Ingrid has been in the same daycare since day one, a place we have been totally happy with, with very few reservations. (Cost and teacher turnover — but they were new on day one, so it was kind of expected — are the big ones.) This week, however, she transitioned up to a new room, for 2-3 year olds, and I’ve suddenly started Exploring Our Options. The incidents that bugged me are incidents of privilege, really. A teacher who was playing a book on tape, and turning the pages of the corresponding book, while staring blankly at the children (and not at ALL acknowledging me as I picked up Ingrid…) but, I figure, we all have bad days, who knows, maybe she’s in the throes of a miscarriage or her boyfriend just called with his herpes test results or she really, really has to fart and can’t do it just now. These things happen. The second was today, when I arrived and found Ing’s class in two rows, in a dark classroom, watching fucking Wonderpets. I only know it was Wonderpets because I lingered long enough to get some data to figure it out, but DUDE, I pay a hefty sum to assure that there is no TV. And these kiddos were chiming in on some call and response chant that ends with “TEAMWORK!” (“and also with you…”) that, okay, maybe the other kids have cable and hot, hot Wonderpets action at home, but we don’t, thankyouverymuch. Ingrid was sitting in a teacher’s lap, I can almost guarantee because she didn’t give a shit about Wonderpets and wanted to be hitting the bookshelf just to her left, or one of the cool toy stations. It. Bugged. Me. And I totally get that it’s not like “they murdered rabbits for satan!” level of daycare unpleasantness, but… it’s my kid, it bugged.

Based on incident 1, I made some calls this week to see what’s out there. The options open up when a kiddo hits 2.5, so I toured a Montessori and a preschool-kindergarten today to see what was out there for options. The Montessori was okay, but left me feeling kind of meh, and had hours that were just on the outside of convenient for us. (Ingrid goes 8-4:15 most days, and this one closes at 4:30, but I kind of like having the option to run an errand or have Dave pick her up once a week.) The second place, though, I fell in LOVE with.

It’s in this crazy gorgeous spooky old building overlooking the city, that opened in 1835 as an orphanage. It’s been a preschool for many, many years (I’m not even sure how long, I should’ve asked) but, a long time, anyway. The director is this affable 75 year old retired school principal, who was the first principal of our neighborhood school (he oversaw construction!) and clearly loves children. The teachers have all been there for years — there is very little turnover, unlike the current place, where it seems like one of the three teachers is always changing. He met me with a little simple picture book to bring home to Ingrid, and we talked in the school’s library. (Not a huge thing, but that there is dedicated library space, with quality children’s books — I’m discerning — won me over.) He talked about the staff, the building, the fees, the hours, the programming, all of it, and I am just in LOOOOVE. Ing has to be 2.5 and potty trained before she can start there, but I am really leaning towards making the jump. To help, I want to list the pros and cons, and maybe some of you more experienced readers out there can help me out:

Pros:

• Better ratios for Ingrid, I think. Current daycare is 19 kids with 3 teachers, this would be 8 kids with 1 teacher, in two separate classroom areas. No doors, I don’t think, just sort of across a hall area with each other.
• Less expensive, by $25/week
• Tuition includes snacks and lunches
• Field trips (I saw pics of the state park we just camped at, some from the children’s museum, and they had just been to the bird sanctuary and were going to a fish hatchery next week.)
• Great playground. The playstructure is commercial (as opposed to a bunch of little tikes plastic crap)
• EVEN BETTER, the fenced area surrounds the entire property, and the kids are encouraged to play in the woods behind the building. Teachers are up there with walkie talkies to supervise, but that this kind of “dangerous” play is facilitated sings to my little “Last Child in the Woods” heart…
• We can get two weeks of vacation, in that two weeks that Ing doesn’t attend we only pay half price for those weeks. It’s a little thing, but a really cool little thing. (Current daycare, we pay monthly, no matter what.)
• Still very close to our house. Dave can still do dropoff; instead of a straight line of home-daycare-work, it might be more like a checkmark.
• Close to the Y, so I can easily go to the Y after work and do pickup and not have it eat a lot of time.
• Hours are 6:30-5:30, very similar to current daycare’s. (Better, if we were ever people who were awake AND needing childcare at 6:30…)
• Warm. The staff and director and kids just seemed very calm and warm and like a good place to be, you know?
• Really cool building. I got tours of all three floors, and knowing some of its history, it was just totally amazing to imagine it as an orphanage. GORGEOUS city views (it’s just below the standpipe, which is my favorite landmark ever, of course.) It’s older than the current daycare, for sure, and has that old-building-smell, but it’s laid out well.

