I've had lots of thoughts that I believed would turn into blog posts this week, but none of them did. So, for your enjoyment, the crap going on in my head, in my favorite writing style.

• I read The Tenth Circle and I found it to be incredibly meh. I know lots of people who love Jodi Picoult. Should I try another or move on?
• I made the mistake of looking Salem up on Petfinder. He hasn't found a home yet. I'm desperately sad about it.
• Alliclaus loves timeout. Maybe too much. We don't really use it for punishment, as she rarely does something that warrants that. Mostly we use it to help her calm down when she's worked herself up too much. But lately, if we say no to something she wants, she'll show the beginning of a tantrum and then walk herself to her room and sit on the timeout chair. Should I be worried?
• Mimiclaus was the last of us to get the illness that we passed around the family upon our return from San Diego. She also seems to be the person who's got it the worst and for the longest. My doctor's office made it very clear that babies get, like, nine colds a year, but Alliclaus never really got sick like this while she was nursing. Her well-baby check isn't until the 19th, so I can't decide whether or not to take her in.
• Mimiclaus is sick. No one is sleeping. Send help.
• Help is, in fact, on its way. My mom comes out to help us through my two-week intensive this Monday. She doesn't do overnight childcare, but I'm thinking I might be able to occasionally squeeze in a nap.
• Oh my god. My two-week intensive. The professor has scheduled content mastery exams over the reading for each night. And the reading is 120 pages of doctrinal history. Each night. I did one day's worth of reading and it took me four hours. I do not have this kind of time. Particularly since the class is in the evenings. I'll have to try to do the reading during the daytime, when my children are awake. Un-freaking-likely is what I'm saying.
• I weighed myself this morning. And after a week of Weight Watchers-esque eating and occasional exercise, I lost seven pounds. It's all water weight, to be sure, but there's really nothing like that first week loss to motivate you, is there? A couple of you mentioned being lifestyle-change buddies. I'll email you directly, but I think that would be great. Let's think of how we should do it.
• I would like, momentarily, to make excuses publicly about exercising. Dude! Exercising when you have a baby is HARD! In Kansas City lately, it's really only been cool enough to get out to walk or run in the early morning, but Mimiclaus does not sleep at night. It's all I can do to drag myself out of bed in time for work, much less an hour earlier so that I can get out and walk. Which is to say, I'm in the market for an at-home workout option. Anyone have a particular DVD they love?

Okay, that's it. Not that it's anything unusual, but I'm not so sure how much I'll be around these parts for the next three weeks. School is calling and since I'm in my last year, I need to keep that GPA up for thesis defense. I'll be back, though, hopefully with lots of baby pictures!

Huh. It's the most I've ever weighed when not pregnant. I have 82 pounds to lose. That sure is a lot. In the past, I would have cried about it, but at this point, I feel almost outside my body. I don't know how I let it get to this point. I'm not sure when my life made the turn that brought me to this point.

I've made a seemingly infinite number of promises to myself that I would change my lifestyle and lose the weight, but they've never seemed to stick. Some of that, sure, can be credited to two pregnancies in as many years, but I also have to at least consider the fact that I haven't taken changing my lifestyle seriously.

So, no promises now. I'm just going to change my lifestyle, eating well and exercising for a year. When I get to the end of that year, I'll see where I am. If I'm unhappy with my weight because I haven't lost it, I'll consider whether or not I need medical help to get past this. If I've lost weight but am still unhappy about it, I'll seek help with why I can't forgive my own imperfections. But hopefully, I'll have lost some weight and will have changed my self-perception at the same time.

I'm not a fat acceptance advocate, but I also refuse to allow myself any longer to believe that being fat makes me a bad person. I'm certainly fat, but I'm a caring, compassionate individual who isn't valued by myself or anyone who matters based on the number on the scale. I want to be thinner, but I refuse to make promises I may be unable to keep simply so I can beat myself down more about something that is clearly difficult for me. So here goes. Your tips for healthy weight loss are welcome.

Shortly before we left for San Diego and Josue and Sarah's wedding, Andres received some distressing news about his job. And since I am disinclined to go into specifics about his employment situation on the Internet, I will have to leave it at simply that his company is undergoing a major downsize and that his job will possibly be affected. He may keep his job, but we may have to relocate in order for him to do so. Or he may simply be severed. In either case, we know something is coming, but we don't know what and we aren't sure when. It has been, needless to say, a stressful couple of weeks.

I have two semesters of school left, only one of which requires me to continue living in Kansas City. So when our lease is up in January, it would be an ideal time to move if the job situation remains rocky or we decide to leave the company. But in the mean time, we're in planning limbo.

To add to the complication of our inability to make a plan at this point is the fact that our trip home for the wedding really confused our feelings about a future city in which to settle. We'd been pretty set on Chicago, but had recently begun considering other major cities, namely Boston, Seattle and San Francisco. But San Diego offers something that no other city really offers. Help with our kids. Not in the "free babysitting" sense, although that is certainly there as well. But just a genuine sense that there are people there who love our children and are eager to care for them. In some ways, Chicago has a bit of that. But Sarah and Josue are very career-oriented and, truth be told, while it would be nice to leave the girls with them and go out on a date, we would more likely spend our time trying to find a babysitter so we could go out with them.

When we first moved to Kansas City, I was desperately lonely. Over time, though, I have filled my time (mostly with children, I confess), but I didn't realize how much I missed the support of geographically close family until this trip home. There are hundreds of reasons why moving back is less than ideal, but none of them seem to be able to surpass the one reason it seems perfect. We miss our family.

