Blogging

Apparently there was this big conference for women bloggers recently. I am assuming that this exists only on the periphery of my life because there is a cheerio stuck to my glasses and I can't see anything else? I'm not really a "blogger." I mean, I blog, but frankly, I use the blogger template, unchanged, and post, on average, once every 3 weeks.

Really, people, I'm like a kid playing in a puddle who can't find the kitchen to bake the mud pies. Maybe it's because the only times I get to blog are when my dishes, laundry, and duster await me eagerly and my kid sits at the other computer and serves himself lunch from the Snack Cabinet (cheerios and an apple, woohoo!), and the baby is falling asleep in my mei tai, while I bounce, bounce, bounce, cha cha, bounch, cha cha cha. While typing. (Or after everyone in the house is asleep and I am choosing blogging over sleeping... not a good decision, let me tell you.)

Well, there are some blogs I've started following regularly, among them Uppercase Woman. I really love her blog, that one and The Spectrum I click to whenever I have a moment (um, a moment being stolen from the laundry, because THAT never gives me a break).

So I've learned that apparently I don't really make the cut of the blogger elite, and I'm not bitter, I'm really not. Really. It's just... what am I missing exactly? Apparently my current level of internet participation (which drives my husband NUTS) is miniscule. Where does anyone find the time?

So when I read this on Uppercase Woman: "BlogHer [the conference] is about community. It's about meeting other women like you, . . . women that don't think Twitter is silly, or that Facebook is just for keeping up with family, or that spending a lot of time on the internet is stupid and pathetic," this is what I thought: Okay... so how is Twitter not silly? How could facebook be for anything but keeping up with folks? And really, if I sit on my computer for about a half hour, tuning out persistent concerns for my son's brain while he finds Quack at peepandthebigwideworld.com and wishing I could get out of the house sometime today after the laundry and the dishes are done (oh, dear, did I already mention them, oh, 40 times? oops.), I start to feel like, yes, this is stupid and pathetic. I need some sunshine. I need to do something REAL. And so does my kid. And the baby is going to wake up soon and NOTHING WILL HAVE GOTTEN DONE!

And thus, I suppose, I am not BlogHer material. I mean, I just don't get it. I blog mostly because I'm afraid if I don't feel accountable for writing SOMEthing, I will wake up one day, my kids will be 40, and I will remember NOTHING.

I won't remember that this morning when Andrew woke up, he crawled into bed with me and said, "I don't like sleeping in Daddy's bed. I want to sleep with you."

I won't remember how Liliana, who is now almost 6 months old, (HOLY CRAP!) smells like butter and milk and candy and when I laugh and tickle her and suck on her chin, and she smiles with one dimple I think I will die of happiness.

I won't remember exactly how we arranged the living room, or how the sugary sound of the baby's breathing, or that little-boy voice of Andrew's or the amazing things he says, like identifying a cumulo-nimbus cloud (okay it was a cumulus cloud, but he's only 4, give him a break). Or how he climbs up in my lap when I'm nursing the baby, or how he suddenly just shouted, as I'm typing this, "I'M GROWING UP SO FAST!" as if he read my mind!

"What did you just say!"
"I said I'm growing up so fast today!"
"Why did you say that?"
"BECAUSE! I'm eating so much healthy food!"

Maybe there's another reason to blog? But I'm just not there. I'm glad some people are, though, because I keep finding new blogs to read. Check this one out, gotta love a mama who takes on the "bad mom" myth in her title: Her Bad Mother.

The Spider Incident

Ohh. Ohhhh. The Spider Incident.

So, if you've read my blog, you know about our pet spider who lived on the back porch and ate all kinds of unsavory things. She kind of worked for us, keeping the bugs away. What you may not know is that Andrei fed her cockroaches. That was quite a sight. For me, it was one of those car-accident moments. Can't look away, but disturbing. Actually, I did look away. Run away. ANYway...

