I can’t leave Liam alone anywhere! He now scales boxes to access and/or knock stuff off high shelves! He can open our fuse box and turn off the main power to rooms! He has managed to break not one but two floor lamps by shaking their stem thingies! He climbs from the living room chair across our rack of TV trays, onto the TV stand, where he knocks stuff off the TV and tries to eat the baby monitor! He is jumping our sofa into oblivion! I probably shouldn’t be writing this now, because he is probably getting into something! In fact, I think he is banging a spatula against the TV screen even as I type!

But he’s cute … he made up the Rice Milk Song, to the tune of “La Cucaracha”: “Na-nuk, na-nuk [rice milk, rice milk], blalalalala, hot-cha-cha!” And the first thing out of his mouth every morning, after, “HelLO! Hi!” is “Snuggle Daddy? Snuggle Mommy?”

Ngaire is so freakin’ amazing with the baby. She gives Rhiannon her finger to suck on in the car, and stopped her from crying this morning by getting into our bed with her and snuggling her. I’m having so much fun with Ngaire in general, reading and coloring and making soft pretzels with her during Liam’s naptime. This morning, she made my day by saying, “Could you please get me some water? I’m a little dehydrated.”

Rhiannon is a really, really sweet baby. Aside from her passionate hatred of her carseat, she’s pretty mellow about most stuff; even her smiles are mellow … not as huge and emotive as Ngaire’s or Liam’s at her age.

Yesterday was a back-to-back doctor’s visit day for me. I had my postpartum visit with the OB/GYN, who left me inordinately proud by praising my pelvic floor and never ONCE tried to get me to go on the Pill. Later, I had a ganglion cyst on my left wrist drained by an orthopedist who looked like she was maybe 16 years old. This is the second time I’ve had the thing drained, and this time around, I didn’t start to pass out until AFTER the draining was done … not until she started mashing my wrist to break up what was left of the cyst and squeeze the remaining joint fluid out through the HOLE IN MY SKIN, OH MY GOODNESS I AM GETTING WOOZY AGAIN.

The Husbandlet comes back from the Frozen North tomorrow. His phone calls have been so happy and excited; he says it is absolutely beautiful and the people are friendly and the lab is nice and there are nearby tidepools to explore. It turns out that they’ll cut us a check for moving expenses, so his idea is for us to sell off pretty much everything and re-buy it on the other end. He mentioned gleaning through our book collection. I DON’T THINK SO, BUDDY. THE BOOKS ARE SACRED.

This morning, I substituted sour cream and water for milk in my pancake recipe, and it is official: Sour cream makes everything better.