Meaning he begged me and I said “Yeah, but this website is so comfy” and he reminded me that so are those pants with the stirrups under the heels but you don’t see people walking around with those anymore, and I had to say “touche” and hand him the keys.

So. Because we’re stifling over here under our own boredom, because painting the kitchen and rearranging the kids’ closet and cleaning the bathroom are SO MUCH WORK he instead decided to spend the last couple of months putting together my new site.

Starting now, I’ll be over at http://somewonderland.com. Bookmark it, love it, hate it … Whatever. Just don’t tell Dave you hate it or he’ll curl up in the fetal position and I’ll never get him out of bed, and clearly blogging doesn’t pay the bills.

A few housekeeping notes (and I’m not talking about that bathroom): The top rotating pictures are “featured” posts. The newest posts are below, and when you click on the headline of one you can click “Previous” or “Next” to go to older or newer posts; or you can click “Share this” and, well, share it on other sites. It’s what we in the business like to call “neat.”

So, see ya over there.

A summary would exhaust me further, so I offer snapshots of the verbal variety:

Like the snapshot of us at a table inside an Indiana McDonalds/ truckstop hybrid, where a couple and their boys and 20 truckers were trying to pretend Alice’s sobbing screams for her dad from our booth wasn’t really happening. He looked at me from his place in line to see Alice reaching out from where I’d put her, across from me in a dirty booth, a hungry Violet perched on my hip, torn between stopping Alice from fleeing in front of me and my purse to my left in the car seat … I yelled “DAVE” and let her run to him.

My iPod was in my purse, come on.

I’m exhausted.

And there was this big sticker on the table that suggested in happy phrases that we spin an empty milk carton on the sticker, which had all these idiotic suggestions on it a la “make a funny face!” I was nearly in tears over the inane idea that someone would a.) order milk at a truckstop McDonalds in this state, and b.) that I will ever, ever spin a milk carton over a sticker that tells me to make a funny face to create these happy little family memories at a truckstop McDonalds.

Other snapshots I’d rather delete: The sliding the car into park at the stroke of midnight, 12 hours after we’d strapped the kids into their car seats.

The hissing at Alice an hour later, who was laying at the foot of our bed in the spare room at Dave’s parents’ house, to stop pressing the Glo Worm’s belly at 1 a.m., out of the fear that the damn toy’s music would wake Violet, who was in her crib an arm’s length from where the three of us were doing said hissing.

The one where I stopped in to introduce Violet to my grandpa, and was running late and could only stay 20 minutes, long enough to flip through his Honor Flight photos, all these emotions running just under the surface. Grade A idiot I was, slipping in and out of his house with barely enough time to take a photo.

I teared up, angry at myself, wondering if I shouldn’t have stopped in at all, on my way out of his driveway, late to pick up Dave from his meeting with his friend, late to see our other friends, then late to leave their house. Returning three hours late to Dave’s parents’ house. The sleeping, dark house was screaming at our inconsiderate, selfish selves, even if no one else was.

Or the playtime where Alice screamed every time her well-meaning 2-year-old cousin came within a foot of her. “ALCIE SHIRT,” she’d scream when her cousin pretended to tickle her. “ALCIE CUP!” when her cousin retrieved Alice’s dropped cup. “ALCIE BLANKIE” when her cousin accidentally stepped on the part drooping on the ground.

It wasn’t a horrible trip, though.

We saw our families, Alice played with her cousins, many babies’ cheeks where smooshed and kissed by me; Violet was a doll, an absolute ball of chubby cuteness on my hip, the picture of contentedness if I ever gave birth to one. No one bled, died or suffered any tragedy.

No one threw up.

But family is messy. It’s really, really messy. There’s the family you miss, and the ones who never hold your baby. And the ones you see mostly just at Christmas but think about a lot and wish you had a tunnel straight from your living room to theirs. The family who you save your best stories for, and the family who overhears those stories and has no idea what you’re talking about.

I love them all, but I’m exhausted.

And before we have a chance to relax because we’ve survived the most contentious visit home since Christmas (the only visit home since Christmas, you might add), someone says “We’re doing our Christmas Dec. 27. Be there by 2.” And we don’t have vacation slips back or plans set and the other two sets of parents hear that and are on alert and doing some hissing of their own, and just GRRRR.

This is a really, really long rant. I apologize.

I will be in a better mood after I realize I have no bottles to wash tonight. Ha.

