“When Daddy got hurt at camp.” Artist: Owen, age 6. Medium: Lego.

So hi, Supa Friends. Long time no prattle!

It’s June today (it’s June today, right?) so I’ve decided to do June Nablopomo (a.k.a. June-po-blah-blah) wherein I will start writing here quite regularly, as in daily regularly, in a measured exercise in willful and stubborn yet meaningless meandering.

So. Junepoblahblah Day One.

I wanted to tell you guys about the dumb ol’ weekend we had. Iain didn’t break his arm! He also didn’t die. (Do you like having things presented to you as negatives? ‘How was your weekend!’ ‘I didn’t ride a rollercoaster. How was yours?’)  That is the good news*, because he was hit by a tree, and either of those scenarios would not be unreasonable. But he hyperextended his elbow. That is a lame word, hyperextended. Because his elbow looks like an eggplant right now, and ‘hyperextended’ sounds like he just scheduled it for too many piano lessons.

He and my father-in-law had taken Owen and Mac to the camp to do some gardening on our little hobby farm garden up there. We (OK, they) like to grow tons and tons of corn and potatoes and pumpkins on a good-size plot, because there is far more room up there than in our backyard. So anyway, “gardening” turned into “cutting down some trees,” and long story short, this tree? Fell the wrong way and I guess you could say it landed on Iain’s dad. Iain, in his haste to escape the inevitable arboreal trajectory determined by gravity, somehow moved at a different rate of velocity or followed a different path of movement than his arm, resulting in the aforementioned hyperextended (but not broken) elbow, said elbow having hit him in the back in a way elbows are not supposed to be able to do.

My father-in-law, though pinned, escaped major injury by the grace of a supernatural being or sheer inexhaustible Eastman luck. Iain, one-armed as he was due to his own injury, was however unable to fire up the chainsaw and successfully free my father-in-law from the tree’s rather heavy clutches, and it was required of him to drive hell-for-leather in the pickup over a dusty track to alert his uncle to the predicament, which uncle then came to extricate my father-in-law.

You may worry as to the safety of my children during this time. I will comfort you and say they were nowhere near the falling tree, and thank god, because I get faint to think of it. I also get faint to think of something happening to Iain and my father-in-law, not only for their own sakes but because if they were rendered unfit for duty my boys would be alone in the wilderness and I pretty much just want to throw up thinking about it. So. They were fine.

Somehow other relatives, on neighboring property or perhaps in town, were alerted and 911 dialed; rescue personnel arrived, a stretcher was loaded with the broken and cursing form of my dear spouse, who had undoubtedly gone into shock, because he never says the F-word, oh who am I kidding. Probably true about the shock though. The technicians were evidently quite amicable, because we still have in the back of the cab of our pickup the bouncing, five-fingered heads they made of surgical gloves to give to the boys.

Once at the world-famous Corry Memorial Hospital, Iain was pronounced “unbroken” — well, his arm, rather — and messages were relayed second-hand to me, who was, as I mentioned, blithely shopping for jeans shorts at the mall with my cranky baby and utterly unaware of the near-fatal yet ultimately unscathing event. I arrived home from the excursion to find a message on my answering machine from my mother-in-law informing me as to the events.

This is because my husband, in 2011, has no cell phone.

I had plenty of time that afternoon to ponder this. He has no cell phone. The time that afternoon was plentiful because of this fact, in fact. He was many hours away, God knows where, possibly broken, though specifically alive, with though it cannot be said no means of reaching me, at least very limited means of doing so, and I, while professing otherwise, of course worried like a worrying worried person.

Re: cellphone utility. He, granted, is not frequently apart from me when he is not at work or the grocery store. These locations do not often require the necessity of constant communication (though it would be nice, because I forgot to tell him we need more walnuts). But when he is away from me, it is often the Deep Deep Woods whereat he is, and, as the events of Saturday prior have shown us, that is too goddamn dangerous for a willy-nilly worrywart like me. A cell phone would not have protected him from a falling tree, but at least he would be able to radio for help if more dangerous danger occurred. Or he could give it to the kids to play Angry Birds on to be doubly sure they remained out of harm’s way. I’m OK with both uses.

So. In an impotent move to try to undo the events that turned my darling spouse’s elbow area into an eggplant, I went out and bought him a cell phone the next day. An iPhone, because if I’m going to do something I’m going to do it expensively. Fortunately for me, he found a number of useful applications and not a few completely useless ones which are nonetheless quite entertaining. I taught him how to send a text. People, this is huge.

So. That is what happend this weekend. Malingering tree, an introduction to the 21st century, and the possibly stress-inducing decision to write a lot more right here on my eight-year-old website for the next four weeks.

