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Weblog Archives December 22, 2003 First things first: HAPPY BIRTHDAY, KATIE!!! I hope your birthday rocks as much as you do. So until this evening I was worried about my Xmas shopping. I had most of the big stuff but there were a few people that were really hard to choose something for. But now, thanks to a quick expedition with Ange, I have all but two gifts and I know what to get and where to get them so I am pretty damn ready. And I have a clean and decorated house and I have baking stuff ready to go tomorrow. Whoot Whoot. In other news, the Boy only nursed once last night. He woke up several times but only needed to nurse at 2am so I am well on my way to drinking blue curacao on New Year's. Hurrah! (again, not conveying the proper jubilation but it'll do.) I don't have anything else interesting to say. Wait. That makes the presumption that news of weaning and Xmas shopping is interesting to anyone besides me. Ah, the hell with it, I stand by my original statement. And I'm outta here (makes Dennis Miller squiggle on imaginary paper a la vintage Weekend Update) December 16, 2003 Happy Birthday, Mom! You rock. Enjoy your yacht ;) I'm writing today solely to have an excuse to mention Mom's birthday so this isn't going to be an action-packed entry. The Boy only woke up twice last night. Once at 1:30 and once at 4:00 and then he got up at 6:45. So things are looking up. The Man and The Dan and The Ange and The Phil have a LOTR movie marathon tomorrow from 12pm-1:30am. So me and the Boy are going Christmas shopping and having supper with the second string. We had some unexpected money arrive today so our budget has expanded somewhat. Big fun for Christmas shopping and for Christmas parties. Hurrah! Writing 'hurrah' does not convey the right sort of merriment but 'hurray' just looks wrong. Let's just say I'm pleased and leave it at that. December 15, 2003 December has been totally weird so far, I've been ill, the Boy has been sleep even less than usual and I have been severely unmotivated because of all of the above. And that sucks! I am really working hard at getting the Boy to sleep longer these days and that means bracing myself for a lot of fuss because part and parcel of getting more sleep is weaning him. I've thought about it lots of times but I still felt like he needed to nurse at night for whatever reasons of his own. But since last week, he seems different, more able to take other sources of comfort and I'm gleefully heading to a non-bovine existence even as I type. I'm taking it slowly, but I'm trying to be milk-free by New Year's Eve so I can have a couple of drinks without agonizing over alcohol content. That sounds like a lousy reason for weaning but seeing as I had decided it was time, New Year's seemed like a reasonable goal and a couple of Be Braves (vodka, blue curaco, and sprite) sound like just the thing to see in 2004 - the year I become famous ;) It's really weird to think of having my body all to myself. Since March of 2001, I've had to consider the Boy in everything I've done, everything I've eaten or drunk, every time I went out. I'm not sure what I'll do with my freedom once I get it. It will be nice to be able to be out very late and not worry that the Man is home with the Boy, unable to comfort him because nursing is the only thing that would work. Motherhood really puts strange stresses on you, perhaps different stresses than fatherhood puts on men. I haven't been able to go out guilt free for almost three years and I feel a little guilty for being so happy that that situation may end soon. There's a full size essay to develop from that last paragraph, I think I'll try and write it this week. And now, in the great tradition of obscure comments to friends who may not even read them : Good Luck, Daniel. You've been on my mind all day. December 9, 2003 This has been a really crappy day. Not only did I get less sleep than usual but the boy was cranky AND everything I had planned for the next couple of days has been cancelled or postponed. That sucks. Now I have to reschedule everything in what has to be the busiest time of year for everyone. GAH! I'm really all out of sorts today, I hope it's just the lack of sleep. I feel too sick to exercise and too lazy to tidy up and I can just muster the enthusiasm to write this whiny entry. There is absolutely no pizzazz in me right now. In fact, maybe I shouldn't be writing at all. Maybe I'll just go back to re-reading Fear of Flying by Erica Jong and call it a day. December 6 What a fun couple of days! Yesterday I spent a long time out in the yard with the Boy, dragging him around in his sled, playing in the snow, making snowmen and laughing uproariously. I'm not one of those people who goes outdoors for the sake of being outside, I like to have a purpose, so it was fun to have a reason to be out enjoying the sunny snowy day. Then last night we played Trivial Pursuit. We have an unusual set of rules to keep things fair, no couples or siblings on the same team (unless all three of us Henneburys are playing and there are only