Fevers, Butterflies, and a Survey

Well, she isn't feverish in this picture.

She is asking me to take her picture while she rubs her hands together.  Because, you know, that's important stuff.  This was yesterday--she deteriorated as the day went on and was roasting with fever by the time she went to bed.  We only got up seven or eight times in the night though.

He doesn't appear to be feverish yet.  (Here he is reading.  Very studiously.  Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See?  Because he is ever so much bigger than Baby, and that makes him able to read.)

Yes.  That's baby powder on his head.  He applied it himself.  No, he wouldn't let me get it off.

Survey time!  Vote!  Do you like this cover, which we will call Eye 1?  (Because there are others with this eye picture in the background.)  More to the point, would you buy the book if you saw this cover?  Do you think any males would buy it, or will we assume that this is a Ladies' Book?  Because it really isn't.  There's lots of fighting and there's even fireballs and a bone-monster and everything.

We ordered these caterpillars through the mail with a coupon that came with the cage thingy. Because they arrived and sat in the mailbox for a couple of hours before we realized they were there (in 100F heat) I thought they would surely die.  Or at least not make very good butterflies.  But, the miracle happened.

They made cocoons and then they emerged, pretty as could be.

I don't know how long they will survive their ardent admirers, though.

I think we're going to let them go today, since I can't find any hollyhocks to give them (the directions airily instruct you to place "a few stems and leaves of hollyhock or mallow in the cage" for them to lay eggs on--what's mallow?).

"No, remember? We don't want to scare them!  They think you're a big bird that's going to eat them!"

Laughing: "Oh Mama, I am not a bird.  They're so silly.  BUTTERFLIES!  I'M A GIRL! DON'T BE SCARED!"

He's very thoughtful, this one.  I've noticed lately he memorizes things aurally, too-- he wants me to read a book until he can get it perfectly.  Then he recites it.  With his mouth closed.  (*Head slam on desk*.)  I wish I could figure out how to convince him it's okay to talk with his mouth open.  He does it sometimes, when he forgets that anyone can hear him.

None of my kids are what you might call sloppy, but I have this feeling Buddy is going to be my perfectionist even more than his sister.  Still waters run deep, you know.

Cheesy smile to convince Mama to give him the camera!

(Think it's going to happen?)

Okay, we'll call this "Sword 1".  Would THIS cover make you buy the book?

How about "Sword 2"?  Feeling like shelling out the dough yet?  (It's only going to be $2.99 so it doesn't have to woo you very hard, but still.)

Or "Sword 3"?

Send me an email or vote in the comments!  (It's ok to say "I like Eye 1 but want the text a different color", or something like that, too.)

Something else to consider is how well the covers will transfer to a physical, hold-in-your-hands book.  I *might*, if there is enough interest, have some physical copies made--there's a service called CreateSpace that's pretty low-risk.  So, Grandma and Grandpa and those of you who don't like the complexity/newfangled-ness/tiny buttons of an e-reader, let me know if this is something you'd be interested in, okay?  It's not a big deal, just another kind of formatting to learn and probably something I should know anyway.

Listen to me talk, like I'm a writer or something. ;)

And now, back to feverish babies.

Cheers,

Breanna

Quick Update

I'm taking a break from writing, having finished the first draft (yay!) of the book.  I'll be emailing new copies around to my faithful reviewers as soon as get the table of contents thingy figured out.  In a couple of days I have given myself permission to begin to edit...not till then though, or I don't see mistakes.

I also have pictures, but I am on a bit of a time limit here because I've got a very spitty Littleman in my lap going "TTTHHHHH!  Few!  THHHHHHH! Few!"  He likes sounds, and experimenting with those two new teeth of his.  (Oh yes, there are two now.)  So, some cuteness:

Miss Boo, today, was being a fast dinosaur.  When I asked her which one, she said "Compsognathus".  I have this on video, I'm not making it up.  I got to be brachiosaurus, "the big arms lizard".  I always get the sweetheart roles in these things.  Luckily I was a boring herbivore so I just had to sit there while the meat eaters ran around crazily and roared.


