Starting over

The date of my first blog post at Pitas was January 22, 2001.  I've been posting there for eleven years and five months.  I have 133 archives, mostly by month.  That little blog follows me through three years of college, many all-nighters involving friends and concrete canoes, two Star Wars prequels, three relationships, my wedding, my first engineering job, two presidential elections, a series of remodeling projects, the death of my grandmother, my discovery of photography as a hobby, the birth of my son, two miscarriages, passing the PE exam, the birth of my daughter, and now life as a part-time working mom with two kids. That's a lot of baggage.

Pitas is really a terrible platform.  I've stayed there out of nostalgia, but Haloscan is shutting down in October and I like being able to get comments.  I'm not that good with HTML or CSS or whatever it is you kids are using these days, so it's time to hang it up and join a real blog community.

Maybe one day I'll manage to bring in my archives.  Or at least the ones that aren't so terribly embarassing.  You guys, I was 19 when I started that thing.  I was an idiot.

During Bathtime Tonight

"Mommy, where is your brain?"

"Well, it's right here inside my head. And you feel how hard your head is? That's your skull. It's made of bone and it's hard. It protects your brain!"

He gets a serious expression and thinks for a moment.

"From zombies?"

Christening

Way back on May 27, we had Aerin christened at the Church of the Nativity in downtown Huntsville. My cousin, Laura, flew all the way from Minnesota to be there as a godmother. Several other family members also came to visit for the first time. It was a really wonderful weekend and I'd write more, but Aerin's cutting a molar (we think) and needs to be rocked back to sleep. Again.

He also calls zucchini "spakhini"

Every year as part of the Week of the Young Child, Micah's daycare has a Wacky Tacky Day. We wanted to beat last year's getup, and I'd say we succeeded. The only thing missing here is his Thomas the Tank Engine sunglasses.

Micah had a blast at his daycare's Trike-a-thon. He rode that tricycle for a solid 45 minutes, around and around the loop in front of their building.

Every summer, Micah has at least a couple mosquito bites that cause the affected body part to swell up significantly within just a few hours. It's not an infection; it's just some sort of allergic reaction. The only thing I can figure is that there's one particular type of mosquito he's really allergic to and the rest of his bites are from other types.

This time he got one on his ear and I didn't get him dosed with the Benadryl fast enough, although I put hydrocortisone cream on it right away. He spent several hours awake that night from the pain. The next day, despite Benadryl and hydrocortisone cream, his ear was sticking straight out to the side and at least twice as thick as it should have been. It looked a little better the third night, so I took this picture in order to judge the next morning if the swelling was really going down. He's fine now.

  The other day Micah and Alex were quietly playing the playroom while I sat in Micah's room surfing Facebook. A while later he wandered in and told me he'd made a plane. Then he showed me this. He made it from scratch, all by himself, with no input from anyone. You can't tell me that's not pretty awesome.

For the record, he says it's a C-44. I'm pretty sure he means a C-141 Starlifter. He's been watching a lot of YouTube videos of cargo planes with Todd lately. Now that Aerin goes to bed at more or less the same time as Micah, Todd's been the one reading books and singing songs at night. A while back Todd started letting him watch one video in place of a book, and apparently movies of big-ass military transports landing and taking off are preschooler crack.

The other weekend while his cousins were over, out of nowhere, Micah told my sister he was worried about Alex swinging too high on the playset because Alex might "fly off into the stars, hit a pine tree, and TURN INTO A BEAR."

There's not much you can say after that.

I will have completely gray hair within a year

This week, during lunchtime at the daycare, Aerin choked on massive wad of half-chewed watermelon. She was packing it into her cheeks and just got it wedged wrong or something. We're talking blue lips, baby Heimlich, everyone panicked kind of choking.

When it comes to self-preservation, some babies are just nothing but FAIL.

In case you were wondering how Aerin got the bruises on her face in the last few photos, let me show you what we're dealing with here.