Mommymatic

She's ba-ack. Kinda.

2009-09-25T15:20:00.002-07:00

I'm moving, dear reader (if I have even one left after lo, these two years I've been away). I have been re-reading this blog over the last day or so, and I've even gotten a little verklempt about the time of my life it describes. But that life has changed radically--mind-blowingly so--and so I think it's time for a fresh start.

Feel free to visit me at my new bloghome.

From the You Cannot Make This Stuff Up Files

2007-08-09T15:19:00.000-07:00

Ok, so the preschool teacher told me the other day when I went to pick D up that she had been tickling him, because she loves to hear his laugh, and he was laughing, laughing, laughing. And then she stopped, and he stopped laughing and sighed and said "That was amazing."

So then we were trekking out to the ~~bicycle stable~~ shed in the backyard and he was asking for, oh, I don't know, the thirty-thousandth time if he could ride the "big Zander bike" which, as I may have mentioned, has had to be replaced for a short period by a Slightly Smaller Big-Boy Bike (which he is riding here) as he can barely reach the handles. I had already told him, oh, twenty-nine thousand, nine hundred and ninety-nine times that he could not, he was still too small, he can ride it when he's three next summer, so I opened my mouth to answer him (perhaps in a voice not specifically designed to be an Inside Voice) when he looked at me like I was nuts, cocked his head, laughed and said "Mommy, I'm just bein' a joke."

And then when I was playing hooky from church, attending a rally for my new man-crush, D and Daddymatic were working the coffee hour room after getting their Eucharist on. Apparently, D asked for--and received, because Miracles Happen in Church--a cupcake. He ate the icing off, handed it back to Daddymatic and asked for another in that Toddler Trance Voice, the one where they kind of mutter the same thing over and over because they know you aren't listening but are hoping to wear you down by sheer volume? And Daddymatic was apparently not wearing down fast enough, because the kid took his father's face in his hands, looked into his eyes and said "DADDY, DO YOU HEAR MY WORDS? I WANT ANOTHER CUPCAKE."

Of course, it's not all Kids Say the Darndest Things around here all the time, though--I think I actually may have said the words "I will stop yelling when you start listening." But then I turned immediately into my mother, so I don't remember much after that.

Six and a half weeks? Seriously?

2007-08-02T10:21:00.000-07:00

I've really been meaning to update this blog, but something about a solid month of temperatures hovering around, say, 4000 degrees has pretty much drained all the life out of me. But I realized that since I wrote last, the One True Child has done a number of blogworthy things, and it's high time I just sucked it up and got back on the computer. That and it's only supposed to be about 86 degrees today. I know that sounds like Early Parenthood, when you say things like "Wow, I just got three whole hours of sleep!" and mean it, but seriously, 86 degrees feels damn near arctic after these last several weeks.

Blogworthy Items of Note:

1. The child decided, completely on his own, that it's time to potty train in earnest. At least on the weekends. Of course, the fact that he gets 3 jellybeans for each successful, ah, 'deposit' doesn't hurt. Apparently, however, he has yet to fully grasp the whole concept of Escalating Rewards, because over the weekend, he was peeing and rather unexpectedly dropped a small brown trout in the potty. I got pretty excited and informed him that when he poops in the potty, he gets a sucker, and you would have thought he won the lottery (of course, pre-potty training, he was more likely to win the lottery than to get that much refined sugar in one sitting, but who's counting?).

He gave me this look that said "Are you KIDDING me? There have been SUCKERS in the offing this whole time and you've neglected to mention that up to this point? I have GOT to instruct my attorney to look at the fine print more closely." He hasn't pooped in the potty since, but I'm just glad he lives such a deprived life that we can get away with offering suckers when other people have to bribe their children with actual nice stuff, like model airplanes and bikes and Roth IRAs.

And while we're on the subject, I have to say that I am frightened by the dizzying array of underwear available for little boys. Boxers, briefs, boxer-briefs. And the licensed characters--good grief. Bob, Diego, Spongebob, Spidey, Mater--I have to bring the Noggin Schedule with me just to figure out who's who. Especially since the preschool has put the big ix-nay on "any characters who fight," which in Little Boy-ese translates to "anyone cool."

However, the most disturbing thing about hunting for boys' unna-pants are the kids on the packaging--they just look so spry and jovial, all hands-on-hips, nubile, clothed in nothing but a pair of spidey tighty-whiteys and grinning charmingly. It totally creeps me out for some reason. Having to spend a lot of time browsing on this aisle makes my tummy feel funny, like at any minute the army of Target's anti-pedophile militia is going to swoop down and ask the guy next to me if it really takes that long for him to find some size 4T spongebob boxers. Ick.

2. He has learned to pedal, which earned him a big-boy bicycle, complete with training wheels. He has not learned to properly operate a coaster brake, which has earned me a number of heart attacks. He has, however, accepted as gospel the fact that "big boys wear helmets on big-boy bikes." Video of the entire bicycling extravaganza coming soon.

3. He is becoming learned at the Art of Manipulation, even at his tender age. Case in point: the other night I had to work late and wasn't going to get home before he went to bed, so we talked a little on the phone, and then he said, in the Most Plaintive Voice Ever, "Come home, Mama."

As I was piecing the shards of my heart back together, Daddymatic explained that D had wanted to go outside after dinner and Daddy had said no, and D suggested we call Mama and ask her to come home so that THEN he could go outside. Because apparently I am a complete pushover wussy-pants. After this information helped lift the crushing weight of guilt off of my chest, I have to say I had a grudging admiration for his keen ability to, well, try to completely play two people who, working together at least, should be able to outsmart him. Well done, indeed.

4. You know how everyone has those incredibly sweet, cloying things that their children say, and you get all jealous because your child is busy saying things like "DON'T say no to me, Mama!" and "I want daddy to put me to bed?" Well, I think D has finally redeemed himself in this area: He's been obsessed with these two videos--especially the "C is for Cookie" one. So then last night, this conversation took place:

Me: What does c-c-cookie start with?

D: Cookie starts with C!!

Me: What does D-D-Davis start with?

D: Davis starts with D!

Me: What does D-D-D Daddy start with

D: Daddy starts wiiiith..I love you!

I was afraid to ask what Mommy starts with, but luckily it appears that Mommy also starts with "I love you," which is good, because for a while there, he was saying things like "You not keeming [screaming] at me, mommy!" in this awed, surprised tone, which made me feel just fantastic, because, I guess, it represents such a departure from my normal MO. Or we'd be looking at his "Mercer Mayer book" at the scene where Mama Monster is clearly comforting Little Monster, and I'd ask what the mommy was saying and he'd say, "She say, NO NO, you get a time out." Outstanding.

So those are my updates. Pictures? Videos? One day soon. *sigh* I mean, at least I'm not keeming, right?

Advice from Sistermatic

2007-06-12T07:20:00.000-07:00

I got nothing. A weekend-plus of the world's worst case of croup (people still get that! some people get it THREE TIMES A YEAR! Who knew?), a visit from the Outlawz, and about a thousand other things too gross or petty to name have just wiped me out.

Luckily, however, my sister is funnier and cleverer--and apparently better rested--than I am, and she sent me this nugget of advice I thought the interwebs might appreciate:

She and her husband who have been married less than a year (read: still honeymoonish and completely nauseating) just got custody of his son last week. This morning I got this email:

>From: sistermatic
>To: stefanierj
>Subject: New Equation
>
>Some things you have to learn the hard way, I guess.....
>
>Threat of thunderstorms + 7 year old = wear PJs to bed

See, now don't say we don't never offer advice on this here blog.

My personal answer to "what could possibly be more boring than reality TV?"

2007-06-06T13:51:00.000-07:00

So say what you will about Di$ney, but whatever sticker company they license their "Car$" products to must freaking rock, because D gave me a sticker for my hand yesterday, and it has lasted through the following:

1 very splashy and interactive toddler bath
1 very wiggly and silly toddler diapering and baby-lotion-applying session
1 sinkful of dishes with the level 2 extra-greasy-slime option package
1 pre-in-law-visit-panic-mode guest room cleaning
2 loads of laundry (which had to be hung up to dry, not because I'm all getting into the Laura Ingalls-y pioneering spirit of Utah or have become angst-fully aware of my carbon footprint, sad to say, but because my dryer is apparently more moody than I am, and a darn sight harder to mollify with a pedicure and a handful of candy bars)
1 shower
1 post-shower high-maintenance product application routine
1 excessively type-A hairdrying routine
3 car-to-office/office-to-car trips. in the rain. without an umbrella. because I am dumb. and this, for Pete's sake, is THE DESERT WEST.

So now I am taking bets as to which will come first: will the sticker wear off? or will someone from my office who no doubt knows me as an Uptight Office Type finally, finally, finally ask why I have a raggedy-ass kid's sticker on my hand?

This is what passes for entertainment when you only have basic cable, people. You have been warned.

The Lord's Day and the Day After That

2007-05-29T15:50:00.000-07:00

Okay, so it's time for a confession, Utah-style. Most of you know that while I am not Mormon, I am quite positively inclined towards the LDS church. I think it's a force for good in this community, and while I don't espouse the theology myself, I think there are some lovely ideas there. Being nice to people. Helping out. Being with one's family for all time and eternity. Now, ten days straight with my family is about all I can manage, but hey, if one wants to be with one's family for all of time and eternity, be my guest! If I were a better person, I probably would, too.

