The Hours

Today is Tuesday. The Husband is working an almost-double today so won't be home until after eight o'clock. Luckily, one of his coworkers volunteered to come in and take the last three hours so he only has to do 13 instead of 16 hours. Of course, today is also the day the Little Goat has decided to be rather on the cranky side. Of late, she's taken to pulling off her socks and sucking on them. (Does this mean she's low on cotton?) I can't keep a pair of socks on her for more then 10 minutes before I look over to discover at least one saliva-saturated sock already on the floor, soon to be joined by its partner. I tried tying a pair of booties on her feet but of course, they come with shiny ribbony laces and what baby could resist such a thing? Then I put on a new pair of shoes. She got a pair of Robeez from two of her Aunties. One pair is blue and sandal-like so we're saving those for when the weather turns warmer, the other pair has giraffes on them. I take it from the struggle she had getting them off (to get to the socks, presumably) that this daughter of mine has no greater interest in wearing shoes than I do.

On Saturday, the Husband and I busily set about making marmalade. He's a marmalade fanatic and when the grocery store advertised a huge bag of oranges for five bucks, I knew it was time to knuckle down and try making our own. It was going quite well (we actually really enjoy doing those types of projects together) and we were all ready to start cooking up our fruits when I read the recipe again: "Boil for five minutes. Remove from heat and let rest in cool spot for 12-18 hours." Yes, that's HOURS. Shoot! Sunday ended up being too busy to finish it so I canned it yesterday afternoon. But of course, I didn't cook it long enough, so now it looks like really pretty orange SAUCE. As in, it's pert near juice. Boo! So the Husband has graciously agreed to re-can it tomorrow night and when it's re-canned, I'll post pictures so you can all be in awe of the beauty that is homemade marmalade.

Saturday night was also bittersweet. (No more reading for you men - go find something else to do....you've been warned!) Some strange notion must've overtaken the LG because she slept for seven hours straight! SEVEN HOURS! Except earlier in the evening I had discovered that I was getting a nicely plugged duct and any of you who've breastfed will know exactly how excruciating that is, so while it was great that she slept seven hours, I REALLY needed her to eat. Sunday morning, I was in so much pain that the LG and I stayed home from church. It was also the morning I discovered that my plugged duct was accompanied by a very lovely blister! GACK! A couple of phone calls to friends later, I decided to pop the blister. Ordinarily, I wouldn't do this. Okay, I would....but I would try to convince myself not to because it's a bad idea. This time, though, it worked! The Husband sterilized a pin for me and I made one tiny tiny poke (after numbing it with an ice cube...sheesh! I'm not completely daft!) and a feeling overtook me which I can only properly compare to the instantaneous feeling of well-being one experiences the minute after that baby leaves your womb - oh, the relief!

Today, I made some more Russian Black Bread. I usually don't take the bread out after the second proof while the oven is preheating but I did today and that was unwise. It still tastes fine, but it's a little on the flat side. Also, our post-holiday pictures arrived in the mail from snapfish this afternoon so I've got to get busy sending out the LG's Christmas thank you notes which I've been putting off now for almost three weeks. Why are we such sticklers for kids sending thank you notes? I don't send out thank you notes for MY Christmas presents, but if I don't for the Little Goat's, I know I will surely offend somebody. Do you make, er, encourage your kids to write thank you notes for gifts they receive? Do you write thank you notes for your gifts? When was the last time you wrote a thank you note and do you remember what it was for?