Instead of transitions between topics, today we shall have bullet points

• I have had a cold, a miserable conglomeration of low-level discomforts that absorbed all my energy and thoughts.  At its worst, my teeth ached from the sinus pressure and I felt so feverish I could not eat my dinner and had to take a cold shower instead.  It is passing now and as I return to good health, I am reflecting that one claim to fame that blogging will have is that it has motivated more words written about the common cold than any other cultural phenomenon in the history of civilization.  That, and more photos of onions being chopped when everyone does cooking/recipe blogs.
• Violet had her 2-month check-up last week and it turns out she is a HUGE GIANT BABY.  Well, at least compared to Grace at that age.  She weighed 12 lbs 10 oz, over 2 lbs more than Grace did at 2 months.  Yay, Violet!  She also got her first big round of immunizations, which was no fun at all.  It started with the oral rotavirus vaccination which made her choke and splutter in desperate, confused fury ("what is this?! this is not delicious warm breastmilk!") and moved on to 4 shots in her tender chubby thighs.  It was pretty bad, actually, and she was much harder to comfort than Grace ever was.  Poor little creature...
• Speaking of Violet, she takes a pacifier, unlike her older sister.  We waited a few weeks to try the pacifier with Grace like the breastfeeding experts tell you to and she was never accepting of it.  With Violet, she and I were by ourselves in the hospital on our second night and she wanted to nurse like CRAZY, for hours and hours on end (well, that's what it seemed like in my exhausted state), as she worked on bringing my milk supply in; I ended up calling the nurse for a pacifier so I could go to the bathroom without her screaming.  And there you have it-- a baby who takes a pacifier.  Some days I am glad that she does, and some days I am not glad and regret that I ever gave it to her, mostly because I suspect it has made nursing somewhat harder.  Overall, I can't decide if the balance is positive or negative.  Be that as it may, I now have to keep track of the darned things, at least until I gather the gumption to wean her from them.  Pacifiers seem to waft in and out of existence in puzzling places around the house and often seem to disappear entirely, or to be all in one room together when I am at the other end of the house.  I am a pretty firm believer in conservation of mass and know that they must be SOMEWHERE but I am often at a loss as to where exactly that is.  Maybe they are quantum tunneling in and out of our universe.
• Today Rob is leaving for a research conference in Georgia related to the grant he got (this is the grant that pays for his fellowship research and then a couple years of faculty time after that). After being gone for 4 days, he returns home for 3 and then jaunts off to ANOTHER conference in DC, this one for 5 days for his medical specialty.   As you may suspect, I have some trepidation about these trips and being on my own with the two wee ones for the first time.  The days can stretch out very long when there is no one coming home at the end of the day to chat with, to hold the baby for a little while, to entertain the 3-year-old for a bit.  Times like these remind me that raising children really is a two-person job and all the people out there who are doing it on their own have undertaken no small thing.  I shall reflect on how fortunate I am to have the partner that I do and try to keep Grace's TV time from spiraling out of control.