One thing I just don't get, however, is the ban on shopping on Sundays. I get the general gist--that it's a day of rest, that one should not conduct business on the Lord's Day, but what about those of us for whom shopping is less and chore and more, say, a form of therapy? Especially when there is a newly opened IKEA in town, taunting me with its cheery yellow and blue promises of extremely cute Scandinavian design. And 99-cent breakfasts.

So yes, I am confessing. On Sunday morning, we decided that we did not need a repeat performance of last week's nursery debacle at the Cathedral of the Perpetually Howling Toddler and went to IKEA instead. I kind of want to duck behind something when I say that, but it's true. I skipped church and went shopping and I'm not even sorry. We had breakfast, which frankly, wasn't that great, but dude, it was 99 cents. We found the toddler bed to end all toddler beds (because it has a tent! that attaches to the bed!) which we won't be buying for some time but which is darned cute nonetheless. We also found all manner of cute stuffed toys, which we need like a hole in the head but bought one anyway--it's a macabre little turtle who sings "Twinkle Twinkle" when you pull his head out from his body. Gruesome? A little. But also silly cute. Now D announces to everyone he knows that "I LOVE IKEA." That's my boy.

And may I say about 3-day vacations is that they are only 3-day vacations for those without children? Because by Monday morning, I was so ready to be back at my desk, fielding countless demands and answering the same question over and over and over again. Oh wait......

Content evaluation

2007-05-23T07:42:00.000-07:00

Recent google searches that have led people to this blog:

meal moth cat poop

testicle grabbing

poop "bear down"

Mommymatic: Come for the scatology, stay for...what? More scatology?

(I know I'm being cliche and that every blogger inevitably does a post about the wacky searches that bring people to their blog, but this past week is the first time I've gotten any really good ones, so bear with me. No pun intended.)

Tinkle Tinkle, little boy

2007-05-04T08:49:00.000-07:00

So you may have noticed our decided lack of news on the pottytraining front here at Chez Mommymatic. That's because there hasn't been any. I've been trying not to freak out about the fact that some lovely people have managed to potty train their children scant months after their two-year birthdays and that we, up until the last few weeks have only shown a third-party kind of interest in the whole toileting business.

That is, until one of the preschool teachers tapped into the two great toddler currencies (peer pressure and high-fructose-corn-syrup-based products) and persuaded the One True Child to (drumroll, please) PEE-PEE INNA POTTY. Here is how Daddymatic and D broke the news to me:

Daddymatic: Tell mama what happened at school today.

D: I fell DOOOOWN.

Daddymatic: No, tell mama what OTHER thing happened today.

D: ((crickets chirping))

Daddymatic: ((whispers in D's ear))

D: I go pee-pee inna potty. ((pause)) I GET CANDY.

Ah, yes. It seems we have found the magic motivation in the form of...jellybeans. Unfortunately, we also have a toddler who is smarter than both of his parents put together, because the other night before his bath, he begged to be put on the potty. Normally, this is nothing more than a stalling technique, but it's an effective one, since we simply cannot seem to take the gamble of refusing him. I won't double down on an 11, but I'll take 100 to 1 odds that he will actually pee, because this time is different. This time could be the one!

Well, lo and behold--this time? He did. He tinkled a bit and was thrilled to recieve 3 jellybeans for his trouble. He got in the tub, and announced 5 minutes later that he had to pee-pee again. Now, he knows that candy is only distributed for actual fecal or urinary production, so I was curious to see what he'd do since he'd just peed, and the little stinker peed another, oh, pint or so. So either they are putting real coffee in his daviscoffee (why is it that one cup of coffee going in equals 3 coming out again?) or this little bugger has figured out how to hold some back in order to maximize his jellybean intake. Either way, I think I speak for the entire Matic parenting unit when I say "Craaaaaaap."

But seriously, it's a very good thing. I haven't been pursuing the potty training thing for a number of reasons, top among them being the fact that it would really cut into my Laying Around on the Couch time, and yesterday it became clear that It Is Time, because an untimely diaper full of poop throws quite a wrench into one's sequence of errands, especially when said person has been Laying Around on the Couch instead of, say, making sure there were extra diapers stashed in the car.

So we shall see. I welcome and solicit any advice (or shoot, even assvice) you have to offer, dear reader (and that's not a reference to Ann Landers, it's because I'm sure all but one of you have totally given up on my ever posting again).

Oh, and yes, Bee-bee and Grampy were here for 2 weeks, so there should be a post coming about their visit, which might soon be renamed The Least Stressful Two Weeks of my Recent Past.

I will leave you with some cute recent pics and D's favorite memory of my father from this last trip: "Gumpy havva loud nose." Apparently, heaping this child with gifts and food is second to having the most dramatic nasal-mucus-expelling routine ever. Let this be a lesson to you, friends: you never know what you are going to be remembered for.

This is Bee-bee's favorite picture. Yes, she made the apron. Daddymatic has a matching one. Yes, you may throw up in your mouth now. It really is THAT cute.

This is my favorite recent picture. And his mouth is open in both of these pictures because he almost. never. stops. talking. Finally, a trait for the Outlaws to claim!! *cough, cough*

I don't know where he gets the endless chattering thing from

2007-04-26T09:27:00.000-07:00

Some thoughts:

One: So I was washing my hair the other day, and my little voyeur peeped into the shower. He asked for some "bubbles" out of my hair but told him I was washing it. He looked at me gravely and said "You're doing a good job, mom."

Two: We were driving away from the library the other day and a cute Asian couple walked by our car. D doesn't always notice passersby but for some reason, they captured his interest, and he said "What's HIS name?" I told him I didn't know, and he kind of shook his head at me, like "come on, that was such an easy question" and said "it's Frere Jacques" as if maybe I just didn't recognize Frere Jacques because he was wearing sunglasses or a bad toupee. I don't know why this filled me with glee, but I think it has something to do with the fact that D is thinking about this guy now whenever I hear his reedy, sweet voice singing that old French nursery rhyme.

Three: The following commentary might be the reason it takes us 13.5 minutes to get in the car and get ready to go somewhere:

Okay, sweetie, time to get in the car. No, no, D honey, now is NOT the time to run under the tent and hide. I need you to get in the car. Right now. Okay, I'm going to count, and you either come out of the tent or I will come in and get you. One. Two. Very good, thank you for listening. Okay, now let's get out the door. No, the door honey. That's right. Mommy will open the door, you just walk on out. Out. This way, please. Yes, I see the tree. Yes, I see the bicycle. We will play with your bicycle when we get home. No, sweetie, I need you to get off your bicycle right now and get in the car. Are you listening? Thank you for being a good listener. Okay, let mommy open the car door.

Come back over to the car, please. I know you want to roll your car on the ground right now, but we need to get in the car. Please walk to the car. Do you want to walk like a big boy or do you want me to carry you? Okay, then walk. NOW. Oooooone. Twoooooo. Thank you for listening. Now let mommy open the car door. Okay, okay, YOU open the car door. Go ahead. Do you need help? Okay, okay, I won't help. "My" do it. Yes. ((pause)) Do you need help? Because when you grunt and scream like that, mommy thinks you need help. Mommy actually thinks MOMMY needs help when you scream like that. Okay, now into the car. No, honey, there's nothing under that seat. Yes, that is mommmy's seat. There's nothing under it. Okay, you're right, there's a goldfish. No, no, please don't eat the goldfish. That goldfish is grey. And slimy. Yes, slimy. Yes, I will give you a not-slimy goldfish once you GET IN YOUR SEAT. I know you want to climb in the way-back, but we are not climbing into the way-back right now. Get in your seat, honey. I am not asking again. Okay, okay, "my" do it. Just do it NOW. Sit down. D, listen to me. You need to sit down right now. No, mommy needs to help you buckle those straps or she will get arrested. I know you want to do it, but mommy needs to help. Okay, you're all buckled in. Yes, I will get you some goldfish. Yes, I will get your water. And your la-la. And your binky. And a very large, very cool cloth to put to my head.

As Daddymatic likes to say, it is a little like getting pecked to death by a duck.

Co-opting pagan rituals for the sake of candy since 2007

2007-04-17T08:20:00.000-07:00

I've been bad about posting. I really wanted to post just after Easter, but I had a rough week in which I received some pretty bad news about a friend who was killed, and in light of that and the recent shootings at Virginia Tech, it seemed frivolous to post about the fact that D had candy for the first time over Easter and how much fun it was this year to have Easter with him.

But I have been thinking about this more and more, and I think what helps me to get through news that seems so bad you can't even get your brain around it are precisely these moments of silliness and joy--even if they are fueled almost entirely by high fructose corn syrup and D&C red #5.

So I will have more posts coming up--I actually have a few drafted that are just waiting for the gimlet eye of revision to be cast over them before I release them to the ether (yes, believe it or not, most of the stuff I publish here has actually been reread and often revised despite the scrawled-in-haste-on-two-squares-of-toilet-paper je ne sais quoi it embodies.)