The night before, my mom and my two brothers and I peeled ourselves away from late afternoon black-and-white reruns on TV to eat a dinner of macaroni and cheese and hot dogs. We were very, very healthy eaters. All the time.

I dug in my plate but my brothers hovered over theirs. “I’m waiting for it to cool off,” my brother Derrick said.

Famous last words. They’ve haunted us for more than a decade now; we still bring them up in jokes and when we’re really asking “Do you feel OK?” I remember it clearly, like he just said it a second ago: “I’m waiting for it to cool off.”

Seconds later, of course, he was puking to my left and then my youngest brother, Christopher, was puking to my right, and I was pinned between the table in front of me, a wall behind me and two puking brothers on either side. I screamed “NO, MOM, NO! MAKE THEM STOP, I WANT TO GO TO CHICAGO” and rammed Christopher’s chair forward — mid-puke because I’m that sympathetic — to run out to the garage. I held my breath the whole way out, all the way to the backseat of the car, where I hid, crying because I JUST DO NOT DO VOMIT.

I’m a natural born nurse, obviously.

Well.

This little family gem popped in my head this morning when Alice threw up over breakfast. I do mean “over” in the literal sense, SORRY INTERNET, but I think you, the childless bunch, need to know what you’re signing up for. It’s not just being able to watch cartoons and buy stuffed animals and cutesy dresses (oh, and that family togetherness thing, too). It’s not: Sometimes it’s puke at 7 a.m. I forget that often. Selective acknowledgment.

We were supposed to leave at 7 a.m. tomorrow for vacation, a misnomer because our three-day jaunt to Ohio is full of people (us included) smile-stabbing (new verb, I’m trademarking it) other people over how we’re going to divide our short time there. I’m pumped about seeing new babies, the only woman I can call my BFF without gagging at the junior high school-sound to the phrase, and of course our families. It’s just … Hard.

And now you have vomit on top of that.

You just know — you KNOW — that Violet’s next. You do. It’s coming. PLEEEEAAAASE, no. Please, fate, nooooooooooo.

Last night we were taking pictures of Alice kissing Violet. Note to self: STOP THAT.

My mom and stepdad are taking vacation time next week to hang out with my daughters, and I have been looking forward to this week like kids before Christmas.

But I have to admit, all this talk about sleeping in til 7 a.m. and having a date night and cleaning the closet (I’m talking about REALLY, REALLY thrilling things, here) has me wondering how appealing this whole childless thing will be on Tuesday next week, when instead of playing animals with Alice, Dave and I will be staring at each other.

But at least our closet will be clean, right.

Sigh.

Tonight I was gathering little outfits up and putting them in a purple suitcase the girls will share, and I’m folding little dresses with bows on the front and little capri pants and stuffing in a pair of Mary Janes, and I have to stop because I’m feeling emotional.

WHAT.

Yes.

Emotional — My little Violet … My Alice. Oh, a week is an insanely long time.

My mom just gagged on her Cheerios because she thinks I’m backing out: I’m not. That closet really needs cleanin’. But I’m not sure how I’m going to be holding up.

Ohp, ohp! Wait. Wine. That’s it.

Wait, wait. Back up. EIGHT GARBAGE BAGS of hand-me-down clothes, size newborn to 2T — EIGHT BAGS. Two of the bags were eliminated early in the game for being not from this century but not yet old enough to be called “vintage.” That leaves us with six bags of clothes that make you go “Awwww.”

We kept probably three bags’ worth, and the rest we’re donating and holding on to for friends and garage sales where we’ll charge grandmas 25 cents a pop and buy a pizza with the profits at the end of the day … All that work, a year or two of holding onto bags of clothes? WORTH IT. We’re getting extra cheese and extra mushrooms. It’s worth the hassle of stepping over the bags in the basement to get, oh, ANYTHING.

So, we’re down to three garbage bags full of clothes, some that fit Alice, some that fit Violet, and most that are somewhere in between the two extremes. Currently, Mount Oh My God Are These Really All From Your Sister Where Do They Store This Stuff and Who Do I Need To “Know” To Get An Attic Like That is sitting on the floor in front of our bed, because the one measly little hand-me-down dresser from my youth — its three drawers split between Violet and Alice — crossed its arms and said “Hell no, I’m not putting those in here.”

So, now we’re up to three bags of clothes and the need for a new dresser. Time for the girls to stop sharing: We knew this day would come, OK.

But then I start looking through all these clothes, and I’m getting weepy, right? “SO CUTE and Violet’ll only wear it like ONCE and outgrow it and MY BABIES ARE SO OLD and I’LL NEVER HAVE ANOTHER ONE.”

