Tonight, we didn’t get going on bedtime till an hour later than usual. Elliora was overtired and resisted sleep for an hour or more, with much whining and crying and squirming around. She nursed and then got mad when I tried to snuggle with her. I put her down in her bed, and she relaxed for a few seconds before getting mad, and sitting up and crying. I tried putting her down in the pack’n'play and rubbing her back while singing to her, and got the same reaction.

After about an hour of going around and around in this way, I was so exasperated that I did something completely ridiculous. I sat with my legs crossed and laid Elliora down on her tummy across my lap, her head on one knee, and patted her back. She calmed down almost immediately and was asleep in less than a minute. My reaction could be summed up thusly: What the–!?

BABIES.

Remember, I’m not far away from 10,000 comments (real ones, not counting spam) on this blog, and the 10,000th commenter is going to win a prize—maybe a piece of pottery of their choice, or perhaps something crocheted, or maybe something else entirely—just as a “thank you” for all for the great comments over the past four years. Keep commenting, and YOU could be lucky #10,000!

October 2: Annalie’s been doing a lot of drawing on her easel chalkboard lately. I thought this one, of a pear on a branch, was particularly good.

October 3: Class in in session. (Homeschooling can be kind of awesome. In our dress code, pajamas and bedhead are perfectly acceptable attire.)

I looked out the window of Elliora’s room and saw four deer across the street in our neighbor’s yard. (One of the deer is just to the left of frame, behind a bush, so I didn’t bother trying to get it in the shot.)

October 4: I couldn’t get Elliora to lie on the couch for our monthly photo session; she kept rolling away. I tried to sneak some photos in one day when Katy happened to be in her bedroom while we were in there playing, but I couldn’t get Elliora to look at me for a single photo. Oh well. This is very representative of 10 months.

We got a new chair from our neighbors who were getting rid of it after it didn’t sell at their garage sale. Elliora loves it and has already figured out how to push it up against the couch and use it to climb up.

October 5: Troy had to come home on a lunch break. I grabbed the opportunity to take a photo of him and the girls. (He normally wears civilian clothes on his commute and changes into his uniform at work, so we don’t see him in uniform very often.)

Elliora, just reading in her chair.

October 6: My friend Carrie, who is married to a Swede and used to live in Sweden, mentioned that October 4th is National Cinnamon Bun Day in Sweden, which inspired me to try making some tasty Swedish cinnamon buns, also called Kanelbullar. I knew that Swedish pearl sugar I bought just because it was pretty would come in handy someday.

I went painting pottery with both girls, and all things considered, I won’t be doing that again anytime soon. I managed to keep Elliora entertained and paint at the same time but it was exhausting.

I painted this sign (“NO WHINING. Kthx.“) for my friend Katie as an unbirthday gift for her to hang in her high-school English classroom.

October 7: Elliora decided that her toy basket looked like a comfortable place to sit.

October 8: We were invited over to our neighbors’ for pizza and the last swim of the summer in their pool. I was sitting in their living room when I glanced out the window and saw they had “Live long and prosper” painted along the inside of the fascia on their front porch, so you’d see it as you walk out the door. I’ve been over there a half-dozen times and never noticed it before.

Elliora on the left at 10 months; Annalie on the right at 17 months, in 2005.

October 10: Elliora has discovered a love of being underneath tables. We’ve discovered how many gross things and choking hazards normally live underneath our tables.

October 11: Elliora has also discovered the basket by our fireplace where we keep firewood and old newspapers. She takes her job of spreading every last sheet of newspaper around the room at least once a day very seriously.

Speaking of Trekkies, Elliora looks adorable in her ThinkGeek Starfleet Academy Cadet onesie, don’t you agree?

October 12: It’s really hard to make mashed-potato casserole look pretty.

October 13: I love it when geeky friends come bearing geeky gifts. Well, technically Laura painted the bowl on the left for me because I painted a dottery bowl for her with a BBT quote (which I never got a photo of, I just realized). And Sonja mailed the bowl (with quotes from the song Friends Forever in the Scrubs episode “My Musical”) to me, she didn’t give it to me in person. But the point stands.

