It’s hard to believe that the gorgeous baby boy (in case you’ve forgotten how beautiful he was, here’s a reminder for you) at my house has grown into a stout little screech monkey so quickly.

He’s as grumpily demanding (and the demands, they are so very strange) as is he winsome–we spent some time last night trying to figure out which crazy dictator he most resembles and the Husband chose this one, explaining that as long as the Crabcake’s completely nonsensical crazy demands are met, he’s pretty happy-go-lucky.

It’s the happy-go-lucky boy everyone at our house is after, too. The amount of work any one of us will do to get a sideways flirty-eyed smile from this boychild is hysterical. I imagine he thinks about that from time to time and applauds himself inwardly. The reward for the rest of us is that fantastic.

The more Charlie can communicate with us, the happier he is. Unlike his sis, who was earthbound and cautious, but who spoke beautifully and almost perfectly by age one, the boychild would just as soon stand on the dinner table or climb up the swingset. He’s far more physical than his sister was as a tot, but he’s a decent talker, too. His interests slant towards the boyish, through no fault of our own. He likes cars and trains and trucks and contstruction sites. If I stop the car at a site where people are driving backhoes and bulldozers, he’s in hog heaven. As every woman over a certain age is so fond of telling us, he’s all boy. Ain’t no disputing it.

But the same boychild is so gentle and dear. The Husband rocked him last night before bed (the Crabcake now pulls out about forty different tricks to stall bedtime and the current routine we follow is hilarious in its complexity: I have to sing our special song several times and cover him up with his taggie blanket and help him find a “soft one” tag for each hand and on and on and on) and took his hand for a moment and Charlie held on until the Husband shifted in the chair and dropped Charlie’s hand. Charlie reached for his dad and said, “Hold hands, Dad-deeee?” It’s that gentleness (”Kiss, Mom-eeeeee?” “Hug?” “Tank yew, TaTa!”) that makes me almost instantly forgive being hit in the face with a matchbox car more often than I’d like.

Every once in a while, when the fever pitch at our house reaches high screamy kid mode and the dogs are barking and the cat is stalking back and forth in front of us, glaring and meowling like cats do, the Husband will turn to me and say this is us. I still tear up every time I hear Emmylou sing “and our baby boy” so sweetly. Those four words, sung just that way, are just it for me with this kid.

This is the boy.

This is the littlest of us. We are still overjoyed to have him in our family. Happy Birthday, Crabcake.

Yesterday, my daughter taught my son to drag a chair over to his big, tall bed and use the chair to climb onto the bed. Then she went running for the Husband and tattled on her brother and lied about teaching him to do it without knowing that the Husband heard the whole thing from just outside the room.

In the middle of the day, I took the kids to the zoo and to the grocery store (they adore that horrible car cart and act like insane monkey children when they’re in it) where the Crabcake bit his sister on the arm and left teethmarks. She sobbed.

The zoo time was perfection. See? Don’t they look deceptively angelic?

After being sick for all of February, I was completely worn out when I got home with the kids, so I took an hour-long nap. The kids spent part of that time coloring happily at the dinner table. When I got up, the Husband showed me the boychild’s outfit (the one he has on in the picture, made of the softest fine-wale light apple green cord, which I worked my hiney off to purchase, along with a few other foofy outfits, by making several hundred invitations to the clothes show where I got it–I think it would have been about $80 if I’d purchased it, which is outrageously expensive for a wee boy, I know). The back of the floppity collar was covered in ruinous huge purple crayon marks. McPantses tattled on her brother a second time and claimed that he colored all over his clothes, which has never happened before.

She pinkie promised that she didn’t have anything to do with the crayon marks and the Husband believed her, but when I got up from my nap, I knew immediately that she’d lied, again. Plus, the Crabcake told his father that “TaTa colored Chahleee’s clothes.” He calls his sis TaTa and he tattled right back on her, I guess.

