Oh no! Yesterday I pulled a muscle in my neck while headbanging with the kids. I can only turn my head to the right like 30 degrees. How long is this going to last? Do you know, internets? How do I make it better faster? I am supposed to do the Danskin triathlon on Sunday, and I have Goals To Meet. I want this to be my foray back into real athletics, after a long, child bearing induced absence. This has to get better! I have been having so much fun training for the Danskin, and hope to complete a longer triathlon in a few months. It's nice not being pregnant.

We're having a fabulous summer, and I am looking forward to fall. Every day we do something fun and interesting with friends in the morning, and then after naps spend 2 or 3 hours flip flopping from the wading pool to the playground, to the wading pool, to the playground, in the big cool park near here. I got, ahem, injured during yesterday's post nap dance party, so we stayed home instead of walking the mile to the park, and got a little preview of fall, I think. We baked and fingerpainted and played with trucks and boats. Good times. Except the finger painting was done nekkid in the bath tub, and Simon is far too stalwart a young man to just go with the slippery flow. He would stand up on the side, and the bottom of the bathtub had basically zero friction to it. Even with me holding his hands, his expression evoked a fussy British governess accidentally ending up in the Woodstock mud pit. Only more crying because he's a baby.

We have up until this point avoided television for CH, but on our road trip to Canada* we allowed her to watch a video (Big Bird goes to China - the border crossing was almost two hours! What else could we do? Sigh. Don't answer.). I actually don't know if she recognizes most numbers**, but apparently 9 is seared deeply in her brain. Sesame Street is on channel 9 at 9 am. The TV is in the playroom, where usually she has free reign, and also I don't always hear her because it's on the other end of the house from the kitchen (I'm usually cleaning up breakfast/putting together diaper bag snacks for the day around then. God how scintillating. Aren't you glad you read this parenthetical?). She likes to turn the TV off and on, just to get a little shot of toddler power there, and apparently one time just after vacation when I was putting Simon down she saw her hero, Big Bird flicker on. So now whenever I put Simon down for nap she gets all agitated, runs to the kitchen to look for a 9 on the oven clock, and tries to sneakily turn the TV on and get it to 9 (PBS). I am not letting her watch it, but I gotta say I am not positive this battle is worth fighting. It is Sesame Street after all, and it has already taught her to tell time (well, at least for two hours during the day- 9 am and 9 pm). But it's frighteningly addictive. I'm a bit put off by that.

As is not immediately obvious by the amount of internet playing and science experiment brainstorming I am doing, I am hosting my book club here tonight, have no food for them, and have not finished the book. Also it is 9 am. Time to police the TV.

* I hope it is obvious from the, uh, sparsely texted photos that we had a wonderful vacation. I love having the kids around grandparents for an extended length of time, so they can really get to know each other. And I can't rave enough about having a kitchen and separate rooms for naps when you are on vacation with small children.

**OOoh! Maybe a good science experiment for this afternoon. What Numbers Can Claire Helen Recognize? She can count to whatever, but doesn't usually seem to connect "counting" with the symbols on a page.