Around Here These Days . . .

. . . I'm wishing for more sleep. Isaac's lovely sleep performance for that one night during that first week has yet to be repeated and if history informs me correctly, I don't expect to be sleeping through the night again until sometime in 2012. A friend asked me recently if I handle sleep deprivation well. Umm. No. My brain gets all mushy. I forget things. Important things. I make mistakes. Small mistakes. Big mistakes. But baby Isaac is worth all that trouble and more.

. . . Speaking of baby Isaac, he's a smiler. Isaac means "laughter" and he's living up to his name. He smiles a lot in his sleep. All babies do this, but it seems like Isaac does it more than my other babies. And the other day when Isaac and I were taking a nap together, he woke up, looked at me and smiled. A real smile, not a gas induced or a sleepy dream smile, a real smile. Pretty neat.

. . .Matt has grown a beard. Moses would be proud. He also wrote and presented his first professional paper. Apparently it went really well. The guys asked lots of questions after Matt's presentation and that's a good sign. After all, computer data storage is not the big yawn that most people think it is.
. . .We've been trying to go to as many of our niece's basketball games as possible. We yell, "Way to go Elle!" "We love you!" and other similarly embarrassing things from the stands. Isaac sleeps soundly through the crowd's cheers, the ref's whistles and the clock's buzzers. It's not much different than being at home, really.
. . .We celebrated Lydia's sixth birthday a bit early. She's not official until tomorrow, but she's been reminding me regularly since last spring about all her birthday expectations. A pink birthday cake (with candles that she personally picked out at the dollar store about 6 months ago), a camera and a violin. She got her pink birthday cake on Friday night when Grandpa Tom and Grandma Jane came here to help us celebrate. Last night, at the big Macduff family gathering, Lydia received a play violin from Grandpa Bob and Grandma Dianne. Grandma Dianne says that if Lydia takes piano lessons and still desires to play the violin when she is in the fourth grade, the she will buy Lydia a real violin. As far as the camera goes, I think her Auntie Em might have something to do with fulfilling that wish, but I'm not tellin'.
. . . I ordered forty pounds of fresh chicken breasts in my sleep deprived state. (What was I thinking? Oh wait, I wasn't thinking.) The chicken will arrive on Tuesday and will need to be trimmed, bagged and frozen in relatively short order. Good thing I ordered the cookbook "Fix, Freeze, Feast" as a "Happy Birthday" to me present. Too bad I didn't order a new brain for myself as well. Onward and upward. Dinner awaits--not for me, but for Isaac. (Why is it that babies always want to nurse as soon as you sit down to eat?)