Stardate 52009: Mother of the Year.

Two incidents from my day:

I'm sweeping up the floor after afternoon snack (chex mix for the bug, cheerios for the polliwog), which has left considerable debris underfoot.  Halfway through area recon, I realize that my son is crawling across the floor at top speed, not to observe my progress, but to try to snag the cheerios out of the refuse pile.  I never envisioned myself sliding my nine-month-old across the floor with a broom, but he is super-fast and I couldn't quite get the sweeping-into-the-dustpan done before he'd managed to get at least two into his mouth.  Ah, germs.  We know them well.

Later in the evening, the bug is begging for media time, specifically for a movie neither Matt nor I want to watch.  It is just before dinner, and using my best imitation-sad voice, I say, "Fine.  Go watch your movie for ten minutes, while I get dinner ready, all alone, without any help."  She instantly bounds back down the stairs over to Matt, and says, "Daddy, won't you help Mama make dinner?  Are you going to make her make dinner by herself?  You should help her."  (Note: she did not get out of kitchen-help duty, but she did get bonus points for the subtle approach to passing the buck that she's clearly learned from her mother.)

Hell has not actually frozen over.

However, all four of us have been captured on film in the same shot:

While the photo captures some of the polliwog's slack-jawed yokelness and the bug's best smarmy make-me-smile qualities, at least we are all dressed and not leaking any bodily fluids. 

This is good even for the adults, but the polliwog has been more like a slug in the past month as he's both learning to crawl and gaining four upper teeth at once.  Thus, our family room hardwood floors are covered in little slime trails as he progresses across the floor between Matt's magazines (which he's not supposed to suck on) and the stereo cords (ditto) with many age-appropriate distractions in between (by which he is neither absorbed nor distracted). We were outdoors at the playground by White Fence Farms in Lakewood after a lovely big fried chicken lunch when the photo was taken.  Perhaps in future photos Matt and I may be in body positions which indicate we know and like each other, but hey, you can see our faces! Thanks to Liesl for sharing the photo for bloggy consumption.

It's May, it's May, the merry month of May...

Updates since my last post:

Two shows I worked on, one opera and one romance, have opened and closed.  Both were sell-out hits and did very well with the critics, which should hopefully improve funding on all fronts in the year ahead.

My parents came to visit and got to see one of the shows, the world premiere of Morisot Reclining, and to meet some of the theatre friends I've been working with for the past three years.  It was a treat to have them here to see our work.  

Matt went to the shuttle launch in Florida to watch COS go up in style.  He has promised pictures to me for future blog posts.  We'll see who returns images first, Matt or the newly repaired Hubble.

Mother's day was the day both my parents and Matt left town, so it was truly a mother's day as I spent that day and the next two with the kids, except for work.  We've made lots of trips to lots of parks and playgrounds in an effort to exhaust the bug and air out the polliwog.  He, by the way, appears to have "man of the house" syndrome.  While Matt was away, he was unusually hard to get down to sleep, and wouldn't stay asleep unless I stayed upstairs in my bedroom.  Literally the moment his dad's plane touched down, he took a 2.5 hour nap at daycare (VERY unusual, he's usually an hour-or-less guy) and another mid-evening nap tonight while we went for a walk.  Yup, he's been taking care of the women and it's been exhausting. :)

Perhaps most relevantly, I started Facebooking which has sucked my recreational computer time away from blogging.  I will attempt to be better about maintaining the longer blog post format more than once a month, especially since I have family members who rely on my blog for photos.  (Ah, faithful readers!)  This is why I haven't gone near Twitter--I've already gone from blog posting to 250-character updates and the lure of brevity is way too attractive for me to consider seriously.