All That and More.

Katherine hates Publix with a passion.



This is the fifth time she's been there, and the fifth time she has (loudly) expressed her displeasure about it.

Halfway down the bread aisle, I pulled over to try the pacifier rotation. This includes the Comfort Paci, the Frustration Paci (which Alex calls the Mad Paci), and the Hunger Paci, the latter to be used only temporarily while somebody gets a bottle ready, or to test the "she's hungry" theory when, according to the clock and all those books that don't know what they're talking about, she shouldn't be, yet.

When she spat all of them out with a look of contempt and opened that adorable little Cupid's bow mouth to yell at me, I stuck the emergency bottle into it. She shook her head at me. Yes, she did.

So then my little helper jumped in, as he does whenever he thinks he knows better how to handle any given situation than I do, which is pretty much all the time.

"Why don't you just pick her up?"

Fine.

So I got her out of the car seat, which was hooked onto the front of the almost-full shopping cart, and she instantly passed out on my shoulder just like she did after the birth experience, as if we had both not just been through something pretty noteworthy.

Pushing the cart, which OF COURSE had a bum wheel and wanted to pull stubbornly to the left, proved more difficult than my adviser or I had anticipated. We ended up walking in front of it, each on one side so that we took up the whole breadth of the aisle (the breadth of the bread aisle, heh), me barking navigational orders. "Turn right. No, your other right. Watch out, we're about to hit that guy!"

And I did almost take out an elderly lady who responded to my harassed-sounding, "I am so sorry," with "Oh no, baby, you've got your hands full, bless your heart!" Which made me extra glad I hadn't run over her because I'm a sucker for well-intended terms of endearment. Go on, call me sweetheart or honey, make me believe it, and see if I don't agree to lend you a hundred bucks.

But I got my grocery shopping done, and Katherine's mini-meltdown didn't faze me much. Alex and I even laughed about it as I was unloading our stuff onto the check-out belt one-handed and trying to get Alex to conform to my unloading method: frozen with frozen, cold with cold, boxes with boxes, cans with cans, etc. NO, I AM NOT ANAL RETENTIVE.

And I just realized I've written all of this about a fairly run-of-the-mill grocery store experience, so no wonder my uber-nice sister-in-law is usually my only commenter! I'm sure you've lived through a bazillion of these scenarios, C.

Bigger and better: Alexander started kindergarten.



He likes his teacher (whew, because she seemed a little less kid-gloved than I would have liked) and made three friends ("at the same time!!") because they all sit at his table. He doesn't remember their names but promises to tell us when he learns them. They're very tight.

Liddy, the girl next door who is very much in love with him, is not in his class but they did meet up at recess. I guarantee there was hugging. This girl hugged him so hard his feet left the floor (and she is a little girl) when we ran into them on Meet the Teacher day. Ever since he gave her a hydrangea blossom she's been his biggest fan. I figure if he's going to be a ladies' man, one day he can help us protect Katherine from the jerks Steven seems bitterly certain she's going to want to go out with.

I had a good birthday, spent Friday sitting around a metal table in a thunderstorm talking and laughing with awesome friends who sang Happy Birthday to me at midnight; enjoyed the gift of an extra two hours of sleep when Katherine went back down after her first bottle of the morning; went clothes shopping for comfortable things to wear in my "home office" that aren't pajamas but which I can wear out of the house and not be mortified when Liddy's mom drops by unexpectedly in the middle of an unsuspecting Tuesday morning. (When we ran into them at the school, she hugged me like we're BFFs and said she will be coming by to meet the baby soon. Scary, as sometimes I don't wear the requisite undergarments while I'm working on my couch, or I have on a threadbare T-shirt with chicken wing and wine stains on it. Classy.)

I wish there weren't windows in our front door.

My parents graciously offered to come over and watch the kiddos while Steven and I went out to dinner last night. I felt prettyish for the first time since this second birthin', and granted it took some WORK, but I think it was my new wine-colored lip gloss. I'm a fan of colorful lips. I ate chicken and lobster and drank Chardonnay and met someone with four kids and a passion for her church and a burning desire to share that passion with any and everyone. She happened to have graduated with my sister and was nice as nice could be and had lovely, well-behaved children but wouldn't stop talking to us. (Ironically, when we got there she said to her kids, "Leave these people alone; they're on a date night!")

I got awesome new knives (and boy does it take a brave man to buy his often-moody wife knives) and a lopsided chocolate cake with bumpy icing that was delicious and as cute as a baked good can be.



I also scored the infamous green mop that Alex saw on a commercial months ago and has been telling me he wants to get for me ever since ("It even has a powerful vacuum!" ... which it doesn't, but that's because I told Steven to find a cheap green mop that would satisfy Alex without costing too much), gift cards for !!!CLOTHES!!!, a salad spinner, and a necklace that lets me wear my kids where they belong ... no, not around my neck (though on a bad day it often feels like they're hanging there). Near my heart.

I also got lots of much-appreciated birthday wishes on Facebook and that special birthday feeling that lasted all day long.

I love my peeps.