V-Day and Excuses

Hi, how's it going? KInd of crappy here, actually. We've been snowed/slushed/ iced in all day, and it's supposed to get even worse tonight, which is awesome news for a nice morning drive to campus. Even the presidential candidates cancelled their campaign stops today, the wussies. (On a totally random sidenote, anyone ever read Richard Russo's The Risk Pool because I am pretty sure that Wussy might be my favorite fictional sidekick-- excpet for maybe Teddy and June in Russo's The Straight Man, which, if you are an academic, you should read because you will find it hilarious. Oh my god-- I totally remember when I used to read books that weren't about abortion--ahhh, memories.)

Anywho, we're just so freaking busy this semester that this blog has fallen by the wayside a bit. Ben is teaching a couple of adjunct classes at a local university (you know-- in his spare time, when he's not working 40 hours week and coaching the speech team), and I am preparing a presentation I have to make later this week, prepping a new class, (and, you know-- trying to finish my dissertation before I give birth to this baby, my god). In our free time, we enjoy such relaxing pursuits as cooking, cleaning, and moving the couch to vacuum under it, which seems to go under the heading of cleaning, but is actually more intense, especially since when we moved out of our old place, the movers lifted up the couch to find an ENTIRE, IN-TACT piece of pizza underneath it, and we do not ever want to be "those people" again.

Harry's really busy, too. He just discovered the wonder of "Little Bear" on Noggin. I think that show is mega boring and just randomly turned it on today because we checked out a Little Bear book from the library last week, and I thought Harry might like to experience Little Bear across media. He LAUGHED at the parts of the show that were supposed to be funny (and they weren't funny-- I mean whiney, pain-in-my-ass Caillou is way funnier-- Barney looks like Dane Cook compared to Little Bear), and he said "Yeah!" when something worked out well for Little Bear (he found some eggs to bring home to his mother or something dreadfully boring like that). It was weird. He was like Ben watching MSNBC coverage of the election (which is the only coverage Ben likes because they are so pro-Obama it is ridiculous.)

So, before these pictures are totally irrelevant, let me show you Harry's Valentine's Day.


He started out with a few presents, which sort of disappointed him because we told him he had presents downstairs, and he was all "Ho, ho, ho," but V-day is nothing compared to Christmas.

I made cupcakes (and yes, he did actually eat one or two with breakfast) the night before,

and we thought Harry might have fun decorating a few of them in the morning.





And this is how I know that Harry is my kid even though he looks nothing like me (although, yes, I did actually, you know, birth him) because this is how much frosting actually made it onto the cupcakes. The rest (including the mini candy covered Hershey's kisses)? Safely ensconced in Harry's belly.

We met Ben at Build-A-Bear at lunch, where Harry had about sixteen tempter tantrums and built this guy,

whom he named Monkey and dressed in these jammies. Normally, I would have protested them, since the apostrophe in Dino's Rock is so not grammatical, but Ben was all too happy to buy them because it was either these or a lavender pair that said "Glamour Girl" that Harry was originally drawn to.