asteroid B612

I realized as my molar lay on the dentist's tray that the tooth she had just pulled was my favorite tooth. I know it's silly, but I kind of liked that tooth more than the other teeth and took extra special care of it. Maybe because it was the under-dog molar that never really fit. I don't know. Now there's just a hole there. Recovery is going better than I expected, but I still feel like I was punched in the jaw, and I'm really not looking forward to a repeat of this on the other side in two weeks.

My mom came to help watch the kids so I could go to the dentist. Ellis had off school for Rosh Hashanah (something *I* never got growing up in Christian school) yesterday and off today for teacher inservice. The dentist visit was fast, and I met my mom and boys at the arboretum, numb jaw and all. The arboretum has gotten over its late summer "ugly" hump. It was just looking all dry and worn out, but fall is starting to peek in, and the sedum is gorgeous and leaves are starting to turn. The shimmering linden branches were starting to quiver golden yellow.

I went home with my mom, who fed me soft things, while I watched House and waited for the baby to wake up. He did not disappoint. I finally started looking at the clock. He woke up around 6-7 times between 2.30 and 4.30 and then hourly until morning. This has been going on every night for weeks. A lot of wakefulness. And a lot of crying. Plus Ellis's continued nightly wakeup. He wakes up once and usually crawls in with me, and since I'm dealing with Marlowe, I can't take the time to help him go back to sleep in his own bed, like I used to be able to. About 3 months before Marlowe was born, he was making it all night in his own bed a few times a week. This, too, shall pass. (And b/c of Daddy's work schedule, he is unavailable for nighttime parenting.) I'm kind of bummed. Marlowe started out pretty well, going 3-4 chunks between wakeups, but this past month that has all unraveled. And I've done everything right. All the routines and cues are in place. It's just down to temperament now. And it looks like I'll continue to be a zombie for another 3-4 years. I'm sorry if I forget to do things for you that i said I would.

Anyway, we had an excellent day at my mom's. Ellis was in a terrific mood and had a great day. He even ate a variety of food, including homemade pizza margherita, which, if you knew him, would cause your jaw to drop.

I tried to sew. I actually got a pair of CUUUTE baby jeans made for Marlowe, and started a pair of pumpkin-colored pants for him, but I kept making stupid mistakes and having to rip out seams. The process took a lot longer than it should have.

I love October, it's the falliest month of my favorite season fall. I'm so happy that it's October. And it will be deliciously cool tomorrow.

BTW, don't forget to update your feedreader to http://ab612.partialflow.com. Hopefully our new server will be much more reliable. If you don't read this blog through a feedreader, you have nothing to worry about.

OK, peeps. Update your feeds, and let me know if you have any trouble. The address, ab612.partialflow.com should work, and the old cjones.jwnmedia.com/ab612 will soon be removed. From this point forward the old feed will not work.

If you read me on the web, then you are not affected by this change.

I got a wisdom tooth out today. I need both bottoms out, so one made its grand exit today. She didn't want to numb both sides of my mouth at the bottom, because then I wouldn't feel my tongue. As it is, I feel very numb and expect to stay close to the bottle of tylenol for awhile. The next one comes out in two weeks. I was shocked at how huge the tooth and roots were. Blah.

Hubby blogs----

Wow. What a week. Actually, it's been a week and a half. About the middle of last week, I was looking at a deadline. I knew I had to finish this particular project by the end of the week or so, though I did think I would have the weekend. But for the life of me, I could not get to that project. Whenever I tried, I would be interrupted by some new disaster at my other job. In fact, they owned me for about three days. So by the end of the week I turned to finish the other project.

I knew it would be a programming marathon, but I was determined to make it happen. After almost forty-eight hours without sleep, I had what I had. But I still was not where I needed to be, and my employer was -not- happy with my progress. I swear, thought I would lose my job.

So I worked through Sat. and Sun (I NEVER work on Sundays). And on Monday I was feeling comfortable that I could be done in reasonable time.

Then my other job called up. Disaster. Our client was -very- unhappy. Things had gone completely wrong over the weekend. And though it -really- wasn't our fault, we naturally had to share the blame. So it fell to me on Monday to be the one to offer a solution that would save not only the project but our relationship with the client.

In a moment of complete psychotic disassociation from reality I suggested it might be possible to put together a complete social networking environment in Drupal, within 24 hrs. We already had a template, which could easily be tweaked for the purpose. And once again, another forty-eight hour work marathon later, I was in the same situation as before: desperately trying to put something together in a pinch, hoping it would be good enough to buy more time to keep desperately trying to put something together in a pinch that would buy still more time. Only now I was doing it on two fronts, for two clients.

I don't have to tell you that as I sit here I feel like I've lived five years in two weeks. I'm just now remembering that I have a family, and I'm trying not to think about everything I have left to do. I'm trying to think of what to say to my wife to start getting to know her again. And I'm not sure that Ellis remembers who I am.

I did find out from talking to her today that Ellis had a rough speech therapy session, though not in the usual mode of rough. We've been struggling to keep him engaged during the sessions. The therapist thinks he should be making more progress than he is. So she asked a colleague to run this week's session, while she watched.

Second opinions can be just the thing for getting over a hump. Unfortunately, it seems that one of the reasons we are not seeing the progress we should may be that E has processing difficulties. He's struggling in ways he shouldn't, even given the challenges of being deaf. And maybe he is showing evidence of this processing problem in ASL, too. Only we would never have known it, because we could never get anyone to give us a proper ASL evaluation as part of our IEP.

