Be Nice

Kiddos, listen to this; it's really important.

Be nice to yourself. Everyone makes mistakes, and everyone must make them. Forgive yourself for needing experience in order to gain wisdom.

Be nice to the people you love. Even if they seem to nag you, they really just want you to be your best self. They probably weren't even trying to pick at you. Even if they say the same things all the time, be nice to them.

Be nice to people you don't like. Even if they really super annoy the crap out of you. They are probably dealing with lots of their own issues that you don't know about, and they're really not trying to annoy you, they're just needy and don't know how to ask for help.

Be nice to the people that scare you. Don't let them get close to you. Don't let them know you. Stay as far away from them as possible. But be nice to them. They are dangerous, and they don't know the difference between right and wrong. They will use any excuse to be scary, so be nice to them, so they don't remember you.

If you are in danger; if someone is hurting your body; if someone is making you unsafe; or if they are making you feel like there is something wrong with you, when clearly there is not: stop being nice. Walk away. Tell them to stop. If they do not stop, make them stop to the best of your abilities. You have my full permission to physically harm anyone you must in order to protect yourself. No one is allowed to hurt you. If you are not in imminent danger, though....

...be nice all the time. Be nice to every person. Do not hurt anyone on purpose. Do not hurt other people to make yourself feel better. Do not dismiss other people to pretend that you're better.  Be nice. As much as you can, and as fully as you can, be nice. Remember this: people are not intrinsically good or bad; they are selfish. So am I, and so are you. Remember this about yourself, and try to look around your innate self-centered monkeybrain to understand the world around you. Try to recognize when others are listening too closely to their inner monkey, understand, and be nice.

Birthday Photo Booth, Because Why Not?

Kyle was at work. Just picture him cheezin' it up with the rest of us in each shot...

I swear he really was happy

Please enjoy some photo selections from Grammy K.'s stock - I was too busy running around like a crazy person to take any. These are all (of course), ripped off from Facebook, but I collected my faves of the 70+ available. 

Anachronistic Sofa

Dear Cormac,

I love you.

It's difficult to believe that you've already been here a whole year, and also of course, difficult to imagine life without you in it. Weren't you always here? Perhaps you were, but we just hadn't met yet. Well, it's nice to finally meet you. We've been waiting, and you did not disappoint.

Your sister is always asking me why the water swirls down the drain of the bathtub the way it does. I usually mumble something like, "physics...happen, and hemispheres have something to do with direction, I think... and fluid dynamics... are a thing..." So basically I don't know the answer. But you know, it's like, an eddy, or a little whirlpool or something. Neither one of us has any idea what I'm talking about.

You, on the other hand, do not ask me these types of questions (because duh - you don't so much speak in sentences yet), you just get really, really angry when I remove you from the tub before you've had time to splash in the few inches of remaining water, then whip your body around so you can stick your hand in that little whirlpool and disrupt the spinning.

You don't really like to talk about things. Not like Iris does now (obviously because you're not almost four years old), but not even like she did, when she was your age. Iris didn't necessarily question centrifugal force, you understand, but she still wanted to smack the bath water and demand a word for it.

You want to DO things. You are a RUNNER. I have tried several times to hold you and talk to you about your nose and your eyebrows and other exciting facial features, but as soon as I start talking and NOT providing instant opportunities for action, you look away. If it's a word that describes something that moves, you're all over it. I really do think that's the key for you. Mom, Dad, Dog, Ball, Up, Down, More: all = action words (if you consider that Mom and Dad are only classified as moving entities who fetch stuff for you).

In fact, you are such a do-er, and Iris is such a... pontificator (???), that your proclivity for grabbing and destroying all the things, ever, really freaks her out. I mean, I'm not stoked that you believe the floor vent by the back door must be removed from the duct every time you see it, but Iris is horrified that you think so. Hey, I'm not saying you should provoke her into nervous tics, just that I'm probably going to laugh about it for the time it takes me to get to you and stop you from destroying whatever it is that you're loving too hard at that moment.

Dad and I strive to hold you up, but not coddle you. We hope that you'll be savvy, but not wary. Don't be naive, but please don't be jaded. You already shine with so much kindness and wonder. Try not to let your feelings get too hurt. People will try to protect you and accidentally hurt you by doing so. Be brave, but don't dismiss your emotions because you think that experiencing them is the opposite of bravery. Listen, your parents can be paranoid over-protective crazies at times, but please don't let that deter you from discovery. You are the best of us, and we could not be more proud of you.

Happy Birthday, Cormac Michael.

