Ho ho ho

My message board girls did a Christmas in July exchange for the second year in a row, and I got my package today.

That cupcake pouch is the cutest tiny manicure set of all time. I suppose I could've taken the silica pouch out before I took the photo:



Nico got a present, too! I loved the frog wrapping paper:




Hilarious levels of toddler skepticism:



I have about six photos of him, and in all of them he's wearing the same expression and is removing a teeny shred of paper. Eventually he got it open:

Secret Santa is always fun, but something about it being in the summer, in a season that's usually without random giftage, makes it even better. If you have a passel of awesome internetty friends (or even local friends), I heartily recommend it.

Photo Friday

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Mostly house-y stuff

An old friend gave Nico a really amazing gift this past weekend:

She created this freehand after receiving a bag of colorful scraps that reminded her of the wings of the butterfly from The Very Hungry Caterpillar. (I keep telling her she needs to start an Etsy shop, because this is just one of the many amazing things she's made.) I posted an admiring comment on an early in-progress facebook picture, and she later surprised me by deciding to give it to Nico upon completion. Since Nico doesn't use blankets yet (and won't even tolerate a sheet across his feet when he's in my bed) and since, hello, this thing is AMAZING, I think I'm going to hang it on the wall above his crib. Does anyone have any tips on hanging a quilt as art? It's pretty small as quilts go, only 37" across the top. Some cursory googling indicates that I should probably stitch a pocket onto the back to slide a dowel through, and then use the dowel as support for the hanging mechanism. My friend Rachel suggested using a hollow rod so that I can run a ribbon or invisible nylon line through the center and have the rod completely hidden behind the quilt. Would a piece of small-diameter PVC pipe work? I love this idea because it wouldn't require a lot of hardware on the wall, and because if Nico wants to use it as a blanket someday, it'll be simple to remove the pocket.

Advise me (again), internets

MB and I have been talking a bit lately about what room we want to redo next, on the hypothetical future day when we have a little bit of money set aside. I think we're going to address the living room first since our current couch has a spot the size of a loaf of bread where the upholstery has worn through to the stuffing, but I've also been daydreaming about redoing our little half bath off the kitchen. It's got the fantastic original 1940 tile and sink, which we aren't going to touch, but the wallpaper with pastel blue seashells must go. So what color would you paint a very small bathroom tiled in white, black, and a very light gray? What curtains would you put in there after painting?

Here's the best photo I have of the tile, since I'm too lazy to go take and upload a new one at the moment...the tiles are pretty small:

Gamechanger

I can't remember who, but one of my facebook friends posted a video the other day with a tutorial on how to fold a fitted sheet so it doesn't look like a big wadded-up ball. I tried it tonight, and damned if it didn't work like a charm. I love that the first comment under the video is "Shit...he's already married."

Braggy McBraggerson

Nico "reading" a picture book:

And now, bedtime!


Reading:  The Mermaid Garden by Santa Montefiore (Yes, still, OMG.)

Playing:  Sublime

Beware the cantaloupe!

My boss drives about 200 miles of middle-of-nowhere highway on the weekends and has been bringing back great roadside produce for a couple of weeks now. He gave me this HUGE cantaloupe this week, since Nico likes them. We hadn't finished the last huge roadside cantaloupe he brought, so the new one was sitting on the shelf unit by the fridge, uncut. It was fine when we put it over there on Tuesday. To my knowledge it was fine Wednesday. It seems either Wednesday night or while we were at work Thursday morning it went horribly, aggressively bad and leaked awful rotten cantaloupe juice all over the shelf and the floor. I was unaware that cantaloupes are actually evil, but it seems that they are.

There's no polite way to put this: when Nico and I got home from nursing group at 3:00, our entire kitchen smelled of unwashed crotch. After eyeballing the dog with great suspicion, I realized it was the cantaloupe. And Nico had passed out asleep in the car and he only stays asleep on someone's lap in that situation, so I ended up sitting on the couch with him for like 2 hours, smelling this horrid crotch melon smell. MB wanted to go out to dinner, and once he was home and Nico was up I only had time to throw the melon out and wipe up the juice, but not to clean under the shelf thingie or mop the floor. So when we got back, the house still smelled like crotch. After Nico was in bed I spent 45 minutes moving everything off the shelves, wiping them down, cleaning stuff from the shelves that got splattered, and sweeping / swiffering / steam mopping the floor. Then I burned incense and a candle with the kitchen window open.

Okay, you're thinking, no biggie...everyone encounters a rotten melon every now and then. But oh, my friends, it gets worse. Friday at work, I went to get my lunch out of the fridge. I moved a cantaloupe on the top shelf while looking for my apple, and discovered that it and its identical buddy had both turned semi-liquefied overnight. Apparently it was a suicide pact of some kind. And thus, for the second time in 24 hours, I got to mop up nasty crotch-y rotten melon juice. It seems I have done something to anger the cantaloupe gods. I'm not sure what I did but I assure you, I wholly regret it. Beware the cantaloupes, y'all. BEWARE.

