Are you there, blog? It's me, Paige.

As I sat down to write this, I realized that I haven't showered in two days. Whoops. At least I combed my hair today. That's something.

So goes my life recently. Somehow it seems that every moment of the day is crammed full of activity, from waking up in the morning to getting Carter out the door and off to school to Griffin-Griffin-Griffining all day to picking up Carter at night, putting both kids to bed, washes bottles, making food for us, and passing out on the couch (I wonder how many times I've used the phrase "passing out on the couch" on this blog. It's in the double-digits, no doubt). My mother calls to harass me regularly, reminding me to sleep when he sleeps, put my feet up and relax, all that good stuff. But there are dishes to be done, counters to scrub, and closets to organize (you trying packing clothes for TWO children into one small bedroom. It's like an episode of "Hoarders" up in here).

And despite the nonstop semi-chaos, I actually feel pretty damn great. The boys and I are getting over little colds (with the help of the Nosefrida, my latest and greatest investment. Oh God, how I love it. I could write a sonnet about sucking snot out of my kids' noses) but otherwise I am soaking in the holiday spirit. Thanksgiving was lovely, our tree (and accompanying tree-circling toy train) is up, and I'm looking forward to spending a week with my family up north for Christmas. And I still have two more months of maternity leave. Life is good, folks.

Griffin is a blissfully easy baby. He rarely cries, with the occasional exception of during the five o'clock witching hour when he's inevitably overtired and trapped in his carseat en route to pick up his brother. For the other 23 hours of the day, he's mellow yellow - since he was about six weeks old, he's been sleeping from about 8pm until 3am, waking to nurse, and then immediately going back to sleep until about 6am. I know - WHAT?!? Carter was not this child. Carter was the wake-up-multiple-times-and-stare-at-Mommy-for-an-hour-until-he-is-bounced-back-to-sleep-on-the-damn-exercise-ball baby. Not so with his little brother. When G is done for the day, he is DONE, and does not seem to particularly want to see my face until the morning hours. I am fine with this.

He's a pretty big boy, weighing in at 12.2 lbs at his two-month check-up, smack in the 75th percentile, and has outgrown all his 0-3 month clothing already (HUH?? Tiny Carter worn that crap well into months 4 and 5). He naps well during the day, he is generous with his smiles and he has started giving me the occasional chuckle during Mommy's tickles.

Basically, he's that dangerous kind of baby that makes you want to have ten more just like him. YIKES. I'm a realist however, and fully acknowledge that having both a mellow toddler and mellow baby is like winning some kind of cosmic lottery, and to add another child to the mix will certainly ensure that #3 is pure devil spawn. One can't get lucky three times, after all. We shall see - at the moment, I am quite content with my boys.

Voila - Thanksgiving:








I have no pictures of my husband from Thanksgiving because he's generally on the other side of the camera. But I guarantee that if you shrunk him and put him in a diaper, he would look exactly like THIS:

I don't have any cute shots of my kids in Halloween costumes, as Carter refused to wear one and pitched a massive fit when we attempted to finagle him into both Cookie Monster and Dinosaur ensembles, so instead I stuck him in some plaid and overalls, let him carry his dump truck around, and called him a farmer. Behold:


He had a stuffed chicken and carrot too, but apparently he deemed them unworthy of schlepping about. I felt like a pretty crappy parent when we arrived at preschool to find EVERY other kid completely decked out in full-on Halloween costume regalia, but this just proves my theory that 1) my kid is an individual, and 2) my kid is the most stubborn creature alive.

Griffin was decked out in a Halloween sleeper and pumpkin hat, because, well, I'm just not that creative (oops...didn't even get a shot of the aforementioned pumpkin hat - alas):


Our attempt to go trick-or-treating was a massive failure - Carter wasn't remotely interested and by that point was beginning to get lethargic and croupy, plus, we evidently have the WORST neighborhood on earth for trick-or-treating anyway. We wandered around for awhile in search of pumpkins, other kids, or some small semblance of festivities, but there was NADA. Boo hiss, West Hollywood. Next year we'll drive to Beverly Hills and get Godiva and Rolexes in our plastic pumpkins.