Ol’ One-Arm is currently doing all right, considering; I purchased him something called the Ultimate Arm Sling so that he doesn’t have to go to school with his arm tied to his midriff with a piece of muslin I ripped with my teeth like a prairie EMT. He has an appointment with an orthopedist who will hopefully somehow fix the eggplant situation and in the meantime he can send me any number of punny texts with his good hand.

I can’t promise that the next four weeks are going to bring actual paragraphs to you here on Supafine but what the hell, maybe I’ll try to write longer. I forgot how fun it is smushing words together.

*They also won $100 on their Mega Millions ticket that night, thereby proving the existence of sheer inexhaustible Eastman luck/presence of supernatural being.

Busy! Tired. Happy? Sure.

I have taken a couple snaps on the DSLR but can’t find the cord so take my word for it, they’re cute. The kids are, I mean.

Over the weekend I finished reading DFW’s The Pale King and we moved the boys room around (twin beds into bunk beds) and hung room-darkening blinds in molly’s room and by the way, Molly is not only crawling and sticking things into electrical sockets but also pulling herself up and cruising along furniture like hello, I need this in a seven-month old baby like i need a hole in the head which is to say, only with anesthetic.

Today’s post was prompted by Stephanie:

Things change so fast with babies and kids… just when you think they are sleeping thru the night — bam! They’re awake again. Or you can go a whole year and suddenly you have a seven year old who is climbing in with you at night. When my youngest was seven (he’s now almost 13), I would have researched how to get him back to his own bed and made a plan until he was once again on his own. Now, three kids later with the little one — I realize this won’t last forever. She won’t want to sleep on my floor much longer. Just trying to embrace the stage you’re in and not loose your mind in the moment.

so maybe the writing is about keeping perspective when parenting and embracing that nothing will ever be perfect.

Yes.

Today is Molly’s six-month birthday.

Since the day she was born, I have been counting down to this day. The first three months of a baby’s life are pretty chaotic; they have no schedule, they need feeding constantly — but they reward you with being very, very sleepy. From three to six months, they are terrors. They still have no schedule, but they “wake up”; they are alert, they are inquisitive, they learn how to use their hands and eyes and feet and, in Molly’s case, how to roll over, sit up, and finagle their brothers into handing them things.

When Mackie was between three and six months old, I was back at work part-time. I was breastfeeding, working, awake around the clock, and trying to attachment-parent a very needy little baby. I wore him in a sling constantly, and he slept in our bed. The upshot is that I eventually ended up in the E.R. for dehydration; for all that trying to do too much, my immune system finally kicked it, and I was (after months and months of being very sick), finally diagnosed with an autoimmune disease very similar to Crohn’s. It’s now totally controlled by medication, but that was, how you say, a very trying time.

So I knew as soon as Molly was born that the first three months would be tough, but that the second three months would be even tougher. In December, I set my sights on March 20, Molly’s six-month birthday and also the first day of spring. I knew that if I could just trudge through the Pittsburgh winter, and the cabin fever, and the three perpetually sick kids, and the feet and feet of snow, and the awake-all-night baby, that it would get better, it would get better, it would get better.

That is the key to staving off post-partum depression: hope (nay, knowledge!) that it will get better. I’ve been through it twice before and I know that you are rewarded for trudging the swamps of babyhood by the sweet grassy plains of toddlerhood.

The last three months have been a sleepless hell. I have to just say it. Sleep consumes my waking thoughts, and oh! I have so many waking hours in which to have waking thoughts. But now that she has reached that 6-month milestone, I can

• celebrate
• start sleep training.

Celebrate: Last night Iain and I had our first date night in ages. We went bowling at Sheffield Lanes in Hopewell, with a mess of teachers from his school, and boy, did I need that. Certain of you who follow me on Twitter might think that I enjoyed it a little too much. You would be right. No one in my state of perpetual sleep deprivation, or at my painfully advanced age, or with three kids to take care of the next day, should be doing shots of whiskey at a bowling alley. Yet there we were. And it was good.

Sleep training: Stephanie, I know you preached acceptance of the stage they’re in. But I also gotta preach: Sleep. Oh, glorious, predictable, life-renewing sleep.

Now that Molly is six months old, I feel comfortable getting down to the business of sleep training. She is not a good napper, and not a good sleeper. Almost every night she wakes up, screaming, and she ends up in our bed, kicking me in the teeth. Over the weekend, she learned how to scoot backwards, and last thing I need now is for her to spend all night kicking me in the teeth and then scoot herself off Iain’s side of the bed after he’s left for the day.