So, yesterday, she wasn't in her web, which was reported to me by a certain four-year-old. I figured she ran off for greener past... uh, webs. Well, when Andrei went to check on her, he found her on the ground under her web, not quite dead. What happened? Could it be the monster palmetto bug she ate the night before? We may never know.

While I was puttering around the kitchen as I am wont to do, Andrei came through with some of my good pins (snarked from my craft room) and an old piece of cardboard from the recycle bin. AND A DYING BANANA SPIDER. Through which he had stuck a pin to hold it to the board (where it lay slowly dying.) ("They don't have FEELINGS!" he protested when I was horrified.)

My horror abated somewhat when he later LIED and said it was dead now, out on the porch, on the cardboard. End of story, right?

Cut to this afternoon. You know by now what happened.

I FOUND IT IN THE FREEZER. When I was looking for fruit. In the freezer. Looking kind of frosty (the spider, not me).

I barely had time to call my mom and freak out on the phone before the spider killer came home.

Which is when I found out that the story gets worse! Yes, worse!

It was ALIVE when he put it in the freezer! (Who did I marry?) Um, he put it in there to put it out of its misery.

This whole episode raises so many mixed emotions... horror at the corpse vs. pride at the compassion of putting something out of its misery... scientific fascination vs., um, horror... compassion for the spider vs. total gross-out while trying to make a smoothie.

Oh, and trying to explain to Andrew why Daddy did that to the spider (using the word SCIENTISTS and STUDY a lot) vs. trying to calm myself.

Ugh. The worst part? My second thought (after "must. call. mom.") was I SO HAVE TO blog about this.

Andrew and I went to breakfast this morning out at Panera. This is the conversation we had, while 3 guys at an adjacent table talked about Nascar and I bounced Liliana in the mei tai:

Andrew: There's a pool in the sky. (very matter of fact)
Me: No! There is? I've never seen it...
Andrew: Well, it's above the clouds, so you can't see it. (boy genius)
Me: Are you sure?
Andrew: Yes. There are holes in the bottom of it, and that's how it rains.
Me: Okay, well, if there are holes in the bottom, it must get empty...
Andrew: Yeah...
Me: So what happens when it gets empty?
Andrew: Astronauts go up there and fill it.
Me: Are you SURE?
Andrew: YEAH! Of course!
Me: Ok, then, so who swims in it?
Andrew: I don't know. Nobody. Mommy, you're silly.

I love my son.

Me: Andrew won't be watching any TV this week.
Grammy: Well, if he's at our house, he probably will watch some...
Me: Why?
Andrew: (pointing at me and taking a triumphant stance against child abuse) Because YOOOU won't be there!

Liliana is into everything.

That is, everything she can get to on my lap. Loves paper, big suprise there, right?

She got so upset that she couldn't have pizza crusts at dinner tonight that we gave her a little mashed avocado on her new spoon for her to feed herself. She didn't really eat any, but it made her so happy. Now she's contentedly sitting in my lap tearing at paper on the desk.

Andrew is in the bathtub, Daddy is teaching him to use a snorkel (a skill I have yet to master without some level of panic). After the bath we're going to watch a movie and have popcorn, and tomorrow we may use Andrei's last day off to go to the beach! Expect pictures. :)

In the car today..

(...music playing on the iPod in the car fades to the Numa Numa song. Wild singing and dancing ensues on the part of the driver. Um, that's me.)

Andrew: Mommy, stop singing!
Me: (silent mouthing the words and wild dancing)
Andrew: Maaahmee! No dancing!
Me: But I like dancing!
Andrew: Don't take your hands off the steering wheel! (things you thought you'd never be told by a 4yo) ... People will say ... "weirdy." (Ok, "weirdo" is what I usually got in school, but whatever)
Me: I don't really care what other people think. (wild dancing. this is really a cool song, plus it's in Romanian.)
Andrew: (pensive silence)
Me: (hands on steering wheel, I promise)
Andrew: I wish you had two more hands in your armpits so you could dance and drive!

YES! Weirdies 1, normal ZERO!

Jen