Through The Looking Glass

In the summer of 1996 I worked as a Production Assistant on an indie feature called Ties To Rachel, starring Adrian Pasdar. I knew who he was because the previous year I’d watched a movie called Near Dark.

I can’t remember when I found out that Near Dark was directed by Kathryn Bigelow (I don’t always pay attention to these things, so it could have been during the first viewing or it might not have been until I met Will), but I am pretty sure my reaction was thus: “Near Dark was directed by a WOMAN?”

But I do know that I’ve been queued up to kiss her with tongues ever since. So the rest of you? The line starts behind me.

Will: There’s an empty feeling in my stomach. I should have another piece of pizza.

Me: That’s not hunger. It’s the deep abiding man-love you feel for Elliot.

Will: Yes, I have the man-love. It’s like your girl crush on Parker.

Me: Don’t call it a crush. You cheapen it.

Will and I have been to the movies together twice since Sam was born. (That’s three and a half years.) Now, it’s not like we went out often before we had children. We’ve always been homebodies. But we didn’t leave Sam with anyone for more than an hour until he was 18 months old and Tim and Andrea put a gun to our heads and made us go out.

Sunday morning @novysan tweeted that Silverado was coming to the Aero theater in 70mm, with the director and writer. I’d purchased tickets within about five seconds and then IMed Andrea to see if they could watch the kids. (Yeah, I should have switched the order, but I was afraid it would sell out. Worst case scenario if they were busy: I could have gone with a friend. Will saw it in the theater in 1985 so I’d get dibs.) And they can!

So tonight I am dropping off Sam, who has spent loads of time away from me, and Grace, who has spent no time away from me except with her father, and going on a date with my husband to see our favorite movie.

Is it bad that I am not at all anxious about leaving my two month old, when I would never have even considered leaving Sam at her age?

You know what’s really fun? You come home with both kids, after your husband should already be home, and he isn’t there yet. Okay, no problem, he’s running behind–so you wait a few minutes in the garage, hoping he’ll help you carry all the groceries and laundry and children upstairs. Your boy gets antsy and asks to leave the garage and wait for Daddy outside, so you put everything but the baby back in the car and do that. But when ten minutes go by you decide something is wrong, so you have to convince your son to go upstairs without his dad because you are hoping he’s just stuck at work and left a message for you. (Your son’s price is, by the way, a handful of jelly beans.) So you get upstairs and you check the messages and he’s not home because he’s at the emergency clinic getting stitches.

It’s okay, you didn’t really need that five years that just came off your life.

So Will’s home, and he’s perfectly fine but managed to slice into his finger pretty good–eight stitches! Fingers are small, that’s a lot of stitches! Fortunately, it happened at work so they are taking care of everything. Except for the Vicodin, which we had to pay for out of pocket to avoid finding a pharmacy that takes his insurance (it was late when he got home, neither of us had eaten, and there is a CVS three blocks away so we went there). He’s cleared to go back to work as long as he’s on light duty but his supervisor made him take a day off. OH DARN.

I am totally not investigating whether I can take his Vicodin while nursing. It would be wrong to take someone else’s prescription pain medication.

The best thing about dressing a girl baby when you already had a boy is that she can wear all of his hand-me-downs and all the cute girly stuff we can get our hands on. (It helps that she came at the perfect time to get hand-me-downs from our friends; we only got a few things for Sam because most of our friends either had kids who were much older or had girls.)

The worst thing about dressing my particular girl baby is that she is already outgrowing her 3 month stuff. She never even wore half the Sam hand-me-downs, because they are opposite season babies so there’s only been so many times she could wear short sleeve onesies. So today I pulled out all the 6 month clothing and discovered that I need about a gazillion more hangers. I hate putting baby clothes in drawers because if I can’t see it, I don’t remember to use it. Actually, that’s how I am about all clothing. I only use drawers for socks, underwear, and sweats–everything else is hanging. (Actually, everything of mine is in boxes under the bed, because I don’t fit in any of it at the moment. But let’s not discuss that.)

