Randomly

My hair is having a moment, and it's about damn time.

 I have waited 34 years for messy, slightly frizzy, totally unevenly curled waves to be in style, and now that they are, I am milking it, baby. I don't even brush my hair anymore. I just take a shower at night and comb it out. I wake up in the morning with tousled bedhead waves and ridiculous bangs. I spend 3 seconds flat ironing my bangs, and that's it. Yesterday, I braided two small sections and joined them in the back with a clip and left the rest crazy, and today I have a super messy chignon with pieces escaping. Hair in less than 2 minutes, and it looks just like the adorable undergrads or (sort of if you squint) the pages of Glamour (which, OMFG, I am way too old to read). So, that's good.

 Not good? I just now two seconds ago spilled a bag of grape water (from the grapes I brought for my mid-class snack) in the bottom of my new Louis Vuitton bag. I think it's fine-- no leakage through to the actual bag, but a big stain on the liner. Cross your fingers that it dries. Also, that's why I should not have nice things.

 Also not good? I had total insomnia from 2:53-4:40 last night, and then Cooper woke up at 5:31. I blame a NYT magazine article on Ina May Gaskin and homebirth that I stayed up way too late reading, finished reading at Cooper's 2:53 feeding, and could not stop thinking about. You can read it here.

 And now, apropos of nothing, random iPhone pics. You're welcome.

 Jack being super bossy on our walk to the park (he pushed a random teddy bear and a Star Wars guy in this stroller)

But guys, if I go in the water with you, what do I do with my drink?

The new pool has salads on the menu, but I think I'll just have half a rum slushie for lunch

Rum slushies (and bloody marys and beer) on the menu?  A water slide?  Walking distance from my house?  Is the new pool we joined a dream come true or what? Even though one kid (not the baby) threw a massive tantrum and had to be carried barefoot to the car and another kid shit his pants (again, NOT THE BABY) and I am fatter than I have ever been not pregnant, today's first pool day of the season was awesome.  Mostly because of the rum slushie.  I only drank half for weight reasons and also because midway through my drink (which I sipped while Harry enjoyed his favorite lunch food, hot ham and cheese), I thought, "OMG, I should go down the water slide."  That's when I knew it was time to chuck my plastic cup.  Oh!  About that?  The snack bar also has little kid slushies without rum that are served in the exact same cups.  Dangerous, if you ask me.

Cooper can crawl!  It's super adorable, but it also caused us to finally babyproof everything last night.  Today, Cooper was thrilled to have the run of the house.  He also LOVED the pool-- a total water baby.

Crawler!

Who falls down a lot

And can stand! 

Cooper HATES the vacuum.  He doesn't cry, but he clenches his hands and feet and looks tough

Total fight or flight

Could he BE anymore nosy?

Loves scrambled egg yolk

Really loves them

Babyproofing! We gated the toy room

And that's where Harry and Jack's chokey toys are

Lots of things for Cooper to choke on

Then we dug out a bunch of Little People stuff and filled the shelves in the family room

We figured since it already looks like a daycare center in the basement, we might as well add some shelves and bins of baby toys in the family room, too.  Cooper was seriously thrilled to pay with all this crap today.

Harry on the water slide!

Such a silly little outfit00 he picked it out himself

So did he

Jack sang out at the picnic on his last day of preschool.  We're going to miss his sweet little school, but it will be even sweeter to walk both kids across the street next fall.  No more cross town shuffle in the morning.  But also no more fancy schmancy music classes.

Summer school prep

OMG, you guys.  I am SUCH an idiot.

This year for summer school, I decided to teach the 3-week session.  This is awesome because Ben and I don't really overlap at all, and I will be done with school the same week Harry is done-- June 15-- so my class won't even interfere with (interminable?) summer family fun time.  But it is TERRIBLE because I have to cram my entire upper-level rhetorical criticism class into 3 weeks!  3 weeks!  14 class meetings!  Are you KIDDING me?  I usually meet 33 times and show 30 speeches.  That's a lot of rhetoric for 14 days.  So, that's where I have been: in my office trying to to prep this disaster.  Did I mention I also got a new textbook, so I need to make new keynote presentations for my iPad?  No?  Well,yeah.  I sure did, and it seemed like a good idea at the time.  Thank goodness I have a grader to handle 33 hours of grading (The other bajillion?  All me).

