flea

Baby is doing okay, still waiting for him to develop into a person, rather pimply at the moment, still grumbly after eating but not enough to do much about. Now has a real routine of sleeping from 9pm-1am (go team!). After that, not necessarily so great.

Book read:
Sam Walker, Fantasyland: a Year on Baseball's Lunatic Fringe. WSJ general sports reporter joins elite Rotisserie baseball league, eats stick of butter. A very guy-tone book, funny, luckily for me he likes the Red Sox so I'd actually heard of a lot of players (also, it was 2004), most interesting the commentary on the traditional scout vs. sabermetric approaches to baseball, got a little slow once the season actually was underway. These people are insane, it should be noted. And SUCH GUYS.

Casper excitements of note: referred to a sex toy/lingerie store she drove past as "look, a Barbie store!" She knows about Barbie because of her friend Megan, who is 9; store had mannequins in lingerie in the windows.

Felt very Desperate Housewife lately as I consigned baby clothes, spend waaaaay too much mental energy on a possible 3rd birthday party for Casper, regularly do ALL this dishes and wash out the sink, do 1 load of laundry a day.

mr. flea's parents arrive this afternoon to spend the weekend; luckily for us all (heat, baby cry, space) they are staying in a hotel. Must grocery shop. Must think of things to do besdies sit around panting indoors.

mr. flea is off to a conference in Cincinnati the 26th-1st; not only will he miss Casper's actual birthday but because advisor is butthead they're driving (12 hours) so will be basically spending 2 extra days because of cheapness of advisor, Happily for me, veejane planning to come here.

To get this out of the way - I am itching like a mofo right now. Somehow the afternoons are the worst; maybe because I've been taking the steroids at night, so they've worn off by mid-day? Dunno. Must. Distract. I am much less swollen, though I seem to be a little flushed in the face today. My oozing is better; the ointment helps although I feel sticky everywhere.

So proud is because Casper is really taking to potty training. Yesterday she wore panties at school all day with no accidents, even through her nap! Miss Rosa is being very encouraging. When we got home we had a "celebration" - 10 en-dee-ems! And then successfully pottied througout the evening, until we put a diaper on her before bed and she finally pooped. We've got to work on the pooping thing. She had that going spontaneously a couple of weeks ago, but right now is only pooping in a diaper. However, anecdotal evidence suggests this is fairly common - Ellen did exactly the same thing.

I am now thinking of changing my maternity leave plan to take the full FMLA 12 weeks; original plan was to take the 6 weeks I have paid and then come back 20 hours for a couple of weeks and ramp up to full. mr. flea just can't give up much work time at this point to care for the armadillo, if I want him to finish in a reasonable time (and, oh, do I!), and I am worried about finding reliable in-home care for a 6 week old. Six weeks is very very tiny still, compared to 3 months. I know a lot of people have to go back that soon, but how? So now must face breaking this stressful-for-her change to my boss (fortunately we haven't had any formal talk about maternity leave plans yet), and we're considering taking out some student loans to help ease the financial situation. The former scares me, but must be done (yes, I can learn to put my needs before those of my not-well-paying-or-satisfying-job!), and the latter depresses me, but I'm thinking of it more as a safety net rather than real debt. When mr. flea gets a job, we'll be able to pay them off very quickly indeed. Right?