Wayne and Rebecca Madsen

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 »

Wayne <singing to Aderyn>: Baby blue, you make my heart....

Paela: He's not blue. He's black.

Wayne: You don't think she has blue eyes?

Paela: No. Black hair. Black eyes.

Wayne: Baby black, you have the blackest hair.... 

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 »

"Once upon a time, there were two...names. And names went for a walk. And walked and walked. And one name said...scary Swiper. And Dora...no swiping."

There was more...but that is all I caught of the story Paela told to Roo.

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 »

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 »

Paela protects her interests.