It's been a house of illness here lately. The worst so far has been Erin, who has been running a mild fever (between 98.9 and 99.2) with ibuprofen in her system. 50% of her sentences today have been one of these four: "I'm so cold," "I'm bored," "My head hurts," and "I miss Mommy." Very pitiful, huh? But I've been lovin' on her and doing my best. We played about 20 games of hangman, which she loves, and watched a Strawberry Shortcake movie.

Jill kept us better entertained when she got home from school. At dinner she sang a wonderful made-up-on-the-fly song (she does this a lot) about how our bodies work work work to push the bad germs out and we have to eat healthy food so we have healthy arms and legs and heads and armpits. Her songs stretch out for lonnnnng minutes of interesting improvisation.

Erin misses Kim because Kim left last night at 9:00 to help one of her doula clients. It's now been more than 27 hours, and I just got another text message from Kim saying that her client is going in to a C-section. That's a very disappointing outcome for Kim and her client, but I'm sure that the outcome of the outcome (the baby) will be awesome. I am exremely proud of Kim; I know she makes a huge difference for the people she helps, and they are always profoundly grateful to have her there. When she gets home, she will be totally. worn. out.

Both last night and tonight I stayed up too late, working on prints. I ran six more of the first color last night, six tonight, for a total of 22. I will not run more because I'm really running low on white and I just plain tired of it. I want to move to the next stage. I just hope that I don't ruin any of them with the next colors. I've improved my inking ability, my registration technique, and my consistency all around, I think; therefore, I should at least be able to get as many of these as I did of the giraffe prints (of which I had 16 total).

Here's a photo from tonight.