I’ve been feeling guilty about what a MIA blogger I’ve been, here and even more so over at my other blog and at SoVo.

The problem with guilt is that instead of inspiring me to go do something, it inspires me to hide out and avoid things, which in turn makes me feel more guilty, and whadda ya know? We have a spiral into paralysis.

So I’m going to just acknowledge all that guilt and see if I can take a step back towards being responsible, not all the steps to try to be perfect. Cuz, not so likely.

Noah has croup. He’s actually almost better — it hit in the night Thursday night or early Friday morning. The awful sound of his breathing woke Jill up around 3 am Friday, and we took him to the doctor’s as soon as they opened.

Fortunately, intense humidification and mild steroids and tylenol helped a lot. He’s also been clinging and nursing like crazy, but not sleeping well. And the electrical transformers that keep our baby monitor handsets working both burnt out. Fisher Price is sending us new ones, but they’re on backorder until May 15.

It was customer service weekend at Casa Booski, actually. I also wooted a Roomba after our vacuum died, and sadly, the one I got just drove in tiny circles. So they are sending me a new one too.

Last night, he was up from 11:45 pm – 3 am, and again at 7. Fortunately, we all had a nap around 9 am.

During my 9 am nap, I had the strangest dreams. First, I dreamed that we had traveled to Seattle for a day for some reason, but we didn’t go visit blogger-pal Isabel. Also, the crappy resort where we were staying was on a shallow, rocky beach, with half a dozen houses out in the water, 3 or 4 feet deep. And a view of the Seattle skyline. In the bright perfect sun with blue skies. So yeah, not Seattle in any way. And we were about to miss our flight.

I half woke up and rearranged Noah, who was sleeping on my lap, then fell back asleep to dream that Mir’s fiance was a student at Columbia Theological Seminary, and was in the midst of an ethical dilemma about whether to tell the truth about something that would keep him from being ordainable, or wait until after he was ordained to say anything. But it wasn’t that he was gay.
Mind you, I don’t know Mir, or Otto, and I have no reason at all to think he is either Presbyterian, OR unordainable. The only link is that I think Mir is moving to metro Atlanta after the wedding. And our long morning nap and still-recovering boy meant that we weren’t going to church.

(Have I mentioned that our church is chock full of theologians? It seems like every 3rd person we meet is either a student or a professor of theology, mostly at Columbia, but maybe 25% of them somewhere else.)

On Thursday evening, I went to a fund raiser for Family Pride,  and later this afternoon, we’re going to a MEGA picnic, both of which have me thinking about a lot of stuff that I’m going to write about over at the other blog.

Do I have a cute family, or do I have a cute family?

Snuggle on the Floor

And did they have fun playing on the floor yesterday, or what?

Noah and Jill Laughing

Noah also had fun playing BAH! (He got obsessed with these balls at music class on Saturday, so we asked the teacher where she got them. Big Lots! Six nubbled soft balls for $6.34 –> one very excited boy.)
Whoa.Balls! Balls! Balls!

He also enjoyed running around exploring, talking (long!) and wearing my shoes.

UPDATED: Oops! The video of him wearing my shoes doesn’t seem to have successfully made it to youtube. I’ll try again tonight.

I feel like a Bad Blogger, but there’s no sign of that changing at least for a few more days. We had a fun but action-packed weekend, work is superduperbusy, I was a little under the weather Sunday morning, and Noah is like the battery-ad bunny. But here are a few tidbits:

  • There’s at least one more tooth breaking through! I tried to feel around to see if there are more, but it was really annoying Noah. Maybe in the morning.
  • He spent the weekend as Mr Kissy Sweet Boy. Mostly. We Loooooooooooooooooooooove it when Noah’s being Mr Kissy Sweet Boy. Even though we know sometimes it’s manipulative and he’s just trying to climb on us to reach something behind us and up high.
  • The 8-week music class we signed up for with Noah on Saturday mornings was a lot of fun. But the age tops out at 18 months, and Noah is clearly the biggest and most mobile kid there. He liked it, but he wants to run around more than the tiny babies’ parents.
  • The Pocket Change diaper inserts do successfully come out in the wash in a front loader. I love our new cloth diapers. LOVE them.
  • Not sure about this whole tax preparer thing. He returned them today, and we found that he’d assigned the adoption credit to me. Oops. Um, I didn’t adopt Noah. He’s filing an extension for us tomorrow and getting us corrected forms the next day.
  • Random but cool? I got a Citizen Citation from the Farmington, MI Department of Public Safety. They contacted me at work in December with an emergency situation and by a lot of luck, a lot of begging, and a lot of help, we were able to identify who was making some very scary, serious threats in their community, and thus prevent an awful incident from taking place.

