Tornado Stories

Some information about what happened to us and to our friends yesterday . . .

Our girls were sitting at the kitchen table, eating some apple slices, and Greg was going in and out, grilling leftover prime rib, when our weather radio went off. We shushed the girls to listen to the broadcast, which said that we were under a tornado warning, with severe weather to the far north and far west of us.

We looked at each other and then silenced the radio. I ran upstairs to get on the computer in our bedroom, so I could see the radar and tell whether stuff was coming our way. As the computer booted up, I looked out the side window of our bedroom and saw clouds in the not-very-far-away distance, black and rotating.

I ran downstairs, yelling to Greg, who was now sitting at the kitchen table with the girls, to come outside now to see the clouds. We both saw the formation of the tornado.

I ran back in and grabbed Julia from the table, where she was screaming because everyone had gone outside. I pulled Allie with me and we went downstairs to the basement. Greg stayed outside.

I booted up the computer downstairs and tried to get a weather radar up, and turned on the TV. Just then, the cable went out and both girls started crying because they were so scared and because the TV was turned up really loud (it made a static noise).

Our lights flickered a couple of times but we couldn't hear anything happening. The online connection on the computer didn't work because we have a cable modem. The girls and I stayed downstairs for perhaps 5 minutes while Greg stayed outside, taking the video you see on the main site.

When I couldn't stand not knowing any more what was happening, I went upstairs with both girls--there was no way they were going to stay downstairs without me. By then, the tornado had moved probably a mile or so to the east and was clearly not going to hit us.

Greg had watched it go behind our water tower from west to east, which meant it was at least 1/2 mile away, but we didn't know how far exactly. It turns out it was about 1 mile away or so--an F3 tornado with winds estimated at 200 miles per hour. The path of severe destruction is 1/2 mile wide. This thing looked huge. Greg's video doesn't do it justice. The news tonight said it was Wisconsin's strongest tornado in the last decade.

One man died in his basement when his chimney fell on him, so sad. The saddest story that touched us personally was about our friends, Betsy and Chris. They lost their house, their beautiful 1 1/2 yr. old all brick, three-car garage, inground pool, screened-in porch home on the golf course.

The garage is gone, the bricks (that they agonized over the choosing the color of) are stripped off, the second story is gone, the roof on the screened in porch extension fell straight down, and the pool is, of course, full of debris. Some of the walls of the first floor are still standing, but the house is completely ruined. Most of it that didn't blow away fell into the basement, where Chris was sheltering with their two girls who are 5 and 3.

Betsy had gone to play in a softball game, which means that this morning all she owned was her game t-shirt, shorts, and cleats. Chris saw the tornado coming across the golf course and took the girls to the basement. They just got there and hunkered down when the tornado hit and the house fell apart.

After the noise stopped, Chris managed to find a way out--he doesn't remember anything about how except that he carried both girls and kicked things out of the way with his bare feet (he hadn't been wearing shoes in the house). They had to get out immediately because of the strong smell of gas.

They started walking towards Betsy's parents house, which is about 2 blocks away, out of the path of major damage, and someone gave them a ride there. In the meantime, Betsy's brother, Dan, came running from his house, which is about 2 blocks in the other direction. He saw Chris's wallet in the car, which was now in the driveway, more or less, instead of in the garage, and knew that Chris and the girls had been home.

Dan had the presence of mind to turn off the gas (and he knew how to do it, heroic guy) and he eventually figured out where they had gone. Shortly after Dan left, Betsy arrived at the house with a couple of other people. You used to be able to see the house from about 1/2 mile away as you drove in, and Betsy could tell that the house wasn't really there anymore.

She got to what was left of the house and things were dead silent. The three of them spent what had to be an agonizing 15 minutes or so calling Chris's and the girls' names, trying to figure out if anyone was still in the house, before they found out where Chris and the girls had gone. Can you imagine how Betsy felt for that time? It makes tears come to my eyes.

They're all OK, at least physically. Erin, the 3 year old, asked for a nookie last night when she got tired enough to sleep, and Betsy's family managed to find one for her. The family didn't have anything to call their own until this morning, when they bought some basic supplies. That is, except an exceptional family support network that will get them through this.

Another friend and co-worker was driving and ended up just south of the tornado when it cut across the highway. She ended up lying in a muddy ditch while it passed, next to a man and a woman who was sobbing hysterically. They're all OK.

Two cars had a t-bone accident right in front of her, right before she went into the ditch, and I haven't heard that those people were injured too severely. There are 4 people hospitalized, one in serious condition.

Another co-worker had an aunt and uncle whose house was destroyed. Her cousin was sleeping in an upstairs bedroom before she ran to the basement and she ended up outside after the tornado passed wearing only a silk nightie. As of last night, she still didn't know where her car had ended up. It was gone.

It could have been much, much worse, really--small consolation to those who lost everything. If it had come 1 mile further south, into our town proper, there probably would have been multiple deaths and millions more dollars in damage. We're just giving thanks that things are OK for us. We were lucky, really lucky.

Allie asked what would happen if a tornado came again. I told her that tornados don't come very often at all, and now that one came close to us, it will be a long, long time before we see another one. I pray that that's correct.

Allie and I played Snow White this afternoon. Originally, she wanted to play Hide N Seek, but then she decided to watch the movie, and afterwards . . .

To play Snow White, Mommy has to become the evil queen. She looks in the mirror in the bathroom and says the "Mirror, mirror" line, then when she gets the answer, she looks at the beautiful Princess Snow White and strikes her dead with a bolt of evil magic from her fingertips.

She gloats over the dead princess, then turns away to plot and mumble aloud about her next step (something involving a glass coffin, I would assume). And then, magically, Snow White comes back to life and runs away.

The next two rounds involve Snow White running, getting struck by evil magic, waking up and getting away. Then Allie's rules say that the fourth time she's struck, she doesn't wake up.

The evil queen puts a baby blanket over her face (cause it was it the room) and the beautiful princess has to lay there until the evil queen becomes the handsome prince and kisses her awake.

As soon as we've finished one game, Allie immediately wants to switch places and make me die four or so times. After we switch roles twice more, Allie decides that I have to stay dead. I lay dead on the couch (the floor got hard after dying that many times) while she tells me the prince isn't coming.

He isn't? Bummer.

My husband has been playing Metroid on a GameBoy for three straight hours--no exaggeration. I don't even think he's gotten out of the chair to pee.

Oh, he made a wonderful dinner first, but then he disappeared. The girls and I played together, I got them in their jammies, and I put them to bed (Allie did kiss Daddy goodnight--he paused the game for that).

He's going to develop carpal tunnel, I know it.

Allie, by the way, is learning to read. Tonight we read, "Harry, the Dirty Dog." Allie read as many as four words in a row. She's not going to be the most advanced kid in kindergarten, but she should be able to hold her own.

In comparison, there's a boy in her tumbling class who is so backwards in behavior. He has to be at least 4 or 4 1/2. But he starts to cry when he doesn't get to sit on the red stripe on the floor. He won't stretch unless he's pretty much in his dad's lap.

And his father futilely warns, "We're going to leave, Danny (name changed to protect the problem child)," when you can tell they've never left anything due to his behavior.

My children are very imperfect, but at least they're independent children who can do things on their own and demand to do things on their own. We're lucky. At least we're lucky so far!

It's been three months since my boss gave notice. Nothing, and I mean nothing, has happened yet. There's one silver lining to that. If I actually got the job, I probably would never have time to blog anymore.

We had Julia's birthday party and a surprise early birthday party for me. If you know me well, you may already have a customized U.S. Department of Toast t-shirt from my party. They're gorgeous and my husband is a wonderful man.

Forty is coming up fast. I decorated the house for Julia's birthday with gold streamers and Greg said, "Well, Deb, we can just leave those up for 10 years and have them for your 50th birthday party."

I hate my husband.

Julia is going to be two years old next week. That means I've been blogging for over two years. Not that I've put that much effort into it at times, I must admit.

We've been teaching Julia to say "Two," when someone asks how old she is, so she already thinks she's two. Unfortunately, that extends to her behavior.

The terrible twos have arrived early. She has huge tantrums when she doesn't get what she wants or when you don't understand what she's telling you. She'll repeat the same word over and over, louder and louder, while you vainly try to suggest things she might want.

And, oh my god. The child loves to Go. I say Go with a capital G because she'll Go anywhere. To Madison, to the mailbox, to Chicago, to the grocery store--it doesn't matter as long as it's out of the house.

On the plus side, she nearly always says Please and she is excellent about saying Thank you. So after she finished screaming "Q - pee" at you for the tenth time and you figure out she wants her "cuppie," even though she's already holding a cup (she wants juice instead of milk), she will say Thank you in that now-cute-again little voice.

She sings, she dances, she gives great hugs and she's damn cute. We just have to get through the next 16 years and we'll be good-to-go. Hah.

I have to head out now. We're taking the girls to see "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory." I hope the bratty one behaves (which one I mean by that, I won't know until we get there).

I just read a comment someone wrote on my last post where they asked what had happened with my possible promotion.

The answer is, nothing yet. Because of a combination of factors, the president told me on June 3 that he expects it to be 2 months before any decisions are made.

I'm thinking 3 months, personally. Nonetheless, I'm still in the running!

Wimbledon. It definitely turned out to be Greg's favorite part of our trip. Even though, since it was only a little over two weeks until the tournament when we were there, they wouldn't even let people touch the grass on the practice courts.

Just to finish my trip narrative, after Wimbledon we went to Abbey Road Studios and took pictures at the famous zebra crossing. Then we did some last-minute shopping for souvenirs and got ready to head home. We'll go back to England, especially, some day. We had a wonderful adventure.

Since then--we've both been catching up at work and enjoying time with our girls. Since Nana cut the hair on both of them while we were gone, they really did look like different kids when we saw them for the first time in 10 days.

Shannon and Anna got married on June 11--Congratulations to them! Very nice wedding, awful weather. The reception hall, while it had a gorgeous view, did not have air conditioning. It literally was about 100 degrees in the hall. It's been two weeks; I think I'm back to normal body temperature now.

