Henry came down with a cough on Saturday and has been at it ever since. No other symptoms. Just a cough. Lots and lots of coughing. By yesterday it was making me a bit twitchy, all that coughing. We decided to keep him home from school today and after the first couple of hours, I finally gave him a lollipop and told him not to crunch it, just nurse it for as long as he could. After a minute he crunched it anyway, the temptation being far too great. So I gave him another one and made it VERY CLEAR he needed to suck on it, not crunch it. So he did, and it helped stem the coughing tide for the duration of the pop plus a few hours. He's starting to cough again, so there'll probably be another sucker in the not too distant future. I wish I knew what was causing it. I'm secretly holding out hope that he'll develop a full blown cold because at least then we'll know what it's all been about and that an end is in sight. I might try some buckwheat honey next.

Posted by Jenn at 03:31 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

dave: Argh.
me: What?
dave: I just tried to put a dish in the dishwasher and part of the dishrack broke off.
me: Uh-oh.
dave: Yeah
henry: We should just buy a new house.

Posted by Jenn at 02:50 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Yesterday Holly worked very hard at cutting another tooth, and when I check this morning, there it was, nice and sharp. The appearance of teeth is every nursing mother's dream come true. Trust me.

She's been restless the last few nights. Mostly I think it's because she's anxious to get a move on. Yesterday I put her on her little gym mat and she got herself up onto all fours and started to rock back and forth, getting a feel for balance. Almost every time we go to her room to get her up from bed, she's on her hands and knees. When Henry was a baby, he enjoyed the novelty of being able to sit up on his own for a while before he decided to think about becoming mobile. It was great. I could plop him down on a blanket with some toys and he'd sit there and play, happy as a clam. Holly, meanwhile, has, in a few short days, completely mastered the art of pushing herself backwards and gets extremely grumpy when she finds herself lodged around a chair leg and can't go any further. I have a feeling that Dave, Henry, and I will be spending a great deal of time fearfully watching Holly from betwixt our fingers.

Posted by Jenn at 01:56 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

We have been making an effort to make small changes in our life that reflect our somewhat slow-to-come realization that not only is our family not the sole one living on the face of the Earth, but that we are surrounded by a community and world full of great kids who would probably like to inherit a planet that's in somewhat good shape in terms of sustainability. It's taken us a bit too long to get to this point, but with dawning realization comes the strong desire and commitment to actually research and put changes into action.

Now, I can't plead total ignorance about water conservation. As a child of the '80's, I was taught in school that if things kept going the way they were, there'd be a water shortage, and that it would happen very soon. I even remember a Cosby episode that mentioned water conservation, and how all the Huxtable kids had to turn off the water faucet while they were brushing their teeth, which I also got into the habit of doing (behold the power of television). I also tried very hard to take shorter showers, but that one was really tough.

My best friend in high school lived in an older house. I don't recall if she had a dishwasher, but I do remember hanging out in her kitchen and talking, talking, eating Ben and Jerry's Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough, and talkingtalkingtalking while she washed dishes in her sink. She had a flow regulator on her faucet that allowed her to stop the water with the flip of a lever instead of having to turn the water all the way off and on. Every once in a while, since moving in with Dave, I would get on a humbug and search high and low for one, never having any success, until finally, last month I found some. I'm not sure if they've been around the whole time and I've been looking in the wrong places, or if they're seeing a resurgence in popularity in light of the green movement. I ordered one for the kitchen and one for bathroom. After years of searching, you have no idea how excited I was when they arrived in the mail. They were immediately put to use, and I absolutely love them. The habit of flipping the lever while you're washing your hands or doing dishes forms quickly, and every time I stop the flow of water, I'm conscious of the water we're not using. That's a pretty good feeling.

Posted by Jenn at 01:15 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I was playing around with my ukulele on Sunday and Henry asked if I could play the song "Daylight". I found some chords and practiced a little bit, deftly raising my ability to somewhere between "Hideously Bad" and "Not Very Good At All". Today after school Henry wanted to play it along with me on the drums, so naturally, I recorded it:

As you can tell, we consider ourselves to be total rock stars.

