woooohooooo!!!!!!

The Bears are in the Super Bowl. In case you hadn't heard.

I'm a lifelong, die-hard Bears fan. Last night's win was about the most exciting Sunday afternoon I've had in a long time. So now the Bears are in the Super Bowl and while I'm waiting around for that day to get here I get to go to Hawaii on vacation.

Life is good.

Welcome to the world, Josh.

We have a new member of our extended family:

Joshua was born in Seattle today. He's 19 inches long, 7 pounds, 9 ounces and his mother labored 24 hours to get him here. His grandpa Harry has been waiting virtually his entire adult life for his time as a parent to result in the big payoff - grandchildren. Congratulations Harry - your day has come!

Josh's parents, Matt and Beth, are truly lovely people and Josh is blessed to be born into a large and loving extended family who have been anxiously awaiting his arrival. What a gift to be unconditionally loved even before you are born. And you are loved Josh, you are truly, fully and unconditionally loved.

Welcome to the family.

Now if I could just conquer my e-mail....

We've conquered the binky, I think. Good thing, too, because the last week or two at work has been intense. Why?

E-mail.

I'm completely convinced that e-mail actually hinders communication. However, lately I've been getting more e-mail than ever that requires me to act in some way. I've also had more e-mails than ever that were part of some CYA electronic daisy chain of torture. You know what I'm talking about - you send an e-mail to a client to ask a simple question. They forward it to the entire "team." Everyone on the team responds, but when they do they "reply to all." And pretty soon, even the junior project assistant is adding her two cents because she just wants everyone to know that she's participating in the process. And oh yeah, no one ever actually answers the original question.

It's totally annoying.

At the end of last week I staged my own personal protest and started calling people. On the telephone. I even left one guy a message saying that I was calling him because I didn't want to start up the circling e-mail thing again. You know what? He called me back the next day and we worked out the details of a fairly complicated project in about 7 minutes. The same thing would have taken two days and 18 messages via e-mail.

Yep. The phone. It's amazing technology.

P.S. As I was writing this our new puppy peed on the living room rug. The job never ends, does it?

I mean it. I really am an idiot.

So we've completed Night 4 of the no-binky program and you know what? Lauren slept right through the night last night without a peep.

What was I waiting for? Why didn't I do this earlier? Why did I even give her a binky in the first place?

Scratch that last one... she's got a crabby streak so I know exactly why I gave her a binky. I'm just glad we got rid of it before she's developed the communication skills to argue about it.

Cold turkey on the binky.

I'm an idiot.

I've been getting up every night, as much as three times a night, stuffing the binky back into Lauren's mouth. Why? I have no idea. It's one of those things that sneaks up on you, like you think "oh, it only takes a minute to go in there, put it in her mouth and get back in bed." But really, when you do it two or three times, it adds up. And, because her witching hours are between 2 and 5 am, what it adds up to is interrupted sleep right before it's time to get up. It was really making me crabby.

So as of Sunday we went cold turkey on the binky.

Why Sunday you ask? Because if she cried all night at least I could relax a little bit at work.

Don't get me wrong. When I'm at work, there's work to do. But everyone here can feed themselves, wipe their own butts (at least I hope so), and walk. Which is really relaxing for me.

Even my husband said that we should do it on a weekend. You know, so we could take a nap if we needed to. Give me a break! Who are these people with small children who get to nap on Saturday?! Sure, I can nap while Lauren naps. As long as I don't mind Grace watching Go Diego, Go! and climbing on and off the bed about a hundred times.

But I'm getting off track. What really makes me an idiot is that the reason I decided to go cold turkey now was that I have a friend coming to care for my children while we go to Hawaii in a couple of weeks and I didn't want her to have to get up in the night. That's right. I'm perfectly willing to do this endlessly myself, even though I hate it. But I can't stand the idea that someone else would have to. Why wouldn't I treat myself with this much consideration? I don't know, but I feel kind of stupid.

So last night was Night 1. Lauren cried for about 7 minutes at bedtime, but she was also in meltdown from having cousins over for the entire weekend. She woke up at about 1:30 and cried on and off for about 20 minutes. Not in that sad, I'm-lost-without-the-binky-please-cuddle-me way, but more in a who-in-the-hell-do-you-think-you-are-taking-my-binky-away way. She was pissed. But she got over it and went back to sleep until 6:45.

It's the deepest I've slept in a very long time.

P.S. A couple of weeks ago I did take a nap while Lauren was napping. Grace sat on the bed watching Noggin, and once when she got back on the bed she fell on my head. But I did nap and when I woke up Grace said, "Mom, I need to tell you something." I said, "What is it, sweetie?" She said, "While you were sleeping I went downstairs and ate M&Ms." I practically had to bite my tongue off to keep from laughing. Because, when I was a kid, I would have done the same dang thing. And, hey, it could have been worse.

Re-entry is tough.

I've had a week off. A little more actually, since I only worked the equivalent of about three days the week before Christmas, and those weren't exactly high pressure. Today was my first day back on "the routine." I started out by turning off my alarm clock instead of hitting the snooze button.

Grace is off school until the 8th, so the out-the-door deadline is not exactly hard and fast, but I feel like I should stick to it anyway because, well, we just should. But I forgot to factor in the puppy (you remember him? the best christmas present ever?), who needs to go out about a nanosecond after he hears footsteps.

The good news is that it was a relatively low-key workday, although I did have to go to a client meeting at 3:00. Guess some people are chomping at the bit to get back to work, eh? But I got off the hook for an 8 am meeting tomorrow at a client that's three hours away.

One thing I forgot though – there's not much time to spend with the kids at the end of the day. Which kind of sucks.