Because the Idea of Coherence Makes My Head Hurt

If you are going to feed the baby prunes, you will need to remain within diapering range of baby for the duration of prune expellation.


I adore the person I met at a conference this weekend, who, when I attempted a sort of lame business card exchange in a furtive effort to maybe, possibly, start an interaction that could one day lead to coffee or something, said, "Hey, do you want to be friends?" and just took a much cooler short-cut around the awkwardness. So, now I have a new friend!


Also at the conference, we did this touchy-feely closing exercise where we passed a ball of string around a the circle. The facilitator chided us to get closer, until we were actually touching each others' shoulders. Many people laughed a little self-consciously and moved closer, because, as people who work with young children, we generally are folks who are used to physical proximity. Not so for the lone male participant: "Sorry, I'm an accountant."


Have you had a graham cracker lately? Because you might be missing out.


Always have your baby about 18-24 months after a friend or two has had their last kid. Our lovely friend Jo--whom I adore even though she ALWAYS, ALWAYS looks radiant and put-together, even at 9 on a Sunday morning after two weeks of house guests and with her 2-year-old in tow--brought over yet more clothes and baby equipment today. I literally don't know how we could have afforded a baby without the generosity of people like this. Well, the baby was covered by insurance (because I am lucky), but the baby-related stuff came from generous, done-breeding friends.


One of the things Jo brought us was a Pack'n'Play (or foldable playpen, for those of you kickin' it old-school), which I have begun to call Baby Jail. I am mostly being facetious, although honestly, I generally sort of hate the idea of plopping babies in little mesh cages. However, that being said, it was realllly nice to have a safe (i.e., void of power cords and slobbery dog maws) place to set the baby for a second while I printed some pictures to send to Grandma.

On Monday, Tankbaby started to crawl. While this was every bit as miraculous--Dig it! He's like a real baby!--and moving as the cliches would lead you to believe, I am now obsessed (OK, even more obsessed) with how fraught with danger my seemingly-pleasant, formerly-innocent little house is. Who built a house with all these freaking CORNERS? And why make the floors so SOLID? Who turned up the gravity in this place, anyway?


Attention, doctors and media and CDC-type folks: either the swine flu is a Really Big Deal and you encourage vaccines and then actually manufacture enough of the effing things or shut up about it. Because to encourage panic and fear and then have all of us scrambling to find a clinic that has the shots only to be denied them because we're not "priority," well...that's tedious. And it encourages people to take medical advice from Jenny McCarthy.