Long story short: Tide pen works amazingly well and removed every trace of crayon off that outfit (along with a stray ketchup spot from brunch) and my daughter has turned into a fantastic liar. She went to bed immediately after her bath last night and the Husband and I are completely bewildered at her behavior yesterday. He thinks she needs more attention, but after a week where I was home the almost the entire time* and we spent every afternoon bedded down on couches watching movies and coloring and a weekend of more daughter-centric time, I think she was just having a serious asshole day. We’ll see how things shake out in the next few days before we decide, though.

I fully expect that anyone reading this would think, hey, you should watch yer kids a little better, idiot, and then you wouldn’t have these problems, and I semi-agree, but I also have to say that they’re a lovely team when they’re being lovely and play really well together and our house is so small that we’re all pretty much on top of each other anyway and hell’s bells, these things happen. I remember my friend telling me that she left her two small sons downstairs and ran up to fetch something and came back a couple of minutes later to find the boys spreading fireplace rocks all over the living room. They just happen sometimes.

Plus, we should probably watch our kids better.

You might also say, why would you let your son spend the day in such an expensive outfit if you’re so worried about it and I would tell you that’s a good question. Here’s my answer: with the exception of a few nicey nice dresses, pretty much everything the kids own is fine for daily wear. I don’t understand paying for (or working for) nice clothes that can’t be worn. I don’t care about daily wear and tear, including at daycare, and I’m a master stain-remover. I put one kid coloring on the other kid in an entirely different category than regular dirt and food grime. I was shocked that the crayon marks came out, honestly. I just scrubbed each line (there were around a dozen and I think the Tide pen is now stained purple) and then rinsed the outfit in warm water. I got lucky.

* Note to those who will end up here after googling pneumonia and choking to death or coughing, if you are consistently waking in the middle of the night after drowning or choking nightmares and you’re actually choking because you can’t breathe, go to the doctor. Think about a chest x-ray. Also, if you’re already asthmatic and your doctor wants you to invest in a nebulizer (aka “breathing machine”), I suggest you do it. The breathing treatments I’ve been doing for the past week have been very helpful. When you can’t breathe well in the first place, a rescue inhaler isn’t helpful at all and may only make you cough more. Also, no matter what the lovely ladies at the medical supply place say, it’s very likely that you do not need the $400 Ultrasonic nebulizer that is portable and can be used anywhere. You can buy the $178 one. You don’t need a breathing treatment in your car and if you’re sick enough that you might need that, you should just take yourself back to the couch and get some rest. Your kids might think it’s hysterically funny when you do a breathing treatment at home and you will probably think about hookahs while you’re doing it and then instantly want to pass out from exhaustion after using one. For some reason, that’s what I feel like afterwards. I think it’s the mega-jitters from the albuterol peaking very quickly.

NOTE: I AM WRONG! IF YOU HAVE ASTHMA, THERE IS A CHANCE YOU MIGHT NEED A PORTABLE NEBULIZER. You can read all about asthma and its treatments by clicking the hilighted link. While I do have asthma, I developed it as an adult and it is generally only an issue when it’s cold outside and I’m sick or when I exercise. It’s not an everyday problem and I don’t rely on a rescue inhaler outside of the times listed here. So, you might need a portable nebulizer. That’s for you and your doctor to decide. NOT A DOCTOR HERE! NO MEDICAL ADVICE! JUST GENERAL NATTERING. I should not have said that you won’t need a portable nebulizer no matter what the ladies at the medical supply place might say–I should have said that I don’t need one and I felt like they were trying hard to talk me into the more expensive machine. Also, there are much less expensive portable options if you shop around.

(Thank you to my friend, Lisa, who set me straight.)

Also, if you are sick for a month, believe your doctor when he tells you that even though you will start to feel physically better in a week (which is today! finally!), you won’t feel back to normal for weeks and don’t push yourself. He is right.

**Job news: there is none. They were interviewing four candidates, one per week. This week is the last interview. They let me choose the time for the first interview (this must mean they like me best, right, right?) and wanted to be sure that the playing field was level, so one per week it is. Thus far, per an inside source who is gunning for me hardcore (bless her heart, and I don’t mean that in the rude but smiley southern way), I am the only person who wrote thank you notes to the entire interview “team.” I hope to know by mid-March at the latest. Right now I am trying to be patient, to remember that they have treated me like they are really on my side throughout this process and not to daydream too much. I also try to think about what I will do in the alternative, because there must be one somewhere.