I got my wisdom teeth removed, finally. Two of them were partially exposed and my dentist had been bugging me for literally five or six years to have them removed because a pocket made it a certainty that I'd someday get a cavity there.

I would not recommend the surgery. I would recommend being put to sleep for it (I'll pay the $325 for anesthesia myself, I don't care). It's been about 1 1/2 weeks and I really wish my stitches would come out because I'm tired of chewing on them, now that I can kind of chew again.

It's been very hot, weatherwise. Where did spring go so quickly? And life goes on.

Here's the story of our trip so far--

Arrived in London on Saturday morning, exhausted, legs aching, flights 'over the pond' suck.

Checked in at our hotel, thank god they had a room available early. Went upstairs and upstairs and through doors and through doors (they take fire doors and fire safety very seriously here--that whole Fire of London thing, I think). Tried to sleep but the fan to the hotel's restaurant was in the air shaft just outside our window, noisy.

The room was hot and smelled like fried food. We laid down to try to sleep and Greg said--I can't do this. He went down to the desk and we got a much, much better room--their handicapped room in fact, which was not overly warm, twice as large, and had a huge bathroom. Yay!

We slept for a couple of hours, then visited the Museum of London and Piccadilly Circus. They say if you sit at Piccadilly Circus long enough, the whole world will pass by. I have no trouble believing it.

The next morning, we did our Grayline tour to Oxford, the Cotswolds (completely stereotypical beautiful English countryside) and Stratford-Upon-Avon for a 'cream tea.' The only bad part was that Greg and I were most interested in the Shakespeare sites and those were rushed because they were last. We did finish before the pouring rain, however.

The next morning, refreshed, we visited the Tower of London for about four hours (it's pretty cool), then St. Paul's Cathedral, then tried to go to Westminster Abbey (too late) and saw Big Ben and the London Eye and Parliament, then Buckingham Palace, then to Harrod's (where we ate chicken at a counter in the Meat Hall for $70).

On Tuesday morning, we took the Eurostar train to Paris, which I would highly recommend. We were cheated out of about $20 by an oh-so-helpful man at the automated ticket machine for the Metro when we arrived (we should have known better). And that was our first contact with a Parisian, isn't that nice.

We saw Notre Dame and I almost killed myself climbing the stairs. Seriously, we've walked so much on this trip that I think we're both in better shape than we've been for awhile, but my chest hurt from these stairs. 411 steps, all winding counterclockwise, with only one place to rest on the way. The chest thing went away as soon as I got my breath, but then I kept coughing and I thought I was going to throw up.

On Wednesday, fully recovered, we went to the Louvre (oh, our aching feet), the Eiffel Tower (fun but very, very high, Greg would say), did a boat cruise on the Seine, visited the Place du Concorde, walked back to our hotel through the Tulleries Gardens, and called it a night.

On Thursday, we traveled to Versailles via suburban train, where we stayed for hours, and where it got very hot and very sunny (91 degrees, the London paper said today). We ate at McDonald's at Versailles (thank you, Gregory, for letting me eat American food), then returned to Paris.

We tried to visit the Catacombs of Paris (closed for renovation, gotta clean up the bones, I guess), visited the Arc du Triomphe and Champs Elysses, then called it an early night--so wonderful to just rest.

This morning, we took the Eurostar back to London, then dumped our bags at our new hotel (thank you, God, they have free internet access and we could get into our room early).

We headed off to Westminster Abbey, which is really like a big cemetery because there are so many dang dead people everywhere. I wonder what you had to pay to get buried inside, because it seems people from 1200 onwards have been put everywhere in this place.

We liked our boat tour in Paris so much that we did one for London, which was a good idea because we've spent so much time traveling underground that we didn't see a bunch of neat things along the Thames.

We saw Tower Bridge again, then traveled to Trafalger Square briefly before heading back to our 'neighborhood.'

All we definitely want to do tomorrow is go to Wimbledon, which should take up a good part of the day since it's a ways out of town.

I could write on about blowing the black stuff out of our noses every night and the weird times we've been eating meals and the incredible sums of money we've been spending, but I'll leave that for another time.

For now, know that we miss you all, especially our girls. We take out their pictures every day, at least once per day, and we look at the pictures of them that Greg has stored on the digital camera. We talk about how we know they'll have seemed to grow and how we hope Julia doesn't cry when she sees us or refuses to come to us.

According to Marcia, Allie isn't quite ready to go home yet, but I think we've about had our fill of Europe for this trip. We're not looking forward to the horrible, even-longer flight home (I asked Greg if they could just drug me for it), but we're looking forward to getting back to our corner of the world.

Happy Birthday, Pam!!! See you all soon.

Debbie in London

Ah, babyhood.

Julia's on the waning edge of babyhood, what with being 21 months old (time to start saying "she's almost two") and with her speaking phrases and running and walking down stairs holding the railing (that one scares me, yes, and I always hold her arm when I catch her doing it).

But you know she's still a baby when she cries out in the night and doesn't stop and so you head to her room and pick her up. Then you realize that her stomach moving against your chest is her retching and she pukes all over your shoulder.

Yup, nothing says you're a parent more than a nasty, warm, wet, oh-my-god-that-stinks gift from your sick child on your shoulder.

She seems to be feeling better tonight. She hasn't thrown up since first thing this morning and she doesn't have any other symptoms, other than not wanting to eat much.

And when I carried her up to bed tonight, she was back to putting her normal sleepy, heavy head, warm and sweet, on my shoulder. Feeling better, thank god.

Big changes at work--changes that could really affect things for me. My boss gave notice. I was floored to hear it.

She has a milestone birthday this year, and she decided that if she was ever going to pursue her goal of starting her own business, she needed to get going. She'll be doing HR consulting.

So----- I'm the obvious successor, her right hand person. I have a good reputation in the company and with upper management. I just don't know if it's good enough to take over control of the human resource functions for a company of 1400 people.

And if I don't get the position, will I be able to stay, working for someone who will really needs my help but who I resent?

Yeesh.

It snowed here off and on all day today. When I drove home, it was 39 degrees on the thermometer at Walgreen's. That sucks.

Then Greg told me it's supposed to be 18 degrees tonight. Yuck. I want spring. I want it now. This crap isn't spring. This is playing winter when everyone is already sick of the game.

It's supposed to be up to 70s by the weekend. It had better be, or Mother Nature is going to get her butt kicked.

Today was our company's "Take Your Child to Work" Day. Allie loved it, though she really just came for an hour and then for pizza. She was happy that there were no crying babies. It's funny, though, since when Allie was Julia's age, I brought her for this day!

The girls are doing really well. We were just starting to be convinced that Julia was past her biting stage (though I still have the mark from when she bit my arm two months ago). And then she bit me tonight because Greg and Allie were going to the store and she wasn't going.

On the plus side, (ALERT: Don't read further if you don't want to hear a potty story!), Julia was acting like she wanted to use the toilet the other night. So I went upstairs, got the potty chair, and Greg took off her diaper. Sure enough, she sat down and looked for something to read.

Or at least looked like she wanted to find something to read. In any event, she said down and peed! What a prodigy. She's only 21 months. Which means, of course, that she probably won't do it again for another year.

I know why I don't blog more in the winter. It's cold down here in the basement! Unless Greg has been down here and has had the heater on, it's not very comfortable sitting wrapped up in a blanket and typing. The thermometer says it's 63.4 degrees. Yes, if you know my husband, you're not surprised we have an electronic thermometer down here.

A couple of weeks ago, we took the girls to the doctor for their checkups--Allie's 5-year checkup and kindergarten physical and Julia's 18-month checkup. All went well, except that the doctor doesn't seem to have any helpful advice for us about Julia's biting.

Greg and I agree that she needs more words, so she can express her frustration. We both think Allie was talking more at this point, but I know Julia's going to come out with some elaborate sentences when she feels like it.

In the meantime, they're both fine--growing up fast. And Julia is still skinny and tall. Whose kid is she, anyway?

All I can say is that it's a darn good thing she's cute. I remind myself of that every time I look at my arm where I still have a red mark from when she took a nip almost two weeks ago. Little vampire---

Rats! I didn't do a single post in the whole month of February. That's because I've become a "Sex and the City" junkie. My dear husband bought me four seasons of the show on DVD and I'm completely hooked.

So far, I've watched all of the first and second seasons and I'm on disc 2 of the third season. Don't tell me what happens next!

Actually, I kind of know what happens next because the reason Greg got me the DVDs is because I was watching the cleaned-up versions of the show faithfully on TBS, every Tuesday and Wednesday. They're at about year 4 or 4 1/2, I think.

I love this show. I'm thinking about going back and counting how many people each of the women has had sex with after I get all the way through. It seems unbelievable to this naive soul how they all jump into bed with someone at the drop of a hat. Or the drop of a condom.

Nonetheless, it's very entertaining.

At the rate I'm going, I figure I'll be through season four sometime in the week after next (and remember, I have young kids around and can only watch for about 1 hour per night). You won't hear from me until after then, most likely.

Are seasons five and six out? Almost time for a trip to Best Buy! Race you there, Gregory (though he has completely different reasons).

Illness is ravening the ranks of our family and friends. Nothing too catastrophic has struck our family yet, but I'm holding my breath. Julia turns 18 months and Allie turns five on Sunday and the birthday party is Saturday. No one can get sick.

Who am I kidding. Allie had a nasty fever for her first birthday party (she looks very flushed in all of the photos) and neither Julia nor Allie ate any of their respective first-birthday cakes. We'll see if this party can turn out better.

Don't tell, but Allie's getting an Easy-Bake Oven. Her Grandpa Mike in Florida actually bought it for her when she was two and we figure she's now old enough (and she's been begging for one enough lately) that we'll give it to her.

It freaks me out a little. The box says, Age 8+. As my boss said when I commented on that, however, at age 8 Allie will be using the real oven. She already loves to bake. She started cracking eggs, more or less successfully, at age 2.

I know her favorite part of baking is licking the bowl (I know some eggs have salmonella, so sue me). She's always a little annoyed when she has to share the licks of the bowl with her daddy.