October 14: These apple-pie cookies (via smitten kitchen) were extremely delicious. I kind of want to go make another complicated, time-consuming batch right this very second.

October 15: Elliora getting a taste of fall. (Har har.)

October 17: Rainbow sparkly fingernails! The polish (Rainbow Connection, natch) is from the OPI Muppet collection. It made me happy every time I glanced at my hands. Too bad it chipped and peeled so easily. But I’ve been told I should try a base coat next time and that might help.

October 18: Elliora is a climbing fool.

October 19: We went on a leaf walk for science, collecting red and gold leaves and talking about why trees change color in the fall. Annalie copied a list of words for handwriting practice and just to help her learn the words. I threw a couple of pictures in there and told her to write the words for the pictures. The picture for #6 was a tree, and I had to laugh when I saw how Annalie had spelled it. When I pointed her mistake out to her, Annalie thought it was pretty funny too. She said, “I don’t know what I was thinking. I know how to spell ‘tree!’”

The other day, I had put my hair in Velcro rollers while Elliora was napping in the hope that I could coax my two-days-since-washing hair look a little more lively. When she woke up I had yet to take them out. Her reaction to seeing them when she woke up was pretty funny. First she was a little scared. Then, she realized it was still Mama under there.

See how she’s patting my chest? She does that when she’s happy and I’m holding her. It’s like her way of saying, I got my mama riiiight here, it’s all good.

I see these things on your head, Mother. Whatever could they be for?

And there you are in the mirror, with those funny things still on your head.

Wait, am I freaked out by this? Hmm, perhaps I am….nah, I’m not. It’s just funny.

Friday wrapped up another fantastic run of 7 Days. I wasn’t really in the mood on Day 1 last weekend. But as usual the week of taking self-portraits; viewing everyone else’s creative, silly, honest, fun shots; and commenting up a storm worked its magic and brought me right out of my funk. It’s a fact: 7 Dayers are the defunkifyingest group on Flickr. I’m already looking forward to the next one in December.

This was my alternate for Day 7. I felt left out of all the dottery photos, so I took a photo of me, drinking my tea, looking out at the rain. This photo has two 7 Days connections: I was with Lauren C. when I painted this mug, and the tea that I’m drinking is the PG Tips that Lauren H gave me when we met up with her last summer.

Just for kicks, here’s a short video I shot at the Ontario airport in California last month, right after Elliora learned to play peekaboo. It cracks me up how she doesn’t quite get that she needs to cover her face for this game to work, though she’s gotten better since then.

Part of the reason I’m randomly posting this second video now is because I was scrolling through old blog posts today, looking for one I was sure I’d written about our three-day power outage last January when my parents were here…and I didn’t find it because I never wrote it. I also never wrote about Elliora’s baptism and Rachel coming to visit! I can’t believe how many things have gone unblogged in the past year. Sheesh. I need to just start blogging things, even if the posts aren’t well-organized and the photos aren’t all edited and uploaded yet.

While we’re being random, we might as well end this post with an adorable photo of Elliora and Annalie driving a grocery cart at the store recently.

Just for kicks and out of curiosity, today I kept a log of my day.

Today I spent 698 minutes between 7am and 1am caring for my kids. And today was pretty easy, aside from the fact that Troy didn’t get home till almost 8pm. Neither of the girls were overtired or sick, and my cough is almost gone and I’m feeling better. Everyone was in a pretty good mood all day. There were no tantrums or lost tempers.

Still, I spent nearly 12 hours nursing Elliora, preparing food, cleaning up after meals, changing diapers, attending Annalie’s gymnastics class, getting Elliora to sleep at various points during the day, encouraging Annalie as she did her chores, and just playing and talking and being a mom.

I’m taking two big things away from this exercise: (1) No wonder I’m so flipping tired all the time! That’s a lotta hours for an extraverted introvert like me to be on duty and around people, even two of the people I love most; and (2) I’m never feeling guilty about not blogging* or not getting laundry done again, not while my kids are little. Clearly I have more important things to be doing.

