This post is brought to you by teething, and by the letter Z.

Teething is the process by which hard, calcified structures slowly erupt from your tender flesh over a prolonged period of time. Many who’ve gone through this process swear that it has some eventual helpful end, and that the resulting shards of calcified material protruding from one’s gums are useful. Most of these people have, mercifully, forgotten the experience of the process.

The letter Z is a symbol commonly used in triplicate to communicate what I have recently missed. I mean sleep, not snoring. I’m probably snoring enough. Why am I missing sleep? Well. In case it wasn’t obvious…

The baby is teething again. The sleep training I was working so hard on at this time last year fell by the wayside when we all got COVID (right around now actually, yikes)… and then spent the next seven or eight months mostly ill (babies are amazing). That’s left us less prepared than we’d realized; we just started night weaning, and it’s going badly. We’re reassessing our approach after several consecutive nights of being awake with a screaming baby for one to two hours in the middle of the night.

On the plus side, my baby is as cuddly and adorable and friendly as ever when he isn’t screaming in the middle of the night.

In other news, my “is this post-Lyme syndrome?” journey continues. Weird pain, tingling sensations, stiffness, aches, etc. continue to ebb and flow and ping-pong around my body. It’s an adventure that I could do without, not least because I still don’t know what’s actually causing it. Honestly, I think my best hope is that it is post-Lyme syndrome; at least then I’m dealing with diagnosable (if weird) neuropathy instead of undiagnosable neuropathy.

Anyway, like I said last week remember that this Friday, September 4^th, is Bandcamp Friday. And don’t play with ticks.