Still, it's on it's way.

Sorry, somebody won't nap long enough to let me finish my latest, long-winded post. Entertain yourself by looking at my shiny new ads! (Including one for a cleaning product whose latest commercial I did not get. Thanks for the reminder, Universe.)

My hair has settled, finally.

Posting to come, I swear! My husband hurt his back so I've been on single parent duty all week which is about as easy as it sounds. Long story short - no time to blog. Hopefully hubby's on the mend so I can get back to periodically ignoring my child in the guise of "Daddy/Baby" time.

More to come!

I call it "Crimson Glow"

It still looks like Strawberry Shortcake threw up on my head.

Sorry about the silence. I haven't locked myself away - yet. Husband threw out his back which is awful and miserable for both of us. Taking care of two helpless men is exhausting. How do single parents (and you wranglers of twins) do it?

Of course I had a print audition yesterday, which means that this hair is actually documented somewhere and will undoubtedly end up on some casting director's blooper reel (along with the time my boob fell out of my tank top during an audition for a television pilot. Oh no. Oh yes). I'm doing my best to "own" the color (all the kids have vine-ripened hair these days!) but it's kind of hard to ignore the looks. The pathetic part of me keeps hoping that they're staring because I look so good, which is also what I told myself when I wore leather pants and we all know how that turned out. (I've seen the pics. I looked like a La-Z-Boy with feet.) Speaking of photographic evidence - I'm not posting pictures. I'm the queen of self-dep but even I refuse to document this debacle. I know what you're thinking - JUST WASH THE STUFF OUT ALREADY. But see here's the thing: I can't. I paid for it. And washing it out would be like throwing the money away, and have you seen the economic forecast?

Insane. I've got to wash it.

In other news, the kid came through the 9 month regression with flying colors, sleeping for upwards of 13 hours a night - for 2 days. Last night the teething kicked in again, and with it the crying, the waking, the gritting of teeth (his and mine). Long story short, ended up pulling the boy into bed so we could all get a decent amount of rest. Unfortunately we're getting his room painted today (let's hear it for maintenance men!) which means naps in the lap instead of the crib. I'm hoping someone doesn't start getting any ideas about this being the way things are going to go from now on... (Crib, kid. CRIB.)

Brought to you by the letters LOVE IT

Okay, so how do I make this happen, 'cause I could use some seaside niceness.

I can't decide if it's more "floozie" or "clown"

I spent the morning getting my hair did, as the kid's say. I'm new to this whole "coloring" BS and still feel a little nervous about messing with a good thing. My hair is a big source of vanity and years of people warning me not to touch the color has kept me strictly au natural. But since I'm no longer a spring chicken (as evidenced by the white hairs - plural - my husband gleefully plucks from my head), giving Mother Nature a boost didn't sound so bad. The first time I braved it the good folks at Aveda went easy on me - demi-permanent so the color would gradually fade, a gentle boost to the red. And I liked it. It gave my eyes a nice little pop, callbacks started coming in, husband said it was like getting a hotter wife - all pluses in my book. (Except for that last one. Remind me to sucker punch him for that little number when he gets home.) Today I went back in for a touch up and this time the gloves were off. No more namby-pamby, wash-out-in-6-weeks, natural-with-a-kick booshit for this girl! Today we went fierce.

And permanent.

I'm not entirely sure how it happened. Scratch that, I know exactly how it happened. All it took was the gorgeous head stylist - the one with the red/violet hair and incredibly milky skin - telling me how much better I could look and I was in. There's something so seductive about having someone who is very much cooler than you take charge of your "look". It's how people get railroaded into spray-on tans or metallic jumpsuits, by having really fantastic people speak authoritatively about something you know little about. Inevitably I find it hard to disagree because deep down it's still 1983 and I'm sporting legwarmers six months after everyone else has stopped wearing them. Tell me you can make me cooler/prettier/calmer and I'll say yes in spades.

So I said yes. In spades.

Out went the strawberry blond, in went the red. Perhaps that should be in caps because Stylista turned the dial to 11, peeps. I am Belle Watling. I am the Red Roof Inn. Husband says it looks good but he is not to be trusted. If he tells the truth he risks his wife locking herself in the only bathroom and not coming out until the wells run dry. (I hear if you wash it a lot...) Honestly I can't tell if it's off the charts or if I'm just not used to something so "vibrant". The baby didn't seem to be thrown so that's a plus. He freaks when daddy puts on his old glasses - the kid notices change. It's just a little disappointing. Just once I'd like to have that InStyle moment, the one where you look in the mirror and think, Holy Shit. But in a good way.

Someday my Red Carpet Fairy will come...