I never had an Easy-Bake, but my friend Connie did. We couldn't use it very often though, because the mixes were too expensive. Since we're not actually buying Allie the oven, I want to go hog-wild with getting her Easy-Bake mixes.

She can mix a batch of little brownies and eat the whole thing for all I care, without baking it. As long as she eats a good dinner first (don't get me started on her eating habits lately).

Anyone for a cupcake size cake?

Greg and Julia were somewhere else in the house the other day when Allie said, "Mom, I need to tell you something. And I don't want you to tell Daddy and I don't want you to tell Karina (our daycare provider)." She was intensely serious.

She said, "Come here and I'll tell you. OK, bend down and give me your secret ear." So I bent down next to her and she moved my hair aside to whisper in my ear.

I could hardly wait. She gave me a very serious look and said, "OK, mom, now you can't tell anyone." I said, OK.

And Allie said, "Mom, I'm on a secret mission."

I almost looked around for M. She really gave me pause for a minute. Then she went on to say, "Sabrina and I hid in the closet to make plans, and I didn't want to go because it was really dark, but we had to figure out the mission," and I felt better.

My daughter wants to be a spy. I've been watching too much James Bond lately, obviously.

We were on the way to daycare the other morning when Allie said, "Mommy, Karina (our daycare provider) says that God is invisible." I said, "Yes, that's true, honey. Nobody knows what God looks like."

She said, "I know what God looks like. He has a green pointy hat with a red poof on the top. He has a green shirt like Peter Pan, but he doesn't have a green skirt made of leaves like Peter Pan. He wears green tights, and he has big black shoes."

I guess the eternal question of what God looks like has now been answered for all humanity. He looks a lot like Peter Pan, but with black shoes.

Too bad Michelangelo isn't around anymore to produce the definitive painting.

I do benefits at work now, and it's open enrollment. I've probably seen about 150 people this week, most wanting to drop one insurance or another.

They come see me and say they want to drop their insurance. I say, "Health, dental, short term disability, long term disability, or voluntary life." They go, "huh."

It's no surprise that I've gotten sick again, either as a result of the long hours I've been putting in or all that contact with people, some of whom have probably just finished coughing all over their paperwork.

I saw the doctor today. New guy, again (our clinic can't keep a doctor). He glanced at my chart and said, "History of tonsillitus, history of asthma/bronchitis, and back for throat today." I thought, "What?"

I was in in March for a throat infection, but I haven't been diagnosed with bronchitis since I was 11 and I don't have asthma. The wonders of modern medicine.

I don't have strep, according to the rapid strep test. Just another throat thing that's lasted for over two weeks. What fun.

It's always nice to see your family at Thanksgiving and exchange germs.

The other day, we were asking Allie if the brother-in-law of our daycare provider (who is temporarily living at the daycare house) is there all day, because we were wondering if he has a new job or is still looking for one. I said, "Does he go to work during the daytime?" Allie said, "I think he gave it up."

About a week before that, during dinner, Allie asked her dad for more milk, because he was already by the fridge getting something. When he told her (jokingly) to get it herself, she said, with a big grin, "If you don't get it for me, I'm going to crack you over the head and then eat your brain."

Meanwhile, Julia is into dropping things while eating in her highchair and saying, "Uh Oh!" while looking for them on the floor.

She doesn't have too many other words yet--just mama, dada, hi, bye, and something that sounds a little like thank you at the times thank you would be appropriate to say.

Given how her sister's vocabulary has developed, that might not be a bad thing. Though Allie did say something the other day that I thought was cool. Julia, Allie and me had shopped at Target and were heading for our car in the parking lot when Allie said, "Mom, there's a thicket!" I asked her to repeat it and she said "thicket, over there," and there was a thicket of woods across the way.

I wonder how many four year olds use "thicket." Maybe all hope isn't lost.

Greg is traveling, as you probably know, so last night I was on bath duty by myself.

I am just not thrilled about the idea of trying to bathe the girls together (though Greg does it that way), so I decided I'd bathe Allie first. Julia could crawl around the bathroom floor, getting god knows what on her hands, and then I'd get her all clean before bed.

The only problem with that plan was Julia. As soon as we all went into the bathroom, she started trying to crawl into the tub. It just goes to show that she could probably already get out of her crib if she put her mind to it, because she got on her tiptoes and got a leg up and she was almost on the edge.

Just to see what she'd do, I steadied her so she wouldn't fall and she promptly slithered into the tub (which was empty) with all of her clothes on. Allie was taking hers off as Julia was climbing, so as soon as Julia sat down in the tub and started playing the bath toys, Allie was naked and getting cold.

I would have just stripped Julia and let them bathe together, but just then Julia decided to fill her diaper. So I hauled her out of the tub and washed Allie from top to bottom as fast as possible while Julia complained (loudly, needless to say) about not being in the tub. She also tried, for the entire time I was bathing her sister, to climb back into the tub.

Allie got out and I took Julia in her room to clean her butt before I bathed her. She screamed the whole time, but eventually I got her back in the bathroom and filled the little tub. I dumped her in it, and she immediately started that contented baby humming thing while she grabbed all the bath toys she could reach and started playing.

Who needs playpens, expensive mobiles, sound and music makers, dollies, or strollers. To entertain your kid, dump her clothed butt in the bathtub and she'll be happy for hours. Apparently.

Hello, yes, and how have you been?

I'm doing better, thank you. I've been doing my new job now for almost a month (including when I was being trained) and some things are now coming instinctually instead of "OK, pull out the notes, how do I handle that." Most of the time, I'm able to help people without having to look things up in front of them, which is also progress.

I "only" worked 10 hours today and I could have worked more, but didn't feel that I needed to. I could just be forgetting something huge that I need to take care of, but for the first time, I didn't leave work thinking, "oh my god, I should be staying to start on that huge pile."

The girls are thriving, despite not seeing much of me lately (not that they NEED me but I hope they've missed me). My husband is getting over resentment about being a most-of-the-time single dad because I got a huge raise last week, and the cat seems stable.

Life is pretty good.

It's been so long since I posted that I don't know where to start. I'm still wearing a brace on my hand every day because of my tendonitis, so I haven't been typing here at all. As far as the girls--

Julia went to the doctor last Wednesday for her one-year checkup. She's gained some weight, thank goodness. Her head size is in the 90th percentile, her length is in the 75th percentile, and her weight is in the 50th percentile. Not symmetrical, but cute nonetheless. Greg really needs to get some new pictures of her on his part of the site.

Allie seems more grown up every day. She entertains herself (and not always by watching TV), she gets her own drinks (including glasses) sometimes, she helps us keep an eye on Magellan (otherwise known as Julia, fast-crawling baby), and she has adventures away from us (like visiting Nana and Papa for a week at the end of June).

I have a new job at my same place of work. Our benefits administrator gave notice, so I'm taking over most of her duties while keeping some of my old, getting an assistant and a new title--either Benefits Manager or Employee Services Manager (my vote is for the latter) and I'm getting more money, but the details still aren't fleshed out and it's been 1 1/2 weeks. It's pay change time in our department, so my boss has just put in on the back burner. We should have a chance to talk this week.

I have a birthday coming up one week from today--the big 3-9. Things are changing everywhere.

I know I haven't posted in a long time, but that's because I'm having symptoms of tendinitis or carpal tunnel syndrome or something and I don't need the additional typing at home.

My right arm hurts most of the time (my mousing hand and my 10-key pad hand, of course) and it's a huge pain in the ass. I've tried mousing with my left hand at work. Since Greg is left-handed, our mouse is on the left side at home and so I can do that ambidextrously (is that a word). But mousing with my left hand has just given me almost as much pain as my left arm.

It's hell to get old and have your body fail you. I know, I should be grateful it's not something horribly worse, but this is not any fun either. I wear splints on both hands every night to bed and all day at work I wear one on my right hand.

I would type more, but this hurts. The Lee family is all fine, otherwise. Lots of adventures that Greg will have to write about for the time being.

A woman hit my car on Monday. Why, in three out of the four times in my life that my car has been hit, has it been a old person. Hmm. (Who hit me the fourth time, I don't know--it was a hit and run in the parking lot at work with a company vehicle. Someone in Maintenance got away with it.)

When I was 18, I was driving with my parents back to college and a 72-year-old guy who'd stopped at a bar for a Sunday afternoon drink pulled out from a parking lot to right across the highway, and I was unable to find enough road to avoid hitting him.

About 6-7 years later, my car was legally parked in front of my parents' house when the neighbor across the street backed out of her driveway and apparently never considered that there might be a car back there. In fact there were two, but my sister's car was behind mine and didn't get hit.

On Monday, I pulled into the parking lot at Pizza Hut to pick up a personal pan pizza. This 70 to 75-year-old woman was backing her Cadillac Seville out of a space right by the door, so I stopped completely to let her get out. I was actually turning right to go to another space but I stopped to give her plenty of room to stop backing up and go around me.

Well, she did OK getting out, but she cut it too close when she turned left around me. I saw her car really close to my window and I thought, "Man, she's close." And then she hit the back driver side of my car, which was sticking out about six inches further than the rest of my car because I was starting to turn.

$900 damage on my car. And she scraped the entire side of her Cadillac on my car, so I'l bet her's is going to be a lot more. A lot more.

I got out of my car and just stood there to see what she would say. She kind of threw up her hands and said, "I've got State Farm!" Gee, that really makes me feel better, ma'am. And I was polite, too. I called her ma'am, instead of idiot.

My insurance company was great--the check arrived today. We need a loaner for the 2-3 days it'll take to fix it, so I have to wait until the 28th, but it'll get back to normal eventually. And the body shop says they'll fix where Greg scraped my passenger side mirror on the garage frame for free!

There's a silver lining for ya. Sigh.

Gosh, it's been awhile since I posted. Nothing too interesting has been happening. Let's see . . .

We've had lots of guests. Dinner/playdate guests (wrote about that last time), then my family visited for Mother's Day (and we all got crazy in the jumpy), then Dwayne, Raquel, and Lourdes visited, all in three weeks time.

