I kicked off the day with a dentist appointment, and left with an aching mouth and an exhortation to floss (which I do, religiously).

School starts in less than a week, and we have yet to receive our books. I can’t get organized, and my sanity depends on organization.

I’ve got an inbox full of correspondence I’ve neglected.

My hip is acting up for no discernible reason (aside from scoliosis).

Brady was fussier than usual.

And my grandpa died this afternoon.

Yeah, it was a bad day.

At least I have this to cheer me:

Brady with the piece of tortilla he mooched at Chipotle, 8/3/08

While trapped in the house due to chicken pox quarantine and blazing heat avoidance, I’ve been trying to accomplish things around the house. Most of these things don’t lend themself to blogging, unless you’re interested in:

• disposing of plastic food storage containers with no matching lids (or vice versa),
• recycling cardboard boxes strewn about the garage,
• putting books on the bookcase we moved upstairs,
• packing up old school books to send back to K12 to make room for the new books that will arrive any day now,
• posting our old microwave on Freecycle,
• or pulling the creeping weeds of evilness that invaded our yard.

One project is photogenic enough to warrant mention, though. Using this starched fabric decal tutorial, I added a giraffe to Brady’s room.

The recessed area above his bed was definitely lacking something. I wanted an easily removed, cheap bit of artwork since the Pottery Barn jungle animal motif will disappear when the baby outgrows his crib. Using this lamp for inspiration:

I bought two yards of white and yellow gingham fabric for $2 at our local Store-Which-Shall-Not-Be-Named, as well as a 52 cent scrap of orange. I made an enlarged paper pattern of the giraffe using Rapid Resizer, cut out the body, and stuck the fabric up there using the tutorial directions. I was concerned that the bumpy wall texture (prevalent in Arizona houses) would cause a heinous end result, but it worked out fine (although smooth walls = best results). I then cut some freehanded orange spots; in retrospect, I would have liked a lighter orange, but not enough to warrant a trip to another fabric store.

Kyle thinks that I should add a tree. And clouds. And a bird. (This project was easy, but not THAT easy.)

I vaguely recall that this was originally supposed to be a knitting blog. My knitting output has diminished greatly since the baby arrived. (Note: I was knitting prior to his arrival, but failed to document any of it. It involved booties and hats that were outgrown in the blink of an eye, because Brady is in the 90th percentile for height/weight.) But while we’re discussing crafty stuff, I’ll post this:

The second sleeve to my #@!* Hourglass Sweater, which had better fit this time around. I am so close to finishing it, but am so bored of endless stockinette stitch with Classic Elite Bam Boo (Bougainvilla) yarn that hurts my hands.

And this:

A Shadow Scarf in Knitpicks Shimmer (Bayou). I was working on one of these before my lace yarn met a tragic end and I frogged the whole thing. (Pussycat has only attacked the yarn for this scarf during the initial winding, resulting in minor damages. Knock on wood.) I like knitting lace. It appeals to my perfectionist side. This project is highly portable with an easily memorized pattern (about all I can hope for at the moment) and the resulting fabric is super soft and cuddly. Yay!

As far as babies go, Brady was quite amiable for the first six months of his life (give or take a couple weeks).  He never engaged in unjustified crying, slept through the night at an early age, and greeted the world with a gummy smile. Now? I fear that I broke the baby.

It started with our trip to Michigan, which wreaked havoc on his schedule. Signs of never-before-seen crankiness appeared. I began getting up in the middle of the night to quell the fussing in the Pack N’ Play across the room. My dad and I took Brady for numerous outings, as riding in the stroller was the only thing that ensured contentment (as long as we didn’t slow our pace, even to window shop).

He amazed our relatives with his newfound sitting and rolling prowess, but also began whining for food like an insistent dog. I think this habit started with a slice of pickle I gave him to teethe on, and was reinforced with bits of baked beans and melted marshmallow slipped to him by family members on the 4th of July. I knew that I was in serious trouble when he had a five-alarm meltdown because I wouldn’t allow him to drink my pop. (It finally dawned on me to buy teething biscuits- messy, but proffering them at meal times maintains the peace. His new fancy European cow sippy cup, courtesy of Grandpa, is also of great help.)