Photo Friday

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I think I might have ADD, but -- hey, a squirrel!

Okay, lame joke. And possibly offensive, except that I actually do have ADD and therefore feel like I'm entitled to a few jokes on the subject. Usually it's not that big a deal, except for nights like tonight, when I go to the grocery to pick up a few things and don't realize until the cashier has scanned my wine and ice cream and baby wipes and tomatoes that I don't have my wallet. Because it's in my bag. At my house. Gaaaaah. Luckily I live about five minutes from the store, but still. The whole debacle resulted in a grocery trip plus medicinal Starbucks after-trip that ate up an entire hour of my life. The M&M blast blondie was almost worth it, but not quite.

Pretend this is a cute segue

I signed up for this local playgroup message board a few months ago. I'm not sure why, other than I guess I like the idea of a playgroup. I probably should've known this was not my style of playgroup when the lead mom repeatedly referred to the members getting together to "share our most precious possessions...our children!" But I've been trying to give it a fair shot, despite rolling my eyes at their slightly over the top momthusiasm. They keep planning playdates only for 11 AM - 1 PM on Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays and then reminding everyone that we have to participate at least once a month to stay in the group. I replied to one of the reminder posts with a note that I supposed we'd be booted out of the group since I am always at work at those times, and the lead mom was nice enough to book a playdate for Monday morning. So of course I said we'd go, even though it was at a local version of Pump It Up, which I fully expected to be on par with Clara's recent Chuck E Cheese experience. Then all the playgroup people bailed on going, but I had psyched myself up for it and thought Nico might really like it, so we went anyway. (Are you laughing at me? I can hear you laughing.)

It wasn't circle-of-hell bad, though it was at this random murder-van warehouse in the middle of an industrial park out in BFE with no official signs or anything. And come to think of it, it was pretty hot in there with all the motors running on the inflatables. Really, though, not as bad as expected. I was on my guard against other people's shithead kids since a friend of mine had posted on facebook about two ridiculous encounters with other people's kids just this past weekend alone, but that also went better than expected. At one point, Nico was playing with these three random balls he'd found lying in the middle of the floor and an older toddler came up and took one of them right out of his hand. My poor sheltered solo-childcare-flyer only child, he literally watched the little boy walk up and looked curiously at his own hand as the child removed the ball from his grasp. Then the other kid took off and Nico pointed after him incredulously and shouted, "Ball?" Before I could think of what to say, the child's mother hustled him back over and made him return the pilfered item, informing him that "We do not take toys away." Mental high five, other mom! Later on a bossy little shithead kid did steal one of the balls while I was tossing them to Nico and ran around with it (not even playing with it, just carrying it around with him), but since we already had two, I decided to let that one go. I did keep my eye on that kid after that, though.

Oh, and the reason we were playing with balls at a bouncy place? Nico wanted nothing to do with the inflatables. I tried putting him in the special toddlers-only one and as soon as his feet touched it, he was all "What the blue hell is this nonsense?" and "This surface does not seem very stable, mother." He was obviously curious about the bigger slide thing they had, but every time I offered to help him climb it, he flipped out. Now I have an excuse not to go to bouncy houses for at least a few more months. I'll call that one a win, I think, even though I did pay $6 for my kid to spend 45 minutes throwing miniature foursquare balls and crawling through a plastic Little Tykes house. But hey! He did it in the presence of other children, so I can count it as social experience, right?

Wait just a minute, who is that grown-ass child wearing my son's clothes?

Slightly shiny and new

I don't know if anyone else will notice, but MB overhauled my template this weekend and I think it looks pretty sharp. I toyed with the idea of really having him change it up, but in the end I decided I still really love the original masthead he made for me back in the day. The stuff he did change I like, and he also fixed a lot of backdoor html stuff that was apparently all wrong and so five years ago. If anything doesn't work, please let me know...I've been test-clicking stuff, but I don't usually visit my own blog as a reader, so I might be missing things.

Multimedia, hooray!

I think I mentioned before that we got rid of our cable package when my job situation changed at the beginning of the year. We got an Apple TV and a Netflix account and it has really worked out well. After a long string of mediocre-to-terrible (not-so) scary movies, we have finally hit on a few winners. First we watched this weird little indie movie called Ink which turned out to be much better than expected. It starts out with barely any exposition at all and gets weird right away, but if you stick with it, it pays off. There's one scene I really loved, which you can watch here if you don't mind a slight spoiler:



Then the other night I finally watched Winter's Bone and oh my hell, you guys. Literally gut-wrenching. I am not usually too affected by movies, but about halfway through I started feeling like I might throw up if it didn't end well. (It did, but it got much worse first.) It's an amazing film, but there's really not a scrap of happiness in it. It was scarier to me than any of the horror movies we've watched, just because it was so real and so bleak. Brilliant but possibly scarring, consider yourself warned.

