Friday

Working, Asher at babysitters’ house, May Day celebration at Lucas’s school, potluck lunch, Lucas at babysitters’ for afternoon, hair appointment to become more fabulous, 4:30 p.m. vodka and seven, visit with my mom, Ian home from work with more fixings, dinner out, carboliscious Mexican food including nachos and a fajita burrito, evening visit to Chicken Park, bedtime rituals, fell asleep with each of my kids in turn.

Yesterday

Shopping for mom, trip to Lowe’s garden store to purchase new plants, Ian’s labor (shirt off, mattock swinging, digging holes), Lucas’s helping, coreopsis, primrose, orange honeysuckle, purple fountain grass, artemesia, foxgloves, marguerites, agapanthus, muddy baby, sex-on-the-beach cocktails, leftover pork tenderloin and salad, bedtime rituals, TV, lovemaking, snoring. 

Today

Awake at o-dark-thirty, nursing and listening to birdsong, snoozing, Lucas’s 6 a.m. temper tantrum, later in bed alone reading Dr. Doolittle, coffee, receiving handmade gift from Lucas (a heart-shaped necklace made of wet-felted wool and yarn) lax and cream-cheese omelet and breakfast sausage, champagne, brief visit from mom and dad, fancy soaps for my mother, hot tubbing with all of my boys, lunch at Ian’s mom and stepfather’s with Aunt Kellie, VoVo, and DeeDee, fancy necklace for grandma, Lucas swimming, breezy back porch time, Asher throwing the ball for the dog to fetch, Lucas’s temper tantrum, grumpy ride home, nap for me and Asher, chess and a Mary Poppins chapter for Lucas and daddy, waking up, playing outside, crab cakes, more sex-on-the-beach, homemade chicken dinner, crying baby, Lucas in bed early, blogging, and … if I am really lucky, soon sleeping baby, Eskimo kisses, toe nibbles, and spooning.

Happy Mother’s Day!

It’s been a hell of a Spring Break and I, for one, am glad it’s OVER! 

It’s Friday night and I’m sitting here in the dark with my vodka and 7, while Ian suffers in the other room: On top of cold symptoms that he’s worked through all week, he appears now to have eaten some bad sushi.

Asher is still sick. He alternates between feeling reasonably chipper and totally lame. His nose is sometimes so congested it’s hard for him to breastfeed. Suck, suck, detach, breathe. Suck, suck, detach, breathe. Suck, suck, detach, breathe. It’s pathetic. He’s now whining a lot of the time, not crying, just complaining. I don’t blame him, but there is so little I can do to make him comfortable: menthol rub on his chest, hot showers to clear out the boogers, milk when he wants it, a sleeping companion, being held a lot. That’s about it.

Lucas is doing better. The antibiotics do the trick. I hate the idea that we’re wiping out all the beneficial flora in his system by giving him this medicine, but lung infections suck worse. Maybe. He’s got 6 more days of meds to take, but he’ll be back to school on Monday. (Otherwise, I may just end up in prison.) Fortunately, my son is mature enough to take his medicine without argument or fuss.

In 12 days, I have left the house only a few times and then only for a brief while. My nerves are completely frayed. Today I yelled at Asher because he wouldn’t sleep. Yeah, that’s stupid. I know. He would go to sleep, rest for 10 minutes and pop awake again. He did that three times. He only really took a proper nap when I calmed down and resolved myself to staying with him instead of working. 

I have work to do and can’t manage to do it. I have my first project to edit in a whole new software program. At the moment, I’m not sure how to do it, only that I’ve committed to doing it. 

Yesterday evening I split, engaged in some retail therapy, and (Thank God) dropped in on some friends who were kind enough to convince me that 9 p.m. was not too late. It was a dark moment when I was sitting in my car in front of Barnes & Noble thinking I had no friends and nothing to do and nowhere to go. Thanks, darlings. I really needed to sit in your kitchen and bitch for a while. 

In a (perhaps belated) effort to stay positive and be Zen about all this, here are some highlights from the last two weeks. There were some fun and/or funny moments, in between the SERENITY NOW! moments.

El Torrito Cilantro Pepita Caesar salad dressing. Lucas has been practicing pouring.

We took a walk at Negro Bar along the American River on March 26. Here are a few pics from that brief outing. It took Lucas only .5 seconds to get covered in wet mud.

It was a beautiful afternoon.

This was before we got sick. I like knowing how to take time-delayed shots! The camera is balanced on the stroller.

This is a cupboard in Lucas’s bedroom. Asher has taken to hiding his pacifiers in this cupboard. Now every time Asher enters Lucas’s room, he makes a beeline for this cupboard to check his stash.

My tulips are blooming and they’re fabulous.

I planted a multipack of pansies in the flowerbed by my front door a few weeks ago. They’re looking great now.