What was NOT a massive failure? The dozens and dozens of sugar cookies that I made for Carter's preschool - pumpkins, ghosts and bats (two different sizes). At 11pm on October 30th as I stood in the kitchen frosting all those motherf-ers, I was wondering why I had been so ambitious. However, they turned out well and the kids ate 'em up. Sometimes I think maternity leave is really just one big excuse to bake. 'Tis the season!

Croup, and How Much It Sucks

What's more fun than a trip to the ER with a vomiting toddler with a 105-degree fever who can hardly breathe??

A trip to urgent care two days later with a feverish newborn.

YEEEEEHAH!!

So went our week, beginning Tuesday, when, after a sick day at home, Carter awoke in the early evening with extremely labored breathing, a hacking cough, buckets of vomit, and a scorching fever. Max rushed him to the ER, where they stayed for the next five hours as he received oxygen, steroids, and other good stuff like that. Croup, they said.

CROUP IS A BITCH.

He's recovering well, I am happy to report. Fever is almost gone, cough (which sounded soooo classically croupy and seal-like) is much improved. Doctor says he can return to school on Monday. Little G is fine too - urgent care checked him out and said that as long as the mild fever stays under 100.4, we're okay. 100.4 and up merits another trip to the ER. Today he was in the 99's (fingers crossed and wood knocking, th-th-th over my shoulder).

Fortunately, I have not been alone in this madness, as my husband has been working short days and my awesome mother-in-law has been coming to help. I cannot imagine doing it alone, as keeping sick, coughing Carter occupied and separated from his (mostly healthy th-th-th) little brother as much as possible for entire days is no easy task. It's been a crash course in HOLY CRAP we have two kids now!!?!? Like Sara said, it's NO JOKE, people. Sheesh.

So it's been a rough couple of weeks, with mastitis giving way to croupiness and general mayhem. But as if to make up for it, my sweet little Finnster slept for 6.5 hours IN A ROW last night. Huzzah!

How I Met Your Father

Dear Boys,

As I write this, you are both still small. You won't care about this story just yet, as your days are spent plotting how to steal Mommy's phone in order to watch tractor videos, or snorting hungrily in the general direction of Mommy's boobs every two minutes (you know who you are).

But one day, you'll want to know how Mommy and Daddy met, and how you subsequently came to be. And this is what I'll tell you.

First, you should know that we live in Los Angeles. Now, Los Angeles is a nice place to live and has many wonderful qualities, but "ideal for locating quality individual with which to fall in love and subsequently marry" is not amongst them. It is the home of the struggling actor, the fledgling musician, the wayward drifter, and Mommy was growing tired of sifting through these bums and lowlifes. She knew your daddy was out there - she just didn't know how to find him.

This is where your Grandma comes in. See, your Grandma is a very smart lady, and as much as I hate to admit it, she's usually right (USUALLY, Mom). One day, Grandma made the keen observation that Mommy would never be able to marry someone who cannot spell and use proper grammar, so perhaps she should try online dating. That way, she pointed out, Mommy could see right away who could use the English language properly and who should have paid better attention in elementary school.

Mommy had to agree that Grandma had a point, so she set aside her long-held suspicions that internet dating was reserved only for trolls, losers and the socially maladjusted, and created a profile on a dating site.

Dudes started emailing Mommy. Most were perverts and/or could not distinguish between "your" and "you're." Mommy ignored them. One day, when she happened to be out of town visiting Grandma, they were sitting in their favorite coffee shop when an email popped up from a new prospective internet suitor. Only this one was different. The note, although fairly inane ("What are you doing for the fourth of July? I am going to a rock climbing gym"), was properly spelled and punctuated. The profile listed a love of wine, tortilla chips and jazz (um, have you MET Mommy??). And attached to the profile was a photo of a very, very handsome man - your future daddy.