Oh, and if you just want something fluffy and like slightly cheesy dance movies, there's a movie on Netflix instant called B-Girl that's actually highly decent.

Clearance wins

I have been really, really good about avoiding extraneous shopping lately, but I found some things at Barnes & Noble today that I could not pass up. For $2.24 each (75% off plus additional 10% member's discount), I got two 24-piece Very Hungry Caterpillar puzzles (this one and this one) and a small stuffed Max from Where the Wild Things Are to put away for Nico in a year or so, and also a really cool Dover clip art set of 1920s fashion for my dear friend Kate. I wanted to buy the clip art set a few weeks ago but couldn't afford it at 50% off (original price was $24.95), but at 85% off, I could definitely justify it. I can't wait to send it to her. Today's steals made me feel better about walking away from the fifteen clearance racks of baby / toddler clothes at BRU yesterday. I also had a little bit of money to spend on Nico and blew his car-crazy mind with this book, in which he has pointed out every set of wheels at least twice already.

In a bit of reverse-shopping, I dropped off two big boxes of stuff at a very cool consignment shop and got $20 back for stuff they've already sold for me. I could get used to getting paid to declutter my house.

Mayday, mayday, mayday

I am impossibly buried under the weight of my google reader and I don't know what to do. Every time I go in with the intention of culling my subscriptions, I end up wringing my hands and fretting and not deleting any. This is colossally dumb since I'm pretty sure very few of the bloggers I read even know I exist due to the fact that I have less time to comment than I do to read blogs. But seriously, how do you guys figure out who to cut and who to keep? Do you just mark all as read and leave things as they are? I've tried that a few times and I always just end up buried again. First world problems, I have them!

Just because

Today is MB's and my 7th wedding anniversary and also the 11th anniversary of the day we met. I tried to find a non-identity-revealing photo from our wedding day to post, but couldn't find any I liked. I did, however, rediscover one of my all-time favorite photos of Nico, taken a year ago this past week:

He's much cuter than me anyway, even seven-years-ago me. (Good Lord do we look young in our wedding photos, though.)


Reading:  The Mermaid Garden by Santa Montefiore

Playing:  Helplessness Blues by Fleet Foxes

Photo Friday

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Adventure! Excitement! Geriatric cashiers!

Nico and I spent Saturday morning at the county fair and while I don't suppose it was the greatest adventure of our lives, I do feel it was a suitably enriching experience for his little brain. It was also hotter than Satan's nutsack, no lie. But Nico had a good time running around loose amid the tractors and rattling the pens of farm animals while I practiced not helicoptering him. We met up with Julia and Nathan and also with one of the mom / kid pairs from our nursing group, which definitely made the experience a lot more enjoyable for me. Maybe for Nico, too, but at this age it's hard to tell. He did take a three and a half hour nap afterward, which I take as a good sign. Anyway, pictures or it didn't happen:




I don't remember what he was looking at in this one,
but I love his "Say whaaaat?" expression.
"Hey, Nathan, watch me poke this goat."

There was a barrel train, pretty much the cutest thing ever.
The other two toddlers were thrilled. Mine? Skeptical as hell.
Cutest thing ever, though, yes?
(And he ended up liking it just fine once it started moving.)

This morning Nico got his 18-month photos taken, and I can't believe how much of a kid he's getting to be...barely any baby left!






After a post-modeling session nap, MB and Nico and I went out on our weekly grocery run. We ended up in the slowest checkout line in the history of the world. Seriously, it was brain-meltingly awful. Nico and I left MB to wait in line and went to return something, and I remember looking at the clock and it being 5:45. After our return was done I took Nico for a walk around the store, found a cute wooden puzzle I thought he'd like, stood in line to buy it in the jewelry department, and then went back to check on MB and found that only one person had been checked out since we left, 25 minutes earlier. ONE PERSON IN 25 MINUTES.

Thank the sweet baby Jesus that right after that, the chatty old lady cashier was replaced by a teenager and the line started moving, but Nico was already losing his shit (and so was I, let's be honest). And that's how I ended up kneeling on the floor of a Walmart (in capris, oh my God), helping my kid work a puzzle that I had bought and ripped open on the spot so he didn't burn the place to the ground with the force of his bored, tired toddler rage. Of all the things my pre-kid self swore I'd never do (along with "whip out a boob in front of God and everybody," which I think we took care of within three or four hours of his birth), "kneel on the floor of a Walmart in shorts" was probably pretty high on the list. In the moment it felt like a big profound metaphor for motherhood, but unless I come down with a weird rash tomorrow, I'm going to admit that it wasn't really that bad.

