MamaSite

Christmas, as it turns out, was quite nice.

I cheered up about half way through last week.  I think in part it's because the die was cast - gifts were bought, plans were made, and if I screwed up it was too late to change it.  So I stopped worrying and had fun.  We had Christmas Eve dinner at our house - a huge production, with nine adults and an amazingly well-behaved and cute 2½ year old, that was a big success - and Christmas morning with my parents.  I got nice gifts, and people seemed to enjoy what I gave them.  Although I cannot help but observe that nobody resorted to gift certificates for me.  Which means next year I will have to think harder!

So the house is covered in bits of wrapping paper and Emily gifts, and I'm feeling a little sad but largely perfectly content to go back to work tomorrow.  Two days in the office, then my Friday at home while my folks babysit.  I almost always get more done at home - even with a dial-up line, and even with the distraction of Em running around being spoiled by Grandmommy and Grandpa all day.  I think it's a more cheerful environment, and that gives me more mental energy.

And with some luck...we'll be able to do it full time soon.  Our town's internet service is FINALLY taking off.  They've got seven poles operational (about ⅓ of the total deployment), and one up the street from us that's about half done.  We stopped by the electric company today and chatted with the big cheese over there (he actually remembered our house - not THAT remarkable, since even here ICF construction isn't that common).  He says assuming his parts get delivered when they are supposed to the pole might be operational by the end of next week.  Then I become the guinea pig, using my Fridays at home to work out the kinks in the system.  Assuming I can get things working swimmingly, we're going to push for full-time remote status.  It's something we've talked about for so long it seems a little surreal to think that it could actually come to pass - and fairly quickly.

And how will I do, working from home where I don't pass people in the hallways and don't have my office mate to chat with?  Honestly, I don't know.  it sounds lovely on paper, and certainly most aspects of working in an office I will not miss.  But the human contact...hm.  I don't know.  Still, there are things to be done about that, things that I couldn't have done working in an office.  The library has toddler reading groups in the mornings; if I it meets early enough, I can take her to that before dropping her at day care and still put in a full day at work.  Maybe I'll even find a writer's group - a place to critique the brilliant 50,000 word novel I am going to churn out in January.

Speaking of which - yes, I do realize the odds are incredibly slim I'll be able to hit 50,000 words in a month.  6 pages a day is a LOT, even when I don't have a 2½ hour round-trip commute and a toddler keeping me up half the night.  What appeals to me most about the exercise, really, is the potential to get into the habit of just writing without focusing on perfection.  I have read that in order to write for real - professionally, or just to finish something for your own edification - you need to practice, practice, practice.  Because the muse isn't always going to gift you with inspiration in those corners of your life when you have time to write.

One little corner of my life dropped off for a nap at 4:30 today, and persistently didn't want to wake up.  I carried her upstairs around 7:00.  She downed two bottles, was briefly cheerful and playful, then zonked out again.  It is possible it will be a bad night; then again, it's possible she's just as exhausted and looking forward to normalcy as I am.

Oh, who am I kidding?

I was going to convert the podcast next, but I think I'll do the blog.  It's 1) easier; and 2) will save me some frustration, since SandVox has been crashing on me a lot lately.  (Not that I don't love it anyway; but in the 18 years I've been using vi, it has never crashed on me once.)

So I'm writing because I haven't written in a while, and to confirm for everyone that yes, Christmas still sucks.  I've had a lot of fun buying stuff for Emily (even though she does not yet fully appreciate the Muppet Show, for which I will someday learn to forgive her), but I've been largely frustrated by everybody else.  None of this is helped by the discussion boards I read, in which there is always a vocal group of people crowing about how Inconsiderate, Wasteful, and Thoughtless it is to give a gift certificate.  I think everybody on my list is getting at least one this year.  So of course the Math of Depression declares that all my dear, sweet family members are going to secretly be thinking I'm Inconsiderate, Wasteful, and Thoughtless.  Of course they'll deny it, because they are dear and sweet.

