Prata Baby - maybe that should be Prata Boy by now - turns four tomorrow. You will already know this if you are one of the random strangers he accosted today to impart this information. He is likely to be disappointed with the experience, given his expectations, which are heady, to say the least. He expects to be taller, faster, smarter, and more able to accomplish almost everything (in fact, he has a short list of things he has been putting off for the last couple of weeks, because "he'll find it easier once he turns four next Thursday") - all by the time he wakes in the morning. Hopefully he will be happier with his presents.

I already got my gift for his birthday. We have been struggling at school ever since this post, with much the same issues. It has seemed a case of two steps forwards, one back (if not the other way around at times) but today his teacher told me he has finally come around and has been getting along really well. I swear I nearly started crying at the school gate. She thanked me for all my hard work, but in truth it was a multitude of factors, which I am now going to write down for the edification, or at least reflection and discussion, of whoever is interested.

Things That Have Helped (*These a Great Deal More than the Others)

*Teacher
He has a new teacher this year, and I think she is better for him, for two reasons. First, she is rather liberal with the edible treats, and if there's one thing PB loves it's an edible treat. I have mixed feelings about this, but currently I am on the side of "whatever works". More substantially, however, his teacher this year has a relaxed confidence born of much experience. Last year's teacher had a tendency to worry about PB's behaviour, fretting over the fact that this technique or that technique just didn't seem to be having the desired effect, and I think that only fed the anxiety which lay at the root of his problems. I felt her pain. She was fresh out of teaching school with no children of her own, and I was drifting about in pretty much the same sea. This year's teacher has seen PB's type a thousand times before and can handle it with an unruffled deftness which inspires both him and I.

*Familiarity
He knows his school now, and he knows his classmates. He's just more comfortable interacting with them. Things at home are more stable, too - no new siblings to contend with, no new houses, no new countries. It's all comfortingly familiar.  

*Students
The Prata Boy has matured, plain and simple. He finds it less frightening to be separated from his family, although he still complains that he doesn't like it. Literally, he told the teacher the other week that he would prefer to be homeschooled because he doesn't like to be separated from his parents. He will grow out of it, and we will have to remember to go easy on him in the meantime. But in that meantime, he is growing much more comfortable with familiar adults, such as grandparents and teachers. (Sometimes I wonder if this whole thing wasn't a misjudgement on our parts, if he just wasn't ready to start school yet, but then I remember I only sent him because he had so clearly outgrown the stay-at-home life. Maybe three was destined to be difficult for him either way.)

It's not just PB who has matured, though. His classmates have also matured. Last year the teacher attributed part of his difficulty to the fact that he was well ahead of his classmates in terms of his spoken language - he was frustrated with them because they couldn't communicate together in the way he expected. Now, before I go sounding all puffed-up parent I have to point out that the majority of his classmates are at least bilingual, and some are multilingual. We were pleased he was so far ahead, but to be honest it would have been a worry if he wasn't. In addition, his great verbal skills seemed to have been learned at the partial expense of some other communication skills - reading body language, for example, or facial expressions. We have always tried to be the calm and patient parents. I am wondering if we shouldn't have lost our nuts a few more times along the way.

In any case, his classmates have closed the verbal language gap quite a lot since last year, and have probably also improved, as he has, in their non-verbal communication skills, and they have probably all learned a thing or two in areas like cooperation. The whole classroom is just a more civilised place these days, it seems to me.  

Talking, And So On
We have talked and talked and talked and talked and talked. We have read and read and read. We have played games. We have told stories and sung songs and discussed them afterwards at length. We have tried out a lot of impulse control techniques - magic ("dolphin" - he's in a marine biology phase) breathing, counting, ritualised gestures (he seemed to respond to making a triangle with his fingers when stressed), looking at things from the other person's point of view, looking at the upside, brainstorming alternative responses, etc etc etc. It's a pretty long and tiresome process, training new impulses - for "training new impulses" certainly captures what our game is more accurately than "controlling impulses". He's nearly-four. He's impulsive. I'm not sure I can change that. But the talking, I think, eventually, sort of maybe starts to sink in, a bit, in order to change the nature of his impulses, and therefore the outcomes.  

Food
PB has never been a picky eater, and I have always tried to provide him with a good diet, home made and whole meal, but I have become extra-vigilant, especially about things like food colouring (red sends him loopy), chocolate, and sugars generally, and especially as regards the timing and overall glycaemic index of his meals. We have explained to him how what he eats (or doesn't eat), and when, can affect his moods, and we have drawn a lot of food pyramids. He is very interested in how stuff works so he eagerly takes it all in, asks questions, and seems to be building some sort of practical understanding.  

