grad school hookey

I'm skipping my classes this afternoon. But, Isaac is sick so that's my reason. He can't stay at daycare all day and expose all the other babies. Still no time for pictures. Three things:

1. Not to be overly proud, but I'm starting to think the babies in our family are just cuter than other babies. Not that the other babies are ugly. Ours are just cuter. By ours I means the Hurliman, Capri and Compaore sides. I don't know about the other ones.

2. I'm trying to take my cousin's observation from Mother Teresa to heart: "We can do no great things, only small things with great love" or something like that. But, instead of applying it to so-called menial tasks, which I would frankly rather be doing, I'm going to try to apply it to my attitude about grad school. I've been feeling pretty negative about the whole thing and I need to remind myself that it's not something I should just quit. It's just so hard with a little guy when you are always worried that someone is not doing as good of a job as you could be doing. How handy it would be to be in three places at once. I feel like I've been getting pretty close to that lately.

3. I wish I could talk more about what we're doing in clinic, but, it's confidential. So you won't be hearing much about that. It is fun though. That much I can say!

For now, I'm going to just enjoy the afternoon with my little sweet boy.

Slings save lives, or sanity, or something like that.

Lately, I have started using all possible forms of trickery to get Isaac to let me have just a few minutes of time alone, or with free hands. This sounds bad - but it preserves my sanity. Usually this ends up with Isaac sleeping for two hours, and me thinking, retrospectively, of course, "Wow, I should have been sleeping then too.."

Form of trickery #1: The sling. Works almost every time. Isaac will stay asleep in this for hours. He knows the food is right there, and I think that reassures him.

Form of trickery #2: Bassinet + rolled up blankets, stuffed on either side of Isaac. This fools him into thinking he is sleeping next to someone. Effectiveness ranges from three minutes to 45 minutes.

Form of trickery #3: Swing. Mixed effectiveness. Usually more effective with Henri. Ranges from 30 seconds to 10 minutes.

To clarify, Isaac will stay glued to me all day if I do not use any of these forms of trickery, or his Grandma or Papa is here. And, he likes to nurse more than once an hour or he will scream his head off.