We have some butterflies on our kitchen counter, which we raised from caterpillars and which popped out of their cocoons today as we watched.  Buddy, true to our theme, grabbed a toy dino and made it growl at the butterflies through the net walls of their cage.  They didn't seem too terrified, maybe because they were all stoned on the sugar-water paper towel I put in their cage.


So, in case you are wondering, Miss Boo is an astronaut dinosaur unicorn at the moment.  We will keep you updated as the situation develops.


Cheers,


Breanna

My First Payment

Hello family members who are also being beta readers!  I appreciate you reading my book and sitting through the emailing of various copies that I've been doing.  I should be getting the *last* story finished this weekend and emailing you a complete first draft.  From then on revisions are to parts, not whole stories.  (Alas.  I ripped out a couple of entire ones.  But it's for the best.  And now you know how book making really goes.)

So.  Anyway.  I said I'd pay you in baby pictures.

They weren't really in a posing kinda mood, having been in the car roughly 3 hours today.  But they did both want to play with the baby under the coffee table.  I don't know why, but he keeps crawling under there and finding crayon papers.

Pretty boys, aren't they?  Cough.  I mean, handsome.  They're very manly.  If there was any doubt, Littleman already thinks that farts are the funniest thing in the world, even funnier than his jingle-bell green frog.

Think they're related?  (That block wasn't really poking into his head, it was just above it.)

"Helping" Baby.  My mantra these days is "don't help Baby, let Baby do it himself, Baby is too little for you to roll him".

He has a whole tooth, by the way!  It popped in yesterday and to all appearances he feels a lot better.  He keeps feeling it with his fingers and tongue, though, in a concerned way--like he's thinking "I never had a tooth there before.  Maybe I should have that looked at.  Yeah, I think I'll make an appointment with my gum guy.  What was his name...or maybe I want someone board-certified.  So hard when this happens while you're new in town..."

I wish I could look this good just by having someone go "hey, smile! I'm taking your picture".

This is our attempt to get all three in the same shot.  Tricky.

Very tricky.

We got silly in a hurry.

Very silly.

But at least you can tell we love each other.  And the frantic shouts of "Meow! meow! meow!" don't come through on the computer.

Cheers,

Breanna

{Pretty, Happy, Funny, Real}

{Pretty}

At least to me, the sight of big brother teaching baby about Legos is pretty.

{Happy}

None of my kids are ill-natured, but Littleman has been my happiest, most naturally content baby.  He's more than satisfied to roll and crawl around on his rug and chew on toys his siblings give him.  And magazine pages, but we try to avoid that.

{Funny}

Because a couch is where YOU'd park a John Deere tractor, right?

{Real}

Miss Boo, the chick who always wakes up at 6:00, still asleep at 8:00AM.  Why?  Well, because she woke up at 3:00AM and needed, after a quick potty run, her space book.  Because she is an astronaut these days, and she needed to know where Mars was.  Badly.  I think she must have spent a little time studying before tiredness overwhelmed her; Mama is letting her sleep in, and the baby sleep books can go whistle for a wind.

Cheers,

Breanna

Keeping On

Lady In The Grocery Store (finishes admiring Littleman in his backpack carrier, then turns to Miss Boo): And how are you today?  What are you doing today?

Miss Boo: I am working very hard so that when I grow up I can be an astronaut and go to Mars.

Lady (slightly dazed, turns to Buddy): And do you have a toy motorcycle? You do!

Miss Boo does have a burning desire to be an astronaut right now.  I think because on the Backyardigans astronauts get to go to interstellar diners and have "two eggs, moony side up, and a bowl of floatmeal".  But she wants to go to Mars and has memorized where it is in our Golden Book of Space.

And yes.  Those are snowboots she's wearing.  And yes.  It WAS 104F yesterday.  She does not see why that should be an incompatible pair.

Potty training is easier if you just don't put pants on.  Really.

He gets real mad when things don't move out of the way for him, but he's slowly sort of grasping the concept of going *around*.

He doesn't approve, mind you.  But he grudgingly does it.

What?  It's Muzzy.  It's educational.  Teaches them German.  And so on.  And on days when they don't have a nap, it's either educate them or strait-jacket them to the bed.