Increased Responsibility
More chores. Higher expectations. Extra freedoms. His favourites are being allowed to mop the floor, helping to cook, and being allowed to ride up and down in the lift by himself (he always waits for us at the other end). His least favourite is having to use better table manners.  

Mum and Me Days
With SB getting older and more independent, I have started taking Prata Boy on Mother-Son excursions on the weekend. He seems to like this.   

*Exercise
I have left this one til last, because it seems to have made the biggest difference for the least effort - at least on my part. Early morning exercise really works for him. Mr Bea tries to take him out for a swim or something in the morning, and I have started making him ride his bike to school. He needs cardio. His little body is addicted to endorphins.

I had plans of saying something soppy at the end here, something about kissing goodnight to three and looking onward to four. At some point I was going to describe to you the severe social anxiety I have been experiencing over my first ever children's birthday party. But it is late and SB seems to be in for a rough night (teething) and tomorrow I have to shop for said birthday party as well as (probably) bounce out of bed bright and early to witness the opening of presents, so instead, I'll leave the discussion over to you, especially if you think I've missed a trick in managing unruly behaviour in preschoolers. But even if not.

There has been a thing recently about a new online community. I'm feeling bad for Mel, because she's feeling hurt, but otherwise I don't feel that strongly about it. Then it struck me: maybe there needs to be a post from someone who doesn't feel too strongly about it. Isn't this exactly the type of viewpoint that usually gets left out of discussions?  

Here are the facts as I understand them:

• there is a parenting-after-infertility blogroll
  
• it is relatively small and active, at least at the present time
  
• plans are to structure it not just as a blogroll, but as a whole separate community, duplicating some of the community activities that Mel currently runs (such as ICLW) in what, if we take my mother's view, is possibly the greatest form of flattery. (I had a sister who used to copy me a lot.)
• I haven't actually visited PAIL and I don't know who runs it, what their plans and intentions are

Pros:

• Mel's parenting-after-infertility space on her blogroll is a bit too intimidatingly large for some people, and a bit too frustratingly full of dead links. This new space (PAIL) is smaller and fresher - for now.
  
• People won't be surprised - in the bad kind of way - to find bloggers who have reached The Parenting Side of infertility when they are feeling sad and childless.
  
• Mel could pass over some of her work in maintaining the blogroll to someone else.

Comments and questions three:

Mel's space was once small and fresh, too, but she has followed a philosophy of inclusion, even of now-abandoned blogs. There are good arguments in favour of this: we all want to hug and love each other, also, archives can be useful. If people are going to PAIL for the smallness and the freshness and if PAIL want to continue to satisfy this want, they will have to run their blogroll according to a different philosophy: one of limiting their roll to a relatively closed group of active bloggers.

Is there something wrong with Mel's philosophy? No. Gosh no. We think she does a wonderful job. We really do want to love and hug each other, and we really do find the archives of dead blogs useful. Also, the blogroll could be re-organised to provide easier navigation and flagging of active vs inactive blogs - I mean, we all know Mel is just sitting around waiting for someone to hand an extra task to her, she has so little to do /sarcasm - but it could be done. Practical ideas are probably even welcome.

Is there something wrong with PAIL's philosophy? Well here's the thing. I don't object to another community per se. There are plenty of other infertility communities out there (here's another site, created by one of our own) and people already join the one they think fits best. Some people join many, just to spread the word around, and why not? Maybe there's a limit to how big a community can get before it fragments, and maybe that's ok, because it's not about hating each other, it's about how many different people and groups you can know - or at least know of - before the part of your brain that deals with personal connections heats up under the workload and melts out through your ears. That's fine (the having a limit, not the brain melting). But.

If they're planning to do Mel's current job, they are not going to satisfy a lot of people who have just joined them for their freshness and smallness, because they're going to get big and a lot of links are going to become inactive, because people who face infertility mostly become parents sooner or later, one way or another (although not all of them keep blogging). And yes, maybe this problem could be fixed with some good organisation, much in the same way as Mel's blogroll could be fixed up with some re-organisation, thus preserving the blogroll as it is, which would be great even if it kind of defeats the purpose of jumping ship for the smaller, fresher blogroll. But if a reorganisation doesn't work, will we need another spin-off sooner or later? Because if so, all these spin-offs are going to start making me dizzy. The parenting-after-infertility category is going to get smeared across the blogosphere, and we will all be lost. LOST!