Pre-Cut Jitters

Listen, kid. Just because I'm feeling PMS-ey, and it turns out we just noticed the heater isn't like, working and everything, and it happens to be the night before the anniversary of the second time someone cut a (very large) small person out of my belly, we are not in the habit of performing re-enactments around here.

Yet somehow, I was just able to say to your father, "It's almost exactly like one year ago today: I'm bloated as hell, the baby is kicking around like crazy at 10pm, I can't do what I want, and we're kind of stressed in general."

I love you. I love you. Go the f**k to sleep.

Slimer

Cormac is teething again, hard, so he's miserable, clingy, drooly, miserable, snotty, drooly, snotty, and clingy. Not necessarily in that order. He also sort of walks, and he crawls at zombie-fast speed. So being in his presence means dealing with his unidentifiable woes (WHY are you moaning and tugging at your ear? Oh. Your jaw is radiating pain. Re: the moaning - carry on).

We're also preventing him from trying to kill himself by opening cabinets containing medium-sized appliances, shutting himself in the bathroom, closing the magnetic-lock baby gate on his hand/foot/face, climbing the couch, taunting the mentally challenged dog, eating electrical cords (but only when they're plugged in), choking on bites of food larger than dust motes, and bodily inserting himself between the balusters of the basement staircase railing. He's a scientist.

Iris started dance class three weeks ago, and I've yet to take a single photo of the thing. I have literally spent every dance-class-Saturday saving Cormac's life (for all of the reasons listed above), and not photographing anything.

Dance class is tomorrow morning. Wish me luck.

Bueller?

So... hi. I apparently am still here. Maybe you are too?

I think facebook has taken the place of this blog. Everyone I know is on it, and I can now officially share all photos and clever anecdotes in easy to digest quips, leaving no one out. I blame Cormac's baby shower (which was the impetus for Grammy to finally succumb to the great FB in the sky). She was the last meaningful holdout, and now I fear I have nothing to say here. Not sure yet, but I do know that I will not skip Cormac's one-year post.

So maybe this is the second-to-last post ever, but I've pretended to quit before, and that didn't exactly work, so I guess the answer is: we shall see. Yes, we shall.

The Monitor

In the old house, Iris started out sleeping in the guest bedroom downstairs, if she ever really was able to sleep away from my person. This was mainly because it was closer and less noisy to get to her if she woke up and had the potential to be coaxed back to sleep. The creaky stairs to the finished attic would have, at the time, killed any ability to reestablish sleep if there was one. Still, in a bedroom, behind a door just a few feet from where we were, Iris always slept with a baby monitor.

I remember people rolling their eyes at me for jumping to tend to her when, to most, there was nothing happening. She always sounded just as asleep as she had moments before to anyone else, but to Kyle and me, she sounded awake, because the monitor allowed us to hear the moment her breathing changed from "deeply asleep" to "going to wake up in 5.3 seconds." We were not wrong. Even just the few relatively silent steps we had to take to get to her once we noticed the breathing change always overlapped with her zealous scream of wakefulness. The thing is though, that change in breathing which allowed us to act short seconds faster than we could have had we waited to hear an actual cry, always meant the difference between relative ease in reestablishing sleep, and the unholy terror that is infant Iris, righteously pissed off that you dared to wake her. Even though she likely woke up because she did something like stab herself in the eye with the points of all her fingers and then sit up (while still asleep).

When she was older and much better at sleep, and she did sleep upstairs in her own room, we still had to keep a monitor on her. She was gated from the stairwell, so even though she was of an age where most children wake up and then walk down the hall to let their parents know that nap time is over, she was trapped a few feet away from the top of a 60 degree-angled stairwell of doom. The only way to know that we had to go get her was to listen to the monitor. So we did.

Then we moved to the Ugly Brown Ranch (shush. you know I love her, but she is ugly. and brown.), and Iris' bedroom was merely down the hall. No monitor needed. I mean, where would we be? The kitchen? She was fine. I was 64 months pregnant, so I wasn't exactly moving from wherever I'd parked my butt once she finally passed out.

We lived in this house for like a week and a half before Cormac was born. I managed maybe 15 days of monitor-free life before I had a brand new baby who almost sort of liked to sleep alone, and who subsequently needed to be monitored. Let me tell you, those days of monitorless life were really awkward for me.

Almost without break, I have been listening to the soothing sounds of white noise via oscillating/box fan through a monitor for three years. Every moment I have to myself, truly to myself, alone reading or pretending to care about chores or something, I have heard the sound of rushing air through a baby monitor. I'm listening to it right now. I have come to the point where I actually, literally and completely cannot relax unless I can hear the monitor buzzing away next to me.