We had our big Syttende Mai celebration in town, but it rained a bunch so we didn't do as many events as we normally do. The weather was great for the Saturday parade though.

Allie is partway through a five-week series of tumbling classes. And she's the only student. Yep, the only one. Normally, there's two brothers, twin sisters, another boy, and Allie in her class, at a minimum. Apparently all the other parents decided to take a break at the same time.

Two weeks ago, Allie had two instructors just for her. Last week, she had one instructor all to herself. She gets worn out in that half hour, needless to say. Normally she has to wait her turn and she gets to rest between somersaults or cartwheel attempts or jumping on the trampoline, but she's coming home from these classes sweaty and thirsty.

The tumbling class people aren't going to cancel her class because there are classes immediately before and following hers and they'd just have to sit around between. We can't get her in the class before because it's a little too early. And the class afterwards has kids that are at least a year older than her.

Alexandra, despite her middle name of Grace, isn't the most graceful or coordinated kid. It's just recently that she walks down a balance beam that sits on the floor without going tentatively and slowly sideways. I think she'd really feel behind if we put her in a class with older kids.

So it seems she'll continue her solo excursions in tumbling for another three weeks.

On Wednesday night, Allie and I spent two hours transforming a box from Howie (if you know us and have been to our house, you know Howie) into a castle. I cut a door, three windows, made turrets, made an angled roof, made curtains, fixed shutter latches and a doorknob, and then we made a bed inside and Allie laid down to watch TV through one of the windows.

The next day, I strung a string of Christmas lights inside so she has power. It's pretty cool, but I'd like to add wallpaper (so you don't see the writing on the brown cardboard) and flower boxes on the windows and color at least the front (maybe paint?). I know, you're thinking, whose project is this? I think that should be obvious.

This weekend, Marcia and Dave visited, I made a quick trip home for my sister Pam's 40th birthday party (Happy Birthday, old lady!), and Greg and Dave tiled the backsplash of our kitchen, on the wall with the stove. Greg can now make tomato sauce with impunity. It looks great. Good job, honey.

What have you been up to?

We had a great time yesterday. We spent the whole day cleaning and then had guests for dinner and a playdate--Maddie, who is probably Allie's best friend, her parents (Chris and Betsy--I used to work with Betsy and they also used to live almost across the street from us) and her baby sister, Erin, who is 22 months old and wild.

We had Papa Murphy's pizza (we really like Papa Murphy's) and they brought cookies for dessert. Allie could hardly speak, she was so excited. All the drudgery of cleaning the entire house (which was desperately needed, by the way) was completely made worth it by the expression on Allie's face when they arrived.

There was an immense amount of running, hopping, and screaming. Two 4-year-olds, one almost 2-year-old, and one puzzled-at-all-the-excitement but smiling 9-month-old. The older three girls were endlessly running, screaming, from the kitchen to the living room and back. Our ears were ringing, but no one wanted to yell at them and spoil their excitement.

Needless to say, the girls didn't really eat any pizza. We adults ate a bunch of it, almost finished off the cookies, and talked our way through the entire evening. It's just a shame Betsy is allergic to cats. Within minutes of arriving, she was suffering with a runny nose. They had to leave when she started getting wheezy, but she was a wonderful sport and made it through over 3 hours.

Allie was completely exhausted and said she had the best night ever. We really, really need to do this kind of thing for her more often. She's at a daycare with only a 14-month-old and her sister and she's starved for playtime with older kids.

And this morning, she slept until almost 9:00 (almost unheard of). Yay for play!

We've been busy lately doing spring things. No illnesses per se have hit us, but Greg did sprain his ankle on Monday night. He was helping our daycare provider's husband move a playset and he just stepped wrong.

Of course, that was the same night he got our lawnmower back just for the night from the repair/tuneup place, so I went out and mowed the yard. I like mowing, as long as it isn't hot, and it wasn't this night. Good thing, too, because it took forever. There was an awful lot of grass in our yard (and weeds, and dandelion blooms, and dog poop, since a popular walking route runs alongside our house).

Greg has been limping around the house and work ever since and he says it doesn't feel better. Sigh. We must be cursed or something.

Julia is having adventures in food. She'll be nine months old tomorrow and she's experiencing new food flavors almost every day. Yesterday, she had baby lasagna for the first time. She voted no to the noodles and yes (or at least OK) to the sauce.

Her favorites (besides the plain fruits, of course) are the fruit/meat combinations. Mmm-mm. Ham with apples. Chicken with pears. Chicken with apples. Beef with carrots--of course that's not a fruit, but carrots are sweeter, so you'd think she'd be OK with it. Nope. It's not fruit and she knows it. And it's amazing how much orange baby food can stain a bib and clothes.

And so much is orange--carrots, sweet potatoes, squash, beef with carrots, garden vegetables (carrots, potatoes, peas all together), peaches, peaches with mango, mango with apples, you name it. Am I making any of you hungry?

Well, consider this. Orange baby food leads to orange baby poop. I'm going to just leave that thought there, thank you very much. Have a good day!

I've been sick again. Yeah, yeah, who cares.

Today I served a pizza lunch to 683 people. Well, I made the arrangements for 683 people at work to have pizza, to celebrate a large order we received from a company I won't name but whose initials are UPS.

It's enough business to keep about 1/3 of our workforce busy for about 8 months. Worth celebrating. And thank god the pizza party is finished now and we had enough pizza for everyone but not too much left over.

Our bill for pizza, just for the city that I work in, was almost $1700, without tax. We gave them a $40 tip. That's 2%. Before I get nasty e-mails from waitstaff and delivery people, I want to state that we based the tip on information from one of our supervisors who works at Pizza Hut nights delivering pizza.

He said that $10 per driver would be a respectable tip but not outrageous. Gosh, they only toted around 162 pizzas, no big deal!

I should add that I am in absolutely no hurry to see sausage, pepperoni, or cheese anytime in the near future.

An acquaintance of mine was robbed last week.

She lives, along with her husband and their two kids, in a two-story house with a partially exposed basement. Both the basement and their kitchenette area have sliding glass doors.

In the middle of Thursday night, she woke thinking she had heard something. When she didn't hear anything else, she went back to sleep. In the morning, she went downstairs and her slider was slightly open and the door to the attached garage was partially open.

She said she never even considered that they had been robbed; she just thought one of the boys had left the sliding door ajar and the wind or suction or something had caused the other one to open.

She got ready for work and was set to leave. That's when she realized that she couldn't find her purse. Even then, she said she didn't think robbery. She just thought she must have left it in her car.

When she went in the garage, she found that the door from the garage to outside was open also and that her purse was not in her car. That's when she figured out what had happened.

The thief had come up on their deck, got in through the slider (which she can't swear was locked, but she thinks was), stole her purse and her briefcase, and left by way of the door to the garage and then outside. The police found muddy men's size footprints and no fingerprints.

There were four other houses hit on our side of town the same night. Did I mention she lives two blocks from us?

She lost $5 cash; that's all she had in her purse (and she and her husband are both lawyers!). She had taken most of the papers out of her briefcase to work on and hadn't put them back, so she didn't lose much work-wise. Though she knew not to keep her social security card in her purse (you all know not to do that, right?), she did have a paystub in her purse. Of course, her social security number was on her paystub.

She and her husband have signed up for some kind of monitoring service on their credit cards that watches for fraudulent charges and other signs of identity theft. And they bought curtains for their basement sliding door. And deadbolts for the doors into the garage and into the house from the garage. And they're faithfully using bars in their sliding doors now.

She says she lies awake at night listening. She can't stop thinking about what might have happened if the thief had decided to come upstairs, after her husband's wallet, for example.

The biggest loss, of course, is their sense of security. And some of mine, too.

Another week has gone by. The only good thing about that, I suppose, is that it's closer to spring and the weekend.

Last weekend, we took Allie to the ballet as planned. She loved getting dressed up and getting to go out with Mommy and Daddy while Julia had to stay home (though she really likes our babysitter too).

She was eager to get into the theater and we showed her our watches to let her know how much time was left until the show started. We sat in the front row on one side.

Then the music started, the lights went down, and the ballet started. She did wonderfully. She asked questions, but did it quietly and not very frequently. She stayed in her own seat (unlike last year when she was afraid of the folding seat and spent the show on our laps). She knew the basic story this year, too, so she was waiting for the crocodile.

It was very nice, except for the annoying little girl behind us (who was old enough to be told to behave and do it), who continually asked loud questions about what was happening. And her parent answered back just as loudly and very, very frequently. I almost wished Allie would do like last year when she shushed the people behind us. We should have spoken up, but what do you do at a kids show.

Afterwards, we took Allie out for ice cream. She loved that best of all, though she did start complaining that her dress shoes hurt (she had nasty red marks on her feet, we unfortunately found later).

It was wonderful and I think we'll do it again, but I have to admit that it didn't have the same sense of magic as last year. My expectations were too high, though. How can you expect that your daughter will always be as thrilled as she was the first time she saw theater.

I guess we'll have to look forward about two more years, when we can take Julia!

Would you believe I've been sick again? Considering I never threw up with morning sickness in either of my pregnancies, I've done more ralphing in the last month than ever in my life.

Monday I started feeling like crap at work and I spent most of Monday evening in bed instead of with my family. Just like clockwork, almost exactly one week from when I threw up last week (within 1/2 hour of the same time), I was throwing up this week. Greg got it this time, too, on Tuesday morning.

I dragged myself in to work on Tuesday, idiot that I am, to prepare some weekly reports that a VP relies on. I went home in late morning and crawled into bed at noon. I didn't wake up until 4. I can't ever remember sleeping that long in the daytime. Maybe when I was 2 or so?

In any event, to cut boring blogs short, I'm feeling better. Thank god.

Julia and Allie are doing fine. Julia has been a little snarky healthwise for the last week but she seems to have rediscovered her appetite with spades in the last two days.

Tonight before bed, she ate baby applesauce, sweet potatoes, AND peaches. Have you seen those little jars of #1 baby food? She ate the equivalent of two whole jars, easily.

Happy family.

