Potatoes in the Mist

One of my blog friends is about to give birth, and perhaps has done so already! The suspense is killing me :) A scary thing happened on the bike path today. It was pretty clogged because a lot of people decided to hit the path on Labor Day weekend. (Which, coincidentally, always makes me sad - it's like saying goodbye to summer.) Anyway, I saw a motorized wheelchair chugging along ahead of me. Those things are definitely dangerous. A guy on a bike started to pass the wheelchair on the left. Then, without warning, the wheelchair took a sharp left and collided with the bike. The bicyclist fell off his bike, but I think he was more shaken than hurt. Amazingly, the wheelchair person (I couldn't tell the gender from behind) was completely oblivious. No "sorry," nothing. The cyclist stared at the wheelchair for a minute and I knew that if a wheelchair had not been involved, there would have been tons of profanity. As it was, the cyclist pulled himself together, said "...

Did you ever notice that mothers in movies always have short hair? Robin Wright chops her tresses after she has Forrest Gump's kid. I always assumed it was a time issue. I'll keep mine long, I told myself. It can't take that much longer to wash long hair than short hair. The real reason? Because babies spit up in your hair. A lot. It's happened twice today already, and I'm too lazy to take another shower. Maybe I should just shave my head. I've been flirting with the idea since 2004.

Found the most fantastic babysitter. I am very pleased with her. She goes to college uptown and seems like a bona fide baby expert. She babysat for a pair of twins until they were 10, starting when they were 4 weeks old! I used the time to go swimming, where I saw a friend of D's family (who offered to babysit any Wednesday or Friday) and my pool buddy (who is due next week). She was wearing a bikini, God bless her - I stopped wearing mine around 4 months and only recently donned it again. After I swam, I lay out on the sun deck, which was awesome.

I managed to trim the e-babe's nails today with a clipper - not a pair of scissors, like my mother and MIL advocate. What, do they have nerves of steel? Am reading Cynthia Kaplan's Leave the Building Quickly - overall, not as good as Sedaris, but I did laugh a couple of times, which startled E, who was feeding. I have a weird passion for microwave dinners, which I have been able to indulge while D is in Seattle, but it will definitely be nice to have him back :)

This is a kind of original meme where you talk about 6 "unspectacular quirks"...hmm. 1. I have seen the Basket Case movies. These are such dreadful horror movies that they are actually kind of good. They involve a twin who is kept in a basket. The sequel is called: "Basket Case 2: Time for a Bigger Basket." I think the reason my family saw these was that my brother-in-law is from Glens Falls, where these movies were made, or set, or something. 2. I came across the word "Egypt" in my reading when I was very young (kindergarten or before) and pronounced it Eggy-pit. D likes this pronunciation :) 3. I like pigs. 4. I used to get an anonymous valentine (among the usual signed ones) on Valentine's Day in elementary school. It really piqued my curiosity. 5. I used to love circus peanuts (the fluffy, orange candy kind) as a kid. D can't stand them. 6. A couple of my favorite iTunes songs right now are "Everything She Wants" by Wham and "Lev...

I know the last few pics are basically the same, but it was hard for me to eliminate any when he's so cute :) There's also a picture of him laughing, but it's blurry...

This morning, construction drills woke me up. Needless to say, I was not pleased. The boys slept through (men are gifted that way). So I took a shower, figuring it would give me some quiet time and let me unwind. Then I jumped when I heard this nasty cackling. We have this one rubber duck that cackles in a really menacing way whenever it's touched by anything - human hands and apparently water. I moved it away from the shower. It kept cackling. "Ha! Ha! Ha!" Imagine how annoying this is. I moved the duck into a green plastic bowl we have in the bathroom - D used to soak his feet in it. The duck kept going. So I grabbed it and threw it hard against the floor. It stopped. It was satisfying, but I felt kind of mean at the same time ;)

D sent me a link to some personality quizzes that were featured in the Times. I haven't taken them all yet, but I liked this one . The results are actually kind of funny. If you take it, feel free to post your results on your blog or in my comment section - I'm nosy that way ;) Here are mine... Your personality tendencies in a nutshell... You are very dependable and almost always follow through with your commitments. You are curious about many different things and highly value artistic expressions and ingenious thoughts. You show some tendency toward anxiety and worry. You are typically respectful toward others and dislike confrontation. You show some tendency toward being outgoing and sociable. YouJustGetMe.com 's guest psychologist Dr. Peggy has a little more, uh, informal interpretation of your traits... About that "Disciplined" bubble...To always be responsible and dependable gets too heavy at times and you just have to shirk it all sometimes o...

Am feeling more Zen. Of course, 6 1/2 straight hours sleep may have something to do with it :) Just finished I Was Told There'd Be Cake, which was funny but a couple of essays left me scratching my head; and started American Wife, apparently a fictionalization of the life of Laura Bush. Of course I'm wondering which parts are true.