I really don't think it's the holidays, though.  I've never much been sucked in to the commercialism (and yes, I recognize the irony of making that declaration right after my paragraph about being inadequate for not giving the perfect gift).  I love my family.  I love that my brother comes to visit.  I love having everyone together in the house for a couple of hours, even though it's loud and chaotic and exhausting and I need a three-day vacation after everyone leaves to recover.  It's just that the holidays fall at the end of the year, and my inability to properly shop for gifts is just one more failure to add to my long list of mishaps.

Of course, that makes me wonder where I got the idea that I had to be perfect.  I'm quite clear that I'm not perfect, and I probably wouldn't have as many friends if I were.  It's not the mistakes that are the worst, it's that I often don't quite know how to forgive myself.  Sometimes I consider crawling under the bed and staying there for a while; but while it might be easier to cope with the embarrassment from there, I do have daily responsibilities that preclude such a self-indulgent solution.  (Plus I'm pretty sure I wouldn't fit, at least not comfortably.)

And I've no time for such self-indulgence, really.  I have the world's most wonderful, ornery, sweet, fresh toddler to raise.

She pushed a little girl at school the other day.  Oh, I was embarrassed!  She'd done it right before I arrived, and was still crying from being punished.  I picked her up and smooched her - and insisted she apologize to the other child.  She refused three or four times.  I chit-chatted with the teacher, who was holding the other little girl (who had long since stopped being upset at being pushed and was cheerfully paying attention to other things), and prompted Em every minute or so: "Say you're sorry."  "No!"  Eventually, though, she said it: "I sorry."  I told her to tell the other girl; Em turned to her.  "I sorry," she said.  The other girl was giggling at something she saw across the room.

I want to sit Em down and explain to her that because she's so much bigger than the other children she needs to be more careful; but I think that's too much to process at this age.  At this age she needs to learn that shoving=bad, all the time.  When she's older, I can talk to her about being extra gentle with the kids who are smaller than she is - and hope she doesn't realize how easy it would be to turn into a bully.

On a separate note: I know a few people on-line who tried National Novel Writing Month this year.  I think I'd like to give it a shot.  November is a long way off, though - so I am considering trying to do it on my own in January.  After all, nobody will read what I write - the purpose is not beauty, but volume.  I think it'd be good exercise - and depending on how it goes, I might try again in November on the record.

The beginning of the Christmas season.  The beginning of the shopping season.  The beginning of the navel-gazing season, if you're me.  (Yes, I know every season is navel-gazing season for me.  Stop laughing.)

Too soon for the Year in Review; but how about the Month in Review?  A month ago today I lost my kitty, and I'd be lying if I said I was over it.  Em asked about her out of the blue the other day, and I stumbled, trying to explain that she wasn't around anymore.  "Bella upstairs on Mummy's bed," Em said wisely - that's often where Sabella would be when Em went looking for her.  I thought it was a lovely thought, but it made me cry.  People who tell me it's silly to mourn an animal so much have never had a pet.  I did everything I could for her, but I couldn't make her life longer.  I wonder if I'll ever stop missing her?

And work.  Ah, work.  So much I can't say in a public forum.  I'm in a class next week, which should be good (way over my head, as usual, but I'll pick up a little and it'll be a nice break from the real thing); and then I officially start my new job.  Which should be...interesting.  I will be working with a kid I helped hire back in 2000 when he graduated from college.  He's the technical lead on the project, since he knows the technology we'll be building in better than anyone else.  He's also, with a single exception, the least experienced engineer on the whole project - and, unless he's changed since I worked with him in 2001 (which is entirely possible), he does not like to answer "I don't know" to any question, even if he doesn't know, and he doesn't like to listen.  In the year he was on our project he repeatedly suggested we ought to rewrite the whole thing from scratch.  It's a lovely, naive idea that most engineers have believed in passionately early in their careers, before they knew A SINGLE DAMN THING about writing and maintaining software.  Unless you've got something that's a catastrophic failure or technically obsolete, the bugs you know are ALWAYS better than the bugs you don't.

