth them now? Seriously, three gnarly old fishhooks, all attached to his magnet at once. And just now, he brought in a massive rusty staple -- at least five inches long.


Good job, Dodds, good job. Saving all the foot flesh of children in Central Costa County.

Just doing my job, ma'am.

Yearning for a geek reunion

I cut off all of my hair shortly before my 10 year high school reunion, so I looked kind of butch. And I drank too much and fell down on the dance floor twice. Nevertheless, the love flowed among our class! I saw people I'd forgotten, and we all confessed various crushes to each other and laughed our heads off.

There were some speculations at the time as to what happened with the 5-year reunion. It seems that there had BEEN ONE, but none of us geeks had been invited. Huh.

Then the 15-year mark came and went without a notice of a reunion, but I was busy starting the agency and forgot about it entirely.

Now that we're coming up on 20 years, I'm starting to get pissed off. We elected people our senior year whose JOB IT IS to arrange the class reunions. And they seem to have dropped the ball almost entirely. First the 5-year reunion of "just them" then, yes, a nice 10-year reunion, then... nothing.

I ran for a class officer position my senior year of high school. If I had won, you bet your ass I would be throwing reunions left and right. We would be organized as a class and communicating with each other. I'd probably have some sweet newsletter going.

As it is, we're all stumbling around, asking each other, "Uh, any word about a reunion?"

Because my high school populace elected JERKS. Jerks and wieners who left us high and dry. All of us geekier kids (who, it must be noted, went off to more exciting, successful careers PLUS we all got more attractive in the interim) were left behind.

So now we're all on Facebook and Ning, sending each other messages such as... "Has anyone heard SQUAT about a class reunion?"

I'm inclined to give the jerks and wieners a break, and think, "Hey, it was 20 years ago... that's a lot of lifetime commitment to ask of a 17-year-old."

But then I think, screw that! They knew, before they ran for office, that they were responsible for getting the whole class together every five years.

And if they don't want to run the reunion now, I would forgive that... they should just DELEGATE IT to someone who would.

Folks, admit that you screwed up by taking on this commitment and pass on the task to someone else. And while you do that, you should have to publicly confess, "No, I should not have run for office. I should have given up my candidacy to the vastly more qualified Shaken Mama."

Then all would be forgiven.

Me and The Utes

This morning at dawn, I called my elderly uncle who lives in Munich, Onkel Rudi. He was thrilled to hear that we are coming to Germany next week. Our whole conversation was in our special brand of shouted German.

Me: I can't wait to see you, Onkel Rudi! And to introduce you to my family.

Onkel R.: Yes, I'll come visit you at your house there, and meet the new little one. What is her name?

Me: (her name)

Onkel R.: Jennifer?

Me: (her name, shouted louder)

Onkel Rudi: Judy?

Me: (spelling name, carefully trying to remember the German alphabet, getting louder and louder)

Onkel Rudi: You'll just have to tell me in person.


....

So over breakfast, Hub-D and I talked about this issue. We're about to spend a month in a country that absolutely cannot pronounce our child's name. The name has no German equivalent and it's confused the heck out of all of our relatives since we announced her birth.

Therefore, we decided that Baby V is going to be "Ute" (pronounced "OOO-ta")while she's in Deutschland. It's one of the most popular girl names in Germany (???) and it suits her in its absurdity.

We spent the morning calling her "Ute," so that she started to identify it as her own. Yep, that'll be me with Baby Ute strapped to my chest at the Biergarten, sloshing a Radler into her hair. Oh Ute!

Ya blog, ya jinx

I shouldn't have told you guys that Baby V slept through the night for two nights.

The sleeping has deteriorated since that day. Last night was a horrid walk through memory lane, and today my eyes can't focus and it truly feels like I have a vice attached to the top of my head.

Have mercy! Lift the hex, fellow sleepless friends.

Hell barking

My neighbor's beagle NEEDS TO GO.

Yes, these are the same neighbors who extended Stanley's life beyond what was humane. Yes, these are the same neighbors who adopted a barking hound who made my pregnancy even more hellish that it already was.

After that dog was euthanized for biting someone, they quickly adopted a beagle. He was a former laboratory dog, so he'd been de-barked. It's sad that he was a laboratory dog, and sad he underwent that painful and inhumane procedure, but HOORAY FOR DEBARKED DOGS living next door to my light-sleeping infant!