And, we get to have a family day this weekend. We're getting a babysitter for Julia (WHAT--but they never do that? Well, we're going to!) and Greg and I are taking Allie to see the Peter Pan Ballet.

You might remember Greg's blog about seeing this with her last year. She adored it. For a long time, it was her favorite thing in the entire world. And now she gets to see it again.

When I told her tonight that we were going, she was thrilled. Then she said, "This year, Mommy, when the show is over I'm going to talk to the people that were on the stage for sure. I'm going to be brave."

She chickened out last year, which was no big deal. Isn't it a shame that even a four-year-old can be bothered by regrets? Well, she's getting the opportunity to resolve the situation and I can't wait.

I'm not that excited about seeing the ballet again, though it was cool and I always love live theater. It's watching her face as she watches the ballet that I can't wait for. She'll be flying through her dreams again.

I give up. Four weeks ago, all four of us were sick with vomiting and stomach symptoms. Two weeks ago, I got my nasty throat infection and found out I'm allergic to penicillin, and this week, I'm sick again. Last night, my stomach just didn't feel right when I got home from work.

By the time Greg finished making shrimp scampi for dinner, I didn't want any part of it. I was nauseous, in the bathroom, and at 10:30, I threw up. I made it through two pregnancies without throwing up once and now I've been tossing my cookies with some regularity. What is up with this crap.

The good news is that I felt slightly better after throwing up and I slept OK. I went to work today, despite feeling like someone beat me up.

I hate winter. I love spring. Is spring coming what it's going to take for this family, and especially me, to get healthy?

At least the rest of the family are OK. If you haven't heard, Julia has her second tooth, and she's sitting up for long, long periods of time now. Her favorite hobby is chewing on the remote control (don't tell her daddy). What have you been up to lately?

No, I haven't up and died. Hard to believe it's been three weeks since I blogged.

First my parents were here and Greg was gone, which meant I spent almost no time on the computer. Then, if you read Greg's blog, you know about my illness.

What it was, we'll never know. It felt like strep throat, but wasn't. It could have been mono, but thank god, it wasn't. All the health care professionals I saw kept saying what a large collection of pus I had in my throat, so I guess we'll just leave it at that and be grateful that I'm back to normal.

And I'm going to be very grateful that no one else in the family got it. I hibernated in our room for most of Friday, all of Saturday and Sunday, and most of Monday while Greg held down the family fort and I guess I kept my germs to myself.

Things were fairly insane at work when I got back--I'm still doing two jobs, but I've hired a clerk now and she starts this coming Thursday, so that should get better.

Otherwise in the world, congratulations to Raquel and Dwayne on little Lourdes. I'm having kind of a hard time imagining Dwayne with a baby. I'm sure he'll be a great father and he's very good with kids, but an infant is a whole different matter.

He sounded completely in love with her on the phone, so I think the Springman family is off to a good start.

In our family, Allie looks like she's gone ten rounds with an unfriendly and lost. She has a black eye. Last night, I took the girls to a McDonald's with an indoor playland and Allie disappeared for a hour inside the tunnels. She loved it. However, when we got home, she was crawling across from the back seat to come out of the car by my door and she fell somehow.

She got a lovely bruise on her cheek and it's spread up to her eye. Greg took the girls out today while I did our taxes and he said people would always smile at the three of them, until they saw Allie's face, when thoughts of abuse and authorities would cross their minds. Poor little girl, she'll probably look bad all week. We need to take pictures!

I'm not really gleeful or anything, of course, but I had two black eyes when I was about two from climbing on the kitchen cupboards and bonking myself with a door, so she comes by the look honestly. Here's hoping you and your family are healthier than ours!

I think Greg should post another picture of Allie's new haircut, because he called it severe and it looks awfully drastic in the photo, when it was soaking wet. I took her to get it cut and it is short, but she looks cuter than heck (like that's so difficult--indulge a mother, please).

Her hair is thick, so it's poofed out considerably now that's it's dry. She did pretty well at the salon, considering that the girl who cut it (this was not a woman) was not very careful about combing it out gently. Allie said "ow" a couple of times and then towards the end, she got that "I'm gonna cry any minute" look and sure enough, she did.

Big crocodile tears welled up and spilled over, so the beautician quickly cut her bangs (a little unevenly) and she was done. She made it through her third salon haircut (her nana was a hairstylist and she's cut it quite often).

Greg is trying to convince me that we should cut the back of Julia's hair. The sides aren't very long and the top is OK (although she has a combover), but on the back of her head, she's got a mostly bald spot.

Allie had one too, same place, from laying on her back so much. The problem is that the hair below the bald spot and to the side of it is quite long, giving her a little bit of a mullet.

But she's my mullet-headed baby, and I just finished giving her a bath, so she smells good (like a baby should).

Now if she would just learn to roll in the opposite direction, so she wouldn't keep getting stuck under the furniture, we'd be a happy, happy family.

It's no use. If you read my blog yesterday, you can forget about it. Or try to, anyway.

No matter if you keep your toothbrush on top of the toilet or if you keep it hermetically sealed in your bedroom safe, it's going to have fecal coliform bacteria on it. That's the conclusion of "Mythbusters," in the investigation detailed in my blog last night.

There was no significant difference in the amount of bacteria found on the toothbrushes kept in the bathroom and outside. However, no one got sick from any of the toothbrushes either. The end result is that there's fecal bacteria everywhere--because people are such slobs, of course. Just try not to think about it.

On another subject, did you know that some psychology professors who have studied job interviews state that most interviewers make up their minds about an applicant in the first 3 minutes? Then they spend the next 27 or whatever minutes gathering information to validate that decision.

I've been thinking about that a little lately because I'm interviewing to find a new clerk for our human resources department. People think that because I do HR that I interview all the time, but nothing could be further from the truth. Me and the HR director never do job interviews.

I've done three interviews since last week and I'm so glad I'm almost done. I know that interviews are very stressful for most people, but I just want to get someone to accept a job offer so I can hand over the clerk duties, which I'm doing right now.

Anyone unemployed out there?

Have you ever seen the Discovery Channel show "Mythbusters"? It's hilarious and educational at the same time.

These two guys whose background, I believe, is in science/TV/mechanicals/who-knows-what-else carefully research and attempt to prove or disprove urban legends and stories that we've all probably heard but have never known anyone to experience.

Tonight, they're trying to see if it's possible to waterski behind an eight-person crew boat. They're also trying to find out if it's true that leaving your toothbrush by the sink next to the toilet will result in it being covered with fecal coliform bacteria droplets when the toilet's flushed.

I'm interested especially in the last one--I read that theory in Reader's Digest a long time ago. Great little journal, Reader's Digest. If you read even a few other magazines each year, some of the stories are going to sound really familiar when you see them condensed in Reader's Digest.

My parents have a collection of ancient R.D.s in their basement and the most fun thing is to find one from, say, 1975 and read the predictions that were made regarding the cold war or progress in computer development. They were really off, usually pessimistically (is that a word?), thank goodness.

I need to remember to read one of those oldies the next time I'm at their house.

In the meantime, back to see if I need to buy a new toothbrush and if I'm going to start keeping it next to my bed. Stay tuned for the answer---

This has been one lo-ong week. I did get sick on Thursday, joining my family in vomitus familius. Today, I felt weak but knew I had to go in to work. Then the phone rang--our daycare provider again. Her son had a fever of 103 that wasn't coming down with Tylenol.

Sigh.

Greg took the girls to the daycare center associated with his work. You know, one of those "warehouse your kids" places. And it was fine. Allie had a blast playing with a little girl who had a Princess jacket on (therefore, friend) and Julia was one of only three babies, so she got lots of attention.

We're all going to spend the weekend sleeping to recover from this week. Especially since it's snowing again (we got 5 inches of snow last night).

Our sole trip out will probably be Greg's mission to buy us new toilet seats. He says he's now intimately familiar with what's on the toilets in our house and it's time to buy new ones. What can you do with a used toilet seat (since we'll have three)? I'm taking suggestions.

These last couple of days have sucked. Lots of sick people. On top of everything else in this story, I'm still getting over the cold I got a little while back.

So on Tuesday morning, our daycare provider calls to say she can't take the girls because she's throwing up. Greg and I decide that he'll work in the morning and I'll work in the afternoon and we'll cover it. Julia has come down with a nasty cold, so I spend a bunch of time in the morning suctioning her nose while I manage to get some work done at home.

At noon, Greg comes home for the tag team. Allie has been quiet all morning, just asking for a snack of multi-colored goldfish crackers and eating a slice of American cheese. I head upstairs to change clothes for work and hear a commotion downstairs. Allie has thrown up all over the (white, wouldn't you know) carpeting in the living room and in the hallway and in the bathroom.

Did you know that multi-colored goldfish crackers basically all turn red in the stomach? Gross doesn't even begin to describe it, and Greg got to clean it up because I had to leave. He spent the afternoon doing laundry (her bed got it too) and then Julia started throwing up also. Last evening was your basic miserable experience.

Last night actually wasn't too bad. Both girls last threw up about 7 p.m. Allie slept through the night and Julia woke at 3:30, famished. She ate part of a bottle and went back to sleep.

Our daycare provider had called and said she didn't feel up to taking the girls yet today. So Greg and I decided to tag team it again, this time with me working the morning. The girls were listless and Julia was clingy, but other than that they were pretty much OK. When I walked in to relieve Greg, however, he was throwing up in the bathroom.

He's been throwing up and nauseous all afternoon and evening while I've been trying to gradually re-introduce food for Allie while holding Julia, who's probably having stomach cramps on top of her cold, based on how she's almost inconsolable. And Julia's eaten so little today that I'm afraid for dehydration if she doesn't start eating in the morning.

And the worst part for me, personally, is the anticipation of knowing that my turn is coming. I don't think I have ever not caught something that Allie has had, illness-wise. Every time I eat, I question whether I'm going to be OK looking at that meal again.

The good news is, the girls and our daycare provider should be back together tomorrow. Greg may still be ill and I'll probably be ill, but at least we won't have to handle the two of them also. We'll also be feeling like death warmed over, most likely.

