This morning was a disaster of mundane proportions. Really, nothing interesting; the dishwasher didn’t get run last night, the oatmeal didn’t get started early enough to be done when we were hungry, the alarm clock battery died and Dane had to rush out the door, blah blah blah. It just added up to a minor mess.

And then I tried to dress Audrey. First of all, the girl picks out her own clothes. She’s ONE. Most mornings, I choose something for her to wear, and she says no. We repeat this interaction a few times. Eventually I hold her up in front of the closet where she points at outfits: no, no, no, THIS! (“This” is her all-purpose word, here meaning something along the lines of “give me that shirt and don’t try to mess with me, lady.”)

So this morning, I put her in the “this” outfit, and she started trying to yank her shirt off immediately. I kept up a helpful stream of chatter: “No no, you’re almost dressed! See, it’s the shirt you picked! And now it’s on!” At which point she pulled the thing away from her body with such force that she ripped the shirt along the seam. What would have happened if I tried to dress her in one of the “no” outfits?

Luckily, we’ve got men at work in the backyard to take our minds off such minor troubles. They’re doing some removal of concrete patio and some destruction of storage shed; my kids are both enthralled and terrified. They keep asking whether perhaps the guys are having so much fun tearing down the shed, that they might move on to the house next. I’ve said no in about eighteen different ways, which means it’s time to stop watching the action and go eat lunch.

Who knows what delights the afternoon may bring!

Why do I insist on cutting the frozen pizza into eight little slices, when I’m just going to sit down and eat the whole damn thing myself? Why?

Poor Dane tried to get my glasses fixed for me today. Turns out they ARE under warranty, but the place I bought them (cough—Costco—cough) no longer carries that frame, so they can’t fix or replace them. But! They can credit me the cost of the frame toward my next pair! But! My prescription’s expired, and they won’t let me order new glasses without a new one! And I don’t think “middle of pregnancy” is the recommended time to have one’s eyes examined, especially if one has a tendency to only remember to go to the optometrist every five years or so.

In the end, they offered to pay to have the existing frames fixed at another shop (which wasn’t open and won’t be until Tuesday), AND to give me the credit toward my next pair of glasses, if I should manage to get a new prescription before the warranty runs out in a few months. Which… maybe I will, maybe I won’t. It’s just SIGHT, how important could it be? Sigh.

I’ve been reading a ton lately, and as a result feel entirely unequal to the task of writing. Anything. Even wee little blog posts. In fact, when I sat down to write this post, I immediately picked up a magazine to stall. What a strategy! If I hold my magazine at just the right angle, maybe I won’t notice the glowing computer screen behind it! Brilliant.

There is something unsettling about receiving a Heifer magazine and a Pottery Barn catalog in the mail at the same time.

Just… wrong.

Drat. Audrey broke my reading glasses again. I’m trying to decide if I want to glue them back together—which I probably could do, but it probably wouldn’t last—or try to take them back and see if they can be fixed. She broke the hinge, not the frame, so that should be fixable… but my prescription’s expired now, which means I’d need to actually get my eyes examined to get a new pair. I thought maybe I could just live without them, but—not so much! I’m typing without looking at the screen right now, because yikes, killer headache.

See, THIS is why I would like to never leave my house. Abigail’s been a wee bit sick to her stomach for the last couple of days (and even a wee bit, it ain’t that pleasant). Where did she pick up a stomach bug? I tell you, my kids bring home every stray germ they can get anyone else to part with.

Though, to be completely fair to the other kids at the park, strangers at the library, and anyone else we’ve come in close enough contact to steal germs from, I will begrudgingly admit that half the time, stomach issues at our house turn out to be food-allergy-related. Another unpleasant alternative to contemplate.

Unrelated to the general ill health, Abigail lost a tooth today. Let me just say this: teeth are weird. Yes, they are. They’re in your mouth, then they’re not, then they are again, except bigger, less well-fitting, and often at peculiar angles. There also tends to be more blood involved than one would expect for something so itty bitty. Like I said: weird.

Mmmm, food. I’ve discovered that I can eat maybe three or four bites of almost anything before never wanting to look at it again—a vast improvement over just a few weeks ago, when the total was exactly zero bites. Progress!

A few people have said to me in the last week, “I heard you’re pregnant!” Um, you heard it? Like, you couldn’t tell by looking? Because there’s a strong possibility that I’m just rotund? I’m not liking this line of thought.

Maybe they really couldn’t tell. I have a couple of shirts in my closet that are clearly third trimester shirts, so I’ve been avoiding them. And then I realized that the whole “third trimester” thing is less than six weeks away. (Four weeks away? Five weeks? I never can keep track of the weeks until the very end.) The shirts still don’t fit, but I did hyperventilate a little.

Ugh, Monday. That’s really all I have to say about that.

We watched Elizabeth I over the weekend, the first installment in Helen Mirren’s apparent bid to play all British royalty ever. Or perhaps just all public figures who go by the name “Elizabeth.” Hard to say which.

At any rate, we enjoyed the movie, though Dane was a bit frustrated by the fact that the storyline followed the politics of her person to the near-exclusion of world affairs. But then, there were a whole lot of pretty dresses, and you can’t have everything, now can you?

And because we are geeks (did you not know we were geeks? we are totally geeky), after concluding the two-disc, eighteen-hour (okay, maybe like three-hour) movie, we immediately started up the bonus features. There was a bit called something like “in search of the Real Elizabeth,” which turned out to be an interview with a historian, and let me just say, if you’ve never had the delightful experience of hearing a history lecture that caused you to squirm in discomfort, do check this thing out.

I think his general purpose was to affirm the movie’s historical accuracy, which he did by comparing Elizabeth and Leicester’s relationship to the Clinton-Lewinsky affair, in plenty of detail in case you weren’t sure how the two might compare. I was afraid he was going to break out a diagram before he moved on to the Earl of Essex.

And tonight we’re going to sit down and watch… something else. I don’t actually know what yet, but the kids are all asleep, Monday is over, and a celebratory movie seems in order. Don’t you think?

Good news, that is, in the form of a sensible—and even somewhat practical!—article on the topic.

My favorite points:

- Parents probably aren’t quite as influential as some experts (and some parents) think they are. Wait, my child’s personality isn’t all about me?

- Over-praise may stem from the parent’s need to have a child who is the “best” (academically, athletically, artistically…). Wait, my child’s talents aren’t all about me, either? What is this world coming to?

On the other hand, isn’t it possible that some of us believe our children really are the very smartest, loveliest, most delightful people on earth? At least sometimes? And that our praise reflects our sometimes-blind adoration of these little creatures? Because I’d rather be labeled “infatuated” than “pathological,” but that may be just me.