Sometimes I almost grab it when I'm gathering small purse items before I leave the house. I sleep with it cranked up to "it even annoys the crap out of white noise-obsessed husband" volumes. I take it to the bathroom with me. Kyle and I had a rare night away on our recent anniversary (THANK YOU JENNIFER PARKER, YOU ARE THE BEST PERSON EVER), and I found myself standing outside the hotel with Kyle, lamenting that I couldn't quite relax because I couldn't hear the monitor.

As I sat here tonight with my monitor-cum-binky, I realized that someday, because we now live in the Ugly Brown Ranch (bountiful and beige though she may be), I won't actually require the use of the monitor anymore.

I'm not completely sure what I'm going to do when that day comes.

Biting

It's about 11:30 here. Cormac woke up again, sad, and I rubbed his back till he felt better about things, but I have no idea how long that will last. He's been far less barfy lately but a lot sadder, and we kind of don't know what to do. Hugs make things better for a bit, so there's that, but after awhile he just goes back to Very Sad Time. Poor Sad Cormac. Little babies shouldn't be sad.

After I tucked the wee one back in I went to check on Iris. She's always been a sleep talker, but tonight was kind of intense. She was definitely asleep. Eyes closed, not moving, but talking, she started muttering about biting. Then she said "Ida was biting me and she was so angry." I tried to tell her (with her eyes closed, while she was sleeping) that Ida wasn't going to bite her; in fact, Ida routinely trots into the kids' rooms while they're asleep and checks on them, but she repeated it again: "Ida was biting me." So finally I just said, "I'm so sorry. I'll tell her not to." Apparently I said the right thing because she heard that and relaxed and fell back into deep sleep. 

Iris usually wakes up at some point in the night and comes to our room. Her typical reason is that bugs are in her bed and they are biting her. This is fully my fault. My dad used to say to us every night before bed, "sleep tight; don't let the bedbugs bite." It was sweet and I thought it was a lovely, heartwarming tradition to uphold so I said it to Iris one time. Once. One. Time.

That's all it took to convince her that bugs lived in her bed and would bite her while she was sleeping.

Heartwarming, no? 

There was a monster who lived in the hallway, and a witch who lived in the bath tub, and a wolf who lived in her closet. All were treated as real, producing actual fear, and providing good reasons to never go to the places they inhabited. We've managed to quash almost all of the random mythological creatures' influence on her routine, but I'm not sure how to handle this "Ida bites me in my sleep" thing. I mean, she doesn't bite Iris. Not even kind of. She trots into her room, checks to see she's there, then goes back to lying under the chair in the living room. Not really sure what to do here.

I think I might get her a wand; teach her to cast spells and banish spirits. If she believes it, I'll move on to giving Cormac a spray bottle containing "sad repellent" and let him squirt the hell out of anything he sees fit. Wish me luck.

Phone does tricks; takes the fancy movin' pikchers

I swear, when the camera is off, this child is a non-stop chatterbox. Well, he is when he's the only child around - gotta fill the void and all that, and a pretty significant noise void is created when Iris leaves the house. Anyway, I just downloaded the camcorder app for my iPhone, since it's a hand-me-down from a friend and only happens to be a 3G (anything newer and it would have had this function already)(not that a hand-me-down 3G is anything to spit at. I LOVEEEEE my free iBrain. Also spitting at phones tends to make them stop working). So this was an adventure! A totally lazy, unshowered, couch surf of an adventure. I'm very active in my free time, you see.  

Since Cormac is normally this completely jumpy, effusive noise box when he's in his exersaucer, I thought I'd try to get a few minutes. He makes a few sounds here and there, but I must warn you that this is about a minute forty of basically nothing much happening. I said like, "hey" or something to him once in an attempt to get him to do some kind of interesting baby trick, but I didn't want the whole thing to be a silently staring Cormac with my voice screeching in from the ether going, "Say hi to Mommy! Say hi to Mommy's camera, Cormac! Cormac! Cormac! Baybeee Cormmm-nessss!!! Cormie, Mommy's over here! Over here! Over here! Overhereoverhereoverhereoverheerrrrrrreeeee!!!" Which is what normally works quite well, actually, but wouldn't have this time because I was filming, and obviously he knows it, and really needed to win the stare down.

SO. Here is Cormac... chewin' on stuff. 

