Until Christmas

I have until Christmas to finish the first draft.

So...I...am...going...crazy.

Crazy like Howard Hughes crazy. I'm repeating myself and finding all sorts of dirt in my house that needs to be cleaned before I pick up my pen and green tea.

(Well, no, I don't really write in pen first.)

We're going to Blacksburg, VA for Christmas this year, to be with my husband's family. It might snow! Jim and his mother have been concocting some sort of surprise gift for me. I can tell b/c when she calls he muffles the phone with his hand and speaks in curious fragments of sentences.

Hmm. Well, I may not know what it is, but I know what it's NOT.

We're working on night-weaning Elizabeth in the hopes that she'll learn to sleep through the night. So far, it's improved the situation but hasn't cured it. She woke up only once last night, but it was for over an hour, and she cried. I'm sure time will be the biggest cure--humans eventually wean and eventually sleep for long stretches without needing mom and dad to help them back to sleep.

Oh, and another Elizabeth note: she's very much under the Standards of American Girls Weights, and the pediatrician we had last week felt it was entirely my fault. Apparently I am both starving her AND forcing her too crudely to eat. How in the world can anyone DO that? Shove the food down their throats until they give in? The Queen would never stand for that. And she does eat. Today she had bits of ham and baked beans. Isn't that fattening? (It's scary though---I end up eating right along side her. Some day I'm going to have to eat a salad instead.)

Ok. I need to stop writing and get to my WRITING.