1. How is PAIL planning to maintain their blogroll? Are they planning to cull inactive blogs? Are they planning to limit their size (and if so, how?)

Here's another question. Will the existence of this community put pressure on those parenting after infertility to move out of Mel's space? There has been a comment to say that ICLW seems to work best for the childless. I don't know if this is true. If it is, it may be more about the activity level of those just starting out in blogland (more likely to be non-parents) vs older bloggers (more likely to be parents) or, alternatively, the activity level of parents vs non-parents. If there is some such reason that has nothing to do with the active avoidance, by childless bloggers, of parenting blogs in activities like ICLW, then I'm not sure how these activities are going to gain a foothold at PAIL. Perhaps people are going to feel their enthusiasm for blogging refreshed by the joining of a new community. Or perhaps what is really going on is not so much active avoidance by the childless, but self-censoring by the childfull - which I can understand. It seems funny that people are going to be embarrassed about having gained parenthood on Mel's site, being, as she is, a parent herself, and one who talks about her children from time to time, but I can believe it to be true. Perhaps some members feel they should lay low in the community after becoming parents, and remove themselves from community activities out of politeness, even though they would prefer to participate. If so, this is probably because they felt uncomfortable with parents (although presumably not with Mel? or they were tolerating Mel because either she or her community are too awesome not to?) before they became parents which puts some credence behind the idea of active avoidance by the childless (ie a little of both might therefore be true). Or maybe they were ok with it and childless members are pretty much all ok with it but those who are parents just imagine others not to be ok which is just silly, but people can be silly sometimes, so it's possible. Did I lose you?

2. If you do not have children (or have been blogging since before you had children), how do (did) you feel about those parenting after infertility participating in community events? If you are parenting after infertility, how do you feel about participating in community events now? Does it make a difference to you to have a parenting-after-infertility-specific event, or not?

Of course, the "surprise" element could be easily removed by flagging parenting blogs - another extra task I'm sure Mel would be grateful for /sarcasm - but it could be done.

General comment: It seems to me that most large communities have spin-off communities sooner or later, like little bits of space debris. Some continue on their own path, possibly in an intricate dance around the parent, but most of them hurtle completely out of the orbit of the original community, fragmenting and dissipating as they go, leaving the original community largely unbothered - it probably picks up a few asteroids here and there to balance out the inevitable losses anyway, even if it is a bit more of a shock to lose a big rock than a few bits of dust here and there. (I hope I didn't offend anyone by referring to them as "dust". All good metaphors get insulting if you carry them too far - although for Mel, being important enough to cause spin-offs could be seen as flattery indeed.) Anyway, the original body probably keeps some of the fragments in the end, especially in this sort of situation where the... atoms... can exist in two places at once, like some sort of quantum thingo. (Wow. I should have built my metaphor around something I studied in greater depth and more recently than high school. Or dropped it earlier, possibly before I insulted people by referring to them as dust.) I know Mel doesn't want wasted effort (especially on her part), but I'm not sure a speedy handover of the parenting section of the blogroll is wise at this point, for this reason alone.

3. What do you think?

When we arrived back from our recent holiday in Australia... wait. Recently, we went to Australia to visit the family for Christmas. We got back on New Years' Eve, to find (to my disgust) that the shops had already removed the Christmas decorations they trotted out over a month before the start of advent and had replaced them with the trappings of Chinese Spring Festival. Thankfully, at our apartment building, where they seem more concerned with tradition and less concerned with whether or not they have an upcoming opportunity to sell us crap, they waited until January 6th to remove the tinsel and silver bells and replace them with red and golden lanterns and dragon motifs. One great thing about living in Singapore is that Chinese New Year is a major celebration. So if, like me, you weren't quite organised enough for the Gregorian version, you get a do-over a few weeks later.

I finished Mel's book. I liked it. It's chick lit. It's not usually my thing. But I liked the way the characters bantered with each other, and I admired the fact that she slipped fertility storylines into the background of the plot (along with, at one point, a public service announcement about maternal aging). But (spoiler alert, highlight to read) OH MY GOODNESS MEL WHAT ENDED UP HAPPENING ABOUT HER BROTHER'S COFFEE TABLE BOOK? It has left me, however, with a sort of incongruous need to blog about food.

