So we're moving, as I may have mentioned about a zillion times before. And moving, for those of you who haven't done it lately, really sucks. I'm in a listing mood, so I'll do some pros and cons. Pros first:

- Less rent. Much less rent. Thank you GOD, we'll pay less rent.
- Ramona's going to have a big fenced yard.
- We get to live with our friends. And on days when I feel like I can't possibly leave the house- I still get to
see friends.
- Guest rooms! So people can come stay with us!
- A play room for Wrennel!
- No more crazy landlady!
- The incredible blessing of options. We found a house! It worked out- with all our crazy variables. We
-can- move, thanks to a loan to see us through getting our deposit back from this place.
- And I mentioned the rent thing, but really, if the house was made of straw and insulated with live ants,
I'd still move because of the rent.

Cons:

- Ramona's an outside dog, even when it's cold and rainy.
- Oh who am I kidding? Lease Shmeash. Ramona's an outside dog except when it's cold and rainy, and
then I guess she's a utility room dog.
- We get to live with our friends! So even on days when I don't feel like leaving the house, I still get to see
friends.
- Going on the evidence of sleepless nights whenever we travel, I'm betting Wren is going to have some trouble with the housing transition. We're hoping the routines we already have in place will help her, and we're trying to come up with yet more complicated and consistent bedtime routines, just so she'll have that constant when we move.
- Packing! Moving! Boxes and tape and Uhauls and change of address and cancelling utilities and painting and cleaning the oven for the first time ever and those last few boxes that despite my best organizational efforts are just going to be random but un-throw-away-able JUNK. UGH I've done this all soooo many times and it's such a drag.

So, to make myself feel better about the whole moving saga, which is going to take a week and a half, and then untold months of unpacking and organizing and shuffling in the new place, I'm going to take my list-making mood to a happier place:

TEXAS! Specifically, things I'm looking forward to doing in Texas this summer:

- Going to Schlitterbahn! I'm an original New Braunfels girl, but you can totally talk me into either the Galveston or South Padre branches.
- Speaking of South Padre- floating in the bathtub warm waters of the beautiful Gulf of Mexico. Gazing from the hotel patio across a brown ocean of oil rigs and a beach of tar and seaweed. I've never been to Hawaii, and Lazlo says that would change my mind, but I have been to the so-called beautiful beaches of both the East and West coasts of these United States, and I gotta say, (without intended irony) there's no place like home.
- Swimming at Barton Springs, Hamilton's Pool, Mckinney Falls and oh okay I guess Hippie Hollow. But you'll have to google that yourself- I'm not putting -that- link up.
- Canoeing.
- Eating seafood at a cheesy beach restaurant in Padre with the extended Roden clan. Good times.
- Eating at Elena's in Beaumont with my mom and grandmother.
- Eating (and drinking) at Z Tejas with Lazlo for our anniversary. Mmm...tosdada bites...
- Going to Village Creek with my dad.
- Being home in the blazing heat of a Texas summer. When you step out of the air conditioning it should feel like you just got punched in the stomach, otherwise you're not home.
- Seeing all my Vincent, Mackellar and Roden relations whom we miss so much.
- Seeing the Rush family, and its new addition Chris, husband of Casey.
- Going to the Treasure House.
- Showing Wren off at St. Marks where old women will faint into the baptismal font from the force of her be-ribboned cuteness.
- Seeing Melio and his bride, Chet, and assorted Daves, and all our Austin friends.
- Being away from home for long enough to really appreaciate coming home when it's all over.

The other night we had dinner with Finn's parents, Jeremy and Jen, and they mentioned that Finn wakes up from his naps totally happy. Like he just opens his eyes and starts laughing. Wren... not so much. She sort of snorts and snuffles and rams her head into her crib bars and then does this barking seal cry to alert us to the fact that she's -really pissed off- to be awake. Basically me as a 14-20 year old.

When you open the door to her room she flinches angrily from the light and tries to bury her face in her blankets, scritching around until you come pick her up. And she wakes up sloooow. For the next twenty or thirty minutes she just wants to sit on you, and maybe eat a bite of whatever you're eating, with frequent breaks to shove her hot little head into your armpit and fall back asleep. I'm okay with this. I totally understand not wanting to wake up, and I'm happy to facillitate as slow a waking as possible for Wren. Sometimes she reminds me of a surly teenager, with her sweaty hair and heavy eyes and her whole "don't mess with me" demeanor. She even lets out these long melodramatic sighs every few minutes, like the weight of the world is on her shoulders. But then after a while she starts squirming around and gabbering and wanting to get down and chase Ramona, and then she's normal happy Wren again. Give her some cheerios and a banana and she's ready to face the day.