Cons:

• It would be another transition, and away from several kids that Ing has been with for the last two years. Not sure how much that would matter to a 2.5 year old. (But, the director said they get quite a few folks from our center, so maybe some of those friends would defect, too?)
• No infant care, so if Hypothetical #2 was conceived and arrived perfectly on an ideal schedule, we’d be looking at 3 options: 1) taking 2 kids to 2 childcare centers, 2) looking for a home caregiver that could watch Ing around public Pre-K and take care of infant at home 3) move Ing to a center that is infant-preK. Of course, it took a year of TTC to get Ingrid, so she could also end up going to K when we need infant care again.
• Can’t start til 2.5 and potty trained, so I suddenly feel like I have to PT in 4 months or else.

That’s the skinny. I just clicked with this place, so much, and plan to take Ingrid for a visit in a few months to see how SHE clicks in there, but the vibe was overwhelmingly positive. I totally have a crush on it.

I do plan to talk to the director of our current center about the concerns from this week, just to make her aware, but I do now kind of wish I could just sign her up for the new school rightnow. Sigh.

Ingrid’s had a fever for 4.5 days, but in the last two, i swear, her brain has just exploded with new words and concepts. Craziness.

I tried really hard to remember our trip to target tonight, because it was just a non-stop stream of consciousness flow of words coming out of her.

I say "want to go to the store?"

Ingrid:
"Yeah! Store! Coat. Shoes. Hat. Mama coat. Mama shoes. Charlie! [sees her Charlie Parker book open to an illustration of him…] Daddy? Daddy?"

Dave comes up, kisses us goodbye, we walk out to the car.

"Moon. Car. Keys [keys are in my mouth, as I buckle her in, and this is the first time I’ve heard the word form her]. Hat. Coat. Shoes. Mama. Indid. Bye Bye Daddy. Bye Bye Daddy. Store. [I’m now driving….]

In the store:
"hat? Hat. Shoes! Boots! Balls Balls Balls! Neigh! [to toy horse] Baby. [to doll] Giraffes! Giraffes! Boots? [to giraffe rainboots, which we purchased.] One. Two. Two giraffes. Elpant. One, Two, Free Elpant. [I look around and sure enough, there are three elephant watering cans nearby.] One, Two, chairs. Tables.

Getting ready to leave:
"Hat? On? Hat? Bye Bye.

In the car, after telling her it’s  bath night.

"Bath! Bubbles. Daddy?" (he does bath.)

Getting out of the car:

"Daddy car. Vroom Vroom! Beep Beep. Daddy? Bath. Daddy!"

Basically, one of the most verbose evenings she’s ever had, ever.

In addition to "keys" she also now knows "pocket" which freaked me out. While I was working on dinner, I left the gate open and was gone for less than a minute, and when I came back, she was at the top of the stairs, having just reached the turn. Yikes. She randomly hugs us now. She loves her giraffe and her babydoll, which she has to sleep with (hence the wicked excitement for the giraffe boots.)

Also, she’s started punctuating her conversations with a giggle I’ve only ever seen on movies. It is beyond cute. Heartbreakingly so. And for Dave? She says "I laloo daddy" at least once a day. (Alas, not to mama, but I know she loves me.) I can’t believe she’s going to be 2 in like, 9 weeks. Wow.