What the future holds for this new project I don't know.  I will do the best I can.  I'm supposed to be writing the user interface (which is already being designed, and I have already heard of one design point that I'm going to feel obligated to argue with, even though I'm the newbie on the project: pop-up windows, which are to 21st century web pages what blinky-text was to 20th century web pages), which is going to allow me to learn some pretty cool things.  I've already been practicing the easy part (the display stuff); the programmatic things will be more challenging.  But everything I'm learning will future-proof me a little more.

Of course, we're still hoping to work from home.  No recent updates in the paper about the light department's broadband wireless project; but last week some hot-pink spray paint appeared at intervals along our street - one right at the edge of our property on the road.  If that's where they put the pole, it's hard to imagine we'll have connectivity issues.  Last week I asked the project lead of my new group about working from home; she said they didn't care where I worked, as long as they could reach me and things got done. 

Steve and I are going to try to pencil in some time to work on my office.  There's not a lot to do (from my perspective - he's got a list of shelves he wants to build for me, but I have enough furniture to get started).  We've got to wash the walls and then paint them (the color scheme I've chosen will horrify anyone but me, I am certain; I will post pictures when it's done), and then I can move the furniture back in and start making it comfortable.  

I'm thinking of foregoing the loveseat I was going to put on the short wall and putting my piano there instead.  The cost of tuning it will be very high - it hasn't been tuned in something like 25 years - but worth it, I think.  It's too early to tell if Em is at all musical - although given what a phenomenal mimic she is, I'd be surprised if she wasn't - but I'd like to have the piano somewhere she can play with it anyway.  And maybe I'll play with it a little myself.  I was never a spectacular player - I didn't practice enough! - but I did have some fun.

Now I'm going to go on-line and do my own Black Friday shopping.  From the comfort of my own sofa.

[WARNING: digestive details ahead.]

Oh, my, goodness.

Yesterday I got a call from day care around 2:15.  Em had woken from her nap crying and complaining of stomach pains.  I asked if she'd had a bowel movement that day, and "Jane" said something like "we sat her down but nothing happened."  Which I thought was curious, but didn't say anything on the phone.  I made an appointment with the pediatrician and went to pick Emily up.

Where I confirmed, among other things, that they've been trying to toilet train her for the last 2-3 months.

Jane could tell I was pissed, I think, even though I didn't say anything - I had an armful of tearful Em, and I needed to hear what was going on and hightail it out of there to the doctor's office.  She said, rather defensively, that they don't do anything until the kids ask to go, and that they always check with the parents first.

Well, no, dear, you don't.  Nobody checked with us.  How do I know this?  How do I know nobody talked to me, and it's not my Swiss-cheese Mommy-brain forgetting the conversation?  Because we would have said no.

At the pediatrician's, the doctor listened patiently to her history (as fast as I could give it; I wanted to make sure he had all the details), and ordered an x-ray to find out how much stool she was retaining.  (I didn't know you could get that from an x-ray - but sure enough, you can.)  So Em had her picture taken - which was no picnic, even though it didn't hurt and the x-ray tech gave her a butterfly sticker - and the doctor discovered she was VERY backed up, and was inhaling a lot of air.  With both of those symptoms, it was no wonder she was in pain.  He told me to up her laxative dosage and check back in about ten days.

On the way home, Steve and I discussed the day care situation and decided we would tell them to stop training her.  Whether or not that had any influence on her condition - and although the timing is suspicious, we can't know for certain - we both agree she's not ready.

I don't remember how old Em was when she first climbed the stairs, but I do remember she didn't do much.  She went up two or three stairs, then came back down, entirely disinterested.  She did not give the stairs a second look for five weeks - and then she climbed almost all the way to the top in one shot.

That's how she does things.  She samples them, ignores them for a while, then plunges in full-force.  Urging her to use the toilet might work if she wants to please you - but until she wants to do it for herself, she's never going to be consistent.  I'd noticed her interest in all things bathroom had been flagging at home, and now I have to wonder if it's not because she was feeling pressured at school.

