I'm starting to think this 'working hard' is hard work.

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Ugh. I still haven't sent out the thank-you cards from Bean's b-day. They're all written out, and she's signed them all, but Lazy Mommy hasn't addressed the envelopes. *sigh*

So Bean's over there playing with all her horses and she was showing me the 'family' (she's very, very into making families out of everything). She explained "This one is the daddy because it doesn't have any boobs. It's smooth and has a shiny horse on it's tummy. This one is the mommy because it has boobs - see?"

Sadly, the "boobs" were indeed the boy horse's bits. I didn't bother to correct her.

Miss O has been doing some 'potty play', where she'll park her tush on the small potty, and she delights in using TP to wipe, but there's no actual pottying going on. No big, since my approach to this stuff, especially at 20 months, is pretty organic. Bean figured out how to turn the lights and music on on the potty, tho, so now they both spend inordinate time making the potty talk, "flushing" it (it makes a flush sound) and then rocking out to the happy potty song that plays at the end. There are shrieks of delight and some kickin' dance moves that go along with the potty song, and I'll have to get this on video at some point ...

The slump I mentioned a little while back still lingers in some ways ... but not totally. I've been kind of feeling shortchanged at work, but I keep trying to balance that against how awesome the stuff I'm doing will look on a resume in a year or two, if I can't shake the feeling of not being truly appreciated. I'm involved in a lot of stuff I'd never be given the opportunity to do in a large company, simply because my boss took a chance on an unproven performer who's willing to learn on the fly. And that can't be under-valued.

I've been totally treated like crap by the web design company he hired to build the three websites I manage/edit/write copy for. And that has definitely not helped any mood slumpiness, I can promise you. They have talked down to me, treated me with total disrespect and said I was "demanding" .... presumably because when they give BS answers to my help desk tickets and close them themselves, I reopen them and say "no, you didn't answer the question", but in a nice way.

The owner has also totally refused to speak with my boss (you know, *his customer*, who has spent like $10K with them) in an in-person meeting. Refused. Said he will only talk to him via email. So if you're looking for a web design/hosting company in the ATX area, I cannot recommend Lucid Crew, based on their customer service. Their technical and design skills seem fab, but the way they have treated my boss and I makes me want to scream.

I can, however, recommend Julia, whose fab Little Austinite site is very well designed, robust and, best of all, I doubt she'd talk down to you.

I'm wrapping this post up (begun around 6:00 this a.m. at 8:45, after leaving the girls to fall asleep on their own. I'm sick to death of the whole bedtime rigmarole, and finally turned O's crib to face the wall and talked Bean off a ledge and walked out. Yesterday it took over an hour for O to fall asleep; when I'm going to sleep with them, it's not such a huge deal, but on the nights I'd like to get a couple things done, it's effin' ridiculous. Because it takes so long, I nearly always fall asleep with them. And get *nothing* done around here. And get all cranky and resentful.

I think I might just have to take the tough love approach on bedtime. Especially because O didn't freak out crying, just mutterd a few pathetic-sounding "mama"s, and they both fell silent within a minute or two. Bean was actually the one who cried, but then she practically crawls under my skin at night, insisting that she can no longer lay alone, normally, on the bed, she has to come be pressed against me as I lay parpendicular to the head of the bed down by O's crib.

Is a kind of emotional regression normal at 4? Asking around, it sounds like a few of the other 4-year-olds I know are acting slightly, well, down-level, for lack of a better term. Bean is now afraid to go in a room when the lights are off (even tho she has done it for months previous, and knows how to turn on the lightswitch herself), needs to sleep pressed against me and clings to me like a baby howler monkey at every. single. preschool dropoff. Miss O walks over to her teacher and says "buh-bye", Bean draws the goodbye out into 5-10 minutes of "I want you to stay with me".

Moms/dads of 4-year-olds, or older kiddos - do/did you see this too? It's so frustrating to go backward, and while I'm trying to be as accomodating and supportive of it as I can, I'd really like to sleep in my own bed and not have to peel my big girl off of me every day!
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