Lazlo and I won a washer and dryer on ebay for $51. I really believe that this is going to change my life. I've never owned a washer and dryer. The last time I had access to them in my home was when I lived at the Hampton House with 10 other girls. So it was more or less like a laundromat. I forsee a pleasant future of not rationing diaper covers, and washing the duvet cover -every- time (rather than every fifth or sixth time) it gets spit-up on.
Next on the to-do list- fix the oven. It's been broken since we moved in and I'm getting pretty sick of stir-fry. We eat a lot of rice. Last night our culinary school friend talked me through poaching, and I'll definitely be giving it a shot to break up the saute monotony. But I miss pies and bread and cookies and roast chicken and damnit even casseroles. If anyone knows how to replace an electric igniter on a gas stove [for less than $50 (no thanks, Sears)], give me a call.
Here, for those of you who read this exclusively to hear about Wren, are some baby updates. She's showing a terrifying tendency to fight her naps. My mother tells me this is payback for my years as the "Napless Wonder". Whatever. She starts looking a little raggedy and frayed around the edges a few minutes before naptime, but she's still playing happily so it's tempting to just let her hang out for a while longer. This is a bad move. It's my one and only chance to convince her to go to sleep peacefully and if I miss it, even by minutes, then we're in trouble. The next hint comes when a gleeful laugh sound will suddenly turn into a sad squeal, and then her babyface just teeters back and forth from comedy to tragedy, ending, of course, with tragedy. From there it's total disintegration and I'll be rocking a grunting, barking, back-arching, swaddle-fighting baby until she goes limp from exhaustion and mutters herself to sleep. It happens at most once a day. For the rest of her naps she'll just flutter her eyes at her mobile a couple of times and when you turn around she's out.
Outside of the mystery nap-hating, the baby is doing fine. She's recovered from her shots with a minimum of spit-up. She continues to flap her arms and grab her toys and shove anything she can reach into her mouth. She has an enormous toothless smile, that's sometimes coy and sly and sometimes so big her face can't contain it and she has to bounce and wiggle in ecstacy, like a dog. Her favorite thing is to catch your eye across a room and smile and wiggle at you. Her finger and toenails seem to grow at an alarming rate. And she bobbles her head around seriously, from toy to toy, like a little owl. So that's the update. Come babysit sometime. I'll bake you a pie.
Wrennel rolling on our dirty floor. I really should buy a vacuum cleaner.
Yesterday I said goodbye to Lazlo at 7:30 a.m. and hello again 10:15 p.m. Yuck. It was a long day.
For a couple of relatively lazy people who've held all manner of parttime and fulltime "jobs" during out courtship and marriage, we've still always had it pretty easy. When Lazlo worked at UT he could get there late and leave for a two hour picnic in the middle of the day. They were all too busy figuring out how to fire the guy who had actually STOPPED coming to work to worry about Lazlo leaving early. When I worked at the coffee shop it was only 3 days a week, and Lazlo got off from teaching around 4 in the afternoon. I've also been a nanny and an assistant librarian, neither of which were very time intensive. Now I'm a mom, which is pretty freaking time intensive, and I was awake for a total of 10 minutes of quality time with Lazlo. (that's 7:25-7:30 and 10:15-10:20)
It's payback for the smug satisfaction I've felt with our relationship. "We're so connected! Look at all these poor shmucks having dinner together- they don't have anything to say to each other! Not us! We could talk for HOURS!" and we do. Like disgruntled coworkers with bad cell phone connections: "Can you hear me now? Okay I'm walking outside- I have 3 bars...Okay, I'll pick you up and we'll go the store and you can drive around the parking lot to keep the baby asleep while I buy sixteen twelve packs of diet coke..." We exchange logistical household-running details, when the diaper service is coming, how much milk I've pumped, who paid what bill. yuck.
It's not actually this bad- Lazlo only has class 2 nights a week. And if I make more of an effort I can do something besides hold the baby all day. It just felt like an abrupt return from vacation, where my mom and mother-in-law would resort to anything to hold the baby, thereby giving me two free hands for up to three hours at a time. And Lazlo went to work slightly late today, so we got to laze around in bed with coffee and our newly rolly baby girl. That was especially nice.
I don't know if you've heard- but in addition to being ridiculously fat and adorable, Wren has added some new accomplishments to her list. She giggles, grabs her toes, smiles spontaneaosly, flaps her arms around her face like little birds, grabs toys, replaces her pacifier when it falls out of her mouth (woo-hoo!) and...wait for it...rolls over! Unfortunately for poor Wrennel, she can only roll one way, back to stomach, and she really REALLY doesn't like being on her stomach. This doesn't stop her from constantly trying as hard as she can to get on her stomach. It makes me so curious to know what's going on in her head. Put her on her back and BAM- she rolls over. Then she grunts for a few sad, hopeless seconds, then she cries. I walk over and flip her onto her back. She looks excited and surprised, and before I turn around she's rolled over again. It's sort of on the frustration level of Chinese water torture, for both of us, I imagine.
The whole thing has also made me aware of all the baby-proofing we're going to be needing really soon. I'm not even talking about latching the bleach cabinet. More along the lines of, say, not setting the baby down where she's going to roll into the surge protector. One step ahead- that's us.
I need to post about our fabulous trip to Texas, but not today. Today I have to take Wren to get four more projectile vomit and fever inducing vaccinations at the children's clinic. My afternoon will be spent cleaning up vomit and fighting with the insurance company.
