the source of sanity, the Marathon Nap

Julia is taking one of those marathon naps that is lasting so long I have to get up periodically and make sure she's still breathing. I even risked waking her to take a picture. She's been a needy little girl lately. Pretty much ever since we got home, she's been very reluctant to play on her own, and instead she hangs on to my knee while I eat or type or read or cook. When I put her on my lap, she stiffens and squirms to get down. When I put her down she wails like I've pinched her. When I stand up and carry her around on my hip she is happy and content. Since our house is about 10 feet by 10 feet this gets old for me fast. She is content in the great outdoors too, so I've started adding a morning walk to our routine. Unfortunately this has also coincided with bad weather, so our walks have been confined to close to the house. The river has finally frozen solid, so we have new territory to explore. This clingyness could be a sign of the eminence of new teeth erupting, but she won't let me near her mouth to see. This could also be a sign that I've caused her significant emotional damage by taking her traveling for a month. Or this could be a sign that I've raised either an insecurely attached child or a child with avoidant attachment or ambivilant attachment or disorganized attachment (I'm learning lots in my psychology class)  Or maybe she's on drugs. I learned that phrase from Kaethe's excellent parenting blog http://dearthisbe.blogspot.com. Why wait until she's 16 to use that reasoning when it applies so well to her behavior now?
Most of this I doubt though. Maybe the teething excuse is valid, or maybe this is just a phase.
We finally had a date night. We sent Julia over to Taylor and Angela's house for an hour last night. Dave and I ate chocolate cake with strawberry sauce and talked, mostly about whether we thought Julia was crying, bawling or wailing at that very moment. When our hour was over, we ran over to collect our poor abandoned baby only to find that she barely noticed that we were gone, didn't cry at all and had a great time playing. So I guess date night was a success and will hopefully be repeated often now that we can release our fears of having a traumatized child.
I am typing away on my new laptop that my sweet husband purchased for me which is a small miracle considering that 48 hours ago Julia dumped about a cup of water straight onto the keyboard. The laptop promptly shut itself off with a decisive "zoop" and I went into a panic thinking of all the photos I'd probably lost forever, not to mention all my class assignments that I hadn't submitted yet and not to mention having to tell Dave that I'm responsible for another laptop's demise (ask me sometime about how I had Dave's laptop run over by a bus.)  Turns out all my fears were for naught. I propped it tent-like upside down above our heater and let two days go by before powering it back up and it's like nothing ever touched it. Praise Be!

Molten Chocolate Cake from Martha Stewart
4 Tbsp unsalted butter, room temperature
1/3 cup white sugar
3 large eggs
1/3 cup flour
1/4 tsp salt
8 oz really good bittersweet chocolate, melted

arrange a baby sitter.
preheat oven to 400.
butter 6 muffin tin cups or 6 ramkins. Dust with white sugar.
Beat butter and sugar until fluffy. Beat in eggs one at a time. Beat in flour and salt. Beat in melted chocolate. Pour into cups and bake 8-10 minutes, until still jiggly in the center. Let cool 10 minutes. Turn out onto serving plate.

Strawberry Rum sauce of my own invention
Thaw frozen strawberries or use fresh.
puree strawberries until you have about a cup of liquid. Add a splash of rum and a drop of vanilla or better yet, make your own vanilla rum by adding a vanilla bean to a small bottle of rum and letting it sit for a month, shaking occasionally. Add a splash of that. Add brown sugar to taste.
Pour over chocolate cakes and eat!

Julia woke up so fussy that I had to wrestle her down to check, and it's true, tooth number 5 is making an entrance! I guess she's not on drugs yet...