So traveling with Brady was not a rousing success, but his bad temper was manageable because there was a constant supply of adoring people to hand him off to. I thought he would sort himself out once we returned home, but then came a fever, followed by…

Chicken pox. (Caught from Aidan, who had the vaccine and acquired a mild case that I thought might be bug bites or an allergic reaction.) Thankfully, Brady’s case of chicken pox was also fairly tame (in comparison to mine*), but it certainly did nothing to improve his mood. He is now in the recovery phase, but the past week has been a blur of toys-whinging-bottle-lullaby-nap-repeat. (Also, I feel guilty over the fact that Brady traveled on an airplane at the height of contagiousness and exposed numerous people to his germs, including my pox-free brother.)

I am mentally preparing myself for tomorrow. Brady has an appointment with the family doctor, which will undoubtedly include shots of some sort. Fun!

* Yours truly, with chicken pox:

Why aren’t there any decent ice cream trucks in Arizona? Trucks that look like this:

As opposed to the ramshackle old cargo vans plastered with stickers that travel down our streets, hawking a wide assortment of Mexican candy (possibly containing lead) in addition to the traditional sherbert cartoon character heads with gumball eyes.

And why do they all play a tinny version of the “Popeye” theme song?

As this post proves, the rumors of my demise were patently false. There were a variety of reasons behind my blog neglect, which included:

• An incident (unrelated to this blog) which made me question the wisdom of making personal information readily available on the internets,
• Pregnancy and the resulting confinement to my bed/couch, which limited my blogging inspiration to such scintillating topics as “Why hasn’t someone at All My Children told Jacob Young that his hair looks wretched?”,
• The arrival of Baby Brady and the discovery that followed: One-handed typing while holding an infant? It’s quite difficult.

The kids and I have been cooped up in the house for the past two days. The return of school is looming over all three of us (as the summer is actually a break for the homeschooling mom), and I feel somewhat guilty for not planning lots of fun activities to wind up the summer with. On the other hand…it’s hot, I’m uncomfortably pregnant, and Kyle and I are forced to share the one car while the university shuttle is on a break for two weeks and our other car is stuck in some bizarre registration limbo due to it automatically failing emissions because no mechanic on earth can get the check engine light to turn off. So, lacking in worthwhile forms of entertainment, we decided to watch the shuttle launch.

Much to my chagrin, our cable provider does not carry NASA TV, so we were forced to watch the feed through the NASA website. Thanks to CNN Headline News, we discovered that this feed is not quite live, and lags behind by 10 seconds or so. But the alternative was watching 10 minutes of CNN trying too hard to link this mission with the Challenger tragedy (From what I caught out of the corner of my eye, it went something like this: “Barbara Morgan trained with Christa McAuliffe! Who died! When the Challenger exploded!” <insert footage of disaster here>), followed by 30 seconds of actual launch footage drowned out by the yappy anchor, followed by a story about about a convenience store clerk who threatened a robber with his own gun. So NASA TV web feed it was.

I actually used to watch NASA TV when I was a kid. Not only the launches- the boring stuff in between, with the little map tracking the shuttle and dry, technical communications exchanges. I also fantasized about going to Space Camp, like this local kid that collected enough soda cans to pay for his trip. And one of my most beloved books was The Space Shuttle Operator’s Manual, complete with fold-out reproduction of the shuttle instrument panel to facilitate pretend shuttle missions.

I recently unearthed a stack of Challenger-related newspaper articles that I saved at the tender age of seven. That was the first shuttle launch that I ever watched, thanks to a snow day spent at my dad’s house. I had two cheapo Christa McAuliffe posters from the NEA and a model of the Challenger…I found the whole thing to be quite exciting. I remember being very confused when the explosion happened (Does solid rocket booster separation make so much smoke?), completely traumatized when I figured out what had happened, and then became obsessed with the whole thing for an extended period of time. I acquired more posters, more articles, and checked out a massive adult non-fiction book about the tragedy from the local library a year or two later.

I was a weird child. And I never made it to Space Camp.