Necessary Distractions

I haven’t been writing much lately and there are multiple reasons behind it all. Don’t worry, none of those reasons include pregnancy or moving to Nashville or any other life altering seeeekrits. My days have been FULL. I remember once listening to a mother of a lot of children telling me about another mother with a lot of children who said that once she leaves her bedroom in the morning, she doesn’t make it back into that room until the evening. I’m not in that place, but in the interest of full disclosure, the changing table is currently in my bedroom. I’m in there plenty.

The baby is in full-on-death-mode. I’ve found her chewing on cords, trying to make out with an electrical socket, attempting to sit at the top of the stairs where there isn’t actually any floor, climbing on top of toys in the crib in a feeble and ill advised plan of escape, leaning out of her high chair towards the floor while I put the tray down on the counter, shoving all kinds of things that could potentially choke her into her pie hole (none of them were pie. Sad face). She is the greatest reason for my full-tiltedness. She’ll be eight months old next week. Goodnight.

Gideon read his very first book all by himself today. It was about a rat who’s wearing a tan hat. There is also a cat. I think you can figure out what happened.

He got a sticker and tons of self confidence. That’s how you get proper self-esteem, by the way. You do amazing things, things you didn’t think you could do, things that look like a giant, St Helens sized obstacle and then you tighten your crampons and you go. When you’re standing on a precipice and you think you aren’t going to make the summit and then you do it. You summit. Like a boss. That’s when you know the next time that book or that volcano is taunting you with your possible inability, you remember that last Kilauea whose steam you felt but triumphed over and you think, “be quiet fear. This is doable.” You don’t build real confidence any other way.

Piper used scissors to make ANOTHER snowflake this morning. It is as if she is summoning the cold from December and wishing it upon our day. She’ll care when it arrives (this weekend, maybe?) and she can’t wear those shiny pink sandals anymore. In the meantime, she’s rocking out My Little Pony episodes and taking names from anybody who wants to mess with Twilight Sparkle. The show bleeds over into her play every day, but thankfully not so much in the details because I am guessing its writers drop acid and then beat their heads against a wall when they get a creative block and need more material to fill those excruciating 22 minutes of awful.

We’re knocking out work as fast as we can without compromising quality. It’s good and exhausting. It’s hard to know what comes first, the exhaustion or the sinus infection and mastitis. Do I wear my body down with lack of sleep and then get sick or does the sickness make me crazy enough not to sleep. Okay, yeah, it’s the first one. Regardless, there’s plenty more to do, which will hopefully get crossed off tonight while the Pres and the dude who wants his job square off tonight. I hope they throw in some jazz hands or that the moderator’s chairs turn around or something so that the rest of ‘merica will watch. Maybe they’ll parade out overweight southerners in pageant clothes instead. I say go where your heart leads politicians. Make us proud.