Wherewithal

September from Hell

She's wearing the garb to fit the times, even if she does look pretty pleased with the day.

I have been loathe to file any new posts, lately, and I can't chalk it up to any one thing, but, rather, a series of unfortunate events that have culminated in this, the ninth circle - er, month.

Never fully recovered from food poisoning, sent my son off to preschool, went to the doctor, had him freak out on my ankle and then hastily schedule surgery, which prompted me to freak out, had a chunk of my epidermis and dermis carved out, got eight stitches, had no child care help, discovered all too late that my two children decided to switch their sleep schedules to an ambitious wake-up time of 5:45 a.m., worried over a grandmother in the hospital and a mother who went in for yet another surgery, worried over friends going through hell, tried to find child care, couldn't find it, couldn't get energy or sleep. Couldn't walk well for a week, had to withdraw from my Mandarin class because of poor scheduling.

And yet. Here we are, at the end of the month, and things are looking up. I took out my stitches myself today, since the skin was growing around them and making the ankle look exceedingly angry. The kids are still waking up at 5:45 a.m., but I am learning to live with it. I have gone back to coffee after a month's hiatus, 'tis true. This helps for an hour.

I am still worried about other loved ones. I know I am lucky, by comparison. That, more than anything, prompted me to stop whinging and just get back to it. I still don't know if I am going to continue this blog, because I am ambivalent on its merit, nowadays. There is so much I could be doing; should I be getting on a puny little podium and ranting? There are good stories to be told. There are many things to enjoy each day. I have spent this past month in limbo, because of the aforementioned events and because I haven't had any healthy stretch of sleep, and this makes me second-guess everything, including whether or not I am turning into a horrible parent, being of a short fuse for two active toddlers who are testing their boundaries in the world. I have to get over myself, and remember they are simply testing their world's limits, and not my patience.

So I will leave this post on a good note, and post pictures of the kiddos taken during the past month.

Land of Primary Colors

There he goes. Click here for the first few minutes of Kane's first day of preschool.

It's a cute little place that is kind of like crack for toddlers, like a toy store with all of the goods unwrapped.

And we didn't have any meltdowns until I came to pick him up.

I think we did well.

We dropped him off at around 8:30 a.m. and I stuck around with Carly until about 9 a.m., because there were potential waterworks lurking after he was told on the drive to the school that I would eventually be leaving him alone with the teachers. I thought if I stayed with him a few minutes, he'd adjust and wave me off like any normal child would, having more cool little toys to grab at than you have miniutes in the day to do it.

When I did finally leave him (after flubbing hopelessly at small talk with a couple of joyless mothers who haven't smiled once since I met them last week), he gave a little "mommy!" wail and a few fat tears, but then was all right once one of the teachers assured him he could go outside and play with the dump trucks soon enough. I wanted to hightail it out of there, having already calculated in my head I could get to the store with Carly and perhaps get her to catnap (she did, after all, wake me up at 5:50 a.m.) before picking Kane up. Plus, I was aggravated with the aforementioned humorless types (who looked uneasily at Kane when I joked that he was living out his OCD dream of lining up a dozen toy trains on the table), and with the recurring comment of one of the teachers who claimed Carly was "a busy little girl" (I could sense this woman was wondering whether my daughter would enroll sometime soon, and, if so, would she have to teach her).

After a breezy jaunt at the store (oh Jesus; I forgot how easy it is to go ANYWHERE with just one child - we were silly together AND we got things done!), I got home, checked to make sure the answering machine wasn't blinking with some message about Kane melting down, and then cleaned the house up while Carly talked herself to sleep.

We got back to the school at 11:30, with Carly grumpy from too little sleep. As soon as I set her down, she started flinging herself backward, saying "Eat!" Kane caught sight of me, and said he wanted a snack. I told him I'd give him one as soon as we got out of there, which prompted him to race for the door, despite three teachers telling him he had to stick around for circle time. He was having none of it. He was tired, over-stimulated, processing an incredible amount of new information, AND he had a load in his pants, which meant there was no way anyone would be able to get him to sit down. After much wailing and gnashing of teeth, I grabbed him and hightailed it out of circle time, and they chowed down in the car on tofu and raspberries. There was silence for a full five minutes, interrupted only by: "More, please."

No one napped. Everyone was cranky this afternoon. Mommy is very sleepy now, but I promised I would get these up for grandparents. Here you go. He's still lookig forward to school on Thursday, despite the bad taste he got toward the end of today's session. He said he liked the dinosaurs, and ringing the bell on the play boat outside in the backyard. He said tonight he will go back (and he said this out of the blue), despite him telling me on the walk from the school to the car late this morning: "Mommy, I missed you. My eyes are sad."

Phil's 41st Birthday, or, How I lost Seven Pounds

This was paradise.

So I am told.

I wouldn't know, since I spent my entire stay here in the bathroom, having fallen victim to a noxious parasite that had lain dormant on, of all things, a Fuji apple I had eaten Friday morning. Two hours after consuming the forbidden fruit, I was incapacitated for much of the following 55 hours, which included Phil's birthday bash. It sounded like fun, from what i could hear. I made the occasional appearance here and there, when my body was taking a brief respite from violently expelling something from my person.

Phil looked like he was having a good time, no? So did everyone else. I am told the food, which was catered, was absolutely delicious. Looks like the wine was yummy, too.

I'm not bitter. I'm just drawn that way.

Click here for more pictures, most of which Phil took (since no one wanted to capture what I was seeing).

The Kids Are Alright

Oh, they're cute, alright. This is the result of a contrived day in the park in order to get some candid shots of the kids, blow them (the pictures, not the kids) up, and give them to Phil for his birthday. Trouble was, they knew there was something at stake with this whole scenario, and they blithely refused to cooperate. Still got some nice shots; just can't enlarge them to 8-by-10s.

Click here to see the morning, such as it was.