Ok, I’m falling asleep now….

My heart is breaking, I want to throw up, this story is just so awful and ugly and hurtful.

In a nutshell:

A lesbian mother who had legal custody of a little girl for a year was not only denied her adoption petition, but her daughter was taken away and put into foster care, only because the custodial mother was a lesbian.

The court is holding the lesbian mother in contempt for trying to move away in order to protect and preserve her family. In spite of a court in her new home county ruling that the current situation was the worst possible situation for the little girl, the old court and the foster family refuse to return her to her mother.

Georgia law is SILENT on the subject of gays or lesbians adopting! It isn’t prohibited!

But this judge has interpreted the 2004 constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage as also prohibiting any gay or lesbian person in a relationship from being able to adopt AT ALL — whether as a single person or presumably in a second-parent adoption.

Thanks, Shannon, for the heads-up.

I don’t happen to share Shannon’s fear that Noah’s adoption will be invalidated — which is sort of funny, since theoretically, a horrible path of decisions sparked by this situation could actually lead to that result.

I think the more likely bad outcome is that the ambiguity of Georgia law will be “clarified.” And that I won’t like that clarification, and it will prevent me from becoming the legal parent to our much hoped for second child.

Even just typing that out makes me want to throw up again.

It continues to be crazy at work, but at least Noah slept through until 6:30 am. I was able to be fully functional.

But my brain is wrung out. Wrung.Out.

On the plus side, my new cloth diapers arrived today. We’re testing the Pocket Change diaper tonight, with 2 microfiber inserts. They look adorable, I hope they work that well. (And those of you into cloth diapers, we bought the factory seconds, which were almost 40% off.)

Update: The Pocket Change leaked, although not as much as the 7th Gen. I think that could be avoided with using the bigger microfiber inserts, ie the cottonbabies ones. We do have a front loader, so I’ll provide a report back, Jen.

Dear Noah,

You turned 14 months old today. This month has been one of extremes for you — one moment you can be charming, affectionate, kissing one of us — and the next, sprawled on the floor, screaming like you’re being poked with a pin.

You’ve also become much more skilled at mimicry. If a word sounds interesting to you, you attempt to repeat it: Vegetables? Ba-be-boo, but in exactly my tone of voice. The ABC song? Eee-ee-dee-ee…in the right rhythm and tone, followed by an expectant look that breaks into a grin if I start to sing along.

Many more words are totally clear to you — and anyone who might be listening to you say them: No, Mommy, Babboo, Ball, Car, Door, Dog, Woof-Woof, Duck, School, Bye-Bye, Shoe, Juice, Uh-oh, Bath, Baby, Ne-ne (night-night), and Book. (Well, dog and duck are context dependent. If we say “duck” and are looking at something other than a bathtub rubber duckie, you usually say “Woo-woo” and smile. But if you spot a rubber duckie in a book, you point and announce “duck!”)

The teachers claim that you say “Alex” at school, but we haven’t heard you. Their theory is that Kaylee, your best friend, has a brother named Alex, so she can say it. Plus, that’s the name of your and Kaylee’s “third musketeer.” He’s the next biggest and most mobile child in the infant room, after you and Kaylee.

Other words may be clear to you, but not so much to your listeners. You’ve started saying what sounds like “daddy” quite often. Sometimes we joke, “Nobody here by that name.” But mostly we wonder what you mean, and how you learned to say it. Today I’m leaning towards “that is?”

You continue to love dancing, almost more than anything else. You will bounce and stamp your feet to anything that sounds remotely musical, unless I’ve just told someone that and they start singing. Then you are stock-still.

Along with dancing, you love vegetables. Peas are your favorite, followed by carrots and corn. Today you insisted on having some of your snack peas for breakfast, because you saw them being unpacked.

You got a “Go Diego Go” push-or-ride toy this weekend, and I’ve never seen a toy make you so happy. You run it around all over our house, outside, up and down hills, pushing buttons and making us dizzy. You’ve already killed one set of batteries.

And you are over diaper changing. Having clothes put on or removed is almost, but not quite, as bad. I think you are beginning to want to do these things for yourself. We’ll see what we can do to start working on that.

Most of the time, when it isn’t 3 am and we haven’t just thwarted your will, you have a charming and sweet disposition. You have the best smile — still just the two teeth — and you light up when you see Mommy or something excites you.

It makes me want to do nothing but find new ways to delight you.

love,

Mama

3 am is not my favorite time of day. Especially 3 am with a baby screaming and screaming and screaming for no apparent reason.

The second 3 am in a row is even less attractive than the first, even if this time I got to go back to sleep cuz Jill got up.

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