A little tongue in cheek note to my family.  The above title has an AKA of "The Family Thanksgiving Dinner" or "What happens when PMS meets Menopause"!!!  My sisters are probably going to flip over that last sentence, but I thought it was kinda funny.  They are going to get me back, though.  When we visit the family in Arizona in November, one sister is promising to take us to the Heart Attack Grill.  The cooks are dressed like doctors, the waitresses are dressed like candy stripers from Hooters, you get the idea.  Not too thrilled about flying with a baby, but such is life!  One of my nephews is getting married the day after Thanksgiving, so it promises to be a very busy trip.  As busy and hectic as it will be, I'm kind of looking forward to it, in a masochistic kind of way.  :P

If anyone recalls, I went into some detail last winter about how my basement flooded from a massive amount of snow and a sudden warm streak, and the ensuing pre-term labor I enjoyed for about three hours.  At the moment, there is this huge backhoe in my back yard, which crushed the old metal swing set like a beer can, and large trenches snaking around my yard as workers lay drain tile, hopefully to prevent any more flooding.  One of them coughs a lot.  I don't think it's smoker's hack!

I need to take the dog in to the vet.  She's been favoring her left rear leg lately, and we're suspecting arthritis.  The kid needs glasses, and very likely braces in the next couple of years.  The hubby's new job is going well, but the part time paycheck is gone faster than a glass of water in the Sahara!  The baby's appetite has really taken off, and I'm beginning to wonder if baby food is sold by the gallon jug!  I avoided Twitter for so long, and now I think I'm addicted to it.  One sister has been pressuring me to join Facebook.  Trying to avoid that one too, but I feel it may be a losing battle.  Who knew a six month old baby could be my salvation in this tech heavy inter-connected world we live in?  As you can tell, I barely have time to update my blog!  Some writing resume this turned out to be!

Today has been rather busy, so I had to take some down time, and updating the blog seemed like just the thing.  Laundry, vacuuming, walking the dog several times (we have to keep her inside while the trenches are being created), etc.  The oldest son wants to do soccer AND Cub Scouts.  I'm really hoping we can swing that.  It sounds very time consuming, and time is hard to come by!  If money grew on trees, maybe time could be bought in a store...

Happy birthday to Ken McConnell, an excellent writer and fellow Phineas and Ferb-aholic.  Congrats to fellow writers who have sold submissions, made submissions, or merely wrote something!  I'll follow along vicariously until Kindergarten, if you don't mind!

We have begun full teething mode.  We know this because the baby has begun waking up every hour, all  night, and has been very congested lately.  I'd like to know the fool-I mean person who wrote that now is the time to help them sleep through the night by not picking them up WHEN THE BABY IS GOING THROUGH ONE OF THE MOST UNCOMFORTABLE TIMES IN HIS LIFE next to the common cold?  Doesnt' that seem kind of oxymoronic to anyone?  It didn't strike me as such when the older one was a baby, we just went through it.  But now that I'm a bit less overwhelmed by the whole parenting thing, the confluence of events just seems a bit odd.  When babies get about this age, they should be encouraged to sleep through the night.  Sounds great, if they weren't in so much pain!!  I'm sorry, I guess I'm just wimpy, but I can't just listen to him scream, pat him on the back, make shushing sounds, walk away, and hope he'll "cry it out".  He's a bit too tenacious for that!

I can be grateful that he's never had colic.  There's a plus.

Sigh.  Time to go to the store.  Then picking up the kids, dinner, and the first soccer meeting.  I know I'm going to get the hang of this, I just know it. 

I am here, praying the baby doesn't wake up in the next half hour or so.  I have so much to write about, I don't know where to begin.  The last few weeks have been crazy/wonderful.  I had a c-section, which sucked.  The first two weeks of recovery sucked.  Not being able to move, and being in physical pain just aren't things to be doing when you are supposed to be on "vacation".  One of my sisters helped the first week, and grandma helped for a couple of days.  People at our church brought tons of food (which my oldest son hated).  But I must say, this time around is much easier than last time.  It is a combination of having more perspective and experience, and the fact that this baby is much easier!  He sleeps at night (six hours last night!), and has only rare bouts of colic.

Nursing this time has been a challenge.  Nursing and pumping have turned me into an Austin Powers fem-bot.  Now, for you men out there that may sound pretty cool.  Hah, joke's on you!  My husband keeps his hands to himself, thank you very much!  He learned from last time!  Poor guy.  Poor me!  But the dry spell will pass.

What else in family news?  My oldest had two teeth pulled at the dentist yesterday.  That was a mommy nightmare.  I picked him up from school and we drove to the office.  I explained to him what would happen, and that I would be there for him.  I tried to downplay the pain without completely ignoring it, and told him that the novocaine shot was the worst part.  When we got to the office, I tried to go in with him, but was asked to wait in the waiting room, "so he won't think I'm trying to save him."  Good call.  I'd heard that many children do better at the dentist when the parent isn't close by.  True story in my case.  I sat in the waiting room, in standard waiting room furniture, with the baby in my arms and feeding him a bottle, waiting for that wail signalling my child's pain.  There was another child crying in another dentist cubicle (but she was only about two), and the sounds were making me cringe.  Strangely, that wail of pain never came from my son.  I was still wondering when they were going to start, when the hygenist brought him out, mouth full of gauze, and said he did great!  For him, he said the worst part was the novocaine, but not getting the shot.  He hated the fuzzy, puffy feeling of his lip.

In other news, I have wanted to start writing again.  Any idea how hard it is with a baby?  I haven't come up with any new story ideas, but I would like to work on the old ones, maybe hit my journal again, etc.  Yeah, whatever.  With everything going on, it's a bit more difficult than I thought it would be.  Not only has the writing but hit, but the spring cleaning bug, too.  That, also, is not easy with a baby.

In going through my LJ friend's blogs, I found that a fellow Hadley Rille author, Camille Alexa, will be attending a Hadley Rille reading in Seattle on May 1st and 2nd.  That happens to be a four day weekend for my son's school, and we have family in the area.  So I think I'm going to call, set up some babysitting, and see if I can join that bandwagon!  That will be a month before I have to go back to work.

Oh yeah, work.  Maybe I can write a couple hundred words during lunch breaks.