I do suspect this was just an oversight on their part.  A couple of months ago the lead teacher in the toddler room was promoted, and Jane put in charge of the room.  Em is very fond of Jane, but I must say she always seems frazzled and just on the edge of out of control of things.  She's also not all that well organized.  And if she's new to this level of responsibility, that's no surprise, and not in itself a serious problem.  It's very possible she assumed the old teacher had spoken to us, and the old teacher assumed Jane would talk to us.

Okay, yeah, I'm still pissed.  I will probably try to talk to the director next week (when I feel less like ripping somebody's head off), just to make sure she's aware of the sequence of events, and to hopefully prevent similar oversights in the future.

Em has been happy at this day care.  She has friends there she's now known for years - kids she's growing up with.  I don't always agree with the things they do - giving the kids waffles and syrup for breakfast, for example - but they've always been small things, little philosophical differences not worth fighting over.  This, on the other hand - this is a major, big-deal, screw-up in communication.  If they can't talk to us - if the teachers are too frazzled or they're too short-staffed or just plain too disorganized - then we've got to find somewhere else.  It's not what I want - but dammit, I won't have this happen again.

Friday I lost my old lady - my grumpy, misanthropic, deeply beloved Siamese cat.

She's not the first cat I've lost in my life, but she's the first one I've had for so long.

I am not handling it well.  Or maybe I am; I can't say that i know what it would mean to handle it well.  I am working, I am parenting, I am getting through the day.  I even laugh sometimes, or enjoy doing things.

But everything is gray.  And I still turn sometimes, thinking I'm seeing her out of the corner of my eye.

Her passing was planned.  There are a lot of euphemisms for it; but really, we kill them because it's kinder than letting them die in pain they can't understand.  I was with her, scratching her head, telling her she wasn't going to hurt anymore.  Everybody at the vet's was lovely.  My dad was with me.

I stayed with her because it was my duty, because I'd never ever let her die alone.

She wasn't alone.  But now, I am.

I haven't written for a while.  For some reason, I've been craving stillness.  Maybe it's the stress - I've podcasted twice since I've blogged, and both were rants.  And it's certainly not a lack of stuff happening.

Work-wise, I'm starting a new job (same company) on December 1.  On the one hand, I'll be learning all kinds of new technology, which will make me more marketable whatever I decide to do.  On the other hand, the project I'm joining is a bit of a train wreck, and as the new kid in the pack (even though I'm relatively senior compared to most of the others) I feel I have to be careful how I offer suggestions.  I can't just say "What are you, nuts?  What about this?  And this? And this???"  Well, I can.  But that doesn't make me a team player.  Figuring out how to say it politically is going to be a challenge.

So it's a good thing, really.  But it's also a) change, which I don't always weather that well; and b) kind of sad.  I'm leaving behind something I cared about a great deal.  It's the right decision, and I don't regret it; but still.

Em's had a rough couple of weeks as well.  She woke up barfing at 2:00 am on October 9, and did it (if I remember correctly) 5 more times between then and 10:30 in the morning.  No fever, and spots of energy and normal behavior; but it's really awful when your child hurts and you can't do a single damn thing to help.  She's been a bit of a barnacle ever since, but I don't mind.  If it comforts her to be near me, it makes me feel better as well.

She's also had continuing problems with constipation.  At this point, I'm nearly convinced that the times we thought she was having night terrors she was actually having severe gas pains.  Even with the medication I've had to give her a suppository a couple of times.  We're working on giving her a more widely varied diet, which will hopefully help; but boy oh boy, I want this cleared up soon.  Potty training is pointless with these kinds of problems.

Speaking of which - she comes upstairs with me a lot now in the morning when I shower and dress.  (She actually showered with me this morning - sort of!  I had to hold her the whole time.  We didn't end up washing very much.)  When I was dressing this morning, she looked up at my dresser, on which the pair of tie-dye hearts training pants I bought her is sitting.  "Emily's panties," she said sagely.  I agreed.  She showed no interest in wearing them - but the fact that she's feeling a sense of ownership is a very good thing.

