Saturday the 21st--Nix-Nix on Elastic Waistbands

Milestone: Wore pants with a real waist (no elastic waistband) and a belt for the first time since surgery.

Went for a walk in the park with Charles and Vita and their 2 dogs, plus Jake and Ralph. I pushed the stroller most of the time (except down the evil steep hill on the way to Nethermead).

Jim and Nancy came over to visit, they stayed a bit too long and now I'm tired to the point of being cranky. Vita helped us bathe Ben; he hated it, all red and crying but he smelled so good when we were done (Jake, for some ungodly reason, thought he could get useful information off of the Dr. Bronner’s soap label on how to dilute the soap for use on a baby, amongst all that evangelical crap they put on there. I just dumped some of it in the tub and added water.)

He fussed some more and we started making dinner. I ended up putting him in the sling while he cooked the turkey burgers and I made the escarole thingy (cheap, poor Italian people food). I was able to cook with one hand (the other was holding Ben's head up). He stopped fussing; Ralph was underfoot; a fire started in the toaster, where Jake was toasting bread to pour the soup onto. Very exciting. We both had mad gas all day long (me and Jake), from what we couldn’t figure.

By the time 9 o’clock rolled around, I was nearly psychotic and happy that Jake came upstairs to give me a kiss. I wanted to cry and was taking myself way too seriously (symptom: printing out articles from the web on growth patterns for breastfed babies).