A Whole Lot of Nothing

I put the kids into some fancy clothes and tried to take some pictures for a Christmas card. It is very hard to get two babies to provide nice smiles at the same time while also sitting still and not crawling towards the camera to try to grab the strap or touch the buttons. I took about 200 pictures and got one picture that is maybe good enough to use. I'll try again in a couple of days. Here is one of the 199 rejects that give a sense of how difficult I'm finding it to get decent pictures.

Plus, why am I even thinking about making Christmas cards? I never send out Christmas cards. I don't even have the addresses of most people in my life. Also, I have always disliked it when I got cards from my friends and saw that they sent photos of their kids but not of themselves. I always want to see what my friends look like, too, not just the kids. And now I'm suddenly trying to take a cute picture of the babies for a Christmas card? Who am I? My pre-baby self would be totally annoyed by something like this.

We are running a search again this year to try to hire a new colleague. This is a difficult process because in my field universities compete for candidates. We have identified the top three candidates and are going to bring them out in the first two weeks of December. This means lots of lunches and dinners out with the candidates, as well as interviewing them and attending their job talks. It means a lot of time outside of the house and a lot of evenings away from the kids. Fortunately, my colleague is the search chair, not me, so he's the one who has to shlep out to the airport and drive candidates back and forth from their hotels.

Today it was about 28 degrees when I took Milo and Nora for a walk. I bundled them up in down coats and hats and mittens pinned to their sleeves so they wouldn't tear them off, and then I stuffed them into fleece sacks that are sort of too small for them in the stroller, and then I put a giant plastic tent over the stroller to shield them from the wind. The whole process took like 15 minutes just to go on a walk, and I'm kind of wondering whether I really want to do this throughout the winter. But we can't stay stuck inside all day, either.

When I asked Nora what an owl says, she says "Who! Who!"

Milo has a 3rd tooth. Nora still has zero teeth. I hope there isn't some rare disorder in which people just don't develop teeth.