THEN...

That dog was "lonely" so they got a second beagle. One that is NOT debarked. And as of yesterday, she started really howling up a storm. It's exceedingly nervewracking, and it wakes the baby.

But we are essentially powerless. Our phone calls last time only made our neighbors stop being friendly with us, but did nothing about the dog.

Other than pretending to have been bitten by the beagle, whose only problem is that she's an untrained beagle in the hands of bozos, I can't think of how to solve this problem.

So the barking/howling/crazy beagle bothers me. And she bothers Baby V a lot. But no one is as bothered as Hub-D, who likes his quiet.

And nothing shatters the peace as much as an unhappy beagle. Christ, people, what did I do to DOGS in a previous life such that I am tortured by them now?

Birthday mania

Maybe I'm instilling the wrong ideals in Chebbles, but she and I are getting awfully hyper about her birthday party, although it's still more than a month away.

"Mama, I want to have a LOT of music players at my birthday."

"There will be a guitar player," I explain, "and your friends can play instruments along with him."

"Can I have a bounce house?"

"No."

"Can I have a Percy cake?

"Why?"

"Z. likes Percy."

"OK."

"But with blue candles," she adds. (Green candles are overkill?)

"And Mama? I don't want to share my toys at my birthday."

"That's pretty selfish, Chebbles. Some of your friends might even bring presents for you, and you don't want to share your toys with them?"

"I don't want their presents."

"OK. I'll tell everyone -- no presents."

"No wait, I DO want presents." (She says this like I originally misunderstood her.)

To that end, is it too Joan Crawford of me to request that people bring us used presents? Used costume jewelry or dress-up clothes or books, or anything they can find within the confines of their own attics or thrift stores? Either that, or experiential-based presents? (A theme-based playdate would knock the pants off another choking hazard piece of plastic in this house...)

Is my new eco-freakism going too far when I ask that people wrap present for Chebbles in scrap paper or newspapers? Or, the ultimate Joaniness, "No presents, please."

This latter statement is forbidden by Hub-D, who feels that a girl ought to get presents on her birthday, and I'm inclined to agree, but when I'm staying up late at night shoveling her third My Little Pony into his wicker stall, I start getting mean thoughts.

But I don't know how to communicate my "bring used items" idea, without sounding like I'm presuming people will bring presents. That's the #1 faux pas of event planning.

Ultimately, this is the point: the child is three. She doesn't care if something is in its original packaging, or it's stained or broken. If it's shiny, and it purported to be something like a mermaid earring or a feather from a magical bird, she will love it forever, secretly stashing it under her pillow at night, despite the fact toys are strictly forbidden in her bed.

She just won't muster up the same amount of love for anything that requires batteries.

But anyway, back to the whole point of having children: party planning. The first batch of invites are out there, and the RSVP's are starting to roll in. Will we have this much fun planning her wedding some day? I doubt the Percy cake is going to fly (unless she marries Z, I guess).

Pieces of V

I wonder if infants spend their first few months in absolute confusion... one long episode of "what... the... HELL!?" And once they get their land legs, they can show what they're really made of.

I guess in that way it's like cats at the pound. You can't judge them on their caged personalities. Likewise, a person shouldn't be held responsible for anything they do when they're freshly out of the womb, feral and totally off their rocker.

To that end, Baby V has really shaped up. For example, she is now a sleeper. She's an exceedingly light sleeper, but she takes at least two naps during the day, and then wakes up just once during the night. Last night it took her two hours to fall asleep, but once she did, it was lights out until 3am. So I'll take it.

We can see this child's personality starting to arise. For example, she's extraordinarily social. It pisses her off when one person in the room hasn't made eye contact with her yet, and she focuses on them with her laser-like Delft-blue eyes until they stop what they're doing and acknowledge her outrageous beauty.

I've been known to interrupt conversations, "Excuse me, but my child would really like you to look at her. It will just take a minute." And once that person meets her gaze, she smiles with her whole body. Her eyes crinkle and her nose buttons up and her mouth gapes into a toothless grin. This is accompanied by an arm flailing, leg kicking, squirming display of glee... just because you looked at her.

