Mmf

Dear Bloggety Blog:

I just want you to know that I think of you often, and nearly every day compose a thing or three to post - but my musings almost never leave my head and gets typed in here.

Daily I am left exhausted (that's only the best word I can come up with right now - but the feeling is much more intense than that) and absolutely confounded at the thought that some people actually have clean, clutter-free houses and children who have regular bedtimes and have a bath and read books every single night.

Some days I really don't know if I can make it through The Bug's teething to those seemingly far off days of glory when I shall sleep more than three hours at a time. Yes, I did make it through Sweet Pea's equally difficult teething, but she was my only child then. Raising two through this is enough to grind me into sand. Every day.

However, despite the extreme difficulty and frustration of last night (The Bug woke up VERY often and at one point when she was actually sleeping, her big sister inexplicably woke me up and kept me awake for a fracking hour and a half), somehow today I made it through with no yelling at all, and only a few stern noises at the girls. You've still got to use your Mom Voice when the 16-month-old climbs up onto the dining room table and then smiles at you, rather than moving her little butt backward and onto the chair, when you tell her to get off the table.

Today was Picture Day for Sweet Pea's class, and omigod she looked adorable. We went clothes shopping for her, uh... last week? Well, recently, anyway, and the outfit she wore was just super duper cute and it spoke to me and said, "I am the one she must wear for picture day." And she agreed, and I can't wait to see the pictures. When we got home today we were on our way to ring our friends' doorbell across the street when Sweet Pea tripped in their driveway and started crying really hard, and blood started leaking through the knees of her tights. So we went home through the sudden downpour which I swear started the second Sweet Pea fell, and stayed at home instead, doctoring Sweet Pea's knees (they're really not that bad off but she hasn't had many injuries so to her it was a big thing) and doing laundry until dinnertime. And playing, of course. Always playing.

If there's anything else I'm too pooped to think of it right now.

Oh, wait, no I'm not: Last night Slipshod and I finished the final Harry Potter book. I didn't mention anything about reading it before because while everyone else was devouring book 7, we still hadn't even begun book 6, so we read them both straight through and just kept our heads down so nobody would blurt to us about either of those books! We started reading the Harry Potter books out loud together with book 3, and it has been nice to have that as one of "our things" to do together. I think that reading book 7 immediately on the heels of book 6 made the last book far more intense for us, and there were several points during the story in book 7 when we were both actually crying and having trouble reading. Slipshod has been reading HP to me almost every night while I do the dishes (every so often he washed and I read, but mostly it was the other way around - at least we were spending time together) but over the past week we've been moving to the couch with the book and forsaking our TV shows to keep reading the book. Last night we stayed up later than we normally would so that we could finish it. We enjoyed the book, and indeed the whole series immensely, but it had to end and we were not disappointed. But NOW - I'm rather bereaved tonight and haven't even started washing the dishes at 10pm because, there's no more Harry Potter left to read! Whatever will we do? I suppose there are other books out there, or we could just talk instead, der, but... it was so much fun having that story to look forward to every night! Oh well. I saw something on Amazon.com about how "There IS Life After Harry Potter." I guess I'll have to figure out where to go from here. Not ready to move on yet.

That is all and I hope that at least some of it made sense. I'll be back at some point, and maybe I'll even have something interesting to say. But right now, I am the servant of the teeth. I was all pissed off last night/this morning about how much The Bug woke up last night, even though I knew it was teething related, but later this morning I got a look at what we're dealing with, and then I felt rightfully sorry for her and held my grumpiness in check. At one point she was nursing and I removed her from one breast simply to move her to the other side. She started crying a lot, which was strange because usually she knows I'll just move her over to the other side, but I took advantage of her open mouth to get a look, and saw that her two upper one-year molars are cutting in tandem. She must be in a whole helluva lot of pain, poor thing. But part of me is rejoicing that the bottom two molars have (I think) finished cutting and these two are coming in at the same time. I am REALLY hoping that we'll have a week of good sleep before she starts cutting the eye teeth. And then, hopefully we'll be in better shape for a number of months until she cuts the two-year molars. Here's praying... 'cause Mama needs SLEEP!!!!!