Tomorrow we have a play date, a lunch date, and Nico's 18-month well child appointment, so all in all it should be a much more hygienic day. Happy (almost) August, everybody!


Reading:  The Mermaid Garden by Santa Montefiore

Playing:  Sigh No More by Mumford & Sons

Photo Friday

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Bang Bang Bang

Decency

I had a package that needed to be mailed today, so Nico and I took care of it on the way to our play date this morning. I figured 10 AM on a Monday was a pretty safe time to go to the post office, but boy was I wrong. When we arrived there was a non-moving line of about a dozen people. We ended up waiting there for at least 15 minutes, creeping slowly through the line. Nico was squirmy so I risked putting him down. He actually did really well, sitting on the floor to play with his trucks and staying with me as the line moved. At one point he started rolling one of the trucks to me and asking me to roll it back. This worked a few times, then he overshot and the truck went several feet past me. A woman about my age in line behind us pushed the car back, and then continued to push it back and forth with Nico for a few minutes. When it rolled past her, she turned to the nicely-dressed older man behind her and said, "I guess it's your turn now!" and then he rolled the car back and forth with Nico once or twice. So many stories on the internet are about people being intolerant toward children in public, so it was a really great surprise to have people in a busy, irritating, long-wait situation be so nice to my kid, just for the sake of being nice.

Regression

Nico seems to be suffering from some sleep regression lately, and though I keep telling myself it's a phase, it's a phase, it's got to be a phase, when he wakes up screaming at 3:30 in the morning, it feels like this is never going to end, oh my hell, send help. He's been a good sleeper for ages, and usually when he does wake up a little Ferber-approved pat on the behind is all he needs to settle himself back down. For a long time, he didn't even need the butt-pats and would soothe himself to sleep within a minute or two of waking up during the night. Now, though, we're into the realm of crying so hard while I'm in the shower that he almost barfs before I get out and hear him and hurry to his rescue. And as we've discussed, anything that involves the potential for barf is not a-okay with me. I guess I'm not really going anywhere with this, just trying to remind myself that it's a phase (it had better be a phase) and on the bright side, at least if I have to go in and rock him back to sleep I get an extra limp-limbed curly-headed warm-baby cuddle.

Rabbit hole

I was singing to Nico after the aforementioned near-barf incident and reflecting that about half the songs I know for lullaby purposes are religious in origin. That got me thinking, and I couldn't seem to stop. I was raised Catholic but don't consider myself Catholic now, or even Christian. I don't have any specific life-changing story or reason, I just don't find church spiritually fulfilling or feel particularly connected to God when I'm there. I do enjoy the tradition of, say, midnight Christmas Mass, but I think that's more for the nostalgia and the memories of Christmases past with my family. MB was raised Christian but as far as I can tell his parents sort of bounced around between various denominations. Some more information that may or may not be relevant: almost no one in our immediate families goes to church, either. We don't pray before meals though grace is said before holiday meals with both extended families. We don't read the Bible or display religious things in the house or say bedtime prayers.

Now that I have a kid, I sometimes wonder if he'll miss out on something if we don't start taking him somewhere for church. I don't for one second believe that he needs church to be a good, moral person, but I wonder if (properly liberal and inclusive) religion would give him another lens through which to view the world as he grows. After all, as a friend pointed out, he'll never get all the Biblical reference in Shakespeare if he never reads the Bible. On the other hand, I went to a K-8 Catholic school, and I didn't get most of the Biblical references in Shakespeare, either. I still got an A in the class. I will admit another fear that I have: I'm afraid if we don't take him to church, he'll fall under the thrall of one of those creepy culty teen-proselytizing megachurches when he's a teenager. (It's not an entirely ungrounded fear; it happened to one of my cousins in high school, though she seems mostly normal now.) I suppose I'm risking preachy comments in order to ask if any of you out there are like us -- God-believing but not big God-in-the-home folks who don't take their kids to church -- and how you feel about the whole church / no church issue. I'm curious, is all.



Reading:  The Mermaid Garden by Santa Montefiore

Playing:  Lovestrong by Christina Perri

One point five

Nico turned 18 months old last Friday, and though I had hoped to mark the occasion with a masterful and sweet milestone letter, I failed utterly. Friday I was tired and figured I'd do it over the weekend. Saturday was one of the most challenging days we've ever had, and I figured I probably wasn't in the right mental space to write a sappy letter right after having exceeded my Cranky Shrieking Tolerance and fled the house in search of silence and an ice cream cone. Monday I moved 3800 pounds of bricks with my dad in the afternoon while it was 108 degrees outside. And so it went, until I got to today, a week after the blessed occurrence, with still nothing to post.

