Check out my new space! What do you think?

I’m still figuring out wordpress, so please let me know if you find any, um, peculiarities that I ought to fix.

In the meantime, I think everything’s been moved over except links to my favorite blogs (yours, of course). I’m getting there, I’m just getting there slowly. And my old list was terribly outdated anyhow. So here’s the deal: if you link here, or comment here, or read here, I’d love to add you to my list. Just leave me a comment on this post to remind me, okay? (And really, don’t be shy. Let me give you a link! Unless you’re selling bodily enhancements on a spam-blog, in which case, no. No I will not link to you. But everyone else: I’d love to!)

If you subscribe to my feedburner feed, your subscription should have rolled over to the new site (and if you think not, again, please let me know). Otherwise, update your link or blogroll or bookmark or however the heck you get here, won’t you please? Thank you! You guys are awesome.

You know those baby books, where you record your kid’s first words, first haircut, first sibling rivalry? I think instead of those, we should keep mother books: first time you stay up all night with a sick toddler, first time you get thrown up on (and I’m not talking baby spit-up), first time you sleep through the night after giving birth.

Instead of that, we have blogs. So I’m recording this right now: this week we had our first head injury. And by “we” obviously I mean “Owen.” But I survived, too.

Here’s what happened: Audrey came up and hugged Owen from behind, and they both fell over backwards. Owen’s head hit the seat of a kitchen chair on the way down.

It was just an external head injury, nothing serious, but even a not-serious head injury is somewhat terrifying. There’s the blood, for one thing; heads bleed a lot. Then there’s the wondering where the first aid kit is, followed by the realization that you don’t have a first aid kit, followed by the idea that you might want to get a first aid kit.

After all that (if you happen to be me), and after grabbing a dozen washcloths and an ice pack to hold to the wound, you get to call Dane, tell him to come home from work, then send him to buy gauze and bandages and children’s ty1enol and children’s m0trin, because apparently we don’t keep these things around the house. (As an aside, did you know that a little bottle of children’s painkillers has something like eight pills in it? Very useful, those little bottles. As long as you only have a little bit of pain.)

And then, seventy-two hours later (that would be now), the wound looks almost like a little scrape. Not even a scab, just pink skin with a little blood crusted along one edge.

The first day, when it was still trickling blood, my mother came by to check on us. (She’s the kind that not only has a first-aid kit, but is first-aid certified.) “Heads heal quickly,” she said.

“Not quickly enough,” Dane said.

I’m thinking they were both right.

I am officially out of teacups. Mugs. Ceramic items from which to drink steaming hot caffeinated beverages.

I have a few from Ikea that the kids eat snacks out of, but those could in no way be called heat-proof. You fill them with coffee and they burn your fingerprints right off your fingers. So those won’t work for me, even though I like the $0.59 price tag. (Side note: my laptop keyboard does not appear to have a cents symbol. Does no one use pennies anymore? We just always use dollar signs? Did I miss a memo on this?)

I’d like to find some plain-ish mugs (so they will match with my more-outlandish—er, I mean stylish—serving pieces), or teacups with saucers maybe, but I don’t want to spend a ton on them. Suggestions?

Our clothes dryer died in grand style last week. Normally it makes sort of a mechanical whirring sound, similar to all other electrical dryers ever. But this time I pushed the start button and it went: BANG! POP! [Insert burning smell here.] Luckily, there was no accompanying electrical fire, but still. Noisy, startling, and resulting in wet laundry.

The dryer is fairly new and still under warranty, which would have been great if we could find the warranty information. (We found it. Eventually. They’ll be here to deal with the dryer on Tuesday, I think.)

Normal people in normal houses might, when faced with dryer-less-ness, put up a clothesline. We, of course, are not especially normal, nor do we have a normal HOA. Actually, I suspect we DO have a normal HOA. We have the kind of HOA that says things like “no clotheslines visible over your five-foot-tall backyard fence” and “no permanent clotheslines.” So we’ve been improvising. (Read: drying towels at my mother’s house.)

We have learned that we can dry one load of clothes per day in the house. We can wash more than that, we can hang up more than that, but if we do, nothing will dry. The air in the house will, however, achieve a sort of perpetual dampness which cannot possibly be good for the furniture or the walls or anything else that might have the ability to grow mildew. Ick. So: one load of clothes it is. One load of clothes. Hanging on the curtain rod in my living room. Where they are not permanent or visible over the backyard fence. Sigh.

Addendum to my current mamazine column:

1. I did finally get the video player to work. Okay, Dane finally got it to work. Two days later.

2. A few days after that, I set up the little video player thing on my mother’s computer with no difficulty whatsoever. No one asked me for her country or county or cable provider or social security number or anything. What’s that all about?

3. Oh my goodness, did you see the men’s 100m dash? Did you? DID YOU?

(Which is to say: hey look! A new installment from me, at mamazine! It involves swimming, youtube, and me whining about computer difficulties! Please tell me you can relate.)

Today is mamazine.com’s birthday! Go wish Amy and Sheri many happy returns of the day, won’t you?

New mamazine features are like chocolate delivered to my rss reader. They just make me happy. Did you catch Anjali’s last column, Fade to Brown? Or Tomas Moniz’s latest, Everyday Parenting? I love his list of 15 Things Fathers (or really anyone) can do to challenge Patriarchy. (Scroll down for the list.)

One of those things done only by parents, biology teachers, and insect-ologists:

“Ooh, look! There’s a huge caterpillar devouring my basil plants! I think I’ll leave it there until the kids get a chance to check it out.”

The thing about five is… well, the thing is, when Abigail turned five, five seemed OLD. So old! Our baby was five!

Five isn’t a little thing. Five is the age when people start asking what school you go to, whether you like your teacher. The word kindergarten gets thrown around a lot. Five is the age (or anyway, the size) when you have to stop buying “baby” clothes brands and start shopping in the kid section. It’s the first year you can count by fives to your age. (It would sound like this: “Five.”)

But the thing is, five doesn’t seem so old anymore. Five. It’s just a little more than four, a little taller, with a bit more self-control and a bigger imagination.

Even eight—and Abigail will be eight in twenty-three days, she would have you know—doesn’t sound so old right now. Sure, eight is almost halfway to grown up and (theoretically) moved out, but only almost. And only halfway.

I’d like to think I’m more realistic now, not just in denial about my babies being not-babies. Because I’m don’t want to focus on the growing up—how big! and how old! and remember when they were little?—to the point that we forget to enjoy the childhood that is right now.

So: Five. We’re back. And I’m not so anxious about it this time around.

The first words from Owen this morning, spoken while leaping up into my arms: “I’m turning five right now!”

Five!

Hey, guess what? My sister started a real, honest-to-goodness art/craft blog. She’s an artist, and happens to be extraordinarily crafty besides.

I think I’ve mentioned having a sister. Actually I have three sisters; two are my half-sisters and are unrelated to each another. I also have two brothers, but let’s not complicate the matter, shall we? At the moment we are talking about one sister with a craft blog. And an etsy shop. And stuffed bats. And lots of pretty pictures of crafty-ness.

Stop by and say hello if you have a chance, won’t you?