As for today - we're headed for another no-nap day, although she's not all that awful without a nap anymore.  Although since we're going to my in-laws' for dinner, she'll probably be a complete terror.  Well, the sooner they see that side of her the better, I suppose!

In case anyone's interested I've found two:

1) Carnivàle.  Don't let the pseudo-French name fool you (and no, I've no idea why they chose it).  This is your classic good-vs.-evil show, set in the dust bowl post-Depression and pre-World War II.  Our candidates for Child of God and Spawn of the Devil: a taciturn escaped convict, holing up with the traveling show of the title, who seems to be able to heal a whole slew of ailments, including death; and a devout minister who seems to sincerely want to help the poor, but lusts after his sister and causes poor people to cough up coins.  Guess who's who?  (Although, you know, if I were dirt-poor, I don't think I'd mind regurgitating a little cash once in a while.)

It all sounds rather clichéd and unoriginal when written out like that, but it's not.  The atmosphere is quiet, but weird; the characters are intriguingly off-kilter; and the acting is fabulous.  It's also worth mentioning that Adrienne Barbeau looks really, really good.

2) Weeds.  A young widow in a wealthy suburban town has turned to selling marijuana to pay the bills.  This one got good ratings on Amazon, but I wasn't sure how they'd pull it off in any credible way.  But they do.  It's crisp and funny; and although I've no idea if this is how the pot trade really works, I buy how it's set up.  Mary-Louise Parker and Elizabeth Perkins are just two of a really, really talented cast.  Made me laugh AND cry, all in nicely-paced little half-hour episodes.

Weeds I may just up and buy; Amazon has it for less than $30.  Carnivàle, being an hour-long show, is pricier.  Of course, Amazon is having a TV sale right now, so it might be worth coughing up the bucks.  Hm...

And while I'm on the subject of TV, an old one: Inferno, an episode of Doctor Who that originally aired in 1970.  I remember it as my first episode of the show, which I'd have seen around 1973 (I think US public TV got the rights to it around that time).

A quick plot summary: The Doctor is "consulting" on a power project - drilling through the earth's crust to tap gas for energy - where a number of people start turning green, going nuts, and dropping dead.  The Doctor, being somewhat single-minded about some things, is spending most of his time trying to fix his crippled TARDIS, ends up slipping sideways into an alternate universe where the drilling project is much further advanced, and things have gone much more badly wrong.  Oh, and they're also all fascists.

It actually holds up remarkably well.  The special effects are dated, of course - not that they put that much money into them at any time - but there aren't many used in this episode.  It appears to have been filmed on a warehouse lot somewhere, which accentuates the atmosphere perfectly.  Our usual cast gets to play against type a bit - Nicholas Courtney, in particular, gets to play a power-hungry Brigadier who has a breakdown to which our universe's stiff-upper-lipped officer would never succumb.  But in addition to that, it works as a creepy psychological drama.  From the arrogant, doomed - in both universes - Professor Stahlman, to the alternate Liz Shaw, watching the world come to an end around her, the characters still draw me in.

It was released on DVD on September 5, and I'd been waiting a long time.  I still have my VHS tapes; but as with all of Doctor Who on VHS, the quality was spotty (something about converting PAL to NTSC).  This is not only a lovely transfer, but it has subtitles - critical in a household where the TV has to be quiet after 8:00!

So, here's the thing.

I gained about 35 pounds when I was pregnant.  Nobody seemed to think this was a big deal - I wasn't thin when I got pregnant, but I wasn't fat, either; additionally, I think my midwives were more laid back about the whole issue than some practicioners might have been.

You have a baby, and you immediately lose the weight of the baby, the amniotic fluid, the placenta, and the umbilical cord.  Your blood volume drops gradually; but in a fairly few months the physiological changes have pretty much reversed themselves.

