Summer school prep

OMG, you guys.  I am SUCH an idiot.

This year for summer school, I decided to teach the 3-week session.  This is awesome because Ben and I don't really overlap at all, and I will be done with school the same week Harry is done-- June 15-- so my class won't even interfere with (interminable?) summer family fun time.  But it is TERRIBLE because I have to cram my entire upper-level rhetorical criticism class into 3 weeks!  3 weeks!  14 class meetings!  Are you KIDDING me?  I usually meet 33 times and show 30 speeches.  That's a lot of rhetoric for 14 days.  So, that's where I have been: in my office trying to to prep this disaster.  Did I mention I also got a new textbook, so I need to make new keynote presentations for my iPad?  No?  Well,yeah.  I sure did, and it seemed like a good idea at the time.  Thank goodness I have a grader to handle 33 hours of grading (The other bajillion?  All me).

Ben teaches on Tuesday and Thursday mornings this summer, and I am doing a whole lot of nothing in June.  Jack's last day of preschool is tomorrow; Harry's still in until my session is over.  And then it's just us.  For 3 solid months.  I see lots and lots of pool time ahead and lots of naps, too.  Ben's colleagues typically don't work over the summer, so they think he is NUTS for teaching 2 mornings a week-- how funny is that?  Meanwhile, Ben is fresh from the private sector and is loving this whole summers off thing. 

Okay, here are a ton of pictures from my phone.

Time to write a summer midterm.

Terrible Teeth

Teething has ruined Cooper's LIFE.  It's the worst thing that has ever happened to him, and to be totally honest, he is not handling the stress well at all.  The baby FKA Happiest in the World is now the saddest baby ever.  Nothing makes him happy except sometimes biting on a plastic cup, but eventually he gets mad because there's nothing in the cup to drink, and all hell breaks loose again.

Solid foods make him so irate he can't stand it.  He bashes his head into the high chair and screams for minutes after we take him out-- that's how mad he is that we had the balls to offer him blobs of banana and shreds of waffle while we thought about spooning oatmeal and fruit into his cry hole. AS freaking IF.  He will usually deign to eat a YoBaby yogurt for dinner, but never a peach one. NEVER! A! PEACH! ONE! YOU! IDIOTS!

Even nursing pisses him off, but he grudgingly shreds my nipples every couple of hours to pass the time.

I have stopped using the monitor at night because the sleep deprivation was getting to me.  So now when I go get him in the wee hours it's because he was good and mad.  Last night, he was sitting up smacking his crib soother with his palm at 4 am (but not the on/off switch, just the screen-- v. ineffectual).  Imagine his outrage when I changed his poopy pants (HATE), took his temperature (ALSO HATE), used saline drops in his stuffed up nose so he could both breathe and nurse (REALLY HATE), and gave him Tylenol (THE HATIEST).

He cried all morning but has been napping for an hour or so (thank goodness), and I get to leave to give a couple final exams in a little while, so say a prayer for Ben.

I wish you could see his 2 adorable bottom teeth and horribly inflamed gums in this picture, but his mouth is either closed tight or full of something chokey unless it is wide open in a scream of discontent.

Stuff

The thing that freaks me out the MOST about my postpartum body is my total lack of core muscles. My problem area has never ever been my stomach, but these days, I have a definite pooch that, in my Nike running shorts, looks like a flabby ring.

We have joined a new pool, and swimsuit season is right around the corner, and Ben and I ate my entire birthday cake by ourselves because the kids didn't like it.

8 years ago, my parents got me an iPod Mini (pink!) for my birthday, and I LOVED it.  My grad school BFF got one (aqua) at the same time for her MA graduation, and she named it Sea Sparkle.  Apple always asks you to name your device the first time you plug it in, and mine are always named Sarah's ipad/pod/phone, etc.  I decided to creatively name the pink Nano my parents got me this year.  I wanted to call it Well, aren't you snazzy? but I forgot the ? and spelled snazzy wrong.  Should have stuck with Sarah's Nano.

No matter the name, I am in love with the Nike+ feature and have been using it to time workouts, which are PATHETIC.  Because I have no muscles.

Jack spent the whole day being terrible-- he dumped an entire water bottle into 3 cupholders in the back of van today because he wanted to make a pool.  Over my vehement objections, he went down the hall to "check on Cooper" and woke him up 15 minutes into his nap.  He ran over my foot 3 times with the Target cart and then climbed up on the check out stand and jumped off of it screaming that he could fly.  He screamed "Hello sucker!"at a woman's open window in the parking lot.

