I have so many things to blog about, I don’t even know where to start. The site is back up. That’s big news around here. I spent the last two days attached to my laptop with one hand and the baby with the other.

The hand that was attached to my laptop was typing into yahoo instant messenger to my new host couple who are the nicest people on the planet. They are not only hosting this site but they also walked me through step by step how to modify wordpress templates. Believe me, that’s a lot because I don’t understand a flip of CSS. I think C.S.S. stands for Crappy Site Stuff. But actually CSS is really cool and not crappy at all, except that I don’t understand it and I feel like a bungling fool. There are still so many things to fix. Like you’re probably wondering where all the spy emblems went. I still have them, don’t worry. I just have to figure out where to put them. The comments are saved too… they just haven’t decided to show up yet.

The other hand (that wasn’t attached to my laptop) was holding the baby to my boob. That was almost more of challenge than learning CSS. I should draw a cartoon of all the positions I go through to try to get Baby Bug to latch on. It could be like a kama sutra book but without the erotica.

We’ve tried it on the floor, we’ve tried it on my desk, we’ve tried the football hold and the cradle hold. We’ve tried it with the boppy and without the boppy. We’ve tried it in the dark, we’ve tried it in the light. We’ve tried it in every room in the house! It’s no use. When she makes up her mind that she’s going to be badger baby, there is just nothing you can do but wait it out. It’s almost like she gets traumatized by one failed attempt to latch on and then every single thing I try after that makes her scream because she’s remembering how awful failure is.

I feel so bad when she’s upset at me. They say you can’t spoil a baby before they are three months and it’s okay to pick them up when they cry. They say picking a baby up when it cries teaches them that they can trust you. So I’m thinking that Baby Bug is learning that she can’t trust me because every time I pick her up and try to nurse her, she has some kind of trauma. And if it’s not that, it’s the tummy ache that I must have given her by eating broccoli or something. I know she won’t remember this and she’s still learning that she can trust me but I still give myself major guilt trips every time she cries. I guess this is just part of motherhood.

But this post isn’t all about Baby Bug and our many nursing tribulations. It’s really supposed to be a lengthy thank you and ode of adoration to the Stranahans. They have been so wonderful to me these last few days. I thought I was indebted to the last guy who hosted this site for me. Now I really know the meaning of indebtedness. They stayed inside on a perfectly nice sunny day, probably ignored their kid’s pleas to go outside and play ball, and helped me put this mess of a website back together piece by piece. “Can I have three columns? No, can I have two? Can I put my archives in scroll bars? Can I have an image map in my masthead” etc. etc. etc… My requests are endless and of course I still have a wish list a mile long.

And another thing! One of those perfectly nice sunny days was the wife’s birthday. Get this: on her birthday, she chose to spend the day transferring files from my old ftp site to my new ftp site. Nice birthday present… um, to me! I know. I should be banished to a corner somewhere.

So do you think they will let me pay them for all their hours and hours of labor and patience with me? Not to mention server space and bandwidth? NO! I have to be creative and think up some sneaky way to thank them. I will. I have to.