My Little Lighthouse

At any given time there are several water bottles in my car, all containing different amounts of water. They come in handy because someone is always wanting a drink. Our hot weather and recent news I've heard that heat forces cancer-causing chemicals from plastic into water are causing me to rethink this method.

In any case, there was a half-empty (half-full?) bottle in Sam's seat this morning and conveniently enough he wanted a drink. But for some reason when he drinks from a water bottle he also sucks out all the air, so not only is it really noisy but the bottle ends up deflated. That wouldn't do this morning. He wanted a perfectly shaped bottle. My solution - I put the cap on the bottle and jerked it hard, several times, hoping the force of the water would "fill out" the crunched bottle. It didn't work. It didn't work several times.

I gave up and handed the bottle to Sam. Then I noticed he took off the cap and attempted to push the plastic out from the inside. It would've worked if his little fingers were longer. So, after watching my 4-year-old tackle the problem, I realized there was another solution. Seems trivial, but I was quite proud of him.

The World Is Too Much With Us

cnn.com is my default homepage and I think I need to change it. Several times a day I'm reminded of the awful things that happen in this world, especially to children. It reminds me of a poem I remember from college, at least the first part.

The world is too much with us; late and soon,
Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers;
Little we see in Nature that is ours;
We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!
This Sea that bares her bosom to the moon,
The winds that will be howling at all hours,
And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers,
For this, for everything, we are out of tune;
It moves us not.--Great God! I'd rather be
A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn;
So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,
Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn;
Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea;
Or hear old Triton blow his wreathed horn.

Under My Skin

Several years ago on the TV show Ally McBeal, someone asked Ally why her problems were always so important. "Because they're mine," was her response. So, in that vein, here are the things that are taking advantage of my irritability-prone state and irking me today.

1. Every night at 12:30 Jake storms out of bed and into our room. It would be one thing if he would climb peacefully into bed with me and go back to sleep. (I would happily deal with that issue a year from now when it becomes a problem.) Instead, he turns into a WWE wrestler, throwing water bottles, knocking over fans. If he could curse I'm sure he would let loose a string of obscenities worthy of a professional athlete getting ejected from a game.

2. The heat. Forget about man living on Mars. Let's see if Texas is inhabitable five years from now.

3. Everytime you flush a toilet in our house, the kitchen sink gurgles. I don't know what this means. I don't think it could possibly be good.

4. I saw a man urinating into a beer bottle outside CVS yesterday. Life in the big city.

5. One wall of my closet has fallen in and exposed the crawlspace of our house. The crawlspace, where there are mice and squirrels and humid, 110 degree heat. This is the closet for my non-maternity clothes and I am convinced IF I ever get to wear them again, they will be rotten.

6. I read on CNN where 50,000 domestic dogs were beaten to death because of a rabies scare in China. I know there is violence in the Middle East and an interminable war in Iraq and an imbecile president, but things like this stick with me.

7. And lastly, just to end with a little levity, I am deeply saddened that I will never get to be a contestant on Rockstar: Supernova.

Wings of Wild Birds

This week I have started feeling tiny kicks. It's one of my favorite parts of being pregnant. One that is hard to remember when you aren't, hard to describe to someone who isn't.

Right after Jake was born, when we were still in the hospital, I suddenly got very sad that I wouldn't feel him tossing and turning in my stomach anymore. He was right beside me in the bed, but suddenly he was for everyone. Again, hard to explain.

School Daze

If you read this blog often you know that Sam and Jake commute with me to day care every day. When I was pregnant with Sam and started visiting day cares, I only looked near my office. I figured it had to be close by so I could go over every day and eat lunch with my child. It made frequent fawning and swooning convenient. Although it was good if the school needed me or someone got sick, there were very few lunch visits and only a handful of stops to fawn and swoon.

So several months ago when we found out we were expecting again and realized we could not go the private school route, we decided to enroll our kids in our church day care. It was closer to our house, closer to Bryon's office, and if I was going to be home on maternity leave, it would be much easier than driving 50 miles roundtrip for day care.

There were a lot of other advantages, in that we really like our church and thought this would be a way to get more involved, meet more families. Plus, one thing we never considered when we chose our day care so far from our house is that those are the kids your kids become friends with. Those are the kids whose birthday parties you'll want to attend, whose houses you'll visit for playdates. And while we made great friends at day care, everyone there seemed to assume we lived right around the corner as they did.

And just as we were debating the decision to stay or go, things started unraveling at our day care. A few favorite teachers were fired or left under suspicious circumstances, Sam unexpectedly transitioned to a classroom with much older kids, Jake's favorite teacher switched classrooms. The timing seemed right so we forged ahead.

A few weeks ago we received word that there were spots for both Sam and Jake beginning August 14. We began preparing them and visiting the rooms after Sunday School. We got our paperwork and immunization records together, bought back-up clothes for their cubbies. And last Friday I made a hysterical tour of our old school, saying goodbye to some teachers we'd really loved and would miss.

All this to say that today I drove to work without my guys. The drop off this morning was deceptively easy and my commute was unpleasantly quiet. I found myself censoring the radio and looking in the rearview mirror a lot. Although our commute was unnecessarily long, sometimes 45 minutes to an hour, and sometimes agonizing, it was time we spent together. I'll miss the giggling from the backseat. I'll miss their presence.

Update

I think I can safely say that moving Jake into a big bed was premature.

Uh, Thank You?

I was walking slowly toward the open elevator yesterday when I realized someone was inside, holding it open for me. I picked up the pace a little and soon enough was standing in the elevator with an attractive lady from my office. The awkward silence was broken when she said, "I never thought I'd see someone more pigeon-toed than me. But I guess today's the day!"

Now, I'll admit I'm pigeon-toed. I don't have a problem with that. I'm even slightly proud of the fact that I can turn my feet 180 degrees inward. (I could never be a ballerina. First position would snap my legs at the ankles.) But it's hot and I'm pregnant and I shuffle, which means my 'condition' is more noticeable. As a matter of fact I trip several times a day.

But whatever happened to "How about this heat?"

Baby Steps

In the past week Jake has tee-tee'd in the potty twice. It's really just a fluke. Both times he's been futzing or crabby and in an attempt to distract him I've asked, "You wanna tee-tee on the potty?" Both times he's pulled down his own pants, crawled up and done his business. Like most little ones, the 'flush' is the best part. I figure if we can make it fun (?) and casual it might actually be easy.

Potty training Sam was no easy feat. He was fine with peeing, as far as I can remember, but pooping was a whole other ballgame, the lowpoint of which was holding him down, naked, on the bathroom floor to administer an enema while he screamed "Don't put it in me!!!" If DFPS was nearby I'm sure there would've been an investigation.

Now I'm not fooling myself into thinking Jake will be ones of those kids who potty trains overnight, but for a moment it is nice to imagine it might be easier with him than it was with Sam - at least until his next diaper change, that is.