Gluttony and other sins

Here's Jack trying to crawl on Christmas Eve. He can go backwards really well, but to go forward, he sits up, throws himself on his stomach, sits up, and then does it again.

Harry is totally impossible to photograph these days

Here he is next to the weird plate of food he left for Santa-- Rice Krispie treat, fudge, carrots, a green pepper, and milk. He also left a multimedia art project mainly made by me and Ben--Harry was busy flinging pipe cleaners across the room and sticking little googley eyes in odd places. Note-- he is not wearing a fireman's jacket. It's a Santa coat, and don't you forget it.

Jack was not as ready to go open presents at 5:45 on Christmas morning as a certain two-point-five-year-old who will remain nameless

He admirably yawned his way through his stocking

And then just sort of patted boxes and looked vague until naptime

Harry ripped through all of his presents and then demanded that I assemble them. Then he knocked Jack over and took all his toys. Christmas really brought out the best in him

Ben and Jack both liked Spike the Dinosaur quite a bit. Harry claimed that Spike was his new best friend, but he was more than a little scared of him-- liked him way better behind the plexiglass box at Target


Jack became his usual affable self as the morning progressed

But Harry OD'd on Fannie May Santas and adopted his brother's empty stare

Then we dressed in matching Old Navy holiday t-shirts and piled in the car to drive to Illinois and spend Christmas with the grandparents. This is the point in Jack's first Christmas where Ben and I really dropped the ball. Not only did we not buy a baby's first Christmas ornament (not even on sale the day after), but we DIDN'T TAKE ANY PICTURES OF CHRISTMAS. Except for these of Jack and Lucy


Because Harry lost his shit during present opening and never regained it, so Ben and I never had a free hand or brain cell to think about archiving our precious freaking memories.

Apparently, the fifty bajillion presents Harry opened were not enough for him-- he wanted all of Max's toys and Jack's toys, too. He would have stolen our new dish towels and wooden salad bowls, too, if we had let him.

Then he willingly went to bed at 7:00 before dessert had even been served.

So maybe it's less of a greed inspired meltdown and more of a no nap thing. (Oh! He really likes peeing in urinals, by the way-- and maybe the potty training and the fact that his increasingly mobile brother is getting more and more attention by the minute are screwing with him, too. Or, you know, maybe he is an overindulged brat.)

Here we are coddling-- uh, cuddling-- the next morning.

Harry had the most fun ever riding on this truck (Jack's) and pulling us on his new sled

He tried to pull us all, but clearly he had the most success with Jack. I include this picture, though, to show you Jack's awesome outfit, including his onesie with a tie printed on it. A power tie.

Jack and his grandma

Jack could not pull Harry, and Harry was pissed


We came home in some intense fog on the 26th and immediately removed all traces of Christmas from our house. Except for all the toys. WHAT ARE WE GOING TO DO WITH ALL THE TOYS?????

The Knight and the Princess: Starring Harry and Daddy

Happy Chrismukkah!


Untitled from sarah on Vimeo.

He sees you when you're sleeping

Poor Harry. He has recently dropped his nap which sucks as much as you might think. Some days, he snuggles up with me on the couch and drifts off (because I haven't dropped my nap), but some days he doesn't. By dinner, he falls apart or falls asleep somewhere odd.


One minute, he and Jack were playing, the next minute, he was really, truly asleep.

This picture was almost our Chrismukkah card, but a cannibal Santa joke is hard to make in the one pithy line that most Shutterfly templates allot.

On the first day of Hanukkah my true love gave to me a plastic baby Jesus underneath the Christmas tree

Harry tore the paper off and said, "Oh! I got a that!" Jack? Ate the paper.

I have no idea where Jack's other sock is.

Harry made the angel fly around the room while making a pterodactyl noise. Then he perched her atop the manger and made her sing "The roof is on fire."

And of course it didn't take long for Santa to arrive at the manger. He was all, "Forget your nose, Rudolph. We've just got to follow that star."

Weirdest Google search that's brought someone here

I found this when I checked out my stats on Feedjit:

Saskatoon, Saskatchewan arrived from google.com on "Harry Times...All Jacked Up: So You're 38 Weeks Pregnant, and You've Gone and Peed Your Pants: A Modern Girl's Guide to Embarrassing the Eff Out of Yourself, Now With Pictures!" by searching for does your husband have to STIK HIS HIS THIG HE PEES WITH IN YOUR in order to get pragnet (I WANT TO SEE PICTURES I WANT TO GET PRAGNET).

Awesome.

Were you to perform a search for "does your husband have to STIK HIS HIS THIG HE PEES WITH IN YOUR in order to get pragnet (I WANT TO SEE PICTURES I WANT TO GET PRAGNET)" I would be the very first result. I am so proud.

Blizzard-- the snow kind, not the cookie dough kind.

As I write this, I am sitting in the 6th floor seminar room in my building on campus. I haven't been in this room for a long time-- since I was pregnant with Harry and had my prelims defense, in fact. I used to spend hours and hours and hours in this room, usually at night, attending classes. Like the classical rhetorical theory seminar that convinced me I was too dumb for PhD school and almost persuaded me to get a job at the mall (because the either-or fallacy is how I think). Or the rhetorical criticism seminar my first semester here that led me to discover my dissertation topic. Or the Kenneth Burke seminar that had me mining the footnotes of his books for never quoted text with the fervor of Anne Stoler on the hunt for Foucault's lost lectures.

Memories.

