My Week in FB

My goal of writing more has been a little more difficult to achieve than I thought. It seems like when I finally find the time to sit down and recap the last few days, or the week, I can’t remember what was going on. There are many adventures and cute things that I’d like to remember, but my brain just doesn’t work the way it used to (or the way I imagined it used to, I’m starting to wonder if I was ever smart). But my Facebook statuses might be able to keep me on track, because I post those as things are happening (or at least on the same day). I think I’m going to work from those to start.

“Wyatt's six month checkup today! I'm excited to see how big my little fatty fatty has gotten :)” This is from last Monday. He was 16 lbs, 4 oz and 26 ¼ inches long. He’s hanging out around the 15th percentile, which is about average for our babies. The doctor is always amazed by his super strength though, and he’s growing proportionately so it’s all right that he’s kind of bitty. He’s darn cute. I think he has a crush on me. He looks at me with this kind of half smile, half serious expression, and a look in his eyes that says, “Who IS this lady? I really like her.” Then when I pick him up, he buries his face in my neck and does a happy humming noise for a while. He still nurses several times a day, but I think it’s more of a snacking/comfort thing. He gets most of his nourishment from baby food and the bottle. I just can’t make enough milk. After four times struggling with the same thing, I’m done beating myself up about it. I’ve tried everything—pumping, constant nursing, different herbal supplements, even a prescription that make me comatose—and none of it worked. I’m happy to still have something left at seven months, and I’ll keep going as long as I can. I feel sad, but there doesn’t seem to be anything I can do to fix it. Oh well.

“I stayed up way too late last night finishing season 1 of Mad Men... I wasn't sure I was going to like the show until about halfway through the season, and then I just couldn't stop watching it.” Tom is gone for two weeks in the field, which means I can watch my shows on the big TV without having to kick him off of whatever dumb video game he’s playing. (Actually, life without the video games has been glorious, but that’s kind of a different topic.) I started watching Mad Men after I saw that it had won more awards at the Golden Globes. I don’t watch that many shows, and what I do watch tends to be seasons of things all at once. The only show I will actually turn on the TV to watch when it’s on is Cops on Saturday night. Everything else I watch online or when it comes out on DVD. Anyway, it’s a really interesting show, but it’s kind of heavy at first. Once you get past that, the characters are so interesting and well developed, the storylines are complicated and stretch out over more than one season, and by the end of the first season, I was addicted. Last night I finished season 3, which is all there is, so I don’t know what to do with myself… I want more Don Draper!

“Today, for some reason, I decided to change my hair color up a bit. Back in the day I used to opt for copper tones, which suit me well. The lady on the box had copper tones... somehow, I ended up with something I can only label ‘Great-Grandma Henrich Early 80s East Berlin Orange’.” Yeah, this is typical me. I don’t know what possessed me to color my hair—actually, I do. There was about ten years of my life when I was some color other than my own. Around the time I got married, I stopped coloring it because I wasn’t keeping it up very well and I hate the brassy rooty look. When I was at the doctor’s office with Wyatt, I saw myself in the mirror in the lovely fluorescent lights, and noticed that my hair was the color I like to call “mouse”. Literally, it is the color of a mouse. Not quite brown or gray, but somewhere in between. It is also very fine and blond in the front. This is why, when I chose a color that was supposed to be coppery, the fine blondness turned bright orange. The back looked a little better, since it’s much darker. Still, it was not good. (Great Grandma Henrich is my grandma who, back in the 80s, went through a rather startling orange phase. The East Berlin thing… well, have you ever seen those Russian ladies with the crazy orange hair? It’s that.) I did add some brown tones to my hair the next day. Unlike my past attempts at fixing my hair color on my own, this one actually worked and it looks much better. Almost natural, even.

“I pulled out a bedtime story from the closet tonight... ‘Jacob, this book says, 'To Nicole, from Grandma and Grandpa P., December 1987'. Jacob: ‘Wow! That's almost the time of dinosaurs!’ ” It took a little while to explain what 1987 meant, and that it is 2010 right now. I think because the numbers are so different, he didn’t really understand until I said that I had been six years old when my grandparents gave me the book, and that was twenty two years ago. It also led to a discussion on the years we were born—another reminder of how I’ve spent the last six years of my life: “Jacob, you were born in 2004, Brynn in 2006, Norah in 2007, and Wyatt in 2009”. Oof. But really, it was almost a compliment in Jacob’s world. He is obsessed with “the time of dinosaurs”. He seems to think it is a place, not a time, and keeps asking when we can go there. (Darn you, Jurassic Park!) On Friday when he got into the car after school, he asked me if time machines were real. I said no, and he asked if he could build one. I said sure, and asked him what kinds of things he would need to build a time machine. He started with a clock, which I thought was pretty smart. Who knows, maybe he’ll do it. He says he’s going to be a ‘science test’ when he grows up. That’s a scientist, to you and me.

“I just got to the end of writing a letter, printing the letter (wrong first, then right), stuffing, sealing, stamping, and addressing envelopes, all to do holiday cards over a month late. It took all freaking day! THEN I realized, as I was inserting the Festive Holiday Greeting into like the 2nd to last card that there was an error right in the first sentence. Arg.” I don’t know why I had such a hard time using my printer. I was trying to get it to print landscape in two columns, front and back. It shouldn’t have been that difficult, even if our printer is not fancy. The whole thing was just a pain in the butt, and the grammatical error was just karma for me being snooty about other people’s errors. I deserved it. I still have to go buy stamps though, and I loathe our post office so who knows when they’ll actually get mailed.

Well, that’s my week in Facebook, at least the part I want to remember. The doppelganger game, in which you’re supposed to put up a picture of someone you’ve been told you look like… well, mine was Barry Manilow, so I don’t know that I need to remember that forever.

One last story: I took the kids to Great Clips for haircuts earlier in the week. While we were waiting, we were listening to the radio. The song “Forever” by Chris Brown came on (it’s the one from that Youtube dancing video, later recreated on The Office). Instantly, Brynn says, “This is the song from the Office!” Jacob says, “You play this in your car all the time!” (I do.) Norah says, “I dance!” And the three of them had an impromptu dance performance in the lobby of the Great Clips. It was pretty cute. Even when I’m stressed, bringing four kids with me wherever I go, sometimes they really make me smile.