In some ways, it seems like it would be simple to just decide that San Diego is where we should move. But beyond the practical reasons not to (the high cost of living, the family drama that comes with living nearby), Andres and I are struggling with the idea of moving away from Josue and Sarah. While we don't live in the same city now, we see each other many times a year, because traveling back and forth Kansas City to Chicago is sure as hell cheaper than flying to San Diego and back. Moving to San Diego ensures that we would see them only a couple times of year at best and when they come to San Diego, we are far from being the primary people they want to visit. Being the Midwest branch of our family has made us all closer than we might have been had only some of us been out here. And I know Andres feels the same reservations I do about losing that particular aspect of family life.

All that to say, I've been stressed. And a blank entry page was daunting. I still don't know that I'll be able to come up with blog posts that aren't about Andres' work, since that's a lot of what's on our minds these days, but I think I'm going to try to process the other things going on with me (there are other things?) here so that I don't look back on this time and wonder what the hell was going on.

Your reward for reading all that? Pictures!

Alliclaus' pigtails with my Dad

She seems happy here, but moments later a fly dared to be in the outdoors near her and we had a complete meltdown.

We went to the San Diego Zoo and there were lots of grey baby flamingoes. I love them!

This guy was awesome! He did this pose at least a dozen times while we stood outside the enclosure. I'm bummed about the glare I got off the glass.

Alliclaus was very excited about the ocean - not so much the sand.

During the rehearsal brunch, Andres kept Alliclaus happy with crayons...

...while Josue spent some quality time with Mimiclaus.

Sarah's jewelry, which her aunt handmade for the wedding, was much more stunning in person.

Oh, look! Here it is from the back!

The guys stole my camera at some point and I promised I would post to the Internet anything they left on there, sure they would leave embarrassing pictures they would be ashamed for the Internet to see. Instead, the left a decent picture of Andres' old fraternity brothers. Things have certainly changed since college.

Well, not that much.

I'm just popping in to say that we are home from a ten-day trip back to San Diego for Sarah and Josue's wedding. There will surely be posts following about the things we did while we were there, but for now, I just wanted to let y'all know that we are back to hot, hot Kansas City.

I have so much to get done this week, including getting out a prize to my contest winner, unpacking a ridiculous amount of luggage, prepping the apartment for my mom's upcoming visit, all while nursing myself and all members of my family from whatever mysterious illness we all seem to have contracted.

See you tomorrow.

or, I think I might have given my daughter the wrong name.

Since I outed the girls' names a few entries back, I thought I would discuss something that has been a topic of discussion around these parts lately. It appears that we may have given Mimiclaus the wrong name.

Let me go back.

Alliclaus was named after Sarah and Naomi's mom, who died my senior year of college. Her name was Joy. And since the Spanish word for Joy is "Gozo," we opted instead to use the Spanish word for happiness. They do not, strictly speaking, mean the same thing, but they do elicit the same response, one I love.

"She is her name."

Joy got that a lot and I'm pleased to say that, at least among Spanish speakers, Alliclaus does as well.

In any case, once we gave our first child a virtue name, we were inclined to do the same for other children as well. So while I was pregnant with Mimiclaus, we came up with other virtue names we liked. Hope (Esperanza), Charity (Caridad), Faith (Fe). But we settled on a short list: Peace or Justice. And we couldn't decide. We like to see the babies before we finalize a name decision, so we waited.

Things were very easy with Mimiclaus' delivery. And she went right to the breast, which was something about which I had been deeply concerned after extensive problems with Alliclaus in that department. It seemed that Peace was the most appropriate name.

I was wrong.

Because, you see, Alliclaus' earliest days were difficult. I was sick my entire pregnancy. I had a 19-hour labor and a 4th degree tear. But she was a delightful baby. She slept easily and was happy to sit in a bouncy seat or be held. She didn't express a strong preference for anything, really. She was an easy baby.

So, while Peace does describe my pregnancy and delivery with Mimiclaus, I believe she is perfectly described as Justice. Because since coming home, Mimiclaus has been quite the opposite of Alliclaus. She has a strong preference about EVERYTHING. She wants to be held - by me - all day long. She sleeps only when she has cried in our arms for hours.

On the plus side, she's mastering gross motor skills on the standard timetable, somthing Alliclaus never did. I say that to make it clear that her justice swings in both directions.

What really kills me about this whole thing is that Andres didn't want to name Mimiclaus Justice for this very reason. He would say, "But Alliclaus was so easy. Do we really want to tempt fate?"

And we learned, as Oedipus did, that you cannot escape your fate. (And we don't even believe in fate.) We were going to have a difficult baby no matter the name we chose.

Still. We rarely get the "She is her name" comment about Mimiclaus. Peaceful is not how most people would describe her. And I wonder. If we ever have another, what exactly would Justice be for this situation? Could I hope for another easy baby? Because, I gotta tell you, having the easy baby first is not the way to go.

I wish I had thought of this question as a comment prompt for the previous post, but I didn't. Inquiring minds want to know, though.

Bagels: sweet or savory?

So Swistle decided we should all start a Pay-It-Forward Bomb, wherein we would host a contest on our blogs and then the winners would host a contest and on and on infinitum. Well, I am on board.

So this contest is open, yo. Leave a comment to enter and I will pick a random winner of a prize as yet to be determined. And I give good prize (just saying). Contest closes on July 4 at (um) 12 noon Central Time. If you don't have a blog, you can still totally participate. Swistle will explain how.

Don't forget to also enter all the other contests listed on that entry. You have many chances to win! Many different prizes! And many opportunities to also give gifts to total strangers. Good luck.