Stuff

It's been a week or so since we started letting Evan cry it out at night and it has been great. I'm willing to feed him up to every three hours, but I'm done replacing his pacifier or nursing him back to sleep if a sound startles him or whatever.

I was prepared for some long evenings at first -- I remember Matt and me sitting on the deck with wine and a stopwatch when we started letting Claire cry at night because it was so hard to listen to her. But Evan's not cried more than about 20 minutes at a time, usually more like 5 minutes. The best part is, he gets it: He's sleeping 12- or 13-hour stretches now -- about five hours at the beginning of the night, then three or four hours at a time until the morning.

So: Around 7 every night, Matt puts Claire to bed, I put Evan to bed, and 10 or 15 minutes later Matt and I reconvene with the whole evening to ourselves. I can hardly express how wonderful that is. Very, very, very wonderful.

Other stuff that's been happening while I haven't been blogging:

We hung out with some of our college peeps tonight. It was a great time, as always. Five years ago, there was one kid in this bunch. Tonight there were 10 adults, 10 kids and 1more in utero. Craziness. All the kids played together really well. I am thankful that God made kids capable of entertaining themselves and each other at such young ages, leaving the adults to have actual conversation. I just love this group. We left home a little early and squeezed in a trip to the Trader Joe's close to the Herndons' house, stocking up on beer, wine, coffee and cards. I love Trader Joe's too.

I finally finished the book Matt gave me for Christmas, "Freedom." It was great in similar ways to "The Corrections" (also by Jonathan Franzen). It just took me a long time to read because I only got to pull it out while breastfeeding. Now I'm reading "The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo" -- along with the whole world, I know, but Matt read it way back on our Maine trip in 2008 and has been after me to read it ever since. Our literary tastes don't overlap much, but he's pretty good at predicting what I'll like.

I'm running my first race since Claire was born (I think) next Saturday. I probably would have bailed but Amanda signed up so I did too. It's not going to be a pretty effort. I'm trying to decide whether I should ask Matt to keep both the kids while I run (so I might finish with a halfway decent time) or if I should run with both of them in the double-stroller (so I have a good excuse for being extremely slow). Or split the difference and run with just one -- but which one?

We've had some really promising showings of our house lately. No offers yet, but lots of talk. Keep your fingers crossed for us!

Last and best, amazing news: Matt and I get to spend a weekend in New York City with Jacob and Carrie and Stephen and Kara and NO KIDS repeat NO KIDS in a month! Biggest thanks ever due to Mom and Dad, who are going to keep Claire and Evan the whole time. I almost didn't even ask them because it's such a huge favor. Then I decided to ask them, because honestly, I was giddy at the prospect of this getaway.

I asked Mom to try to think of some way we could compensate them for this. She said, "Our payment is getting to spend time with these grandbabies." I said, "Mo-om, come on." She said, "OK. You just wait till you have grandchildren." Wow. Just -- wow. Have I ever mentioned that my parents are incredible?