Except that I'm still about 20-25 pounds over where I was when I conceived.  And 2 years and 3½ months after having Emily, I don't think I'm allowed to call it "baby fat" anymore.  I lost about five pounds a month or so ago, just by cutting down on snacks and portion sizes, and I felt amazingly better - no more back pains, fewer foot pains, fewer problems with my knee.  (God, I'm decrepit!)  That alone should be an incentive.

Why I've always struggled with my weight I don't know.  I've never been scary-overweight; and I haven't wanted to be unrealistically thin in more than 10 years.  I know where I need to get to feel both healthy and sufficiently attractive.  And it's not exactly rocket science: eat less and exercise more.  At least eat less.  As the Queen of Snacking for Boredom, I've zillions of habits to modify before I even have to boost my heart rate.

I used to dance.  We built a room over our garage specifically designed so I would have room to dance.  It's still unfinished (but it does, thanks to my wonderful husband, have a gorgeous hardwood floor).  When Em was younger, I had tons of excuses; now I really don't.  Yes, she still needs constant monitoring when she's awake; but constant monitoring sometimes means letting her run outside while her Daddy is working in the yard.  Liz gets the run of the house.  Time to finish that damn room, don't you think?

So exercise, right now, consists of lunchtime walks with Steve (he's nice and tall, so we walk at a decent clip), and treadmill time after my evening shift with Em.  The treadmill isn't bad - I blast the iPod, close my eyes, and pretend I'm somewhere else - but really, I miss the dancing.  Not that I'm any good at it; but it's the only kind of exercise I've ever done consistently over a long period of time.

I hate to sweat.  Weird, isn't it?  I love how I feel when I get into shape.  I love how I feel when I've had a really good workout - even now, when I'm still pretty pathetic.  But I HATE to sweat.  I feel grubby and unfeminine.  (And yes, if I still had a shrink, I'm sure there'd be tons to talk about in THAT comment!)  When I dance, I sort of forget where I am, and I don't notice the sweating.  It's also so much more fun than the treadmill.  I'm grateful we've got the treadmill, of course; but I miss dancing.

Just not enough.

There's one other incentive: my workplace offers a physical activity rebate.  If I exercise 4 times a week for at least 30 minutes for at least 10 of 12 consecutive weeks, I get $150 (which comes to about $100 after taxes).  You have to start by September 10 or they won't have time to process the rebate before the end of the year.  So of course, I started last week.

Sad, isn't it?  Cash gets me off my behind.  Now, if only they'd pay me to paint that room over the garage...

Yes, I actually have some.

Em is often quite happy to entertain herself for ten, fifteen, sometimes even twenty minutes at a time.  It gives me a chance to read the mail, blog a little, maybe get into a stupid argument with someone on an Internet message board.

But it's not leisure time like it is without kids.  I've always got half an eye (or half an ear) on her.  If she cries, or asks for something, I respond immediately.  So my leisure time consists of doing things that are highly interrupt-driven (like baking my infamous banana bread).  Other activities, like writing that novel I keep meaning to write, are completely out of the question.  I can work - a little - but I find when I work while I'm watching her (which I've only done once or twice) I am completely exhausted by the end of the day.  Which is why no matter how good she is (and she's good probably 90% of the time), I try to make the most of the times my parents are over, or when she's outside with her dad.

And still I feel like I don't have enough time with her.  It's madness.  I feel either exhausted or guilty.  I figure every stay-at-home mom out there structures the day with coloring, and play-doh, and reading, and creative games, and peaceful, conflict-free nap times.  I can't get through one weekend without leaning on the Idiot Box.  

Okay, I didn't get much sleep last night.  Em's come down with a cold, and I think that had a lot to do with her wakefulness.  This after three nights straight of sleeping through.  I think it's worse for me when she's been doing well - my body starts getting complacent, and one restless night knocks me right over.

If someone asked me what the worst thing about parenting was, I'd tell them the sleep deprivation.  The best thing, of course, is everything else.

I am grumpy, angry, tired, frustrated, and feeling sorry for myself.  Consider yourself warned.

