It’s 1968. The Fantastic Four. Shazzan. The Wacky Races. The Banana Splits Cartoon Network runs year-themed bits from its Boomerang sister network early on Saturday mornings (right about the time…
It’s 1968. The Fantastic Four. Shazzan. The Wacky Races. The Banana Splits
Cartoon Network runs year-themed bits from its Boomerang sister network early on Saturday mornings (right about the time when Katherine wakes up, coincidentally). Fun stuff.
Katherine likes the Banana Splits.
Princess has been teething for the past week or two something fierce. So that — plus the diaper rash that comes with teething — has meant she’s been fussy and…
Princess has been teething for the past week or two something fierce. So that — plus the diaper rash that comes with teething — has meant she’s been fussy and up and down multiple times each night. And since Margie’s had this low-grade illness, that means both of us have been up and down multiple times each night, responding to cries of distress.
I went to bed at 9:30 last night. If not for the hour-plus I was up around midnight to one, getting up at 5 wouldn’t seem so bad, right?
Children are … complicating. From a purely pragmatic and selfish PoV, Katherine has complicated our lives immensely. Nights punctuated and interrupted by howls of varied distress, often requring getting up…
Children are … complicating.
From a purely pragmatic and selfish PoV, Katherine has complicated our lives immensely.
Nights punctuated and interrupted by howls of varied distress, often requring getting up to find out what the problem is and correct it, but always requiring arousal from sleep. The living alarm clock deciding it’s time for someone besides her to be up sometime between 5:30a and 8, regardless of whether it’s a work day or not, or whether the parents were up until 9 or Midnight, or were up during the night dealing with those distressed howls. Trying to keep her constantly amused so that she’s not screaming for attention. Tripping and dancing about various toys (and pieces thereof), pots and pans, and other dropped-where-interest-flagged detritus. The constant struggle to keep things out of her reach, which keeps getting longer, such that any horizontal surface becomes an emergency hosting place for coffee cups, books, papers, anything that shouldn’t be chewed, taken, or dropped. Outings that come to an abrupt halt because Katherine is too tired to be awake but too wired/unhappy to go down in her porta-crib. The inability to plan or execute any activity without working it around ad hoc right-now-dammit naps, feedings, bath time, bed time, or just I-want-to-crawl-in-your-lap-and-pound-on-the-keyboard sorts of demands, etc.
Heck, not being able to sit down and watch a movie on TV at night without at least one irresistable demand for food/visitation/re-binking from Our Mistress’ Voice. And having to be constantly attentive, waiting for said Voice, whether it comes or not.
There are times it gets incredibily frustrating. And harrying. It introduces a level of stress that leads to me grinding my teeth, Margie and I snapping at each other, and general misery.
It is something that nobody not in the situation can understand. Really. Trust me. I thought I did.
And yet …
Yesterday morning, I came downstairs, having slept in until 9:30a (albeit with multiple interruptions at wee hours of the morning), to find Katherine sitting on Margie’s lap on the sofa in the family room. And she was smiling, and happy, and full of joy, and she looked up and saw Daddy desending the stairs and the look on her face was just astonishingly precious. It made it all worthwhile.
At least until the next time I found myself grinding my teeth …
Long day. Off to church in the morning. More about that some day. Then to our usual Sunday brunch at Le Peep. Katherine’s table manners continue to improve, which is…
Long day.
Off to church in the morning. More about that some day.
Then to our usual Sunday brunch at Le Peep. Katherine’s table manners continue to improve, which is nice. There are some ways in which I would not at all complain if she “grew up so fast.” Eating is one. The end result is another.
(I asked my Mom once how long it would be until I could have intelligible conversations with my children. She suggested 30 years as a good round number.)
Then afterwards, off to CompUSA to see if I could get a new D-Link USB wireless NIC. The PC Card version I have has died for unknown reasons. I’ve used the upstairs USB version with great success, but Margie is understandably annoyed when we can’t print any longer (it also has some affect on her dial-up to her office).
Well, CompUSA doesn’t carry the D-Link line in wireless. In theory, 802.11b-compatible cards/units should be compatible with each other. On the other hand, I’ve dealt with enough Ethernet equipment that didn’t work and play well with others that I don’t want to screw around with it. So I’ll mail order it.
Then off to the Nursery (Arapahoe Acres). I got a bug up my butt (metaphorically speaking) about dealing with the “New Side Yard.” This is the section of the side yard (western side) between the fence/gate and the concrete slab. I decided this Spring that I would turn this into garden yard, rather than the dirt, mulch, and haserei that had accumulated there. I discovered, after some digging, there was actually a sprinkler buried down at that end of the yard (and slowly leaking).
So we went to the nursery (which is a great place to buy trees, though we didn’t, though we will eventually). Picked up a nice rose, various shrubs, etc. Went home and started off at 2 p.m., with a 5 p.m. quasi-deadline — since the first thing I did was fix the sprinkler head, and the sprinklers were due to kick off at 5.
Disconnected the old patch of fence and moved it down to the end of the slab, doing a quickie connection to the fence there (not permanent by any means, but it should hold up to wind and weather, if not Jake). Started digging up dirt, distributing the mulch piles there, fixing the sprinker wire that the original installer buried all of two frickin’ inches below the surface, etc. Then planting. Then mulching. I’d have not made the deadline, but I overrode the sprinkler control and bought myself an extra hour.
Fortunately we have plenty of Advil.