Why I don’t feel bad that Ingrid still wakes up between us every day:

New Caller: This is Ralph. You know I’m an older man, and I’m calling
about the person who called earlier worrying about their baby, that
they didn’t have heat and they were going to try to find a place to
stay. It might be more dangerous in these conditions taking the baby
out. Ask any grandmother, especially one out in the country, and she’ll
tell you all you got do is go to bed with that baby and put the baby in
between you, and that baby won’t even know the heat’s off!

From an article about the ’98 ice storm, in Bangor Metro.  It made me well up a bit (Um, I Held a Baby today and pretty much spontaneously ovulated, oh, and that baby’s mama confessed privately and sheepishly that the reason why he slept so well the night before may have been because "we tried the cosleeping thing" — after three weeks of staying up with the wee babe all night….)

Um, yeah, anyway. I like picturing that old guy out there, listening to the radio and thinking "kids today! I know the answer!" and calling in to broadcast it. 

My weekend has been awesome, and it’s not even noon on Sunday yet.

Dave had to work on Friday and Saturday night (that part wasn’t awesome) so I have decided to make game nights like that a mama-Ingrid funstravaganza. It worked out pretty well, actually!

Friday night, I picked her up from daycare and drove straight downtown. We parked, and I went to the Thai restaurant to order takeout. (Former locals: it’s in the old Bagel Shop.) It was going to be fifteen minutes or so, so we walked up one side of Main Street and down the other. She LOVED it.

It was already dark by then, of course, and the big tree is still lit in the square. A toddler’s eye view of Main Street is fascinating. People in restaurants, sitting in the windows. Brass instruments lined up. Rope lights. Bongs. Country Crafty Crap like dogs and snowmen. We waved at the museum staff, closing up for the day, and to the jewelry store clerks, cleaning out the window for the night. By the time we completed the loop, our food was done.

When we got home, there was a package for Ingrid from her online Secret Santa — two books, neither of which we had, and fuzzy slippers for both of us. ("Sooz!") We put on our slippers, and I set up our dinner at the dining room table* and we read "Goodnight Gorilla" and ate supper. We read several more books, of course, after dinner, and she went to bed happy.  Yesterday, we had swimming in the morning (I did wrangling, Dave did the actual water part) and she ended up taking an early nap in my arms afterward. When Dave went to work, we headed to Target, but it was PACKED. Insanely so. I didn’t even TRY to find a parking space, instead, ended up at Kohl’s and LLBean, when I realized "Wait! I have a museum membership now!!!" We hustled out of there and went downtown, and spent over an hour in the museum, which was GREAT. Exactly why I wanted a membership, honestly. We came home and had supper, and then ventured out to Target again (I really HAD to go, as we needed diapers) where Ingrid had fun counting everything she could see. ("Waaaan, CHREEE, fie, nein, ah ah ah ah. Yay!")

When we got home, we read and played some more, and then Ingrid helped me clean up the living room (a first! She even made a pile of books!) before bed. Ahh.

A few Doh! things I’ve realized in the last week: Ingrid likes spicy food. She always kind of has, and there’s a little bit of pride in the fact that she happily eats curry or whatever, but I never thought to translate it at home. IE, she often gets an egg at dinner, but lately hasn’t eaten it, so I started peppering it all up, and "MMMMMM!" she eats it. Also assisting her eating? A fork. Um, yeah. When she doesn’t eat the peppered egg, I hand her a fork, and she does. Sorry, baby.

A lot of that leads to my asterisk:

*It is my goal to get us all eating together. Dave has this ridiculous lack of hunger until 10 or so, and Ingrid eats at 5:30, and I’m somewhere in the middle, annoyed at eating so late and having two separate mealtimes. Now that she’s heading towards 2, it’s time to make that shift to Family Dinner, Goddammit. The plan is to have dinner at the table at 6. You don’t have to eat it (DAVE) but it will be there and so will you. (That’s sort of unfair, as the nights I have the group power class, I may not eat til later — the class is at 6:40, and it might suck to be doing disco barbells on a full stomach.)  It’s going to take some planning — I’m thinking of looking for meals that can be prepped the night before, and cooked between 4:30-6, to serve at 6, to help — but I think we can do it, if we commit to it. Plus, all of us eating together means that Ingrid can eat more Real Food, as opposed to eggs and fruit all the time or whatever.

