I'm not dead!

According to my husband, not posting in over a month constitutes a dead blog. I'm here to tell you , reports of my demise have been greatly exaggerated. Long story short, between the craziness of trying to get everything set up so that my maternity leave would be fairly transparent and the general fatigue of the last months of pregnancy, blogging was just at the bottom of my list of things to do. But now I've had the baby and am on leave and am ready to start blogging my little fingers off again. Here's a quick list of things that have happened since the end of September:

- Had a baby. Zachary Nathan, born Nov. 28, 8lbs 11oz, 20.75 inches long. Looks just like his daddy. Becky loves her new little brother and does her best to help out mommy and daddy -- she shakes his bottle, hands us diapering supplies when he needs to be changed, and makes sure we know when he's crying. She also loves kissing him, which is just about the cutest thing ever. She's pretty patient when I need to tend to him in the morning, too, which is great. And he's a ton more patient than she was when it comes to waiting for his bottle or binkie, which is pretty helpful, too.







- Got a new couch. Sectional sleeper -- love it. We were worried about finding something as comfortable as the old couches, but I think we succeeded.

- Got annoyed at BMFA. This just happened yesterday when I got my last sock club shipment, which included a "certificate" with a "grading scale" on the back. It turns out that since I haven't got around to knitting any of their patterns yet, I'm considered a "Sock Poser (Stash Enhancer)." Excuse me? I spent how much money on your stupid club to get called a poser? Fuck you. If I hadn't already decided not to join next year's club (I decided I'd rather spend my money on yarn I know I'm going to love), I'd be demanding my money back. I'm not silly enough to say I'm never going to buy yarn from them again -- the yarn is just too beautiful -- but it's going to be a good long while, I can tell you that. Especially since...

- I decided it's okay to pay people to do things I don't want to do, even if I can do them. Like clean my house. And hem my pants. The downside is this cuts into the yarn budget pretty severely, but I have PLENTY of stash to work through, so that's okay, too. And while it cuts into the budget for purchasing yarn, it frees up a lot of time to actually knit the yarn. Bonus.

- Watched a couple of good movies, and one really horrendous one. Good = Superbad and Bourne Ultimatum. The first half hour of Superbad I was completely bored and thought I was going to be stuck with another Napoleon Dynamite (which I did not find even moderately entertaining. Sorry.). But then Seth Rogan showed up and saved the whole thing -- even the parts he wasn't in. Dude's Superfunny, is what he is. Bourne was good -- completely action packed. A little light on plot, but really fun to watch. Unless you're prone to motion sickness, apparently. I'm not, but Kit mentioned that he had a hard time with the "shaky cam" parts -- mostly the foot chase scenes. I didn't even notice it until he mentioned it and then I remembered other people mentioning it when the movie first came out. Bad = Spiderman 3. Wow. What a complete mess of a movie. Just horrible. Really. Right up there with the Fantastic Four movie. Excrement.

- Cast on several new knitting projects. As if I don't have enough to work on. But I'm enjoying all of them and actually making progress on all of them, too. And yes, Dad, you will have your socks this winter. Soon, even. Also, I came up with something to knit for Kit that will actually be useful to him, and will fit. So that's exciting. But it probably won't be done for Christmas. So that's not as exciting.

- Had lots of company. First it was Eric and April. Eric came down to play poker with Kit, and April was touring the city. So I got to hang with her after her tour was done while the boys did their thing, then the next day we all hung out and chatted deep into the afternoon. Tons of fun. We sent Becky to Grandma's for that one. Then Ab, Dave and AJ popped by the Saturday after Thanksgiving. Becky got to stay for that visit, and after she warmed up to AJ and decided it might be okay to share her toys, she had a grand old time. She still asks for AJ everytime I tell her we're going to have company. Then my mom came in for two weeks right after the baby was born, which was a tremendous help given the complications I had (did I not mention that? Major blood loss resulting in severe anemia, necessitating a transfusion of two units of whole blood and lots of sleep.). Becky misses her Grandma Tedi tons -- every morning I get an earful. "Tedi? Tedi? Gamma? Tedi? Daddy? Zack? Tedi?" We enjoyed all of our company tons and hope to have lots more...but not too soon. It's nice to finally have the house to ourselves for awhile.

I'm doing my best to just take it easy and get the things done that I need to get done without completely wearing myself out. So if I owe you emails, look for them in the next few days. I'm doing my best to catch up, but it'll be a while.

posted by Laura Y. @ 7:28 AM