Today, I am just wasting time online while a group of students takes the final exam for the course I help direct, and I am staring out the window at a freaking blizzard. It took me over an hour to get to school (if you count the time I spent when I got stuck turning out of our street onto a main road and left my car at the corner and walked home, screaming hysterically on the phone to Ben, who left the kids in the house and sprinted to the corner to move my car and I cried in the kitchen for a few minutes and then gave it another go).

Every school in a 50-mile radius is closed except for my university, which has only been closed for snow once in the last quarter century. Harry's holiday party has been canceled-- which is good for my guilt at not being able to go but bad for the bag of teacher gifts, cookie decorations, and classmate Chrismukkah treat bags on our kitchen counter. Harry was really stoked about giving presents to all of his "swends" (It is such a blessing, by the way, that he says "s" instead of "f," because when we're in the car, and he screams "suck you" to those who pass us, it doesn't sound as trashy as it could).

Ben took the day off so I could proctor this exam and meet with the TAs about grading it (grading? sure don't miss it), and I told Harry that Daddy was going to be the Mommy today, and then I realized that that statement sort of goes against everything I believe in and write about. (Sort of like Obama when he asked that antichoice homophobe to pray at his inauguration). Childcare work doesn't have to be mothering, right? Fathers can do it too, right? Or, should we call the work of caring for the family mothering to reflect the fact that women have shouldered the majority of that labor for years? Dunno, but I should probably figure that out sooner rather than later, since I have started to consider men and women in Planned Parenthood literature.

Oh! Am definitely graduating in May! There's been talk of a party and a date to have my manuscript out for review (April Fool's Day-- ha-- which gives me a couple of weeks of padding, if I need it, since I want the damn thing out of my hands by Jack's birthday). But I did just find out yesterday THAT I NEED ANOTHER PERSON ON MY COMMITTEE which is the kind of MINOR DETAIL that maybe would have been good to know THREE YEARS AGO WHEN I STARTED THIS MESS perhaps.

Okay, seriously, we are so beyond bored. I took the kiddies out for Little Gym, but otherwise we stayed in ALL WEEK because it has been so cold and snowy.

We busted out Harry's easel so he cold help make holiday cards for his teachers at nursery school and Little Gym. Everyone got green except for Miss Connie, who has apparently been very good this year and scored a rainbow.

Some play-doh, which was really boring after like 3 minutes, so we combined it with some Imaginext dinosaurs to make it more fun, but that only bought like 30 more seconds of whine free time.

At least they're cute and snuggley

Even in the midst of a Lizzie Borden like rampage

I'm digging Jack's tufts of old-man-like over-the-ear hair. I also enjoy his adventuresome appetite. Here he is sampling chicken and veggies in a jar.


Not bad, despite some initial misgivings.

Meanwhile, Harry enjoyed his chicken and veggies in salad form, and he enjoyed the kind of mid-dinner snooze he used to take when he was a baby Jack's age. Recently, he has been refusing his afternoon nap (oh the horror!), but he falls apart at 5:00 and is just miserable to be around until 7 when we do bed and bath. I think I could make him take a nap if we did a sort of cry-it-out (or really a yell-annoying-things-from-the-top-of-the-stairs-it-out), but Jack is also napping during that time, and I would rather chew my arm off than spend all day with 2 kids who haven't slept, so I am forced to cut my losses. I am glad to see, though, that Harry can still sleep and eat simultaneously. Such a talent.




Ben came home mid-meal with lots of energy because he enjoyed the far away galaxy of OUTSIDE THE HOUSE where he met strange people called ADULTS and enjoyed their strange customs like TALKING WITHOUT SHRIEKING and DISCUSSING THINGS NOT RELATING TO PEE AND POOP AND SPONGEBOB SQUAREPANTS.

Jack thinks we're so weird. And you know what? He's totally right.


Edited to add: Ben was so the picture of a disgruntled housewife when I got home at 4 yesterday. (and let me just say, he gets home at 6 most days, and the hours between 4 and 6 are the LONGEST hours of the day) He made brownies and when I complimented them, he said, "They're no good. They're too dry," and then he asked me if he looked fat in Thursday's fleece pants that he was still wearing with Thursday's socks.

Eight months old and eight hundred times cuter than he was a few months ago

How big is Jack?
Eight months is Jack's most adorable age so far. He sleeps in our bed, and sometimes I am annoyed at night because he is contantly waking up to nurse, but then I catch sight of his fat pink toes, or he grabs my face with his hot little hand, and I am nothing but glad for his squishy company.

Last night, I read a post from a mom on a message board who was asking for ways to get her 2 week old son to sleep somewhere besides on her. I thought of hugging my angular, squirmy toddler and the way Jack's feet reach to my thighs when he lays on my chest, and I wanted to tell this poor, tired woman to love letting her teeny little boy sleep on her chest or cradled in her arms because soon-- sooner than you can possibly imagine-- he'll be too big. But that was probably the last thing she'd want to hear, so I typed nothing.

Jack fell over in the tub last night and smashed his face on the drain and went totally under water-- and he LAUGHED about it. He is a little 18 pound bundle of joy-- literally. The fat rolls on his thighs even look like smiles.

He is content to sit around and chew on dangerously small toys for minutes on end.


He can't really crawl yet, but he really, really wants to. That's the only time he even gets crabby-- when he wants something just out of his reach.


He even went pantsless with Harry in potty training solidarity


He was not the most cooperative at his 8 month sign session, but still really happy. Even when he actually ate the paper and didn't really like the taste.






To the gym I go to work off the orange scone I ate while typing this. But oh boy do I have some stuff to tell you about Harry and potty training. He asked me to close the bathroom door this morning "so Jamie and Jack won't see us," though, so I am not sure if he'd like me to share his business over this series of tubes.