I tend to feel like I ACED infancy with her — that nursing and babywearing and nurturing like that is my strong point, and that toddlerhood is fucking ruining me, with trying to figure out the meals and stuff. I am not a Cook, so I really struggle with it. 

Either way, a totally fun weekend with my girl. Wish me luck on the food thing.

I’m a bit neurotic about some things, carseat safety being a big one. Ingrid is still rear-facing, and will stay that way* as long as possible, which is hopefully to the limit of the seat, which is around 33lbs for rearfacing. Another element of carseat safety is that as little as possible gets between Ingrid and her carseat straps, so she generally never wears anything thicker than a thin fleece, and has been doing that so far this fall. Today, though, daycare asked that we bring in a warmer coat for her to go outside in, which meant I actually had to go BUY one.

Enter secondary neurosis: girl clothes suck. In general.  I lean towards basics, love brown and orange, and no words or characters. I like purple — the aforementioned fleece is purple — but pretty much despise pink. It’s in her wardrobe, but not as the primary color of anything, really, except for one bodysuit that I leave at daycare for backup. So, yeah, I’m neurotic about clothes. Shopping for a coat didn’t help. I checked Kohl’s, and… I just can’t do glitter liberally applied to faux fur trim. I just can’t. Not while I still get to choose, and Ingrid doesn’t have an opinion. (I fully recognize that Ingrid will be into deciding some of this for herself, soon, and I plan on letting her have a voice in that.) I did find, at the LLBean outlet, a bright orange parka (the Katahdin one) for half price. Score. Sold. 

I almost want her to wear it in the car, specifically to go visit my MIL, who will totally see it as us pushing her one more step toward a career in professional softball. Whatev.

*Although I’m already doing a pro/con list in my head about Texas — front face because it’s a better install with the travel seat and we’ll be getting there at 11pm? Or take the extra time in the car parking lot to get the RFng good and snug? And if we FF, will she become addicted to it? And this is after the internal debate of "maybe we should just take our regular carseat, is it more important to be safer every day in your hometown, or for one week in a strange place?" ARGH.

You know, we have a whole slew of new words in our world, and I was trying to remember them all.

Re-sook: To find a lost pacifier for a mostly-asleep baby who can’t find it herself.
Jamify: To undress from day clothes, change diaper, and put into pajamas.
Crankenmonster: When a certain baby is fussing.
Squirrelly: See Crankenmonster.
Sleepytime: Bedtime. "Are you ready for sleepytime?"
SnotSnuckler: The amazing Nosefrida.
Code Brown: A soiled diaper requiring the assistance of a second adult.
Cooked Carrot: Tired kiddo.
Frickin Frackin Fried: Tired Mama.
Ingy-Bug, Buggy Girl, InnieGriddie: Best thing EVER.

This week, Ingrid has developed a good case of Separation Anxiety. Andy is back (YAY!) and we had lunch, and then came here for him to see Ingrid, who was once very familiar with him. She BURST into tears, and buried her face in my chest the whole time he was here. We went to the park with him, for a change of scenery, and she played, but she didn’t talk. As soon as we dropped him off, she erupted into her little language, like she’d bottled it up for the last few hours.  She was much the same for my parents, whom she sees all the time, and our trips to various stores got lots of comments like "where’s your smile?" and "Not much to say today, huh?" where she used to LOVE going into stores and trying to make out with anything with a face. On top of that, sleep woes — she’s never needed to be rocked to sleep, until this last week, and it’s almost like she can’t handle the idea of not being able to see us (well,me) and sleeping will make us go away. Hard stuff. Especially with our trip* coming up next month — I hope she’s re-righted herself by then, because my grandmother is SO anxious to meet her, and hears all these wonderful stories, and Ingrid IS a wonderful kid, but the silent scared treatment is just… not Ingrid.  Ive read that it can be linked to a developmenal leap, which kind of makes sense, as she seems younger than her peers in many ways.  I’m wondering (hoping) it’s language related, as I would love to hear more of her thoughts, or, okay, even second syllables. In that vein, here are her words so far:

