So much fun

On Sunday, our friends' daughter turned 1. To celebrate, they had a big birthday party at the Little Gym.

This was Micah's first time at the Little Gym, and he had a blast. He loved all the blocks and ramps, and several times climbed up onto the 4-foot-high balance beam all by himself while our backs were turned. The catchable bubbles and all the different balls scattered around were a big hit too.

Micah enjoyed the cake and ice cream of course, but I think we could have left him in the gym and he wouldn't have cared. Between the parachute, the bubbles, and all the stuff to climb on, I'm pretty sure he thought he was in toddler heaven. Poor Todd spent most of the party keeping our child's skull unfractured, although he did get to play with the parachute while Micah ran around everyone shrieking with happiness.

And me? I got to spend a whole hour and a half snapping pictures of my friends and their adorable daughter having a blast and celebrating a major milestone. I honestly can't think of a better way to spend a Sunday afternoon.

Note the implements of torture to his right

This week, I'm going the single-parent route. In the evenings, our typical arrangement is for one parent to cook dinner while the other parent keeps the child from freaking the hell out and/or climbing into the oven or something. But with Todd gone, all I can do is throw the baby in the Cage of Despair while I work to destroy his every hope and dream (or, you know, FEED HIM).

Warm afternoon

Well, it's gone now, but Spring was here for a little while last week. We took advantage of its brief visit by heading outside to play and opening the windows so the cats could bask in the sun.

Still, even though it's been gray, rainy, and cold all week, there are small signs of Spring everywhere. It's just been too miserable to get out with a camera and go looking for them.

New toy!

Dude, I have NO IDEA what happened with this site the last few days. I think they just kind of forgot to renew the domain name, but it also could have been a problem with the warp drive or maybe the annular confinement beam. Whatever, it was probably over my head. Look, I play in dirt for living, okay?

In the meantime, I've been having a blast playing with this site that converts pictures to "old pictures."

Come on, you know you want to try it.

Results

"That is what my teachers and parents were trying to tell me when they said life isn't fair. It wasn't actually about who got to sit in the front seat of the car or who got to stay up late. It was about the big, unpredictable things. The things that actually matter but that our young minds couldn't comprehend and our parents and teachers hoped we would never have to face." - Portraits in Sepia

The baby was a triploid pregnancy; 69 chromosomes instead of 46. Also, thanks to all that extra genetic material, it might have been a partial molar pregnancy, meaning I get to spend the next six months to a year being jabbed every month to watch my HCG levels. Doc believes in erring on the side of caution. This also means that for the next six months to a year, it would be profoundly stupid to get knocked up. You know, if we decided we wanted to roll the dice again any time soon. On the upside, I won't have an excuse to lay out of the October PE exam.

So, this whole painful episode was just another relatively rare and random event. Nothing I did or didn't do, nothing wrong with me or Todd. It was just our day in the barrel. Again.

Unfair? You bet. Also unfair? That lottery ticket we bought, feeling like the universe owed us another big statistical improbability? Yeah, still not filthy rich.

The Truck Book is made of magic

During our visit to Atlanta, Todd's mother gave Micah an old book of Todd's. The Truck Book has pictures of all kinds of trucks and construction equipment, along with descriptions of what the different trucks do. Micah spent most of Saturday morning going from person to person, asking them to read him the book over and over and over. I handed it back to him during the 4-hour drive home yesterday, and he spent over 30 minutes paging through it, "reading" it aloud, commenting on the pictures, and making the sound effects.

The Truck Book from Sarah Y. on Vimeo.

The child LOVES dump trucks, and he's a big fan of "tractors," meaning any piece of yellow construction equipment. I can't help but wonder if it's a result of all the construction sites he was exposed to in utero. Or maybe it's just a Y chromosome thing?

Now I will feed him chicken for every meal

Wednesday, Todd called me from his car just after picking Micah up from daycare.

"Listen to this. Micah, what did you have for lunch today?"

In the background I hear this little voice pipe up: "Bawk-bawk!"

Apparently, they had chicken for lunch that day. Bawk-bawk. I pretty much died right there on the spot, because COME ON. Bawk-bawk.

If you can't appreciate the cuteness via transcript, I managed to get a video of him saying it after they got home.

Chickens, owls, and dogs, oh my from Sarah Y. on Vimeo.

Please ignore the unpacked boxes in the background. We've taken the approach that if we're just going to move again in June, what's the point of unpacking anything we aren't actually using right this second?

Oh, and speaking of moving in June, they're still making progress on the house, but it's a little slower due to stuff like this:

Man, I can't wait for spring.

One (of many) my boss never needs to read

At work, I fidget, I surf the web, I start a report, I start another report, I get up to stretch, I sit back down and check my phone, I'm back up to walk, I'm back to start another project, I decide to clean up my desk, I'm back to surfing Flickr, I decide to fill out my calendar. I can't focus on anything and I can't complete a task to save my life. I desperately want to be somewhere else, doing something different, and I couldn't tell you what that might be.

Let's be honest. I don't care about work right now. I don't care about this client's permit or that client's report. I'm not interested in reading gobs of regulations to prepare a proposal. I feel a slight panic when I think about studying for the PE, but I don't really care about that either, even though I know I'll regret it in April. I should at least be using my time to study for the deposition that was recently moved up to March 16th, but guess what? I don't particularly give a shit.

THIS IS NOT NORMAL FOR ME.

I said before that it's harder this second time. That was at the beginning, in the immediate aftermath. Now I'm starting to realize just how difficult the next few weeks and months really could be. It's only been a week, I know, but I feel so much more beaten down than the first time. I haven't had time to work through the things I need to. I haven't had the space to sort out how I feel or to come to terms with it. I took my three days off, and now I'm supposed to be the good little productive engineer, but I just can't do it this time.

Things that make me smile

One, this boy (when he's not being feral):

Two, our house is suddenly coming along: