Plagued

Oh, you guys.  I have not been sick like this since December of 2007.

I got up to feed Cooper on Monday night and stepped in a puddle of puke outside the boys' room where Jack apparently got up, went in the general direction of the bathroom, slimed, and went back to bed.  Ben and I got him up, stripped his bed, cleaned him up, and settled him in the guest room with Ben keeping vigil on the couch.  He threw up for the next 6 hours straight and was finally able to hold a teaspoon of water down by 9 am.

On Tuesday, Cooper entered day 3 of a nursing strike, and we took him to the pediatrician who said his stomach was churning and he appeared to have a bug.  (This was way more helpful than the lactation consultant who said "Maybe he's not hungry" in response to my call that my 7 month-old wouldn't eat.)  For the rest of the day, Cooper's "spit up" smelled exactly like vomit.

Tuesday night at 11:25, I woke up to the sound of splashing outside my door.  Then I heard little feet pounding to the laundry room and back down the hall.  I was not prepared for the horror show of partially digested roast beef and prunes splattered down the stair well, on the walls, on mudroom rugs, and in footprints toward the kids' bathroom.  I found Harry in front of the toilet covered with gore and trying to wipe his feet off with a tissue.  I thought I would let Ben sleep and clean up the mess.  Then I happened to glance in the boys' room.  OMFG.  The top bunk, the stairs, the wall, the white carpet the Lego table, the blinds, Jack's mattress and pillow.  OMFG.  Working together, it took Ben and me until 1:45 to clean up the mess and shower, while Harry took a bath and slept on the floor of the downstairs bathroom.

Wednesday afternoon, I called Ben home from work and laid on the floor of Cooper's room in the fetal position, Harry sick in the guest room, Jack watching TV in the family room, and Cooper rolling merrily on the floor beside me, until he got home.  I was brutally sick for about 6 hours and sick enough after that.  Even now, I am too weak to carry the baby (Ben's eyes are rolling so hard when he reads this, but t is true) and have only eaten toast, a popsicle, and a juice box since yesterday.  I laid on my bed shivering under a quilt all day and night, sleeping until I flt too sick to sleep and watching HGTV and bobbing on waves of nausea until I would mercifully fall asleep again.  No wonder both older boys were such docile patients-- even taking a shower this morning was too strenuous.

My brother texted to say that he, too, is sick and blamed blowing up Harry's spitty whoopy cushion, which means Ben is the last man standing.  Gulp.

7 months yesterday

Here's Harry at 7 months, and here's Jack at 7 months.  I think Cooper looks more like Harry than Jack but mostly like his own adorable bald, toothless little self.  I love his paroxysms of joy and his smile that splits his little face in two and the wheezing intake of breath he makes when he smiles it.

Passover/Easter/a birthday for Jack

Harry and Jack waiting for Uncle Jon with signs.  Harry's said "Uncle Jon how are you doing good I can count to 100 we are going to the zoo."

So we went to the zoo.

Jon and the kids and Ben dyed eggs

We set a pretty table for the family

    

Had an egg hunt for the kids

What, didn't your eggs have mustaches inside?

Hung a pinata for Jack's birthday (which is not until next week, but we combined family celebrations)

Ben and I were surprised to find that everyone else was freezing cold-- we didn't even think about coats

My dad scares Cooper

A lot

Both Harry and Jack spilled their milk first thing

Lots of eating

Jack was so excited about his cake

He tried to blow out the candles

And tried

And tried

But they were trick candles, and he was sad and disappointed in himself for not extinguishing them

Fortunately, he has presents to open

And everyone rejoiced

Cooper even sat near my dad for a minute

Jon passed out

The kids woke early this morning for a bleary egg and basket hunt

We hung around and adored Cooper and flew kites and ate leftovers

And of course put the baby in a basket

We miss Jon already!

Page 1

Becca at Academomia is running a fantastic meme.  She asked us to write the first page of our memoirs.  To play, write  post of your own, and leave a comment on this post at Becca's blog.  She'll link them up.

