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!

I took Allie to tumbling class tonight. It's just her fourth half-hour class, but she already is doing better than the first night (which is when I last took her), especially at things like the stretching exercises they do at the start. I can't help laughing at her, though. She still waves at me, or whoever is her attending parent, about every third minute, and if I happen to not see her, she calls me to notice and wave back.

She's gotten better at waiting her turn without asking every other minute when it's going to be her turn. That skill should stand her in good stead when she gets to school. I think her favorite part is the trampoline--well, sorry, little girl. We ain't getting one for home. Too dangerous at almost any age. Your mom has seen too many TV news programs about nasty injuries.

On another subject, a huge congratulations to Dwayne and Raquel, who are having a baby girl. I still don't know when, though, because Dwayne has never written me back with an answer to my due date question. I am thrilled for them. Babies rock (no puns, please). And now I must be off to get mine into her crib. She's sleeping peacefully on the couch (don't nag me by e-mail, she can't even begin to roll off yet). Pleasant dreams to you all.

I took Julia to the doctor for her two-month checkup today on what is her two-month birthday. She's tall! Who'd a thunk it. She's in the 90th percentile of babies her age for height but only the 50th percentile for weight. Julia now weighs 10 lbs., 9 oz. Hard to believe some babies weigh that much at birth (like my father-in-law, for instance).

Julia also had to get three shots. I guess that's better than Allie, who had to get four shots at this age. They've come up with some new and improved vaccine that combines something or other, so now "just" three shots. I remember when Allie got these, I spent at least a few minutes going over the vaccine information sheets, checking what the side effects could be and informing myself on what she had gotten.

Today, I don't even know what Julia got (I was changing a poopy diaper while the nurse was telling me) and I'm not planning on reading the sheets unless she's acting weird. Yet another of the "disadvantages" of being a second baby. At least she gets the advantage of parents who are a lot calmer about anything odd she does.

As long as Julia doesn't get sick, she doesn't have to go back to the doctor until she's four months old now (when she'll get three more shots). Kids these days get 21 shots before the age of two, believe it or not.

Allie did go back to the doctor before she turned four months old--she was in daycare for a grand total of two weeks before she got sick for the first time. Julia should be better off that way--our current daycare just has Allie and our provider's own 7-month-old son. Julia gets to start going there next week Wednesday, my first day back at work. Not looking forward to it, needless to say.

Today is Monday and the first day in 10 that I haven't been with Allie for a majority of the day. Last week our daycare provider was on vacation, so I had both girls at home alone with me for Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday. It's too bad, because the days went just fine, but I don't think I'm cut out to be a stay-at-home mom.

I wanted to be able to read something for 10 minutes or 30 minutes or spend half an hour on the computer and I couldn't do that, at least not without having Allie watch way too much TV. I think things will be different when Allie and Julia can play together, but right now, Mommy is Allie's primary playmate at home. Allie's a sweetie, but she can be a little tiring when it's nine hours at a crack.

My sister Claudette is off on her honeymoon this week (one week after the wedding week) in San Francisco, which is where Greg and I also went on our honeymoon seven years ago. It's a beautiful city and I'm sure she and Mike will have a wonderful time.

Greg and I also visited the Napa Valley and the Winchester House in San Jose (I believe) when we were there. The Winchester House is the house that they kept building on for 20 years or so because the owner believed that would keep the ghosts of those killed with Winchester guns from haunting her. It was cool--you see things like that on shows like "Ripley's Believe It or Not" and it was fascinating to see it in person.

My mom called this morning and said that Claudette and Mike are visiting Alcatraz today. That's another place you see on TV and then to see it in person--- Here's wishing a steady ferry ride for the honeymooners--the bay at San Francisco can get really choppy.

And if those two are anything like Greg and I--by the time they leave on Saturday, they'll be heartily sick of sourdough bread. Give me a good baguette anytime!

I had a follow-up appointment at the eye doctor today and my eyes are going to be OK. I haven't worn my contacts for a week and a half, except for 12 hours on the day of the wedding, and that helped a lot. I guess my blood vessels are looking a lot more normal, and I've got a new prescription for contacts that's just a little different than 2 years ago. Thank god. I repeat, thank god. I am, however, a reformed contact lens length-of-time wearer. One week wear schedule, OK. Two day wear schedule, OK. I don't care how much I spend on contacts, I'm following the wear schedule.

I told the optometrist that I blogged about how everyone should follow their contact lens wear schedule and she was very pleased. She said she needs to get online herself and post something about the dangers of overlong wearing of lenses, and asked me what I could have been told to keep me from wearing my lenses so long. Hmm--maybe that I could seriously damage my eyes? Golly--that would have been enough for me. I, and she, put some blame on the manufacturers of the new multi-purpose solutions. You don't even have to rub contact lenses these days if you change your lenses often enough, but she says no one ever reads the fine print on the boxes and so people go ages with each lens and just throw them in the case at night.

