I stole this from Eva.

Considering I’ve been at this for over four years, I don’t have so terribly many posts hanging out in my ‘drafts’ folder. But a while back Eva treated us to a tour of her draft posts, and it was pretty amusing. I don’t think I can quite reach that level of hilarity, but here’s my list, most recent first:

Title: It’s not who you are, it’s where you are. Or something.
Content: A paragraph about how taking care of little babies is all hands-on, and then a paragraph about my coworker who swears she will never send her son to public school in this city. And then a few words about Ingrid’s awful first dentist visit last spring and about a job offer I recently turned down. This was meant to be about how the main task of parenting ultimately becomes finding the right places for our kids to thrive, even as we keep on trying to figure out the best places for ourselves to thrive.

Title: She did the face.
Content: A photo of a drawing Ingrid made this summer by lying down and having me trace her body on a big piece of paper, then coloring it in. Only the photo didn’t turn out so it mostly looks like a crime scene outline with a big blazing orange sun in the corner, and you can’t see the priceless facial expression she drew.

Title: Put Up
Content: A list of all the produce I’ve canned, dried, and frozen from our garden and CSA this summer. Huh. Maybe I’ll post this one soon.

Title: What’s so funny?
Content:
"I believe I have cracked open one of the great mysteries of parenting.
The mystery: Why do people do it?
The answer: From the outside, the most horrible parts of it look FUNNY."

Title: Teeth
Content: A long, long thing about Ingrid’s horrible first dentist appointment, which I’ve tried and failed to write about in many contexts. It just ends up too long and hard to explain.

Title: Maybe it’s the weather.
Content: A day-by-day replay from about a year ago, showing me slipping into the horrible post-partum winter blues, including running into the Perfect Mom at the library, taking Iris to the doctor on the wrong day, and then taking her on the right day but forgetting my wallet. At the time I thought it sounded too whiny to post, but from here it looks almost funny.

Title: Untitled
Content: “There's the mama who dances around the kitchen holding her daughter's hands, making up verse after verse to the tune of Everybody clap your hands. And then there's the mama who hears still-awake cranky Ingrid crying over the baby monitor, slams the cheese grater down on the kitchen counter, and yells, She can just cry it the fuck out.”

Title: The Bottle
Content: None.
(I must have meant to write about our early successful attempts to give Iris bottles of pumped milk.)

Title: Switch Hitter
Content: I assert that my boobs switched roles (overproducer / underproducer) when I started nursing a second baby, and give several theories as to why this might have been true. (I don’t believe this was actually true, though. Or it’s not anymore, anyway. Maybe I’d mixed up my right and left momentarily?)

Title: On Joining the Crowd
Content: “Strange indeed.” Then several blank lines and “Buying a House.” This was almost four years ago, and I have no memory of what I was thinking.