1. I just finished reading The Lonely Polygamist. So, so, so good. I added it to my library queue after reading a review somewhere that I now don’t even remember, and when my turn for it came up I almost didn’t pick it up from the library because I couldn’t remember why I wanted to read it. Then I picked it up from the library because I was going there anyway, but I thought I probably wouldn’t read it because I already had two other books on the go and it couldn’t be renewed because there were already several holds on it. Then I read the first page, because what the hell, and the two books already on the go were shoved to the back burner.

It’s hilariously funny, heartbreakingly sad, and so beautifully written. Do check it out.

2. Look who’s cruising.

She’s ten months old today. Crazy, right? Insert the usual noises about how I can’t believe how quickly the time goes, and how I have no idea where the last ten months have flown. Except I have a theory now about where the time goes. There appears to be a vortex in this house…somewhere in the vicinity of the living room. All of my free time and a good chunk of my sanity and short-term memory get sucked into it.

3. I was pretty sure I had three things to say, but I’ve forgotten what the third was. Which is just kind of how things are going lately…

Yes, I’m finally releasing the hat and legwarmer set! Why did it take so long? Ask the cute kid in the pink hat and legwarmers.

I can honestly say these pieces are among the most truly useful things I’ve knitted. The baby has worn this pink set pretty much every day in fall and winter, and wore a smaller set when she was first born in the spring.

It’s a simple knit that looks complicated (always a good thing if you’re knitting it as a gift for non-knitters). It will see more use than a sweater, is more practical than booties. And it uses fingering-weight yarn, so it’s a great sock-yarn stash buster.

Make the set as a gift, or for your own kids. Hell–make it for yourself! I’ve sized it for babies through teens, but it would be very easily sized up for you. Oh come on. You totally deserve your own hat and legwarmer set. In cashmere, even. It doesn’t take that much yarn.

Any fingering-weight yarn will work. I knit the baby’s first set with one skein of Elann Baby Cashmere and knit her an additional hat from half a skein of 100% cashmere I’d had floating in the stash for years. (Small things are a great way to use luxury yarns without totally breaking the bank.)

SIZES

Hat
0–6m [6–18m, 2–4yrs, 5yrs–teen]

Legwarmers
0–12m [18m–5T, 6–12yrs, teen]

YARN
Pictured here in: Zen Yarn Garden [70% Superwash Merino/20%Bamboo/10%Nylon; 450yd per skein]; Color: Passion.

For the complete set:
1 [1, 2, 2] skeins.

For just the hat:
1 [1, 1, 1] skein.

For just the legwarmers:
1 [1, 1, 2] skeins.

The pattern includes instructions for both hat and legwarmers.

US $5.00

My big guy is conked out with a fever and a runny nose and cough. The baby? She’s cackling and crawling around the living room, banging on stuff and searching for choking hazards.

Speaking of which, thank you for all of your babyproofing suggestions! We’ve opted to move the really small stuff up to Thumper’s room, because he was excited to have his toys up there, and to enlist his help in keeping choking hazards out of Ladybug’s chubby little hands. To that end, he now has his very own toilet-paper roll for size checks. Who would have thought that the kid who hates to be alone in a room would be so happy to have his Legos and Playmobil moved into his bedroom? Go figure. My best guess is that now that the baby is totally mobile, the idea of a space that’s just his own is quite appealing. We’ll see what happens once the novelty wears off, and will maybe go the baby-gate route then.

The baby has a runny nose, too. And yes, her bedtime was an hour ago. And yes, we went through our bedtime routine at the usual time, and got into bed to nurse. And then she sat up after nursing for a while and did that “I’m so damn cute” head tilt thing and started crawling all over the bed. I tried to lay her back down several times, but I’m not really the wrestling and forcing and strong-arming type of mama. I’m not going to pin down a not-tired baby. Nor am I going to put her in a crib, tricky as the family bed can be in situations like this. Yes, it would be easier with a crib to stick her in there tired or not and walk away, but that’s exactly why I wouldn’t want to put any child of mine in one. (This is what we choose for our family. I’m not judging whatever works for yours, crib or not. Well, except for crying it out. I do judge that a little. Okay. More than a little. But not to your face. ;P)

I thought I’d gotten the sleep thing straightened out after winter break, when I got us back on our normal wake-up schedule, but apparently I was wrong. I’ve tried to patiently explain to her that mama can’t work on her book until a certain baby is asleep and she just laughed in my face. Shocking that at nine months old a child should be so unconcerned with her mother’s hopes, dreams, and sleep needs.