Blogging while tired results in many parentheticals.

Last night–or this morning, I guess–I woke up at 3:00 because Grace was hungry. Then I woke up at 3:30 because Sam had a nightmare and wanted to get in bed and cuddle with me. We cuddled and then I struck a deal with him to get him back into his bed so Will could get back into ours. Then I woke up at 4:00 because Grace was hungry again. Then I woke up at 4:30 because Grace’s diaper had leaked so her leg was wet. So I got up, changed her diaper, changed her clothes, and–as she was wide awake–went upstairs to watch TV with her.

So I’ve essentially been up since 3:00 in the morning, because drifting off to sleep three times between then and 4:30 was more like a cruel prank than actual sleep. But we somehow managed to have a wonderful day. The boys slept until 7:00, which is late for them, and we had an amazing breakfast (homemade huevos rancheros), and then we went for an adventure and had the best time at Vasquez Rocks that we’ve had in a while.

In conclusion, OMG my baby is two months old how did this happen.

ATTN: Baby

RE: Nap

That’s more like it.

So. Using logic and facts on a three year old? Hahahahahahahahahahahahahaha.

Oh, my head.

I put the two Hellboy animated movies on our Netflix Instant queue, even though we have them on DVD, because Sam adores them and it’s faster to use Roku. (Also the DVD player is being a pain and refusing to actually read DVDs lately. What the hell.)

A little while ago he brought me the Blood & Iron DVD and asked to watch it.

IT IS CURRENTLY PLAYING ON ROKU.

I tried to explain this to him. He agreed with me, and then asked me to put the DVD on.

Oh, my head.

This happened twice more. Then I hid the DVD.

The kids and I are having a sick day because we all slept horribly and Sam has a nasty cough. We are camped out in front of the television, watching cartoons. And also Hercules: the Legendary Journeys, which is kind of cartoony.

Unfortunately for me, Sam is insisting on watching episode after episode of The Pink Panther. It’s a cute cartoon if you only watch a little bit. We’ve been watching for over an hour. Every time he goes to put on a new episode (it’s Netflix Instant on Roku, so no play all option), he looks to me for permission. You would think this means I could say no, but you’d be wrong. His asking is apparently just a formality. There is a wrong answer.

Fortunately, the gods saw fit to put The Big Store (Sam’s favorite Marx Bros. movie, and one of the few we don’t own) on Netflix Instant. I AM SAVED!

Now if poor Gracie could just have a nap that lasts more than ten minutes…

I had a tiny bit of spending money and used it to get some beautiful fabrics to make a quilt for Grace. I think it’s important that the children each have a quilt that is entirely their own. Sam’s is crib sized, so Grace’s will be too. I happen to know, through extensive research, that crib size is exactly the same as lap size and therefore will be useful approximately forever.

This is Sam’s (remember?):

Yellow is definitely the dominant color, though there are actually several prints with little to no yellow in them at all.

For Grace I ordered various red and pink prints. There aren’t as many sweet kids’ prints out right now as there were in summer of 2007 (when I bought the fabric for Sam’s quilt) so it is primarily florals and abstracts. I had to order from two different stores to get the prints I wanted. About half of them have arrived:

The three prints on the left are actually one fabric, which will be the backing. For the patchwork top, I’m thinking of doing squares, like this. What do you think? I want something simple, but not too simple. I briefly considered doing a stacked coins quilt, but discarded the idea because I want a pattern that will work with what I bought (quarter yards of about 11 prints).

I completed my Knitting Olympics project.

It came out exactly the way I pictured. I love it so much! It’s sized for Grace to wear this summer/fall, and I am writing up the pattern for it. I expect I’ll do it in sizes from 12 months to 8 years or so, and I might do an adult version as well if I’m feeling really patient (sizing sweaters requires a ton of math).