I always thought my ghostwriter would pen the majority of these pages.  As a child imagining what my memoir would look like, I had a good idea of the writing process.  I would lie on a pile of pillows in my bed jacket and satin turban taking delicate puffs of a Camel Special Light through a long black cigarette holder and saying “Dahling,” a lot while a mousy brunette in a turtleneck held a tape recorder aloft in the pace between my tall bed and her high backed wing chair.   At night, she’d leave me with a fresh martini and a giant black rotary phone with a silver dial and slip back to her studio apartment and her orange cats and her electric typewriter where she’d turn my dahlings into literary gold.  In the morning, she’d return with a sheaf of onion skin pages, and I would make her read them aloud, correcting both her diction and her copy, sending her home again with notes scrawled in the margin of every page and a fresh tape of my exploits. I could even picture the book itself—thick and sleek, a smooth black-and-white close up of me on the cover—more Garbo than Steve Jobs, but the same general idea.

            Apparently, when I was a child imagining my memoir, I assumed I’d be traveling backwards in time and switching bodies with Tallulah Bankhead or Auntie Mame, Miss Hannigan if times were tough.  What I could not have imagined when I was the fat little girl who devoured Danielle Steele novels, any account I could find of life with a Seconal-popping Judy Garland, Days of Our Lives, and community theater by the summer-stock-ful, was the long slog through academia and suburbia that would occupy me starting in my twenties.

            I played with dolls but didn’t imagine having children, listened to my own voice echo through the high school auditorium and imagined Broadway, watched my soaps everyday and thought of myself in front of the camera in the clothes of a much older woman, passionately spitting out overwrought dialogue.  When I am famous I’d think to myself, making a mental note to catalogue a particularly endearing quirk.  I signed a desk full of loose leaf notebook paper, practicing my sure-to-be-coveted scrawl.  I didn’t think of the future in concrete terms ever because, dahling, that’s what my staff would be for—buying food, arranging clothes, folding linens, mailing letters.  I’d leave the quotidian behind and be fabulous.

            And then I was in graduate school in cheap clothes and a tiny apartment filled with rented furniture, contemplating life at the meaning of the word and wondering when my own real life would begin, not realizing it already had, that the man I spent my weekends with drinking expensive vodka and cheap beer was the same one who’d watch all the kids so I could have 5 minutes to go to the bathroom or arrange oranges in the new fruit bowl I’d be really excited about. 

            This is a story of how I traded dreams of Ethel Merman and Deidre Hall for a reality of Betty Crocker meets Betty Friedan meets Betty Rubble and found happiness in my own backyard while still wearing the ruby slippers every once in awhile.

Spring break!

As I pushed my cart around the grocery story today trying not to accidentally bash Jack in the temple (again) while making a blind turn to avoid a lingering solo-shopper and repeatedly asking Harry to stop clinging to the basket, two things occurred to me simultaneously.  First of all, damn it hurts when Cooper yanks fistfuls of hair loose from my french braid and tries to hoist himself out of the Ergo and toward my face, using my locks as a frizzy rope.  Second, today was my first time taking all 3 of them to the grocery store by myself.  Not because I am one of those annoying people who is overwhelmed by the thought of handling all of my own offspring by myself but because I have never had to shop with them and without Ben.  And really?  I didn't have to today considering the ingredients for brownie sundaes topped my list and nobody needs those.  But thanks to early dismissal for spring break, I found myself wrangling 100 pounds of kids on an early Friday afternoon.  Ben is home by 1:30 on Fridays, but I wanted to hit the store before he got home so we could make the 2:45 showing of Mirror, Mirror that I promised Harry and Jack. I am an old pro at shopping with 2, but that extra kid really makes the whole experience more than a third more harrowing.

Spring break.  Ben had his all by himself a couple weeks ago, but the kids and I are off together, meaning I am on my own with no magical all-day kindergarten for a half a day Monday and Friday and a whole day Wednesday.  Wish me luck!

Actually wish the kids luck.  Not only did I run into Jack with my cart, but I set Cooper down to play in the plastic cabinet (for the first time--  a milestone!), turned around to wash a cookie sheet, and heard him scream when he face-palnted into the bottom shelf.  He may have a black eye.

While Harry was at school: the iPhone version

Cooper was clingy.  Jack was cute.  My bangs were long.

Pictures.

Working on his forward roll

Finally a fairly reliable sitter.

You know what would make those circles under his eyes go away?  Sleeping past 4 am.  His new trick is to NOT sleep past 4 am.  Cute.

Jack needed to fix Cooper's bowtie.

"OMFG!  A DUCK!"

We've been playing so much Jenga.

He's so tough

They both are

The first year Jack manned up and got in the picture.