Even before Charlie Crabcake made a surprise appearance during the Oscars in 2005 (his birthday is on Tuesday, but in 2005, 2/27 was on Sunday night–I drug my poor doctor away from the Oscars at about 8:20 or so and the boychild was delivered by hook and by crook, appropriate for an Oscar baby, surely, at 9:01 p.m.), I loved the Oscars.

I love to imagine my acceptance speech (how silly is that?) and the fact that one of the greatest compliments I’ve ever received in life (a tiny statement by my husband) compared me to an Oscar winner. I love predicting ahead of time who will win what–if I’ve seen a good chunk of the movies, I’m a fairly accurate pop culture prognosticator. I’m picking Helen Mirren for best actress, Scorcese for best director and I’m torn between Babel (which I haven’t seen) and The Queen (which I have) and Little Miss Sunshine (haven’t and, I know, shame on me) for best picture.

What do you think?

I love that Ellen is hosting, too. Did you see her in W magazine? She looked incandescent.

I have two and a half solid hours of television to watch. More tomorrow.

A man with small children recently told the Husband that he wasn’t interested in the school where we send our daughter (and will send our son, provided he gets in, which is so weird to even think about at this point) for his own daughters and that he chose a different private school that, he says, costs less money.

(I think, in actuality, that the three main private schools here cost about the same within a few hundred dollars. Ours just seems like the most expensive because it’s one flat fee, instead of many different fees for things like activities, lunches, etc.)

His reasoning? If his girls are like their mother, they will just get married, have kids, quit work and stay home.

Gosh. I could rattle on a bit about pesky wimminfolks costin’ their daddies too much money in schoolin’, but I’ll let you do the mental dismissing yourself instead. It’s my gift to you today.

On a happier note, I think it’s time for me to figure out how to post pics on flickr and link them here and have them show up here but take you to flickr when you click on them. I joined the Corners of My Home group there and posted two pictures of my breakfast area, which is separated from my kitchen by a tall countertop. We rearranged things (moved a huge honking hideous table and added two cubicles bookcases from Target and my childhood easel) to make it a crafty area where the kids and I can hang out and work and where they can amuse themselves better while I’m in the kitchen, though lately, the boy prefers having a bowlful of ice cubes and various vessels into which he can decant them and the resulting meltoff. You can see the two pictures by clicking the links in this sentence.

Back to the doctor for another chest x-ray at lunch. Did you know that when you get a big ole shot of Rocefrin in the behind now they will mix it with lidocaine so that it won’t hurt at all? Not only was the shot completely painless except for the quick initial stick, my hip didn’t hurt at all the first day. It does now. I’m on an oral antibiotic, too, so for those counting at home, it’s my fourth since February 4th. I’m mildly fearful of what they’ll do next if today’s visit doesn’t show enough improvement. I’m still rattly in the chest.

I told a girl at work, who started with the stomach flu and now has pleurisy that I am in a death battle to outsick her.

pneumonia.

Good grief.

I am still sick, would you believe me? I might not believe me, but I have been in bed as soon as the kids have gone to bed every single night for almost two weeks now. I fell asleep at 7:30 last night and kept waking up and thinking, surely now it’s time to get ready for work, but it would only be a couple of hours later.

I think a second doctor visit might be in order. My tessalon perles cough drop thingys are about to run out.

I am trying to be creative, but aside from knitting yet another blue scarf (seriously, my third in that color, in addition to a navy blue one and a lavendar one), I am barely hanging on. Up to my eyeballs in laundry and countertop clutter and dog hair dustbunnies.

On the creative front, I am desperate to make a wavy, ripply crocheted blanket like the ones at Yarnstorm and Posie gets cosy, so I have even ordered Jan Eaton’s book, 200 Ripple Stitches, so that I can attempt the same. I’m also lining up a few colors of Brown Sheep cotton fleece yarn and trying to decide what else would compliment the brown, turquoise blue and lime green that I already have.