Some bath time fun. Asher kept sticking his tongue out.


And Lucas thought that was cool, so …

We have a book from the library called Hurry and the Monarch and another book all about the life-cycle of the monarch butterfly. Lucas spent two entire days being a monarch butterfly. I had to sneak this photo because he didn’t want one taken. He also had a monarch butterfly painted on his face—and it was damned good, if I do say so myself.

Lucas has also spent a lot of time pretending to be a mouse and a rabbit, which is more palatable to me than, say, pretending to be a Hells Angel or WWF wrestler. Even though small woodland creatures talk in unbearably high, squeaky voices and titter loudly enough to make your head explode.

To keep ourselves busy, we have also: 
* painted pictures
* painted faces
* made mobiles from tissue paper and sticks
* played board games
* played with dominoes
* drawn and colored
* cooked
* gardened and planted 2 tomatoes, 1 cucumber, 1 cantaloupe melon, 2 lavender bushes
* read dozens and dozens of books
* shopped online
* done many, many chores
* cleaned out closets
* and blogged.

Yes, that says “Day Four.” We had planned to spend his first week (and Ian’s only week) of Easter Break at the cabin in South Lake Tahoe. I know we were there just last month, but staying there is fun and free and we figured that we could do with another week of snowy bliss. 

Alas. We are not in Tahoe. We are puttering around our house, mostly enjoying each other’s company and not working, but we’re also bummed that Lucas feels so crummy. He has had a fever and a bad cough since Sunday night. He is able to play a little (occasionally a lot) when we dose him with ibuprofen, but when it wears off he’s back to feeling miserable. And he is bored. And whiny. 

But, really, poor baby! At least he’s old enough now to know that sickness is temporary. I hated it when he was younger and he would get sick and look at me with those big blue eyes and ask, “Why, Mommy?” And expect me to make it all better.

The weather is drop-dead gorgeous, if such a thing can be said about weather, and it’s hard to be cooped up indoors. We managed a leisurely walk along the American River bike trail at Negro Bar yesterday and a meal out in Folsom. Today we tried a walk around our neighborhood with Lucas on his bike, but he quickly decided he’d rather turn around and go home. Asher and I pressed on without Lucas and daddy and had a nice, quiet walk. 

Last week Lucas played with the grandson of his grandma’s friend on Wednesday. He was here visiting from Maryland or someplace. The next day the kid was sick and had to cancel another planned playdate with Lucas. I’ve been silently blaming that kid for the last four days for getting my kid sick. Turns out, he wasn’t this sick, so maybe it’s not his fault afterall.

On a more positive note, Ian has made us some marvelous meals and I love, love, love that I have a husband who wows (and woos) me with food. Tonight we had chicken picata with artichoke hearts and capers and a sidedish of kale and chard in a creamy tomato sauce. Two nights ago he cooked chicken korma, complete with cashews and garum masala. Totally delish. He’s a man of many scrumptious talents and I’m a lucky girl.

Also, the darling

frosteee 

dropped by (unfortunately when we weren’t at home) and left us a big, beautiful family portrait as a gift. It must be 16 x 20 or bigger (don’t know where my measuring tape is at the moment) and printed on metallic paper and mounted on a hard board of some type. It’s this shot that they took of us at Asher’s birthday party on Feb 3, and we look like rockstars!



I adore it and I can’t wait to have it framed. It’s awesome! Thank you, Frostee and T8! 

Today was pretty cool. It started with our cleaning ladies arriving at 10 and thoroughly cleaning my house until about 1:15. They do such an awesome job and I’m thrilled to have this help. Everything in my home is sparkling right now. It won’t be long before we clutter it up again, but for this one day it’s been perfect.

Lucas is feeling better, and I’m no worse. I have a little bit of a sore throat, but it doesn’t seem to be developing into anything major. 

Asher had good naps today. This afternoon I snoozed with him for a little while, which was a rare indulgence. Lovely.

I finished chapter 9 glossary terms. One more chapter’s worth of glossary definitions to go. 

Ian came home from work a little early, which is always a treat. I love him so much and want to spend more time with him, without kids. It’s a problem we are working on. Starting next week we’ll be taking a drawing class together on Thursday nights for a month. If we like it and we can keep swinging the babysitting, we’ll try to continue beyond that. Our goal is to do a painting class soon too. 

Our new wood window blinds arrived today. Ian hopes to install them in our bedroom this weekend. They’ll class up the joint, I think.

We went out for sushi for dinner, which pleases my Atkinsing palate immensely. Asher decided he liked the tofu pieces in the miso soup and gobbled them up. We rounded out our evening’s entertainment with a trip to Barnes and Noble. We picked up a couple of birthday gifts there and I got a new dictionary. Yay!