There Goes My Nomination

On a day when it was way too hot for sane people to be out of doors, I had the brilliant idea to take Little One to a carnival. In the full, unmitigated sunshine. This should have been Her first clue that maybe I wasn't quite full of the good-mommy mojo that day. She should have been a little wary.
But instead She bounced around the jumping castles, all full of youthful innocence and trust. Poor sap. Then, when She was getting a bit pink from the heat, I took Her into the shade.
For a pony ride! What little girl doesn't love a pony ride?! She was a little unsure about the funky helmet. She had never touched an actual horse before. But, again, blindly investing all Her faith into Her mother, She went with it. The withered guy with the cane, behind the pony-table said: "well...ok, but you have to hold onto Her, the whole time." I sort of brushed him off. "Of course!" I said. Of course. So we started off, Little One wondering what the heck was going on, and me cooing beside Her. But the saddlebag was getting in my way, so I asked the pony-walker if I could switch sides. And I did. And just as I had grabbed Little One and was about to turn and walk, the pony walker decided I was ready. She walked. The pony, walked. It stepped on my foot. Do you know that silver shiny sandals are really cute but not the best choice for agriculturally-based activities? Huh. It broke my toe. In that instant, I let go of Little One. Because apparently, when the chips are down, I choose my pinky toe over my first-born and only child. Good to know! I let go, and in that same instant, Little One sat right up, like, "hey, ma, where'd you go?" And then. She fell. Off. The. Pony. The poor thing cried. Her father swooped in to assess the damage, I was on the ground. With my pinky-stinking-toe. The withered man hobbled up all mad, people gasped. The pony stood there, thinking, "I hate my day job". We apologetically handed back the helmet and limped away. Little One has a small bruise from the helmet, and She very well may have a pathological fear of horses for the rest of Her life, but She is otherwise ok. My toe is fat and purple and ugly, thanks for asking, because sometimes people get what they deserve. Which, in this case, is most likely NOT going to be a commemorative plaque for "Mother of the Year".

At least he can admit it.

Heard tonight, at BATHTIME:

C: What's going on in here?!

Little One: (Big chicken-y grin) "Chik!"

J: "...She said She was hungry again..."

C: Mmm, mmm. That girl plays you like a fiddle.

J: Yeah, well. You and She both.

Mens

Heliel: male, 9 years old, from down the street. Slicing shallots for dinner:
"So C? Where did you say you guys are going on Friday?"

C: Little One and I are going to New Mexico.

Heliel: What about J? He's not going too?

C: No, he can't come with us.

Heliel: "How come?"

C: "He has to work all weekend."

Heliel: "Sssoooo...you're going all by yourself and Little One?"

C: "Yup".

Heliel: "Say what?!" (rolls his eyes, shakes his head) "Pft. Mens."

The Coolest on a Hot Day

I just want to give a little shout-out.

To J.

To J who was the only dad


The only grown-up period

To actually get into the fountain

In all his clothes

And get soaked

And have fun

And play

Play with his baby

Holla J.

I'll Take S'more Anytime

Let me ask you. What is not to love about a big, roiling pot full of these things, all stirred up together:
Heat
Humidity
Fire
A small crowd of people piled on top of each other
A couple hairy animals
Lots and lots of dirt
Some bugs
Gooey stuff

Tell me that does not spell fun! It does! We might not know everything, Peanuts. Like why certain families with shrill-voiced women choose to site next to us out of an empty forest to hammer metal tent stakes and scream at each other in at 1 gosh-darn 30 in the morning, BUT- we do know this. F. U. N.
And so. On a whim we threw some baby and dogs and gear into the car and set up camp. You may not know or believe this. But I love, LOVE to camp. I spent maybe 79% of my childhood (the parts I remember) camping, and a tiny part of me- you know, that quarter-sized patch that doesn't get sucked on by a mosquito- sort of thinks that camping is closer to the way we were all meant to live. Under the stars, singing kumbaya with nature. Unless of course it's cold. In the winter, that tiny part gets gagged and bound with a scarf and a hoodie.
But since it is thickly hot out here, we introduced Little One to the great outdoors. She loved it!
She helped set up camp

And make a fire

She acquainted Herself with the Time-Out Tree

She gulped Her beans and chilis right down

She hiked through the woods, smacked things with sticks, threw some for the dogs, examined leaves and bugs, alerted us to the presence of all rocks larger than a pea, and got totally and thoroughly filthy

Yep. Other than the part where She puked all over the down sleeping bags, She loved it!