So, without tears I convey that to my boss at work, and we work out a deal to use my remaining maternity leave time to my advantage, meaning I get Mondays off and can work the rest of the hours Tuesdays to Fridays.

Sounds dreamy, doesn’t it? I know. I know. I held myself together long enough to get home and shriek like that time Aaron T. called me in the seventh grade and sorta, kinda said he liked me. ME! YEEE! I was THAT thrilled, like OHMIGAH.

But now that means I’m working four days earlier in the morning til later at night, and now the whole one-car family schtick is becoming less schtick and more son-of-a.

So now Dave’s talking about a second car.

For those keeping track at home — pencils up — that brings us to three bags of clothes, one new-to-us dresser and a car, should I agree to that.

Now.

I’m a journalist, not a mathematician, but I think the value of the bags of clothes maaay be a little less than that of the dresser I sent Dave out to find at a thrift store and a car …

BUT. If the hand-me-downs keep coming I may be able to FILL the dressers AND have that yard sale-for-a-pizza. Right?

Someone help me with the math.

1. I’m guessing this is a growth spurt … Lucky us: That one time my kid slept 8 hours … and then didn’t.

2. Quite possibly the lamest confession I’ve ever made: True story. Really is.

3. Grandparenting gives me something to look forward to: Ain’t that the truth.

Dear Alice,

Your sister has been encroaching on your personal space for about three months now. Thanks for hanging in there. You’re here for comedic relief (laughing with you, not at you 78 percent of the time), to be another set of hands when I need someone to fetch a binky, and to have someone to converse with since we three spend a lot of time without your dad most nights.

As I mentioned before, you’re definitely 2 now. There are several phrases that poke that nerve that shoots right from your eardrum to the part of your brain that says “FLING SELF TO FLOOR,” and your dad and I have a mental list of them, which exercises our creative sides as we try to come up with euphemisms. “NO GO TO BEEEDDDDD!” You say. So we say, “OK, let’s go read some books upstairs.” “NO ‘MBURGER!” “OK, that’s not a hamburger, that’s ‘chicken’!” (Wink, wink.) “NO GO HOOOMMMEE!” “OK, then we’ll just go grab a bite to eat.”

Ugh. Two-year-olds.

I’d estimate three nights a week I get that edge in my voice around 8 p.m. that I can hear myself — the one that takes more than a few videos from “America’s Funniest Videos” to erase. I’ve accepted that no gold bars washed up into our yard after the recent floods, so I must continue working. But, by Thursday I am pushing your bedtime up to 7:30 and bribing you with promises of farmers markets and library trips and Target visits “in two days! Two days, you go to bed now and then one more time and then it’s SATURDAY and then we’ll go to Target. But you have to sleep now!”

I planned to be a much better parent — or at least more creative than this. I’m just … Tired.

But again our Mondays are our salvation. This week you grabbed Baby Cuckoo and her stroller — and instead of ramming it into your sister’s helpless body like last time, you grabbed your purse and asked for some monies so you could go to the store to buy diapers and formula.

As if my heart weren’t a soupy pile of sappiness as I stood in front of the drawer where I keep construction paper. I cut you up dollar bills out of green paper and you held them like a poker hand, treasuring them as if I’d handed you real money. “ALCIE GO SHOPPING!”

I can only hope that joy remains when you’re old enough to ask for an allowance, because I have a stack of pretty, bright green $4 bills for you and your sister as a little thank you for doing laundry. Now go put the dishes away while Mama watches her shows.

Other new developments: You chat on the phone, you remember people’s names, you put facts together to follow questions and stories. You’ve memorized “No David” by David Shannon, and I know this because I caught you yelling “NO DAVID” to the dog — odd, yes, but I was laughing aloud by the time you’d spouted off most of the phrases in the book: “DAVID BE QUIET. NO NO NO. GO TO ROOM. SETTLE DOWN. STOP THAT INSTANT. THAT ENOUGH. SAID NO DAVID.” Mr. Big had no blinking clue what you were talking about, but he knew to be afraid.

I’m a little scared that you too, my little firstborn, are growing up too fast; it struck me that you’re technically in your third year of life now, and I vowed to stop thinking technically after that thought had me gagging on my water the other day. Three years? Three years? I’ve had sweaters not last this long.  Also, three years — I’ve had dark circles under my eyes and jowls for three years now. This motherhood thing is serious.

Eek.

