{anatomist}

fuck, man.

i don't know where to begin. i snuck out of the house, after everyone else was in bed, and got drinks with an old friend for the first time in 6 years. we drank too much and i heard all the nasty details of his life and i regained a little bit of something i had been missing. a little validation that so many things i thought in the end were true. it was good and otis was there smelling of the barbeque joint, the old men sat at the end of the bar, leering at the smokey, raspy laughing women in the booth.

i was reminded of how happy i am now, how in the end i wouldn't have it any other way. 

and i was reminded of how incredible things have been, how high, how manic, how mind blowingly beautiful and tragic and i think i broke open something trying to feel it all at once.

then my mother called and told me she has breast cancer.

and yesterday i got on the bus with a notebook and transcripts and mulled around with all the 19 year olds learning how to fill out the paperwork that will get me into art school.

i'm exhausted and i don't think that any pictures can sum up what i am feeling. so i'll give you something simple.

this kid has attitude.

some things with no particular theme or order.

1. he hates the stroller. refuses to be entertained in it and won't be satisfied in the ergo either. he only wants to be crawling. but really, we have to leave the house sometime. we managed a 2 hour walk today (seriously! 2 hours! a miracle!) with only minimal screaming which was amazing. i had to carry him the last 20 blocks home though. i really miss the days when he considered the stroller a fine place to sleep and we could have nice long quiet walks through the neighborhood. now we are running out of sun and i want to take advantage of the last of it, but he isn't having it.

2. speaking of sun, it is f-ing beautiful out!

3. tom and i have arranged a babysitting swap with our wonderful neighbors and last friday we went to oliver's twist and had amazing cocktails and popcorn with truffle oil. now i need to go buy some truffle oil and put it on everything. i want lentil soup with truffle oil.

4. i left the house yesterday to go for a long walk, thinking hours on the road with my head phones would ready me for the week and stopped at evilcat's for a minute and discovered the pumpkin carving party i had forgotten about. so i carved a semi recognizable barack-o-lantern. (which i can't post a picture of because typepad sucks and wont stop rotating my damn pictures to landscape. argh. never mind, found one already landscape.)

5. aaaand, jack is now crying to get out of his crib, after only a half hour nap. dammit! but i wanted to talk about the new little project i started:

i can't stop watching this. it is just so, so, incredibly good.

i just made a fantastic dinner

i spent hours in the kitchen and back and forth to the store making makhani butter chicken and saffron-cardamom rice. and holy god was it good. just like proper spicy tasty flavorful indian food that you get at the good restaurants. i am extremely proud. topped off with coconut bliss with raspberries and a rhubarb dry soda and now i am just floating on a food high.

more baby talk

you guys are great! i was starting to feel like i was doing j a disservice by not letting him wander around the house freely more often so it is so wonderful to know that you guys have had the same issues.
it is definitely winter coming on that has me thinking about this. that and the fact that he is so close to walking. next week we are hoping to by some furniture that will help (and that we have wanted for a long while), so maybe i will freak out about it less then.
we are cleaning out the garage today and i found a couple of boxes of pre-baby clothes. i was so pleased to discover that most of them still fit, but unfortunately they are mostly crap and i am tired of them. so now i have to change my mindset from looking forward to getting back into the old clothes and somehow figure out how to afford some nice new clothes.
i found a whole pile of clothes for jack too, but it looks like we will be out of hand-me-downs in a few months. i think around 2T the boy cousins started really wearing through their clothes, and since jack is the 5th boy, there isn't a lot of fabric left in them. i'll have to start actually hitting those toddler clothes sales. i think that maybe there is a part of me that isn't too disappointed about that.

baby proofing

ok, all you people out there with kids: how the hell do you babyproof?
we have a big open floorplan and i have had to arrange the furniture so that jack can't get out of the living room area. otherwise he is all over the house and into the few little things that are impossible to make baby friendly (like the open closet that i have tried to babygate but he can reach over into the mops and dog gear and things, or the bedroom with all tom's pocket change and other choking hazards strewn about.) it doesn't help that we have two dogs roaming around, so i try to keep jack away from the big one all the time and give the little one the option of running away. we also have the issue of trying to keep the dogs out of jack's room so that not every surface is coated in dog hair, not to mention the little dog's habit of marking his territory when he is annoyed as well as eating stuffed animals (which jack has a large collection of, yet remains mostly uninterested in so maybe i should just forget that battle). plus, there are cords. i mean, mostly we try to hide them away, but we only have so many outlets, so some cords have to stretch along entire walls. i've tried taping them down, but he just peels up the tape, sticks it to himself, attempts to eat it, and then yanks the cord merrily.
i go to other houses with toddlers and their children are happily wandering around, following their parents and ignoring all the outlets, pet dishes, dvd players and such. how do they do that? do i just have one of those kids? if i let him roam around will he eventually be like that? i want to be able to function without just sitting in the living room with him watching him move blocks in and out of the box.
at this point i just wish someone would come over and fix my house for me so that everything is safe for him. but that is so rediculous!
next topic: climbing. also: screaming (what the hell? why does he just stand in front of me all day screaming and signing for milk? when i just nursed him?)
seriously, i need answers, advice, commiseration, tell me i am doing everything all wrong if you want, i'll take anything right now!