While Nico and I ate a dinner of grilled cheese sandwiches this evening, I thought about the letter I was going to write, how I wanted to brag about him eating real people food and how well he's doing, about his cute new words, about how sometimes he's challenging but he's also awesome. And then, about halfway through his sandwich, apparently the cough / frog in the throat caused by previously trying to hork down a giant piece of crust and gagging on it caught up with him and Nico proceeded to barf up everything he'd eaten since we got home (to wit: half a grilled cheese sandwich, half an orange, copious amounts of Goldfish crackers).

And so after changing him into a new outfit and trying to comfort him, I spent the evening rinsing chunks of pre-masticated grilled cheese off his clothes and the towels we used to clean up the mess (though I did think seriously about throwing away his pants and bib and never speaking of it again) while poor MB -- after working a 12-hour day -- disassembled Nico's entire high chair so it could be cleaned. Because, you see, Nico has a charming vintage high chair, lovingly sanded and refinished by a friend who upcycles furniture, carefully re-upholstered by his grandma and myself, a chair with umpteen nooks and crannies, a chair that utterly lacks a convenient removable washable cover. Meanwhile poor Nico was sequestered behind his baby fence, wailing because he just wanted to cuddle and both his parents were busy with barf detail. Oh, and at one point I dropped one of the high chair bolts down the garbage disposal. At least it wasn't running at the time. Needless to say it was a spectacular disaster of an evening.

You know what, though? Even after a night like we had, even after having to mop up barf (which has always, always been my Achilles heel when it comes to caring for kids), even after a week of whining and varying degrees of toddler assholery, after all that, I still couldn't be more grateful or more pleased to be this dude's mother.


And maybe that's the lesson I'm supposed to learn this month, that even when things get dicey, I'm still incredibly, stupidly lucky and I still love each day with my crazy, sometimes incredibly gross little family.


Nico, you're a true toddler now, constantly coming up with new words and new ideas, tearing around on your own two feet, exploring and testing and pushing and learning and sometimes falling. You're absolutely car-crazy, you still love books, you often ask to wear shoes and throw a fit when it comes time to change your diaper. You eat fruit and sometimes vegetables and chicken fingers and cheese and cheese sandwiches and Cheez Its and Kix and goldfish crackers and lasagna and yogurt. You sometimes say "More, peese" when you want something and sometimes just unleash an unholy volley of whining. You recently started saying "library" and "pirate ship" and "airplane" and "hippo" and it's all so cute that I died and then came back to life just to hear you say them again. You give hugs and kisses and high fives, you can count to two and identify a dozen different shapes, but you also hit us quite a lot and always guess blue when asked "what color is that?" even when it's definitely not blue.

(You're right, though...that one is blue.)
You're sassy but also sweet, smart but impossibly stubborn, sometimes a little too clever for your own good (like the other night, when you climbed out of your crib, oh my God, I'm so not ready for that). Occasionally you act like a very small mad dictator and I wonder how we're ever going to make it through your toddler years. You're getting to be such a big boy and as much as I revel in it, I also sneak into your room sometimes after you're in bed just to see you in your most baby-like moments, sleeping with your butt up in the air and your curls all wild in the dark. You're by turns impossible and funny and fantastic and I love you, I love you, I love you.


Thank you for being awesome, thank you for being mine, and above all thank you for being you. I love you best of all the babies that ever were, even when you laugh at my misfortune.

Love,
Mama

Photo Friday

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Bullet points with butterfly wings

I really like my new job and kind of hate that I can't say much about it. I will tell you that summer camp has been eating my brain, but it's over after tomorrow and I'm optimistic that I'll make a full recovery. I took your advice and approached the dad half of that nice couple at swimming lessons plus another friendly mom with a child of appropriate age about playdates. Both parties were extremely receptive, so we'll see if anything comes of it. Even if we never get together, at least I'll know that I tried.

And I realized just now that I never posted anything about 4th of July weekend. It was awesome, we had a great time visiting MB's family, and I have a bunch of pictures I should post. I'm up too late as it is, though, with one more day of brainsucking summer camp awaiting me, so let's move on to the bullet points:


Packrattery

According to some people who seem to want to make the rules on the internet, I shouldn't watch Hoarders lest I want to be a horrible evil rubbernecking exploiter. But I do watch it for it's trainwrecky can't-look-away properties, and because I swear it actually is teaching me some stuff. Maybe it's psychosomatic, like the time my dad saw one too many commercials about arteriosclerosis medication and announced that he needed to see a doctor because he just knew he had it, but I see some of the hoarder-type habits in myself sometimes. And I do tend to be really motivated to work on my decluttering project after watching a few episodes. That whole thing is actually going really well. I haven't made it to 50 things on my list yet, but the basement is the emptiest it's been since we moved into this house.