*That doesn’t mean I still won’t wish I had more time to blog, though. Just today I had great ideas for two blog posts—even took photos for one of them—but didn’t manage to download the photos to my laptop or write a single word of either one. Oh well.

Heh. Not really, of course. But doesn’t it look like Elliora is getting ready to catch a mini-Annalie!? This cracked us up when we saw it.

Can anyone out there think of a better, more hilarious caption? There might be a prize in it for you if you come up with a really good one. Maybe some dottery or something crocheted. Wow me, I dare you!

(DISCLAIMER, because I know some of you are looking at this photo and thinking, “Aack!”: No babies were harmed during the taking of this photo. It was safer than it looks. We have a king-size bed, and Elliora was on one corner with me right next to her, while Annalie jumped straight up and landed on the pillow in the opposite corner, about six feet away. Elliora wasn’t even jostled.)

“She’s as happy as a clam…actually, I’m not sure if clams can even BE happy.”
9:51 AM Feb 1st

Singing, “So I came to Alabama with a banjo on my knee, a banjo on my knee, a banjo on my knee, oh I came to Alabama with a banjo on my knee!”
3:06 PM Feb 3rd

“Mom, if you gave Elliora that bracelet when she’s older, then she would have an accessory that was her birthstone.”
1:33 AM Feb 5th

“Glab is a secret word, meaning GLAMOROUS.”
12:17 PM Feb 6th

“You might not be aware of this, but throwing up when you have no food in your stomach really HURTS.”
4:03 PM Feb 8th

“I really am a complex girl, because I’m an American.”
5:22 PM Feb 9th

“Ooh! Stunning flavor on my tongue.”
8:31 PM Feb 12th

“Who can resist the cheesy goodness of a cheese puff!? I certainly can’t.”
11:32 AM Feb 14th

“You know what they say: that dry-erase board ain’t gonna erase itself!”
10:47 AM Feb 15th

“Huh. My pine-cone-wild-onion air freshener didn’t work out the way I thought it would.”
1:10 PM Feb 16th

“Aw, that chicken joke is a cluck-sic. Get it? Instead of ‘classic’ I said ‘CLUCK-sic, because it’s about a chicken! Hahahaha!”
12:12 PM Feb 17th

“Ah. Nothing like eating some dry toast in your Snuggie.”
10:52 AM Feb 18th

RT @bethanyactually: “Mom, can I borrow your camera, go outside & take pictures?” http://twitpic.com/41633o
12:54 PM Feb 18th

(after going into the men’s room with Troy to wash her hands) “It smelled like a zoo in there!”
1:57 PM Feb 20th

“Oh dear. My dolphin has red eyes, a fever of 100, and tired tail. She’s going to need bandages, lots of rest, and ice cream.”
2:45 PM Feb 22nd

“You know, for an Australian, Lauren is pretty all right.”
10:56 AM Feb 23rd

“I think I better have Joe-Joe’s for lunch, because the cans are stacking up!”
9:15 AM Feb 24th

doing modern dance in my pj’s with a four-foot plush dolphin
4:32 PM Feb 24th

“I’m an everywhere veterinarian. That’s a vet who travels around the world to help animals.”
4:34 PM Feb 27th

“Elliora, will you be my sister FOR LIFE?”
12:43 PM Feb 28th

By the time I went down, Annalie was already chattering away on the phone. I waved at Annalie through the glass door of the booth, she smiled and gave me a thumbs-up sign, and I went back upstairs.

Several hours later, our land line rang. When I glanced at the number on the caller ID I noticed that the prefix was 402, which is Omaha’s area code. I thought that was funny, but didn’t otherwise recognize the caller, who was calling from our 703 area code.

I answered the phone, and the woman on the other end gave me her name, then said someone from our number had called her and she was wondering why, since she didn’t recognize our number. I had the fleeting though that it was odd for her to have called me back, in that case. Out loud, I replied that I didn’t think anyone had called her. I asked her to repeat her name, and confirmed that I didn’t know her.

Slightly confused, I asked what the person on the message had said. She explained there had been no message, just a number on her caller ID.

Then the 402 prefix of her number on my caller ID flashed into my mind, and I realized what must have happened. I apologized and said that when my daughter was calling her grandma earlier that day, she must have dialed the wrong number.

