I go out for a few hours without the baby, and when I come home she has learned to climb stairs.

Oh the places she'll go! I'll never forget making the bed and glancing out the window to find 18 mo Bobby climbing a ladder up to the roof of our house. He was a stacker too. There was nothing he wouldn't get into. (don't mean to scare you!)

Aren't first children supposed to sit still and read books?

Oh, good grief. My mother is messaging me to talk about my feelings about Israel. (As usual, my feelings are wrong.)

OK, I think I've convinced my mother that I'm not actually advocating for the destruction of the state of Israel.

sj, if only. She is a curious kid, which is FANTASTIC, if nerve-wracking.

I kinda took a nap for most of the day. Actually I grabbed Penny and kind of force-snuggled with her until she succumbed and curled up next to me and let me pet her and was kind of snuggly. Then I feel asleep. I've missed having my cat act like my cat.

Also I was trying to store up ... energy or something for the coming week. No camp for E this week just swimming twice a day so we're going to be his camp.

I also feel impending drama coming up regarding my nephew, my brother and Mom. It's complicated but some of it is that Mom is thrown in the role of 3rd parent but doesn't get a say in things and also she's let my brother come to expect that he can give a few hours notice for say -- needing E to spend the night. And there's other stuff but I just... I don't think it's going to go well.

I hope your family is able to communicate their rules and boundaries and come up with a solution that works for all, askye. It is more than complex when adult children and parents have to navigate these waters.

It's been an ongoing process but about 20 minutes ago Mom told me "E is spending the night tonight."

I don't know why there maybe there was a last minute thing but I know if Mom called and said "oh by the way tomorrow I need to get E early from swim/camp etc because of x" that wouldn't be okay. Maybe I would be able to do it or maybe she'd cancel/change her plans. Which isn't fair but that's up to Mom to decide how she wants to handle it.

Facebook kept giving me ads for a bidet attachment for a toilet, and there were a whole lot of great reviews, and it said it's easy to install and uninstall, and it was relatively cheap, so I ordered one. I forgot to factor in that, when it says "easy to install," it means for someone with decent arm strength, and that the vanity in my bathroom is right next to the toilet, so there's not really a good angle for getting leverage to untwist the thing that needs to be untwisted. I got the first part installed (the part that doesn't require plumbing, but does require removing and reattaching the toilet seat, which took me a couple tries because it isn't attached the way I'm used to them being attached), but then I think I give up for now on the plumbing part of it. (It's fairly straightforward -- turn off the water, unscrew a tube, attach a T-connector, reattach the tube, and attach another tube to the other opening of the T-connector -- but it took me about twenty tries to figure out how to get enough leverage to unscrew the tube. I could re-tighten it pretty quickly, though, so at least there's that.)

I need to remember that being the most handy person in my family doesn't actually mean that I know what I'm doing when it comes to this stuff.

Hil, if you can wait until we get back from vacation, Tim can do that for you. (And it will only make him want one more. The apartment we stayed in on our honeymoon had a bidet attachment on its toilet, and he LOVED it.)