Six Monthiversary Anew

Dear Cormac,

Well dude, today was crazy, was it not? You and your sister have (hopefully) hit the bottom of your behavioral spiral down to what I can only describe as the human child equivalent of sad drunk penguins, fighting to play a single ukulele.  The volume/frustration/barf output parallels are uncanny, really, and as much as I love you crazy doodles, I am glad you're both feeling peaceful now. I mean, you have to be if you're asleep, right? 

You know, when I first found out that you were on your way, I was very sure that I knew you already; that, as your  mother, I could feel who you were through my skin. I knew you were a boy, I knew you'd be my good sleeper, and that you would be calm and sweet. I knew this the way that I knew your sister was a girl before I met her, the way that I knew your dad was supposed to share his smiles and his hugs and his last name with me before we'd even known each other a week.  

I could list the bad things I didn't know about (take for example, the general relativity of the concept of "calm"), but let's not focus on the negative here.  Today is your yesterday was your day of half-babyness, and I don't want to bring us down any more than I already did with that unstable avian comment. The moral of this story is that you are all those things.

You crack jokes with your little raised eyebrows at skeptical situations. You can crawl, but you don't because doing so would require that you remove both fists from your mouth, so you move in these lopsided half-circles like a one-oared canoe.  You don't really cry outside of sleep battles, but you are so loud. The other day I heard you grunting and happily screeching from the living room while I was in the garage, in my car, with the windows up.  To be fair, it's a thin wall, but dude - you're loud. 

I started writing this letter to you three days ago, knowing I would need a lot of time. On three separate occasions, I have written and deleted the comment, "you are sleeping now," because each time you woke up a few seconds later. Ahem. You are currently lying on a blanket next to me on the floor, and the last time I wrote that phrase was ten minutes ago. 

It's good to hang one-on-one like this though. You and your sister passed out this evening at 4:30, and I was really discouraged to learn that it seemed like you were both pretty serious about calling it a day and actually going to sleep for the night (hah - "the night"). Iris is, of course, dead to the world for at least eight hours, and while that's not great for my 11pm futureself, I got to chill for a couple of hours with you on the floor while you sang songs and played with my eyebrows. 

I know I won't always do the greatest job of slowing down enough to give you my undivided attention like this, but I hope you know that you are so worth every ounce of love we squeeze you with. Your babyhood is no less precious to us simply because we've done this once before and you are no less special because you happened to be the little brother.

(Hey, I'm trying to make sure you get equal representation in the photo annals, but your sister WAS sitting on my back, hanging from my neck when these were taken. Hope you didn't need really good photo history of your forehead at this age.)

You have now entered the second half of the first year of your life. You love hugs and your squishy baby doll and your big sister. You are known as Cormac, Mac, Cormie (God help us), Big Daddy C, Daddy Mac, and of course, DJ Squizzles. Someday you will be taller than me, shaving your face, and trying to convince your sister to buy you beer (which will not be happening will it, Iris Luella? No it will not, chicklets. No it will not). Remember that to your dad and me, you will always be our baby, our Cormac Michael, named after your grandfathers and born on yet another auspicious Thursday to tearfully grateful parents. 

The Pink Party Part R.A.(h): The Final Chapter (I swear)

Originally I was going to have Rebecca photograph the party. I will say outwardly that this was because Iris' third birthday was her first she'd actually remember, her first for which she'd actually been self-aware enough to actually have a say in the planning and, while this is all true, it's also the first that I'd put so much effort into the decoration and thematic direction, and I really wanted some professional photos of my pretty, pretty tablescape my beautiful, opinionated child on her birthday.

Anyway, we ended up deciding to wait on a RA photosesh till this summer, when hopefully Cormac can keep his guts in-check and we're all a little more pulled together on pretty much every front. Rebecca Allen, Photog Extraordinaire and Good Friend to boot (it's your official title now; go with it) is so wonderful that she, after having been canceled on for the photosesh in the flippiest of  textual manners (go me), took some shots anyway. She's wonderful, no?

And I'm so wonderful I'm making you go to her website to view the photos and buy many, many prints.

The Grammy Series: Pink Party Part Deux

Okay, I had to make these all really small or blogger wouldn't let me even upload this many. As you can see, the chaos was abundant. I still maintain it was one of the best parties we ever threw. Giant mushy thanks to Grammy K. for getting these photos (see facebook for the full set), since Kyle was preoccupied with maintaining Cormac's happiness (though Grammy did her fair share of that too. huh.), and I was busy running around like a crazy person trying to keep the party going (we have fifty-seven candles in this house and the only ones I could find were non-matching, slightly pre-used, and one was shaped like the letter "E.").

