Since last we met...

I bet you're wondering where I've been. Okay, so maybe you weren't, but I certainly was.

I spent the past 6 days doing a lot of stuff, some of which I'll tell you about now, some which will have to wait until later. But here's the short version:

1. I mailed all my Christmas cards, which was quite something considering I am a sort of black hole of unproductivity these days. However, I did manage to mistake some $1 stamps for 1 cent stamps to the tune of something like $20 in postage, and had to be rescued by a saintly and rather incredulous mail counter lady. Well, I'm glad I did that because otherwise I wouldn't have known myself.

2. We went to this baby reunion. When I was pregnant with Odessa, we went every other Monday night to this really great birth/parenting class through our midwifery practice with a bunch of other couples, and now all the babies are born and kinda big and able to pull each other's hair and poke each other in the eye. Looking at all those babies, I realized something: before you have a baby, people are all the time making a bunch of lame and specious claims like "You're never going to sleep again," and "Kiss your movie watching days goodbye," and "They just grow up so fast," all of which are completely misleading. For starters, I sleep 5-6 hours every night, whether I need it or not. Furthermore, you may have noticed how many movies I manage to go see. Procreation has not tempered my movie-going moxie. And "they grow up so fast" is almost laughably inaccurate. I'll have you know, Odessa has grown up in the time it takes to bake a batch of cookies. The time it takes Lance Armstrong to ride a mile on his bike. The time it took for my dog to eat the bowl of spaghetti I dropped on the floor this evening. Babies don't grow up fast, they grow up lighting fast, muscle car fast, fast like a greased bunny with a jet pack on.

So, we had a baby reunion and it was adorable and also amazing to think that this time last year all the babies in that photo above (except the very advanced looking blond pixie in front) were all curled up in the tummies of all those ladies (with the exception of the lady in black at the far right who looks like Sophia Loren. She's our midwife, Susan, and she's got a special fancy chair waiting for her in heaven.) Now they are out, and are fully capable of throwing their own feces at the other monkeys, if only they were able to take off their diapers. Which they can't yet. But soon enough, and let's just hope it will be after their feces throwing impulses have abated.

3. Odessa, chip off the ole block that she is, has taken this, The Most Wonderful Time of the Year, to contract a mysterious and temperamental fever. She has no symptoms of illness other than the fact that between the hours of 5 PM and midnight for the past 3 nights, you could roast a turkey in her pajamas. I have called the pediatricians office and they told me to bring her in when I have successfully cooked an egg sandwich on her forehead. I think we'll skip that step and take her in tomorrow.

So, I'm off to bed to make hay while the sun shines--or, rather, get warm while my baby makes a passable substitute for an electric blanket. More tomorrow!