I've been busy. Reeeaally.

That's why I haven't posted lately. Despite having at least one blog for nearly 8 years, I have been utterly awful about posting at all, to anything, this year.

I'm pretty sure Tristan is safely to blame. He takes a lot of time. Most days, he's nearly attached to me all day long. In fact, lately I've even been holding him while he naps.

You know how before you were a parent there were things that you called crazy, things you said you would never do? Like, for example, holding an 11-month-old baby while he naps? Yeeeah. Then the baby actually comes along, and goes months hardly napping at all, despite the fact that you spend several hours a day repeatedly trying to convince him to nap. And your baby loses his Happy and is rather tetchy all the time, and you begin to count how much he sleeps and realize that it can't possibly be enough. And you think, well, I can spend several hours a day trying to convince him to fall asleep, trying to move him into his crib without waking him, and praying he'll sleep more than 10 minutes after you do; or you can just bite the bullet and spend that same amount of time holding him and rocking.

So I've been doing a lot of rocking.

Fortunately, I have my good buddy the hand-me-down iPhone to keep my company. Just this morning I scored 57,000-some points in Bejeweled! Today during naptime I've also typed 450 words on my current writing project (all with my thumb, thankyouverymuch), read email, and caught up with my most useful girls forum. I know you're thinking, WOW, what a waste of time! But before I started holding Tristan for naps, I wasn't doing any of those things on a daily basis, because every time I could eek out a second of Tristan-free time I was writing articles or submitting project proposals on Guru.com. Which is still what I'm doing with my Tristan-free time (along with cleaning, feeding children, changing diapers, doing laundry, and so on).

And you know what? Since I started the current nap-on-Mama initiative, Tristan has regained his Happy. Just this week he has invented the most hilariously evil little giggle. It's so funny I had to capture it on video, and as soon as I figure out how to rotate my video clockwise so it's not sideways, I'm definitely going to post it somewhere.

I hadn't meant to ignore this blog for so long.  I've been busy (surprise?).  In addition to spending 23 hours a day playing mom, I picked up a freelance writing job a couple weeks ago.  So now I spend 23 hours a day being mom, and my free hour writing articles. This has cut down significantly on my blogging-and-forums time, but it's good for the ol' bank account.

I'm way behind in posting photos, so this batch are from much earlier this summer -- May, June, July. I'm not going to let myself get all excited and post my August pictures until I've caught up!

First, in honor of ballet class started up again next week: pictures from Vivian's dance recital. She's the tiny one on the far left, looking confused. I'll have to post the video Grandpa made: it's hilarious. I almost died laughing watching it the other day.

And here she is, all decked out in her recital tutu and sequins. She was pretty proud of herself -- and she should be! She made a lot of improvement over the year.

Sleeping baby Tristan! We gave up nursing in the rocker ages ago because he was always trying to fling himself off my lap. Now we lay down on the bed and nurse until he falls asleep, and then I attempt to sneak away, pick him up, and put him into his crib. Which works about 10% of the time.

And bathtub Tristan. He really enjoys a bath now and then, but lately he won't stop trying to crawl out of his baby tub. We bought a new, slightly larger baby tub at Ikea but that only solved the problem for about a day.

We had a garage sale at the end of June. Vivian enjoyed talking the ears off of everyone who came, and also running around labeling items.

Welcome

This is a blog about my two kids, Vivian and Tristan.  I've been blogging about both of them for a long time -- since before my first pregnancy -- but I've decided I need to split my posts up into separate blogs.  This blog will be about the kids themselves -- anecdotes, measurements, photos, and so on.  Some/most posts will probably be cross-posted into my original blog on Livejournal (along with a mishmash of other posts about non-kid subjects, such as my wanna-be career as a fiction writer).

Who we are:

Vivian is 4 1/2.  She's our "twice exceptional" kid with very asynchronus abilities.  On the one hand, she has gross motor delays and sensory processing problems.  On the other, she is ahead of her age in "academic" skills.  Strangers often can't quite figure her out.  The last year with Vivian has been a huge trial as she has experimented with not-listening, defiance, contrary attitude, and so on.  Then again, it's been a tough year for other reasons as our house went through some major changes. But right now, she's full of both sweetness and sass, with the sassy part of her getting the upper hand most days. 


Tristan is 9 months old as of last week.  His gestation and arrival--and the fact that he's still here and she's sooo over that sometimes--has been a rough journey for Vivian.  But that doesn't matter so much to Tristan, who thinks his big sister is completely awesome.  In the last month he's hit a bunch of milestones, including sitting himself up, crawling, growing his first 4 week (in 10 days flat), speaking ("Mama", which seems to actually mean "nurse"), and signing ("Eat" and "Drink".  And also "more", but in his world "more" seems to mean "nurse").

And there's me, Erin. I'm 34. I used to be gainfully employed, but I got laid off last summer at 6 months pregnant. My husband, who used to be the stay-at-home parent around here, got a great job and went back to work the very week the  baby was born. I honestly never thought I'd have the opportunity to stay home with my kids, so I'm grateful to be here, even if I was forced by circumstances. I'm not exactly a natural, but I'm doing my best.

Welcome.