So yea, we've pretty much had a normal week. What's new with you?

Hubby has been work, work, work, working and working some more. Too many deadlines for Daddy. He got up at 3am on Thursday and didn't go to bed until 9 pm on Friday. I'm not kidding. He was up and working for over 40 hours straight.

So we have been mostly keeping him fed and staying out of his way. When E came home from school on Friday, I packed the boys up and went to Lancaster. We boogied up to my parents' house listening to Funky Friday. I was planning to do laundry*, but as my first load was half way through the washer, my dad said, "oh, by the way, did you know that our dryer is broken?" Groan. I dried the boys' pajamas in the oven. We snuggled in the fall chill. My dear, kind mother took the rest of my laundry to the laundromat the next day.

*do I need to remind you that I don't have a washer/dryer?

In the morning we had waffles. Yummy, yummy waffles. My brother came over and we sat around the table and laughed hard. Nick and I went to see my grandma at the old folks' home. She's not doing so great and reminded me that I shouldn't take visiting my grandma for granted. Her body groans, but her mind is sound. Nick called ahead, and when we entered she was sitting calmly in her chair with fresh makeup on. She and I could share lipstick. We're twins.

In the afternoon we puttered around, and I had the insane idea of making a shirt, and my mom assisted my insanity. I had almost finished when Marlowe decided that enough was enough. I brought it home to finish, and packed the chilren' up again. We came home, the sun setting behind our backs.

Daddy is still working. Marlowe wakes hourly for the umpteenth night in a row. I pop teething tablets onto his gums hoping that that is the underlying cause of such sadness, because teething has an end, restless slumber for its own sake does not. "Sleeping through the night" is the biggest farce of modern parenthood.

Ellis helped me make chocolate chip cookies this afternoon. He holds the ancient hand-held mixer steadily with his eyes on the prize: the cascade of chocolate chips into the bowl at the end. He will stick his hand out and usurp as many as possible from their rightful place in the cookie dough.

A fistful of chocolate gets us through.

Today I got a haircut, a seemingly mundane task, but a larger undertaking for me. In fact, it really was a group effort. In order to get a pretty decent haircut for a fabulously affordable price, I usually go to this Aveda Institute in the city. I've always had a great experience. Today, I'll say, my haircut isn't necessarily bad, but it was a lacklustre experience.

First, my mom came to go with me. We drove into the city, found street parking, fed the meter (allowing over an hour!), and went in. Marlowe seemed pretty happy. So I told the girl what I want, and we proceeded. M started screaming. I took a quick break to nurse him, and then hopped back on my stool. And hte girl was like "so is this pretty much how you want it?" She had cut about a millimeter off of my rag mop. My specific instructions were I want it super short, close to my head. And so the haircut went, my repeating what I wanted over and over and over and over again. Even pointing out people walking through the room whose hair I wanted. It took over an HOUR for her to cut my stinkin' hair. I have short hair. I have easy hair. I wanted an easy haircut. So I was pretty annoyed that I got an okay haircut after much discussion. But, whatever, you get what you pay for.

This extraordinarily long haircut meant that I was extraordinarily late getting home to meet Ellis coming home from school. Thankfully, work at home daddy didn't mind, and E was obliging, so he didn't lose too much work time, either.

When we pulled up, I popped E into the car and we went to IKEA, where we spent somewhere between 2-3 hours. I got an Antilop for Marlowe. He's so cute.

I have a headache. Just watched the season premiere of House, which is currently my favorite show.

So that was my day.

I realized that I no longer get carded when I purchase adult beverages*. Is it the sleep deprivation? Surely not anything I've done to affect my look. Do I really look 30?

*Like I do this all the time. Not. I've just bought wine a couple of times recently for at-home dates with hubby.

So today marks seven years since Sept. 11, 2001. I can always remember which year, because it was three months after we got married.

I was sitting in our New Orleans apartment with my morning coffee. My grad student hubby had gone to class and I was on his computer checking my email and waiting for a phone call to schedule a follow-up interview for my first job. (Except I probably didn't know that I was waiting for this phone call at the time.) I got an email from my former college roomie, also newlywed and at her first job. "Have you seen the news?" I thought this was sort of weird, since it was midmorning. At first I wasn't sure how to "see the news", but I figured if it was noteworthy enough for a midmorning email, it might be on TV. We barely got any channels, but there it was on the TV, the World Trade Center falling. It was scary and confusing at first. Were we at war? Would there be a draft? (Yea, I admit, I thought that right away; I was newlywed, after all.) Hubby came home from cancelled class, and we watched awhile, went over to his colleague's house with cable and watched some more. After a couple of days we stopped watching. Louisiana felt so far away from New York, like an alternate reality.

So, where were you?

It's been a hard past week.

Developmental insomnia on the part of the 3yo. Non-stop nursing growathon for the 3mo. Equals NO SLEEP 'TIL BROOKLYN! "Tired" doesn't really begin to describe. "Utterly defeated" is close.

Add in too much city driving with vocally unamused children.
A disappointing trip to Lancaster.
A intensely crazy drive home in "hurricane" hanna. Pretty much the worst rain driving I've ever done. Thankfully the kids obliged by sleeping (go figure). And Feist kept me calm.
And Hurricane Messy-Car visited today.
Oh yea, and don't forget the lovely hormonal cocktail called I Just Had a Baby.

I'm really praying for a better week. Or heaven. I'll take either.