God, those nasty little viruses do like to do us humans in, don't they? Until healthier days---

Allie is four. She had her birthday on Friday and her party on Saturday. Let's just say it was a very pink day, filled with princesses and lace and Barbies.

How did my daughter get to be such a girly-girl? We've bought her trucks and balls and bats and construction materials, but she loves Sleeping Beauty. Why? Because Sleeping Beauty wears a pink dress.

We had a very nice weekend at my parent's. It actually got a little warmer today, so Greg successfully chipped away some of the ice on our driveway when we got home.

I gave Julia a bath tonight, which showed (no surprise) that there are still new challenges to come in bathing her. She kicked so hard and was so determined to chew on the cup that we use for rinsing her hair. . .

Tomorrow, I'm going to try oatmeal baby cereal for her breakfast. I'm assuming that I could blog tomorrow night and indicate that I've given her another bath. Babies that are her age love to decorate their hair with food.

I'd say she'll most likely outgrow it pretty quickly, but more often than not, when I brush Allie's hair after she has had pancakes, there's syrup in her hair!

I'm sick again.

It sucks again. And no, Mom, I didn't intentionally get sick to make you sick when we see you this coming weekend.

I have the whole sneezing, scratchy throat, drippy nose, stuffed sinuses, headache thing going on. Do you think it's God getting back at me for feeling happy that Luis got canned? It did start on Friday or so.

Well, it's worth it if that's it. Though I might not think so when I'm trying to sleep again tonight despite the fact that I can't breathe.

Rather a necessity, that breathing thing. I remember before Allie was born, when we got our first glimpse of her in an ultrasound at 8 1/2 months. She was moving--her chest was moving, and Dr. Stoffel said that was a good sign, that she was practicing breathing. Even though there was only fluid to wiggle around in.

I feel like I have enough fluid right now myself to float a boat--in my stuffed up head. Sigh. I'm going to go away and have a pity party now.

One of my daily tasks is bottles for Julia. Wash the bottles, wash the retaining rings, wash the caps, wash the nipples. Line them up, put a liner in each bottle, fill it to the right height, tap in 3 1/2 scoops of formula, shake them up, cap them, and put them in the fridge.

Then Julia's set for meals for another 24 hours. It's easier, I suppose, than making a meal for either Allie or Greg and I, but somehow it seems like such a chore. It takes about 20-25 minutes a day, and I normally do it after the girls go to sleep.

I guess it's because I don't have any choice (unless Greg does them for me). The bottles have to be washed and the bottles have to be filled. If I didn't feel like making a meal for Allie, there's always McDonald's (and she would be supremely happy, as a side benefit). But ya can't buy a bottle filled with formula at the drive-thru at Culver's.

Wash, line up, fill, shake, cap.

When is this child going to start eating food? Then I can start complaining about how I miss holding her and giving her bottles.

Last night, Allie took a long bath. How long? Long enough that her fingers, toes, and probably her head all had deep crevices instead of just bath wrinkles. About 45 minutes.

Her latest game in the bathtub is to lay back full-length, with her hair floating around her head. She likes to listen with her ears under water and have me pour cups of water on her tummy or legs.

She could and does lay (lie?) like this for at least half an hour without any desire to stir. This seems to supremely fit the definition of child. If I laid in the bathtub for a half an hour, I know I'd be thinking about projects at work or how the bathroom rug needed to be vacuumed (it really, really does, by the way) or about if we're really going to get 4-6 inches of snow and if Greg will be safe driving the freeway in that kind of weather.

Allie might be thinking about how she can't wait for Tuesday (when she has tumbling class, which she loves) or wondering when the weekend is coming again (she likes to sleep in until 8 as much as her parents), but I think that's about it.

After I finally got Allie out of the tub and in her jammies, I bathed Julia. Julia loves baths too. Last night, instead of resting on her slant-board with her legs splayed or with her feet up to her mouth (she's been chewing on her toes a lot lately), she actually stretched out her legs, crossed them, and rested them on the edge of her bathtub.

Freaked me out, it looked so grown up and non-babylike. She only held the position for about 30 seconds, however. Then she pulled her legs up and started trying to suck on the toes I had just covered with soap.

She doesn't seem to mind the taste of soap, by the way. Not that I'm admitting to anything.

Greg and I just had an argument over who did more work today. He said he made dinner, washed the dishes, and got groceries, so he had done all the housemaid work today. I reminded him that I washed and made bottles this morning and then I couldn't think of a lot more other than watching the kids all day.

Now I've had some time to think.

This morning, I did the bottles, but Greg made Allie breakfast. We both bathed one child. Greg made Allie's lunch. I watched the kids in the afternoon until 3, while I did three loads of laundry. Greg took Allie to the store and I fed Julia (again) and changed a poopy diaper. We both put groceries away. Greg made dinner, but when I was starting to clean up afterwards, he said he'd rather wash dishes than play "Sweetie and Mommy" with Allie. I eventually went upstairs and put away four loads of laundry (one was left from earlier in the week) and I got Allie in her pajamas. I think that makes us pretty even in work accomplished, because that was the point when we had our argument.

I said I wanted to blog and Greg said he deserved a break. While I've been downstairs blogging, he's had to change another poopy diaper (I believe). That makes us even more even.

I think today was a pretty typical Saturday as far as what we got done. So why were we arguing? Who knows.

Nine years ago tonight, my life changed forever. I'm not being dramatic; nine years ago tonight was the night I met Greg.

I worked with the husband of a couple and Greg worked with the wife and they set up that the four of us would go to a movie together. We saw "I.Q." with Meg Ryan and Timothy Robbins. It was an excellent first date movie; no embarrassing sex scenes and some funny scenes.

Afterwards, we went out to eat at Applebee's (there weren't many other restaurants in Decatur at that time). There was an awkward moment when I bought him a drink. I had chicken fingers and Greg ate riblets, I believe. We laughed. We laughed a lot. Greg and I discovered we were both English majors and we talked about skydiving (which I'd done a few months before).

Eventually, we went back to my condo and the four of us talked for another hour or two before the three of them left together. Greg and I shook hands and said maybe we would do it again sometime.

I very carefully waited until the following Tuesday (not Monday, too eager) and then called when I knew he wouldn't be home to leave a message thanking him for dinner. The rest is history.

We had a wonderful courtship and our early marriage was very romantic. Lots of lunches together and notes left on car windshields. We both miss those heady days.

But tonight, all four of us crawled onto our bed together for about 45 minutes, before the girls went to sleep, and giggled and played and talked. Times like that may seem pretty ordinary when they happen, but I think back to that first date and I know how extraordinary it is that we've found ourselves at this point.

Fate is a wonderful thing sometimes.

I love you, Gregory! I can't wait to know you for another 59 years or so.

How often are you supposed to sweep and mop your kitchen floor?

Never mind that, how often do you actually do it? I know, it depends on your traffic, size of family, if you have a crawling baby around. But how often do you sweep and mop?

Every day? There's no way I'm going to sweep every day (sorry, Marcia!). Every week at least? Umm, I don't sweep every week.

I sweep when the chunks get annoying or when we have company coming. I just swept because the in-laws are coming to visit tomorrow for New Year's.

It's a good thing they're coming, because it's making us clean. I'll come forward and admit, the last time I swept my floor was right after we made Christmas cookies, around December 5 or 6 or so. I had to sweep then because there were little nonpariel (sp?) things rolling around the floor.

The problem, besides the fact that I dislike cleaning and would rather spend my spare minutes reading a book or magazine or newspaper or just about anything, is that my floor is huge. Our vinyl starts in our broad entryway, extends past the basement door and around the hallway to the half bathroom, runs through the dinette and under the breakfast bar, through the kitchen and into the mudroom to the back door.

It's probably 3/4 of the space on our main level, so at least 500-600 square feet. Maybe that doesn't sound like much, but when you sweep as infrequently as I do, it takes a long time to get that much space clean.

Don't even tell me to do it more often and it'll take less time. Haven't you been paying attention? I'm not a cleaning person!

Sigh.

I'm going to go upstairs and dust now, since both girls are sleeping.

Allie likes to dust. Thank goodness she got that gene from her paternal grandmother. When Greg and I get old, we can go by Allie's house for holidays and everything will be spic and span and spell of lemon polish. Let's see, she's almost 4. I figure I only have about 19 more years of sweeping left.

Merry belated Christmas to everyone!

Greg and I and the girls went shopping, well actually we went exchanging gifts shopping, yesterday. We had to go to five stores and we got an early start so it would be less painful. There were almost no lines and everything went very smoothly. We got some cool stuff to replace the cool stuff that didn't fit or were duplicates.

Claudette, I got white backless slippers to replace my slippers, because all they had in the boot kind were red ones. Pam, Greg got three new shirts/sweaters at Old Navy and they made him very happy. And among other changes, we exchanged Allie's Leappad book for one that features pre-math, so she's very happy.

What's pre-math, anyway? Whatever it is, she's very good at it. Such a smart girl! Allie was even smart enough to open her Christmas gifts from Mom-and-Dad Santa and say that each one was "so cool!" Way to guarantee she'll continue to get gifts!

I'm going to get busy cleaning my incredibly dirty house now. The in-laws are coming in three days and it's going to take us that long to get it presentable.

Happy Birthday, Mom! Today is my mom's birthday and she's, well, I'd better not tell you how old she is. Your birthday cards are in the mail, Mom, if you didn't already get them, and you're getting your present on Tuesday when we arrive for Christmas.

I've been feeling old myself lately. It's mostly my eyes. I notice that I want to turn a light on to read stuff that I would have been perfectly well able to read without additional light in the past. And small print is getting harder to read too. I'd like to put it down to new contact lenses or something, but I think it's age.

And I think I have a permanent line where my face creases on the right side when I smile. Better a smile line/wrinkle than a frown line, but . . .

People still tell me that I don't look my age, but I don't believe them much anymore. I've always been a non-tanner, so I still think that'll help my skin stay younger-looking, but nothing lasts forever. And 40 used to seem so old, after all it's 20 years beyond age 20, but now it doesn't seem that old at all.