Aside to Aunt Di: Sorry the only photo of you is with your eyes closed - you look so dang cute I couldn't resist.

One more photo-heavy post soon about the Pink Party then I swear I'm letting it go. Enjoy!

It's an addiction now

This changing up the blog every few days? Yeah, I'm really going to try very hard to stop. I like this one a lot better than the last one though. I mean, it's still essentially the same, but I found these cool background patterns, so... anyway, sitting on my hands over here. Really.

Want That

So I've been working on losing weight. By working on it, I mean doing slightly less than absolutely nothing, in that I do everything exactly the same as before, I just don't eat as much, and when I do, it's something much less likely to cause me to gain weight. The only way I know (for now) to guarantee that what I eat is not going to make me gain weight is to eat one of those little frozen dinners/breakfasts (they're making great strides in frozen omelets. no, really.) and then a re-freaking-diculous pile of baby carrots. So basically I cook less (amazing amounts of time saved, guys), eat less, and weigh less. Revolutionary. It's going really slowly and I'm trying not to focus on it too much at all, but it's SUPER exciting to start fitting into old clothes again.

So as much as I pull on my tiny pants and make Kyle tell me my butt looks nice, I have been trying hard not to let Iris hear me go on too much about it. Losing weight hasn't changed my character in any way, or made me suddenly smarter or more successful, it just made my butt smaller, yaknow? And the size of my butt really has no bearing on anything other than the size of my pants.

Iris likes to read the same stories over, and over, and over again till she's memorized them. She likes to have the same conversations that many times over again as well, so we have a LOT of repeat conversations around here. In reading The Very Hungry Caterpillar (Iris: "Can we read the vewwy hungry pattykiller?" Totally.) we always get to the end of the book, when the caterpillar isn't hungry anymore, he's really fat, and he's ready to cocoon down and become a butterfly, and have the same conversation. Every time, like EVERY time, Iris goes, "the caterpillar is fat. (Adult who Iris knows but who I'm not about to out today) is fat too." The first time she said that I was all "WHO said that to you? WHY would you say that about her? She is NOT FAT." Her response: "She told me she was fat."

I was floored. I'm sorry people, but telling a toddler you are fat goes way beyond your own self-image or issues with yourself. I can state completely emphatically and correctly that we do not know anybody who is overweight enough that they should be described as fat. And that word is SUCH a loaded gun; it carries so many horrible self-image issues and societal burdens and just, so many -isms I can't even begin to analyze.

Now my kid has the information that a regular sized adult is fat. Now, if she ever gets close to that size (this person is PERFECTLY NORMALLY SIZED, IF NOT ON THE SMALL SIDE), she's going to think she herself is fat. What is a child to do with this information? She's already of the opinion that being fat is bad, so will my perfectly normally sized child then someday start taking measures to make herself smaller? Is she going to start to believe that by calling herself fat, she's somehow being humble? I don't know. I hope I can model good behavior and self-image/esteem/worth and combat this terrible mind/body relationship that she's been shown.

Mostly I just want her to forget about it. No child should ever look at themselves and think about whether or not they see a fat person looking back, and I'm pissed that anyone introduced the concept to her. I mean, she was two years old when that conversation took place. That is ridiculous. I want her to look at herself and focus not on her size, but on making sure she doesn't have schmutz stuck to her face, or that her clothes are on straight or something. I want a few more years before I have to worry about my little girl obsessing about her body. I want her to equate getting bigger with growing stronger and older, not fatter.

Uhg, I feel like I'm just ranting in circles now. Know what? I'm gonna take my size-whatever butt, and my pink dress-obsessed daughter, and we're going to dress up all fancy and go on a date. And when she says to me "Mommy, you look beauuuuuuutiful," I will not respond by putting myself down. I will thank her, and compliment her outfit as well. She will learn that it's okay to love the way you look, and she will learn how to be gracious, and complimentary, and she will feel good about herself, and no part of our conversation will have anything to do with fatness. I want that to be true forever.

Conditioning

I had a social studies teacher who once told our 7th grade class that air conditioning was originally invented to literally condition the air. It had little to do with cooling; more of a filtration effect was desired. I don't think that's correct, or cooling wouldn't have just been a handy side-effect. It's difficult to cool air, especially when one has only ice and ammonia at the ready to accomplish the task. It seems that the history books tell us that, from the outset, air conditioning was contrived of to cool the air, and also to control its humidity. Thus, the term "conditioning" came into being, since it sought to achieve both simultaneously.

