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.