I’m convinced that some point soon my life is going to slow down and have more time to blog. I don’t even know what it is that I’m doing that has me so busy, but I’m definitely busy. I often struggle with the prospect of what type of writing I should be doing on the blog; should I just chronicle all the things that I do on a day to day basis, or write less often, but longer and more introspective posts? Or both?

Quite often the blog writes itself. I can’t really think of anything that is more funny, poignant, or endearing than raising children. Actually, since my life outside of work is almost all about raising children, I usually can’t really think of anything else, period. In any case, I have lately not been able to write down a lot of the stuff that’s been happening lately. It has definitely been write-itself sort of material. At the same time, I’ve also had a lot of longer topics that I’ve been meaning to write about. Like this one. For the moment, would really like to trade off breadth in the interest of deeper, more thoughtful posts. As a bonus, longer posts mean that I can include more pictures, which I would really like to do, but I’m sort of limited with my photo layout at the moment.

With all of the schedule weirdness lately, we’ve found ourselves putting Anna down to bed late or eating at an odd time, and saying “you’re usually sleeping right now,” or “we’re usually eating lunch right now.” Anna has latched on to this, and many times during the day will ask “what am I usually doing right now?” anytime she senses that she’s off schedule. Tonight, when she asked for the umpteenth time, I just had to say, “You’re usually asking what you’re usually doing.”

Yesterday, Anna started coming down with a little something, as she was acting tired and mopey halfway through the day. In the morning, though, she was amazingly well behaved and helpful. She’s been exhibiting more and more streaks of very good behavior that has me wondering if she’s coming out of the “terrible twos” phase. If we had the good behavior all the time, I don’t know what I’d do with myself. It’s like figuring out how to spend your millions after buying a lotto ticket. Yesterday morning, she actually fed Tara (with occasional help) while I cooked myself breakfast, then entertained herself while I put Tara to bed. Back to reality, though, a sick Anna is a moody Anna, which is what I’ve been seeing for the last day or so, and it’s hard to be firm with a little girl who’s not feeling well, even if she is showing some bad behavior.

We’re now in our third day of full potty-trainedness, and I’m very happy to be back down to one diaper-wearing child. The tradeoff there is that Anna is now at an age where she’s seldom taking naps. It would have been nice to be at a point when both kids were taking naps, just to have a little bit of a break during the day. Anna still has nap time at school, during which she lays quietly. If we can keep that going on the weekends, we may still be able to have our own break.

I’m now coming down with whatever Anna has; the last several times she has come down with something, I’ve gotten some sort of variant of it: she gets a head cold, I get a chest cold; she gets a chest cold, I get a sore throat. This time we’re tired and cranky, but at least we get a little extra attention from Mom. Everything’s a tradeoff.