This morning I had a narrow window of child-free opportunity to shower, change, google a recipe and maybe read some blogs. Guess which of those I didn't get time to do? Read blogs. I blame America. You guys seem to have this obsession with adding sugar to every decent recipe under the sun, such that now when I google something like "zucchini bread" I waste half an hour clicking on recipes that cannot be served up with a crisp side-salad and maybe a dash of balsamic vinegar. BAM! My blogging time, down the toilet. Some of these recipes called for chocolate chips. I ask you!

And you needn't think this is an isolated incident, either. It happens to me all the time. For my American readers: what the fuck have you done with food? Can you leave nothing unsweetened? To set things straight (and in the vain hope of raising its google profile), this is how you make zucchini bread.

In the end, I didn't make zucchini bread, because I didn't have any zucchinis. I used the leftover vegetables I did have - sweet potato, capsicum and tomato - with the oat flour I also had, but forgot to add baking powder to, because I was so engrossed in PB's plans to travel to England in search of mermaids whilst simultaneously worrying that he was about to accidentally egg my kitchen. And so I made, pretty much, disgusting and inedible half-baked vegie slop, but at least it didn't have chocolate chips in it. Then I looked at my enormous pile of dishes and unfolded laundry and thought about the myriad other housechores I had left and said, more or less, screw it - let's go to the park and fly kites and shit.

We went to West Coast Park. When we arrived the adults were starving and the children were bursting to get on to the awesome play equipment so we took turns supervising/going to MacDonalds, which is the only nearby eating option and, you know, the McCafe food is no worse than any other cafe and anyway, I don't have to justify my choices to you who asked for your opinion anyway?

Mr Bea had a Prosperity Burger. "I saw it there and all of a sudden I wanted to know what prosperity tastes like," he explained. "Black pepper, in case you're wondering." I wasn't. I was hankering after a Himalayan tea latte. Do they have Himalayan tea lattes at your local MacDonalds? It's more or less a chai latte by another name, except sweeter. (Which is, by the way, a perfectly legitimate place to send in the sugar. Unlike pumpkin ravioli, which is no such place. This is how you make pumpkin ravioli. It already has biscuits, for gosh sakes.)

Lately, I have become concerned about our cash flow. It turns out raising kids costs money! Who knew? People who weren't shelling out so much money for fertility treatments or stressful pregnancies prior to the birth of their first child that they never even noticed the change in their budget after they took kid #1 home, that's who. Me, it has taken a little longer. It has only just happened this year, with the addition of a second child, conceived and delivered without complication. So there you go. Raising kids costs money, it seems, and I have started worrying about our cash flow.

"Other people we know seem to have more than us," I stated recently to Mr Bea, trying not to sound complaining. "They live in posher quarters, take five star holidays, employ live-in maids, send their children to expensive schools and expensive peri-school activities, own properties in expensive overseas locations - and often in more than one location - have expensive gym memberships, eat at expensive restaurants and wear designer labels. How come we don't?"

"Do they earn more than us?" Mr Bea suggested.

"Well, maybe, and I'm ok with that. We are not poor. We are probably doing better than I expected to do. And maybe they are more comfortable with higher debts and lower savings, and that's fine, too. But what if they are just better with their money? I'm bothered because I'm not convinced we're being as good with our money as other people." It's the same sensation I have when I see what other people manage with their time, or their hair. How can she have her shit together like that, and I don't?

Earlier this year, I was talking to one of these glamorous folk with the time and the hair and such and we wandered onto the subject of holidays. She was off to Phuket. "Nice!" I was saying, in so many words.

"We're staying at hotel X," she informed me.

I shrugged. "I've never actually been to Phuket," I told her apologetically.

Her reaction threw me. "Oh, I know it's not supposed to be the best place to go," she said hurriedly, looking a trifle embarrassed and insecure all of a sudden. "I know they say it's overly touristy and whatnot but I sort of booked it on impulse because it seemed like a good deal, I mean perhaps it wasn't, but we got this time off at the last minute, and I thought with the kids, and..."

"No, it sounds good," I said, surprised. "I just mean, I don't know that hotel at all, because I've never been to Phuket. I'm sure it's very nice. We will have to try and go ourselves one day. You should tell me about it when you get back." Although the holiday I'd been dreaming out loud to her about was a backpacking trip through Vietnam - hardly the five-star beaches-massages-and-martinis holiday she was lined up for. Could my breezy backpacking (with young children, no less) talk have somehow given her the impression that we'd had all the five-star beaches-massages-and-martinis holidays we could handle and were ready to move on to something else?