We were having so much fun, that we even decided to go totally crazy and let Her walk a little further onto the wild side, and try a piece of a marshmallow. This was rather momentous. Because other than the horrible time She snagged a fingerfull of ice cream, this was Her first ever taste of refined sugar. We showed Her how to put it on a stick and roast it in the fire, all of which She was very enthusiastic about. And then She tasted it! And this is the face of Little One meeting sugar for the first time:

She HATED it. Please mama, She begged. Can't I just eat some more beans?

Poor thing. Someone had to take it off Her hands. And I have to say, our big pot of staying up way past bedtime, waking up and freaking out about the deer tromping around our heads at 3 am, cursing the neighbors at 1 am, and coming home sleepy with 3 loads of smoke-steeped clothing was, altogether, almost too sweet to stand.

On July 4

Life

Liberty

Happiness

J gets older. Than me!

J's birthday was a little more low key than mine, thank goodness. What can I say, I've always been the crazy party girl in this pair. To celebrate being older than me again after three tedious and endless days of my being taunted with being as old as him, J got a new bike and all day to ride it with his friends.
Little One and I waved him off and then sprinted to the car, full of giggles, to go shopping! Because the bike was the pre-ordained gift, and because J has a superpower. It plays out like this:
C: "Hi honey!"
J: "Hi C....(momentary pause, squints a little) I see you bought 2 packs of gum and 3 apples today."
He just. knows. He has monetary ESP. And USAA's banking site bookmarked on his cell phone.
Thank goodness someone pays attention to the cash flow around here. Because, as J stated in our first ever fight- over me wanting the more expensive honey in the bear-shaped bottle because it is cuter- I have these crazy rock-star tendencies.
But it does make surprising the guy with gifts a little difficult. So we waited until the last minute and raced out to get him something for his bike, and a really old Latin copy of Livy he had liked months ago but been to practical to buy. Then we raced to the asian market and back home to make him his current favorite dinner, homemade vegetarian Pho, and of course cake. Because two people definitely need two cakes within 3 days of each other. (Did I mention that my birthday gift was a gym membership?) We ate ourselves silly, lit candles, sang, and celebrated another year of the best man on earth, and also the fact that the universe is now set right again. Because he is, once again, much closer to 30 than me.
Happy Birthday J!

Potty in the USA

It's time, Peanuts. I'm sorry. But in every baby-blog, the time must come to have a serious chat about potty training. People who are not parents cringe and balk and think, "Oh, geee-eeeze, why do they have to share that? Gross! Bordering on inappropriate! Oversharer!" And they are so, so right. But you know. When you are teaching a child to do what they gotta do where you want them to do it, you have this compulsion to talk about it. Partly because it so consumes your every thought and moment that there is just nothing else to say.
"What did you do today?"
"Potty."
"and then what?"
"potty."
"... in the afternoon?"
"Clean pee off the floor. Potty."
"How are you feeling?"
"Poopy."
But also, it's just a big deal. Seriously! Because (medical issues aside, of course) doo-doo in the pants in what separates babies from actual human beings. There is a thin line of pee which, once crossed, earns a child the right of passage into the world of Persons, where you are in charge of your own self and entitled to big-kid treasures, like "personal space".
This is why it is so hard for a lot of kids to go through with it. There is this struggle between wanting to cross over and become an autonomous human being, and wanting to stay a baby and be snuggled and coddled and have people wave palm fronds while they spoon feed grape puree into your mouth.
It is why it is so hard for a lot of parents to go through with it. Because on the one hand, you could really get used to the idea of not having skin-skin contact with feces for awhile. It might kick up the glamor quotient just a scotche. But on the other hand...it's your baby. They grow up too fast! SNIFFLE!
They do. Me, though, I feel no need to hold on to my child's babyhood in any manner which also involves holding poo. I think I will save my nostalgia for things like cuddling late at night or toothless smiles, or the physical incapability to talk back. But not for wiping poo.
So just as soon as we got done gallivanting around the country and stationed ourselves home for awhile, we got the show on the road. I have read, in my pretentious baby-raising books, that children are not physically ready for potty training until they are about 2 1/2. But this, my dear friends, is, well...crap. Certainly some kids are not ready till then or later, as we've discussed, and some parents are not (which is a top notch reason in my book). But physically able? Psht.
Something J and I learned from watching babies in third-world countries where no one can afford disposable diapers is this: If you carry a kid on your back, with one thin layer of cloth separating you and the kids' bum, you are not going to let that child mess whenever it pleases for years on end. And what we noticed there is that just about all the kids we met who were capable of walking, were also able to walk themselves over to a hole in the ground when nature called. I stand by the idea of each family being ready for things in their own time. But I personally am ready for this particular accomplishment like, yesterday.
And I'm happy to say that for all intensive purposes, we are pretty much done. Little One is now exclusively in "gig gul unjies" all day! Though She still wears training pants to bed and I assume it will be awhile until I'm ready to yank those too, She does get up to go at night and has had a couple of dry nights so far, so I'm optimistic. There are occasional accidents. Rush hour on the beltway is a particularly risky business. But most days She keeps Her "unjies" dry and thanks to the heavens I have not had to touch poo in a good long while.
As far as potty training goes, I think She was pretty darn easy to teach! Which is not to say that we haven't had some interesting moments. I mean, I truly know that it's best to stay home during this whole process, especially at the beginning when "I gotta go" means "go NOW". But Little One and I get antsy. It's summer! There are splash parks! Farms! Parks! We have no time to sit around the house with our pants down. So in case you live in the DC area and you are wondering, getting more suspicious as you read this, yes.
Yes that was me. Whipping out the porta-potty and stripping my kid down and letting Her pee right there. On the red line platform, at Metro Center. At rush hour.