Keeping on is harder than it seems.  There's a point in every endeavor, quite often near the end or the fruition, where the most sensible thing seems to be to give up.  For me it comes during the home stretch of writing a story or a book.  For days--weeks or months sometimes--it seems like the best thing to do would be to scrap the whole project.  However, having been there before, I know that it is an illusion of sorts.  If I can just push through it, very often the story or book turns out just fine.

I notice it with other things.  Cooking.  Learning something new.  Exercising.  Relationships.  There comes a time when you don't need to change anything you're doing, you just need to keep doing it.

And that, I think, is what the virtue of perseverance is all about, and that's why it's a virtue--i.e., something we can't do without divine enabling.

Praying today for all of you to have perseverance in doing the will of God, and the wit to realize when what you are doing isn't His will.  (That's my hangup.)  Often it takes me two or three days to realize that something that I just can't get done is...not actually something God wants me to do.  (For instance: wear only dresses and skirts.  I tried it as an experiment for a week, and only got through a few days, because it's hot here and shorts don't stick to you quite so badly.)

Keep at it.  I encourage you, if you are in a down season, to go back to the Scriptures and/or the books that always encourage you.  The Imitation of Christ always helps me, as does The Screwtape Letters.  And there's nothing wrong with reading simple, happy escape fiction either--try Chronicles of Avonlea by L.M. Montgomery.

Cheers,

Breanna

What Have I Been Doing?

Writing, mostly.  And fighting with my e-book-maker software to force it to include a link to the table of contents.  Apologies to those of you who got the version of my book without a link to the table of contents, in the Kindle drop-down menu.  And for those of you who have half a murder-mystery.  I wrote the end today.  It's pretty good, although of course I need to clean it up.  Meanwhile, the Husband finally took a picture of me, even with itchy just-Lasik'd eyes.

I think I actually look better in first person, but that's a pretty tight tank top I have on so at least you know the shape of me, for comparison T-Tapp purposes.

Miss Boo did this all by herself, without prompting.  We're not sure if it's a coincidence or not, but we are saying not.  It really is pretty good, considering the only other word she can write is her name, and even then she tends to move the O around randomly.

Buddy's favorite book these days.  A sign?  I hope?

And they are all asleep, and now I'm going to go to sleep too, to dream of what to write in the morning.  The creative fit is upon me, and it's not always entirely pleasant.

Cheers,

Breanna

Personalities - A Little Fun

(You must understand that in the Veggie Tales song "The Pirates Who Don't Do Anything", the chorus starts with "and I've never been to Boston in the fall".)


Miss Boo (waking up and stumbling around her room): ...and I'll never put the hoopdeck on the ball!


-A few days later-


Miss Boo: What does 3 say?
Me: It doesn't say anything.  It's a numeral, not a letter.  It's just 3.
Miss Boo: Tell me.
Me: It doesn't make a sound, honey, it just says three.
Miss Boo (determined, having grasped the concept that p and h together say "ffff"): What do 3 and 0 say together?
Me (giving up trying to explain that numbers don't have phonics): Thirty.
Miss Boo (satisfied): Sirty.

I include the baby witticisms because I don't want to forget them.  Miss Boo is a 4.  Buddy is a 3.  I have a feeling Littleman will turn out a 1.  See below.

Grammy found a fun thing the other day called  Dressing Your Truth.  I link here not to the actual website--which seems absurdly overpriced--but to my favorite source, someone who blogs about their experience with it.  Basically this is like any other personality inventory which categorizes people, with the unique marketing twist that it then tells you how to dress to match your personality.  (Male readers: you may think about something else for the next few paragraphs.)

So for instance I am a type 4.  (Hands down.  Totally and completely.  Possibly with a dash of 3.  But the other two aren't even on my horizon.)  They call this personality "bold and striking" but it's also been called Type A, or Tiger.  Basically the big insight is that I should, therefore, wear bold and striking clothes--sleek lines, colors like black, white, and gray, and chunky, powerful jewelry.  All the stuff I like already, in other words.  It's always nice to be right. :)

The other personality types are, of course, supposed to wear stuff that matches them.  My Type 3 (passionate and practical) sister instinctively wears the pretty scarlets, plums, and golds that go well with her nature.  I know someone who's a type 2 (soft and subtle) who doesn't wear the soft, flowy, lacy, femme stuff that type 2s are supposed to, but she's going to try it.  I'll let you know about the answer.  I also know someone who's a type 1, to the core--bouncy, cute, high-energy--and she dresses it instinctively too (she usually wears bright pink running shorts and a ponytail and she looks awesome).