Well on Sunday morning she was grouchier than usual, and when I took her back to bed with us to snuggle, she was like a little reactor. She smelled kind of funny and sour, and I could feel her super hot head burning me through my shirt. She's just sort of flailing around unhappily while Lazlo and I are going over the reasons why we are bad parents:

1. The children's tylenol ran out last time she was sick and we never bought anymore.
2. That thermometer parents are supposed to have... Yeah we don't have one.
3. The doctor's office is closed on Sundays. Do you have that backup number? No? I thought you had it...
4. Doesn't the doctor cost money? What day of the month is it? Uh-huh. Well let's just waitandsee okay?

Right. So Lazlo is dispatched for tylenol, and I walk the hot potato around and around the house because she REALLY does not want to be set down. Long story short- we buy the reduced-for-quick-sale Spongebob digital thermometer and wrestle it into Wren's wriggly armpit while she throws a perfectly understandable screaming fit. Did I mention we were in the car outside Von's? We're those parents. At least we didn't go rectal. Anyway, we gave up before the buzzer went off because she was at 101.5, which is high enough to freak me out. But Dr. Lazlo M.D. who-went-to-medical-school-for-seven-years was not at all concerned. Why? Oh because he read this website. And the website said that a fever in a baby is totally normal. Only idiots and alarmists worry that high fevers give babies brain damage. That old fashioned science has all been discredited by this WEBSITE.

I am happy to be told that I'm being a paranoid worrier by a real live doctor. But a website that I probably couldn't have used as a legitimate source for a report on the human body in 9th grade... I'd rather scrounge up the $10 for the copay.

Her fever stayed nastilly high all day Sunday and into Monday morning, when I took her to our wizened old pediatrician. As I was waiting to go in I heard the nurses talking about his last medical school class reunion. Turns our 23 members of his graduating class are dead, and he's one of like 14 still practicing. Yeah you guys thought I was exagerating- but when I say wizened I mean wizened. Anyway the verdict was mystery virus + red throat. No ear infection (woo-hoo) and probably not anything requiring amoxocil, which he gave me anyway. Poor Wren, who's usually so easygoing, screamed the whole time, which I could understand duing the rectal temperature taking, but not so much during his failed attempt to listen to her heart. I'm surprised she didn't blow out his eardrums. But perhaps they're long gone and he only pretends to use the stethescope.

Baby Lethargo ran a fever all day Monday too and I was really wishing I had one of those slings that expand as your baby grows so you can carry your 14 year old to school. Wren was extra clingly and usually I'd just tell her to get over it, but it's mean to make a sick baby sit on the floor when she wants to be held. She woke up this morning nice and cool, and seems to be more sleepy than usual, but otherwise she's back to her dog-baiting antics. It's nice to have her back to normal and I'm always so so grateful to have such a healthy family. Thank God.

Lazlo and I woke up in a crummy mood this morning, probably because Wren was sitting on top of us bouncing up and down with indignation and doing a velociraptor impersonation. She squawked and screeched and poked us in the eyeballs for about twenty minutes before we gave up and dragged our bodies out of the warm warm bed.

Wren enjoyed a delicious yogurt and cheerios breakfast while I discovered to my horror that we were out of milk and I HAVE to have some milk for my coffee and AH I'm having a breakdown I can't TAKE it anymore I need some coffee- ee - ee (cue sleep-deprived dry sobs, a la that girl from 24). So Lazlo, being the wonderful man that he is, grabbed some shoes and walked to CaliMex and bought some milk and he also bought some bacon and now he's making bacon and eggs. Which is all a long pointless story to bring you up to the point where I finally got inspired to figure out how to upload pictures the old fashioned way. Sorry they're so huge; there are just some things you never have to learn to do (like shrink pictures) if you marry a computer genius before you turn 21. So here you go:

Wren on the swings at the Fuller Playground.

A selection from the much hyped poppy-bed photo shoot.

Look at these fantastic new shoes my mom sent her! They are blue and they have birds on them! Birds, because her name is Wren! Cool, huh?

Anyway, this is our second to last weekend before moving weekend and we have A LOT to do. I hope all of you are having wonderfully relaxing velociraptor-less Saturday mornings.

Our Flickr account expired, and I know it's only like $20 or something but folks, that's diaper/diet coke money we'd be cutting into and I'm just not ready to make those sacrifices. The awful result is that you can't see the truly fantastic photo shoot Wren had yesterday in the poppy bed. I know it's cheesy and corny and yadda yadda but give me a break. If you were sitting there with an indescribably beautiful ladybaby (as Lazlo calls her for some unknown reason) a digital camera and a little field of poppies... I defy any of you, no matter how hard core, to say you wouldn't have done the same.

I had to put a stop to it about the fourth time she ate a flower, but oh well. The pictures are worth it.