And so, I give you a picture and two videos:

Act I: In Which The One True Child Finds Candy, after Just Having Stated to His Mother That "I Don't Want to Eat Real Food, I Just Want Candy."

Photo Sharing - Upload Video - Video Sharing - Share Photos

Act II, In Which We Explain Wordlessly Why The One True Child Should Not Ever Be Given Said Candy (and Possibly, Why Toddlers Even Look Cute Dressed as Old Men in Socks and Sandals):

Photo Sharing - Upload Video - Video Sharing - Share Photos

But this face? How can you deny this face the jellybeans it loves more than either one of its parents? Especially since this child gets more mileage out of 3 lousy jellybeans than most people would a 5-course meal?

(The strapping lad with the OTC in this picture is our neighbor, Xander, who has convinced me that the person who said all children should come with the older sibiling accessory was RIGHT RIGHT RIGHT on.)

Our New Valet

2007-03-21T11:25:00.000-07:00

D apparently has decided he is destined for the service industry and is hard at work on carving out a niche market for himself. Namely, he sees a big future in becoming a Bathroom Valet. Lest you think this is merely some fancy name for the person who, in very fancy restaurants, hands you towels when you are finished washing your hands, let me correct you: not so. The responsibilities of this position go far beyond the conveyance of hand-drying textiles. As best I can surmise, his job description for this position would look something like this:

1. When a person in your presence casually mentions that they have to go to the bathroom, announce clearly your intent to go with them. We call this process Engaging a Client. To fully prepare yourself, you may also inquire as to which substances ("PEE PEE? POOP?") that person plans on depositing during this particular bathroom trip.

2. On your way to the bathroom, close and lock all doors with as much enthusiasm as you can muster. Clients like their privacy.

3. Once you get to the bathroom, be sure to rush past the client and lift the lid of the toilet. Once again, you will want to carefully explain every action you are taking ("I LIFT THE LID ONNA POTTY!") so that your client does not become confused.

4. When the client sits to transact his or her business, sit on the small bench (I was going to say stool, ha ha) provided for you and gaze intently at your client so that he or she knows you are fully committed to the waste expunging process. You are encouraged to make descriptive comments about this process, including--but not limited to--attempts to recreate any sound effects that occur. Most clients find such a rapport both charming and compelling.

5. Occasionally, your female clients may need to procure feminine hygiene products. Know where they are kept and their technical names, and repeat them loudly ("TAM-PAAAHN") to ensure you have selected the proper product. Also, do not be afraid to model how these products are to be used, at least in front of female clients. Often such a "refresher course" is appreciated. However, you will want to avoid any mention of feminine hygiene products in front of male clientele. They do not appreciate the depth and breadth of your knowledge.

6. When your client has finished her or his transaction, reach behind him or her for the toilet paper roll and hand it over with a flourish.

7. When flushing, which is your primary responsibility, hold the handle down as long as possible. This is not overkill. It is called Being Thorough.

8. When your client is washing her/his hands, narrate the process, repeating the most important steps loudly ("Washa haaaands! WASHA HANDS!") to ensure that your client knows you are paying attention to procedural detail. The fact that any listeners/bystanders will likely think that your client simply doesn't usually DO these things and thus needs extra reminders? That's merely a bonus.

So there you have it. Fortunately, he hasn't installed a tip jar on the back of the commode, but I fear that's not far off.

What happens in Vegas...

2007-03-13T14:30:00.001-07:00

Oh, yeah. I've been in Vegas. Vegas, baby! A city so storied it caused Daddymatic to leave me a note of things to do that included items such as

1. Double down on an 11 and
2. If you can't be good, at least take pictures.

It was hard-hard-hard being away from my peeps for a week, especially since the One True Child refused, for the first time in six months, to take a nap. This of course was mere hours after I left. Apparently he had forgotten that the last time he pulled this stunt we explained with exaggerated patience that two hours of midday toddler rest time is a mandatory stipulation of his continuing to stay with us. However, the boy rallied later in the day as he and Daddymatic rode the train and conversed with the tweakers my husband seems to attract in the same way that I attracted unwashed slacker dickhead boyfriends during my college years.

Then of course he was ailing and coughy and weepy for a day or two, during which time the confining guilt actually squeezed all air from my lungs and left me gasping after every single conversation with Daddymatic and his small person companion.

But dude, as soon as I hung up, I got to go shopping, meet up with old friends whom I introduced to new friends (what happens when a japanese-hawaiian mormon chick meets up with a formerly catholic lesbian jew? hilarity ensues!), get a mani-pedi, rock the old-school casinos that apparently only elderly hawaiian people frequent, and find out exactly how much sushi one can consume when it's an all-you-can-eat buffet. So there was that.

And the people in my training group were startling in their similarity to, say, the entire cast of Best In Show. Seriously. My coworker friend and I spent most of the first day casting celebrities to play these people. There's the flamboyantly gay guy in bright clothing, his middle-aged female friend with teenaged children who went nuts at the local male revue, the second grade teacher who wore skirts so short I was sure she had to work a bikini wax to wear, and the loud older woman who missed no opportunity to point out the ways the curriculum we were learning was sure to be inappropriate for the Navajo children she teaches at the rez. I am not even making this up. It was more fun that should be allowed, even in Vegas.

But then I came home again, and got to watch D say "pinkle pinkle" as he sprinkled sugar on his oatmeal in the morning, and hear him say, for the first umprompted time, "I love you, mama," and I thought "Meh. What's Vegas got on da SLC?"

So thanks to those of you who were checking to see where I was and a BIG SHOUT OUT and "mwah" to Mo-wo for nominating this post for a ROFL award. I'm blushing, babe, especially since you always make ME ROFL. High praise from the Motherwoman herself. The pressure's on now!

Items of note

2007-02-22T21:59:00.000-07:00

One: The One True Child has apparently mastered the concept of the First Person Singular Pronoun. For those of you who don't speak Insufferable Grammarian, that means that instead of referring to himself by his name, a la Bob Dole, he can now use a pronoun to represent himself in a sentence. Thus, "Day-vuss chair" has become "My chair."

Unfortunately, "my" appears to be the only first person singular pronoun he knows, so it's been a little confusing around here this week as Daddymatic and I, slow as Neanderthals, have finally realized that what he's saying is NOT NOT NOT "Mommy do it" but rather "My do it," as well as charming variations such as "My don't like it" or "My have some." Honestly, it's a wonder this child doesn't lose his patience more often with us, considering that every time he said "My have some" when holding out a bite of food, mommy would, oblivious as she is to Obvious Cognitive and Conceptual Linguistic Progress, eat whatever he was displaying. I mean, at some point, he had to be going "Damn, woman, get your own snacks."

Two: For the first time since I was in the throes of prenatal nausea three years ago, I weigh less than my husband. Yes, he is nearly 5 inches taller than me. Yes, he still has a smaller butt than I do. Yes, this occasionally makes me want to poke at my eyes with a splintery stick. But dude, right now? I weigh less than him.

This woman is responsible for the recent transformation. I have been reading Kristin's mommyblog for months, ever since I found out she was a regular reader who was neither related to me nor paid for her perusals of this blog. I knew she'd done some personal training, and I knew she was tough--I mean, her son Logan is dribbling a soccer ball at a scant 12 months old! But all I wanted was for her to give me a fitness plan. You know, tell me how long to get on the treadmill and how much weight I should be pumping when I do tricep curls or whatever.

What I got was a total-lifestyle-altering, kick ass plan to get my sorry butt healthy and in shape. She wrote out a nutrition plan that frightened me so much I still have a 2-page email I composed to her explaining in the nicest possible way that she might see whether or not her ancestors had ever, say, run the gulag or poked sleeping kittens in the tummy. But I made myself give it a try, and I can say that while I cannot say for certainty that I enjoyed surviving a week without a pop tart, I have discovered that it is, in fact, possible.

She wrote a fitness plan that leaves me feeling like every single muscle of mine was scrubbed by the tiredness machine, rinsed, wrung out and hung to dry. She has promised to write a leg routine next week that will make me cry.

I hate to admit that this turns me on a little.

She makes me warm up. She makes me stretch. She runs me ragged. She also encourages me, cheers me on, and makes me feel like I can actually do this. She didn't even make me sleep in the basement when I cheated on my nutrition plan this week. Of course, I didn't tell her that it was the first time I tried the Utah delicacy that is fry sauce, which is so good that it must be made from God's tears.

So all I'm saying is that if you need a good trainer, and you are hip to the idea of working with a HWAHM (Hard-Working At-Home Mom), Kristin is worth every penny.

Three: I got a sweet new ride this week. Yeah, I know. But duuuuuude, is it a nice car. And so nice to not have to worry about not having enough punch to, say, avoid becoming a hood ornament for an SUV every morning on the interstate. And it's safe! Standard side curtain airbags! "Think of the child!" I keep telling my guilty conscience. Also? My purse fits perfectly in the center console. But I promise I did not know this until I had already committed.

I miss my old car just a tiny bit. She was a good old car. She got us across the country and back the summer we found out D was on his way, and she got daddymatic out here in one piece. Ish. But it was time to split up: we'd fight and then make up, and then something else would set her off and she'd just decide not (!) to accelerate. Or to brake 15 seconds AFTER I slammed my foot on the brake pedal. Very childish behavior. And so we parted ways, complete with a whole "it's not you, it's me" speech on my part.

