So we’ve all been sick for close to a week. We quarantined ourselves to avoid spreading this nastiness to others, but not before a quick trip to have lunch with my mom last week. We tried to warn her that Nicolaus seemed to be getting a bit of a cold, but grandmothers have this instinctive thing where they try to sponge the baby’s germs off onto themselves. Kevin’s mom actually told us once “Well I’d rather me feel bad than him.”

Ummmm. Ooohkay. You know what? Go ahead and kiss him then.

My mom’s not much better. She says she “didn’t even think about it” when Nicolaus invented a game where he put her necklace in his mouth, chewed it, then giggled and shoved it into HER mouth. My uncle tried to point out the problem but she waved him away “Oh it’s fine, he’s not going to hurt it.” So yeah, she called the other day and her throat was feeling scratchy. Oops, sorry mom.

Anyway we keep waking up thinking wow, we feel SO much better today! And we get very excited and start planning all the cool things we’re going to do now that we’re all better. But then we stand up and start walking around and stuff and Oh. My. God. It was a trick. We’re not better at all.

During the last week, we’ve cut down all of our adult responsibilities to an absolute minimum. Food, water, sleep are the only things that matter. And of course taking turns making sure that the baby doesn’t die, which I’m not proud to say sometimes involves letting him watch television for three hours at a time and/or letting him play with a giant roll of garbage bags while we lay on the couch and cough.

Huh, “couch” and “cough” are almost the same word. Cool.

Anyway the house is four levels beyond messy right now. The mess has spilled out of our bedrooms, into the living room, all the way across the kitchen and into the TV room. How did this happen? How did we accumulate two years worth of dirty laundry and use every dish in the house in only a week?

The bathroom, I’m proud to say, looks pretty good. Early on in this adventure, my friend Jessica said to be sure and keep things clean so we don’t keep passing germs around. We tried, but one of the symptoms of this particular illness is that cleaning makes you feel weak and dizzy, so I decided to scale back on the cleanliness requirement. So the bathroom looks good, and Kevin has been doing as many dishes every day as he can.

Not much else to report. I’m not returning client’s phonecalls; I don’t have the energy. If I had promised you I’d mail you something (Kristen, Brandi, Leeann…) I promise I will, just as soon as I’m sure I’m not contagious. Whatever this is, you don’t want it.

Ooh and I’ve spent my downtime drawing some comic strips. I really hate drawing and I suck at it so it’s slow going, but I’m looking forward to seeing the finished product.

Around here we talk a lot about who different things are and aren’t for.
Bananas aren’t for dogs, they’re for babies and little boys and girls. Bicycles are for big boys and girls. iBook G4 laptops aren’t for babies or for little boys and girls; only for ladies and men. We don’t throw bottle caps at ladies or babies – dangerous and annoying projectiles are only for boys and men. Makeup is not for little boys or for men; only ladies. Yes, I know sometimes men wear makeup, but for now I just want him to stop digging in my purse for my lipstick because it’s this fancypants Clinique special formula that I got as a present and I can’t afford to replace it. We can cover complex gender issues when mommy is back to using Cover Girl.

So anyway when I was giving him his bath a minute ago (aka reading a magazine while he played in the bath next to me) I heard him say “Eat bubbles! Good. Eat bubbles. No Mouse, bubbles not dogs. For babies…. aaaand boys…. aaaand li’l girls… aaaaaand bicycles.”

Sometimes I just don’t think we’re getting through to him.

Just like my friend Justin suggested, we tried recording Nicolaus the other day. He talks continuously so this should have been easy. My uncle set up his laptop and held a microphone up to Nicolaus.

Guess what! We’ve discovered the one thing in the world that will make Nicolaus stop talking. From now on, whenever we travel anywhere in the car, we’re definitely bringing a microphone with us. Even though we love him and every moment is precious and every word is a little insight into what’s going on in his beautiful little mind, I have to admit there are moments when we consider driving off a cliff just for the few minutes of silence we’d enjoy between the time when the car hit the ground and the time when it exploded.

My uncle waved the microphone in front of him and N just stared at it with a concerned look on his face. So our first recording is all of us reassuring him in high-pitched voices, “It’s okay, go on, say something!”

*silence*

I decided maybe the problem was that he didn’t understand what this thing was for. He’s all about cameras lately so I said “It’s a microphone. It’s like a camera for sounds. We’re going to take a picture of your talking sounds.” Yeah, so I suck at explaining stuff in toddler terms sometimes. He looked at it, processing this mi-cro-phone business for a second. Then he grabbed it and held it up to his ear. Trying to… hear the pictures. I guess?

We finally managed to get one word recorded by holding up a guitar and saying “What is this?”
So we have a recording of him saying “Git-AR.” then, louder: “GIT-AR!!”
I’m writing this so that when future generations listen to that recording and say my goodness, what a quiet young man. Hardly spoke a word! your grandchildren can be all dude, no way, my grandparents used to read his mom’s journal and she said that he never shut up from the time he was born.

These were stacked up in my parents’ living room, and I thought the textures were neat. I’m not sure if there were violins in them or not. This is actually one of the more normal things I’ve seen them stack in their living room. They could pile a dozen milkcrates full of cupie dolls on their coffee table and it wouldn’t even occur to me to ask.

I used to say that we need a war because people obviously have way too much time on their hands and too little to worry about. Well dang it, here we have a war and yet things like this continue to flourish in our society:
The infinite cat project