We didn't need to turn on the air. Not really. Not when you're only looking at outside temperatures and how they affect internal ones. Windows open, fans on, the house was surprisingly pleasant to inhabit (talk to our tenants in the old place, they'll tell you a different story). So, ugly brown ranch for the win, it would seem.

The problem is that the littlest Kelley suffers from the kind of allergies that respond to fractional changes in allergen pollution. The first whiff of warm air causes all the little flora to burst with randy glee, which in turn causes Cormac's face to start pumping the mucus hydrants like his face is on fire. The poor kid is miserable.

We made it maaaaaybe two nights without the AC on before it became evident that we needed to shut ourselves off from the outside air. He could just barely get air through his nostrils, and didn't seem to be very agreeable to mouth breathing (while I understand the concept is disgusting, I was willing to give it a pass if it meant proper blood-ox levels). It got so bad that I took him to the doctor, terrifying thoughts of his tiny body trapped under piles of apparatus, being whisked away to the ER to establish an airway. I am nothing if not thorough in my hypochondriac projections.

The doctor (new doctor! competent office! amazing thoroughness and insight!) did a good job of assuring me that yes, it's miserable, but no, there is nothing we can give a baby so small. Hoover the crap out of his nose with that bulb boogie sucker thing. Use saline drops if necessary. If his fever spikes, call. If he's still exactly this miserable or worse in two weeks, call. If he starts vomiting profusely, call (she seemed perplexed when I started laughing though).

We had a brief aside to discuss the reflux, and she enlightened me a bit. It seems that any medicine given to infants with reflux is only there to diminish the presence of acid in the reflux, but not to diminish the output in any way. We shouldn't be expecting the medicine to do anything but make him more comfortable. Well, more internally comfortable. More "hey, my esophageal lining is still in-tact," comfortable, less "my damp-ass shirt is giving me a rash, still" comfortable.

She also pointed out that this time in his life should be the worst of it, as far as reflux goes. He's learning to roll over more efficiently (and more frequently, god help us), and he's learning to sit up, and all those muscles moving and working really hard just irritate an already irritated pylorus (spot where stomach meets small intestine). Apparently, once he masters these tasks, he'll be tirelessly upright so much that the reflux should abate drastically. I shall withhold judgement till proof becomes available.

Hindsight is happening now, and I'm left wondering: why didn't old practice tell me all of this? Why was the whole thing left to be this terrifying mystery? We have watched for months as he continued to vomit, fretting that the medicine wasn't working, that something much more grave and sinister was happening. Why weren't we made aware of what our expectations should be?

I have spent so much time worrying that reflux wasn't the issue at all, and that the next obvious cause, pyloric stenosis, was a genuine concern. Don't think this is just me being a hysterical worrier; the issue had been discussed multiple times with the old doctors, but they couldn't readily see any evidence, so they kept up with their usual rhetoric of "well, it doesn't seem like pyloric stenosis, but we've never actually encountered the situation, so...(insert shoulder shrug here)." They were always full of this noncommittal speech. People, the solution to pyloric stenosis is SURGERY. I spent months worrying if my baby needed surgery.

Then one conversation calmed all my fears. Just like that. Poof. I can't believe how long I put off changing doctors.

In other news: A tooth has emerged. Five months, nine days. Clock it.

The Manly Missus

Iris received a set of pink mustaches for girls from Lois for her birthday. Tagline on the package: "Don't be caught in public with a naked upper lip!" Each one is a different shape and comes with its very own name: The Frida, The Grandma (what??), The Cowgirl, The Bollywood, The Lip Liner, The Heroine, and of course, The Manly Missus. In a fit of style overload, Iris combined the Frida, Heroine, and Manly Missus to create this pink monstrosity of awesomeness.

Also apparently I only take photos in front of this little book case. Huh.

Books

Cormac is normally asleep or half passed-out and nursing when Iris' bedtime routine goes down. So normally, he's not so lucid for the book-reading portion of the evening. Tonight though, I propped him up on his boppy next to Iris in her bed and read them both the requisite four books. He was so thrilled with everything - he loved the pictures and giggled every time I made eye contact with him. He actually bounced in his seat every time I turned the page. I am in love with this development.

Now look at some pictures of the baby trying to sit up:

Time to talk about the new kid

When I tell you that Cormac is happy, I need you to understand what I mean by "happy." This child suffers painful reflux, teething, and neurological growth spurts simultaneously. These are things which would individually adversely affect the mood of any person, not to mention a baby, if just one of those things happened to them. This kid takes it all on at the same time, gets kind of grunty and fussy (and probably barfs on you a few times), but then he's ready with a gooey chuckle and a grin that will melt you, the second you give him an ounce of attention.

