Best Laid Plans, and Where on earth does she get that syntax?

Friday I took the day off work, hoping to catch up with the various things I'm really behind on. A is out of town this week and next, and I thought it would be great to get a little on top of things before the inevitable crazy couple of weeks.

Instead, we woke up at 7 Friday morning to a baby completely covered in vomit, and I spent most of the day sitting on the kitchen floor nursing Iris, holding her while she dozed, and/or pointing her in the right direction as she threw up. Poor thing. It was a short sickness, and we had a nice Saturday, visiting a public garden we'd never been to. Then Ingrid came down with the crud at bedtime Saturday, and A and I pretty much both got up for each of probably fifty vomits. After a while I stopped going back to bed and just curled up in my bathrobe at the foot of her bed.

A, somehow, took care of just about everything Sunday while I tried to catch up on sleep. The theory was that he'd be able to get more sleep near the beginning of his trip, while I'd need all the reserves I could gather during this 15-day solo stint. After hours of napping (and feeling a bit under the weather myself) yesterday, I feel relatively human today (day 1 without A). I hope things are going as predicted on his end.

This week has all kinds of nuttiness in store, including several weirdly overlapping work commitments, plus the start of my poetry class, during which Ingrid's old day care teacher is babysitting—great for Ingrid, but I'm imagining Iris may cry the whole time and wondering what on earth I was thinking to set this up.

........

On a whole other subject, I've really tried to give out more popsicles in the past week. The other day Ingrid asked for one after dinner, but in a whiny voice, and I was in the middle of changing Iris's diaper so I told her she'd need to ask in a nice voice when I was finished and then we could talk about it.

As I pulled Iris's pants up, Ingrid gave me the most earnest look ever and said, "Mama? Let's talk about this popsicle problem."

I gave her a popsicle.