She's also a pickier eater than The Chebs. As a baby, Chebbles would wolf down anything she could get her mitts on, even yogurt, which made her vomit throughout her first year. But Baby V is more discriminating, as in, "Hey, if you want to serve green beans, knock yourself out, but I'm not going to eat them." Today I tried a different formula for her, and she gulped down six ounces at one feeding. For her, that amount at one time is unheard of. She was uncomplaining about her old Gentlease formula all of this time, but I can now surmise that it tastes like ass. Sorry kid! Glad we tried a new one that you like.

It frightens me to speculate how large the child will grow, now that I'm feeding her milk she enjoys.

But that's just V for you -- she didn't become a jerk because she didn't like her formula. She'll go with the flow, silently hoping that something better will come her way. It's that way with most situations. It takes a lot to piss her off, or to incite her to cry. Yesterday she got a big gulp of bathwater by accident, and cried for about three minutes. It was weird. I thought, "Oh, that's what her cry sounds like." I'd never really heard it before.

She's also fantastic in the car, as she enjoys the streetlights and the hillsides, or just the profile of her sister in the carseat next to her.

And finally, the girl loves a party. She's never more at home than when she's got a room filled with people who can gaze upon her beauty, where music is playing and her sister (the greatest, most amazing person in the whole world, according to Baby V) might be dancing in the background. Plus she might get to gnaw on a watermelon rind, or be held by a new person, which is the whole POINT of getting up in the morning, isn't it?

Old Home Week

Remember the movie "Sheena?"

As I recall, Sheena had a signal of some kind -- a call she would use to summon all the animals of the savannah. And I'm pretty sure, deliberately or not, I sent out a Sheena-like signal for all my old friends to come stampeding back to me.

In the last few months, I have heard from... EVERYONE. It's strange how I haven't heard a peep from some of these folks for, in some cases, more than a decade. Then in some kind of LinkedIn/Facebook/Googlemania STAMPEDE, I'm hearing voices from the past almost every day.

It's not just Julie. It's the Jehovah's Witness guy I dated in 1999.

And my pal K., whom I sat next to for years while I worked at Houghton Mifflin. She's also a mother of two, and it's been marvelous to be back in touch. She loves bees too.

I also heard from the 6'7" guy I met at SUUSI. We had spent years kind of mooning after one another, then nothing... until now. It seems he joined the Marines, unjoined the Marines, got married and now has two boy babies, the ages of my girl babies.

Oh, and the musical phenomenon I went to high school with, who now runs a music-based preschool in New York City? Yes, she wrote me too. And she in turn connected me with our friend D., the woman who introduced me to Duran Duran and The Smiths.

How about the man from Michigan I dated for five years, who followed me to Boston then went straight back to Michigan? Then pursued me once again, only to be rejected because I could not STAND that he sported a new hoop earring in each ear? Yes! He found me too.

I don't know what to make of it. Today I heard from a woman, M., whom I enjoyed so much during my Boston days. Some of the most resonant funny quotes in my life came from her, but we've been out of touch since 1998. Until right now! Hello M.!

(Aroooooooo!)

My Sheena old friend signal definitely seems to be working.

What's the hurry?

You may be asking yourself, why is she in a hurry to get pregnant again? Why is she checking her OV-Watch, just on "CYCLE DAY 03" once every few hours, in case she spontaneously ovulates during her period? She's got a beautiful family, two darling baby girls, and what's the RUSH here?

I've been thinking a lot about that, when I'm not hitting the "C" button on the OV-Watch to force it to take additional readings and collect as much data as possible about my skin's saline level in order to accurately predict TO THE SECOND when I might ovulate.

Why? Pregnancy is HELL, especially for me. And even for people who are funnier and more well-adjusted than I am, it's a huge chore from beginning to end.

Why don't I take some time off, let Baby G grow some more and enjoy being a non-pregnant mother? And let Chebbles enjoy a little respite from a constantly barfing, paranoid and miserable caretaker?

Because Hub-D and I fall into a category known in the OB-GYN world as "Pedal to the Metal."

So if we really want to have more children, we have to race like blazes to the finish line. Because, at best (not counting any additional chemical pregnancies), we're batting .500 for my eggs. I haven't touched a method of birth control since September 2004, and we've "tried" every month that I haven't been pregnant. And the crappy part is that I'll be 37 in two weeks, so our batting average is only going to go down -- both for actually getting pregnant, as well as keeping any pregnancies.