But here's the problem. D called my old car, inventively enough, "Old car." When Daddymatic got the Subie, it was instantly dubbed the "new car." So my question, internets, is what do we call the new kid? "New-new car" won't do because the "noo-noo" is what he calls the vacuum. Really New Car? The Nice New Car? The Get Your Feet off the Seat, Mommy Has a Lease Agreement to Honor Car has kind of a ring to it, but I dunno. Thoughts?

Bug bites

2007-02-14T22:05:00.000-07:00

A number of really nice, concerned and completely great people have written to us to make sure we're okay after the deadly mall shooting that took place about 10 blocks from us here in Salt Lake City. We are shaken, we are sad, we are seriously reconsidering our stance on the concealed carry law, and we are grateful to live in an environment with brave and skilled emergency workers and cops who were able to make sure the situation wasn't a whole lot more devastating than it was. But we are okay.

We've been busy creating a ladybug circus.

Actually, they're not ladybugs per se, they are red and black beetle-y critters that have, apparently, followed us from Pennsylvania where they used to invade our house in the late fall through early spring. But we flout tradition (and common linguistic labels) and call them ladybugs.

And we love them.

Photo Sharing - Upload Video - Video Sharing - Share Photos

Here we are trying to take a picture of the ladybug, kiss it, and make it better. In other words, harass it within an inch of its life, as if being an insect in Utah in the winter wasn't bad enough. If you click over to our dropshots site, you can view the sequel: Ladybug II, which is about two minutes long and includes such hilarious hijinks as looking at the ladybug "on the tummy," feeding it goldfish crackers, and nearly squishing the poor guy for his trouble.

The picture's dark, but the audio's pretty funny. But then, we are a strange and easy to entertain people.

Oh, and happy valentine's day. Daddymatic and I decided awhile ago that the real V-day love was going out to the preschool teachers, who made our month when they announced last week that preschool would, in fact, be continuing through the summer. Not to put too fine a point on it, but I was ready to offer them celebratory sexual favors when I heard the news. You know, because it would be awkward if Daddymatic tried that.

Instead, we settled on Tar-zhay gift cards in a festive heart design that said, if nothing else "We love you, even if we are so lame that they were out of Valentine's day cards when we got to Target."

Words and wishes

2007-02-06T15:56:00.000-07:00

There are days when my child makes one of my wishes come true to such a degree that I almost wonder what I was doing wishing for that in the first place. Case in point: I could hardly wait for his first words, for him to talk and be able to communicate with me. And now? He. talks. constantly. Yes, the child who Would Not Speak before 19 months now rivals his grandmothers, his garrulous Aunt Katie and his very own mother in the constant chatter competition.

I have said before, I think, that having breakfast with this child is often like attending an auction, what with the endless stream of babble:

Dates.
I want dates.
Dates! ((because, you know, we must not've heard him, or they would have materialized instantly, right?))
Cut in half.
CUT IN HALF.
More cereal, daddy.
More sugar.
Don't mix it.
More sugar.
Bib.
Need a bib.
No, don't like it.
No bib.
NEED A BIB.
Milk.
No milk.
Milk onna cereal.
I want milk onna cereal. ((pause)) pleeeease?

And that's just to get his food in front of him. Of course most actual eating ceases after the first two minutes, but we feel we must at least try to get the child to ingest something other than the fine rime of brown sugar that sits atop his oatmeal. But my formerly good eater just won't do it. No vegetables. No meat, fake or carnivore-approved. Not even pizza or noodles or, in rare moments, even Daviscoffee. I have heard rumours of the Toddler Starvation Diet, but had not seen this particular beast face to face yet. So far? Not impressed.

And why is it that the kid can remember that, for instance, back in September after the loss of our Eldest Cat, one of the felines had an accident in his room (every night he says "GUN-GUN PEE-PEE ON THE CARPET. BAAAAD GUN-GUN". And the cats always look at him like "Hello, broken record. Plus? You totally dropped a brown trout of your own on the carpet once and we have YET to bring that up, dude. Thanks"). And yet this same child with the steel-trap memory cannot recall that EVERY TIME we check out in the grocery store, the cashier is going to need to scan whatever bag of celery/hawaiian-themed rubber duck/pack of hotdogs/plastic plate he has suddenly glommed on to and, more importantly, that he/she WILL GIVE IT RIGHT BACK. Toute suite, in fact. My friend is convinced that "if you want your children to remember something, do it once. If you want them to forget you did something, do it all the time," and I wonder if this might not be the key to the mystery here. Either way, this catchy phrase has become my new mantra for whenever I catch myself using more, ah, quote-unquote colorful linguistic terms in front of The One Who Notices.

And yet, the impossible cuteness continues unabated, strategically placed, I'm sure, in between moments of great duress, such as unwelcomed diaper changes, transition of food items to/from highchair tray and any time one of the cats approaches a Cherished Possession such as a bowl of goldfish crackers, a favorite fleece blanket, or Mom.

Which he now calls me, by the way. When I get home, instead of our old ritual of exchanging a hug-and-kiss combo that would embarrass those who grace the covers of cheesy romance novels, I now get a decidedly platonic but joyful "Hi, mom" and a wave. A wave! Oh, sure, if I ask for it, I can get a hug or kiss, but it's clear these are concessions he makes because One Of Us hasn't figured out he's a big boy now. I just know the days where we greet each other with wedgies or by burping "what's up, dude?" can't be too far in the future. *sigh*

I have some incredibly cute video I am going to post when I can get it edited, but for now, I leave you with D's rendition of our nightly routine:

Have a bath.
Brusha teeth. Need toothpaste. Turn it on ((it's an electric toothbrush)). Oooh, new batteries.
What's THIS? La-la on the penis. ((riotous laughter))
Diaper on. Need lotion. Put some onna hand. Put some onna tummy.
Fire engine jammie shoes. Car jammie shoes. Motorcycle jammie shoes.
WANT FIRE ENGINE JAMMIE SHOES.
La-la.
Binky.
THAT binky.
See Daddy.
Night-night, daddy. KISS!
Read book.
Read it again.
Read it again.
Lights off.
((and then? To drown out the sound of my heart breaking in half?))
No sing, mommy.

What is this Global Warming you speak of?

2007-01-26T17:22:00.000-07:00

So the slide? Is very big.

And is very brightly primary colorific. Very brightly colorific.

Also? Two people who together weigh less than 300 lbs are not capable of taking it apart. But the two people in question did not discover this fact until after it had been put together. So my living room now looks like a freaking daycare. Good times, eh?

Photo Sharing - Upload Video - Video Sharing - Share Photos

But as you can see, it is a big, big hit, (yes, he's actually yelling his new favorite phrase "I LOVE it!" ) so I guess we just look like a daycare for now. Or until we sell the house.

Which might be sooner than I had originally thought, because, gee, I dunno, there’s just something demoralizing about spending, say, $10,000 on a brand-spankety new supah-efficient heating system, only to be completely deflated by one’s first $250 heating bill. Welcome to Utah, indeed. So I spent most of last weekend insulating my basement with the help of our trusty friend Mike in the hopes that we might stop hemorrhaging money heating the black hole that is our master bedroom.

And in case you needed another fun reason to live in Utah in the winter--you know, in addition to the weeks of temperatures where the highs are in the 20s (I, like Sparky, do not believe “high temperatures” and “20s” belong in the same sentence), may I introduce you to the meteorological wonder that is The Inversion? You can read the wikipedia article if you want to know what an inversion technically is, but basically, it’s the glut of pollution that gets trapped in the valley thanks to our bowl-like geography, making everything look like smut soup, obscuring my much-adored mountains from view and giving everyone the experience of feeling what it’s like to have smoked for, say, a decade. Because everyone should have that experience, no?

But lest I complain too much about my beloved new home, it is not wholly without merit. It is the land of Amazing Mormon Grad Student Babysitters, one of whom is the ONLY non-family member ever to put Sleepy D down for the night. And she got him to watch 20 minutes of an animated movie. Twenty minutes! When she called me "a knockout" last week, I almost asked her to move in, but I thought she’d think I was too fast. Or easy.

Oh well. At least she’s coming back tomorrow night so that Daddymatic and I can go to the movies. If we can remember what they are.

You, internets? What does the weekend hold for you?

It's official

2007-01-17T20:59:00.000-07:00

Photo Sharing - Upload Video - Video Sharing - Share Photos

Well, internets, it's official. We've successfully renegotiated Heavy D's contract for another year, due in large part to a vocal showing by his as-yet untapped fan base. So thanks, Sparky, Kristin and Redneck Mommy in particular for showing the love and letting the management know how you feel about this particular player and his strengths.

So, as you can see from the vid, our little fella turned two over the weekend. It was an unusual birthday by Matic standards--no countdown, no cake, no party, no stripper--and the child is from a family in which the father often begins his own birthday countdown in January (hello, March 29?).

But fun? Oh yes.

For starters, Daddymatic got ~~himself~~ D a very cool remote-controlled car, which was an instant hit. I have never seen the Model D take to a toy this way, but, as Daddymatic pointed out, he is male and it is an Italian car. Even if it looks like a Volkswagen.