Party animal

Nico was invited to my friend Julia's little son Nathan's second birthday party this past weekend and we had a pretty good time. MB and I tried and tried to get Nico to nap beforehand and he wouldn't so of course he fell asleep in the car before we even made it out of our neighborhood. He ended up sleeping in Nathan's bed for the first hour of the party, which actually worked out well since he missed the opening of gifts and therefore wasn't tempted to try and swipe any of Nathan's really awesome new cars. He was extremely clingy upon waking, but Julia's mom is some kind of toddler whisperer and played trucks with him for a few minutes, and before long he was running around through the entire party of adults with no trace of bashfulness. We thought he'd enjoy playing in Nathan's awesome kiddie pool, but he was much more interested in running around the driveway and pointing at all the cars. I think he had fun, though, doing his own thing. He did really enjoy working Nathan's new puzzle, and as the only non-adult guest he made out like a bandit with party favors, coming home with a Toy Story mylar balloon, a Mickey Mouse plate, and an orange pickup truck for his Tonka fleet.



Kicking and screaming

I finally joined Pinterest and Google Plus, though I admit I probably don't have much time for the first and I don't really understand the purpose of the second...isn't facebook enough?


Earlier, at my house:

MB: Want me to roll the car? Can you say roll?

N: Roll?

MB: That was a great drift. You'll do that one day, buddy. In a real car.

V: No.

MB: For money.

V: No.

MB: And pink slips.

V: No.

MB: In Tokyo!

V: NO. Well, in videogames. Maybe.


I shouldn't have laughed, but I totally did

One would think I'd have learned something from the great wipe debacle of '11, but apparently I did not:



Sadness & woe

Nico helped himself to that whole box of tissues while I was baking brownies to share with BoMB and his awesome girlfriend. They're leaving tomorrow morning for Memphis so she can start her PhD, and as happy as I am for them, I am pretty much bereft. We hang out with them at least once a week, Nico loves them, and they're just all-around good friends...and now they're going away for at least five years. Of course they'll visit, and I hope we'll visit them sometimes. But still, FIVE YEARS. Bereft, I say!



Reading:  For Matrimonial Purposes by Kavita Daswani

Playing:  Lovestrong by Christina Perri

Puzzling

Photo Friday

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We interrupt this unintended blog silence

to ask a question of the other socially awkward folks out there. There's a mom and dad at swimming lessons with a boy about Nico's age who have been really friendly for the past five weeks, to the point of always seeking us out to say hello and such. We haven't actually talked, other than to find out the names of each other's children, but they seem like they like us. Should I offer them my email address for future playdates at the last class next week? And why does this feel like dating?

Because on the one hand, I suppose if they think it's weird and stalkery for me to give them my email, I probably won't ever see them again. But on the other, what if they sign up for the next session too and it's all awkward? Seriously, though, who wouldn't want a playdate with this dude?

Photo Friday

I'm so happy this one turned out! My iPhone took a better
shot than my little digital point-and-shoot, surprisingly.

View the entire Photo Friday collection on Flickr.

Righteous living or dumb luck

When I got to work this morning, I came thisclose to parking next to my coworker in the front parking spaces by the fence. But instead I drove the extra 20 feet to the staff parking spaces even though there was a good chance I'd be walking to my car in the rain later. Around lunchtime a storm blew through, and when I left for an errand in the afternoon I discovered that a not-gigantic but damn-well-big-enough limb had fallen 40 or 50 feet from a huge sweet gum tree and landed exactly where my car would've been parked. That sucker would've gone right through the windshield and / or the sunroof of my car, had it been parked in its path.

I also had a too-narrow escape from a traffic ticket the other night. I am hesitant to even write about this because it still makes me have that sort of panicky oh shit! feeling. I was driving home from my parents' house in the evening, having gone over there to pack up some books that I wanted to donate to a charity sale being held to benefit the dog rescue that saved Indy. On the way back my mind was wandering a little and I ended up running a red light. Now, it wasn't a horrible near-crash kind of running a red light or anything like that. Between my distraction (bad, I know! BAD!) and the dark, I misjudged how far I was from the intersection and how close the light was to turning. I ended up being in that awkward half-committed spot (or so I thought) when the light turned yellow and so I sped up to make a left turn through what I'd call an orange light, honestly, only to have it turn VERY red before I'd completed my maneuver. I sort of did that thing where you mentally slap yourself in the forehead and started to go on about my business and then I look in the rear view and there is a cop car right on my ass. And guys, I am SUCH a goody two shoes. I have been in a car that got pulled over twice in my life ever and I wasn't even driving either time. So I'm instantly sort of freaking out and thinking "OH MY GOD WHAT DO I DO HOLY SHIT AAAHHHHH!"