None of these pictures show his smile, I know. You have to understand that if Cormac is smiling, he is moving, and he usually only smiles really awesomely if he's also being held. Not conducive to photo-taking.

Things that make Baby Mac smile: fake bite his hands, nuzzle his neck, tell him he looks like Alex Trebec, make buzzy-zerbert noises with your mouth, play airplane with him. The thing is, when he smiles, he laughs, and when he laughs, his whole body moves. He also opens his mouth in a big gummy grin and you can see the TWO (!) teeth which are about to pop out on the bottom.

Cormac rolls over, army crawls a bit, aaaaalmost sits up on his own (I know, right? crazy.), knows his name, recognizes Iris' name, grasps chunky objects and brings them to his mouth, supports his weight on standing legs if you hold on to his top half, and of course, he still does that thing where he says "Ehhhhhh" in greeting when he first sees you in the morning/after a nap/when you get home from work. He's in the bajillionth percentile for everything as far as his size goes.

I seriously need to get more pictures of this kid. Every time I post anything here, they've all been viewed to death on facebook and everyone's all "meh" about them. I mean, even I'm not all that stoked about them...

His six month well-baby check-up is in about a month (I can't even process that information), at which point we have Iris' 3-year check-up (again with the incomprehensible information), so I'll have all sorts of fun statistics for ya then. Meanwhile I swear I'll get better photos.

P.S. I hear Grammy is organizing the Pink Birthday photos and we'll get access to those soon, so stay posted for that!

Party Time!

EXCELLENT! (had to do it) So here are some snaps of Iris' Pink Party! There are a few unremarkable shots still living on my phone, but these are some that I stole from facebook (raise your hand if you're suprised I did that... is that crickets? just checking). Anway, as such, I know almost all of you have already seen these, but what the hey - I'm sure someone out there is still resisting the pull of the great FB (lookin' at you, K-Lonzo).

I took this before the party started. The rainbow-arms? Yeah, those are legwarmers specifically ordered for this party. Apparently they are sleeves now.

After her school birthday party, Iris came home all aflutter that her friends sang a song about her birthday, just for her. She was so touched by that. When it happened again, at her house (!!!), she turned to me right after she (we) blew the candles out, hugged my neck super hard, and, with tears in her eyes said, "I'm so happy!"

Kyle manned the present-opening portion of the afternoon. Please note the serious, "I am now dispensing Fatherly Advice" scene portrayed here. Also do please note the Pink Panther t-shirt (thanks Grammy!).

Iris' Pink Party

Really Very All Right

So what does everyone think of the new layout? Nice, yeah? I think I might tweak the colors/fonts/background, but otherwise, I think it's good. Notice the little tab options near the top there? It makes for a really interesting set of view options. I like it.

The Whiz Abides

FBK: Was that BANANAS? You've been holding out. Feed me. (translated: love the blog; good job, mom.)

Don't Panic!

I'm playing with the blog template. Things might get a little shifty around here for a bit.

Kashmir says, "chillax, everything is rad."

Something Actually Happened

In 1969.

It mattered then, and it matters now: kindness. Thanks, Fred.

Blishhhhh

Once upon a time, these web log thingies were supposed to be online journals. I could be mistaken, but I feel that perhaps journal indicates a level of attention to detail heretofore untouched by this tiny pocket of the internet.

I didn't set out to intentionally gloss over life, but responsibility for this kind of thing tends to lead to the kind of circular naval-gazing which pretty much always ends with, "well nobody cares about THAT, so never mind...." Do you care about the mundanity in El Chap? Well, you're here, so I guess you do. Let's take these new shoes for a lap around the store, folks.

Cormac started waking me up this morning around five, five-thirty (read: smacking me in the face and grunt-shouting repeatedly till I woke up and noticed that morning nursing time had run its course). I finally gave up at quarter to six. Slinking past Iris' room revealed her to be awake, still in bed, singing full-belt a song I have no doubt she composed on the spot. I peeked my head in, invited her to get up and hang out with us, and she, like the precious good-hearted child that she is, looked over to her night light (which shows a moon when it's time to stay in bed, and switches to a sun when it's time to get up), saw that the "sun" was up, and said, "Okay, Mommy, the sun said it was okay, right?" MomSigh forever.