The method I used with Owen (and, to an extent, with Mac) is the Sleep Lady’s method. It’s gentle, but firm, and worked for us almost right away. I bought the book today at Once Upon A Child as a refresher (along with an exersaucer for the Baby Who Loves To Always Forever Be Standing Always). I do recommend it.

I am also putting the whole family on a schedule. For type A people, this is probably a bad idea. But for sloppy Type B people like me, it’s a very good one. I’ve felt so out-of-whack the last six months. Sometimes I didn’t shower until 4:30 in the afternoon. Sometimes the kids didn’t get lunch until almost 2. Molly has almost no discernible schedule for naps and bottles. This is all because I get home from work so late, and go to bed so late, and then spend the entirety of the next day pissy, exhausted, and trying to catch some extra sleep. So I feel like I’m kind of hitting the reset button here. New day, new season, new sense of predictability, which is very good for children and also not bad for moms. Wish me luck, because (as we all know), I tend to march to the beat of a different band altogether. Flakey Von Not Paying Attention, that’s my name.

Lastly, today is Molly’s six month birthday. I bought a baby carrier off craigslist today, one with a hip band (the ergo) that I hope will enable me to do a little babywearing of my massive, 95th percentile-for-age darling. I spend so much of my time trying to put her down and get some damn work done that I hope I can start picking her up and enjoying her sweet baby breath.

So … ya. Six months. I made it. We made it. The hard part, I like to think, is over. It’s only going to get less insane from here; Molly is going to grow into the little woman she is already intent on being. (Why sit when you can stand? Why stand when you can run? Why does she have to sit here on the floor like a sucker when other people get to play with choking hazards?)

Right?

Thanks for reading, guys. And thanks for the comment, Stephanie. My life is always so much better when I stop to smell the roses instead of the poopy diapers.

Hey there, sports fans!

Ha ha ha ha ha. Sports. Ha. The only sport I follow is Olympic speedskating, once every four years. And mostly because hi, Apollo Anton Ohno. Apparently right now there is some sort of … basketball dance? Or is it a mental affliction? Not sure, but I need to learn about it before Friday, for work.  Ahoy!

Am responsible. Clueless, but responsible.

Just like old times: I was re-reading my archives yesterday (perhaps I was wearing my Bad Idea Jeans! That is the only explanation for such stupidity) and remembering how I used to use these little bolded lead-ins, and how every post was sponsored by a song. I am going to do that today. Blogging is way easier when you just write what’s going on, instead of trying to tell a funny story. All of my stories these days end in wide-eyed, static-haired panic about babies*, and I’m still working on trying to make them funny. Mostly they’re just thinly veiled pleas for a head-pat and a stiff drink.

*Fussy and Finslippy wrote a book and BIG HONKING SURPRISE, it’s stone cold hilarious.

Shower them with BEBBIES! So I had a nice weekend. We* threw a baby shower for my next-younger sister, Emmy, who is due in May and looks amazing, like she just swallowed a neat, tidy pumpkin. I am so crazy excited for my sister to be having a baby.

• I get cuddly niece out of the deal
• Molly gets a cousin the same gender and pretty close in age, and that’s just a good as a sister! Right?
• We get to dress said cousins in matching outfits, I don’t care what you say, it’ll be cuuuuuute
• My sister will get to join me in the motherhood club
• BABIES BABIES BABIES BABIES BABIES. I complain a lot, but BABIES. They are the best drug.

*I say we, but my contributions were quite small. Mostly in the form of cookies. Thankfully her mother-in-law is an excellent hostess and picked up a large part of the slack, the rest of which was carried by my own mom. Moms! Ain’t they grand.

Six hours of the 24-hour visit were spent driving. I am getting pretty good at transporting three littles for three hours across the Turnpike. And they are getting pretty good at not driving me bats for the whole three hours. Maybe I should give them more practice. I love passing exit 114 (Sandusky), when the land gets vehemently rural and flatter than a sheet of paper. It just feels like home.

Coming down the pike: So. How best to delicately phrase my opinions on the current backlash against public workers, specifically public school teachers? Perhaps not possible. Pennsylvania’s governor recently revealed his 2011 budget, which slashed funding for public schools. Like, a lot. My spouse is a public-school teacher. His district is getting ready to drop the axe on employees. It’s a scary time. I think that’s all I can say without resorting to exclamation points.

The walls are closing in: I am usually an introverted, happily-housebound homebody, sewing clothes, knitting dishcloths, growing food, baking bread. But this winter has me eyeing the door. I’m sure the insomniac six-month-old has nothing to do with it. This week everyone’s getting Spaghettios for dinner and no one will have clean pants.

