Holy monkey.

It's beautiful. My new laptop is absolutely gorgeous and mine - all mine! Bwahahahahaha! Normally I don't get all that jazzed up about new purchases. There are certain things you need like clothing and toiletries - you know, so you don't want around naked and stinky. But I totally splurged on myself and got a new laptop to make it easier for me to write. Our previous setup was my desktop downstairs in the basement. It's right next to the cats' room which, while not a horrid place, means that you have cats constantly trying to climb on you, you can't hear anything going on upstairs (like little kids waking from sound sleep) and it's not very comfortable because we still have a card table instead of a desk.

Plus, my laptop, while certainly NOT top of the line, is the first computer I've bought since college that I haven't had to build myself. And it's pretty. I plan to play tonight. I've been too tired, what with being sick and not eating, but today is the first day I've felt nearly normal and have been able to eat stuff other than minute amounts of bread and pretzels with water. So I plan to eat moderate amounts of non-bread items and install software all night.

Even better, our son seems to be growing into his sleep. Meaning I can take him to his room, we'll lay down and read a story, I'll turn off the lights and recite another story or sing, I kiss him, say "Go to sleep. I'm right down the hall if you need me. I love you. Night, night." And he stays there and actually goes to sleep! And even more shocking - he stays asleep, or has for two nights in a row. Two nights does not a solution make, but this has been a growing trend over the past few weeks, with stops and starts and regressions, but clear progress all the same.

I'm happy about this for two reasons:

a) The obvious reason - more sleep equals happier me, happier husband, hopefully more nookie and free time. Plus not having to stay with Ragsy for a frustrating hour and a half while he grudgingly conks out is absolutely wonderful and makes me dread bedtime far less and actually look forward to it.

b) The not-so-obvious, selfish reason (and this is going to sound absolutely horrible) - we didn't have to let him cry and all those people who said we were doing it wrong can kiss my butt and back off on commenting on my horrid parenting skills. So there!