He also got a ride in my friend Mike's BIGTRUCKBIGTRUCK! which was very cool, since Mike is not above doing donuts in parking lots and shoving the bad-ass V8 into 4WD to show off a little, which got the typical D response of "Doot 'gin. Doot 'gin." And grins galore. And constant begging for "See Mike! See Mike!" at any given moment during the 48 hours following. It's embarassing to have one's parenting replaced by a $40,000 vehicle, but at least it's a really nice truck, right?

And finally, the perfect endcap to the day was a trip to the local hipster coffeehouse, because we have discovered that we can ply D into letting mama and daddy enjoy a nice latte or so by getting him his own frothy beverage, called "daviscoffee," known to mere mortals as a cup of whipped cream with a spoon. So we decided to forego our usual haunt and head to the hot spah-zot in town where the pierc'd and tattoo-ed staff was more than happy to provide D with daviscoffee. Unfortunately, I was midway through an ETM (extremely tasty mocha) when D dropped a load and we realized why we don't go to hipster coffeehouses more often: they are the only place in Utah that the plastic fold-down changing table people have left untouched. Oh well.

The partying did continue, in typical Matic fashion, as long as we could possibly drag it out, and given that even Utahans have the sense to celebrate The great Doctor Martin Luther King Jr., that means a whole extry day of funness. But that's for another post, so tune in next time for a full report on the Indoor Slide Monstrosity and, God willing, actual video of D voicing his newest phrase: "I LOVE IT." He says it so enthusiastically and, frankly, gaily, that I like to call it his first truly metrosexual phrase.

For now, though, I have cuteness that only Bee-bee can bring out in our precious spawn:

Forgive me, Internets. It's been a month since my last confession.

2007-01-11T13:55:00.000-07:00

Things in the Matic household have been…interesting. The last few weeks reminded me of when I went to Alaska and saw Mt.McKinley. We were there in June amidst awful weather, and one day, someone said, “Go down to the end of the road and see Mt. McKinley. The fog has finally lifted from it and it’s spectacular.” As I’m walking down the road, though, I’m grumbling something about how in the heck am I going to be able to tell which dang mountain it is, since there are nothing BUT snow-capped, huge mountains around here, being that I’m smack dab in the middle of a mountain range, and then? THERE IT IS: a huge, towering completely snow-covered mountain, dwarfing everything in sight, and upon reflecting on it later, I thought “Yeah, I guess you can’t really miss that, huh?” Sort of like Real Labor—if you have to ask, it’s not Real Labor.

That is how the terrible twos were for us the past few weeks. I have whined here about D’s tantrums and his crying when I leave in the morning, which, while brief, is a tempestuous maelstrom of toddler misery and starts my day off with a whopper helping of guilt and a small side of relief that I get to go to work where, most of the time anyway, people do not scream and cry and crumple their sweet faces when I do something they don’t like.

And I thought, “Geez, he’s hit the terrible twos early. This is pretty hard, but I think I can handle it.” Just like seeing all those mountains, and thinking Mt. McKinley would simply be the vaguely bigger one with slightly more snow.

But ooooooh the week of Christmas, I finally saw Mt. McKinley Three temper tantrums before 8 AM one day. Most days, actually. Whining and crying and clinging nonstop from 7-10 every morning, despite however many time-outs or “mommy goes to the other room because that noise makes her ears hurt” rehearsals we did.

I did things I’m not proud of. I’m sure during one of those put-in-time-out-sessions, I was rougher with him than I needed to be. I yelled, despite the fact that it made me sick of myself to do it. I considered not re-upping his contract, which is due to be renewed on Sunday.

And then the night before we were to come back to Utah (because oh yes, most of the horrible, terrible, no-good, very bad parenting I got to do over the holidays was in front of my own sainted parents. Because God has a sick sense of humor, that’s why), D announces on the way home from some outing that he’s MAD! MAD! And starts to cry. It was some kind of gestalt-type release, apparently, because he cried—hard—for the next hour. Nothing would console him. Mama had to hold him UP (no sitting, woman!) and get him away from all grandparents, the TV, and most books and toys. We got him calmed down a few times, but then he’d start up again. We put him to bed early, and he woke once, equally hysterical, but did go back to sleep.

All night, I worried. Was he sick? Was he going to get worse? Would they make us ride on the outside of the airplane if this hysteria continued?

And then, in the morning, he woke up right when we needed him to—on his own—and was, for the most part, completely charming for the rest of the day. Certainly more charming than either of his parents, who each felt like ten pounds of crap in a five-pound bag.

Since then, thing have been much better. I mean, he’s still being Two, but in a much more manageable kind of way. He’s been affectionate, and even downright adorable on several occasions, so the contract re-negotiations have gone well. It was touch and go there for a while, but the fact that he pretty much poops on command and sleeps twelve hours at night has swayed our front office personnel considerably.

So, now, I will leave you with two bits of D cuteness in case any of you are still reading:

I may have mentioned a time or ten that D calls cats “gun-guns.” We are still not sure why, but the other day, he and the kitty were watching Daddymatic make cookies, and D looked over and said, as clear as a bell, “What do you SEE, Gun-gun?” He then paused dramatically for effect and replied, “I see cookies, Day-vuss.” (he has finally started referring to himself by his own hyper-articulated name. Because apparently, “Day-day” and “D-diddy” are soooo 2006).

And then last night in the tub, he grabbed himself by the business end and said “Day-vuss have a penis.” I concurred that he did. “Daddy have a penis.” I didn’t feel I was in much of a position to deny this, either. I mean, how do you think you got here, little one? Then he said, “Mama have a penis.” No, babe, mama doesn’t have a penis. What does mommy have? He thought for a moment, and then broke into a huge smile and said, very proudly, “a TATOOOOOO!”

That’s my boy.

Pictures coming--Bee-bee was the holiday photojournalist, so when I get them from her, I'll post 'em.

Perspective

2006-12-12T08:11:00.000-07:00

Daddymatic finished his semester last week, and this very. challenging. toddler. weekend, we had this conversation:

Daddymatic: Did you know D's school goes until December 22nd?

Mommymatic: I think I did know that. Why?

Daddymatic: Because it just struck me that he's too young to know how much that sucks, but I'm old enough to know how awesome it is.

I don't know why, but that struck me as really, really funny.

Official Spokestoddler

2006-12-07T20:56:00.000-07:00

Soooo the child has finally decided that the educational materials my company designs are more addictive than, say, whatever the toddler equivalent of crystal m3th is.

Given what I do all day, you'd think it would annoy me to have to watch 2-minute animated clips of "The Eensy-Weensy Spider" and "The Wheels on the Bus" but all I can say is that it's about dang time. I was getting tired of having to dodge my boss's queries about how D likes our product. Telling him that "he likes it as long as there's not something more interesting going on, like figuring out how many peas have become fused to his booster seat or learning to pass gas in the tub" hasn't made me a candidate for employee of the year so far.

So thanks, little guy. Your next vocabulary words will be "mommy's little job security officer." I might even have it put on a t-shirt.

Bits and parts of things

2006-11-30T21:19:00.000-07:00

Some bloggy bitz first: Today is a mommymatic first. Andrea the beautiful and brave nominated this post as a perfect post. I have never gotten one of these coveted awards before, so I'm kind of like a little kid who's been told she's getting the exact brand-new bike she wanted and not the hand-me-down bike from her older sister. It's like when Roger said I had nice hair. Makes me want to cover the world with kisses.

Speaking of Andrea, she used the Best Metaphor Ever in a recent post, so good I have to share it with you: "I could smell her exasperation like a fart in a car." WHY do I never think of such sparkling analogies? It's so PERFECT. And Mrs. Fortune summed up my feelings about my family in one perfect sentence she wrote this week: "I can say with confidence that I must have showed up early and with doughnuts the day god was handing out families." Word to you, sister.

Speaking of my beloved family, I'll say now that spending Thanksgiving with only my immediate family was actually pretty good. We did the orphan Thanksgiving thing with my nabes who were delightful despite their predilection to put their feet in their mouths (they called my work friend "old" and always seem to whine about "the religious breeding freaks" in SLC, to which I almost always reply, "Move your car. My kid and I are late for church."). The rest of the weekend we rolled downtown to see SLC ring in the Xmas season by blazing up Temple Square and surrounds with lights, lights, lights. Is pretty, no?

Saturday, we watched the crazy shoppers at the Overly Kiddie local mall. Which is to say that we rode the escalator for 20 minutes and the elevator for 15. I can't even grouse about it, though, because it saved me from having to shell out $1.50 for the carousel (or worse, stand in line for a ride on the carousel) or $5 for a shopping cart shaped like a car. Thank you, Elisha Otis and Jesse W. Reno. You are totally my homies now. And a big shout-out to the City Library and its 5 stories of completely glass elevatorness. LOVE YOU. We also set up the tree, per Daddymatic's strict guidelines about When the Tree Shall Be Put Up (day after Thanksgiving, always. Down Jan. 6) and When the Christmas Music Shall begin (day after Thanksgiving. Ends the 26th.). This video is dark, but incredibly cute, as D-diddy helps decorate the tree by getting Daddymatic a " 'Nother ooooone" ornament.