Then he does stuff like this

Cooper.  WTF, buddy?

Birthday + Mothers Day = Awesome X 2

The best thing about this picture of this morning's lovely breakfast cake is last night's beer bottle, no?

Fighting over who could give me my cards

Admiring Harry's flower pot and about to open Jack's masterpiece

Necklace from Jack, who has asked to be called artist Jack

They were SO EXCITED to see me open my gifts

Fancy sunglasses that will be no match for Coop

Harry is an excellent little gift, but anything that comes from a box that big from THAT store isn't half bad either.

Just wanted to eat papaer

All my fancy stuff

BRUNCH!

Jack was methodical-- first a plate of breakfast, then a plate of lunch.  Then eleventy billion desserts.  And he had sheep chicken.

Mimosa!  And really bad posture.

I gave my fancy bag its own chair.

nom nom nom

We had way more fun than anticipated

The fam

Frolicking at the capitol

Harry won the race!

Rolling

After a sommersault

Love the hair

Oops-- back to brunch.  Cooper loves cups

Harry loves parfaits

34 is lovely so far.

May the Fourth Be With You

Tonight, we went to the park on the other side of the neighborhood, and it was SO WEIRD. Everyone there had their own little clique, which is probably how they feel at the park on our side of the neighborhood.

Even the kids were pensive.

The Bjorn is nowhere near as comfortable for me as the Ergo, but Cooper LOVES to face front

On the way home, Ben kicked the kids' asses in a few races. There he is claiming victory

Jack fell on his face, but he got right up and kept running. With, as you can see, a bloody nose.

And there's Ben snatching victory from his bloodied child by jumping over Jack's head. Ben's not really a let-the-kids-win kind of guy. So those Chutes and Ladder victories are well deserved, boys.

Kidding!  I'm kidding!  They had a big head start.  Also, he lets them win all the time.  These pictures just made me laugh.

Soccer night

Tonight at soccer, I was happily watching Cooper behead dandelions and Jack play some elaborate game that involved 2 other younger siblings and most of the practice cones when a sweaty Harry came running up to me screaming, "I need to go pee RIGHT NOW!"

I left Cooper cooing at one of the moms and gestured Jack to come with us. He was all, "I have to pee RIGHT NOW, too!" That's when I noticed Jack's gushing bloody nose.

I ran to the school with Harry in the lead and Jack next to me, clamping a tissue over his nose. We got to the front doors to find that the building was locked. Both boys shrugged and said "I can hold it," and turned on their heels to trot back to the field. I gave them my best WTF look and walked behind them back to my happy baby and his weeds.

Jack on crazy hair day.

When we started Cooper on solids, he LOVED them, but for the last 3 or so weeks, he hasn't been interested at all, especially in vegetables. At Target the other day, I grabbed an organic pouch of fruits and veggies mixed together that sounded fine-- nothing but water, blueberries, beets, and apples (or some other combo-- can't remember). He GOBBLED them up and then ate a jar of carrots I've had in the cabinet forever. But the homemade stuff I slave over? He won't touch it. SO we are all on jars now, and it's a great time saver.

Harry had a hard day at the office and needed to unwind with a kiddie cocktail. He was horrified, by the way, when he discovered this drink was made with 7-Up. "Soda?" he sputtered wiping his tongue. "Do you want me to get cavities?" He totally judged us for ordering it. (Jack abandoned his after scrubbing the inside of his mouth with a napkin because it was spicy)

Cooper tries to look cool even when I dress him like an idiot

Harry and Jack gave an impromptu concert on the lawn and were sad no one came, even the neighborhood barefoot runner who actually runs without shoes.

Jack worked hard on his birthday party thank you notes

Today we went to the park

Mayday!

More than just today's date, Mayday was the distress call I was about to sound, but luckily, April ended just in the nick of time.  April.  Academia's cruelest month for sure.  Not only are there final exams to write (two of them for me and a lot sooner than I thought since I am fuzzy with math and they seemed a lot farther away in the 20s of April than they do in May), not only are there semester papers to grade, not only are students clamoring to meet with you about their final projects, but also every committee and advisory board you sit on has to squeeze in one more meeting before the semester ends, even if no one has a pressing issue to address.  OMG.  Add in a teething baby who hates sleeping all of the sudden, the crushing realization that these extra 20 pounds are not going to melt away by magic while I eat a bag of Pepperidge Farm snickerdoodles, and some house upheaval, and I have a huge zit between my eyebrows that's been hanging out on my face since tax day. So! Pretty!

Harry would really like a loose tooth, FYI.