A few days ago I wrote about how nice it was to feel needed when Henry got all Mommy-centered when he was sick.

Now he has been sick for a week, and I am sick, too. Now it is not so nice.

All I want is to sit. Actually, to sleep. I’d like to sleep. But that’s not happening, so sitting is the next best thing.

But Henry is tired and weepy. He’ll play with “Guy” in the red truck for maybe three minutes before Guy gets stuck behind the steering wheel. When he’s well, Henry will just bring the truck to me and say “Guy stuck,” and I’ll remove the guy, and play will continue while I read up on the Barry Zito debacle. But when he’s sick, as he still is, stuck Guy is a major issue, and Henry bawls. Not his fake cry, but his “Oh, God, why have you forsaken me?” cry. He actually throws himself on top of the red truck, weeping.

So I have to get up, and we have to sit for a minute or two until he can breathe again. Then I pull Guy out of the truck. Then I have to get a wipe for his nose, which has by then run all over his face, and which he’s smeared to his ears.

This goes on all day. It’s not always Guy in the red truck. Sometimes it’s that the pinwheel arms have popped off. Sometimes it’s that the water bottle nozzle is closed. Sometimes it’s that he is saying “box,” wanting the Dr. Who flying police bank, and I think he’s saying “blocks.”


I am very, very tired.

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Simon and I are sitting on the couch, playing “what’s that?” with the baby-to-be. Is it a head? A butt? A back?


Baby enjoys pressing on the back side of my uterus so that I get this hard lump in the front of my belly. Sometime the lump sort of hurts.

There it is again.


I think this might be an elbow.

I expect this one will be a nightmare by my ninth month.


But this time around I appreciate how easy baby is right now, comparatively.