"Look at this one," Mommy told Grandma. Grandma took one look and said "write him back." Mommy protested that it cost $19.99 to write him, since she had only signed up for the free trial and therefore could only receive emails, not reply to them (did I mention that Mommy is a cheapass?). "Write him back," Grandma said, and handed Mommy a twenty.

So write him Mommy did. But she didn't hear back. Nothing. For days. Weeks, even. One day she went on his profile. On the page there was a section that said "Number of messages you have sent this user: 1" and then "Number of messages this user has sent you: 3."

Huh? Three messages? Mommy had only received ONE, boys. Was he sending messages that she wasn't receiving? Was the internet conspiring against Mommy and Daddy?

She promptly emailed him again, in a last ditch effort to meet this cute chip-loving, wine-swilling jazz fan. She told him that she hoped she didn't sound like a stalker, but it seemed that perhaps he was sending her messages she wasn't receiving, and if that was the case, well, let's fix it because maybe we will meet and fall in love and have beautiful babies together one day (okay, she didn't actually say that last part. Mommy is pretty forward, but that's just ridiculous).

And you know what? This time, he wrote Mommy back and she GOT it. And she wrote back, a really witty, silly, snarky email in true Mommy fashion. And then he wrote again. And on and on it went, back and forth, for several weeks, until one day we had our very first date.

We went to Mexican food. We ate chips. We drank margaritas. We laughed a lot and talked too loud, and people at the tables next to us stared. Your daddy said to them "This is our first date - how do you think it's going??"

Afterwards, we wandered tipsily into the parking lot. Daddy started to say that he'd had such a great time, yadda yadda. And Mommy said "Is it over already?" because she is forward like that, as we have already established. So off we went, down the street to the famous Dresden Room to hear Marty and Elayne butcher some jazz classics. Mommy spilled wine on her shirt, and Daddy tried to kiss her and she wouldn't let him.

And then she did.

Later we sat in Mommy's car on the street and talked for a long time, our faces bathed in the glow of a dim streetlamp on that warm August night. Mommy doesn't remember exactly what we discussed, but by then she thought that maybe she was going to marry that man one day.

Daddy called her the very next day. He said "This might be weird, but what are you doing tonight?" So we went out again, on another marathon date, with dim candlelit and french food. We decided to be honest, to put all our flaws out there, on the table, so we wrote them down on the paper tablecloth - one column for Mommy and one for Daddy. Mommy still has it. Among other things, it says "Paige: can't make decisions" and "Max: procrastinator." Some things never change, boys.

And as we sat in the moonlight in Mommy's car that night, she was quite certain that she had finally found your father.

Just over a year later, Mommy and Daddy got all dressed up and stood in front of their families and friends and told them all about their hopes and dreams.

That was four years ago today, on a perfect autumn evening.



We didn't know what the world had in store for us. We were just kids.


We didn't know that we would be lucky enough to have two perfect little boys to share our lives.


We didn't know that we would be so happy, or so tired.


But here we are. All of us - our little family - together.


So my boys, I promise that I will do my best to teach you, love you, protect you, and help you become strong, kind and smart.

But if there's one thing I know is true, it is this: if you grow up to be one shred of the man your father is, you are very lucky little boys indeed.

Happy Anniversary, LOML. Thank you for our beautiful life.
Oh, and you still owe Grandma twenty bucks.

Mastitis, and How Much It Sucks

To say I'm a hypochondriac would be a slight understatement.

Just after Griffin was born, I noticed a spot on my face. It had always been there, or at least it had been there as long as I was really conscious of examining my face for flaws, which is to say AWHILE, and had never really bothered me. Yet suddenly, standing in the bathroom, unwashed, smelly, leaky, hormonal, I was absolutely certain that it was cancer. I rushed to the dermatologist (okay, I waited three weeks for an appointment, but by damn I entered that office quickly yesterday) demanding to have it checked. It was, of course, nothing (or a "subcute-something-blahblah-whatsit" according to the doctor). Ah.