I also have a nice set of Wren riding the dog. She sneaks off to do this when I'm not paying attention. She chases Ramona around the house, screaming in ecstasy, and then when Ramona finally retreats, cowering, to a corner, Wren moves in for the kill. She starts by straddling her at the tail end and working her way up until she's just behind Ramona's neck, and then she bounces up and down wildly like she's in the Houston Rodeo. It gets ugly, but Ramona is so unbelievably stoic. I feel guilty, but it's so funny it's hard to make Wren stop. Ramona won't knock her off, she'll just wait until Wren gets bored and slides down, and then she'll slink away to the door and beg to go outside, presumably to lick her wounds, real and metaphorical, and try to recapture some dog dignity.

Somehow I think she'll take to the 'outside dog' thing better than we're expecting. We're still planning on moving into our community house in early June, and then heading off to Texas in mid-July. I'm very excited about seeing the family, and I'm also hoping Wren will have fun playing with her big girl cousins, now that she's more than a lump-o-baby.

Lazlo's winding down this quarter and we're getting ready to say goodbye to many friends who are graduating from Fuller. I've finally gotten around to getting out with other moms, and that's been pretty great. If only I were more outgoing, more extroverted, more organized... you know. Maybe I could put together a summer play group or something. Being around other kids and moms really gives me some perspective on Wren. My preliminary conclusion: she's a funny little girl. While other kids are screaming and holding onto their mom's legs in the nursery, Wren toddles off and doesn't even look up when I tell her goodbye. She doesn't look particularly thrilled to see me when I come back either. Today she gave me a cursory wave 'hello' and then went back to her bag of cheerios. When I look through the window she just seems totally self-contained and invovled in whatever she's doing. Like at home when she'll just play by herself for an hour. What a funny kid. We're so lucky to have her.

Whoever came to my house yesterday and switched out Wren's personality with that of some coke-head temper-filled frustra-baby, please please please let me trade back.

Lazlo suspects teething is the culprit. Sarah suggests either an ear infection or a wicked growth spurt. I'm sticking to my original hypothesis of a Changeling baby. Occam's Razor, folks.

Whatever the problem, the result is alternating frantic periods of yelly activity followed closely by decents into screaming, floor-stomping tantrums. Right now she's puddled under the desk screaming herself hoarse and resisting any efforts to comfort or entertain her.

Children's tylenol shows no discernable effect (which is wierd because it usually knocks her flat out) and if she doesn't cylce back to happy-fun-time Wren I'm going to be in the market for a tranq. gun.

A moment of eerie calm. She seems mesmerized by the Tejano music pumping out of our neighbor's car. It's the eye. We all (by all I mean everyone from Beaumont) know that the eye wall is the worst part of the storm.

Lazlo took the car to work this morning and our house feels very small. He'll be home for lunch soon, and then Wren will fall asleep on the drive back to Fuller, and (please God) she'll wake up on the right side of the carseat.

It's days like these that make me think community living with be great for us, and maybe not so great for the rest of our prospective community. At least Arkay has some sound foam for his walls. Maybe he'll share the love.

I really can't tell you how frustrating this is. I've been reading knitting patterns until I'm thinking in P/K/tog/MO yadda yadda...

This one simple thing that's supposed to go over your hand and keep you warm and I CANNOT figure it out. How do I add these stitches for the thumb? Should I use double pointed needles, or just two circular needles? I've made two proto-mittens that might work on someone -without- a thumb. I think they're also called hats. Oh, and they just sort of fall apart when I get to the thumb section.

But man oh man do my cables look hot?

That's a rhetorical question, because of course they look hot. There are several reasons I think this is so frustrating to me. First, knitting is making knots in yarn. That's it. And so when it's SO hard to figure out, and it seems like everyone on the entire crafty internet sheds beautiful knit mittens from their hands like wooly second skins, and THEIR mittens have actual thumbs, instead of thumb HOLES like my weirdo pirate mittens, and all their patterns are so freaking hard to read! AH!

And secondly, I feel that there's a sort of virtue in hand-crafts. Like by even wanting to learn this I'm joining a nice church lady club of friendly women who bake things and wear flats and attend barnraisings and WANT to help other people learn to knit. WRONG. Now knitting is all the rage, and a knitting club is called a 'stitch and bitch' and mitten making classes cost money. This skill that you used to learn automatically from your grandma is now a big industry and I know this is ridiculous but I feel betrayed. Knitters should be NICE, not commercial.

But no one will help me with my mitten. A kind lady from That Yarn Store in Eagle Rock tried to help me read the pattern, but I think she was as confused by the seemingly random jumble of numbers and letters on the page as me. She gave me a flyer for the pattern reading class, which, guess what, costs money. Perhaps I'm just looking at the wrong patterns.

If there's a mitten-knitter out there who could explain this to me, please let me know. I promise this will be open source knitting and I will tell everyone I know (whether they like it or not) how to knit a mitten. No charge.