Her maid was on leave for two weeks over Christmas, during which time her husband stayed home to help her out. When I saw her last week she looked excessively tired, and quite stressed. Much more tired and stressed than I look on the average day, I'm pretty sure, and I'm single-handed. Her hair wasn't even that great, although probably her floor was still cleaner. As I sipped my Himalayan tea latte at the park this afternoon, I reflected on these instances and wondered which of my fellow diners had actually done their dishes and folded their laundry before skipping off to the park, and which of them just knew when to throw their hands up and say screw it, turns out I suck at making non-zucchini bread even if I do know not to put sugar or chocolate chips in it, let's go fly kites and shit. How many of them realised that the Prosperity Burger was actually just a normal burger but with black pepper sauce?

In the end we flew kites and shit and I resolved to open a proper savings account to better manage the cash flow. We ate sandwiches for dinner. It was nice.

First, let me point you to Life From Scratch by our very own Melissa which was on my Christmas list but sadly not gifted by anyone. Then I found out that it was temporarily on sale for 99c! At 99c I can probably get away with gifting it to myself. Duly downloaded and can't wait to read it.

--
Two thousand and twelve could be an interesting time. I may be making some long-awaited moves on my career. I have ideas for a couple of other projects. I have the optimism of a twenty-year-old when it comes to my ability to pull it all off. I love having my self-belief back, misguided though it may be.

I once heard someone in blogland say she preferred blogs where people wrote about what they'd been doing from day to day, rather than - I can't remember how it was worded at all - basically editorialising on some topic or other.Really? I thought. That explains a lot. Like, for example, how come people whose posts always consist entirely of a laundry list of events which have occurred in their lives since the last post can sometimes have quite the following.

Not only that. I have friends with whom I never seem to discuss anything but stuff which has happened to each of us since we last saw each other. It's pleasant enough, don't get me wrong. But my whole life, I'd been assuming we weren't really very good friends, until I read that comment, whereupon this occurred to me: perhaps that's how some people do friendship! It's an astounding thought.

Some bloggers, sooner or later, are forced by a commenter to write a post along the lines of, "Hey! People! This is my place to whinge, ok?" In the past, I have agreed wholeheartedly with the poster. Your space is what you want it to be, and for some people, what they want is a spot to put the nasty stuff so they don't end up inflicting it on anyone they know face to face. It doesn't mean they spend 100% of their lives whinging, and they shouldn't have to change the way they blog. Are they forcing you to read?

I guess I still agree with that. I'm not talking about those whose lives (at least as they're writing) are such a suckhole of suck that the odd bit of cheer is completely overrun by the mountains of suckitude - those people you can't help but feel for - I'm talking about those who just plain don't see the need to post the good bits, whilst seeing all the need in the world to post the bad. That is absolutely a valid way to blog. I'm a bit sad that they don't know anyone face to face who can handle them without the edges taken off, or (in a different way) for those who don't know anyone with whom they feel comfortable displaying their edges, but if blogging fills that gap, so be it and I'm glad the internet exists. It's pretty lonely, though, to be the person inside the computer who only hears about the rough patches and never gets to share the joys.

For myself, I blog to think. More than that: I connect to think. But in a world where everyone is rushing to and fro with work and family and houses and hobbies and social engagements and travel delete as appropriate blogging seems to fit the bill better than rambling conversations in late night bars or coffee houses or, afterwards, on park benches situated halfway home - more's the shame. I've been trying to work out why I don't seem so motivated to post now that infertility is behind me, and I'm pretty sure it's because I don't have a big mess inside my head to untangle any more. Or rather, I do, but it's cheerfully disorganised as opposed to actually squalid, and I don't have a chunk of time just now to put it all back in order anyway. I am pretty much resigned to just stepping over my thoughts where they lay until I dependably get not only a full night's unbroken sleep, but a few hours of regular solitude, and I'm ten thousand miles removed from going out of my way in search of new thoughts. (Melissa - are there many new thoughts in your book? Prepare me.) I am just not at a blogging stage of life, at least not blogging in any way that resonates with me.

Here's my thing.

I have made friends in this community, and I don't really want to lose touch with everyone I ever knew. And I can't rely on facebook or anything, because I suck at those sorts of places, and I guess I'm just afraid that, one by one, you'll all stop blogging and one day I'll think something and there'll be nobody left to mull with me. Is it inevitable?  I'm not finished with this space - or at least I'm not finished with a space. It's just my thoughts - my reasons for being here - are few and far between at present.

