Downton and lack of sleep. With a dinosaur hat. But a healthy urinary tract. Oh, snap (peas)!

The Bullet Version

• Look, it was a hard morning. And then I couldn't find my hat.
• Bedtime: 11:30
• Awake with India: 2:00-4:00 am. Feeding, shushing, rocking, applying gum numbing stuff. Up at 6:30.
• Caffeine: 2 cups of tea. 2 cups of coffee.
• Weird smoothie ingredient of the day: Snap peas.

The Text and Photo Version

Jordan's dinosaur hat: It's is a bit tight and uncomfortable, but better than cold ears. And I quite like the look. I think it says danger! Prehistoric danger! I can totally kick your ass, paleontologically speaking!

Yes. I am a tremendous dork, if that's what you're thinking.

Bedtime: So it's my fault that I stayed up until 11 pm watching the Downton premiere, but you guys, Downton!

I don't know if you've read The Night Circus, but I decided last summer that if I could live between there and Downton, I'd be delighted. Recognizing that both are fictional. And that I'd want my family to come along.

Anyway.

I have to say, I was underwhelmed with the premiere. It was fine, but for me to stay up until 11 when my daughter is sure to rip me out of a sound sleep within three hours, I need spectacular.

For starters, I wanted more wedding. I thought the Matthew inheritance thing was sketch. And Shirley MacLaine's lines weren't clever. She was kind of flat and overdone.

Which is not to say that I don't want Downton playing on a continuous loop at my house, because I still do.

OK. So now let's talk about this one fact that underlines everything in my life at the moment:

MY BABY IS KILLING ME. She has woken up no fewer than three times per night for weeks now. Sometimes more like five or eight times. It is fucking brutal.

She's hungry! And she's teething! And standing! And I am old and tired, oh so tired. Tired like I want to do shots of hard liquor and crawl into a warm, dark hole and sleep for three days straight. Kind of like a little hibernating bear.

Caffeine: See above for explanation.

The smoothie business: So, in an effort to eat better and incorporate more vegetables into our lives, as a present to ourselves, we got a Vitamix for Christmas. We have just begun exploring the possibilities.

I learned immediately that yes, you can have too many beets in your juice. And that if your husband has never eaten a beet in his life, he will be alarmed when it comes out the other end.

Anyway.

Nick has, very kindly and enthusiastically, been making smoothies for us every morning. He gets up before me, or gets up when I'm nursing India, and he gets all kinds of things done before I stagger downstairs. For which I am grateful.


The smoothies, however, are...unconventional.There's always a mystery ingredient that I can't quite place and wouldn't choose, if left to my own devices.

One morning it was an innocuous brownish green. I took a sip, and ooh, it was tart, oh so tart!

"What's in this?"

"Apple, pear, spinach, carrot, banana, blueberries, orange..."

"It's kind of, uh..."

"And cranberries! We have a lot of frozen cranberries! I may have gone overboard."

Good for our urinary tracts, anyway.

Another morning it was cauliflower. Which turns out to be kind of a bold flavor in a beverage.

This morning's tasted kind of like grass clippings. I was trying to put my finger on the flavor.

"Snap peas!"