Mama
Daddy
Hi
Bye bye
Hat
More
Duck
Whee (on slides)
Whoa!
Wow
Eye
Yay
Nih Nih (which I’m pretty sure is her first attempt at her own name, which is bound to be challenging thanks to the gr sound in there)
Melmo (The girl sees Sesame Street once or twice a week, on the weekends, as we’re making coffee and coming to, and goddamn if she doesn’t know that little bastard’s name already.)

Variations on the Buh sound, where the slightest difference is evident to us, but maybe not you:
Bath
Ball
Bubbles
Blueberries (sometimes ‘buh’ while gesturing wildly at the freezer, sometimes "bees")

Animal sounds:
Moo
Baa
Bowowowow
Meow
RAaaaarrr (monster)
Ah AH Ah (uhh, this is when we count, like the Count on Sesame Street, is he an animal?)

She signs more and all done, and used to sign for nurse, but weaned. I wish daycare worked with sign, but they don’t, and I’m surprised at what she HAS picked up. 

She has also figured out where belly, eye, ear, nose, and mouth are on herself and others, and she does the actions for pat-a-cake (though still prefers to steer the adult’s hands on that one). She likes to chase and be chased, and has started a new thing where she sort of revs up, ‘running in place’ before launching off into her chosen direction.  She’s really, really fun. I hope that comes through next month.

*Trip — oh god. We worked so hard to find flights that would be toddler friendly-ish, but we’re flying from Portland, 2 hrs away, and the flight there, we have one connection and arrive in Austin around 11pm, and then have to drive to Grandma’s neighborhood** so that will be a late night. Return flight was initially leaving at 1030 am, one layover, arriving to Portland at around 5 pm. That was just changed by the airline to include TWO layovers (ATL & CVG) and we don’t get in til 10. Then drive home 2 hours. And go to work the next day. Oh, suckage.

**After several attempts at finding a rental through a real estate management company, we FINALLY got a place and don’t have to stay at a hotel a good 20 minutes away from Grandma. Instead, we are across the green from her, in a condo, with 3 bedrooms, 3 baths, and a PING PONG TABLE in the master suite. Woot! And a pool. I’m hoping the pool is still open then, for toddler amusements. I’m looking forward to being able to walk a few hundred yards to get to Grandma’s, and I think she is too. We’ve usually stayed with them, but no one wanted to stress out my grandparents by overrunning their place, which is the only thing an 18 month old does, really.

When I was a kid, I loved playing mommy. Loved it. I had dolls lined up around my room, using my old baby clothes, in my old baby cradle. I used to flip through the big Sears and JCPenney catalog and circle all the things my pretend baby would need, and I clearly remember choosing a big padded ring sling from those pages, because it looked so snuggly.

And when I got pregnant, and had my baby, I was blessed with a snuggly, content, mellow, "easy" baby. When I was TTC, and then pregnant, I had a matrix of Things That Mattered to me when I delivered, and at the very top of that list was "BREASTFEEDING." Induction, epidural, c-section, episiotomy, whatever, birth was one day, and breastfeeding was… not. And my first anxiety as a mother (as an expectant woman with a history of miscarriage, I had plenty of anxiety about carrying the baby) was nursing, because it was so, so, so important. But, lo, I had the Nipples du Flat, and it took a little coaxing to get everything working. But really? Just a little. I pumped at my hospital bed to bring in my milk and pull out my nipples, and Dave would feed those precious drops of colostrum to Ingrid via a syringe. One of my favorite memories in the hospital was me, nursing Ingrid in the football hold, while Dave held up my super-calorie milkshake to m lips, this perfect little family unit taking care of each other.

