This is my best friend and his name is caffeine...

and without him I would be lost. Yes, I admit I am a total Coke addict. Hey, at least it's the legal kind! My best friend S got me hooked on canned Coke early this year and it's all I drink now when it comes to sodas. I try to limit myself but thus far my big "limit" is 3 cans a day. That's probably terrible, mostly because that's a lot of sugar, but quite frankly I don't care! One of the few benefits of being an adult is that I can eat and drink what I want, when I want, and nobody can stop me. Rebelling from my youth much?

What's really funny is that we don't let our kids have caffeine (except on very rare occasions like a party) - with the exception of Coral. I let her have little sips of my soda all the time and don't think much of it, and yet I'd never let Alexei and Ibis do that. Mark and I were discussing this yesterday and we're both guilty of it; we finally decided that since she came home after six weeks in the NICU on prescription caffeine, it just doesn't bother us. When a four pound infant is on 16mg of caffeine a day (the equivalent of 1/3 of a can of Coke), what harm can it do after that? She'd have to drink about 3 cans of soda now to equal the same body weight percentage of caffeine as she was getting as an infant. I guess a sip now and then, or whatever passes through my breastmilk to Hobie, just isn't a big deal anymore. Amazing how experience can put things into perspective.

Coral at a month old, about 3 pounds and still in the NICU

Why do I need caffeine anyway, you ask? After being awake all night long with an almost-eight-month-old who nursed FOURTEEN times in one night - yes, you read that right! - I'm not going to make it through the day any other way. And we have so much to accomplish; packing, packing, more packing, and then there's packing. Did I mention packing? So far I have packed up maybe 25 boxes, and Mark managed to roll up our living room rug and fold it and park it in front of the door to the front porch (our new box storage zone). Now you have to drag the rug to the side to open the door. But good thing we got that off the floor! :P And it's yucky and rainy outside. That's not helping our cooperative spirits or our pep.

Oh, and school starts tomorrow! You won't want to miss our first day! I'm still pretty excited about it. I think 2 out of 3 of my students are also excited; the other one is busy grumbling about today being his last day of summer. I have a feeling I may need to exceed my Coke limit tomorrow!