So all this makes sense and I don't think you need their $297 course unless clothes shopping frustration is just wrecking your life--just read the traits etc. in the link above, decide which type fits you, and start telling the truth about who you are with your wardrobe.  Yes, even if you are a tall type 2 so you've always figured that means a no-go on the ruffles.  Yes, even if you think type 4s are masculine and you've always wanted to be seen as a gentle type 2.  Just try it for a day.  Style your hair in a way that matches your personality, wear colors and lines and makeup that match it, and fashion be danged.

(Male readers, tune back in)

But I think actually the neat thing about thinking about this stuff (let's not kid ourselves that Dress Your Truth is the only personality inventory out there) is that it helps you accept other people and yourself and refrain from putting negative labels on what God has created.  For instance, perhaps you're not "lazy", you're a type 2 and easily feel overwhelmed.  Instead of viewing that aspect of yourself as a flaw, accept it and work with it--know that you need a plan and you need to discipline yourself to work at things in manageable chunks.  I, as a type 4, was relieved to realize that I'm not anti-social, I just don't need as much change and interaction as my type 1 friends.  In fact, change and social interaction are stressors for me (even when I enjoy them), while type 1s might find it relaxing.

What Dress Your Truth has done I think is force people to be themselves in their wardrobe, which is powerful because things always work better if they are allowed to be the way God made them.  Telling the truth is always better than lying even with unimportant things like clothes.

So don't pay for their silly online course and don't throw out all your clothes, but feel good about wearing what expresses YOU instead of whatever happens to be "in" at the time.  Or feel good about your work patterns, or your parenting style.  Like body shape, there are some things you can't change very much about yourself, so you might as well decide to like it.

Cheers,

Breanna

Paper Soccer

Littleman has not read the books that tell you what your baby is supposed to be doing, month by month.

Instead he has been working on crawling off his lambskin rug, around my recliner, and over to my computer desk.  While pushing a crumpled up ball of paper that his sister gave him, batting it with his hands like he's playing kick the can.  Correct me if I'm wrong, but that's a little weird for a 5-month-old, isn't it?  Making up games?

He very much did it on purpose.  Thought it was the funniest thing in the world, and chased the paper all the way from the rug to the book-hutch-thing in the corner, before getting stuck against a wall and getting mad.  (He still hasn't figured out that the walls don't move for anyone, it's not just him.)

You can see it in his eyes.  Paper Soccer is the best thing going at the moment.

That piece of paper, alas, is dead now, but I can foresee having to get him another one.  Particularly since he decided to wake up at quarter to four this morning and crawl around the bed, looking for for paper.

"What?  I just want to hone my skills.  You think Beckham was good?  I'm going to be good."

Sigh.  He'll probably sign with Manchester United (in the intervals of his neurological research studies and his symphony composing, of course) and go live in England and I will be a crotchety old lady yelling at the Brits with this maddeningly slow Texas accent I'm acquiring, trying to figure out how to get to his house from the London airport.  You remember I told you this, when it happens and I'm blogging about it on the hive mind.

At least he keeps my floor dusted for me.

And this isn't exactly the T-tapp picture I said I'd post--I still need to have the Husband (whose eyes were all googly and dilated last night because of getting ready for his Lasik surgery tomorrow) take one.  But I took this shot, which I will probably play with some to make it more arty, and am thinking of using it for my Author's Photograph when my book comes out in August.

(Yes, I have a book coming out in August.  Don't get too excited.  It's just a collection of short stories, and it's self-published on the Kindle.  I'll post links when everything is final.)

Anyway, tell me what you think of the picture.  If you think I should do one where I straighten my hair and/or take off my glasses, let me know, please?  You are the only people I trust for this decision.  Also, I just took this picture pretty quick, with children nipping at my heels.  I can take a posed one.

Cheers,

Breanna

Saturday

Thing they don't tell you about motherhood #4958: That it's really true that sleep habits are better and more stable if you wake up at the same time each day.  Ergo, if you want your kids to go to sleep during the week, they have to wake up at the same time on the weekends.

