Yellow Wallpaper

The start of a new year always leads me to reflect on the previous twelve months. Last year I made a list of the "Top Ten Photos of 2005". That really was a good year--we did lots of cool things and accomplished a lot of goals. I don't feel quite the same way about 2006; in fact, I'm pretty happy to see it go. We did do some big things, like having a baby and moving. But overall I didn't feel very happy for most of the year. Master Fob had to work a lot. Recovering from the shock of having two kids took much longer than I expected. And I'm not much closer to having a master's degree than I was a year ago. On the other hand, I am looking forward to 2007. We're getting settled in to Seattle and it's starting to feel a bit more like home now. I feel a lot more comfortable with having two kids, and Little Dude is more of a human and less of a screaming grubworm now. S-Boogie is starting preschool next week and tomorrow marks her last day in Nursery, s

Wow, seven months have come and gone since Little Dude came crashing into the world. This last one flew by particularly fast, and it doesn't feel like a lot has changed since he was six months old. He still has no desire to sit up, which makes bathtime difficult and causes me to compare him too much to his older sister and other babies his age. But, sitting up will eventually come I guess. Right now he's too busy rolling all over the living room, eating the edges of the rug and all the pine needles from the pathetically crispy Christmas tree we really need to take down. He's also become quite talkative this month and loves to carry on little " ba ba ba " conversations with all of us. S-Boogie is starting to interact more with her little brother as well, and a few times I've seen them giggling hysterically at each other. Little Dude is still a bit cranky and doesn't like nap time much, but his disposition is so much better than it was just a few months a

As is her usual custom, S-Boogie refused to eat her dinner and excused herself from the table. She came back a few minutes later looking rather downcast and wiping at her nose. She announced "I have something in my nose" (at least she's an honest little soul), and my heart sank because I remembered the string of beads that had broken earlier today. I thought I had picked up all the beads, but apparently I missed one. Don't worry, S-Boogie found it and discovered that it fit perfectly into her nostril. With the help of a flashlight, we were able to see it and realize that it was a little t00 far up there to attempt safe removal ourselves. After a phone consultation with the doctor's office, we were sent to the emergency room at Children's Hospital (just up the road from our house, thankfully). Our ER visit was nice and low-key, and the staff really is good about catering to children. We were only there an hour or so total, which isn't bad at all. They had s

I had been somewhat hesitant about spending our Christmas here without any family members or friends near enough to share it. But it turns out that we can have a lot of fun all by ourselves (not that we don't miss you all very much). S-Boogie and I spent most of Saturday making cookies; she's quite good at applying sprinkles. Sunday evening we drove all over passing them out to friends. We also had dinner on Sunday with friends from our ward; S-Boogie had a great time playing with her little friends. Sunday evening was a highlight for her because we finally found Baby Jesus for her to go see. I had found a listing for a living nativity at a church that would be on our way home from cookie delivery, so we stopped by to see what was going on. It turns out that they had a full-on pageant that you could watch from your car. We got there just as a performance was starting, and S-Boogie was entranced by the donkey, the giant star that lit up above the stable, and the fact that Mary,

Apparently last night was "Stay Up All Night and Harrass Your Parents Night". Nobody told me about it. (It was also "Eat String Cheese at 2 AM Night", but at least it wasn't "Unwrap Your Christmas Presents Early Night" or "Play With Knives Night".)

After getting today's mail, we now have an enormous pile of presents that is threatening to crawl out from under the Christmas tree and take over the living room. I'm overwhelmed by the generosity of our friends and family, and I feel humbled that all we give them in return is an over-long Christmas letter and a bad photo of us. I hope they know how much we love and appreciate them and all they do for us, even though we can never pay them back in the same way. It's also fun to see how excited S-Boogie is about Christmas this year. She really wants to open her presents, but she's also in love with Christmas itself and the idea of Baby Jesus. In a sort-of related comment, I am feeling really jealous after reading the Christmas letter we received from friends who are living in Honolulu right now. They will only be there for a year, so I imagine that that fact makes them even more grateful for the opportunity, but I'm still envious of their ability to go to the beach on

We finished up our Christmas letter, and Master Fob will stop at the Post Office today after work to send it on its way to our friends and relatives. We managed to do it with surprisingly little stress this year, having finally learned some lessons from previous years. Like don't try and print the entire thing plus envelopes and mail it all in one afternoon. That's not good for family harmony. I was a little disappointed in our photo this year, though Tolkien Boy and Sir Jupiter did an admirable job trying to capture the elusive S-Boogie. Quality photos were made impossible by bad lighting in our apartment, our crazy schedule and the crazy weather that prevented us from going somewhere nice to take the photo, uncooperative small children, and the fact that Skye is in Morocco and doesn't have a telephoto lens that big. Maybe next year will be a better year for photos. I also hope people won't be freaked out by our two-page letter this year. We'll try and condense mo

Well, sort of. This afternoon we had to get a prescription filled at the drugstore, so I took the opportunity to help S-Boogie pick out a present for Daddy. While we were there I found something fun that I think he'll like, and it's not a book or CD, so I'm proud of myself. And I contacted a lady from craigslist this morning about buying a set of doll toys she had listed. It's a stroller, high chair, and a baby doll that comes with some play food, play binkies , and a play toothbrush and toothpaste. She's been advertising the set for a while, but had it listed at fifty bucks, which seemed like a lot to me. She recently dropped the price a bit, so I decided to go for it. The stroller and high chair are from Little Tikes , so good quality plastic, and after doing some research I realized that the stroller alone was at least twenty dollars new. And it's going to be S- Boogie's main big present (and her only one from us), so I guess it's worth it. We got