I realized earlier this evening that I'm not a happy camper right now.  To wit:

Work.  Sucks, but this is not new.  It's not the work itself, really; it's all the rubbish around the work.  Some days it's really difficult to keep from being utterly demoralized by the bureaucratic labyrinthine process nonsense that I have to plow through just to get anything done.  Yes, we all have to do it; but it makes us SO much less productive, and that's really frustrating - I've always taken pride in getting things done relatively swiftly.  And while I'm sure someone somewhere thinks these new processes (which often change week to week) are all great ideas, it's a little hard to keep my mouth shut when I've seen the same things attempted at company after company after company to no good effect.

I used to have faith in all the MBAs at the top.  At my first job in the computer industry, we won a major overseas bid (the only US company bidding; it was a big PR coup).  Of course, we'd sold them something we hadn't built yet; but we had really good people and they busted their collective butts getting the thing out.  Not two weeks before the product was due to ship I saw a memo from Le Frommage Grand on the secretary's desk, declaring that version one of the product would not ship on a particular platform.  Which just happened to be the only platform the customer cared about.  So much for the PR coup.  I don't have faith in MBAs anymore - at least not MBAs I don't know.

Mommyhood.  Anyone who listens to the podcast knows I'm feeling pretty much like a complete failure right now.  Tonight did not help - grabbed my glasses again, and needed two time outs in the space of five minutes.  Have I mentioned I hate those time outs?  I leave her room and close the door, and I listen to her cry for me for two minutes.  Sometimes I cry, too.  She hurts my feelings, and she thinks it's funny.  Is two too young for empathy?  

Cat.  Sabella is supposed to get 75-100ml of fluids every night, via a needle in her neck.  She also gets a liquid antibiotic twice a day (I've only been giving it to her once), a liquid antacid once a day, and two half-pills a day.  I have not been rigorous about this.  It's not because I don't care, either - it's because for a cat with a terminal condition she's damn sprightly.  She's figured out exactly how to jerk to get the needle to pull out.  I keep trying, but the last three nights I've maybe got 10ml into her.  I've developed more effective methods for the liquids and the pills; but administering the medicines certainly turns me into the Big Kitty Enemy for a while.  She doesn't sleep with me anymore, or at least not often.  It's worth it, of course, if she's more comfortable; but this isn't how I want to be saying goodbye to her.

Life.  A friend of mine at work whose daughter is about five weeks older than Em is pregnant again.  I am jealous.  I can barely cope with one - I'm not even sure I'd want a second one - and I'm jealous.

Okay, so it's not that bad.  I'm paid terribly well to be grumpy about the Faceless Corporation, and the truth of it is that the work - sporadic as it sometimes feels - is still kind of fun.  And I'm less jealous of my friend than I was when I first heard about her pregnancy - mostly I'm just happy for her.  (Mostly.)  

And it's possible tonight that I hit on a useful tactic with Em.  After the second time out, I did not lie down next to her again - I sat next to the bed.  She moved over and asked me to lie down, and I told her I wouldn't because she had not behaved herself.  She got very quiet at that.  I read a few books to her, and eventually she made room for me and asked again for me to lie down.  I said "No grabbing my glasses, no pulling my hair."  She nodded.  I lay down next to her, and she was quiet and well behaved until her daddy came in.  Much, much better.  Maybe I need to wait for an invitation - maybe she'll behave better when she has more control over her own space.

Mostly I'm just tired.  AGAIN.  These days I barely wake up - I just stagger to her room when she calls for me, and doze off there.  I prefer to sleep in my own bed; but it beats staying up all night.  Of course, I don't think it teaches her to sleep on her own; so I'm probably just buying more trouble.

But.

The other morning, before dawn, I was awoken by a hand on my head.  She felt around a little and found my ear, then stuck a finger in (just to make sure it was an ear, I suppose!).  Then she said "Mummy."  Not upset, or whiny, or anything - just identifying me.  And she went back to sleep.

Just lovely.