Ergo, Mama has to wake up at the same time on the weekends.  Littleman has an extremely regular internal clock and wakes up, every day, on the button of 6am.  Then he wants me to take him to the potty, because he has to poo.  And, you know, he refuses to go in a diaper--what does he look like, a baby or something?

But it's okay, because Miss Boo wakes up the moment the sun hits the back yard anyway--i.e., 6:10am.  And needs milk.  And company.  Badly.

Littleman has been doing calisthenics lately.  I spent a couple days wondering why I was so hungry all the time when I realized A) he's been pooping a lot, so B) he's been eating a lot! and C) because he's been crawling everywhere.  So there you are--crawling apparently burns a lot of calories, which Mama must make up for by eating lots and turning it into milk.

Buddy, on the other hand?  Buddy would easily sleep until 9 most mornings if I let him.  He is a wonder that way.  But alas, I do not dare let him.  For you see, he needs to nap at 12:30pm in order to be awake by 2:30pm in order to be tired again by bedtime.  Alack.

See her customized shoe?  It took me a while to figure out how she got splotches of marker (very washable) on her seat.  Finally I realized she had been coloring all over her shoes (one is red, one is blue) while sitting at the table drawing with markers, and then, being short, she tucked her feet under her while she finished coloring the paper.  It's been a colorful house here lately and I think I'll go back to the rather out-of-favor crayons.  If I can keep Buddy from eating them.

This is Littleman a coupl eof days ago.  He can do this for almost a minute at a time.  Pretty cool, huh?  I know you've been sitting up under your own power for years, but it thrills me every time one of my kids does it.  And I swear Miss Boo was every bit of six months before she even tried it--Buddy, too.  Littleman is just physically precocious.  (Baba's theory is that I was struck by lightening while pregnant.  I can't remember much other than the sciatica and getting morning sick while trying to buy my new cell phone, so I suppose it could have happened.)

And yes, I did say before he is crawling.  Like, real, hands-and-knees (actually he prefers hands-and-tippy-toes, but that gets tiring and he goes back to knees) crawling.  Like the wind.  And shoving random bits of fuzz, his sister's marker caps, or his brother's maracas in his mouth.

So I'm back in the mode of running around all day frantically picking things up off the floor.  It's harder than you might think, when you've got two small people who want to share with the baby.

And a baby who is pretty sure he's as big as his siblings--if I would only give him the chance.  This one, my friends, is going to be the humdinger who builds his own go-cart in the shed out of old VCRs and an Erector set.  I'm proud and scared stiff at the same time.

Meanwhile, T-tapp continues apace.  I will try to get the Husband, maybe, to take a picture of me later today.  Just a quick rundown of my numbers:

When I started T-tapp, about a month and a half ago, I was a solid size 16.  As in, my size 16 pants were the only ones that were comfortable.

Yesterday I comfortably wore a pair of size 12 shorts, although they should probably be a little looser before I wear them in public.  I'm also easily able to button some short-sleeved blouses that I couldn't even close over my chest when I began.  Pretty good for a month and a half, I should think.

I've gained quite a bit of muscle, especially in my lower legs and feet, and my shoulders look more sculpted than they did when I was lifting weights.  My metabolism seems like it's burning like a furnace.

I am now doing the 15-minute workout every other day.  I assumed, when reading the book, that this was to make the workout easier.  I actually think, now, that it's to keep it challenging--it seems more difficult to me to do the workout when I've skipped a day.  (Sneaky!)  I mean in a good way, like this keeps it from getting too easy.  I'm close to being able to exercise only every third day.

I will probably, when I feel like I'm stabilized in what size I am, go to just exercising every day again.  It increases my energy so much to do so, and I really notice that my feet hurt more on days when I don't exercise, and I'm more likely to get a flare of sciatica.  I catch myself doing a set of Hoe Downs now and again when I can feel my blood sugar getting too high too fast.  (I.e., if we go get donuts and I eat them without any balancing protein.)

And now Miss Boo wants a "campout Dora", but I'm not sure what that pertains to, so I'd better quit.

Cheers,

Breanna