Old business: C's day camp still sucks, but he apparently loves it, so we're very sad that tomorrow is his last day. I'm hoping that this bodes well for kindergarten, but I suspect the main thing he likes about camp is the stoner counselor who's willing to play cards with him (and probably lets him cheat). Maybe we can try to convince the school to create a card-playing position on the kindergarten staff.

A has added peaches, green beans, and avocado to her repertoire, and is still having a lot of fun crawling around. She's been fussy this week, which could be because she ate oats, because I ate cheese, because she's teething, or just because. We stopped the oats and dairy and hope for improvement by this weekend. She's very happy for the first hour after she wakes up after each nap, but things go downhill from there until her next nap. Trying to give her more naps doesn't work (she won't fall asleep; she's too busy being cranky) and we've tried everything we can think of to get her to nap longer.

Luckily, she put on a good post-nap face on Sunday, when we hosted a family party for my cousin Gus, who just got out of the army. (Well, provided a venue is probably the better term; Gus's mom took care of everything else, which made it very pleasant for us- a bunch of people came to our house, bearing food and beer, and we got to socialize without having to go anywhere. But anyway.) A was very charming for much of the afternoon, but she needs more sleep!

C does, too. He's been getting super-cranky in the afternoon, but will never agree to a nap. He's been getting less sleep at night because it's taking him forever- sometimes over 2 hours- to fall asleep, which pretty much sucks for all of us. We'll see if things improve after camp ends, and if not we'll change bedtime somehow. He clearly needs the sleep- he's been throwing whiny tantrums- but just can't get it....

And last night, in the 1.5 hour stretches that A allows us to rest, I too had trouble sleeping because I was thinking about my cousin and his wife, whose twins just died at 22 weeks gestation. Remembering how horrific it was to lose Teiva three years ago, I hate to think about what they're going through now. And it reminds me how lucky I am to have C and A, and how important it is that I enjoy them as much as I can each day, because everything could change tomorrow. Dan and I used to do a lot of long-term decision-making, and we chose to make some sacrifices for our future well-being, such as living on half of our income to pay off loans/ build savings in the first years of our marriage. We even began paying our mortgage down, and I started a retirement fund. Now we really don't plan ahead. I turned down another out-of-the-blue job offer last week because I decided that it just wasn't worth the busy-ness it would add to our lives. (Plus it was at Union College- commuting to Schenectady? Yech!) We'll need an additional bedroom to materialize within the next year, when A moves out of our room, but I just can't focus on any tasks that aren't fairly pressing. Maybe most sleep-deprived parents of young children are in a similar state, but losing Teiva definitely changed our outlook on work and savings.