We're up to 5 words: Mama, Dada, Cat, Good, and Ba-ba (bottle)!

In my plan to wear the bugger out, yesterday I hauled the babe to a Creative Play class. I was curious to see him around other babies (he gets craaaazy with the excites) but also to see what exactly made it "creative". Have I spent months encouraging uncreative play? Is there such a thing? (Unfortunately my questions will have to wait until next week; the instructor cancelled.) Instead of taking the (increasingly antsy) munchkin home, I plopped him on the floor next to a very affectionate 10 month old and sat down for a chat with a couple of the other mothers. I always get nervous around NYC moms, especially overtly wealthy ones. I always feel like I have something to prove and end up turning into this hammy know-it-all, which is super fun for everyone involved. Plus, mommy chatter always turns to sleep which is dangerous territory for me. NYC attracts the competitive, and when you've got a gaggle of women who've left big, self-affirming jobs to raise tiny, rather non-affirming beings, it's easy to start Mommy Warring. Most mommies fall into one of two camps: the Schedulers (those who are convinced that your child will develop horrible sleep associations unless extensively scheduled, quoters of Dr. Weissbluth, devotees of BabyWise) or Attachers (convinced that your child will develop horrible sleep associations unless in the family bed, quoters of Dr. Sears, devotees of breastfeeding). I have fallen into both camps and think each one has merits, but until Moxie I'd never found anyone who fell into the middle. So when the dreaded "So how is he sleeping?" question came up I hesitated before telling the truth: that we rock him until drowsy (make that drooooooooowsy. I think he's technically still awake) and that we're fine with it, thank you, and when it stops working we'll figure something else out and yes we know we're doing it all wrong but we're really not interested in enduring CIO again. This is usually when it gets ugly (in a nice way. They're always very smiley when they berate) but before I could get through my shtick, Blond Mommy interrupted to say that she rocks her baby to sleep too. Turns out German Mommy rocked her baby too! Yet we'd all been made to feel like we were the only people in the world barbaric (or stupid) enough to still be doing it. Don't get me wrong, the boy has definitely had issues (see: the first 6 months of his life, recent regression) but compared to a lot of other kids I think he does pretty well. He usually sleeps from 6:30 - 5:20, takes two naps of indeterminate length (right now we're going on Hour Two), and he always gets 14-17 hours of sleep a day. (CAN YOU IMAGINE?) Now that I'm wearing him out he goes down in about 5 minutes and sleeps soundly unless teething/crawling/developmental BS takes over. Do I wish I could lay him down in his crib completely awake and just turn on his music and go? Actually, no. I really love sniffing his hair. When he's 3 and weighs 60 lbs we'll cross that bridge, but right now I thoroughly enjoy his sleep-induced affection. (At this last nap he spent at least 3 minutes pressing his drooly, wide open mouth against mine. So cute! So gross!) I love the fact that he has to rub his face all over my chest in order to get comfortable and his desire to pull out every strand of my hair. (Okay, that one I could live without.) It was so nice to finally meet other mothers who feel the same way, and to see the relief and the giddiness (and yes, the smugness) over the fact that we're not actually effing it all up. We hope.

Speaking of effing it all up, anybody catch the Sharon Stone thing? When a judge deems a celebrity unfit to parent, it must be pretty bad. (Robert Downey, Jr. wasn't even considered unfit, and he fell asleep in other peoples' houses.)

Ma-muh. MAAAA-muh.

Firstly (and belatedly) CONGRATULATIONS TO J & S ON THEIR NEW BABY, FELIX FLYNN!

What an awesome name. I love this whole old-timey name resurgence. August, Max, Norah - love 'em. I tried to get my husband to name the boy Finn but he wasn't even going for it.

I need to figure out a better way to do this blogging thing so I don't stay up until 11 like I did last night. (5:20 comes early, folks.) As my gorgeous pal and commenter "Pursued" loves to point out, once the kid hits toddler I'll barely have time to pee. I was a nanny so I have a pretty good idea what I'm in for once the kid is fully mobile. While that age is definitely fun, it's not exactly a walk in the park. (Unless that walk is accompanied by much running and chasing and cries of "Leave it! Leave it! LEAVE IT".) Right now I tend to have time to write once Critter's in bed but I still have dreams of finishing my Work-In-Progress (or hell, Chapter 2) and I'm not sure how I'll find time to do both. Plus there's still that whole "need to find a real career" itch in the back of my brain which means school which means the complete evaporation of free time which means... Seriously, when do you find time to do YOUR stuff? (Meaning non-parental, non-houseworkian, non-work relatedish.) Or do you hire help?

Speaking of, I hear the dulcet tones of a non-napper...