This morning around 6:45, Ngaire got in bed with us. The Husbandlet and I always try to sleep a little longer when this happens, but it never works. By the time she gets to us, Ngaire pretends to snuggle, but is ready to play. (Early morning snuggling with Liam is right out. Rhiannon is the only one who is currently up for long, luxurious morning cuddles.)

At one point, Ngaire said, “Let’s pretend to be kitty cats!”
The Husbandlet: “All right. Let’s curl up, purr, and go to sleep.”

* * *

Just now, Ngaire was toying with her lunch.

The Husbandlet: “Eat up, Ngaire.”
Ngaire: “I want my mommy.”
The Husbandlet: “She’s right there, across the table. Eat your noodles, Ngaire. They’re hot buttered noodles! If you won’t eat hot buttered noodles, what will you eat?”
Ngaire: “Cookies!”

* * *

Liam seems to have caught the plague, too. His fever got up to nearly 105 on Wednesday night. However, he’s much better now, aside from the fact that he has a double ear infection.

The Husbandlet also has an ear infection.

After a brief round of H1N1 (I think), I am down to a UTI and a cold.

(Ngaire and Rhiannon are fit as fiddles, though are they ready for love?)

* * *

We are slowly but surely acquiring furniture for our new big Frozen Northern house. We got super lucky today and scored a big dining room table … alas, it has no chairs, just two benches, but that just gives me a chance to get creative. I also found a little dresser for Liam’s room, and we’ve picked up a futon for guests and assorted living room furniture. Bookshelves are a hot commodity here; we are amazed that we’ve been able to buy two.

It would probably be easier if we were up for buying new, but the prices here are horrendous, and it’s possible to get nice stuff used, as long as you’re willing to wait for it. My heart is, if not broken, severely let down by the fact that IKEA does not ship here … that pretty much destroyed my decorating game plan. Ah well.

The damage: One sick Ngaire (Monday through Saturday), one sorta-sick Jordana (Thursday-ish through … well, I still feel recovering-ish), one day missed on NaNoWriMo.

NaNoWriMo status: I’ve been managing around 700 or 800 words a day (though, no pressure! I’m only promising 500!) except for Friday, which I skipped due to general yuckiness, and Saturday night, when I clocked in at around 420 (but I spent some writing time checking out context-for-story stuff and brainstorming background … and getting distracted on Facebook, mea culpa).

My house is a disaster of mostly unpacked boxes and partially-processed laundry, but! I have vacuumed my carpet for the first time since we moved in! And Liam is totally fascinated or something by the vaccum … he talks about it all the time, tries to peek into its closet home, runs to sit on the stairs, which he considers a safe zone, while loudly requesting me to vacuum, keeps track of its progress around the house (“Where vacuum cleaner is? Oh, there it is!”), etc. etc. etc. He and Ngaire have a fun game where he sits on the vacuum, she pulls out the cord, and then he pushes the retract button, and then they both giggle.

The days are getting shorter here, and we now eat breakfast in the dark. Liam looked outside the other morning and made an observation about how dark it was, then said, “It’s the blue, blue dark.” Very observant. Equally observant: He was hiding or something and I asked, “Where’s Liam?” He said, “Oh, there I am!”

Ngaire is reading! She is reading a Dick and Jane compilation book! See Ngaire go! Go, Ngaire, go! The poor girl has been so very distressed by her quarantine and has been asking every day, “NOW can I go to preschool?” She came downstairs on Friday morning asking what she should take to preschool for her show and tell. Alas, the earliest we can hope for is Monday, but the prospect looks good. However, I have been enjoying spending the extra time with her … sometimes, between her self-sufficiency and her strong will, and the amount of time required by the two littler ones, I begin to feel like most of my interactions with her are directions and corrections. And then I feel like a bad mommy.

Rhiannon is now in her big girl 6-9 month clothes and is spending lots of tummy time getting up on her hands and knees and rocking. My baby! She is absolutely delectable; I think that having had a couple of kidlets already progress quickly through babyhood makes me realize just how much I need to enjoy her sweet baby squeaks and growls, and her plump thighs.