In the hospital, when I nursed Ingrid, I could feel my uterus contracting, almost like a pump, to get back to it’s original size. The one time I sent Ingrid to the nursery, reluctantly (horrible roommate meant no Dave to help), I remember waking with a start, my body sensing it was time to feed the baby, and hearing the squeak of the bassinet coming down the hall, and being surprised, but not too, when it was MY baby coming to me to eat. It was such a primal connection.

At home, the first week was good, I no longer needed to pump, my milk came in at home, and latching on was about 5 seconds of "YOWCH!" until she settled into her rhythm. Dave restocked my Hospital Issue Water Jug with super diluted gatorade, and made sure I had pillows and a cloth diaper and all of that to help me. I would get so, so, sleepy when she nursed, as oxytocin flowed through me, and I just loved the little piggy noises that she’d make.

And then, we were good. I nursed her in public for the first time at the ice cream place out by our old apartment, after looking at the goats. Dave was getting my cone, and she was hungry, and I realized, I just have to go for it, and I did, and it was easy. I nursed her in restaurants, in bed, in the car on long drives, on the couch, with my laptop balanced on one knee, in the doctor’s office.

When I went back to work, I pumped, and she reverse-cycled, started nursing more and more at night, and that was okay. I did all of the things that help preserve the nursing relationship; only ever used newborn nipples, kept a stash at daycare, nursed on demand, when I could.  She only ever nipped me a few times, as the result of a bad or tired latch. The first few months that I was at my new job, we would get home at 4:10 or so, and I’d just tear off my shirt and collapse onto the couch, and she would nurse intently. It made going back to work easier, I think, to have that reconnection in the afternoon.

My plan with nursing was to follow Ingrid’s lead, and to reserve the right to change that plan if I found it wasn’t working for me.  At a year, I stopped pumping, and kept nursing. In the last few weeks, though, Ingrid has begun to wean. I was not ready. I’m still not. But she is, even though it seems like my anecdotal evidence is that babies who get to a year, nurse til they’re two, or are forcibly weaned. But suddenly, Ingrid dropped to once a night. One little midnight snack, basically. She went 36 hours, a few weeks ago, and the hormone crash was horrific, I was crying at work, crying at home, and then she nursed again and my ship rerighted for a bit, but I could see it coming on, fast. This week, she has basically nursed once every other night. She has a bit of a fever and runny nose today, and I offered her the breast, and she grinned like an imp, and started to bite my nipple, so I tucked it away.

Fifteen months is great. It really, really is. I went to a La Leche League World Breastfeeding Week celebration this week, and was even interviewed by the radio news (I’ve no idea if it ran or anything) about how great nursing was. And I loved it, I had an easy go, we had a great nursing relationship. Everything is happening as I want it too, at her pace, but I’m just so caught up that it’s happening so SOON. ANd I realize for many people, 15 months isn’t SOON, it’s "why are you still nursing her?" or "I couldn’t WAIT to be done nursing!" but for me, it’s soon. I wanted to be punk-rock, nursing my toddler at he Common Ground Fair in September, or to defend toddler nursing to family members who’d ask about it with the tsk-tsk barely perceptible under the question. I wanted her to "ask for it," just so I could defend a toddler "asking for it" ("She’s been ‘asking for it since she was born, she just uses words now.") And I have heard stories of nursing relationships that have become difficult, physically and emotionally, and all of that, so I am thankful that our nursing days are ending as gently as they began.  I think about how, when I go to a conference in October, I will be able to sleep all night in a hotel bed, alone, and not have to worry about expressing, or engorgement, or whether that trip was what ruined nursing. Nursing hasn’t been ruined, it’s just run it’s course.

