Following up...

Yet another reason not to have more kids - fighting climate change one vasectomy at a time!

Oh, Paul.

Thanks for writing this. Too bad the people who need to read it won't.

Okay, now it's less hot.

But it's still really really hot - it'll be 101 degrees today. Skipper probably thinks every day is going to be spent like these last few - nursing a lot and wearing wet washcloths on her head. We missed by one degree beating the all-time record high temperature in Portland yesterday!

However, tonight will get down to a low of 65! Woohoo! And tomorrow may drop below 90 degrees!

Yes, it's boring, but weather forecasts obsess me this week. And I have nothing else to report. Pretty much all I think about is how hot I am, how hot I'm going to be, and how I can cool down. Though Cook and I feel like we're acclimating a bit. We're still miserable, but now it's kind of a normal miserable.

No, really, it's seriously hot.

It's the beginning of our third over-100-degrees-hot day. We survived yesterday by going to lots of air-conditioned places, and then lying around the park in the shade for four hours. (Cook met us there at 5:30, bringing the dinner we'd cooked in the morning). Then we went to the pool for "Family Play Swim" at 7:30 PM. Dutch showed off all her swimming skills, and Cook and I relished the feeling of actually being slightly chilled. Skipper liked the pool, but not so much the splashing of the nine thousand other people who were there.

I looked at myself in the mirror at one of our air-conditioned stops in the morning (Dutch had to pee), and was shocked. I looked like a refugee,* with greasy hair, shadowed eyes,** gnawed-on lips, and a general expression of sweatily miserable resignation.

It's just... so... hot. There was a breeze in the park, but it was a HOT breeze.*** And the nighttime cool-down isn't very cool, so there's very little respite. I'm really looking forward to tomorrow, when it's cooling down to 97! Woohoo!


* A fat refugee, perhaps fleeing some sort of molasses-flood-type disaster.

** Not only have Skipper and I both been sleeping poorly in the heat, but Dutch woke up panicky in the middle of the night before last, very upset because she was unable to sleep at all. I explained that she had, in fact, been sleeping solidly for hours. She said "Really?! I'm asleep right now!?"

*** Like the sirocco, except not as fast, or as dusty, or in Africa. But otherwise, very much like a sirocco, which was all I needed to go around whispering the word to myself all evening. Sirrrrrooooooccccoooo....

the hot

It peaked at 102 today, and it's 95 degrees now, at 9 PM. The overnight low will get down to 73, and tomorrow and Thursday are expected to hit 104, with even higher overnight lows.

Tomorrow, we'll be mostly at the park, in the deep shade - it's no fun for me to spend a long time there, because I can't put Skipper down for a nap and get a break from her, but it turns out it's also no fun for me to spend extremely hot days hiding out in our apartment, since everybody gets so hot and miserable. Dutch and I spent part of today arguing over where the fans should go. And it's really hard to get a baby to go to sleep when the air blowing over her is 100 degrees hot. At least she likes fans.

The beer wench dances

Videos!

Some things to note:

1. Our apartment is a mess (but we rearranged the furniture!).
2. Skipper is mystified by her own toes (and the fan).
3. Dutch is not going to make it to the 2012 Olympics.
4. Sleeping babies are funny.

deterioration

Today I walked to the grocery store with Dutch, leaving Cook home with Skipper. I pointed out to Dutch that we were free of Skipper, and that I was carrying no baby on my chest, and she said "Mom, show me how fast you can run!" I looked at her in puzzlement. "Can you run, Mom?" she asked. I gave a short disclaimer about how I couldn't run really fast because I'd probably pull a muscle, and then I ran a little. She said, laughing with delight, "Mom, I didn't know you could run!"

Apparently, because I've been pregnant or encumbered with a baby for nearly a quarter of her life, she thought I was incapable of running.

Tonight she said "Mom, I look cute in ponytails because my face is so young! It's not all screwed up like old people's faces." I pointed out that my face is "screwed up," and her face will become so, too. She said "Mom, are you still going to be alive when you're 25?" and I told her that I am, in fact, OLDER than 25. She said, in entirely genuine awe, "WOW!"

SO hot.

It's going to be a miserably hot week - it'll be over 95 the next four days, and over 100 on Tuesday and Wednesday. This would be easier to face if I wasn't unemployed with two kids to entertain. We can stay in the apartment with the shades drawn, moving as little as possible, until 1ish in the afternoon, and then I think we'll have to go to somewhere that's either deeply shady or air-conditioned. Or has water to play in. Actually, I may just fill the tub with lukewarm water for all three of us to sit in all afternoon. That's free.

The worst part of it is that poor Skipper gets hot and angry, and she wants to be comforted... by being picked up and rocked. Which makes her hotter. Which makes her angrier. So then we wet down her head and torso with a washcloth. Which makes her angrier. Etc.

No... the worst part of it is the sleeping. When I went on a trip down the Grand Canyon as a teenager, lo these many years ago, I would wet down my towel at night, lay it on my air mattress, and sleep on that, because otherwise I'd be unbearably hot. In the middle of the night I would wake up freezing cold, lying on a now-dry towel, and I would put it over me as a blanket. I'm thinking this week we could take some air mattresses down to the laundry room for sleeping.

But then it'll cool down by the end of the week, and the Big Cooks are coming for a visit! Hooray!

Reproduction

In my peer group, it appears that more and more people are having three kids instead of two.* Alpha Girl's mom, who has an older daughter as well, reported to me with amusement that not only is she often asked when she's going to have another child, but she's asked "don't you want to try for a boy?"

Um, no.

While we are not going to have a third kid (we can't afford it, and we're lazy, and really the last thing the planet needs is more people on it), I can understand the impulse. For me, the main draw is the science-experiment element - who's going to come out? I do love that part; it's really cool to see Dutch's personality unfold in all its scary glory. And there is something sad about knowing you're never going to have another baby. Maybe it has to do with facing mortality** - if you stop having kids, you must be getting old. Also, I'm ashamed to admit there seems to be some sort of competitiveness in it, at least for me - having fewer kids means you're selfish or wimpy.***

*USA Today says so, and I've seen it in my social circles as well. Therefore it must be so!

** And oh my god I just dicovered MY HAIRLINE IS RECEDING. Not only am I going to die, but I'm going to turn into an old man first.

*** True on both counts for me. Whatever.

baby

Skipper is a terrific baby. She is needy and frustrating* and all that, but really by far the easiest baby we've ever raised. Mostly, she SLEEPS! For about a month, she's been going to bed around 8 or 9 PM, and staying asleep usually until about 3 AM. She is able to fall asleep on her own, given certain conditions. If we can't get her to go to sleep on her own, we can put her down in the crib even when she's not completely asleep, and she can wake up a little and go back to sleep without screaming. When she wakes up, she usually doesn't instantly freak out (AAAAAAHHHH!!! I'M AWAKE!!!!!!!) like her sister did for her first two years of life. This amazes me. Dutch was a miserable sleeper. She completed her transformation to a decent sleeper about six months ago (finally staying in her own bed, or at least her own room, all night), more or less at age 4. We lived through it, but I hope it won't take Skipper that long.
Skipper likes to sit in her chair or lie on the floor and kick her legs madly while watching us, and is especially fascinated by Dutch. She likes to "stand" with us holding her hands. She tries to crawl, but can't get her rear and front ends to cooperate. She still talks, and sings herself to sleep. What a great baby.


*WHY do babies NEED so much!? No self-respecting giraffe baby would be this pathetic at 3 months of age. Stupid upright posture and giant heads.