So my MIL will be in town on Monday and able to babysit E - but D will probably go away again over Labor Day weekend. Fat chance of my finding a babysitter then - actually, I can probably ask my SIL and there's a family friend who may be in town. I'm glad D's business is doing well, but still. Urg. I signed up with a babysitting service at a local women's college, but they have to process my registration, which can take a "few days," before posting my job listing. I'm not sure why it takes a few days. Number of pages they need to process? Two. Oh well. Not that I even like leaving him with babysitters. But I do want to exercise even in D's absence, so if I want to make it to the pool, that's that. Fortunately I have not had to leave him with a real (i.e., strange) babysitter yet - it's been all family friends and members. Looking after a baby can be a lot of hard work during the "witching hour" - typically 5 or 7 pm, when he lets lo...

So I'm a little nervous. D leaves next Sunday for a few days so I will be on my own with the bebe. Having him here, I've been spoiled...able to bike and swim whenever I want. I do have some babysitting leads but the pickings are slim in the summer. A lot of people go away. Still, I should be able to get someone to look after him for a couple of hours so I can swim once. I just feel bad asking my SIL and her boyfriend because they sat really recently - last night, to be exact. While they looked after E, D and I went to The Place. We sat next to some May-November combo with the woman being older and the guy looking like Leslie Howard. After listening to their conversation, I realized they were just friends. The food was fantastic - homemade goat cheese ravioli for an appetizer, vegetarian filo triangle for an entree, and for dessert I had some spiced Bartlett pear plus some white chocolate chip mousse off of D's plate - and if it sounds really good, that's because it was ...

I'm psyched because a friend of mine in publishing sent me 3 books today: American Wife by Curtis Sittenfeld, America America by Ethan Canin and The 19th Wife by David Ebershoff. They all look interesting and now my reading pile is nice and big - just the way I like it :)

So E slept 6 hours again - every time he does that, I feel like having a party. The past few nights have been like this: 6, 6, 5, 6. His schedule is weird, though - the first shift goes from 9 pm to 3 am. I sleep from about 10 pm to 3 am. For some reason, after that, I'm wired and lie awake during the second shift (3-7 am), even though he is sleeping. I guess I'm a natural insomniac. Then I sleep again through his third shift - 7 am to 10:45 am. The problem is, during the third shift, I'm too tired to stay awake during his feeding and put him back in the crib, so I sleep with him. I hope this doesn't "undo" his sleep training, making him unable to sleep alone. Then again, it's light out during the third shift, so he probably differentiates it from the first and second shifts, when we keep the whole apartment dark and quiet. D says not to worry about it. He says sleeping alone is a learned skill and now he's learned it and he can't unlearn it. Anoth...

Well, after all that, E is sleeping roughly 6-hour chunks now...which I think is the medical definition of sleeping through the night. The problem is, with all this bounty, I feel fully rested now and can't get back to sleep! But I'll give it another shot soon ;) The timing is good - D has to go to Seattle on business August 25th-28th and I was worried about how I would make it without the other member of my team. It's funny how you don't know he's slept through until you wake up - I assumed D had given him a bottle, but no. This morning I swam, but it was a bit of an ordeal - I went to the "good" swim place I belong to, but we were all kicked out of the pool because it was thundering. The pool is on the top floor of that building, with a clear glass roof, but I really don't think we were in any danger. I decided to go to the "Get What You Pay For" gym - six bucks a month, no towels, soap or toilet paper, and the locker room floors are covere...

So we had our first dinner out with E! Grown-up E and his girlfriend R joined us. Little E was very well-behaved - he got a little fussy, so I fed him while using my nursing cover. He is currently napping in the stroller. So it looks like we won't need to get a babysitter to have dinner with our friends. It was nice to have adult company.

My cousin sent me some puns, I couldn't resist these four: A vulture boards an airplane, carrying two dead raccoons. The stewardess looks at him and says, "I'm sorry, sir, only one carrion allowed per passenger." Two hydrogen atoms meet. One says, "I've lost my electron." The other says, "Are you sure?" The first replies, "Yes, I'm positive." A group of chess enthusiasts checked into a hotel and were standing in the lobby discussing their recent tournament victories. After about an hour, the manager came out of the office and asked them to disperse. "But why?" they asked, as they moved off. "Because," he said, "I can't stand chess-nuts boasting in an open foyer." A woman has twins and gives them up for adoption. One of them goes to a family in Egypt and is named Ahmal. The other goes to a family in Spain; they name him Juan. Years later, Juan sends a picture of himself to his birth mother. Upon re...

So D and I saw Mamma Mia! tonight. It was my first time leaving E with someone who wasn't my mother or D, and let's just say I was a tad nervous. But I shouldn't have been. We got home and found out E didn't cry at all. The sitter (a friend of D's family) sang and danced with him all night. And the movie? Ultra campy. Will probably increase sales of Abba Gold. My favorite number was "Lay All Your Love On Me."

So E went to the pediatrician today. I'm getting the hang of putting the car seat into taxis - and of course, the magic words are, "You can start the meter." E was very good at the doctor's until he got his shots - diphtheria, polio and meningitis, I think - then his face turned red and he screamed. I was able to nurse him with my handy nursing cover in the waiting room, and that seems to be a cure for all ills. Which brings me to another point - the doctor thinks he should only be getting up once a night (sleeping 3-hour stretches consistently, instead of 1 3-hour stretch followed by 2-hour stretches). She said I should put him in the crib, after making sure he is changed and fed, and let him get to sleep on his own - even if he cries. I don't know if I can do that. He weighs 13 pounds and 12 ounces!