My middle sister is turning 40 next spring, and I'll be turning 40 in the summer of the next year. Maybe I'll get lucky and get mono again, like I did when I turned 30. I was so sick I didn't care what age I was. Then again, maybe not so lucky. That sucked. Poor Greg made me a birthday cake and I tried to swallow a bite of it, unsuccessfully.

Maybe I'll just continue to get old and live with it, thanking god that I'm alive.

Am I depressed today? I didn't think so, but now I am! I need to get out of this house!

Greg and I are both sick with colds. This sucks. We both started feeling symptoms last night, and it'll be a miracle if we don't give it to Julia.

I took yesterday afternoon off and I finished my shopping. Then Greg, Allie, and I wrapped all of our gifts for family members last night. There are things under the tree now, (nothing for the girls or Greg, of course) and Allie was worried. "Mommy, Santa won't have any place to put my presents." I reassured her that Santa will make room.

Greg took her to see Santa this morning. I asked her what she told him she wanted for Christmas, expecting to hear Bratz dolls (I don't like Bratz dolls and she's too young for them, so please don't get her any if Allie is on your Christmas list). She's been saying Bratz dolls as the one thing she wants this year.

Well, she told Santa she wants an umbrella. I have no idea why. That's the first I've heard of that. Maybe she was nervous?

Christmas is approaching fast and I feel nowhere near ready. Some gifts are purchased, but none are wrapped. Christmas cards aren't happening again this year. We made cookies, which was a blast, but the tree took several days to finish. Greg did our miniscule effort on outdoor lighting (we're the shame of the neighborhood--some take that stuff very seriously around here).

Gee, I only have to finish shopping, wrap everything, clean the house, do laundry, pack everything, buy a savings bond--oh, never mind. It's a Christmas tradition to complain about being behind on your preparations, isn't it?

What I can talk about is my daughter, Allie, yet again. She's been (as her daddy says) a "little fartbucket" lately. She was a pretty stinky girl this weekend, and her daddy asked her, "Allie, what on earth have you been eating?" With a smirk on her face, she drawled, "Bea-ans."

After we finished laughing, I asked her who told her about beans. She said, "Grandma." Thanks for that one, Mom!

Greg has taken the girls Christmas shopping today, so I've been alone in the house for almost two hours now. I went through the bags of presents Greg and I bought last week and found the new stockings we bought for the "4" of us. We had three nice stockings before, but now we have four.

Last year, we found out I was pregnant on December 3, and we talked about having a new baby in the house by this Christmas. Julia likes to look at the Christmas tree lights. Allie likes to lay under the tree. So does Pig, the cat. Maybe we should have a tree in the house year round.

When we found out we were pregnant with Allie, we called everyone and told them immediately. With Julia, I wanted to tell my family in person. So we waited until we saw them, which I think was on December 26 or 27 last year.

My mom's birthday had been December 21, so I told her she had to open her belated birthday present. It was a gift bag with the ultrasound photos of Julia-to-be in it. She reached in and pulled the roll of photos out, but what I didn't anticipate was that Allie would "help" by taking the photos and heading off into the room. I told her to give them back to Grandma, she did, and Mom unrolled the paper to stare at it without comprehension.

I told her, "Those are photos of your next grandchild, Mom." The room erupted as my sisters screamed and grabbed Greg, Allie, and me in hugs. It was a lot of fun, and a very happy day. And now, the result is here and wiggling. And trying to roll over, and talking all the time, and smiling, and giggling.

Time passes so quickly!

Doncha just hate it when you take a couple of days of vacation and then not only have to spend a bunch of crazy time getting things somewhat wrapped up before you leave, but then you spend a bunch of crazy time (including, in my case, working through lunches when you get back) to get kind of even close to being caught up from being gone?

I'm going to stop typing now--Julia is feeling better from her cold, but I laid her on the futon while I started typing this and she just pushed her feet hard and fell onto the floor. Luckily it's probably a smaller distance than if she'd fallen off the couch, but I should know better as a not-for-the-first-time Mom. Greg scooped her up and took her upstairs, so I'm going to reassure myself she's OK. Even though I know she is.

Poor Julia. She's sick for the first time.

On Friday, she went for her four month checkup. She weighs 13 lbs, 4 oz. now, which still doesn't seem like much to me compared to Allie's current weight. She's in the 50th percentile for weight and the 70th percentile for height, so she's still tall! Julia's head circumference is in the 75th percentile, which doesn't surprise me since she has all that superior intellect to house. Yeah, right.

She got three shots, and even though fever can be a side effect of vaccinations, Ask a Nurse says that the cold she came down with yesterday is probably not related.

She's miserable. Her eyes are red and her nose is red (despite lotioned tissues). She cries a lot, so she's got tears going on, her nose is running, and she's drooling the normal amount of baby drool. It's definitely a face only a parent could love.

I hate a baby's first illness. As far as they know, they're never going to feel well again. I'm hoping she'll seem better tomorrow, especially since she's too little to get any decongestant. The nurse said a four-month-old's little liver can't handle it. So we're relying on a tilted mattress and a humidifier in her room, poor thing.

On a happier note, the rest of the family had a wonderful afternoon yesterday making Christmas cookies. It took 3 1/2 hours from making batter to finishing decorating. See the pictures on our website. Flour everywhere! And not just on the three year old!

Sometimes I clearly remember what life was like before we had kids. I could pay attention to my husband for awhile and then bury myself in a stack of magazines or a great book for the rest of the day. I mean the entire day, like 10 hours of reading.

I miss those days.

I usually make it through the newspaper every day. On Sundays, when it takes me an hour and a half total to read the paper, I'll plant Allie in front of a movie and hope Julia naps so I can read the paper in short segments. It usually takes me all morning to get through it, if not into the afternoon.

Sigh.

Now the books I get all the way through are "Pocahontas" and "Go Dog Go." It's better than nothing, but not much. I'm already looking forward to when my kids can read on their own. Allie is making strides, sounding out letters. I figure it'll be about four more years until I can read as much as I want for leisure again.

I wonder if we should start Julia on flashcards now to speed things up.

Julia had a giggling fit tonight. It was pretty unintentional on my part--I was changing her clothes for bed. She needed to be washed with a warm washcloth around the neck because she was wet with drool or spit-up.

She laughed when I took her arm out of one sleeve and I tickled her, and when I started washing her neck, she got the giggles. I yelled for Greg and Allie to come downstairs from where they were playing on the computer in Allie's room, so they got to hear it too. Julia was giggling and laughing and doing the baby version of guffawing.

It was very cool. Babies are fun.

Greg arrived home today from Baltimore. No more trips until next year.

Shortly after he arrived and after Julia had become somewhat reacquainted with him, Allie woke up from her nap. She came downstairs and I took Julia from Greg's arms so Allie could squeeze him and hug him (which she's been talking about doing for days).

Greg grabbed her in a big hug and the two of them started rolling back and forth on the couch, tickling and laughing. Julia was watching and she immediately started to cry. She thought Allie's screaming was in pain or fear and boy, did she react. We had Allie come over and try to get Julia to smile again, but it took awhile.

I told Greg, just like dogs do sometimes, Julia misinterpreted what she saw as fighting and she reacted. Is it OK that I compared my daughter to a dog?

She doesn't look like a dog. She looks a lot like me when I was a baby. My mom and I went through a bunch of family photos and I've got one photo of me as a baby (with my sisters, of course, curse of being a third child) that looks just like Julia. I don't think my hair was quite as spikey, however!

I've made my husband a happy man. How, you may ask? What wonder of marriage bliss do I have knowledge of? I let him talk me into spending $1300 on a new computer. I hate spending money like that right before Christmas, but I let him talk me into it. He kept complaining about our old computer crashing and I got as tired as he did of him staying up until all hours of the night reloading stuff when it crashed.

So now we have a new Mac G4. It's very futuristic looking. All one box and the CD drive is completely hidden. I'll probably know how to do about three things on it.

Today, the Lees went out to lunch at a local cafe and then we got groceries, and tonight Allie and I made cookies. It would have been a just lovely day if not for the fact that this red-headed waitress at the cafe terrorized Julia. Julia had been peacefully sitting in her carseat while we ate, chewing on her fist and contemplating going to sleep, when this waitress stopped by to say how cute she was.

For some reason, Julia didn't like her and she started to huff and scrunch her face like she was going to cry. So did the waitress leave before she actually got going? No, she stayed standing over Julia, even leaning in to comment on how she looked like she was going to cry.

So she wailed. Even then, the waitress didn't move. Greg tried to rock Julia a little and finally had to put down his sandwich to pick Julia up. She cried and cried. Thanks a lot, red. Julia cried and sobbed and everyone in the restaurant looked over as if to say, who pinched that baby that was so peaceful for the last 20 minutes?

I know. And if she's our waitress next time we're in there--no tip for her!!!

Well, Halloween has come and gone and it keeps getting better every year as Allie gets older. As you probably know, she was a butterfly this year, with elaborate colorful wings and a thankfully-warm jumpsuit.

It was cold and damp, but we did better with trick-or-treaters than last year, when it was very cold. 258 this year vs. 216 last year (that's in 2 hours, folks). I think our all time high was 320 or so. That's a lot of kids begging for candy on our corner.

We had guests again, which we've had for the last three years. It freed Greg and I to both go begging for candy with Allie, so we both got to hear all the neighbors tell us how cute she looked. Yep, she doesn't hear that enough on regular days, so we have to stock up on holidays.

It's raining steadily outside, and that always makes me want to bake cookies. I would be insane to do so, however, since we have a bunch of candy left over, plus Allie's proceeds, plus Greg bought cookies for our visitors (which went uneaten since they brought cookies with them), plus a friend of ours gave Allie cookies in her Halloween bag. That's too much sugar even for me.

Gloomy day--I hate fall. I'd almost rather have winter, when you at least get bright snowy days. My favorite time of year is spring, when all the flowers are coming up and everything's turning green. How many days away is that?

No, I haven't dropped off the face of the earth.

My last post was written the day that I went back to work and I haven't felt like I've had any spare time since. I have, of course, but I've likely spent it trying to read the last of the morning paper at 10 p.m.