I'm not going to make any promises to blog more in 2012. I see no purpose to such a promise, to blogging for the sake of writing something down (and yet I know some blog for that reason, too, and God bless). I guess I just want to have somewhere to reflect on things at my own pace and time, and to have my reflections understood, and I am increasingly afraid that 2012 will take me further from it. Even as it brings me closer to other things.

I'm not quite sure what to do about it.

A couple of weeks ago I was sick. Not badly sick, just a little queasy and off my food. Heartburney. Bloaty. Tired. Blah. Heavy-and-crampy-feeling in the abdomen. And just a smidgen nocturic. Also, I was having some insanely vivid dreams, largely of a sexual nature. It went on like this for nearly a week.

There was a time I would have believed that nothing but IVF would help us conceive. That time was before Surprise Baby. Now, apparently, I am willing to believe that strange things can happen, even though they usually don't. I believe it enough, at least, to use a pregnancy test even though I am still breastfeeding and amenorrhoeic, we have been using two types of contraception (one of which is "teething baby"), and our track record at getting knocked up is not exactly stellar by most people's standards.

I sat in the bathroom staring at the unused test for a long time, just hesitating. I realised eventually that I was trying to work out how I'd feel about either result so I could brace myself appropriately. I'm not really sure I could handle another baby so soon. But I'm not so far removed from infertility that I could honestly think of an unplanned pregnancy as anything but miraculous and exciting. In the end I couldn't resolve the question either way, so I took a deep breath and piddled on the stick.

It was negative. Even then, I wasn't sure how I felt about it. Over a week later, I'm still not sure.

--

I finally managed to catch up with a book recommended by Miss E (password protected): Motherstyles. It's based on the Myer's-Briggs personality typing system. "I just can't work out if I'm perceiving or judging," I said to Mr Bea.

Mr Bea regarded me for a few seconds with a raised eyebrow and a bemused smile. "Can't you?" he said mildly, and then went straight back to what he was doing. I narrowed my eyes.

The next morning, I tore myself away from the conversation I was having with The Prata Baby about electricity to clear the breakfast dishes. I had just picked them up when he requested I read him a book about sharks. "Oh that's right!" I said, setting the dishes back down on the table again. "I was going to sticky-tape that torn page back together and I never got around to it! Let's get the shark book right now and do that."

I collected the necessary supplies together and we sat down at the coffee table to perform the surgery. Struck with inspiration, The Prata Baby requested his "special scissors for people in my agegroup" and the roll of tape. "Yes, great idea!" I affirmed. "We can do some cutting and sticky-taping. What can we cut up? How about... this piece of junk mail?" I suggested, picking a furniture catalogue up from where it lay, just nearby. PB thought that was a great idea. I glanced around for something to stick our cuttings onto, and noticed the cereal box still sitting on the table. Soon, I had torn it from around its contents, flattened it out next to us, scissored out a picture of a storage-box-cum-stool and a cup of coffee, and stuck them down onto our cereal-box "house".

"Box," I said for Surprise Baby's benefit. "Coffee." She cruised around the coffee table observing everything with keen interest. I gave her the sticky tape.

"Now," I said to both members of my audience, "we should choose some furniture," and I started flicking through the catalogue, naming various items for SB, discussing several tenets of interior design and decoration at length, listening carefully to PB's plans to fill the structure with water and sea creatures and have all the people swim around it in scuba gear, and googling for information on dolphins. After twenty or thirty minutes it suddenly occurred to me that no dishes had been cleared, the cereal was, if anything, less away than when I'd started, everyone was sitting around in their underwear, the stroller was completely unpacked, and we were already running several minutes late in getting out the door to kindy. And the worst part of it was that the only headway we had made on our pretend house was to add (at PB's suggestion) a second cup of coffee and a babyccino, as if I was deliberately trying to make a statement, in collage, about art mimicking life.

I figured I was probably perceiving.

It may be why I have trouble fitting in much blogging these days. I have tried, as you know, to find ways to carve out more spare time, and I have even used your suggestions, but somehow anything I save seems to slip through my fingers. On top of that, as an INTP, the social and feeling nature of the ALI community is a lot for me to handle after a full day's being social and emotional at home. I find myself wanting to shut off the computer in favour of some frothy TV sitcom. Maybe it's nothing to do with Myers-Briggs. Maybe I just don't drink enough coffee.