Photo Sharing - Upload Video - Video Sharing - Share Photos

By Monday, though, I was ready to get back to work. It seems the Incredibly Mommyloving D was even ready, though--Monday was the first day EVER that I have left the house without the wailing and gnashing of teeth to accompany me. I kissed him on the head, and he beamed and said "Bye-bye, mama!" I'd love to say a part of me was sad, but I'd be lying. All I felt was relief.

Of course, for the last two days, I've gotten home after D's been put to bed, and now I am ready to get refilled on toddler love this weekend. Especially since he now sing-songs "yummy tummy" while he eats and this very evening observed "Daddy broke head!" when daddymatic hit his head on something. It makes me feel I have to absorb every moment, even the annoying ones, and really enjoy them. That, or I need to cryogenically freeze him in this current state of sweetness.

Thanksgiving tradition-delurk for charity

2006-11-22T09:48:00.000-07:00

All is well--thanks for the concern over La-la's being on the lam(b) [Thanks, Nancy--you know I love a good pun]. We do have a spare--we have to have a body double for Lambie so that she can occasionally be washed. We've ordered another one (thanks, Gund for continuing to make this critter!) and for now, crisis has been averted.

But posting about losing one of my child's many, many stuffed animals (some of whom should, as Toyfoto suggests, probably be sent to Iraq) and then reading this post (thanks, Granny, for posting about it) made me feel a little sheepish (if you'll, ahem, pardon the pun). I've been hunting the interwebs lately in search of a new Family Tradition, because I think we need to start one this year, this being our first Orphan Thanksgiving since we were in the Peace Corps.

So it looks like I've found one. I admit it, I want D to grow up comfortable, yes, but more than that, I want him to understand the responsibility that living a comfortable life comes with--the compulsion to notice that there are those not as comfortable and to do what you can to share what you have. I complain about my mountains of consumer debt, repairs to an old house, and the money-suck that is the diaper industry, but this Thanksgiving, I need to remember that my kid has both parents around, and, as lousy as we may be sometimes, we are committed to him and his needs. This alone makes him Fortunate. In addition, he always has diapers, he has toys "enough and to spare," and we could probably feed another whole child on food he has the luxury to refuse to eat sometimes. So our new Thanksgiving tradition will be to help out kids who don't have what he has and to remind ourselves to be Very, Very Grateful that we have So Very Much.

And I will donate an additional dollar to Little Wishes (or, if you prefer, another foster organization--just specify) for every person I can get to comment, so if you've been wanting to delurk, do it now. For those of you who don't know what delurk means, it means if you never comment, this might be a good time. I'd love to hear where you read from and how you found mommymatic. If you are a regular commenter, you still count, just leave a comment you'll earn your buck. IT'S FOR THE KIDS, PEOPLE.

Also, because I know you are all going to be shopping online like moi this season, you can do it through this link and companies will donate a certain amount of their proceeds to the cause.

I'd love to hear about your Thanksgivings traditions, philanthropic or otherwise (one of our other traditions might be "Feast for the Beasts" at Hogle Zoo, wherein they feed the animals traditional Thanksgiving foods on Thanksgiving night).

M.I.A.

2006-11-20T16:46:00.000-07:00

Name: Lambie. Also answers to "La-la."
Age: 24 months
Description: White (ish) with smudgy grey-ish ears, nose and tail
Noteworthy marks: Rattleodectomy scar on abdomen.
Last seen: November 20, 2006 at ____ Preschool, Salt Lake City, UT
If you see her: Do not approach! Her eyes are always closed, so she may appear to be asleep but could, at any time, go ninja-lamb and escape again. Please contact the Matic-Operated Lovey Department (MOLD) if you see this individual. Please use caution--a little boy's comfort depends upon it.

More breaking news as we have it. Stay tuned.

Happy birthday, Peanut!

2006-11-17T13:58:00.000-07:00

This one's for you, big guy! Enjoy your big day this weekend! And mama, enjoy the 2s. We expect a full report. :)

Photo Sharing - Upload Video - Video Sharing - Share Photos

NB? PM?

2006-11-15T16:56:00.000-07:00

Ok, so if I only post half the month, can I say I did NaBlo? Or is it PoMo?

Maybe I should just enjoy the collective sigh of relief that I've given in to dropping out (yes, I heard that). I really, really, wanted to be able to post every day, but I'm being crushed by a deadline just now and I don't want to record Memories of Stressed Mommy for D to have when he's older. I mean, if I'm keeping this blog for him (because I am lousy at keeping scrapbooks), I get to pick and choose the memories, right? And witchy, stressed-out Mama who makes a little boy eat his dinner in the car so she can make yet another trip to the office is not a memory I choose.

Except that I just did. Dang. But I can addend that by saying at least all the way home in the car, we sang Happy Birthday to, well, everyone: La-la, Daddy, D (who refers to himself as "Didi/Diddy" now, and I am having a hard time not referring to him as D-Diddy), Mama, the Moon, the Stars, and his puppet Daikon (which is actually just how he says "Dragon," but honestly, who can resist using a funny-named vegetable moniker when given the opportunity?).

So if anyone out there has a birthday coming up (sorry I missed yours, Nancy), let us know and we'll try to get you your own personalized serenade.

Mommymatic the NoMoNaBloPoMo Blogger OUT.

Going on Record

2006-11-13T17:07:00.000-07:00

I’d just like to go on record saying that in the event that my child ever, despite my best efforts to purge my own discourse of such things, overhears myself, my husband or anyone else refer to the event of his arrival in the world as an “accident” or something “unplanned,” that this is what that means: We wanted you for years before you ever appeared and when we found out you were arriving, it was as if someone called us up unexpectedly and said it had been decided that we were to receive the best present ever. And everyone knows that while sometimes, unexpected presents aren’t always welcome and that it’s great to get exactly what you ask for, there is a very small class of presents that is better than getting exactly what you asked for, and that is getting more than you ever asked for, and certainly way more than you ever felt you deserved.

That is what you are, to us. You are the most wonderful, fortuitous surprise baby ever, and you are, as one of my students told me you would be, daily proof that Someone does, indeed, love me a great deal to have allowed me to share part of my life with you.

Your mssion, should you choose to accept it

2006-11-12T22:54:00.000-07:00

...Is to tell me one fairly unusual item you cannot, right now, live without as a parent. No fair saying crap like "crib" or "car seat" (and do not make me watch the 'Kyle' video on YouTube again, please. I am out of tissues) "diapers" or "my (or my wife's, for my male reader) boobs." I'm also hoping too get beyond staples like playdough and washable crayons, which, while both masterstrokes in the Evolution of Parenting, are, shall we say, somewhat obvious.

Products are fair game. We got one of these this weekend and it's pretty swell, but I think everyone has to buy some kind of booster seat thingy, so I don't think it will count as my entry.

No, the most useful thing we've acquired 'round these parts lately was free. It came from Cosco, but I'm sure you can get one anywhere. It's a box that used to hold boxes of Clif bars, but it has reached a new level of utility in its new job: it's a perfect desk for a small toddler who loves to sit on the floor. It's all open in the front, presumably for easier Clif-bar access, but his little legs fit right in the opening and it's the perfect height for him to sit and color. It's cardboard, so he can smear it up/color on it/go Russel Crowe on it all he wants and all we have to do to get a new one is to show up at our nearest wholesale store and look pitiful. It's AWESOME especially for the New To Crayons set, because it's sort of a nice continuation of drawing paper.

So what can't you live without this week/month? I have no prizes to offer, but if nothing else, you will sound cooler than me.

The Devil(ish) Wears Oshkosh

2006-11-11T14:02:00.000-07:00

Okay, I don’t want to sound harsh and actually refer to my spawn as “devilish” but honestly, sometimes I have no idea who has taken over his body. He screams, he throws things (big, hard things, too, like bikes and toy vacuum cleaners and stuff) and slaps. Were it not for all the singing and counting he engages in, I would wonder if we were sending him not to preschool but to a cleverly-disguised street-training gangsta-camp. The other day when he launched into a rehearsal of his new tactics, we managed to remain calm while he systematically emptied the living room simply by throwing an object so that promptly “went bye-bye” per Mommy and Daddymatic’s rules. But then Daddy kind of lost it when D slapped me, and I kind of lost it when putting the child into time-out appeared to have no measureable effect save inspiring great mirth, and finally, Daddymatic concluded that we just had to “save him from himself.” Or from us. Or something.

We decided he was tired, and though he insisted he wasn’t and that the clear solution to all our problems was for me to read his new favorite “fluffy” book to him a half-dozen times.

But even six times is never enough, so I finally turned his light off despite much protest and within minutes, his body was limp with sleep in my arms.

And I wish I could say that all these tender thoughts about him rushed back once he was asleep, but dude, I was so stressed and tired that all I could think as I flopped on the couch and turned on the monitor was “Well, that didn’t kill anyone.”

