Back and gone again

Thursday we packed up the car and headed for the airport. Nine hours later, we arrived at our destination, exhausted and covered in bodily fluids ejected from our children. K spent most of the flight clutching the barf bag for dear life and then fell asleep on top of JW. X was a little volcano, at one point spitting up directly down my sleeve and at another down my shirt, prompting the woman across the aisle to reminisce about how her baby once pooped in her husband's pocket. Normally a great napper, X was so excited that he refused to close his eyes. Every few minutes, he would realize how tired he was and start yelling and yelling. The upside to this was that while walking up and down the aisle with him, I got to chat with some of the New England Revolution guys. The entire team was on our plane, on their way to a game with the San Jose Sharks. They seem like fine upstanding gentlemen and we look forward to attending their games when the boys are older.

The rest of the trip went either uphill or downhill from there, depending on whether you consider "up" and "down" to be measures of quality or difficulty. Friday we met CT for lunch, went for a walk on a local trail, and had dinner with my cousin. Saturday morning we met up with a college friend and her baby for a park outing and lunch. Saturday evening was the wedding. CT and her husband, Mr. Trousers, came over to babysit. This turned out perfectly -- K was excited to hang out with them, they enjoyed quality time with the boys, and JW and I got our first alone time out since before X was born. The place we were staying was literally five minutes away from the wedding, so I came back to feed X instead of lugging my pump out to California. We only knew a few people at the wedding and I wasn't feeling up to doing much dancing, so we came home early and hung out with CT and Mr. Trousers after the boys were in bed. (Other high points of the wedding: a close friend was the best man and gave a great toast, and the groom's father gave a speech about how his son was born in the car on the way to the hospital, which none of us knew about despite the groom being a legendary storyteller!) Sunday we met up with another cousin and her family for a nursery school carnival, where K patted bunnies and overcame his fear of the obstacle course. Then we had a bigger family get-together for dinner and returned home to pack. The flight home on Monday went surprisingly smoothly -- X was his usual mellow self, we drugged K up with ibuprofen and Dramamine and he was fine, and both kids slept for a while.

This week has felt a little crazy even though I'm not working. We returned Monday, Wednesday night we went to a party, and tonight we're supposed to leave for my in-laws' place for Memorial Day weekend. Today is JW's birthday (happy birthday to my lovely husband!). I feel like I've spent the week recovering from our CA trip, doing laundry and grocery shopping and cleaning up, but we still have a few lingering items to unpack and we're still so tired. So, so tired. So tired that I keep hurting myself accidentally -- in the space of 24 hours, I burned my arm, bruised my other arm, hit my head on the bathroom shelving twice, and closed a metal door on my heel. So tired that while K was getting ready for bed, I went into the bathroom and stared into space for so long that he had to come find me. So tired that I have forgotten how to do math. I'm hoping to get some naps in this weekend.

In little boy news, X is nearly three months old and is becoming a delightful little baby instead of a cuddly ball of a newborn. He goos and gahs and smiles a lot. His eyes are wide open and he's lost that look of someone who's just taken off their glasses. He still has the spastic arms, so he needs to be swaddled when he sleeps -- I'm hoping he grows out of that soon, because it's been hot lately and also he can break out of anything but the tightest swaddle. He gets terrible neck rashes from spitting up, no matter how much we try to keep him clean. I don't remember that happening to K. And he also has severe cradle cap, so I've been oiling up his head. He doesn't seem to mind.

K got a haircut yesterday and screamed just as loudly as ever. I thought he was getting over that. K loves to play superheroes (or "supers", as he calls it) and is always talking about what powers he has. He is also back to counting snails now that they're out of hibernation. K has never had a dominant hand, and we thought he might be a lefty but would settle on a hand once he started writing. My theory was that he never liked to write or draw or color because he didn't have a dominant hand. Well, thanks to his preschool teacher, he now knows how to write all the letters on his own and was happy to write in Daddy's birthday card. "What hand did he use?" asked JW. "Both of them," I replied. He'd make one line of the X, or the down stroke of the D, with his left hand, then switch to his right hand for the rest of the letter. I doubt it's occurred to him that none of the other kids do this.

I have done a few interesting things so far on my maternity leave. I reviewed a manuscript of Laura Vanderkam's latest book about money, which contains lots of thought-provoking ideas about how people can allocate their money to make themselves happier. I joined the board of a community foundation that does great work in my town. I attended an alumni entrepreneurship event, and it looks like I'll be mentoring some Brown entrepreneurs this summer. I'm trying to take some time to do things that I would ordinarily love to do, but would never have time for while I'm working full-time.

I've also realized that somehow, I have become an incurable Type A. I'm not sure whether this was an effect of law school, whether it's snuck up on me over time, or whether I've always been like this and never realized it. Even on maternity leave, I have a daily to-do list and fret about getting things done. I need to remember this when I go back to work -- it's not necessarily the job, it's also me.

Okay, back to packing and laundry and I said I'd bake a cake for tomorrow night and X is napping fitfully and it's almost time to pick up K and I haven't started dinner.