Life.

So far this week, it almost feels like my life is back on its normal course. My house is looking pretty good. I made a meal plan and have cooked on schedule. My mom and niece came yesterday, and I made lasagna for Whitley (she loves lasagna) and homemade brownies. Like, not from a box! Until last year I didn't even know it was possible to make brownies that weren't from a box! I jest, because of course I did, but I had certainly never done it. Easy, as it turns out, and also, delicious. I'm not much of a brownie person but these are yummy. Were yummy. Today, it was pizza from scratch, which I think was a bit impressing to the guests since no one in my family would ever make pizza from scratch unless it came out of a Chef Boyardee box, which obviously doesn't count. My ankles are back to normal, and all of the pregnancy weight is gone--actually, I'm down four pounds from when I got pregnant. I am not obsessively reading a long series anymore (which is actually depressing because I miss it a lot) and I have gotten a few things done that have been on the list for a while. It's feeling much closer to the way I pictured life after baby, in short. Who knows if it will last, but it's feeling pretty good right now.

Last night, the four of us who know what pencils do played Scattergories, and then Evelyn decided it was time to get REALLY UNHAPPY. It was strange because she doesn't typically cry for no particular reason. We passed her around, walked with her, moved positions a billion times, let her lay down by herself, sang, etc, and she just couldn't be satisfied. She wasn't screaming all the time, just obviously unhappy, and then she'd cry for a minute and we'd try something else and she'd be okay for a minute but then cry again. I don't really know what made me do it, but I pulled her clothes off of her and she was instantly so much happier. It was pretty neat because she has never once in her entire life been particularly happy naked (excluding bath time, and still, you'd better keep her warm) so it was certainly surprising that she decided she didn't like her clothes and that I found that particular solution for her cranky. I felt like a Real Mom.

Anyway, while that was going on, Whitley asked M something about mandolins, and next thing you know, he's pulled one of them down from the wall for her (we have three mandolins hanging above our fireplace. I am a good wife. No, seriously, it looks kind of neat.) and fetched the one he built, and he is teaching her how to play... and she loved it! She was so excited. The thing about learning to play the mandolin.. or any stringed instrument, I imagine, is that the first bit is rough, since your fingers start hurting immediately and stay that way until you build up some callouses on your fingertips. Her fingers started hurting and she kept playing. He showed her three chords to practice, and she kept plinking away at them. She was still at it when I went to bed, and M, after checking with me to make sure I wouldn't mind, went in and asked her if she would like to borrow that mandolin for a while so she could practice. She was so excited. I could hear her in there saying, "Really?!" and "Seriously?!" over and over. He was up early this morning tuning it for her. Of course, now it looks weird and off balance above the fireplace but it was certainly worth it to hear her get that excited. And it would be awesome if she picked up the mandolin instead of some boring instrument. This morning, I heard her playing with it again--with visibly reddened fingers--before I even got out of bed, and then she was doodling mandos just before they left. Cute! And M, of course, is very proud of himself.

Tonight, I was planning a little shopping trip to WalMart by myself, but we decided we would rather go on a family outing. That's kind of progress right there--a chance to go somewhere by myself and I preferred to take the baby. I changed her clothes before we left, and that delayed everything because she was just so cute in the outfit that I grabbed for her (her first pair of jeans!) that we had to stop and do a mini photo shoot. I have transferred, but not uploaded, those pictures, so they'll have to wait. She's a bit cranky right now, though, and we're watching our weekly episode of Mythbusters in ten minutes. Several of them are quite adorable. I almost broke the baby while we were gone, though. There was a pallet in a center aisle that was out too far, which I didn't see, so--as I was speeding up to catch up with M, who was looking for me, I ran the buggy into it and her car seat bounced off the top seat and fell backwards and sort of sideways into the main cart, which took ten years off my life as I squealed and grabbed at her. She, naturally, just batted her eyes at me like she hadn't noticed her little trip. It scared me to death, but she's fine. There is no way to secure the seat on top of there, but I guess now we know what sort of impact will knock it off. *sigh*