Teeth, and I'm not allowed to watch horror movies

In news that people in addition to me care about, Wehna has finally popped out her first tooth. Lower front left. The one next to it is close too, when she screams at me for trying to look in her mouth I can see it right under the gum, just no sharp nubbing yet.

In news that I find interesting at least, I am not allowed to watch horror movies any more. Yeah, we had movie night in Byron's room and watched Silent Hill. It wasn't bad at the time, I actually rather enjoyed it, but tonight in the silence of hotel graveyard shift I could seriously not stop thinking about the horrible screaming burning things. No more horror films for me. At least not until I get a job with decent hours.

We have been invaded

Our house is now full of soft, fluffy drifts of WOOL. Sheep mostly. Also llama, and some mohair. Mohair comes from goats, and it is soft and squishy. It has primarily taken over the laundry room, where I am washing it ever so carefully in the washer. The black llama had some second cuts tho, so now there is llama hair (short bits of it, anyway) all over Byron's clothes. And the light grey wool took forever to dry, so the variagated llama had to dry on a towel in our room, where it got kicked under the rocking chair several times. Then there's the big bag of dark grey wool that I'm slowly carding out and spinning in the living room. Except my spindle wandered up into Byron's room yesterday, along with several rolags of carded wool. It may or may not still be there. I do however know that Elspeth and Wehna's spindles are lying in the middle of the dining room, where I tripped on them on the way to work.

There used to be a word for what I'm turning into, but I think "spinster" means something different now-a-days. Just wait until I figure out an excuse to drive down by Lake Powell... there's a guy down there selling raw Navaho-Churro fleece for two dollars a pound.

I am so freaking tired.

First Mark had a tickley throat. No big. Then he thought he was dying. Girls still healthy, me still healthy. Mark gets better. All is well with the world. NOW I HAVE THE SORE THROAT. It is not fair! Especially given that I got to be AWAKE for the whole part where I was getting sicker and sicker, instead of just waking up half dead, because I had to work that night. Believe me, it really, really is better to just wake up really sick. That was last night, and here I am again on the graveyard shift. And church is in three hours. And I don't get off for another hour. Yeah, I'm not sure how we're going to do this, but I am very determined to get Elspeth to Primary. Pray.

Aaah, the holidays.

I feel like a massive scrooge, but I hate Christmas. I love Jesus. I love that he was born. I just hate CHRISTMAS. The endless shopping and family and food and EVERYTHING THAT IS CHRISTMAS makes me nuts. Probably partially because Christmas involves long series of surprises, and I have never liked surprises. Definitely partially because Emersen's absense is particularly poignant during the holidays. But you know, on the good side, I was happy that I had to go to work for the first time ever this evening, because it meant I get to escape for a little while. And the girls wore cute matching dresses today, which everybody complimented. Elspeth's is no longer white, but hey, maybe it will come out in the wash. Toddlers are the reason that Oxyclean was invented, I'm sure.

FREE MONEY, woo!

I just got a bunch of money back on my holiday shopping, yay! Ebates is a website where you sign up, click through their site to get to your favorite online stores, and then they give you money back... plus, you can get a five dollar sign up bonus (and I get a five dollar referal bonus) if you use this link:
http://www.ebates.com/rf.do?referrerid=Zisa046jjHB4QMc0VuPqJA%3D%3D

No joke! No hidden fees or anything, and they will either send you a check or drop the money right in your paypal account, easy peasy.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Bottle problems

Wena does not like bottles. She seems to think that they are some sort of torture device. Which is odd, because a couple of weeks ago I was relieved to see her take a bottle with no fight, just drank it down. I think the only reason she did so was because she was half asleep. These are even bottles of expressed breast milk, I have never even tried to give her formula. This is creating a problem because I work eight hour shifts! When I worked during the day, she would take MAYBE two ounces... and most of that probably really went down her shirt. Now that I am working nights, she WILL NOT SLEEP. Poor Mark! I am actually handling my first graveyard shift a lot better than he did, because I at least expected no sleep. So, tonight he is going to cuddle her up in the mei tai, and get the bottle nice and warm, and make sure the nipple is warm, and when she's all sleepy he's going to try and sneak it in there. But seriously, she is five months old, I SHOULD be able to feed her when I leave and feed her when I get back. We will figure something out.

Yup, don't post very often.

  Too busy.  Byron's birthday was on the sixth, I made a cake (from scratch even, so Elspeth can eat some) and I didn't bake it long enough, so it collapsed in the middle and had a gooey center.  But you know what, he asked for a lava cake in the first place, so there you go.  Baked the same recipe for Elspeth's birthday, and it turned out much better because, you know, it was all the way cooked.  I also discovered that you can't just substitute oil for the butter in my frosting recipe, as it screws with the texture.  So, it was tasty, but looked kind of rustic, I guess.  Then we had Halloween, for which Elspeth dressed up as a witch.  And amidst all of this I was looking for a job.  I even got an interview to be an editor for Multiling, but they decided to "keep looking."  Blarg.  BUT, as of today I have a job!  I am going to work graveyard shift at the front desk of the Fairfield Inn, and I start tomorrow!  (Somebody please help me be excited about this...)  This week I will be working days, so I can get trained, though, so we don't know how it's going to work out with the whole "somebody has to watch the girls."  But, that is why I took graveyard shift, because it means I don't have to put my girls in daycare, at which Wena would have to wear disposable diapers, which make her poor skin get all scaley and bumpy and peeley.  Blargyay.