I'm haunted by Dr. W's words, when I asked him what our plan should be for future pregnancies, and whether we risked having a child with disabilities if we mated this late in life, and he said, "Every day counts." !!! Maybe I should wear a second OV-Watch on my other wrist JUST IN CASE this one has a mechanical failure halfway through my cycle!

Who the hell sold us this whole line that we could all wait until we were 40 to have babies? They were totally WRONG. I mean, who can I sue? Madonna, for sure. And probably Betty Friedan -- because our bodies were not designed to have babies in our late 30's. Just ask the orthopedic surgeon who re-injected my right wrist with cortisone yesterday because my achey old joints weren't designed to carry babies at this advanced age.

I wish I'd had my shit together and taken care of getting married and having babies 10-15 years ago, breeding magnificent large babies and then being able to carry them place to place without the benefit of cortisone shots to the bone.

So anyway, every day counts, apparently. And every cycle is another shot up at bat. I know there is a terrible use of the word "woody" to be made here, but I refuse to be that crass.

Julie

Do you guys remember Julie?

I went to college with Julie, and we were the ones who sullied the country-formerly-known-as-Yugoslavia.

But in the years after we graduated from Michigan, we lost touch. I often thought about her, and our ridiculous adventures and deep conversations. We had known each other since freshman year, and it was she who saved my life by suggesting I work for The Michigan Daily after my roommate was revealed to have slept with my boyfriend.

I don't know if we all realize, during college, how hard it's going to be to make friends in the "real world." We should have clung tighter to those college friendships, because it's rare to meet people who operate on the same wavelength as we do, and exceedingly difficult to weed such people out of a big city environment later on.

I've missed Julie, more and more as time went by. She has an irritatingly common name, so it was impossible to Google her. Even her unusual middle name didn't help, and every month or so, I'd try some new method of locating her... paying out the nose for the useless Michigan Daily alumni directory, Googling her mom, moping about it.

Then on Tuesday, she called me. She had come across some of my old letters a few months ago and had gotten moony about me too. So she found me through our PR agency, called Hub-D and got our home number.

We talked for an hour, as our daughters weedled us in the background. She had some good additions and corrections for the Yugoslavia/Athens/Cyprus story and we primarily laughed our rumps off. We're now working to establish a regular talking time each month, so we can catch up on the last FIFTEEN YEARS.

But when I hung up the phone, my whole house looked different. Everything was in technicolor. Everything looked good and right. Julie had found me, and brought back a missing piece of me while she was at it.

(And for all of you who've been asking me to tell the Cyprus story, it looks like I can't avoid it now. Now that she's reading this blog and can fill in the most ridiculous portions of it with color commentary!)

Soliciting opinions and advice

OK guys, I have two questions for you.

First, the most pragmatic issue... What is the most fuel-efficient car in which THREE Britax Marathons would fit? If we're going to carpool to preschool in September, we're going to need a way to transport another kid in the car, in addition to The Chebs and Baby V. It makes my head hot as I mull the problem.

Second, if you have any "how to get pregnant" advice, lay it on me (haha). Today is the kick-off of our "Boy or Bust" campaign* so I'm not bitter (yet), I'm not sorrowful or angry or any emotion but hopeful. As time marches on I will be less open to advice, but now I'm genuinely interested in the latest on how to get knocked up. Are people still putting a pillow under their pelvis after sex? Is there some particular, uh, position that people are espousing these days?

We've got six months to accomplish pregnancy before we start tinkering with nature in the form of IUI's etc. We were one month away from interventions when we conceived Baby V. So, what? Should I take that Vitex? Is charting still in vogue? Fill me in!


* Note to our future third daughter: Sweetheart, we love you SO MUCH, and we can't imagine our family without you. Because of you, our family is perfect. So when you go back and read Mama's blog, and possibly print out the "Boy or Bust" comment to show your therapist how you always felt like you were missing a Y chromosome, I want you to know that having three girls is PERFECT for our family. It's like a sleepover every night! Now, let's go put more lip gloss on Daddy, shall we?

OK, it's two nights in a row now. At the risk of jinxing it, I'm telling you this: Baby V has slept through the night.

Can you believe it?

Now if we could just get Chebbles to follow suit, we'll be OK...

