Miscellany

Those giant "catching up" blog posts are fine and everything, but fail to capture the essence of our everyday life with Walter and Sally.  It's the short, random posts that do the best job of actually documenting our life, I think.

For example ...

• Walter is currently obsessed with one particular pair of neon purple socks. Every morning he asks for them.  "Purple socks?" We then have to negotiate with him, offering other options, because his purple socks haven't quite made it through the laundry cycle yet. It says a lot about me that my solution to this problem is not to make an extra effort regarding laundry, but to think about ways I might procure more purple socks.
• I was reading old blog posts, and seeing several references to Paul Simon's "African Skies" reminded me that the "Ta Oomba Oomba" part still works.  It's pretty magical.  Most recently I busted it out in post-op, while the nurse was trying to get through our post-op instructions and Walter was screaming over her, trying to get down and run away. I hugged him to me and sang it quietly in his ear: "ta oomba oomba oomba whoa-oh-oh." He immediately stopped screaming.  He put out his lower lip to let me know he was still sad, but he stopped struggling and leaned into my hug. He remembers it from when he was a newborn, I am certain of it. It's in his veins, just like the song says. 
• Yesterday was really, really hot.  When Walter got home from day care, he asked us a couple of times to arrange for some rain to fall.  The best was: "Dada! Rain, please." I'm guessing one of his teachers gave him the idea (Walter has been saying "Too hot" these past few days, and I'm thinking his teachers told him that yes, it was too hot, but it would get better soon after it rains.) It rained this morning, and Walter seemed please, but also kind of like, "Well, of course it rained.  I asked for it."  There's a sermon in there about prayer, I'm sure.
• This probably deserves it's own long blog post, but I'm too emotionally confused about it right now to write at length: Sally's c-section is scheduled for Wednesday, August 21, at 7:00 am (check in at 5:30 am ... now that's a good surgery time.) Like I said, I need to sort out some of my thoughts and feelings about this one. My main thought at the moment is that we should probably not just assume that the 21st will be her arrival date: the hospital bag still needs to be packed and ready to go. My other thought at this very moment is that Sally's movements are the nicest thing in the world on this quiet Sabbath morning ... very gentle, but persistent (and, as I typed this, maybe slightly less gentle around the area of my ribs.)
• Today, in addition to Sally/Mama time, I'm also expecting the delivery of a hospital bed.  We were able to borrow one last time but that bed is in use by its owner, so Dr. M. ordered one for me to help with the current acid reflux and the post-surgical recovery to come.  I'm hoping it helps with my sleep, which has been pretty bad lately.  

Having said that, I'm going to try for a little sleep right now.  I know most of my posts lately have ended that way, but I'm too tired to think of something more creative.  And as far as documenting our real lives go, Mama's constant quest for sleep is a pretty real thing to depict.