What I Always Say About Birthdays

On my birthday, J gave me the ultimate gift of letting me sleep in, and making an amazing, fancy, multi-dish breakfast. While he was supermanning around, playing with Little One and French-poaching eggs, She begged him for a taste of what he was cooking with.
She has this obsession with spices. When we cook She often pleads for a little taste of whatever we are shaking into the pot, maybe because it's the only ingredient type She is routinely allowed to sample. One of Her most cherished possessions, I should perhaps be embarrassed to admit, is an empty curry bottle which She keeps in Her play kitchen and shakes vigorously over the plastic ice cream cone in the little pot. And then sticks in Her face and inhales in a way that gives me uncomfortable flashbacks to that guy in the back of the living room at college house parties.
Apparently the mustard bottle looked like "spiteses" and She begged for a try. After carefully reviewing the ingredients listed, J gave Her a tiny taste. She loved it!
And then She got a bit flushed. And then a blister popped up on Her cheek and started to grow. And by the time they got upstairs to wake me, She looked like this:

It got worse. And worse. So after hastily rinsing the worst of the copious vomit that erupted after jamming some sharp metal into Her thigh, we left the beautiful breakfast on the counter and spent a lovely morning in the emergency room. It's not a party until someone pukes and someone ends up in the ER right? That's what I always say!
And the fun didn't stop there! When we finally got home, we realized that the dogs had kept the party bus rolling while we were out. Our little beasties went rampaging through the house fighting for the right and jumping on the sofa. For instance, they are not allowed to put so much as one hairy toe into my kitchen. But yet. Gone was the lovely breakfast. Gone was the entire baked butternut squash for dinner, the pan shining and clean on floor. Bits of napkin littered the dining room like a tiny snow storm. And don't let me tell you what happened to Little One's puked-on clothes. Oh! Too late! Ha Ha.
We had just enough time to begin wrapping our minds around the evidence when Little One's voice rang out, "Uh-Oh!" And in the silence that followed. The pitter-patter of liquid on the hardwood floor. The fun never. Stopped. After Her third costume change of the day and the banishment of the dogs to the backyard we decided to eat the one part of breakfast not thieved- because it was hiding in the oven! Except it looked like this!

It's not a party until someone pukes, someone ends up in the ER, someone gets kicked out of somewhere, someone pees themselves, something catches on fire, rules are broken and a serious case of the munchies breaks out. That's what I always say!
I may be 28 now. Rounding awfully close to 3-0. But do I know how to rock a birthday or what Peanuts?

Oh yeah.

Still got it.

Later, my cousin took me to a movie, J made this beautiful cake, and Little One unwrapped my presents for me, giggling and healthy and safe. So 28 started off with a bang. But all's well that ends well, right Peanuts? Right. That's what I always say.

Smacked in the Face by an Invisible Bird

Little One loves riding high on Daddy's shoulders. This is the top tier in non-autonomous ambulation. Note the placement of convenient handlebars/steering devices. The only way to ride really.


Recently heard on one of these trips, as J was about to walk through some low branches:

J: "Little One, duck!"

Little One: "Quack quack!"