two teams) so the couples/siblings can't use their collective memories to drag information out of the great beyond. That would put the other team at a disadvantage. And then we have arbitrary rules, like no people with the same name or rhyming names on the same team. It's hard to decide who gets to be on what team, and even though we're all adults (or reasonable facsimiles anyway) it's still no fun to be the last one picked. So, hence the rules. ANYWAY, we had a great time playing last night, it was the Man and Hil against me, Daniel and Derek. That may seem like an uneven match but the Man totally rocks Trivial Pursuit so when teams are uneven, he ends up on the smaller team. He and Hil got stuck with all sorts of questions about 19th Century Prime Ministers but we still ended up tied at the end. We had to read a full card of questions to each other to break the tie, and me and the guys won. It was nice to have a fairly even game for a change, with no one getting even slightly bitter. Then I drove Daniel home, and we had a great talk. What a thoroughly interesting person he is! And I realized that we both read people in similar ways but we use different evidence to do so. I tend to pick up on their emotions and their choice of words and he reads their body language but we end up with a similar assessment. V. intriguing. I've never met anyone who is as good at reading people as I am. (It's one of my things!) I usually figure people out pretty quickly and I can usually make them reveal further information just by letting them know what I've already figured out. Not that I do that for sport, however, that would be mean and I'm not mean, just assertive. I think I'm just a natural anthropologist. I study people and it thrills me to figure what makes them tick. I feel like I really know them once I can predict what they'd do in certain situations. I can usually get inside anyone's head and figure out why what they're doing makes sense to them. And when I can't figure out someone's motivations for something, it drives me crazy and I have to keep coming back to it and discussing it until it makes sense. Oh right, I was talking about what I've been up to the past two days. So this morning we were good parents and brought the Boy to the Santa Claus parade. He thought Santa was okay but for him the two hits of the parade were the police car with the siren and seeing Uncle Dan strolling along with Aunt Neece's Girl Guide group. Yep, that's my boy: ignore the alleged main attraction and follow your own interests. I can't wait to put up our tree tomorrow. The Boy is going to plotz. December 4 I am soooooooo tired today. Last night was even worse than usual. My friend Krista has a 3 month old who is already sleeping through the night. I feel cheated! We cooked up a great murder mystery at Improv today, I'm looking forward to Wednesday night when we can perform. One of my favorite parts about improv meetings nowadays is watching everyone interact with the Boy. Even though I liked them all before, watching them with the Boy endears them to me all the more. It's v. cool. I'm too tired to continue writing. Hopefully something profound will occur to me overnight and I can write about that tomorrow. December 3 I was way too tired and headachey last night to write in here and besides writing daily was November's challenge. Release the Moles! kicked ass last night and had a ton of fun. I am so proud of them. Nice work, folks! I'm still tired and headachey, my plan to wean the Boy is backfiring big time. Now he wakes every hour and a half all night instead of allowing my previous luxury of two to three hours sleep at a time. GAH! At least people have mostly stopped giving me advice on how to get him to sleep. They usually just shake their heads and look at me with pity. That's a lot easier to ignore. I was hoping I would have something important to say once I started typing but apparently not so I think I'll check my email and call it a night (it's a night!) By the way, Jason, I was fully expecting to discover a weblogish entry from you on this site when I got up this morning. Got distracted did you? (Incidentally that question was not a challenge, I believe you could totally take over my site if you felt like it. ;) December 1 So December is officially here and I can officially start playing Christmas music. Not that I haven't been playing it already, but I felt sort of sneaky while I was doing it: like I was sipping cooking sherry during prohibition or something. Anyway, I refuse to take crap for playing Christmas music in December so if you are coming over here you had better brace yourself for Rockin' around the Christmas Tree and Baby, it's cold outside. We're putting up our tree on Sunday night. I'm really excited to see what the Boy will make of it but I'm also worried that he'll assume that a 'Santatree' automatically means 'prents' and 18 days is a long time for a little kid to wait for 'prents'. My improv team performs tomorrow. I'm waaaaay excited for them, they are going to have a blast. Release the Moles!: Good Luck © Christine C. Hennebury 2003 |