Well I, for one, am reformed.

My husband was right with his news message about weddings meaning pain, but his list was short compared to the actual injuries. Let's see----

The bride had big marks on her feet the day after the wedding from her strappy sandals.

The maid of honor woke up the day after the wedding with a horribly stiff neck.

The wife of one of the ushers got stung by a yellow jacket when the party bus that the wedding party was on stopped at a site for pictures.

The best man injured his back when the bride sat on his knee for the garter ceremony, to the point that he can't feel his legs (he was going to see a doctor yesterday).

The groom woke up with a stiff neck the day after the ceremony.

The youngest, cutest flower girl (guess who) has nasty sores on her feet from her cute ivory shoes, which she kept on the whole time she boogied (she was up until 11:30, three hours past her bedtime).

Another bridesmaid hobbled around the day after the ceremony from wearing new dress shoes all the previous day.

The wife of another usher fell twice on the dance floor (yes, drink had something to do with it).

Despite this list, the wedding really was fun. Not as fun as mine and Greg's, of course, but fun. Congratulations, Claudette and Mike. By the time we all recover, it'll be time to celebrate your first anniversary.

If you wear contact lenses, please read this. If you don't, feel free to check back another day.

I went to the eye doctor yesterday for the first time in two years. I am pretty diligent about things like going to the dentist every six months, getting a pap smear every year, and getting my eyes checked every two years.

The optometrist commented that my eyes looked kind of red and I told her I had a newborn and that I didn't get a nap yesterday. She checked my right (dominant) eye and my prescription had changed slightly, no big deal. Then she checked my left eye and there's a big change. My astigmatism is much worse, my prescription has changed at least four levels, and she couldn't get me to be able to see 20/20. She said the blood vessels are enflamed and that it's affecting my cornea.

The reason--I've worn my left contact lens beyond the recommended wear schedule. Yep, that's probably the only reason that I may have caused permanent damage to my eye. At the very least, I'm going to have to change lens manufacturers, because my old lens manufacturer doesn't make lenses in as high a prescription as I'm now going to need.

When I originally started wearing toric contact lenses (those made for people with astigmatism) ten years ago, I cleaned my lenses with this fizzy process every day and religiously cleaned them for enzymes every week. I could wear my lenses for three months before changing them. Then suddenly the manufacturer changed the box, and my three-month lenses became one-month lenses. As I told the eye doctor the last time I was examined, I didn't believe anything about the lenses had changed besides the manufacturer wanting you to buy lenses more often, so I continued to wear each lens for three months.

The eye doctor two years ago never told me there might be a problem with that (he's no longer with the office, by the way). Times changed with cleaning solutions and processes and the enzyme tablets are really outrageously expensive, so when they came out with multi-purpose solutions that say you don't have to enzyme anymore, I jumped on board. The newest solutions even say you don't have to rub your lenses when cleaning them anymore (I still rub them to clean them anyway). The problem is that I stopped doing enzyme treatments and continued wearing my lenses beyond the wear schedule.

If you wear your contact lenses beyond the recommended wear schedule (and I bet all of you lens-wearers reading this do), please check with your eye doctor to make sure that's OK. They can give you some guidance. Sure, you might end up spending more on lenses, but you could avoid serious eye damage.

As for me, I need to stop wearing my lenses immediately and wear my glasses, at least for a week. The doctor said I can wear my contacts for the wedding on Saturday, so I'll probably wear them for a few hours that day. I have to go back for another appointment and I'll find out more about what damage I've really done.

This concludes today's cautionary tale. You only have two eyes, people. Take care of yourself.

Ohesotte nani? What is the meaning of my bellybutton?

That's Allie's favorite phrase from Daddy's new Japanese phrase book. She picked the book up because it has little sketches of funny men in it and she asked me to read her what it said. Greg was laughing at me because I'd read something that wouldn't make sense to a literal 3-year-old mind and then try to explain to her what it meant. Most of the time I'd just say, oh, that's a silly one. The above phrase is from the Zen section. It's funny, but it doesn't make too much sense to a literal 38-year-old mind either.

Allie is going to be gorgeous this weekend at my sister's wedding. She has an ivory satin dress with an organza overlay and a big satin sash. It has two satin roses at the raised waistline and a satisfactorily-swishy skirt (I say that because we put it on Allie briefly this weekend and she swung the skirt around and around). I remember doing that with dress skirts when I was her age and even older. She has ivory dress shoes and she'll wear ivory hose (as soon as we find some that fit). Thank you, Nana, for all your work on this outfit. Allie is going to beat the pants off the other flower girl in the cute department (sorry to Amanda).