Bloggers beware

2006-11-10T15:27:00.000-07:00

In case you're wondering what the FREAK is going on around here, I logged in to post the last post today only to discover that HALF MY TEMPLATE CODE (the part with all the links, buttons and fun stuff, naturally) had been deleted. As in GONE. What?? So let this be a lesson to you: back that thang up, and I am not talking about your booties, people (though, it is a free country, so you're welcome to do both). If you have a blogger account with lots and lots and lots of modifications made to a template, navigate over to blogger RIGHT NOW, go to your template section and copy and paste that code into a notepad document or something. NOW!

If you were on my blogroll, I will be adding stuff back in over the weekend. If I miss re-adding you, LMK. Sorry for the administrative nature of this post, but hopefully things will not suck so much once I've had a chance to move in and make this place homey. Again.

It freaking figures

2006-11-10T08:57:00.000-07:00

It just figures that the day after I post the NaBloPoMo link on my sidebar is the first day I miss posting. Dang. I don't care--I'll just post twice today, so you're not dodging any bullets here. Nice try. Oh, and refusing to leave comments? Doesn't phase me one bit. No, no, despite the fact that we are all about the approval here at Chez Mommymatic, I can handle your rejection. Really.

So in the "riddle me this" category, we have these linguistic moments, brought to you by the letter D:

As D totes around his pumpkin from Hallowe'en, he starts shoving things inside it and says something that sounds like "showering" or "showing." It takes 5 minutes before I figure out he's saying "Shopping." Good Lord. I can't even blame this recent spate of avid consumerism on the preschool.

I made some playdough (LMK if you want the recipe--it's super-easy and makes me feel like Sally Homemaker just to be able to offer to pass it along! And to say super-easy!) and he went insane. INSANE. One thing that was particularly puzzling was that he would smash, squish or mold it and, in perfect Greenlandic, say "LAKADAT." Daddymatic and I laughed because there appears to be a direct correlation to how well I understand some phrase and how earnestly D says it. "LAKADAT, Mama. LAKADAT." Finally, we figured it out: He was saying "Look at that!" I think he got this from Bee-bee.

Finally, he kept ducking behind the table and sticking his butt up in the air and saying "Hiney." Or so I thought. I finally realized he was saying "I'm hiding." Oh, right.

Poor guy. He must seriously feel the way I felt when I'd try to speak Polish. Despite the fact that the entire Polish populace around me had all been speaking this language for, oh, say, hundreds of years, when they didn't understand me, I always thought, "God, what idiots. Don't you understand your own language??"

The difference is that I realized later that I'd been asking the secretary why there was no "Pope" for the copier and I eventually learned how to correctly (mostly) pronounce "paper," whereas D just taps his foot impatiently while we catch up and learn what, apparently, is the correct pronunciation for "shopping."

Am I biased?

2006-11-08T22:55:00.000-07:00

Because I feel like one of "those" mothers when I admit this, but I really do think he might be one of the top ten cutest toddlers ever.

Yes, Bee-bee raked all these leaves and managed to play with me at the same time. Mommy was just taking notes and muttering the whole time.

This cute smirk, Bee-bee? Is only for you.

The autumnal equinox brings out my inner cutie. And I even held still long enough for someone to snap a picture, because that's just the kind of guy I am.

P.S. Thanks to all of you who voted for Nancy. She won MOTW at Crazy Hip Blog Mamas. I like to think my 6 readers and I played a part. You rock. I have several other ~~victims~~ nominees in mind, so I'll be contacting many of you in the weeks to come. If you are on my blogroll and you've never won before, you are fair game. If you don't want to be nominated, just let me know.

Boobies II

2006-11-07T12:00:00.000-07:00

As proof my husband is in on this scheme somehow, some way, I offer you D's actual monologue of molestation the other day:

“Mama, shirt off. ((tugs shirt upwards, exposing new bra-ensconced friends.)) Boobies! SHIRT OFF. Boobies! Show daddy! Showwww daddy!”

BOOBIES

2006-11-06T16:03:00.000-07:00

That’s how I was greeted Saturday morning. My son laid his hands on my chest, patted firmly, and said “Boobies.”

“Yes, those are my boobies,” I concurred. “Are you ready to get up?”

“Daddy’s boobies.”

“Well, daddy’s boobies are still sleeping, sweet. We’ll have to wait until he gets up to see them.”

“Sorry, son. It’s Oedipal enough for you to be fondling my boobies, and I don’t think there’s enough Freudian analysis for the two of us if you start petting your grandmother’s boobies.”

“La-la’s boobies.”

“Does La-la have boobies? She’s the only lamb I know who has a belly button, so why not boobies?”

I haven’t nursed this child in a year, and he hasn’t shown any interest in my breasts before now, so what gives? Has his fascination with his own stickie-outie finally waned and he is now seeking other Bits To Be Entertained By? I’m sure this is normal, but what to do about it? He has become more and more interested in them over the last week, and I’m a little nervous that his Well-Endowed Preschool Teacher will wonder what kind of perverts we are when he sticks his icy cold little hand down her shirt and yells his famous war-cry.

Surgeon General's Warning

2006-11-05T22:17:00.000-07:00

This morning when he woke up, D started singing his new favorite song, the itsy-bitsy spider. I might mention here that I am not the least bit bitter about the fact that he had no love for this song during my endless renditions of it during the Pre-preschool Era, and now loves it so much that he insists we sing it in chorus to him (ie, if I begin, he says, “Daddy sing bitsy spider.”). When he is in his crib alone, however, he has no choir of willing voices and has to make do, and thus sings over and over to himself the only two words he knows from the song. Often, then, we hear “bitsy spiiiider, bitsy spiiiiider” sung in a high, free-wheeling tune, and it is so sweet that I think we are just going to have to slap a label on him warning diabetics and dentists to STAY AWAY.

And here I thought object permanence was a pain….

2006-11-04T23:09:00.000-07:00

This kid’s memory is getting to be amazing. Last weekend, for instance, he begged me to help him put on one of his many “truck” shirts—this one has diggers and dump trucks printed on it, and he would not. stop. hassling. me. about putting it on him. Normally, I am extremely patient with the numerous costume changes that must be effected hourly around here, due in part to one or more of the following: poo, yogurt, applesauce, oatmeal, milk (from drinking like a “big boy”) and personal preference “Airplane shirt! On!” This time, however, it was approaching bedtime and it was time to put on “motorcycle jammy-shoes” (“jammy-shoes” = footed sleepers). I convinced him to let me put the shirt on Elmo and promised him he could wear it on our weekly bagel shop visit the next morning. This placated him, and I assumed the issue was closed, forgotten, deleted like a picture on a well-shaken Etch-a-sketch, which is always the way it was Before The Rules Changed.

Not so. The next morning, the monitor blared like a loudspeaker in a barracks: “Daddy! Wake UP! Truck shirt! Bagel! Daddy, wake up! Bagel! Truck shirt!”

This memory thing may not be all it’s cracked up to be. How is it fair that his is getting better and mine is getting....what was I saying?

P.S. Is it still Sunday? Then go here and follow the directions to vote for Nancy for Member of the Week. You don't even have to be a member, just have a website. And remember, I could medal in Olympic level Nagging, so you do NOT want me to have to do this another week. Also, you should do it because you will be one of my next nominees.

Doing the best we can

2006-11-03T14:12:00.000-07:00

There's a tree on our property that has been dead, evidently, since God was a child, and we have finally gotten around to removing it. I've been calling and getting estimates for a week, and one guy said he could do it this week because it was so dead that he was afraid parts of it could fall and hurt someone. D has been trying to get in good with the little girls next door who have absolutely no time for him, and I thought ithat removing the large arboreal hazard that hangs over their house would be a nice first step towards détente.

So when the guys showed up today to cut it down, I was a little irked not to get so much as a warning phone call, but I rolled with it because basically, we wanted it done ASAP. Of course, when my mother called to let me know they were cutting down the wrong tree, I thought, "Idiots. And you thought they'd do a good job. Nice going." So I instructed my mother to ask them to stop and called the dude I'd been back-and-forthing with about the tree, and he agreed to skibble on over and take care of bidness.

When I called my mom back, she explained that no, actually, they just had to trim part of the good tree out of the way to get the dead tree out and that um, actually, we had a bigger problem now, because the door had locked behind her on her way out. And, uh, D was inside. Alone.

We have no spare key. My mother had my keys, presumably inside, and Daddymatic was a bus and a tram ride away at work. To my credit, I didn't freak right away. To my shame, I did eventually freak out pretty badly. I envisioned every horrible possible scenario, I cursed my own stupidity for a) not having a spare key hidden and b) having jumped the gun on the tree guys, who knew what they were doing after all and c) not removing every possible hazard from my home and even d) having a job that meant I wasn't around to run the show. But every line of thought I came to led to one conclusion: there was absolutely, physically, humanly, nothing I could do to fix this. For at least 20 minutes, anyway.

And then I prayed. For the record, I am not in the business of informing God of stuff He/She/It (yeah, God isn't always He or She for me. Sometimes It. Sometimes not even a noun) should know, nor do I routinely talk as if She/He/It is a giant metaphysical Santa Claus--what Anne Lamott calls the "cosmic butler." Prayer for me is more a reminding myself that I am loved, that we have always been taken care of, and that there is Someone more responsible than me who is actually in control. I felt today like I was sitting in a car, driving and honking and turning my steering wheel, only to find out that I was really more like Maggie Simpson, holding a toy steering wheel that did absolutely nothing to control the car. I had no choice but to let go of my toy and my sense of control. I told the driver that I had confidence in Her/Its/His driving skills, and that I was going to let It/Him/Her figure it out.