Yesterday, we picked up a couple of HUGE pumpkins on sale at WalMart, and the Husbandlet and I spent much of the day baking and pureeing the pumpkin and roasting the seeds. The Husbandlet made a wonderful curried pumpkin soup for dinner; I whipped up some oatmeal bread to go with it. I am so thankful to have my breadmaking stuff back … I love baking, and we eat a LOT of bread.

In other news, since my hair-cutting gear arrived, I have shorn the men in my life. And there was much rejoicing.

You guessed it. Ngaire has swine flu.

At least, we’re pretty sure that’s what it is. She shows all the signs (fever, coughing and sneezing, lethargy and poor appetite), and the regular seasonal flu has yet to infiltrate our sector of the Frozen North. My kidlets are always at their sweetest when they’re sick, and we’ve passed an enjoyable (rainy) day reading books, watching movies, and drinking lots of fluids. It’ll be interesting to see if the rest of us succumb … we could be in for a lot of sick days.

It’s NaNoWriMo, and after years of kinda-sorta wanting to give it a try but not being willing to make the commitment, I’m going to give it a shot, though I’m only aiming for 500 words a day. 1,000 seems a bit daunting. The Husbandlet has been joining me in nightly writing sessions. We feel very virtuous and productive.

Now I must away, as the little bitty one is mewling.

Ngaire, handing me the tail of a toy snake: “Let’s all be curious.”
Me: “What does ‘curious’ mean?”
Ngaire: “It means holding a snake. Or a penguin.”

* * *

Our stuff arrived! Most of it, anyway. We are missing a few boxes, two lamps, and our bed frame. We have also acquired most of someone else’s bed (headboard, sides and some metally things), a box of kitchen stuff that isn’t ours, and a shelf or something that also doesn’t belong to us. Ah well. I’ve been happily doing laundry and dishes, and most of our stuff is settled in the house. I must say, it’s nice moving from a small place to a larger place, in terms of finding a home for everything with minimal trauma.

Yesterday and again today, I have exited my house only to have a small rainstorm open up on top of me, which disappears a few moments later (right after I’ve canceled all plans to go outside, because it’s raining). This makes me wonder whether I’ve managed to mildly annoy some minor rain deity.

Also, yesterday, I was changing Liam’s diaper, and he peed and hit himself in the eye.

Yesterday was the Husbandlet’s 30th birthday. Happy day after birthday, Husbandlet! I scored some frozen rhubarb from his boss’s wife (it grows like crazy around here; her parents PLOW IT INTO THE GROUND because they can’t harvest it all … I weep at the thought) and made rhubarb cornbread for breakfast and rhubarb cheesecake for his birthday cake. (The Husbandlet loves rhubarb, so I thought an Iron Chef, rhubarb-themed birthday would be fun.) I also got him some Weird Al CDs. We wound up the evening introducing Ngaire to Running with Scissors.

* * *

Apropos of that, Ngaire just came upstairs singing, “He left his home and kissed his mommy goodbye, saying, ‘Soon I’m going to be a Jedi.’” Then she came and gave me a kiss, and said, “Goodbye, Mommy.” I said, “Are you going to be a Jedi?” She said, “Soon.”

* * *

The only thing worse than finding cockroaches in the office? Finding BABY cockroaches in the office.

* * *

Apparently, today is National Popcorn Day, or something like that. Ngaire made a shaker out of a vitamin bottle filled with kernels at preschool yesterday. This morning, she and Liam emptied the whole thing all over the basement. Popcorn kernels are a lot harder to get out from the cracks under moldings than you might think.

* * *

We have harvested gallons and gallons and GALLONS of berries. We have frozen some, dried some, flavored homemade fruit leather (or “boo,” as Liam calls it, for some reason) with some, and made pie, crisp and juice. We feel like Real Frozen Northerners.

