it’s not about you

I’ve decided to take a blog fast during my trip. I will not be posting, except possibly for Killian’s ten and eleven week posts. I still will be reading blogs and moderating comments, so feel free to gush over his pictures as much as you want.

This was an idea I had entertained a week or so ago - imagine that - and since I decided today that I’m not going to be taking my laptop with me on the trip (it’s one more thing I don’t want to haul around with two kids), it seemed fitting. I’m going to take a real vacation. And after posting my itinerary, come on, really, when am I gonna have time? And if you’d still like to fill in one of the empty slots, by all means, leave a comment, email me or call me.

We leave at five a.m. for the airport. I’m so afraid I’ll oversleep and be late and miss my flight and I don’t do going to the airport real well. It makes me nervous. I don’t mind flying, it’s the getting there that makes me crazy. Deep breath. Aaahhhhh….

So, until I come back home, I leave you with this:

Killian is nine weeks old today. I keep being told he looks like my brother Kyle. And it’s true. He kind of does. His nose is all his daddy, though.

He totally hit a growth spurt this past weekend, which explains all the nursing on the hour he was doing. The past couple of days he has considerably slowed down his eating habits and is now sleeping constantly - I guess he’s been storing up all the energy so he can sleep it off while he grows.

Which means I’ve been getting a lot done, more than usual, and also means my milk supply is freaking out and I’m now gigantic and engorged and am in the plugged-duct-on-the-way-to-mastitis stage. It hurts. I can’t lift my arm over my head. Luckily, I’ve been down this well-worn road before and am on top of it.

Tomorrow, he will get on a plane for the first time and will go to Texas to see his Granddad, Nana, and Papa, and meet his aunts and uncles and cousin for the first time, and the rest of his family as well. Many, many firsts starting tomorrow.

We’re pretty excited.

Wow. There are just so many things wrong with this, I don’t know where to start.

How about with the fact that over half of them are in the exact same pose? Check. If they’re gonna shoot a calendar, at least vary it up. They couldn’t come up with 12 different poses?

Say what you will, but the men and boys fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan are NOT fighting for our freedom. Our freedom was already fought for, back in what was called “The Revolutionary War.” They’re fighting, being wounded by the thousands, and dying, along with tens of thousands of innocent civilians, for someone’s ego, bully status, and God-complex. You can couch it in freedom terms all you want and sell your freedom fries and try to boycott luxury products that most Americans can’t even afford anyway and get everyone all amped up and patriotic, rah, rah, rah, but it reeks of trying to sell mayo for the same price in a smaller jar - something just doesn’t feel right about it.

I’m sorry, having Saddam Hussein out of power is the lesser of two evils? Really? I honestly don’t know which is worse. What’s the saying, “two wrongs don’t make a right?” Anyway, I digress. That’s a different blog post.

Now I think what the non-profit is for is great, aiding the wounded and their families, and the families of people killed in combat. That’s a noble goal. It’s just too bad that we wouldn’t need so much aid if this war had never been pre-emptively started in the first place.

It’s also too bad that the calendar itself that is raising money for support for wounded and killed troops isn’t bringing much awareness to those troops in the first place. Something tells me none of the wounded are going to make it into a beefcake calendar. Cause, you know, nobody wants to see that hanging on their wall, now do they? It might just cause them to be uncomfortable. And we can’t have that. We can’t have the reality.

No to mention the exploitation of the human body (and the military, good Lord). Just cause it’s men and not women doesn’t make it right. Yes, they can wear short shorts and they can rappel and they can tow inflatable rafts by hand and hold their big guns and pump iron and hold up their cammo tents and wear fatigues and face paint and puff up their shoulders and suck in their tummies with the best of them, but that doesn’t make them men. Or soldiers.

It makes them models.

I think I just threw up a little.

And the finished product, being worn today:

The fruits of our labor:

Thanks to Nicole, Linda, Eric, Kristina, Amy, Dan, and Jessica for coming over and cutting up gourds with us. Nicole even brought Pumpkin Ale. Made me miss Bethany.

Killian turned eight weeks old yesterday. He’s a big huge boy. I can’t get over it. Yesterday ended up being kind of tough. I was in a foul mood all morning and couldn’t seem to shake it. There are some days when I don’t read the news. Yesterday was one of those days.

We threw our third annual pumpkin carving party last night, and to prepare, I went to the store after we had lunch. I made sure Judah had gone to the bathroom, and got her ready. I changed the boy’s diaper and made sure he was nursed and burped and ready. I got the stroller put together, checked to make sure I had everything in my bag, made sure my list was written, checked to make sure I had the grocery bag… Check, check, check, and check.

And we were off. We walked to the post office first and checked the mail, and then made our way to the grocery store. I did all my shopping, while trying to explain to Judah why it’s important NOT to take all the specials stickers off the shelves, and got in line to check out. I dug in my bag (it’s not a purse, just so you know. a purse can’t carry diapers and wipees and sweaters for three and a sling. by the way.) for my wallet. And couldn’t find it. Really, where was my wallet? Not there. Oh, the wipees were there. The diapers were there. Judah’s toys were there. Even my pocket-sized Bible was there. But no wallet. Beautiful words began escaping my lips and I thought this was a beautiful thing to happen to round off my beautiful morning on the way to my beautiful day since I just lost my beautiful wallet.

