Two, and three.

Behold, one and all, the Bear King! He has been crowned by his lovely daughter Princess Orclette. Damm: "The bear is trying to eat my face." Princess Orclette: "These photo ops take the LONGEST time. Are we done yet?" Princess Orclette: "Ok, seriously, we done yet?"

Last year I signed up for the DailySpark at the behest of my mom, who uses the site extensively. It's completely free and has tons of stuff to do: blogs to read, tools for tracking your nutrition, fitness, water intake, etc, and much, much more. Way too much, in my opinion. I dabbled around with the site for a couple of weeks, but it was just too much given that we were still in the midst of a grueling semester. I have more time during the summer, however, and in an effort to cultivate more things my mom and I do together I decided to take another look. So far I have tracked today's calories and the exercises I have done. At first it's annoying: you have to enter or find caloric values for your food, enter "groupings" (i.e. combinations of foods you regularly eat) and enter your workouts in detail. You can save everything, however, so at this point I point and click to enter my foods and also the strength training and cardio I've done. And I like it. I'm ...

Orclette, very sagely: "We should go there (Kazakstan). We went there when I was a baby." Also: "Maybe my uncle could take me to Argentina when I get big big bigger." And, for your viewing pleasure, since I have no words left to say. She made sure they color coordinated that day. She kept on trying to swipe my hat. She finally succeeded. And the Miniorc being cute.

I knew parenting was going to be hard. I was under no illusions. But the part I most dreaded was when my children got old enough to want to play with me. The early part, while mind-numbingly exhausting, is fairly free of mental interaction with your child. You feed them, get them to sleep, hold them, make eye contact when they're actually awake, and you're good. I'm excellent at performing routine and dull tasks. I was really good at newborn parenting and got lots of compliments. Of course, I'm sure most new mothers get lots of compliments, but still. No, the newborn part didn't phase me. The toddler part and beyond did and does scare me. You see, given the choice I will find myself a nice pleasant spot away from people with a book and stay there. You don't have to talk to me or play with me. In fact, just leave me alone. I'm sure I was different when I was younger, but starting at the age of ten the previous description fits me to a T (until I get done with...

After vanquishing the TMJ symptoms I came down with a bad case of pericoronitis , which is basically an infection of a wisdom tooth that didn't fully come in. Hurts like the dickens, but I found a dentist willing to see me yesterday morning (another said I had to wait until the 20 th , even after I told her about the extreme pain I was having, and obviously I found her help inadequate) so I'm on antibiotics and big doses of ibuprofen. Even Vicodin, which I didn't take until this afternoon. I used to have a martyr complex and wouldn't take anything stronger than regular ibuprofen, but after going through labor (four and two years ago, not anything recent) and major jaw and neck pain I have no hesitations about taking the strong stuff. I discovered this afternoon that I felt like "airy love" and that I was "floating clouds" and that I definitely should not drive or text anybody while under the effects of Vicodin. Part of my reaction was probably the s...

There were three weeks of a semi-break. Damm didn't have school, I was working but not a prohibitive schedule, we had time to relax. And then it was over. Summer school started, my work continued, and relax time got squished. I'm not complaining-we were the ones who decided going back to school was a good thing, and by gum we're gonna see it through. Two more years. Four semesters. In other news: behold, the girl that reads a lot! I'm finishing some of the historical books I picked up this past year, but I'm also diving into Lauren Willig's Pink Carnation series. Historical fun, bodice ripping, with a good dose of modern reality. I love the series, and am eagerly awaiting her next installment (not sure when that's happening). I tried to reread Carol Nelson Douglas's Midnight Louis series but I've discovered that her books are quite a bit darker than I remembered. So that's a fail. Next up is David Gemmel's Troy series; I like his other book...

That's the line I greeted my coworkers with yesterday. Let me hasten to assure you that the meds I'm on were prescribed by a doctor. I just had gotten a wee bit giddy with the lack of pain. You see, for the last week I've had pain in my jaw, neck, and raging headaches. I'm guessing it's TMJ; the doctor has yet to confirm my diagnosis. He wants to wait and see what happens while I'm on the pain reliever thingy and muscle relaxant. I can agree with that; in the past I've had some pretty wacky stress symptoms that eventually went away. I'm hoping that's what this is, otherwise I'm facing a future without gum. I chew gum all the time. Maybe that's what happened to my jaw: it decided to protest the gum chewing. So that was yesterday. I'm still having some symptoms, but I'm trying to relax my face and neck muscles and follow all the advice I can get on how to relieve TMJ. I'm no longer giddy. That's good. People are not used to seei...