I promised the family that this year we could all have a nice beach vacation. No driving, minimal shopping, plenty of fried seafood. We chose Tybee Island, Georgia, because we’d driven through once on a road trip (August 2004) and were charmed by the warm water, gentle waves, and complete lack of golfers.

We rented an old ’20s beach cottage about a block away from the beach. Bill and the kids had a great time. My time -- not quite so great, since I was attacked by mosquitoes on a daily basis and the heat made my feet swell to the approximate size, shape, and heft of canned hams.

And yet … I did enjoy going into Savannah, which is about twenty minutes away. When I go to heaven, if I go to heaven, I imagine that it will be a lot like Savannah, without the bugs or the humidity. Beautifully maintained 19th century brick townhouses arranged around leafy green squares, oak trees dripping with Spanish moss, delicious Southern food at Mrs. Wilkes’ Boarding House, and boutiques like @home (7 West York Street, no web site as far as I can tell), an amazing store filled with new and vintage paper items, linens, ribbon, books, and all kinds of random, shiny, lovely things.

Okay, so maybe there was some shopping involved, but everyone else did get to go the beach.

When last we spoke ...

I had just discovered that we were going to have another baby. The baby's fine, she's a girl, she's due in five weeks. More about her later. Look at this cool thing I made!



I was thrilled when we returned from vacation and I found Hillary Lang's beautiful Put-Together Book in the mail. Actually, at first I was disappointed because she'd sold out of the first printing and I wasn't able to get one. But then I was glad because she ordered a second printing. Then, when I finally got the book in my hot little hands, I was concerned because I didn't think I had a large enough piece of wool felt to cut out the pattern, until I discovered a big piece of cream colored wool felt hidden away in a closet (glad). And then I was distraught because I thought that I'd lost the cord connecting my sewing machine to the foot pedal when I sent the machine out to be repaired, and I would have to order a new cord from Bernina, which could take forever. But then Bill pointed out that the cord was not lost at all, it was simply wrapped up inside the foot pedal. And then I felt like an idiot. And then I was happy again, and got to work.

The cream colored felt screamed out "bunny," so here she is. I'm very pleased that everything that went into making the bunny was stuff I actually had, especially since it's too hot to drag the family and my enormously pregnant behind to the fabric store. I even had the little daisy buttons that went on the shoes.


I got the dress fabric in a vintage fabric lot I won on eBay about a year ago -- I didn't love it, but I stashed it away thinking that I might find a use for it at some point. Isn't it weird how something overlooked can turn out to be the perfect thing?

If anyone still doesn't have this fabulous book, I strongly urge you to buy it. It's not only adorable, it's clearly written and easy to follow. You can buy it here.

If James Could Speak

He would say that the two worst words in the English language are "nasal aspirator."

He has a bad cold. When Mary gets sick she spends all day on the sofa wrapped in blankets, napping, watching TV, getting plenty of fluids and chicken soup. She's more quiet than usual, but she's game enough to give us a watery smile now and then through her cloud of used Kleenex.

James, on the other hand, is furious when he has a cold. I do feel bad for him; how would anyone feel held down to a changing table with a bulby blue thing stuck up their nose?

***

It's weird and novel sensation for me to go through the clothes that Mary and James have outgrown, and instead of saying "Oh, some day some hypothetical future baby can wear this," -- saying, "The baby can wear this NEXT WINTER."

I didn't mean to give the impression that we're not delighted by the arrival of Baby 3 (or Pogo, as he/she is known around here). It's true that I'm scared for all kinds of reasons*, but both Bill and I are very happy in a giddy, oh-boy, leap of faith kind of way.

(Mary, on the other hand, is incredulous. "But you just had a baby.")

Obviously it's going to be a rough couple of years for all of us, but at least we know from experience (Mary) that there's light at the end of the tunnel. And that light, when it comes, is very beautiful and very bright.


*A sampling:

1) How am I going to take care of two babies in diapers, when I'm notoriously selfish and short-tempered?
2) How unfair is it that Jamie only gets to be "the baby" for a short time?
3) How am I going to cope with the ordeal of another C-section delivery and recovery when the memory of the last one is so hellishly fresh in my mind?

Back After A Long Hiatus

But I have a pretty good excuse.

