• Previous posts

  • Summer camp
  • Pet life
  • My long hot paddleboard summer
  • Love with no end
  • The decades-later payoff of all this blogging
  • Mark making
  • Good grip
  • Give a hoot
  • Goodbye K-12
  • Swipe left, swipe right
  • When you’re sliding into first
  • Pet musings
  • Employable
  • Ruled by weiner (no, not that kind)
  • And then there were three

Archives from 2002-2006

• My kids are both good sleepers. I suppose I shouldn’t even say that in print or out loud or even think it without immediately pounding my fist bloody on the nearest block of wood, but there it is. Dylan goes down every night at 8 PM like clockwork now, and doesn’t even require the endless rocking/bassinet-jiggling/exhausted humming his brother did. Also, Riley — the world’s most stubborn, willful, obstinate toddler — seems to believe he’s not allowed out of his bed when we’re not in the room, and for some reason OBEYS this mysterious never-communicated (but much appreciated) edict, going so far as to wail piteously if he drops a toy onto the floor because AIIIEEEE, he cannot leave the confines of his mattress. Can I get a high five on that one? Even though we technically had nothing to do with this admirable behavior whatsoever? MAH DICK IS LONG.

• Vomited soy formula, while not exactly something I would dab on my wrists and behind my ears, smells about a thousand times less horrific than the milk variety. Still: baby puke, why is there so much of it again? He gags on his fingers, he randomly horfs for no particular reason, he spews in the dead of night. While all the while smiling, eating, cooing, and generally acting like it’s no big deal, but DUDE: BIG DEAL. Big, gross, disgusting DEAL. We’re off to the pediatrician today to see if there’s anything we can do, other than Scotchgard the entire house.

• I was playing with Riley in the backyard yesterday and I accidentally sent his ball flying over the fence and across the street. While Riley watched his ball sail out of sight, he turned to me and said — with perfect enunciation, mind you — “Oh, shit!”

Is it wrong that my first reaction was one of pride? Yes? Oh, well then I was totally upset. Downright scandalized.

• The weather was gorgeous this weekend, a perfect watermelon-slice of summer, and I’ve got the sunburn to prove it. We had a pretty good time hanging around in our yard with the kids, but I think both JB and I felt the crunch of parenting two small children. We couldn’t really just up and go for a long hike, or drive to the beach without a level of strategic planning not conducive to relaxing sunny afternoons, or even just sit in an Adirondack chair for more than five consecutive minutes without having to tend to someone’s cry-hole, or fetch more juice, or play the brain-numbing “FIND RIWWY” game (where Riley “hides” in plain view and you must act like a blind moron, peering around vaguely and wondering out loud where on earth Riley got off to).

I told JB that I think that the infant/toddler combo has to be one of the hardest stages of parenting we’ll go through, until of course they are both sneaking out at night and getting DWIs and ending up in juvie. I mean, I know we’ve got plenty of challenges ahead, but it seems to me that while Riley’s pain-in-the-butt factor has certainly skyrocketed in some ways, many things are so much easier now that he’s a pint-sized person and not a squirmy (adorable!) helpless grub.

Those of you with experience in such things, what say you? Baby/toddler siblings = harder than when they’re both older? Or, god help me, easier?

I linked to this video a while back and I’m a little embarrassed to say that JB and I have been quoting from it sort of nonstop ever since. In fact, I’d like to share with you a very special voicemail left on my phone today by my husband (sorry about the sound quality): HOW YOU LIKE MAH DICK NOW?

← Previous Page — Next Page →

• My product review site:

  [Older recommendations]