Wayne and Rebecca Madsen

This week sped by. Weather was in a pleasant upper-50s/lower-60s much of the week. I feel like I'm betraying my Texan roots by claiming that is "pleasant", but I suppose that is what a winter in Boston will do to a girl!

The nice weather got us outside quite a bit for walks and a trip to Drumlin Farm on Wednesday with Camilla and Victor. And then it rained the last couple of days (no surprise) but our basement is staying dry this time (we check frequently). We crossed our fingers and put our furniture away downstairs (instead of piled on our tarp).

We were also a little bit social. We went to Peter and Cami's house Friday evening and had a great time. Paela enjoyed herself as well and was sad when we declared it time to go home. And last night we enjoyed celebrating Cameron's birthday. What a fun one-year old.  read more »

We took a trip down to North Carolina. Rebecca's family had an Easter weekend family reunion planned and Paela enjoyed seeing all her cousins. I taught classes on Thursday morning and we left for the airport right afterwards.

With two children, we only take direct flights now, where possible. The potential of dealing with a toddler and an infant on a layover is too horrifying for us. It was really kind of Rebecca's brother and sister-in-law to host everyone at their home.  read more »

This week gave us some good freecycle finds. We got a birdcage and decided that meant we should invest in a couple of parakeets for our entertainment. [As a side note, Paela selected to sell two Tonka trucks she had -- but never played with -- in order to help cover the costs of the parakeets.] I told Paela the sign for parakeet, and Paela verbally told me they were her "parrot-keets". I think until this week she hadn't had a need to distinguish between parrots and parakeets. And thus we named the two parakeets -- Parrot and Keet.  read more »

The basement flooded and approximately 50 of my paintings are now ruined. We've been in a daze since this happened. 

The water finally dried up and the sun has been out. While it was supposed to be a productive spring break, none of the class preparation I had wanted to do was done (see above). Instead, I was sick and we tried to assess the damage -- and control it.

Aderyn babbles much more now. She loves her exersaucer and has begun to roll over more frequently. She likes watching Paela and the baby in the mirror, but her sleeping habits have diminished.  read more »

It's been quite the wet time here. In Church this morning, we had about half the usual attendance. 

They said, either people forgot the time change, or they were home with their flooded basements. We think we have some leakage in our own basement, but hopefully it's minor. We turned on the dehumidifier, but since the water isn't in the air yet, it isn't doing much for the wet floors.

At least this is an indication of warmer weather. Otherwise we would have been snowed in.  read more »

Paela got sick. So every night, at around midnight, she woke crying and we had to help her with whatever the latest problem was. This meant that Aderyn also woke at or around the same time, destroying her 8 hour sleep patterns. Paela still hasn't quite returned to her full night's sleep and neither has Aderyn. But at least now only one of them has a cold and there aren't any major accidents in bed or on the floor.

We celebrated Dr. Seuss' birthday a little late this year because of sickness. We invited Camilla and Victor over, but then we backed out because we didn't want to get them sick. But eventually we managed to have fun Seussian cupcakes, read some LeSieg books and do some drawings.  read more »

We had a pretty low-key week.

Paela and Aderyn and I made it to the last ten minutes of story time on Wednesday. I know it takes longer to get out of the house than it used to, and had been prepared for that. But when Paela kept saying "no, no story time", I took her seriously and didn't bother to wake her sister up and get us all ready to go. She changed her mind just as story time was starting, and I figured we could at least do puzzles and whatnot at the library in any case. I shouldn't have listened to Paela's change of tune, because Aderyn was most unhappy about being inconvenienced, and I didn't have any fun. Hopefully Paela at least got something out of it. Juggling two kids certainly is trickier than one.  read more »

I received a phone call while teaching a class from a number I didn't recognize, so I didn't answer it. I listened to the voice mail and learned that another school wanted to set up a phone interview with me. I noted this, but didn't get a chance to call back until late in the evening, wherein they gave me an impromptu phone interview. This reminds me that I haven't seen many adjunct positions this year.  read more »

Wayne disappeared to the CAA conference for most of this week, and I learned to greatly appreciate the fact that I am not a single parent. And I thought last year was tough, when Wayne went to CAA and Paela and I spent the whole time puking ourselves silly! How do you people with even more than two kids handle flying solo?  read more »

I intended to write this email last night after Paela went to sleep. Instead, Rebecca found me asleep on the floor next to Paela's bed at 9:30. There is a reason for this:

On Saturday we threw a pacifier party for Paela. It wasn't because either Rebecca or I was ready to move onto the next developmental stage, but because Paela had finally chewed through her last pacifier. At this point, neither Rebecca or I were willing to go buy new pacifiers for an (almost) 2 1/2 year old. So, instead we decided to help her give up the pacifier in place for a new comfort object.

We invited Camilla and Victor over to celebrate pacifiers. We let Paela have the pacifier all day long. We talked about how wonderful it had been to have a pacifier and how we can say good-bye. We made her favorite food (rice) and had lots of balloons. Then, we went to the Disney store.  read more »