After I hung up, I asked Annalie if she’d dialed a wrong number earlier before she called Gramaw. She said, “Well, I was dialing the right number, but the first time I dialed it, it started ringing before I was done dialing the number!”

I checked our caller ID again. My mom’s number is 402-XYZ-ABCD. This woman’s number was 703-402-XYZA. Because Vonage doesn’t require you to dial a 1- before a long-distance call, it must have read a pause in Annalie’s dialing to mean it was a local call.

I told Annalie, from now on when she calls Gramaw, dial a 1- before the area code.

.

You know, I like a challenge. Challenges keep life interesting.

Give birth weeks before Christmas? No problem.

Spend hours sitting on the couch nursing a newborn when I’d normally be decorating the house, shopping and baking, wrapping presents and getting packages ready to ship? Sure, one Christmas that’s a little less festive than usual won’t kill us, and next year I can do all those things again.

Host a stream of out-of-town guests in the weeks before and after the baby’s birth? Hey, the more the merrier! We love company, and everyone will understand if the house is a little messy under the circumstances.

Of course I’d be happy to help you out with your Christmas card, Mom. I should be able to design it for you in only an evening or two, especially if you’ll hold Elliora for me. Hmm, it seems like she’d rather be held by her mama. And she wants to nurse and doze on me for five hours straight? All righty, I can use Photoshop one-handed; it just might take me a bit longer, that’s all.

Come down with my second cold in a month, really? Okay…I guess I’m usually sick this time of year anyway. I can deal with a cold. We might need to go buy a new humidifier, though, because ours died last week. And maybe pick up some saline nasal spray and a couple boxes of those tissues with lotion in them.

Wait, what!? PINKEYE, seriously? Sigh.

I guess I’d better let Bekah know that she probably doesn’t want to bring her family here to spend the night before their early-morning flight out of DC to spend Christmas with family in Wisconsin. The last thing she needs is for me to pass on an eye infection to all her kids right before Christmas. Man, Annalie’s going to be pretty disappointed when I tell her about the cancelled plans in the morning. She was really looking forward to a sleepover with her friends.

At least while I’m spending all this time nursing the baby and getting healthy again, I’ll stay busy. I mean, if I didn’t need to address all our Christmas cards, write baby-gift thank-you notes, package up and ship the handful of Christmas New Year presents we’re sending to family, help Annalie make the cinnamon-dough ornaments I promised her we could make, take self-portraits every day this week, and try to keep up with commenting on the other 7 Dayers’ photos with my one-handed typing, I might get bored!

Honestly, I just keep laughing. What’s next, a broken arm? A surprise visit from my Aunt Mildred and her 13 kids and three incontinent dogs? You better believe I’m being extra-careful lately—holding handrails on the stairs and walking around any ice—and saying a prayer of thanks that I don’t actually have an Aunt Mildred. I’m also saying prayers of thanks that my mom is still here, still in good health, and doing all my laundry for me.

It’s also worth mentioning that I feel like a walking experiment for home remedies today. Because I’m breastfeeding, I’m trying not to take cold meds unless I absolutely need to. I’ve gone through almost two whole boxes of tissue and half a bottle of saline nasal spray in the past two days. I’ve taken hot, steamy showers. I have drunk gallons of water and hot peppermint tea with organic raw honey stirred into it. I’ve taken extra vitamin C and swallowed a chopped-up clove of raw garlic (like taking pills, with a glass of water). I’ve stood over a steaming pot of water and apple cider vinegar. I’ve put warm compresses and chamomile tea bags on my eye. And finally, in the Possibly More Than You Wanted To Know category, I’ve put a few drops of breastmilk in my eye. I think it was my friend Lynn who told me about that trick a few years ago. Lucky for me, I just happened to be lactating when I got pinkeye for the first time since I was a teenager, eh?

Basically, I surrender. If you need me before 2011, I’ll be right here in the corner of the couch, addressing envelopes and snuggling with my girls in between one-handedly typing comments on Flickr. Hey, as long as you’re up, can you refill my water cup and bring me a banana? Thanks.