* * *

Now that the berry season is coming to an end, the Husbandlet has slowed down on checking satellite footage for the best places to go berrying around here (I’m serious!) and has begun a new obsession: Learning how to grow mushrooms at home. I do not say “obsession” lightly or inadvisedly. The man has to be pried away from his mushroom-related books and websites for even the most delightful of alternate activities. He is constantly coming out with abrupt sound bites about the ease of growing various species in various materials. (“Did you know that you can get ____________ to grow in coffee grounds/old phone books/your hair if you stand still long enough?”)

Let’s just say, I’m making sure to keep in constant motion.

* * *

On the other hand, “Pretty Fly for a Rabbi” is possibly one of the most wonderful songs ever, parody or no.

I have a confession to make: I kinda like Taco Bell. Every so often, I feel the urge to drop by and just see how it is doing, and partake of its bounty, before we go our separate ways. I will make it clear at the outset that the Husbandlet considers these visits highly illicit. However, they continue; though never in his presence. I wouldn’t say that my relationship with Taco Bell is anything but intermittent … certainly not in any way intimate.

So imagine my shock when I received this today:

I was equally taken aback when, upon opening the packet, I merely found hot sauce inside, instead of the two-carat Tiffany sparkler I’d had in mind.

Oh well, I guess I’ll keep these (and the guy who gave them to me, of course):

* * *

Any guesses about what happened here?

Yesterday, the Husbandlet and I unpacked most of our books and put them on bookshelves.

(N.B.: Our stuff has not arrived, but we mailed all our books to ourselves because the Media Mail rate was cheap, expecting to have our books be the last things to arrive. Ironically, of course, the books got here before anything else.)

We picked up one tall bookshelf at a garage sale, and our house has some built-in shelves in the basement/kids’ play room. I must say, our house looks a lot more homey with our books out. Unpacking our books and organizing them was like spending the afternoon with old friends.

During the preparatory stages of book-sorting, I got out the Windex and cleaned off the office bookshelf and the Husbandlet’s new-to-us desk (he got it from a business in town that was downsizing). Then I noticed that the phone was sitting a little crooked on its stand. I pushed the phone’s base down. Not much happened. I picked the whole thing up and tried to straighten it. Nothing doing. I noticed a strange, sweet smell emanating from the phone … somehow, this smell was all too familiar. So I pulled the base off the stand and

OH MY GOODNESS I AM STILL SHUDDERING

found two large but somewhat unhappy-looking cockroaches nesting in the stand, in the part that rests against the back of the base.

I took the stand outside and shook the cockroaches into the street. Then I went back inside. It occurred to me that perhaps, in doing this, I had inadvertently introduced the hearty Eastern Seaboard Cockroach to the Frozen North, thereby creating an infestation that would torment the place forevermore. So I went back out, found the roaches, and squished them.

(They hadn’t gotten very far. It was about 40 degrees out, and I had dropped them on a very wet, paved street. They had made it to the rivulets of water at the side of the road.)

In the meantime, the Husbandlet had unscrewed the cover off the back of the base, and had found ANOTHER cockroach INSIDE.

People, those roaches had been living inside our phone for the last month at least.

I’m sorry, but I didn’t get any pictures.

For the purposes of a little background, we give our in-utero children the names of marine animals.

(No, I am not announcing another pregnancy.)

Ngaire was the Squid, and Liam was the Remora. Shortly after each of their births, we received a care package from one of my college roommates, containing lots of yummy Trader Joe’s goodies (Alysia works at TJ’s), AND …

hand-knitted,
originally-designed
Squid and Remora toys!

So, I must say that from the moment we discovered Rhiannon’s conception and started calling her the Ctenophore, I started looking forward to seeing what Alysia would do with that one.

The package arrived a few days ago, and this is what she did with it:

People, this woman is a total knitting genius! This is one of the most gorgeous soft toys I have ever seen. And Rhiannon absolutely adores the tentacles (I have mentioned her love for cloth-type things, no?).

If you have any desire to sleep through the night, don’t drink a cup of coffee after dinner. Even if you somehow manage to fall asleep, your breastfed baby won’t.

* * *

At lunch today, Ngaire said, “Mommy, you look just like a reindeer.”

I said something along the lines of, “??????”

She explained, “You’re cute like a reindeer!”

BIG daughter points.

* * *

One thousand words: