Head above wine

After that week of sleeping hourly naps all night and rising at ever earlier hours I am pleased to announce that life has taken a turn for the better.

This evening we sipped a Napa Merlot in anticipation of our trip down to the San Francisco coast in July. We will be meeting my mother and Mervyn, Claire (stepsister) and Jeff with their two girls Sasha and Cailey. Cailey was born only a few days after Frost so they will have fun playing together. We have decided to take a road-trip down to California and are enjoying musing over maps and looking at versions of the trip. Google Earth has this neat feature where people can load up their images of locations so we have been able to see pictures of the beach near our planned house as well as the area around the motel in Crescent City.

I have been enjoying a new book - a biography of Sir Richard Francis Burton written by Edward Rice. For those not familiar with Burton - he was a famous British adventurer and early ethnographer. He spoke numerous languages including arabic, greek, roman, hindustani, persian etc and is credited with translating the Karma Sutra and indeed "discovering" it for the West. He was also the first Westerner to make pilgrimage to mecca. I am reading about his first time in India and getting wanderlust (although I think I could do without my own concubine, tiger hunting and studying hindustani 12 hours a day in 120 degree heat.) I was thinking that one could not live this kind of life while being a parent and indeed it seems he was not a parental figure although (I didn't know this) he apparently fathered a number of children with his concubines whose decendents still live in India.)

While musing about travel and life abroad, Josh and I are toying (I stress toying) with the idea of living in Melbourne or New Zealand at some point. This is not an imminent event. It is not a plan. It is an excuse to browse realestate.com.au and look at New Zealand on Google Earth. Its a reason for me to pursue getting my US citizenship which might otherwise languish in the longterm to do pile (if I left the US for over 6 months I might lose my permanent residency here and have to reapply to return.) Natasha says she could hook me up with a lot of hippy families in Melbourne and that we should live in Northcote. Real Estate in Melbourne is NOT cheap.

Josh and I have had all this time to look at Google Earth and sip wine because Frost has been playing with some kids in our neighbourhood. Unfortunately, he feels compelled to shriek and make lame jokes and be naughty to show the big boys how cool he is but they seem to manage to have a good time despite his antics. Today he played with Elias and met Eli from up the street. They played Elias's quota of Wii time, roughhoused on the bed, played with the house, climbed the fence with the ladder, ate smores, toasted marshmallows on the gas flame, spraypainted Warhammer spiders and ran shrieking in all directions. I spoke with Ashley (Eli's mother) and it looks like we will try and have a block party in August this year and I have offered to help out if she plans it.

While Frost was over at Elias's I managed to do some more weeding. Wren sat under a tree in his bumbo but wasn't too content to grab leaves so I left him inside with Josh while I attacked the unintentional shrubbery that is our parking strip. Its 90% grass but there is potential. I also went jogging with Wren in the jogger stroller. The whole event was nearly derailed when I couldn't find the canopy for the jogger stroller and didn't want to take Wren out in the sun (yes, there was SUN). Before I could get completely obsessed with my failure to locate anything in the basement, Josh proposed a hat. The hat fell down over Wren's face but he fell asleep so all the falling went in order and I had a lovely garden-tour like jog. Everyone was out doing yardwork. Everyone.

Finally, lest I forget to mention sleep. Yes, Wren did well last night - a necessary condition for all this spring ebulliance. He slept for 6 hours and then 3 hours. We have a new plan - bedtime routing, nurse to sleep, put him down in his wedge, when he wakes (as long as its 3+ hours) nurse him to sleep again but let him sleep in bed with us. That makes the frequent nursings of the early morning more bearable and he seems to be able to get back to sleep with a few pats on occasion. He is getting 1.2ml of zantac AM and PM. We are seeing the pediatrician to review all this and the leg stuff, tomorrow.

Edited this AM: The kids played with the hose, not the house. We have a bedtime routine not a bedtime routing although both of these have me giggling. Last night Wren slept a bit worse: 9pm bed, 11.30 wake, 12.30wake, 5am wake, 7am up (after an hour of wriggling). That long stretch in the middle will get me through the day.