Last Monday I took Mary to a birthday party at a skating rink in Culver City. We almost didn't go because it was raining very hard. I'm a native Californian -- a heavy rain to us is like a blizzard to normal people.

On the drive over, I began to feel kind of crappy -- headachy and a little nauseated, as if I might be getting a migraine. The skating rink was ridiculously crowded and cold (lots of helpful strangers telling me that the baby should really be wearing a hat) and Mary was disconsolate because her father wasn't there to skate with her. I don't know how to ice skate, so we came to a compromise: she hugged the inside edges of the rink while I tried to maneuver the stroller through the crowds along the outside, saying encouraging things to her. After the skating was over, we had to locate her shoes, locate a place to change into her shoes, and then transport the baby, stroller, etc. up the stairs to the second floor party space.

I hustled everyone out right after the cake and made it home without barfing -- hurray! I put Jamie down for his evening nap, plopped Mary in front of the television (“Angry Beavers” and “Rocko’s Modern Life” are her favorite shows these days, along with -- I’m not kidding -- “My Name is Earl”) and then called Bill. “I’m taking a nap,” I told him. “Please come home early and pick up a pregnancy test on your way home.”

So ...

Yes. Pregnant. Due August 29, 2006. I'm unsure of how I'm going to handle two children under the age of two, but what the hell -- in for a penny, in for a pound, I always say, and since we've already started along this road to penury and chaos, we might as well do it up right. Right?

Oy.

Whew!

It's taken me this long to get over the horror that was the yard sale.

Actually, it wasn't that bad, except for the first hour, which was hellish. It all began at 7:45 am, when Bill told a lady, "We don't open until 9, but you're free to come in and look around." I gave him a look of death, because we weren't anywhere near ready and I had put "no early birds" in the ad, but by then it was too late. The floodgates had opened.

So we had the baby, way past naptime, screaming in my arms. Two women fighting over Mary's pink and purple LeapPad ($3). Little old lady trying to bargain me down from $3 to $1 on a pair of vintage embroidered pillowcases with the argument that "they're used." Cat trapped on the roof meowing piteously. One person berating me for opening the sale early, when SHE WAS THERE EARLY HERSELF! Mary in tears until we finally agreed to let her hold her own cashbox and make her own sales, even though it was horribly inconvenient for everyone, never mind that she's a seven-year old with inconsistent math skills and no calculator, not even a pencil and paper because there was no time to run into the house to get it. Plus some buyers who I think may have had borderline personality disorders, no kidding. Oh, and no change. ALL AT THE SAME TIME.

We sold the sofa to friends. The baby didn't sell for some reason. So we packed him up and took him to Out of the Closet with everything else that didn't sell.

Kidding! If I were going to get rid of the baby, I'd sell him on eBay.

Anyway, it's over -- we made a nice pile of money, even selling things cheaply, and got rid of a lot of clutter. Hurray!

Yard Sale Tomorrow!

We're having a yard sale tomorrow morning and I've been a little grumpy about the additional work, because Bill has a script to finish and hasn't been as big a help as he might have been. But he sent this to me, so now I'm feeling a little more charitable.

Indiana Wants Me / But I Can't Go Back There

There comes a time in the life of every young American where you are required to do a report on one of the fifty states, and create some unwieldy prop to go along with it. I think it might even be in the Constitution.

Mary chose Indiana. I have no idea why. She said she liked the name (maybe because her middle name is India?). In the course of her research, we discovered that Indiana produces corn and soybeans, that it was the nineteenth state admitted to the union, and that the torch in the flag stands for enlightenment and something else that I don't remember. She cut out all the yellow parts herself and we glued it together last night. She was very proud of it, and I think her pride is entirely justified.

I loved the idea of a flag costume, mostly because I thought it would be funny, like Lisa Simpson's terrible Florida costume in that episode of the Simpsons where Marge develops a gambling problem. "I'm not a state! I'm a monster!"

Ayelet Waldman wrote an article on homework in Salon a couple of weeks ago where she recounted stories of "mind-numbing make-work" given to kids in even the youngest grades.

"But my favorite is Carlie Williams' nephew. Assigned to construct a relief map of one of the 50 states out of plaster of Paris, the boy chose Nebraska. He made a flat rectangle. As his aunt said, 'You've got to love a kid who puts into the assignment exactly the effort it's worth.'"