"My curtains are scaring me!"
"I can't find Mimi!"
"I drank all my water at the same time and threw it up in my hair!"
"I'm LONELY!"

In other news, I got my period... which is only good news once, and this is that time. Now WHERE is my OV-Watch?

Hair

I'm losing hair at an impressive rate. I'm particularly impressed because of how much hair I lost DURING my pregnancy too. Where is this hair coming from? How am I not bald?

But every time I take a shower, there is the equivalent of one Muppet in the shower drain at the end. I should paste little googly eyes on it and make it my friend, yes?

I started wondering if I'm losing hair from my whole body as part of this exercise. Are my arm hairs falling out too? The wee hairs on my face? (OK, some not so wee, hello whiskers...) My eyebrows and the fine hairs atop my fingers? Are they all falling out too?

My guess is yes, so therefore I must temporarily suspend my life of crime. My DNA evidence is EVERYWHERE I go, I'm sure. I'm leaking proof of my existence throughout the county in the form of these little hairs, each of which can be traced back to me. So anyway, if you wanted me to do any crimes for you, I've got to put you on a waiting list for now. I just can't risk that kind of exposure.

(The photo above is Chebbles at the beach in Santa Barbara. Irrelevant but sweet, yes?)

Back, tear-stained and tan

You guys, we're back!

We were here, at the Family Vacation Center in Santa Barbara.

Our family had an enormous amount of fun in this order:

* Me (#1 MOST FUN!!! WINNER!!)
* Chebbles
* Baby V
* Hub-D

It's not as though Hub-D didn't have fun, but there was one adult who wept for a full 24 hours before we had to leave, who clung to our newly invalid parking pass this morning and got it wet with tears. And it wasn't him.

Hub-D requires silence to relax. His idea of a great vacation is him. On the beach with no one bothering him. And then we all come by to rub his feet, get him fresh reading materials and food, and then we leave.

So a vacation where there are children hollering with joy all day every day is not his idea of relaxation. Plus there was the matter of the weensy bed.

But whatever, *I* haven't felt that good, that relaxed, and that smile-o-riffic in years. Hot rock massage? OK! Kayaking through a kelp forest? Sign me up! Scrapbooking in the sunshine? Heck yeah.

What made it ridiculously fun and relaxing was the quality of the staff at the Family Vacation Center. When we pulled our car in, a herd of college students cheered and screamed and clapped, then THEY unloaded our car and took all of our belongings up to a three-bedroom suite so we could drift into registration and get the lay of the land.

I don't know how they hire such phenomenally enthusiastic staff, but they kept up that level of energy throughout the week. That's why I felt OK dropping my kids off with these unknown people every day. My children were crazy about their sitters. Chebbles has never been so excited about an adult in her little life as she was about her counselor, who took her on long lagoon dragon hunts (?) that she'll remember forever.

Tonight I scrubbed the last of the purple face paint from Chebbles' little cheek in the bathtub and I started to cry again. Boo HOO, people. Boo hoo, our vacation in Santa Barbara is over. My children are my responsibility again.

There is no more delicious dorm food (no really, it was spectacular dorm food), no more dropping my childen off in their heavenly little havens while I adventured off on dates with Hub-D or sought activities of my own. No more seagulls at the beach, and shells and the big dead seal that terrified and fascinated me throughout my stay.

And at night! Wine! Board games! General unhurried dicking around in sandy beach clothes, feeling beautiful and tipsy and as happy-go-lucky as I had before we added rowdy children and a California mortgage to our relationship.

So now I go to sleep with a lump still in my throat. I don't know if I can convince Hub-D to go back to a vacation that is basically all about me having a grand time while he tries to finish a book about Thomas Jefferson and keeps getting interrupted by me trying to force him to play softball with a bunch of dudes he doesn't know.

But we had fun last week, you guys. We had a freaking blast. (There are still spaces left for August 23-30. I'm just saying is all.)

Ho Ho Ho

We're going off-line for the next week, barring unforseen internet access at our beachy location.

And when my favorite blogs stop posting for awhile, it pisses me off. I get annoyed every time I see the SAME image pop up, indicating there hasn't been a new post.

Hence, this snap of Baby V, captured today. I mean come ON people, you can't get enough of that action, can you?