Love,

Mama

AirVenture, one of the highlights of my summer (commentary on that fact would not be appropriate aloud, thank you), was just too much for too long for the two little girls. I knew it would be going in, but I naively thought it’d be OK enough to fake it.

Well. I think our trek back to the safety of our car, where I could sit down, fan out my soaking wet sweaty T-shirt and snap “Let’s never do that again” solidified the fact that next year I’m going to need a babysitter while Dave and I go to AirVenture.

It started out better than you might anticipate: Violet slept through the air show, the wall of fire, fake explosions, a stroller ride over bumpy terrain. When she woke up, she was content to watch the planes soar overhead from her infant carrier.

Alice sat on our laps and held her hands over her ears, and after we told her the explosions were over she went to everyone — Dave, me, my mom and stepdad, Dave’s dad — and shook her head and said “booms go bye-bye,” and she was fairly content.

Until the trick pilot started swirling above the runway, that is. Violet, the uncultured little thing she is, wailed every time Sean Tucker came near us, so her cries ebbed and flowed with a rhythm that wasn’t at all embarrassing for me. I walked around the grounds with her, my mom trailing us, seeking shelter in a pavilion with a bottle (hers) and red cheeks (mine).

And I mention what happened next not because it really fits in with the rest, but because it doesn’t: The most symmetrical-featured, tan, dark-haired, white-teeth, starchy-pressed-in-a-good-way uniformed man appeared like a mirage. I thought, since I was holding a squirming baby among many, many childless people in this tent, that he was going to ask me to leave, and even was doing an inventory of how we were going to pick up all our stuff and flee in shame. CLEARLY there must’ve been a sign posted: “No babies. SERIOUSLY. GO HOME.”

“Put on your innocent face,” I was telling myself, “SMILE.” But he just wanted to say hello. He asked how old my baby was, and joked about the kids being “future pilots,” and I was staring into his eyes and reminding myself how to form vowels and consonants. “You have a nice day,” he said. “YOU” — adding in that extra personal attention. “YOU.” Not just “Have a nice day,” like you say to someone at the bank. And he DIDN’T add “ma’am” to that nicety, so I’m fairly certain it was my pre-maternity pants that led to this whole scenario. In other words, I left the pavilion, satisfied because no aircraft could replicate the thrill of not being that invisible pregnant lady anymore. Worth the admission fee.

But then I walked back into the sunshine and four jets roared overhead and I yelled to Dave’s and the grandpas’ backs: “I’M DONE.” Alice wailed behind me, Violet was beyond breathless, screaming in fear.

For shame. For shame.

After this whole thing — the walk of shame back to the car, the embarrassment I felt over bringing them in the first place, the annoyance at not getting to see what I wanted to see as we left the guys there … It stuck with me all night — a vague, nagging feeling that people would probably agree it was stupid to bring the girls, thus stupid to go … And a little guilty that I’m glad we tried it, despite that.

But then — this is where the redemption comes in that has nothing to do with a man in uniform in an AirVenture pavilion …

“At church someone said they were at AirVenture yesterday and saw a couple there with four young kids, and one was like Violet’s age,” Dave said.

“Oh?” Trying to act all cool and not affected.

“Yeah, they said the kids were acting up and crying and stuff and so one of the parents put something in the baby’s bottle — like alcohol. And then the baby settled down. And they put it in the kids’ cups, too, and they calmed down, too.”

“OK, WHAT.”

“Yeah.”

“Thank you.”

“For what?”

“I was trying to decide how I was going to frame my guilt about AirVenture in a blog post. You just answered that question.”

REALLY. I took mine home — I’m pretty sure THAT’S the commendable example here. SEE! SEE! I’m doing fine.

I knew I was pregnant right around this time last year.

The pregnancy tests said no, better luck next time, and I did the obligatory cry-into-a-glass-of-wine with my mother in law, and two days later I took another test because I KNEW it, and — whoops! — that wine may have been a mistake … Dave? David, where are you? Is this two lines? Do you see two lines? No? No, here. HERE. TWO, they’re kind of faint — YES, right there. You want me to take another one? Now?

No, don’t open that bottle of wine. I think this one’s for real.

Fine, I’ll take a test tomorrow morning, too. FINE. If it’s negative you’re going to be sorry, though. My hopes are all up, I don’t think I could take it. This one might be for real this time.

Oh, honey, was it ever for real. I’ve got five pounds hanging around my waist and a 14-pound baby on my chest sleeping now that vouch for how real that whole thing was.

This time last year. It seems like years ago. Years.