When Ingrid was born, I cried every night for a few weeks, mourning "inside baby." I loved being pregnant, loved that intimate relationship that only I would ever know, and I could look at Ingrid on the outside, and recognize her movements as the same as Inside Baby’s, but it was almost two separate entities. With the birth of Ingrid, I said goodbye to the possible boy-baby, said goodbye to that physical connection, said goodbye to a shitload of hormones that didn’t help with the crying, I’m sure. And now, weaning feels very much like another goodbye. I’m saying goodbye to that unique intimacy that only I will ever know, that intimacy of what it means to nurse Ingrid. To grow her from two cells to walking toddler, in 2 years (she was conceived two years ago this month), that’s … amazing. And for someone who is decidedly NOT a touchy-feely person (the idea of a massage sounds luxurious to some, but to me, I’d rather have a dental cleaning), to have been so successful and content with nursing is amazing.

I’m sad, saying goodbye to Ingrid the infant, and I’m excited to move on to Ingrid the toddler, but still. It’s weird.

So, yeah, Ingrid is a year. And that means I’ve earned my Breastfeeding Merit Badge, as she’s been nursing just as long, and still is, with no plans wean on this end, at this time.

Breastfeeding is weird, you know? It’s so political and emotionally charged and all this …. stuff, and one always has to disclaim it, "happy mama=happy baby," etc, and I truly believe that. But in all of the political correctness, I feel a little shy about admitting that… I’m really proud of myself. Not just my self, but my body. It’s the first thing it really did right, it feels like, and it has done it SO right.  I never felt conflicted about nursing, i always knew I wanted to, and even nursing in public… I was nervous the first few times, but then it became almost a source of pride, like "HELL YEAH, I’m feeding my baby the ol’ fashioned way! What of it?"  When I worked, I pumped, and while she never needed much of the pumped stuff and did a bit of reverse cycling, but… it worked. it worked! that’s so amazing to me. Insert disclaimer here, but hot damn, I am really proud to have hit that milestone.

I’m sure people will start asking or wondering or maybe making comments like "if they’re old enough to ASK…" (which, as another internet friend mentioned, "she’s been asking all along" and I’d add a ",dumbass" to that) and I plan to just smile n’ nod and say "there are lots of benefits to toddler nursing…" or something. Anyway. Go me & my boobs.

I have no idea how long it’s been, but I’m guessing "awhile." Things continue to steam along here, though Ingrid appears to be in the midst of a teething-fueled growth spurt, which has meant wacked nights and wonky days, lots of sleep, looooots of night-nursing, and even some inconsolability. On a lighter note (and I wonder if this is compounding it) she can CRAWL! We were home on Friday (fever) and got up, plonked her down on the rug, and she tipped forward onto her knees and crawled a few paces. She hasn’t yet figured out the power of mobility, and we can really only get her to motor if we dangle cheese (and of course, with dangled cheese comes Kitty) from across the room.

This is also the season of graduations, and as Dave observed "this is going to be what May IS for the rest of our lives, isn’t it? You off every weekend doing graduations while I’m falling further and further behind on yardwork!" And, well, yeah.  I guess so. The one Saturday was the only one I did last year, and the year before that I was still pregnant and ignorant of the miscarriage unfolding inside, and this one was with my sleepy growth-spurty new-crawler at home. Weird.

Friday is my hooding, and then two graduations on Saturday, the same two schools that I did two years ago, when I was miscarrying in a biiiiig way, laying down in the car until justbefore the conferrals… GOD that sucked. ANYWAY, this year should be better… then I have one on Ingrid’s actual birthday, but I figure she won’t know the difference, right? (And we’re not doing a party… I’ve told Dave’s family they can stop by to say Happy Birthday anytime that day, and I’ll probably make cupcakes to offer drop ins, and that’s it. But still, ONE YEAR? How is that even POSSIBLE?

So, that’swhat’s going on here… exhausted from fussy growing baby, keeping the head down until the end of commencements, work is fine (but also busy with commencement stuff) and just sort of keeping on. Yeehaw.