As I took the picture, I kept calling her, "Sir," as in, "Sir, look over here! Smile, sir!" Nice bubble beard, chickie.

Sometimes I just don't know

Is there anyone who can say with absolute certainty, when they enter a bathroom, what their true intention is? I just don't know if I can commit to being a #1 person when in fact I may decide at the very last moment that I am, indeed, a #2'er.

This sign was mounted in the bathroom of our Chinese foot massage parlor and it totally stressed me out.

I didn't photograph the metal GRATE which was situated in the bottom of the toilet bowl, so in case someone didn't get the MEMO, any toilet paper or #2 they might deposit in the toilet would be caught, and the perpetrator properly identified, I suppose.

It was too gross to take a picture of the grate, but I wasn't above capturing the sign.

Home

I just finished Julie Andrews' autobiography, "Home," and it was so marvelous in its honesty and extreme juiciness, I am already pining for a sequel.

I have to assume that she plans to write a sequel, as it ends while she's married to Tony Walton and is headed to Hollywood to star in "Mary Poppins." One can only holler, "THEN what happens, dude???" Don't leave us hanging, Fraulein Maria.

She reveals every interesting remembrance from her child -- sometimes non sequitur little factoids (the first guy she ever kissed had a huge mole on the end of his nose), and she generally pulls out all of her dirty-and-otherwise laundry and hangs it out.

While I was reading it, I came across our "Mary Poppins" cassette tape cover, and I looked at it and said, "Julie, I'm almost embarrassed to look at you, I know too much about you now!"

I had not known about her unbelievable voice as a child, which was nurtured by her questionable stepfather and paraded around through a series of vaudeville shows. As she grew older, the voice matured and was no longer so incredibly high, but still a marvel.

And she rubbed elbows with some extraordinary people, even in her younger years. It sounds like it was a lot of work, but incredibly fun and inspiring to be surrounded by talented performers, producers, costumers, and musicians throughout her early life. So I also felt like I was eavesdropping on an incredible party to which I was not invited. But still, grateful for the mole. No, not the nose-mole, the spy-mole. Oh, you know what I mean.

Frenetic

There are certain things I obsess about.

I think about Madonna in "Desperately Seeking Susan" and how she got completely dressed in ten seconds. And looked totally cool. With absolutely no strained peas in her hair.

I mourn the lamb who died to make my baby's bedding. My child wakes up smelling of lanolin, clutching the pelt upon which she naps, and I think, some ewe lost her little lamb for this.

I think about the episode where Benson's mother died. You're sitting there watching a perky 1980's sitcom, and suddenly Benson's mother dies? Who saw that coming?

I mull over people who used to like me and no longer do. You know, people like B. and D.. I'll be sitting there nursing and I'll run a slideshow of their faces, highly idealized, through my head, thinking, "How did I screw that up?"

I send my brain to Kennywood. I'll have trouble falling back asleep at 4am, so I'll pretend I'm driving to the park, then I arrive and go through the big echoey tunnel, and everything will smell of cotton candy, toffee and funnel cake and I'll ride The Whip.

I definitely obsess about getting pregnant again. Sometimes the obsession culminates in my taking a Vitex tablet and/or eating a banana in order to stack the deck in favor of a boy.

I think about Ellen's unsnapped onesie. Why wouldn't they take a moment to snap the child's shirt before taking the picture?

I'm seized with guilt over not having planted my Sunflower Project seeds yet. Chebbles asks me about it every day, responsible environmental researcher that she is, and I keep waving her off, "It's too hot." Meanwhile, the earth loses bees by the millions. And now it's my fault.

I think about my prettiness. So why not catch my gaze in the mirror while I'm carrying a tantruming child to the car for swimming lessons, and give myself a once-over and a sexy little cat-growl?

I lapse into anorexia-like thoughts about energy consumption, thinking of tiny ways to save energy, like, "Maybe I can get one more use out of this Kleenex," or "How can I never use the 'reverse' gear in my car again?"

Oh, and don't get me started about "Lost." That subject can fill whole yoga classes. (Om, shanti... What the hell was Sawyer's request to Kate?... Ommmmm.)

I think about melanoma, and how I have about 20 of the 21 "high risk" factors. But that still doesn't mean I remember to put on sunscreen. I can go pretty far down this thought path, straight into "Terms of Endearment."

