It’s late again but here I am, pounding out words before the Doolies calls me for anime time.

I had a bad headache today. I woke up with a small headache that I figured I’d shake off. Last night was no better (and no worse) than previous nights on the Dinosaur front. He does seem to be sleeping better during the day. Hopefully that’ll translate to night time soon.

Tiger was awake already playing in her crib when I woke. She’s pretty good in the morning. She rarely cries or screams (even when we manage to sleep in), and finds ways to entertains herself until we make it to her room. She built a small library in her bed as she keeps adding more books. She likes to look through them and make up stories, such as telling Llama Llama or Llama Llama’s doll or Elmo or Cookie Monster that it’s time for bed and they shouldn’t be sad while she covers them up with her blanket. She’s sweet in her first-born bossy way.

Stand by: I had to check my credit card website to see whether Doolies was successful in registering us for Naginata. (She was and I’m back.)

After changing her, I set her down and she ran into our room to greet the Doolies and Dinosaur. After straightening up a bit, I met her in the room and started taking her down for breakfast while Doolies fed Dinosaur. It took Tiger a few tries to make it past the top of the stairs as she kept going back for one more mommy hug before breakfast. Doolies finally bribed her with the promise of applesauce and she happily stomped down the stairs holding my hand.

I have two theories for the headache today. The first happened after I started Tiger on her breakfast. Her first food is usually “daddy yogurt,” which is a Greek yogurt flavored with honey. Before she started insisting on daddy yogurt, she ate Greek yogurt with strawberries or blueberries. Once she saw me eating the honey one, she decided she only wanted daddy yogurt (a less conceited father may say that she wanted it because it’s sweeter than the fruit one). Tiger has a great memory and balked at my offer of yogurt. She grabbed her blue bowl off the shelf and started yelling “applesauce, applesauce” until I filled it up, and she carried it to her small table.

She was happily sitting eating her applesauce out of her blue bowl while I started her egg boiling and put up the water for oatmeal. It was the next part that may have been the source of my headache. I turned on my coffee maker and hit the rinse button. Halfway through the rinse I saw that the water reservoir was empty. I refilled it and then popped in a pod for espresso. It turns out that it’s best to re-rinse the machine before hitting the espresso button. My espresso cup was only half filled. (Actually, I don’t have an espresso cup and instead use a small tea cup that Doolies’s parents bought us on our first trip to Taiwan. It’s brown and sparkly, and after we browsed the tea pot/tea cup sets at a department store and picked out the shiny one, her mother commented that she wasn’t surprised that we went for the tourist one. So much for thinking I had good taste.) I drank the espresso with the fear that it may not have the proper amount of caffeine to fight through my morning headache.

After Tiger finished her bowl of applesauce, three-quarters of a hard-boiled egg, half a daddy yogurt (I helped her by finishing the other half), and a few spoonfuls of oatmeal, Doolies came down Dinosaur. We were trying to figure out what to eat, and she convinced me that French Toast sounded good. This brings us to my second theory.

I opened my trusty Cook’s Illustrated website and picked out a new recipe for French Toast for two. They solved the soggy problem of most French Toast by recommending that the challah be placed in a 200-degree oven for fifteen minutes before adding the batter and frying. That part worked. The French Toast was quite tasty, if you enjoy restaurant-style French Toast. Doolies was not that impressed. My old, trusty The Joy of Cooking recipe called for a much egg-ier French Toast (Cook’s Illustrated required less than a full beaten egg for four pieces of toast), which Doolies seemed to prefer.

There was a purpose behind my recipe discussion. Oh, yes, theory number two: the carbohydrates in the French Toast did it with a wrench in the boardroom.

The headache lasted most of the day until Doolies brought me back sushi and pumpkin fried rice for dinner. I had planned to join her but decided my head could not take the trip. Now it’s past time for anime watching. I did have other consternations to share, but that’ll have to wait until tomorrow.