A first

When I was on maternity leave, many were the days on which I didn't shower or brush my teeth. It happened. I also lived in yoga pants and zip-up hoodies, so it wasn't like I was advertising myself as a sharp dresser. Thank god for deodorant and mouthwash, that's all I can say.

This morning, however, it went one step further. After waking up with a still-coughing Margot at 1am, 2:30am, and 5:30am, I took one look at my clock after Griffin woke me up at 7:15 and found myself weighing the pros and cons of showering vs. 30 more minutes of sleep. Sleep won. Off to work I went, uncleansed and unapologetic. It was totally worth it.

On a tangent

TREES!

I have developed two obsessions this summer. First, Band of Brothers. I rewatched the entire miniseries over Memorial Day weekend and am now reading the book. This is not what I'd call peaceful (or dystopian for that matter). But it feels compelling right now and I can't explain why. Tom Hanks and Steven Spielberg are apparently doing an HBO movie called The Pacific. I am kind of excited. ????

Obsession #2: equally perplexing, not unlike battle -- nursery school yard sales. We have about 15 small, nonprofit (though they will happily take $10-15K of your money per year) nursery schools within a 5-mile radius of our house and they are all throwing their annual rummage fundraisers. We live, as they say, in a target-rich environment. It is insanely fun to buy high-end baby clothes that other people splashed out on for $1-3 apiece. It is also kind of fun to see the extent to which other parents will go to get their favorite items first. It can get violent and/or argumentative. Other moms: I am not afraid to scrum over Tea Collection. The gauntlet is down.

It's very clear, however, that the ratio of boy to girl babies in the greater Somerville/Cambridge area is even more skewed than I'd thought based on the fact that ALL our friends have boys. The yard sales are chock full of boy baby clothes and the girl clothes are usually relegated to a box here and there (versus giant pool-tubs full of boy things). We so need to move out of the city before Margot hits dating age. Otherwise she will have a harem of boyfriends.

I hear the mosquitos are going to be OOC

So it seems that New England has decided to relocate itself to the Pacific Northwest because it has rained almost every day for a month. The rain was funny for a week or so and now it's no longer even vaguely amusing. I feel like we are living in a Ray Bradbury story. And once I started thinking about "All Summer In A Day"--the little girl's name is Margot?!?!?-- I got this incredible jones to reread all of Bradbury's short stories. Then I wanted to rewatch Amazing Stories (remember Amazing Stories??) Lunchboy wanted to know what was up with my sudden interest in dystopian fiction and I didn't have a good answer. But early last week I went on a news hiatus because the rain coupled with all the horrible things that are happening in the world was beginning to make life feel very overwhelming. Boycotting the news has helped, more than I thought it would, so perhaps the urge to revisit alternate realities via books and TV is another escape mechanism. Want to be freaked out, though? Read "The Veldt" and then get a Roomba.

Obligatory Margot picture:

Anything is peaceful from one thousand, three hundred and fifty-three feet

Sixteen Candles has been on TV every night but all I can think of is that line from Ferris Bueller: "Life moves pretty fast. You don't stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it."

It has been one of those months where it feels like life is moving at 100mph and I don't feel like I am slowing down with any grace. We rush to get ready in the morning, get Margot to daycare, get to work. I rush to get home in the evenings so I can have 15-30 minutes with her before it's bedtime. She is sleeping better but I actually relish the times when she wakes up in the middle of the night to nurse because that is extra time I get with her.



And so I have entered into that perennial state occupied by so many other working moms in which I feel like I am trying to do too much and not doing any of it particularly well. Right when I hit a point when I felt like I couldn't handle the fulltime work thing another second, Margot got sick and I needed to stay home with her for a few days. I HATED that she was sick--no one tells you how hard it is to see your baby be sick--but I loved having whole days with her that weren't punctuated by trips to Target or visits from family. I even loved the part where I got puked/pooped/peed/snotted on. There are moments when I feel completely obliterated by how much I love this child, how much I adore spending time with her, soothing her, playing with her, reading to her, just looking at her.

Tired girl

This was taken while Margot was out on a walk with her aunt on a warm, sunny day. She needed a nap. That makes two of us! I was bitter to be stuck at work while Margot was home from daycare, though I love that she gets to spend time with her aunt, who dotes on her with the best of them.

We are busy these days spending as much time outside as possible. Our street is lush with gardens and flowering shrubs so there is much to explore and discover. Though I don't have a picture of it, I helped Margot smell a rose the other evening. I guess I expected her to enjoy the scent (cabbage roses--yum!) but instead she pulled away with a "ewwww!" expression on her face. Maybe it was just too intense for little noses.

We are on Day 10 of the 30-Day Shred. Both of us are noticing that our clothes fit differently--for me it means that things are looser than they were 10 days ago. But the scale remains my enemy. I am looking forward to/slightly nervous about moving on to Workout 2.

The other night we watched Taken, one of the Netflix movies that have been sitting neglected on the coffee table for a week or six. It wasn't a spectacular movie but I am hereby appointing Liam Neeson to the position of celebrity dad. If Jason Bourne ever has kids, he and Liam are going to have to battle it out.