Change Number Two's diaper. Recommend potty break for Number One. Liquid ice cream/cake batter bottle for FBK (gentlease formula/rice cereal), chocolate milk for the Whiz (carnation instant breakfast), Coke Zero for myself (weight watchers zero points!!!), then morning PBSKids time is afoot. By this point, Cormac has vomited at least 10 times since the smack/shout party began back in bed, and the span of time this marks is somewhere in the 30 minute range.

Change Cormac's clothes; apply bib. Don robe because it's cold; admonish Number One for getting naked, again, when it's clearly colder than satan's toes over here. Agree to live and let live, change diaper, change Cormac's clothes, spot-clean the carpet where barf splattered, again, think about making breakfast.

Walk to the kitchen to make breakfast with robe open and trailing behind, Iris shouts, "You're like SuperMom with your cape! Cormac has a cape too (fingers his hand-towel-bib which drapes evenly over front/back), he's like SuperCormac!"

Indeed.

Prop baby up in bouncy seat on the counter. Frighten firstborn with speed of omelet execution with the hope of avoiding FBK meltdown. Iris, would you like ham in your omelet? Yes! Would you like green peppers and garlic? Yes! Do you want to help me whisk the eggs? YES! Chop/sautee/mix/pour/wait, wait, wait... omelet!

Mom, can I have some toast? momsigh....Yes.

Diaper, change clothes, new bib, nurse, bottle, nurse, nurse, re-dress the big one, locate coffee, repeat.

8:10 AM, Kyle emerges from his allotted one day of sleeping-in per week. Sees remaining (still warm!) omelet waiting on the counter for him, eats bowl of cereal. WifeSigh?

Kyle takes the dog out, Iris dances and sings some more, Cormac screamybarfgrunts several thousand more times, then finally takes his morning nap. As do I, on the couch, while dreaming about nursing and getting smacked in the face, and being intermittently woken up to tend to Iris' random motor skill limitations.

Looks like this whole journaling thing really is as mundane as I thought, and you only got the first couple hours of the day. I'll be kind and leave it here. Please remember this when you ask me to blog more, friends. For no other reason than I'm sure you had better things to do with the last several minutes of your life, let's agree I'll leave that "publish post" button alone till something actually happens.

Ok, So

It's been a minute. Got that. Sorry dudes. Not a lot to recap over here, really. Here's some pictorial narrative to ease your mind:

Cormac wants to sit up now! He can't, mind you, but the exersaucer provides him with some moments of greatness. Also note the drool. He's teething. Already. Teething + reflux = ?? I'll tell you what it equals: laundry. Let's all applaud Kyle's tireless efforts in that department. He's like the linen whisperer.

Iris has many babies. They all have names and they all must go to bed before she does. Usually she locates various individual locations throughout the house that would actually be somewhat appropriate places for real babies to sleep. They are always lovingly wrapped in blankets and propped up on pillows, in various (actual, live human, family members') beds, on boppies, etc. This photo documents the first occasion that a small segment of her babies slept on a pallet and had a slumber party. Meet Baby Alex, Baby Cormac, and Baby Iris (left-right). Yes, the long red-headed girl-doll is Baby Cormac. Discuss. This photograph by no means captures all of the babies in their beds, btw. There are probably another four babies (at least) not pictured.

I was afforded the opportunity to sit outside DURING DAYLIGHT HOURS recently. Because of this awesomely catastrophic global anti-winter situation we're in, I was very comfortable in the 50+ degree weather, and I got to watch the sun set. This is the view from my back porch. Please feel free to express your jealousy in the comments.

Since Logan and Iris are in the same classroom at CMS, I get to benefit from all of Rebecca's photography of various school adventures. Iris' class went on a field trip to one of those "paint some ceramics"-type places today. This candid shot, while beautiful, doesn't quite relay the joy I know Iris felt once she began painting her plate. She's turning out to be quite the artiste (!); once she got home, all she could talk about was how she painted her plate with pink and white, and also purple! And she decided not to make any shapes, she just wanted to see what the colors all looked like next to each other.

A little pink

(Conversation had with Iris countless times over the past several months)

MOMMYDAD: Hey Iris, what color is Mom's hair?

THE WHIZ: It's kinda brown.

MD: What color is Dad's hair?

WHIZ: It's kinda brown too! And curly.

MD: Okay, so what color is your hair?

WHIZ: It's pink.

MD: Really? Your hair is pink? I thought it was brown!

WHIZ: Yeah, it's brown, but also it's a little pink.

Fig. 1: Just keeping her honest

Fig. 2: Relax, it's Manic Panic. Totally washes out.

Cheer!