Posted by Jenn at 04:30 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)

Holly has been diligently practicing her push-ups. This afternoon, she was hanging out on her activity mat, batting some toys around, and when that got old, she flipped over onto her tummy and played with a blanket. When that got old, she pushed herself up, then shoved herself backward. Then she did it again and again and again until she found herself in the middle of Henry's pot-and-pan drum set, halfway across the living room. She played there for a while, then loudly declared that she deserved a nap after all of that hard work. One (albeit backward) step closer to upright mobility.

Speaking of push-ups, I did some yesterday and today I've been very aware of the fact that I have arms.

Let's talk about food. Tonight I made oven-baked sweet potato fries to go with the amazing trout Dave whipped up. They were crazy good. At least Dave, Holly, and I thought so. Henry licked one and called it a day.

Meanwhile, I've been dreaming of Spring, compost, and backyard gardens...

Posted by Jenn at 08:33 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

My Hair. All I can say is: gah.

I haven't had it cut in a year and a half. When I found out I was pregnant with Holly, I decided to take advantage of the crazy hair growth that goes on. The idea was to have hair that was long enough to actually have hairstyle options beyond: short; shorter; really, really short. Now it's long. And I have no idea what to do with it. Except I've now invested all of this time into growing it, I don't want to make a mistake and get a hairstyle I don't like. So I'm paralyzed. Now I understand those women who have long hair but freak out at the mere mention of taking "just a few inches" off. Well, not entirely, but sort of; I have a feeling they actually like their hair, whereas I pretty much am not loving my hair at all right now. I'm thinking I should just go and get it cut really short again and be done with it.

Posted by Jenn at 11:34 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)

Last night I was SO TIRED! I did my pre-sleep yoga around 8:30 and by nine I was sitting on the edge of the bed reading a book. My face was scrubbed, my teeth brushed, and my eyes getting droopy. I decided to get up to say good-night to Dave and ended up spending the next two hours reading about the top 10 art accidents according to Time magazine as well as every single entry on failbooking.com. I crawled into bed around 11:30. I'm such a jerk. A really, really tired jerk.

Posted by Jenn at 02:22 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Holly officially has one bottom tooth. She seems relieved. I didn't have the heart to tell her about the rest of the teeth that would soon be following suit.

Holly has been able to go from her back to her tummy for months now. Today she demonstrated she officially knows how to go from her tummy to her back.

Henry made it official that although he wrote on his construction paper green eggs and ham craft that he would like "to eat them at Grandma and Grandpa's house", he doesn't actually want any green eggs or ham. Ever. Seriously. Blech. Stop talking about it.

Dave officially stopped a goal with his groin tonight at field hockey. He's very thankful for the invention of the protective cup.

I officially ate too many peanut M&M's this evening.

The word "official" officially has no meaning anymore because I've used it so many times it now just sounds weird.

Posted by Jenn at 08:53 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

Holly has way too much going on right now. She's cutting her two bottom teeth, one of which, when I did the first of my six thousand daily gum checks, I could actually see gleaming just underneath the surface. (Holly's current favorite foods: applesauce, carrot, thumb. Two of these items are usually organic; one is chock-full of preservatives.) She's been extremely fussy the last two nights at bedtime, which isn't like her, and I think it's safe to attribute that to the hard-core teething that's going on.

Right now she's absolutely pooped, but is fussing in her crib instead of snoozing. A minute ago I heard her binky hit the floor, so I went up to give it back to her. When I turned to check her out as I was shutting the door, I saw her hoist herself up onto all fours. Crawling is looming on the horizon a bit sooner than I expected.

Dave is trying to teach her to say "hi". It's very cute. His voice gets all squeaky and he says "Holly! Say 'hi'! Say 'hi' Holly!" and she'll look at him and say "haaa" and then beam at him. Then he beams at her, 100% the proud daddy, and then Henry and I have to shield our eyes from all of the beaming that's going on because it tends to get pretty bright.

I just want her to stay little and fuzzy-headed for a bit longer, thank you very much, but I think she's got other plans.

Posted by Jenn at 01:02 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)