Better do as the cat says. We’ll be back later.

(Picture courtesy | dak |)

Even though Bob Dylan wrote it and Jimi Hendrix made it famous, I of course, in my musical ignorance, didn’t hear it until U2 covered it. I have five different versions of it in itunes, none of them by Dylan, two of them live. My favorite version changes depending on what version is on my ipod. But in my heart I think my favorite is a noodlely rendition from the Grateful Dead. I like to think that this being my favorite song of all time makes me unique and special. That it’s some hidden thing about me that to look at me you wouldn’t automatically think, “Hey, I bet her favorite song is a Bob Dylan tune!” But I guess it really just makes me a Cylon.

All Along the Watchtower
“There must be some way out of here,” said the joker to the thief,
“There’s too much confusion, I can’t get no relief.
Businessmen, they drink my wine, plowmen dig my earth,
None of them along the line know what any of it is worth.”

“No reason to get excited,” the thief, he kindly spoke,
“There are many here among us who feel that life is but a joke.
But you and I, we’ve been through that, and this is not our fate,
So let us not talk falsely now, the hour is getting late.”

All along the watchtower, princes kept the view
While all the women came and went, barefoot servants, too.

Outside in the distance a wildcat did growl,
Two riders were approaching, the wind began to howl.

So it appears doctors were, at least partially, behind the botched UK car bombs. This proves what I learned through years of teaching undergraduate physics: many in the medical profession don’t understand physics and chemisty, let alone how to apply those disciplines to real-world problems.

It’s a shame we didn’t offer a Physics for Pyros class.

Eli has taken to planning our days. He will come in our bedroom in the morning and say, “I am going to have a waffle and I will blow on it and eat it and watch a show!” When I come home from work, he tells me, “Dad, after you eat we will play Tasty Planet and then we will play marble tower. Tasty Planet and marble tower make me so happy!” The only thing that ever derails his plans is when he rebels and gets sent to his couch.

Whoa, wait. He rebels. He’s evolving. He has a plan.

He’s a cylon!

For the first time ever today, I had someone come and clean my house. She did the whole house in four hours. As far as I can tell, it’s one step down from a miracle.

Eli decided he needed to take a nap before Jeanie left. So when he woke up the house was quiet and I was in Liza’s room dozing with her on my shoulder, pretending to burp. I heard his door open and he was muttering to himself, “The whole house is clean!”

He came and found me and said with much amazement and surprise, “Mom! The house is so beautiful and clean! Miss Jeanie did a great job!”

There you have it, my little OCD chip off the block.

I don’t really miss my old life. The life I had before I had kids. I enjoyed that life and it was fun. Stephen and I were married eight years before we decided it was time to have kids (well, ok, really he was in grad school but the other sounds better). But sometimes I remember the old life and miss it just a little bit.

Stephen and I are night owls. I was one before we got married and together we can manage to stay up ridiculously late doing pretty much nothing. That all changed though when Eli was born. For one thing, he had The Schedule like the ticking of a time bomb. If you messed with it, the bomb exploded. Part of that is good, because The Schedule made him easy to predict. The bad part was, we had to schedule around his Schedule. The Schedule meant that we had to go to bed at a reasonable hour so that we could meet the demands of The Schedule. Liza is already a bit more flexible. She sleeps longer at a stretch, even during the day, so her eating is a bit more adaptable. She tends to spend the evening hours tanking up for her long nighttime sleep, which is fine because by the time Eli is in bed all I want to do is sit in front of the TV and vegetate.

Last night reminded me of the good old days. Liza picked up a cold somewhere this past week. (I blame you Sci-Quest with all your dirty, dirty buttons to push!) And so, beginning at about 8 p.m. last night, she snuffled and snorted and whined about snuffling and snorting. She was better off when she was nursing but lying flat on her back was out of the question. Stephen put her swaddled in her car seat, hoping that the incline would do the trick. No luck.

So at about 11:30, he gave up and went to sit with her in her room. I went to sleep, thinking he would sleep with her in the recliner. I heard them mumbling about in there around 4 a.m. and so I got up to feed Liza and see how the night went. I found out that Stephen has been sitting straight up with her all night, that was the only way she could sleep. So he sat and read and rocked. I took over and he went to bed. While she was nursing and I was reading, it occurred to me that there have been other times in my life when I stayed up until 4 a.m. reading and thinking it was the good life.

I’m sad that I don’t get to read all night any more. I kinda miss that part of my life. I stayed up late as a kid to read and I guess it just never lost its naughtiness for me. But if I have to give up something to get these two cute kids, I think that maybe giving up staying up all night is probably worth it.

So we’re slow at putting up photos. We suck.

And there’s more where those came from. POW! New pictures for you!

You’re listening to KLZA, your station in the mornings for dirty diapers. Tonight’s lineup includes breathing heavily from 10:30 P.M. until 12:00 midnight, followed by three hours of random cries and wheeps that are guaranteed to wake you up at odd intervals. At 3:00 A.M. we’ll have the half-hour crying-and-feeding show, and then an hour of a rocking chair’s squeaks and muffled snuffling. KLZA will then be off the air until 7:00 A.M. when we resume normal programming.

KLZA is supported by listeners like you and by Archer Daniels Midland Company. ADM. Because not everyone lives on breast milk.

We have discovered that Liza is a Parselmouth. What with the tongue going every which way all the time. This would help explain the variety of snakes we have hanging around outside.

A few days ago, the Wall Street Journal ran an article about parents stressing over what to name their baby. The article discusses parents-to-be hiring numerologists and consultants to help them choose a name, and talks about naming a baby as an act of marketing and branding. Thus you have an ad exec and author of eight books on baby names saying, “We live in a marketing-oriented society…. People who understand branding know that when you pick the right name, you’re giving your child a head start.” The best part of the article by far is about how two people who work in marketing approached the problem.

As one of the founders of Catchword, a corporate naming firm with offices in New York and Oakland, Calif., Burt Alper says he and his wife, Jennifer, who also works in marketing, felt “tons of pressure” to come up with something grabby.

Although Mr. Alper typically gives clients a list of 2,000 names to mull over, he says he kept the list of baby names to 500, for simplicity.

I understand the anxiety. Misty and I spent some time debating what to call our two children. But, really, people, settle down. There are too many stressors when dealing with pregnancy to add avoidable ones. There are a couple of rules to remember. One: whatever you name your kid, other children will make fun of them. Two: the history or meaning of the name won’t change how others react to your child. When someone meets young Chloe, they won’t think, “Huh, that name is derived from the Greek and has verdant connotations,” or, “Oh, she’s named for her great-aunt Chloe.” They’ll think, “I knew a Chloe once, in college. I hated her.” And there’s nothing you can do about it.

So relax. Pick a short list of names. Think them over. Your child will grow into whatever name you give them, until it seems perfectly right and natural. Oh, and run your names through this interactive name explorer that shows how popular names are in the US based on Social Security data. Not because it’ll necessarily help you, but because the explorer is cool to play with.