Have had so many thoughts late at night before falling asleep and on my long commutes, but so little time to write them down.

“Anna Karenina”: I am on disc 27, the last one, of this book on CD. I’ve been fascinated by it. I generally have a very difficult time believing a male author writing the view point of a woman. Not always – one of my favorite books in the whole word (“Mating” by Norman Rush) is written from the viewpoint of a woman. That exception aside, I was surprised that, in Anna Karenina, I found moments of “truth” in Tolstoy’s depiction of both Anna and her sister in law Dolly, and Kitty, to some degree. I found Tolstoy’s description of Dolly’s thoughts and doubts and anguishes about motherhood to be surprisingly modern. And then I thought about what I meant by “modern” and had to laugh. I felt it was modern because it described doubts about motherhood – which is silly, because since time immemorial women have been mothers, and thus must have had doubts about motherhood. What I think I meant by “modern” was the ADMISSION of doubts and insecurities about motherhood. Which, as you all know, I am an EXPERT at.

Ellen made my scalp crawl the other day with both pride and the creeps when she picked up her bottle and started feeding herself. I’ve always been in love with her very good fine-motor skills, but it was disconcerting to see my little girl, who is SO the quintessential GERBER BABY, actually feed herself. She is beginning to raise herself up on her knees in the crawling position and rock back and forth. She is very consistent now with sleeping from 11 to 8, getting up once. Its not ideal, but MUCH better than before.

Will has been impressing me with the leaps his language is taking, and the amount of expression he is putting into his words and facial and body language. He “reads” most of his books to Steve and I, and the inflections he uses are so wonderful. “Brown Bear! Brown Bear! What do you see????!!!”

Weight loss is going slow. I’ve been much better about eating out and controlling weekends, so I feel good about that, but in general am having a hard time getting several weeks in a row of consistency from a scheduling perspective. Over the last month and a half I’ve been as low as 136.6 and as high as 140.00, without a whole lot of trending up or down. I do attribute that to schedule and travel more than anything, and I won’t be done with schedule/travel until October. I’ll have a good chunk of “normal” time between October 1st and Thanksgiving, so hopefully I can make some progress there on whatever is left.

Work I won’t write about now. Later.

Steve and I have had fun the last few days. Its amazing but not surprising how our relationship and day to day interactions rise and fall with his back pain. It makes sense, for all kinds of unflattering reasons due mainly to my general laziness and grumpiness, but it isn’t ideal. (Steve does so much for us as a family, and when his back hurts, I have visions having to mow the lawn and take out the garbage and water the grass and throw the ball for Ripple and go grocery shopping , etc. etc. etc. and I DON”T WANNA. We save so much money with Steve being the SAHP – if it were me, we’d have a housekeeping, lawn service, and use grocery delivery services, and have a dog walker). However, when he does feel good, he makes me laugh, and that makes a world of difference to me. I see so much intelligence in his wit – its not that he isn’t smart in other areas, because he is. He has a crazy head for numbers, and of course his emotional intelligence with Will and Ellen is significant, but those two things aren’t directed AT ME. Whereas his humor is, which is why I find it so attractive. Yes, I’m self-centered. I don’t even feel bad about it right at this moment.