Also in the crafty queue is this fantastic shell stitch scarf, once I figure out exactly how to do that gorgeous stitch. It’s perfect in creme, isn’t it?

I think I recently mentioned artist Stephan Britt, who sold me a print of his fantastic hometown art, as well as a big stack of amazing coloring books (they’re in the $6 price range, are signed and numbered and are possibly the most creative, wonderful coloring books I’ve ever seen), but I failed to mention that wonderful Claire, from loobylu sent me in his direction, with a link to a flickr picture of one of Stephan’s drawings.

Lent begins next week, after a bangup Tuesday that includes a Mardi Gras pancake dinner at church (the kids will love it) and a ball later that evening (can the Husband and I make it to both events with sanity intact? tune in next week to see). I am stealing my lenten plans for this year from my friend, Mary, who read about making your lenten offering a more positive thing–rather than giving something up, she’s sort of adding something in.

All our kids want from us is our attention.

She’s giving up that “in a minute.”

We try to finish up what we’re doing before we turn to our kids and while it’s great to put away that last stack of plates or fold that last towel or (more often in my case) read that last paragraph, our entire households would probably be better off if we just stopped and turned and listened and watched and participated in whatever it is that our kids are after us to do.

So, I’m stealing her idea. I’m going to get rid of the “but Mom, really turn around and look at this painting” and just turn instead.

Wish me luck.

Oh! Be still my terrified, thumping heart. Guess who’s going to be in a real-deal horse show at the end of this month?

I am not feverish, either. I am consumptive and I can’t taste anything, really, but HEY, I weigh less than I did when I got pregnant with my son in the summer of 2004 (for the first time since his birth), so that’s a plus.

Anytime I get sick, I also get a cough that makes doctors stroke their chins and say, “Hmmm. I don’t like the sound of that. And how long have you been smoking, anyway?” Uhhh, never?

So, there’s that, too. It’s sexy. The building guards make fun of me when I cough. My family knows better after ten years of it.

Despite the cough and the still-recuperating (we all know full well that as soon as I take one bite of food, I will instantly gain six pounds, correct?) I have turned over our weekend to the social betterment of our children. The girl has her first sleepover party tonight (at someone else’s house, not at the House of Germs and Cough). Tomorrow morning, I am taking the boy to little-kid free time at the fantastic gymnastic place nearish us and then we’ll fetch the girl from her sleepover whereupon we’ll scrub her down and haul her back across town for a birthday party from 2 – 4 p.m. at LibbyLu (God help us one and all it is so heinous and vile a place and little girls worship it, I tell you, and I probably would have too) and then haul us back home again so I can scrub myself down and get to a grownup party in a city 90 miles away for some grownup party time with the Husband and a bunch of our friends, many of whom we haven’t seen since we finished school. I did not find the time or energy to get hilites, which I desperately need, so I am hopeful that a smashing pair of shoes will divert the eyes from the hair, which has grown exceptionally lank–it’s like the fevers actually fried my poor hair.

And then there’s Sunday. One more birthday party for the girl. Whee! By Sunday night, she should be so over-partied and in need of downtime that when I ask her if she had a good time, she’ll scream, “BUT WHY ARE YOU ASKING ME THESE QUESTIONS?” and burst into tears.

Somewhere in the midst, there will be creating of the non-germ sort. Surely.

The only thing I have created since Friday night is a consistent internal body temperature of about 101.5 and a diagnosis of the flu.

I had some amazing hallucinations Saturday night involving my mother pulling my covers off over and over again while we were sleeping in the front of an old Albertson’s grocery store and I did think up some silly haiku about shivers and sheets and sweats while I was either shivering my way into or out of a fever, but frankly, I can’t remember them now.

The tamiflu and two other flu meds I’m taking seem to be making me sicker than better, but the paperwork says nausea, vomiting and upset stomach are all side effects of those meds, which is just freaking SWELL when you have a stomach flu, isn’t it?

At some point today, I have to bleach the house and boil things. To bed for now.