All the news! So OK! That’s all the news. I had a five-day weekend and I blew almost the whole thing on whiskey and Grey’s Anatomy, chained to my couch by the responsibility of motherhood and the fact that all the best places in town are closed on Monday nights and who am I going to go out with, anyway, since my beloved is upstairs asleep?

Sigh. Baby-sitter’s Club, where are you when I need you?!

This post brought to you by I Missed The Point, by Neko Case

Publishing this little blerp of a post I wrote a few weeks ago. Basically liveblogging my SAHM life on my day off of work. READ it and WEEP, or at least SEND COOKIES, for LO, I am a MOM, and I am in need of MOAR CARBS.

Day in the life. It’s Monday, February 14, Valentine’s Day. 24 hour log begins now. Because I feel like it.

12:39 a.m. I just spent an hour catching up on charles apple’s blog (apple.copydesk.org) and the world of newspaper design. I don’t have time to improve myself at work because I’m too busy actually working, so I try to remember to check in on things when I am at home. That means keeping up with international news as well as developments in newspaper design. That also means trying to do that when I am not cooking dinner or peeling children off of my body.

I ought to go to sleep, because it’s highly likely Molly will wake up hungry sometime between 1 and 4 a.m., as she has done all this week. However, my father-in-law made coffee when we were visiting them this afternoon, and he makes a great cup of coffee, and so I drank some, and so my eyes may be tired but my brain is ready to do the limbo.

I think I will drag myself off the couch to brush my teeth and sleep, perchance to dream. But perchance (A LOT PERCHANCE) to be woken by a wee banshee with a wet diaper. Bringing my kindle up with me, to read a couple locations of The Girl Who Played With The Hornet’s Tattoo or whatever this dang Swedish book is called. More when I awaken.

4 a.m. “MOMMY. CAN I SLEEP WITH YOU.” ughfinewhatevergetinzzzzzz

4:45 a.m. I knew it wouldn’t last too long. What is this, seven straight days running of the 4 a.m. Molly Snack? I woke up dripping with sweat — at least, I hope it’s sweat; share a bed with a three-year-old and you never do know — and retrieved Molly, bringing her down to make a bottle and try to feed her without falling asleep and dropping her. I finally brought her back upstairs at quarter after five, vverry carefully deposit her in her crib, and did the PLEASE DON’T WAKE UP positioning shuffle. Success? As soon as I crawled into bed, of course, she woke up. It was close enough to Iain’s wake-up time that I figured the little devil could cry it out.

7 a.m. “MOMMY. I WANT SOME CEREAL.” Can’t remember if I actually got up to serve that or not.

8:30 a.m. When I was younger, my mom used to do a great Roseanne Barr impression: “I’ve got cramps that could kill a horse!” Well, guess what I woke up with. After brushing my teeth, popping some pills, making a bottle, feeding the baby, serving another bowl of cereal, wiping Mackie’s poopy butt, taking out the recycling, putting away the dry dishes, washing the dirty dishes, wiping the counter, and starting a load of laundry, it’s finally …

9:30 a.m. I finally started a pot of coffee. I remembered to put the top on the coffee pot just in time to keep the grinds from overflowing. Swear to god, this sleep deprivation makes me do some damn stupid things. Like baking the cinnamon rolls with the Saran wrap still on.

10 a.m. Time for molly  to take a nap. I rocked her to sleep, eeeeeased her into the crib, creeeeept downstairs, and poured a cup of coffee. Brought mug to lips and “WAAAAAAH!”

10:30 a.m. Can’t decide if I should let Owen go to school today. On the one hand, it’s the Valentine’s Day Party, he seems mostly recovered, and for God’s sake it’s Monday. On the other hand, he’s still coughing, and to drag him to the bus stop would require that I don pants.

11 a.m. Wonder if I can get in the shower before Molly wakes up. Let’s find out.

11:03 a.m.  Nope. Shouldn’t have wasted all that time eating breakfast.

Oh well. Taking one anyway. You may recall the bit about waking up in a puddle of wet.

11:30 a.m. Showered, dressed, switched the laundry, supervised Owen’s getting dressed, made a few sandwiches, changed Molly, tweeted, gave Molly a bottle which she dribbled everywhere. Good thing I’m wearing an apron, like the utter housewife I find that I am now.

11:31 a.m. TOTAL EXISTENTIAL CRISIS.

11:32 A.M. OK.

12:25 p.m. Got Owen fed and on the bus. Better now. Feeding Mac his lunch (request: “white stuff on bread.” Otherwise known as a mayonaisse sandwich. Coming right up, kid.) Trying to decide whether I have time to bundle the kids up and drag them to the mall to buy a food processor to give to Iain to give to me for Valentine’s Day. I want it today so i can make a blueberry pie to surprise him with after dinner. Time’s ticking.