Ben teaches on Tuesday and Thursday mornings this summer, and I am doing a whole lot of nothing in June.  Jack's last day of preschool is tomorrow; Harry's still in until my session is over.  And then it's just us.  For 3 solid months.  I see lots and lots of pool time ahead and lots of naps, too.  Ben's colleagues typically don't work over the summer, so they think he is NUTS for teaching 2 mornings a week-- how funny is that?  Meanwhile, Ben is fresh from the private sector and is loving this whole summers off thing. 

Okay, here are a ton of pictures from my phone.

Time to write a summer midterm.

Terrible Teeth

Teething has ruined Cooper's LIFE.  It's the worst thing that has ever happened to him, and to be totally honest, he is not handling the stress well at all.  The baby FKA Happiest in the World is now the saddest baby ever.  Nothing makes him happy except sometimes biting on a plastic cup, but eventually he gets mad because there's nothing in the cup to drink, and all hell breaks loose again.

Solid foods make him so irate he can't stand it.  He bashes his head into the high chair and screams for minutes after we take him out-- that's how mad he is that we had the balls to offer him blobs of banana and shreds of waffle while we thought about spooning oatmeal and fruit into his cry hole. AS freaking IF.  He will usually deign to eat a YoBaby yogurt for dinner, but never a peach one. NEVER! A! PEACH! ONE! YOU! IDIOTS!

Even nursing pisses him off, but he grudgingly shreds my nipples every couple of hours to pass the time.

I have stopped using the monitor at night because the sleep deprivation was getting to me.  So now when I go get him in the wee hours it's because he was good and mad.  Last night, he was sitting up smacking his crib soother with his palm at 4 am (but not the on/off switch, just the screen-- v. ineffectual).  Imagine his outrage when I changed his poopy pants (HATE), took his temperature (ALSO HATE), used saline drops in his stuffed up nose so he could both breathe and nurse (REALLY HATE), and gave him Tylenol (THE HATIEST).

He cried all morning but has been napping for an hour or so (thank goodness), and I get to leave to give a couple final exams in a little while, so say a prayer for Ben.

I wish you could see his 2 adorable bottom teeth and horribly inflamed gums in this picture, but his mouth is either closed tight or full of something chokey unless it is wide open in a scream of discontent.

Stuff

The thing that freaks me out the MOST about my postpartum body is my total lack of core muscles. My problem area has never ever been my stomach, but these days, I have a definite pooch that, in my Nike running shorts, looks like a flabby ring.

We have joined a new pool, and swimsuit season is right around the corner, and Ben and I ate my entire birthday cake by ourselves because the kids didn't like it.

8 years ago, my parents got me an iPod Mini (pink!) for my birthday, and I LOVED it.  My grad school BFF got one (aqua) at the same time for her MA graduation, and she named it Sea Sparkle.  Apple always asks you to name your device the first time you plug it in, and mine are always named Sarah's ipad/pod/phone, etc.  I decided to creatively name the pink Nano my parents got me this year.  I wanted to call it Well, aren't you snazzy? but I forgot the ? and spelled snazzy wrong.  Should have stuck with Sarah's Nano.

No matter the name, I am in love with the Nike+ feature and have been using it to time workouts, which are PATHETIC.  Because I have no muscles.

Jack spent the whole day being terrible-- he dumped an entire water bottle into 3 cupholders in the back of van today because he wanted to make a pool.  Over my vehement objections, he went down the hall to "check on Cooper" and woke him up 15 minutes into his nap.  He ran over my foot 3 times with the Target cart and then climbed up on the check out stand and jumped off of it screaming that he could fly.  He screamed "Hello sucker!"at a woman's open window in the parking lot.

Then he does stuff like this

Cooper.  WTF, buddy?

Birthday + Mothers Day = Awesome X 2

The best thing about this picture of this morning's lovely breakfast cake is last night's beer bottle, no?

Fighting over who could give me my cards

Admiring Harry's flower pot and about to open Jack's masterpiece

Necklace from Jack, who has asked to be called artist Jack

They were SO EXCITED to see me open my gifts

Fancy sunglasses that will be no match for Coop

Harry is an excellent little gift, but anything that comes from a box that big from THAT store isn't half bad either.

Just wanted to eat papaer

All my fancy stuff

BRUNCH!

Jack was methodical-- first a plate of breakfast, then a plate of lunch.  Then eleventy billion desserts.  And he had sheep chicken.

Mimosa!  And really bad posture.

I gave my fancy bag its own chair.

nom nom nom

We had way more fun than anticipated

The fam

Frolicking at the capitol

Harry won the race!

Rolling

After a sommersault

Love the hair

Oops-- back to brunch.  Cooper loves cups

Harry loves parfaits

34 is lovely so far.