I had turned from a busy east / west street onto a busy north / south street that intersects our not-busy street, so I usually go up to our street and take a right. I realized I had screwed up and thought, "Shit! Act normal!" (God, so stupid.) so I made a very sedate right turn onto one of the side streets that parallels ours, and then a very slow and polite left onto the tiny connector street that runs through all the parallel neighborhood streets. And this whole time, the cop is right on my bumper. And I'm thinking, fuck, did he flash his lights at me in the intersection and I just missed it? Should I pull over just in case or will that just make me look guilty (guiltier)? By this point I was driving like the most polite, well-mannered, mousy granny driver you have EVER seen. By the time I meticulously navigated two stop signs, I guess the cop decided he'd made his point, and he took off and left me to drive very carefully home, cursing under my breath the whole way. I probably did deserve that ticket just for stupidity alone, but goddamn am I glad he decided not to push the issue. I had to wonder if I was reaping some kind of good karma for the dog-rescue donation. After today's near-miss with the tree limb, I feel like I'm either living right or I'm overdue for sacrificing a chicken.

Stuff and things

1. First of all, let me apologize if you've been here in the last month and experienced auto-playing music. I hate websites with auto-playing music and I'm so irritated that mine was doing it behind my back. The site where I get the playlist widgets has an option for no autoplay and I always select it, but I guess they changed something this time around. I think I've fixed it, but let me know if it happens again. (Aaaaaack)

2. I had Tuesday off this week and took Nico to the children's museum with my old work friend Julia and her little son who will be two in July. The boys seemed to have a great time and they interacted well. We took them to lunch kind of spontaneously and they both sat in the booth like big kids. It was simultaneously adorable and keeeeeling me to see them perched on the benches instead of sitting in high chairs. Sunrise, sunset!



(SO BIG!)
3. Have you guys seen Easy A? We got it from Netflix on a whim and ended up loving it. I think we watched it about 15 times before it was dropped from the instant list. It was so much better than we expected and totally quotable.

4. While I'm definitely not reading as much as I used to now that I have a highly mobile child, I have had a good run of books lately. I read three in a row that were page-turnery enough to keep me up late and off the computer - Weird Sisters by Eleanor Brown, Don't Breathe a Word by Jennifer McMahon, and Bloodsucking Fiends by Christopher Moore. Now I've got the new Stephanie Plum and while I'm not expecting it to blow my socks off, I probably will sit down and rip through it pretty quickly. I'm hoping to do at least a short review of the first three at some point, but we'll see. In the meantime...reading! Yay!

5. My new job keeps me much busier than my old one did, and I'm not on Twitter or gmail chat much at all during the day. I like keeping busy and I like the work, but I miss talking to my blog friends and geographically-present friends. I've been a little bit lonely lately, truthfully. Things will probably settle down a bit once summer is over, but until then, slightly sad panda.

6. On the other hand, the bibliophile called me on Friday evening and we went to Barnes & Noble after Nico was in bed and played this really cool card game until the store closed. I had a really great time and I want to get the game (or this one) for Nico in a few years. Actually, I want it for myself now but I'll share it with him later.

7. I made these awesome cookies for the first time in ages last night and they are so good. I ate them like crazy while I was on maternity leave because someone told me oatmeal is supposed to help with lactation and I could pretend they were healthy. I always think of them as Clara cookies since she's the one who linked me to the recipe. I use butter instead of oil, only all-purpose flour, and always make a double batch since (a) one is not worth the trouble and (b) they are too damn good to only have two dozen. Trust me.

8. Does anyone have any fun plans for the holiday weekend? We are planning to take Nico to visit his Kentucky family and revisit the pool where he had his first swim last Fourth of July. (OH MY GOD, you have to see the CHUB in those photos.) It'll be his first out-of-town trip since becoming bipedal, so I'm sure it'll be a bit crazy, but I think it'll also be great fun. (Seriously, now, go look at the chub.)



Reading:  Smokin' Seventeen by Janet Evanovich

Playing:  The King is Dead by the Decemberists

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Classic rookie mistake

One would think that after 17 months of raising this child, I'd know better than to leave him alone in his room so I could take a quick shower. One would be mistaken:




Reading:  Bloodsucking Fiends by Christopher Moore

Playing:  Sigh No More by Mumford & Sons

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This makes me so happy I almost cannot stand it

Go the Fuck to Sleep as read by Samuel L Jackson:



Probably not safe for work, obviously.

Edited to add: I have no idea why the company bothered to have the video yanked from YouTube, because they're offering it as a free download.