I just switched over to Blogger Beta. It was a little scary, but so far everything is fine. I got sick of not being able to comment on everyone else's blogs as FoxyJ . The only difference is that on Master Fob's family blog I'll be Foxy instead of my real name. But whatever. They know who I am. We also have switched Little Dude over to formula, more or less. For right now I'm still nursing him about 3 times a day, plus any times at night. Well, we're trying to cut out the night feedings and he's been doing a great job this week. He got up at five this morning, so I went ahead and fed him since he'd been asleep most of the night. So far things seem to be working really well. When he does nurse, I'm usually pretty full and he doesn't get fussy. And he doesn't mind the bottles at all, even though I think I want to get better ones next time we have a little extra money. We got the cheapest ones available at Target, and turns out they really aren'

The other day we were putting up our Christmas decorations and S-Boogie asked about the stockings. She thought they were pretty cool, and of course asked what they were for. I started to say that Santa would fill them with goodies, but I couldn't say it. It's not true--Santa doesn't exist and it's Mom and Dad who will fill them with treats (she'll probably actually get some real candy this year too). So I told her something like "When you wake up on Christmas morning, there will be treats in your stocking". I just couldn't tell her that Santa will be bringing her stuff. Every Christmas the Santa issue raises it's head again. It's a complicated one for me, and my response to it is evolving and will keep evolving as my kids get older. Part of the problem is that I'm really bad at pretending to believe something that I don't. I'm a terrible actress, I can't lie to save my life, and I always feel uncomfortable on Halloween because I

For the first few years of marriage we had a tiny little artificial tree that we bought while living in Wymount, which forbids real trees lest they burn down the cinderblocks and cement. Finally, last year, we got a real tree and I remembered why I love them so much. This year I had hoped to start a new tradition by venturing out to a tree farm. However, with school and all the other things going on in our lives, a good day for a tree hunt has had trouble materializing. We had planned to go tomorrow, but the weather website predicts "heavy rain" for the entire day and the next few days as well, so tonight I gave up my romantic ideas and had Master Fob walk over to the grocery store to get us a tree. It turns out that it doesn't matter where the tree comes from--it still looks and smells wonderful in the corner of your living room. And it also turns out that my plastic candy canes from Pic N Save are still holding up after all these years and they are perfect for little pe

Little Dude had his six-month check up on Thursday. He now weighs exactly sixteen pounds, which puts him the 20th percentile or so for weight. That simply means that 80 percent of babies his age weigh more than he does, and 20 percent weigh less. That's really not all that bad, and our pediatrician isn't worried about him. But I am starting to worry a bit. You see, his weight and height were in the 75th percentile at his two month check up. He's been slowly falling down the chart for the last four months. He was also weighed in October at the county health office. If their scale was correct, he weighed 15 pounds then and has only gained one pound in the last two months. I know everything about how some kids are just small and gain weight more slowly. S-Boogie only weighed about 17 pounds when she turned one, and even now at nearly three-and-a-half she barely hits 30. She's just a small person, and always has been. Her weight has stayed pretty consistently in the 10th pe

Ever since this story broke out earlier this week I haven't been able to stop thinking about it. Maybe it's the fact that I have kids practically the same ages. Maybe it's just the sheer randomness of the whole thing. I just keep thinking of what it must have been like, the terror increasing incrementally as you miss your turnoff, make a wrong turn, lose your cellphone reception, etc. I don't blame the guy for setting out on his own--I probably would have done the same thing. I also find it interesting how every so often some tragedy or another makes the news for a while, and then we never hear any more about what happened. I always wonder what happens to people years later, after the news fades and they are no longer "current events". I think of some of the traffic accidents I've come across and wish I knew what happened to the people involved. I hope that this woman and her children will be all right some day. They'll never be the same, but I hope th

And not blogging. Or, even worse, checking plane ticket costs on Farecast . If you haven't tried that website, you really should. It's really cool; I especially like the graph section for flexible dates. And I really should not be finding out that if I left tomorrow I could fly to Honolulu for only $348 round trip. Or only $197 for a trip to Vegas. Sigh. I'd better get back to writing right now...

Hillbilly Gothic by Adrienne Martini This is a memoir about a woman who checks herself into the psych ward two weeks after having a baby, and what her troubles with depression lead her to find out about her family heritage and herself. It was well-written and I found a lot of her insights interesting, but overall I wasn't very wowed by this book. One of my fears in writing a memoir would be that my life really wasn't that interesting to other people; I think in some ways some of this book feels that way to me. More women need to speak out about depression, but I felt like too often she was talking around things in such a way that I didn't get a very good sense of what was going on. But it was still a good read and I would recommend it to anyone who likes to read memoir. West of Then by Tara Bray Smith Another memoir, this time by a woman who grew up in Hawaii. She alternates between the present problem of trying to track down her mom, who is now a homeless junkie in Honol

We need fewer talks about how motherhood is a high and noble calling and more about how motherhood sometimes means that your hands smell like poop and your shirt has avocado spit up on it.