A couple of days ago I was nursing Griffin when I glanced down and noticed a dark brown birthmark on his head, partially hidden in his impressive spread o' baby hair. The five seconds that followed went something like this in my brain: "What the-? A MOLE? Oh sweet jesus, it's melanoma. MY BABY HAS MELANOMA. Did he get too much sun at the pumpkin patch? Did he get ANY sun at the pumpkin patch?!?? Did the sun penetrate through his blanket, his stroller AND his hat and give him cancer at the pumpkin patch??"

Then I poked at it. It smeared. Chocolate. Oops.

So yeah, I get a wee bit neurotic about health issues (especially skin-related stuff - who hates the sun? I do! I do!). Fortunately, 99.99% of the time, my concerns prove to be unfounded.

HOWEVER.

When that .01% of my worries prove ACCURATE, it basically sends my mental universe into a freefall of "See?? SEE??? I KNEW IT!!" death, destruction, apocalypse, total shittiness

So you can imagine my reaction on Saturday after our trip to the pumpkin patch, when I started feeling a little under the weather - aches, chills, fever, crankiness, and um, WHAT THE HELL is wrong with my right boob??

Mastitis, bitches. That's what.

I kept it together long enough to call a doctor friend and have her call in an antibiotics prescription for me at the pharmacy. No, I will NOT mess around with natural remedies when it comes to my boobs and my precious milk supply. Plus, everything I read said that by the time it had progressed to fever (of 101.5, mind you) it was indeed a full blown infection and therefore required DRUGS! GIVE 'EM!

I'm only a few days into the ten-day prescription, and already feeling fairly normal, save for some residual breast soreness and swelling. But that swelling? See, I've convinced myself that it's an abscess. I am certain that I am in the .5% of women whose mastitis has gone unchecked long enough to develop into an abscess, so of course I will require surgery, etc etc etc crazypants etc. Never you mind that I realized what was happening and started treating it within hours of feeling crappy. Abscess! IT COULD HAPPEN!

Deep breath. Breathe in calm, breathe out stress. Thank you, hypnobirthing.

The ironic part of this is that mastitis is largely caused by milk stasis, which is when there is just TOO MUCH DAMN MILK in the boob and it's not adequately removed by the baby. So even though my kid is ginormous and nurses constantly, even he cannot quell the overproduction in my craaaaazy efficient right boob. I had deliberately not been pumping, or at least not pumping like a crazy fiend like I did with Carter, because I wanted to give myself a break and NOT necessarily ensure such a massive milk supply that I could feed a village of kids. I just wanted enough for one! That's it! So if I didn't pump as much, eventually it would stop producing so much, right?

Wrong, apparently. Or right, but only after said right boob TOTALLY SCREWS YOU in the mastitis department.

Sigh.

Well, this has just been all rainbows and unicorns, now hasn't it? Sorry, folks. It's not me, it's the boob talking.

Miss Mary Sunshine, signing off.

Hot damn. Just a quick note to boast about my massive baby. We just had Griffin's four-week appointment at the pediatrician, and the boy is 10 lbs, 8 oz. That means he has gained TWO pounds (okay, 1 lb 14 oz, but close enough) since his last appointment two weeks ago. Two pounds in two weeks! He's in the 75th percentile for both weight AND height. Carter has been 10-25th percentile for his entire young life, so this is new to me. Let's hear it for the boobies, people.

...and now, because I want to zone out and watch some television before the baby wakes up, I leave you with two cute pictures of my awesome older son:

Baby Fashion Showdown!

Let's get all Us Weekly up in here, people! Who wore it better?!

Carter in Silly Goose (9 weeks):


Griffin in Silly Goose (almost 3 weeks):


Carter in Duck Jammies (8 weeks):


Griffin in Duck Jammies (2 weeks):



Carter in I Heart Daddy (5 weeks):


Griffin in I Heart Daddy (3 weeks):


Yes, I am going to have a LOT of fun with this...