1 p.m. Guess not. Mac fell asleep on the radiator. Going to try to get molly down for a nap.

2:43 p.m. Let’s see. Last hour and a half spent trying to get Molly down. Rocked her to sleep for 45 minutes surfing Damn You Autocorrect on iPhone. Transferred to crib and she woke up. Picked her up, she fell asleep. Put her down, she woke up. Picked her up, she fell asleep. Put her down, she woke up. Did this for half an hour because I’m an idiot. Finally put her down awake and fussing to come downstairs so my head wouldn’t explode. Switched the laundry. Typed this entry. Ate a bowl of cereal for “lunch.” Checked the mail. She’s still crying. Guess I better go back up. Only I have to switch arms because shit, kid weighs 16 lbs and my holdin’ arm is tired. Sigh.

2:52 p.m. Stood holding her binky in her mouth with one hand and keeping her hands from scratching her face with the other. She’s finally sleeping. Iain gets home in 20 minutes. I have four loads of laundry to fold, dishes to wash, and my hair looks like a pile of wet branches. Fuck it, at least I’m not still in my pajamas. It is Valentine’s Day, after all.

2:55 p.m. FUCKING SWEET FANCY MOSES SHE’S AWAKE AGAIN. Not just awake. Yelling.

2:59 p.m. I can have rest time now? Pleeease? Before I have to start putting dinner together? Oh right. Cramps.

3:30 p.m. Iain’s home! I just spent a lovely half hour reading my new Cook’s Illustrated cookbook and trying to figure out what Mac was crying about it. Iain said he’ll put the potatoes in the oven if I want to run out to the store for that food processor.

4:15 p.m. Damn hell ass. Out of stock. *shaking fist* So I ordered it from Amazon on my smartphone in the parking lot of Macy’s. SCREW YOU, RETAIL.

4:30 p.m. Making dinner. We’re having green beans sauted with butter and parmesan, baked potatoes, and surf’n’turf. Never tried to cook lobster tail before. And look! Mackie wants to help.

6 p.m. The smoke detector has been going off every five minutes for an hour. Lobster tails look great, though. Taste great, too. I somehow managed to get this whole meal on the table and hot at the same time. It’s basically a plate full of butter. Mackie had one bite of steak dipped in butter. Owen, the same. Molly had lukewarm rice cereal and a bite of my potato. I accidentally dumped half the jar of dried chives all over my plate. Oh well. Romantic dinner for five.

6:50 p.m. Iain’s finishing up the dishes and I am playing board games with the kids. Anyway, Mackie appears to be winning again. Kid’s pretty good. Iain is running a bath. Guess I better get Molly naked and ready to go.

7:45 p.m. Praise heaven and hallelujah, the boys are in bed. Molly is drinking a bottle. We are watching the Jeopardy with Watson, the IBM supercomputer non-human contestant. Have decided that we will make our millions by entering Iain in Jeopardy. He’s a smart dude. Probably smarter than a computer. Only one way to find out.

8:42 p.m. Molly is asleep (I think) in her bed. Iain is writing a paper for the online master’s class he’s taking. I am looking around at all the laundry that never got folded, the shit all over the couch (not literally), thinking that my neighbor is supposed to come over to sit with the kids while I take Mac to school in the morning and she’s going to see a total pigsty. Plus the house smells like burned lobster.

Oh well.

I bought Iain  a box of chocolates for Valentine’s Day, so I think I’ll go eat one or seven. Maybe watch an episode of Friday Night Lights, Season 3. Hey, it’s my night off! The only one until next Sunday. Better enjoy it.

11:56 p.m. Gorged on FNL and Russel Stover. Tomorrow I need to wake up early and clean this house up so people don’t think I live like this all the time. (Confession: I live like this all the time). I just finished catching up on the world of journalism and adding a few newspaper friends to my Twitter list. Also finished my Jack and Pepsi. (Fun fat corollary: the scale at work says I’ve lost 15 lbs since Molly was born. And, I might remind you, she weighed 10 lbs. So five pounds in almost five months? Blame it on my sweet tooth. And the butter. And my bread machine. And my weekly highballs.)

Anyway. Tomorrow I have to get Mac to school by 9 a.m. and I work at 6 p.m. until midnight.  Mondays are great, but Tuesdays? Tuesdays are the schedular equivalent of a smack in the face. Every week. You’d think I’d get better. Blarg.

Good night, diary. Going to bring my kindle upstairs to bed — and this exhaustingly quotidian entry to a circular close.