Things are just fine. Julia has been sleeping through the night like a trooper. She even made the adjustment for daylight savings time without too much trouble. I think one of the greatest gifts an infant of this age can give it's parents is to sleep through the night. It makes parents feel human again to have uninterrupted sleep.

Julia started smiling a few weeks ago and we now consider it official--she's laughing too. Not a lot yet, but that makes it all the more precious when she does it.

The other day, I was sitting in the chair in our bedroom and holding Julia while Allie was jumping on our bed. Allie was jumping and jumping and then crossing her legs and sitting down from a jumping position and I guess Julia thought she looked silly, because suddenly she started laughing. Then Allie and I spent the next five minutes trying to get her to do it again, with only the result that Allie got winded and I got mildly frustrated.

She loves her baths now and her eyes get really wide when you first put her in and when you wet her head. She's not so happy generally when you're dressing her afterwards--I think she gets a little cold despite my best efforts.

Julia is also getting better with her fussy periods in the evening, at least for the last four or five nights. It's wonderful to have a happy baby in the house. She's outgrowing her newborn clothes and getting some wear out of her warmer outfits since it's been so cold.

Allie threw up on me when I left her at daycare yesterday. Gosh, she hasn't done that in at least a couple of years. I can wait another couple of years, personally. We think orange juice is too hard on her stomach in the morning, since she's fine afterwards. This isn't the first time she's thrown up that way.

That's the quick update on my kids. Who knows when I'll write again, but Halloween is tomorrow, so maybe I'll give an update on that soon.

Julia is 10 weeks old today and I went back to work. It was OK. I had enough to do that the morning went really quickly and the afternoon was fine too.

I really wanted a nap at about 2:30, but I got some sugar in my system and I was all right. Julia only got me up once last night, but I had a lot of trouble getting back to sleep afterwards--that old anticipation-of-the-alarm thing. I'll go to bed early tonight and Greg will get up with Julia when she wants to be fed.

I was all right with leaving Julia at daycare for the first time, too. She's been going with me to drop off Allie for weeks, of course, but this time I left her there with her sister. It was definitely easier than when Allie started daycare, for a couple of reasons.

For one, I feel a lot better about Karina, our current provider, than Sherry, who had Allie as an infant. Allie's been going to Karina for months already, so my trust in having Julia with her is obviously unlike that first day leaving Allie with Sherry, who we really didn't know from Adam.

For another, Karina didn't ask me, with a sympathetic voice, how I was doing or if I was OK. That's enough to get me teary-eyed, right there, especially since I think my hormones are still a little screwed up.

I got teary in the car and then I was OK. And I saw both girls at lunch, though Julia was sound asleep in a swing. I'll be visiting them at lunch at least twice a week, for my benefit much more than theirs.

And so we move on to the next stage in our lives, I guess. This is how things will be until Allie starts kindergarten, in two short years.

Last night at about 9:00, Greg was in the basement working on the computer and I was in the living room, feeding Julia and watching TV. Allie had been in bed for 1/2 hour and was supposed to be asleep. She called me and said she couldn't find her dolly. Dolly is a necessity at bedtime. I suspected Dolly had fallen under the bed, so I called Greg to go upstairs and help her (Julia screams if you take her bottle away before she's ready).

Absorbed in my show, I didn't even realize that Greg never came back downstairs. At 9:30, I was going to take a sleeping Julia to her crib when I realized the cat was acting out that no one had remembered to feed her. Her dish is downstairs, so I called down to Greg to feed Pig. No answer. I thought he might have headphones on, so I went downstairs and discovered he wasn't there.

Heading upstairs, I found Greg sound asleep on our bed, with both his bedside light on and the overhead light on. The overhead light is bright! I don't know how he managed to fall asleep. I turned out the overhead light and carried Julia to her crib. She's out--making that little snoring/snurgling noise that babies make when they're happy (full tummy in this case).

I went down to the basement to turn off the computer and noticed when I came back up that Allie was snoring too, which she does occasionally, especially when she's really out of it sleeping.

And then I went back to our room, where my husband was blissfully snoring.

All was at peace in the Lee household.

You've all heard of Corelle dishes, right? When I was in my early teens, my family got their first Corelle and my sisters and I would sometimes amuse ourselves by intentionally dropping it on the floor as we did the dishes. Corelle isn't supposed to break.

Yeah, right.

At some point in time, someone gave Greg and I something on a medium-size, white Corelle plate and we never gave the plate back. On Friday night, I tried to pull two of our everyday stoneware plates out of the cupboard and I didn't realize the Corelle plate was on top of the stack. It, and a small stoneware plate, fell on the counter and broke.

The stoneware plate broke in half. The Corelle plate shattered into thousands of pieces, shards and chunks and glass dust. It took me two seconds to clean up the broken stoneware plate and it took Greg and I a good half hour to clean up the Corelle.

If we owned any more of the stuff, it would be gone from this household. Damn that Corelle. Damn it all.

It was an unusually productive Sunday around the Lee residence today. Not so much for me--I just bathed and fed Julia, kept Allie occupied, and made my way through a stack of filing/paid bills/statements/artwork from Allie/receipts/photographs that dated back to November.

It was my husband who was productive. He scraped the wood trim around our garage door, where the paint had started peeling probably last year. Our house was only built six years or so ago, but this trim was looking bad, and it turns out some of it was actually rotten. He dug out the bad stuff, put in wood filler, sanded, and painted. Then he tackled our front porch, where our lower rail has something growing in it that's rotting it for sure. Same remedy.

He also replaced the peeling house numbers on our mailbox (something Pizza Hut drivers will thank him for) and painted the board where our deck attaches to the house. That last project has been waiting to be done since 1999, when we built the deck.

Not that I'm complaining, mind you. I certainly could have taken care of these projects if I was a little more motivated. I'm just really glad they're done. Good for Gregory.

On another subject, Julia is really growing fast now. She is so alert and good at following movement. She coos whole phrases in babytalk instead of just brief sounds. And she even feels different in my arms, like a baby instead of a newborn--parents and grandparents would know what I mean by that. She's not so floppy, not so light, different. Growing up already.

I know, I know. She's two months old and I've got another 22 years (if we're lucky) before she's out of the house. I'm just conscious that this is the last time I'm going to get to go through this process. And no, I've never, ever considered having a third baby. I just want to appreciate every one of these moments with her (and continuing moments with Allie), and yet I know that's not even remotely possible.

I really hate going to the dentist. You probably wouldn't guess that, since I schedule appointments every six months and submit myself to the whole cleaning procedure, but I do.

I've had more than my fair share of lifetime procedures, I think. A good number of fillings as a kid, a root canal, bleaching, an implant, a crown, another root canal (this one emergency, while I was pregnant with Julia) and now another crown today.

My implant took two years of procedures. I had throbbing pain (on a tooth that had earlier been root canaled and bleached) and ended up getting the tooth pulled. So I had to wear a partial (you know, a retainer-like thing with a fake tooth on it) while I had a bone graft, threads carved into the bone of my upper jaw, the installation of a healing collar through the gum, a cover thing installed, and then a fake tooth put on. I know some people spend years with braces, but this sucked just as much as I understand those do.

Today, with this crown, I felt like the dentist was drilling right through to my brain. He did four impressions too; god, I hate that gunk. I gagged so badly on the third set that he had to start over and I ended up with little bits of hardened impression stuff all over my mouth, including stuck to the roof of my mouth (which I discovered in the parking lot). Gross, yuck, ick.

I have to go back in three weeks to get the final crown put on. Any volunteers to go in my place? Pretty please?

If you bother to read this thing regularly, you might remember me talking about cleaning our mudroom and how many coats we own. Well, I counted today and we own 31 (not including some of Allie's that are now packed away for Julia). That's ridiculous, since you really only wear one at a time. I tackled cleaning the closet in the mudroom today and got two bags ready for St. Vincent de Paul's of just coats. When I was a kid, I got some of my coats from St. Vinnie's, so that's where they're going and I hope they keep somebody appreciative warm (and dry; there's a rain slicker or two in there).

Cleaning the mudroom closet had a spillover effect--I got rid of a whole ton of vases from under the kitchen sink (when was the last time you cleaned under there?) and made some space in our pantry as well. My dear husband is a real sweetie about buying me flowers, so the vase situation had really gotten out of hand. Now we have room for all the Swiffer cloths we own. If you haven't tried Swiffer (or as Greg says for some strange reason, Swifter), you need to give it a go.

Julia has been sleeping all morning. She's starting to eat more at a time and I think that her new formula must have triptophan in it. Yet another consequence of being a second baby--she's not getting Enfamil anymore, she's drinking Parent's Choice (the Wal-Mart brand). Poor child doesn't get all Pampers diapers like her sister either, half the time she's in Huggies.

Well, at least she's been wearing some of the new outfits people were kind enough to give us now that it's cold. She looks adorable, of course, and not at all like her sister did at that age, if you ask me. Unlike Allie, who still doesn't look like either Greg or I, I think Julia looks like me as a baby. Aren't genetics weird? Repeating an appearance in a new person?

She did it!

Julia slept through the night last night for the first time. Yay! Yay! She was wiggling and making noises when we tried to put her in her crib at the end of our evening, so I fed her one more time starting at 10:15. She fell asleep about 10:30 and didn't wake up until 6:45 this morning. I am very happy.

My happiness is tempered somewhat by the fact that this could just be an aberration because of the doctor visit and shots yesterday wearing her out. We'll know soon, I guess. And you can't help but compare--Allie slept through the night for the first time at 3 weeks and was doing it very reliably by 3 months. Please keep your fingers crossed for me and Greg.

Speaking of Allie, just because Julia didn't get fed in the middle of the night doesn't mean I got to sleep peacefully. Allie had three instances last night where she woke up from a bad dream and kept calling my name until I went to her. I just hand her a tissue to wipe her eyes (she's always crying), tell her to lay down, and cover her up before going back to bed. Hey, I'll take that anytime over spending a good half hour feeding and burping a baby. It's a lot harder to get back to sleep yourself.

Congratulations on your anniversary, Dwayne and Raquel!