So I left all my groceries and my Trader Joe’s bag at the vacant checkout next to mine, and walked home to try to find my wallet, panic rising the whole way. I had been out all afternoon Tuesday and was afraid it had been lifted out of my bag or that I had left it at the coffee house, or worse, the park, and that someone had cleaned out our accounts, our business accounts and our credit card and that I was in a load of headache. I called Joshua to ask him if he knew where it was and he said no. I got home, dumped out my entire bag. No wallet. I checked the top of the desk, inside the desk, and the drawers. No wallet. I checked the dresser and the dresser drawers and the bathroom and the bathroom drawers. No wallet. I checked the kitchen and the kitchen drawers and the living room table and Judah’s table and under things. No wallet.

By then I was sweating. I logged on to the Internet, looked up the number to Ritual and called them to ask if anyone had found a wallet. Meanwhile, I was running the contents of the wallet through my head. When I was on hold while they checked the lost and found, I quickly logged on to our bank accounts and credit card account and checked the balances. So far, so good. The coffee house didn’t have it. I started over. Bathroom, bedroom, hallway, living room, kitchen. When I got the the far end of the buffet, on the other side of the microwave where all the art supplies are conveniently stashed, I remembered I had art class Tuesday night. I took my wallet to art class. I checked the bag I took, and LO AND BEHOLD, there it was, praise Jesus.

So I took my wallet, and my bag, and the stroller, and the girl, and we walked back to the grocery store, got back in line, bought our groceries (and I even remembered to get quarters for laundry - those diapers ain’t gonna wash themselves, you know), and walked back home.

The good news? Judah didn’t complain about having to walk so much. The boy laid in his stroller and just looked at everything the whole time he wasn’t sleeping. My checkout girl was really nice and quick and friendly. They let me have a whole roll of quarters. My wallet wasn’t stolen, or lost, and our bank accounts hadn’t been emptied by identity thieves who were ruining my credit history.

The bad news? After having spent all that time chasing wallets and groceries, I only got one photo session in of the boy’s eighth week. That’s why they all kind of look alike. I was hoping to get a photo of his amazing head-holding ability, especially when he’s on his tummy cause, come on, he looks like a baby seal when he does that and it’s pretty cute, but every time I tried, he just laid there and cried - screamed, really - and I couldn’t sit there and take pictures of him doing that. I took pity on him instead.

I also discovered this past week that he does the exact same eyebrow thing that his daddy does, and that his sister does. He gave me this look a few days ago, and it was such an uncanny resemblance to them, I started freaking out and yelling at Joshua to come look. That, of course, startled him and he stopped the eyebrow thing and started crying. Natch. I can’t wait until I can get a photo of that.

These two are cheats. I took them this morning. He is eight weeks old and one day here.

Happy:

Sad:

You can read the article here.

As many of you know, Judah got a camera from her baby brother when he made his extra-utero entrance into the world. She has her own flickr page, too, where we’re posting all her photos. She recently learned how to hit the play button and scroll through all her images. We’ve been subjected to a constant play-by-play of each photo, that goes something like this:

“that’s i take a picture of angel. that’s i take a picture of people. that’s i take a picture of daddy. that’s i take a picture of kiwwyian. that’s i take a picture of dan. that’s i take a picture of shoes. that’s i take a picture of that…”

The newest lesson is the art of the self-portrait. And what better way to illustrate, than with a self-portrait. This is me taking a picture of Judah and myself taking a picture of Judah and myself.

I recently joined JPGmag and submitted a photo for each of the three themes of their upcoming issue. Please go vote for my images. If you like them. I hope you like them.

You can vote for Big.

You can vote for Self-Portraiture.

You can vote for Hometown.

You can also join, upload photos, and submit for future issues. I know a few of you who need to go there right now and join. You know who you are.

It’s a little sad that he is already almost two months old. Time is flying by so fast. I want to somehow make it slow down so I can enjoy this period in Killian’s life when he’s so very young and small and will allow me to kiss him all over his head and suck on his cheeks without embarrassing him in front of his friends.

He’s really becoming more interactive - smiling and cooing and making sweet, little, monosyllabic noises. I hold him in my lap in between the eating and spitting up and peeing, and we have little conversations.

You know Judah’s pirate face? Yeah, he’s got one, too. He’s got this great crease in his nose that he scrunches up whenever he is letting us know he isn’t pleased about something. For example, he has this recent habit of trying to hold his head up all the time (I think I’m going to start calling him Bobblehead), only to have it come crashing down in that little space beneath my collarbone, where he bonks his nose. That little nose crease shows up and he ceases breathing for a few full seconds before the wailing begins. His cries scream, “Mom, how could you have let me do that?” I’d answer, but I’m usually trying to stop laughing at him.

Since he was born, he’s had a little faux-hawk working his hair. It was very pronounced yesterday and I tried to take some pictures of it.

Do you know how hard it is to try to hold your kid up in the air and get off a picture at the same time? Especially when his nickname is Bobblehead? Pretty hard.

Judah still thinks her brother is so cool. She’s always asking me, “Where’s Kiwwyian?” even when she can she see that, Judah, he’s right in front of you. As a matter of fact, you’re touching him right now. We’ve been encouraging her artistic side (of course) and Killian is one of her favorite photo subjects, besides her Polly Pockets.

He’s a pretty good subject, if you ask me.