Remind me to send my mom some flowers.

And now, time to strap this baby into the Ergo and wear her down.

Okay, parents of two or more… Tell me. Please. HOW do you keep a baby from killing herself with an older sibling’s toys? Seriously. It seems like everything Thumper cares about these days is a choking hazard–including his books, because this baby LOVES paper. She loves to crinkle it; she loves to tear it; and she especially loves to try to eat it. Everything goes in this kid’s mouth. Every. Damn. Thing. And I watch her. Closely. I swear. And even so, today I fished a dreidel out of her mouth at the very last possible moment. It’s unreal how fast she is with those hands… I gave her a basket of wooden blocks to play with. I should have checked it more carefully, because I didn’t know there was a small dreidel in it. She found it in less than a minute.

Death by dreidel. I’m torturing myself replaying all the horrific ways today could have gone. But I saw her. I fished it out. She’s fine.

But…fuck. You know? Today it was a dreidel. Last week it was a plastic gun from one of Thumper’s Star Wars figures. (A gun I thought I’d confiscated, by the way. Must look into that one a bit deeper.) And the week before that it was a scrap of paper she’d found on the floor. The obvious solution is to make sure there are no choking hazards whatsoever within her reach, but how? I’m asking sincerely. How the hell do you keep choking hazards off the floor at all times when there’s a four and a half year old boy on the premises? A boy whose dearest possessions are coins and polished stones and bottlecaps. A boy who is really, really into Legos right now. A boy who plunks himself down at his art table and happily cuts out snowflakes for a half hour at a time–and drops tantalizing bits of paper everywhere in the process.

Right now the kids’ toys are mostly in the living room, with less-played-with toys upstairs in an uninsulated (so too cold now) playroom. For starters, we’re going to move all of Thumper’s toys with small parts up to his room. Action figures and Playmobil stuff and his “treasure boxes” full of godknowswhat jump immediately to mind, but I’m sure we’ll find more than that as we go through everything. But he’s a social kid, and he doesn’t much like to play alone in his room, so I’m not sure how this will work out.

Help! How did you deal with this?

1. Start kindergarten
2. Do yoga
3. Do kung fu (get a belt)
4. Get a booster seat

The baby is sleeping better, so now I have only myself to blame for my sleep-deprivation. I’ve been staying up late revising Adverse Possession. Before I had kids, my most productive writing hours were from 10am to 3pm. I didn’t do much writing while Thumper was very young. When he was eighteen months old we joined a co-op playgroup that gave me two free mornings a week, and that’s when I started writing again. I’m not willing or able to take so much time off from the work this time. It was miserable not writing for so long, and a miserable mother isn’t much good to anyone. Besides, Ladybug is a way easier baby than my high-needs guy was (is). I’ve been able to get back to writing and freelance much, much sooner with her. But she’s too young for a playgroup. No free mornings to write or do editing work yet. Night time is it.

My old line was that I couldn’t work after nine pm. That my brain was useless at that point in the day, capable of producing only crap. But if night time was the only time I could get I had to find a way to make it work. The first couple of weeks I did churn out nothing but crap, but it got better. I’m in a routine with it now, and it feels natural to be writing while I listen to Billy and the kids snore on the baby monitor. I always work at my desk in my office, with a glass of water and a mug of decaf next to me, and an apple. Those little constants helped me move the midday routine to late night.

I’m getting good work done. The revisions are going well. I have no idea how long this draft will take–adding three povs is a major undertaking. But the good news (and the bad news) is that no one is waiting for this novel. I will work on it until it’s done. (again)

The third novel, which was formerly known as Cold Black Stars but which recently renamed itself Damascus, is waiting impatiently for its turn again. And so of course an idea for another project started tugging on my sleeve yesterday. But one at a time. The next books will keep. I thought I’d try to work on AP and Damascus at the same time, but I just don’t have enough writing time to divide my attention like that. If only I didn’t need to sleep at all…

Happy New Year, my dears.