I wonder what the fashions are these days. One can't reliably get that kind of information from Us Weekly, and whenever I'm in public I'm just trying to not let a child of mine get into danger or a bad mood, so I don't notice what people are wearing. I suspect that bell-shaped nursing tanks are not "in."

On a related note, I contemplate what kind of women Hub-D gets to see when he works in The City during the day. Probably women who wear blush. Thank goodness I am the mother of his children, which is kind of my only lynchpin at this point, waving goodbye to him in the morning with huge bags under my eyes and hair encrusted with rice cereal and peas.

Madonna, I am not.

But thank goodness, right?

Teefs

I think Baby V is teething.

She's drooling like crazy, gnawing maniacally on anything she can find (on my shoulder skin, it feels like I'm being attacked by an angry snail), she's snotty (clear), and most significantly, she's in a crappy mood.

That's not our V! OK, she won't be receiving any trophies (or even an honorable mention) for sleeping well, but she's always got a smile on her little mug.

And now? She's absolutely miserable. She cried on and off all day -- this baby who "never cries." I called the doctor and they recommended Tylenol, which seemed to work for an hour or so.

I took her and Chebbles to the mall in a moment of desperation -- air conditioned and filled with distractions. She didn't cry the whole time we were there. But once we were back in the car, she melted down into abject sadness once more.

Now she's crying in her crib again. It's a miserable cry. I harbor no high hopes of sleeping tonight. When I feel inside her mouth, there is a ridge of FOUR little teeth under her gums. Horrific. I feel sorry for both of us.

Watch out Kelli O'Hara

V's eye

Since Baby V was born, I've spent about 20% of my time complaining about her not sleeping, 10% of my time pathetically trying to nurse, another 10% trying on too-tight pants, and the entire rest of my time has been dedicated to cleaning out her eye.

It's been yucky from the get-go, her little eye socket. She was born with a clogged duct in her right eye, and it's oozed nonstop, sometimes partially shutting her eye with all of its myriad goo. I harrassed the doctor about it three times, begging him for some magic eyedrops to, at the very least, stop it from looking so gross. (He said no, three times, with increasing annoyance.)

It's been red and irritated and she started rubbing at it as soon as she had enough coordination in her tiny paw. All that eye pus was definitely getting in the way of her miraculous feats of beauty. ("Wow, look at that hair, but what's wrong with her eye?" was the standard comment.)

So imagine my joy this morning to discover that her tear duct has opened and the grand domination of the yucky eye has come to a close -- her eye is clear and blue and gorgeous to behold.

NOW what will I do with all this free time?

Independence

We've never been this popular on the Fourth of July. We've already gone to two parades and two parties, and we have one more party, then a dinner party following that tonight, THEN a get-together for fireworks.

I keep looking forward to the day that I can better enjoy these parties, maybe sit back with a cold glass of white wine while our kids run in a feral wolfpack with minimal supervision.

But as it stands, we attend various events and our eyes are locked onto our kids the whole time. There is Chebbles ripping grass from the ground and tossing it onto a neighbor's back (why? mystery...). There is Baby V needin' food from some source or another, plus she's got eye and nose boogers and she's basically waiting for someone to notice her.

Someday I'll socialize like a grown-up again, if I remember how.

V's Book

Baby V was loving on this book all afternoon. She was turning the pages and staring at the pictures and gnawing on each of the edges. We took a trip to Trader Joe's and she spent the entire time obsessing over her little book.

What I think is interesting is how she looks at the book when I say "book." She did this in both of the videos I took. Genius, clearly. Ridiculously cute genius.

I'm just sayin' is all.

Pals

Hey folks, I've added a bunch of sites to my "Blogs I Read" section. I've discovered a lot of juicy new blogs in recent months. So this is a scavenger hunt based on my latest blogroll. Can you find:

* A co-ed who got knocked up with Baby V's best friend/greatest rival?
* A transracial adoption story that makes your heart swell to dangerous proportions?
* Four local moms who have playdates with Chebbles (and the scars to prove it?). One of these ladies is in INDIA right now! (To escape Chebbles' playdates? Possibly.)
* Cloth bags?
* My college friend T. who always knows about cool gadgets and shows before the rest of us do?
* The cutest long distance relationship in the history of blogging?