This is What it Takes to Get Me to Post

Boring kid update: Bobo has pink-eye. Uck. What is going on here? Chuckles started kindergarten and he adores it. Adores it. He's doing fine. He's on the smaller side, but he's reading now and writing and the Homework. Oh my. It's fun and hard and fun and no naps ever again. He went to the Apple Orchard and I packed his first ever school lunch in a bag with an apple tree on it and they left it behind so he got a hot dog for lunch at the orchard and he was so happy and then he ate lunch. From a bag. For dinner. Low key, easygoing, lunch fail. There is a field trip to the Pumpkin Patch coming up. I will duct tape his lunch to his arm.

OK, why am I posting today of all days? Because I work for a giant faceless corporation with offices all over the world and they are hosting a contest. And I can no longer contain the sarcasm. The sarcasm, it burns. Here is the crib notes version of the email I got:

Giant Multi-National Corporation is hosting its first International New Year’s
E-card drawing/art contest, open to our employees’ children and the youth in the
communities where we have operations. An International New Year's card is
like a Christmas card, but we can't use the word Christmas because we wouldn't
want to show favoritism to the Judeo-Christian tradition, and heaven forbid we
call it a Holiday Card because everyone knows that's code for X-mas
anyway. The theme for the 2009 contest is "Feel the Joy of Sharing" and
artwork should demonstrate cultural diversity and a sense of
community. Feel free to use all the shades of brown in the 128 box
of Crayola Crayons when drawing the Sharing.

In other news, I planned Bobo's First Birthday Party last night. Hot dogs, hamburgers, and S'mores in a brand new fire pit in our backyard two weekends before Thanksgiving or something. I am happy about the First, but sad because, you know, my baby is growing up. BUT! Only 7 more weeks of pumping. I am thrilled. I might actually go an entire year feeding the baby only breastmilk (and baby food) with no formula. That would be something. I might not make it the whole year, and that's OK too. The pumping output is really tapering off, so I am taking fenugreek, and I pump on weekends sometimes now, and I dropped day care bottles from 2 or 3 to 2 only (I only send two now). So, I've done all I can. He takes 2 five-ounce bottles on weekdays, and we'll see what happens. He crawls real tummy up crawling now. And he learned to do that the same day he got his two bottom teeth. It was a busy sleepless time at our house. He also started walking along on furniture over the weekend and that's something too. I'm pretty sure he's all gross motor skills all the time.

Last night, Chuckles was sitting on his bed working on his homework (red, green 5-9, and Tt) and we were chasing Bobo around and throwing him in the air and dangling him by his feet and Chuckles just kept chugging along at his homework. Chuckles is the guy at Woodstock trying to find a shower to wash the mud off so he can make it to class on time while everyone else strips naked and slides in the mud while cutting class.

I am thisclose to ditching the Mirena IUD. I am still spotting. It's been like 9 months. I am so over the mini-pad. I will wait until I wean to see whether that helps (although truth be told, at a year, I only plan to give up pumping...I am not stopping nursing). That is all on that topic.

Abrupt topic shift: Health Care Reform. I am against it. As I am sure you knew. I really don't think health care or access to health care is an enumerated power or an inalienable right. Just don't think so. Sorry. It is a service and like other services, my libertarian heart thinks everyone needs to pay for their own. I am fine with a little Medicaid here and there as a temporary thing, but really, not feeling the low for health care. I am fine with high deductible cost-sharing plans too. I happen to have had good-to-great insurance for most of my life, but I am willing to have higher co-pays and cost-sharing or a high-deductible plan so that I shop around for cost-effective treatments. I am fine with that. I'm a smart consumer. But I don't have many chronic conditions and I am not gravely ill, so my perspective is, as always, governed by my own experiences (note: I did buy Cobra once and it was not cheap and I was young and healthy and could've bought insurance on the open market a whole lot cheaper but I was too lazy to investigate and I was not going to risk ruin on going insurance-less).

Oh, and I believe that you and your doctor should make your health care decisions together (which is a really cryptic thing to say but it does mean keep insurance and government out of the exam room and out of the equation...whatever the decision: end of life care, abortion, pain management, birth control, when to stop labor, when to resuscitate a premature infant, VBAC, c-section, etc).

Quarantine

We are finally out from quarantine. Bobo is better. It was chicken pox. Eventually four of the eight babies at day care contracted it. One parent also contracted chicken pox, and I hear she is miserable. Patient Four is still out of day care after a week and a half. I'd say excluded from child care for two weeks is a pretty sure bet. We're not totally out of the incubation period yet so more could come down with it still.

Mr. Long-Suffering and I took turns working from home during the illness. Chuckles stayed in day care so we could actually work during naptime. I got a solid 6 hours of work done per day. Not bad, but exhausting.

Quarantine was awfully boring. I'm glad I don't like in the age of diphtheria. I don't think I could handle the yellow card. I took Bobo in the car to drop Chuckles off at day care (but he stayed in the car...I was right there 15 feet away at the door...still outside). I took him for walks in the great outdoors, but mostly, we just stayed home. Boring. My mom and dad came to visit to break up the monotony. My in-laws avoided us like we had the plague. My mother-in-law claims she's never had the chicken pox, but both her kids did and she has worked in a school for 20 years, so she's either had it or has super immunity some other way. So, we were pretty isolated. I suppose I could've updated the blog, but I felt isolation was the safest course of action. For you. I'm trying to protect you, my one blog reader. Don't you feel special now?

Eight years ago today, I wore a really pretty silver dress and a little tiara thing and I got hitched to Mr. Long-Suffering. Tonight, I plan on trying my wedding dress on to make sure it still fits. Then, if he's lucky, I might take the dress off. Who knows? On a weeknight, even.

The weather turned colder, and I started cooking again. The tomatoes are in the garden and I made a pot of chili. I also made chicken marsala for the first time ever and nom, nom, nom, can't stop eating to write...it was so good. The recipe is long and easy and one of the ingredients is Holland House cooking Marsala. Who knew? I also made garlic mashed potatoes with potatoes from Chuckles's little garden plot. He found digging in the dirt for "prizes" to be a lot of fun. And I turned a 2-foot long zucchini into 48 muffins. Mmmmm. Some of them had chocolate chips.

Oh, and I crock potted a chicken in just water and made homemade babyfood with chicken, broccoli, and sweet potatoes in the food processor. It tastes like a little slice of Thanksgiving heaven. Bobo wants nothing to do with it. I'll eat it.

Speaking of Bobo...when is he going to stop eating over night? He was so over that, and now here we are again. I guess I don't mind too much as long as he sleeps through the night every once ina while. Again, speaking of Bobo, he is master of the army crawl and thinks sitting it for losers. All teh cool kids are standing this season. And so, he stands. All the time. Which is fine because I don't hang out behind him. He has to do it all on his own.

Now since I'm all about equal time, I will tell you that I requested they evaluate Chuckles to see whether he should be in kindergarten. He's no where near the birthday age cut-off. He turned 4 in May. He just seems so ready. So, I asked for an eval. And if they say yes, he starts the Tuesday after Labor Day. And if they say no, that's fine too. And if the say yes and it doesn't work out, that's ok too. Easygoing. He asked me to teach him to read and I just don't have the time. Literally. It's horrible. With meals, baths, nursing, and other things that absolutely must get done while both kids are awake, I do not have the time to teach Chuckles to read. So, I am outsourcing it I guess. Oh well. We'll see how it goes and what happens. I'm letting it unfold in an organic way. Or something lowkey and laid back.