Which is to say that I have not been sleeping well, because the kids have not been sleeping well. I blame the preschool winter break. Or rather, my not having kept up our regular schedule in spite of the winter break. No…the kids slept in, so I slept in, too. And then bedtime got later because they’d slept later in the morning. And then they slept even later the next day, the baby’s two naps got pushed back because she wasn’t tired, then bedtime pushed back, and now…well, it’s just all gone to hell. I bring the baby up to bed at her usual time (7:30), go through our bedtime routine, get into bed and nurse, just like we’ve done since day one. Normally she’d snuggle in and nurse until she fell asleep. Now she’s nursing for about ten minutes, then rolling over, sitting up, tilting her head and giving me her very best “I’m so damn cute I don’t know how you stand it” smile. That smile is significantly less cute when you are supposed to be sleeping, my love.

I’m all for following my baby’s cues, but 10:30 is not an acceptable bedtime for a not-quite-nine-month-old. Gah!

Since I can’t write until they’re asleep, this is not working out. Sleep deprivation I can handle. Writing-time deprivation? Not so much.

Last night, after trying to persuade the baby that she really, really wanted to sleep from 8pm to 10:30 (she was exhausted and fighting it at this point. We’d been nursing and cuddling and rocking and walking and NOTHING worked) I gave up, plunked her down in the family room with some toys, and dug out the copy of No-Cry Sleep Solution that saved our butts when Thumper was younger. It confirmed my suspicion that the schedule change was likely to blame. Today I’m trying to get us back on track with our routine. I got her down for her regular first nap time at 10:30, and she’s still asleep now at 12:10. So there’s a good first nap for the day. If I can get her down for her second nap before 3pm, I think we’re in good shape.

Ah, the fascinating things that occupy my mind these days. And you wonder why I’m not blogging more often. (Next up, a post on precisely what “bite-sized piece” means when feeding this particular baby! And then maybe a treatise on bath toys!) I think I need some grown-up time. Help!

PS: Kiddo’s been fighting bedtime, too, but that’s Billy’s problem. Heh.

You really, really do.

Caroline Leavitt’s latest novel, Pictures of You, was scheduled to be released at the end of January. There’s been tremendous buzz about it, and some great reviews, and the release date was bumped up. You can get it now! As in–in time for Christmas now. Because what gift could be better than a truly great read?

It’s waiting for me on my kindle. I’m going to start it tonight. Want to join me?

I’m in my office, writing. Got MacFreedom turned on for 30-minute writing sprints and I’m working hard. Plugged in. Getting good stuff down on the page. Billy and the kids are asleep upstairs. I can hear Billy and Kiddo snoring on the baby monitor. Then a cough followed by the shifty papery sound that means someone’s moving around in bed and I hold my breath and hold real still but magical thinking doesn’t transmit well through baby monitors so of course the baby wakes up, fussing and wanting to be nursed back down.

I go upstairs and find Billy has actually woken up and is trying to soothe her back down. Good man! But it’s not working, probably because he somehow failed to detect the telltale smell of a poopy diaper. I take her, bring her to the changing table, get to work. She’s unhappy now, because when she saw me she expected we’d lie down and she’d have some nice milk and drift off to sleep in five minutes or so, as usual. Instead she’s on the changing table and even though the lights are dimmed, they can never really be dimmed enough when you’re on your back staring up at the ceiling after you’ve been asleep, right? And it’s all cold on your skin where your pajamas have been unsnapped, and that mom lady is wiping your butt with cold tushie wipes, and it’s just all so very, very unfair because all you wanted was to cuddle with the mama and get some nice milk and go back to sleep.

So yeah…she’s crying now. And then she pees all over the changing table. So I pick her up because I’m not the sort to leave a kid lying in her own pee and I thought she was done but…she pees all over me. Soaks me through three layers to the skin. Lovely. Billy gets out of bed and gets a clean diaper on her while I strip off my peed-on clothes and now she’s really, really mad because she’s been handed off to the second-stringer when she had expressed a very clear preference for the mama and where IS that milk already and why is she not in bed yet?

Finally we get into bed and since she’s all worked up it takes thirty minutes of precious, precious writing time to get her back to sleep.

But asleep she is. And it’s only midnight. Sleep is for the weak. Back to MacFreedom I go.

Benny is home!!!