big news

In the fall, P applied for a job 10 miles from where I teach. We had given up on his finding a job in the NYC area, but it came up, and so he applied. He couldn’t not apply. We figured it was unlikely that he’d get it, but he got it. He got it!

So... we’re moving. Again. For the fourth time in four years. Unlike the other three moves, though, this one requires putting our house--our house that we love and in which we’ve finally felt settled--up for sale. We may be here a while. I just got an email from family friends who’ve had their house on the market for a year and a half (gulp!), so I’m not holding my breath about this getting sold anytime soon.

But the craziness of all the crap we have to do to the house to get it ready to go on the market (for next week) might provide good blog fodder. See? There’s always a bright side.

the romans had 'em, and they didn't do too bad...

I watched some of SNL on Saturday night--I think it was the first time in about 3 years--and I caught this sketch. You gotta get yourself some.

stylin'

It’s been a beautiful weekend. We’ve been gardening, baby-j and I. Ok, so “gardening” means scooping and piling dirt, splashing in the watering-can stream and making mud pies. But it’s fun. Today we head out and I realize that the sun is really coming down, so I try to find baby-j’s Tigers cap to cover that little lightly-covered pate of his. After a few unsuccessful laps through the house, I come up empty, so I grab some sunscreen and slather it on. He isn’t too happy with that, as you can see here, but at least it did the trick. An hour later, when we come back inside, I try to get some of the sunscreen off. Sunscreen is thick; his hair is thin. Clearly this is not the hair product of choice for a twenty-month-old.

I cannot seem to get the sunscreen out, or even smooth his hair down effectively, so I grab his baby hairbrush, pin the writhing baby-j between my knees, and style his few strands of hair. It takes a bit of work to get it right, but I soon figure out that it’s more effective to brush it forward. With the sunscreen, each hair sticks neatly in place, and voila! A babycombover. Lookin’ good, baby-j. Lookin’ good.

While searching online to determine whether or not combover is spelled with a dash or a space (the answer appears to be neither), I discover that on Monday, April 16, Combover: The Movie premiered on the Sundance Channel. There’s an interesting tidbit for the day.

mama lyrics

You know that you’ve gone a little bit crazy when you’re creating new lyrics for songs that don’t quite fit. Over dinner, “Fever” was playing on the radio, so post-meal, I enticed baby-j up to his bath with the following little ditty:

You give me duckies
when you kiss me
Duckies when you hold me tight

Duckies!
In the morning
Duckies all through the night

Everybody’s got the duckies
That is somethin’ you all know
Duckies aren’t such a new thing
Duckies started long ago

easter outfit

This was the outfit that P and baby-j got last week at the store. Man, he cleans up nice!

apple's latest product

If you haven't seen this already, I urge you to go right now and view Apple's latest product:

http://www.glumbert.com/media/irack

I didn't know whether to laugh or cry: I think I did a bit of both.

sweet and weird

As I type this sitting at my office desk, every 30 seconds some guy on a bike goes flying by in the alley behind our house. Left... then right... then left... then right... I'm not watching, but I can see him out of my periphery.

It's been a crazy few weeks, including family illnesses, a death (my grandpa) and subsequent last-minute trip to Massachusetts, happy visits from the in-laws, and my first overnight conference trip without baby-j. Easter weekend was frenetically wonderful. There was much cousin fun and craziness, and even though I missed much of it by being away in Chicago, I got to enjoy having loads of people in the house Sunday morning. I promise to post some pictures once I can find the damn cord that will bring these adorable shots from my camera to my computer. For now, these crazy pictures of baby-j will have to suffice. I took them a few weeks ago. He's wearing his "Keep Austin Weird" T-shirt, which P purchased before baby-j was born, before we knew he would be baby-j and not baby-n, or baby-a, or baby-s, or any of the other names we had selected for a potential girl.

I love these shots. I love any picture or video of baby-j where he is laughing with such abandon. That giggle is infectious.

Alley-bike-rider is going backwards now. No, wait. He just turned around and is going forward. And left. And right.