Tidal

Before Nico was born, I worried some about what kind of mother I'd be to him. I knew my failings, could list them out without much hesitation: quick-tempered, easily frustrated, prone to Type-A overplanning, occasionally besieged by doubt. I was shocked by how mellow I became during my pregnancy, but chalked that up to hormones and didn't expect it to last. I was surprised to find that I remained mostly low-key throughout his infancy. Part of it, I'm sure, was due to the fact that he was an absurdly easy baby. Once we got past our initial breastfeeding struggles, things were pretty great.

Over the past two months or so, Nico has truly begun to embrace his toddlerhood. He's asserting his independence, expressing his own opinions, and just generally testing the waters. I think the weeks since he started walking have been both the most exciting and the most challenging for me, as my easy sunny even-keeled baby morphed into a grown-ass child who is sometimes sassy, opinionated, and downright whiny. (If I had a nickel for every time I've heard MB respond to a full-on toddler whine with "Nico! Use your words!" I'd have a lot of nickels.) So far, I feel like I'm doing okay. I'm usually patient, almost never lose my temper with him, am able to let things slide and go with the flow more than I think I ever have before in my life.

If Nico had a blog, I bet he'd complain about my reaction to his beautifully theatrical tantrums. When thwarted, he will fold dramatically to the floor, wailing. Once prone, he writhes about, looking for toys that he can pick up and throw. He'll sometimes come over to me and lift his arms, only to slide pathetically and intentionally from my lap as soon as I've picked him up, as if to demonstrate how unbearable it is to be in my vicinity. And nearly every time, I laugh. I realize that will probably infuriate him when he gets older. Probably I should stop doing it before it psychologically damages him. But really, staging such an extravagant performance because I wouldn't let him rip the keys off my laptop / play with my phone / dance on the couch is pretty funny.

One thing is for sure, though...all bets are off now that toddlerhood is here. Sometimes he takes two epic naps a day, sometimes he won't nap at all. Sometimes he hoovers up carrots and pasta and a banana at lunch and is asking "Eat cereal?" two hours later, other times he seems happy to subsist on rice puffs and dry Kix. Sometimes we take him out to dinner with us and he charms the entire restaurant, other times he howls in the parking lot and then has periodic crying jags at the table that require me to pull him into my lap and rock him, lest we become the people that child-free people complain about on the internet. I take him out to the backyard to play with his lovingly assembled turtle sandbox, and he spends fifteen minutes marching up and down the sidewalk carrying the dog's empty water dish. I walk him to the playground down the street and he refuses to ride in the swing or climb the slide, instead rambling around the grass with his favorite board book clutched in his hand.

But then we can take him to Target without a nap and he merrily kicks his feet until he falls asleep in his stroller, snoozing through 45 minutes of shopping. I take him back to library story time after their month-long hiatus and he remembers and requests the shakers as soon as we walk in the door. I stand him on the side of the pool at swimming lessons so he can practice jumping in, and he is so overcome by joy that he scrunches up his shoulders and laughs uncontrollably. Basically his mission in life is to keep us guessing, I think.

I did take him to the playground tonight, and he did wander around rather than try out the swings or the slide. While we were there, a handful of teenage boys were playing basketball in the adjacent parking lot and I realized that in no time, God willing, I'll be looking at my firstborn as he approaches 18 years rather than 18 months, he'll be walking down to that playground by himself to play basketball with his friends while I sit at home and try to remember what he was like when I first took him to that playground to play. I want to weather his tiny storms with calm care. I want to wait out the tantrums and praise the good behavior and manage not to fret over the barely-eaten lunches. I want to be present for him, to rarely tell him "Mama's busy, not now," when he brings me a book or a truck or a plastic spoon. I want to catch all the moments of now, hold them up to my face, breathe them in, before they slip through my fingers and this beautiful, inquisitive, sometimes impossible little boy is just a memory in the wake of a nearly-grown man. Some days I'll succeed and some days I won't, but always, my heart is so full.

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Not dead

Wow, I am not very good at this lately, am I? I wish I had a really good excuse, like writing a book or going on a cool vacation, but I don't. I simultaneously don't have a lot of time to blog and don't feel like anything interesting enough to write a whole post about has been happening. And I meant to do a post of a bunch of little things, but then we turned on a movie and I forgot to actually write it. So instead, here's a video of my kid, who is hardly a baby anymore (oh, heartbreak!):



He's wearing those orange shoes because he saw them on his dresser when I picked out his clothes and said "Shoe tie? Shoe tie? Shoe tie?" in his little voice until I agreed to put them on his feet. I feel like my heart grows three sizes every day thanks to him.


Reading:  Don't Breathe a Word by Jennifer McMahon

Playing:  Narrow Stairs by Death Cab for Cutie

Hurricane in short pants

Reading:  Don't Breathe a Word by Jennifer McMahon

Playing:  Showroom of Compassion by Cake

Photo Friday

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