Of course, two minutes later, my mom called back to announce that my neighbors had kicked in my back door, breaking the cheesy lever lock we'd been wanting to replace, and mom found D in his room upstairs, peering out the window at the tree guys.

The fact that I even mentioned prayer might sound stupid to most of you, who are thinking that this would have happened whether or not I prayed. You're right. I don't think praying made God like me or my kid any more nor did it induce Her/It/Him to intervene on our behalf. What it did was change me, get my heart out from under the crushing fear I had that Something Terrible would happen. It let me breathe and trust and assume that everyone, and I mean Everyone, as my mother likes to remind me, is doing the best they can, and the more I trust that, the better we all are.

P.S. I nominated my friend Nancy for Crazy Hip Blog Mamas Member of the Week award. And because I hate, hate, hate how last-person-chosen-for-kickball the blogosphere makes me feel most of the time and am mindful that others might feel the same way and am doing everything I can to make it stop feeling that way, let me assure you that there are many others I'm going to be nominating in the future, but I'm starting with her. Read this and this and this, (that last one might make you cry, unless of course, you have a heart made of stone) and then go vote for her, okay? If she doesn't get it this week (because votes have to be in by Sunday), I'll just nag you all next week about it and who wants that?

Paci-Posse II: The Land of Binky and Nod

2006-11-02T08:52:00.000-07:00

So for weeks we've been trying to figure out why D only naps for, say, an hour at preschool but will nap well on 3 hours at home. Yesterday at his Parent-Teacher Conference, we think we might have gotten a clue.

To start with, you have to understand that yes, the child still has a pacifier and no, it ain't going nowhere. I'm unapologetic about this--the way I see it, I sucked my fingers until I was 8, so if he's weaned off of it before then, we're good. He only technically gets it in the car and at naps and night, and I figure if someone wants to call CPS on me, it'll be for something far more egregious, like the fact that I steal his Hallowe'en candy and let him run into other people's houses and try their shoes on.

His preschool teachers have told me they hate the pacifer (in general--they don't have a special vendetta against his particular binky) and are actively engaged in an anti-paci campaign. I don't mind this because D seems fine with it, too--he hands over the paci when Daddymatic drops him off without so much as a whimper. Of course, the afternoons are a different story: DM says pre-school pickup is akin to meeting a smoker friend after a day of working in a non-smoking office: he picks D up, and D starts all but searching his pockets, demanding "BAH-JEE-BYE?? BAH-JEE-BYE??" in this slightly panicky voice, as if to say "where's my stuff, dude? where's my stuff?"

Now, we had assumed D was being given his paci during his preschool naptime--he gets Lambie, or She Without Which There Is No Sleeping, and we just assumed that the paci-ban didn't extend into naptime because, for Pete's sake, people who work with small children MUST follow the "anything for sleep" rule, the long version of which is "Whatever Can Be Done Within Reason To Extend Toddler Sleep Must Be Done." Evidently, this is not so. And yet the teachers know he gets the paci at night, and still they were confused as to why, oh why he doesn't sleep better at school.
Now, I don't have a degree in young child development, but uhhhhh, seems to me it's worth a try to re-instate the bink and see what's what, yes?

Of course, we'll have to wait until next week to see if it makes any difference, because little D is home with my mother* today, who, saints be praised, has returned for her annual Bring The Light Back Into Our Lives campaign. I have even enlisted my boss into trying to persuade her and my dad into moving out here and, as I've mentioned, am considering offering to get her a pony of her very own to sweeten the deal if need be. My boss set her up with a realtor for Monday, which I feel is a huge step, so if you can think of anything else that might induce these people to come out to the Land of Trunk or Treat, lemme know, wouldja? (actually, the mere existence of Trunk or Treat might be enough for my dad, but...)

*I just realized my Ode to Bee-bee post was written one year ago tomorrow. Spooky.

Trunk or treat

2006-11-01T10:27:00.000-07:00

Well, despite my best intentions to get all Pumpkin McScrooge on Hallowe’en and ignore it totally in the hopes it would just go away, I relented somewhat and created a modified costume for the One True Child (read: grey fleece jumpsuit with a sock pinned on as a tail, plus kitty ears left over from Mommymatic’s pre-baby, I-can-still-wear-skintight-velvet-bodysuits kitty-costume era) and took him to see our neighbors and, let’s face it, score some free candy for my trouble. He had a blast—played with the two big dogs across the street, tried on all our next door neighbor’s shoes (they were laying in the entryway, absolutely begging for a Small Boy to try them on), and saw his Big Boy Buddy Xander from down the street in his aaaaawesome dragon costume.

Which is where I learned about “Trunk or Treat,” also known as Reason #2 Why Mormons Will Soon Be Taking Over the World*. Apparently, each of the two LDS churches in a six-block radius hosts a Hallowe’en gathering wherein children come to the parking lot of the church, where everyone is passing out candy from the trunks of their cars. I find this to be a stunning innovation in Maximum Candy Acquisition Efficiency—you don’t have to do all the dreaded walking in order to get your sustained sugar high—just come on up to the church and get your loot concentrated in one candy-rich environment. And parents can hardly protest, because children no longer have to walk around the dark neighborhood, worrying about dogs, hooligans, drunk adults or any other assorted Hallowe’en shenanigans. And it’s hosted by a church, which means not only is the candy free, but, apparently, Deity-approved. What could be better?

Of course, I didn’t end up taking D up there, despite the siren song of the thousands of mini candy bars up for distribution, because it was his bedtime and because, frankly, as utopian as it sounds to go to a big parking-lot-candyfest, it seemed a little weird, too. Not, maybe, as weird as keeping a 6-month-old up so that she could go trick-or-treating, but weird. (And yeah, seriously. Six months. D wasn’t even sitting up at six months, let alone interested in dress-up, scary adult holiday weirdness—and let’s face it, most of this holiday is for adults’ entertainment, not kids. And it wasn’t like the baby was with an older sibling or anything. Am I just a fogey or does that seem odd?) But anyway, the parking lot thing seemed weird, so we skipped it. I’m sure I’ll be all over that like a cheap suit next year when the whole capitalist concept of Hallowe’en is more firmly planted in D’s mind , but this year, I was thrilled to give him a taste of the best what Hallowe’en is like and to let him show off a little for his ‘hood.

Pictures to come…

* Reason #1, in case you're interested, is the phenomenon that is the Young Women's group. Apparently, one can call the local LDS Ward and get access to a ready-made list of babysitters through their Young Women's group. Considering the fees one might need to pay an agency for such a service, I feel this is truly serving one's fellow man (or mom, if you will)---to provide a kick-butt (and yet totally free!) screening service to find wholesome, fresh-faced young women who want to take care of my child?? Um, yes, please. I haven't done this yet, but I'll keep ya posted.

Our other child just disapproves of everything

2006-10-25T20:33:00.000-07:00

Okay, when Mom-101 was depressed a while ago, someone posted a link to these pictures of disapproving rabbits, and it made me laugh. I think Daddymatic hurt himself laughing at them. We wished for a brief moment that we had rabbits of our own so that we, too, could bask in similar disapproval. We realized, however, that having a toddler has given our tabby M a great deal to disapprove of, and so, we present to you...

Rampant Tabby Disapproval

In general, I disapprove of toddlery cuteness.

Yo, twinkletoes. Down in front. I'm trying to disapprove here.

I am especially reproachful of head-butting.

Oh good Lord, it's trying to mount me. I do not approve of being straddled.

Can you smell the disapproval, little boy? Hmmm?

I wholeheartedly disapprove of being infantilized.

I will continue to disapprove after you wake up.
(In fact, I am disapproving as you sleep.)

Come back! I'm not finished disapproving yet.

In which I wax all sentimental about my blogfriends

2006-10-16T13:04:00.000-07:00

Every year I go to San Francisco for a spiritual retreat of sorts. I considered not going this year because of of, well, you know, angst and stuff, but I am so, so, so glad I did. I feel the tank of my soul got a really good refill during my retreat on Saturday, and then Saturday night, my tank got the ultimate top-off.

You see, about a year ago, I started reading Sweet Juniper and vowed that the next time I took my annual trip to San Francisco, I would meet them. As you might know, though, I got to meet them on their Great Midwest Move to Detroit instead. But there was still part of me that wanted to get to know some of the bloggers I admire who live in the bay area(ish), mostly because I wanted to see if it’s something in the water that makes for such good writers and, if possible, bottle some of that elixir du blog. So I asked Ann if she was interested in a face-to-face, and she said yes. She used her Blogging Baby connections to hook up with Uncle Roger and L, and we set a time and place for a meet-up party.

Wow. First of all, I can tell you that the pictures I’ve seen over at Granny of Ann fail to reveal the way her face lights up a room when she smiles. Which she of course does often, because she’s either cracking everyone up or talking about her various loves—her beautiful girls, her children and her husband, Ray. She is radiant. Also, it is physically impossible not to hug her. I tried to resist, thinking she might be put off by being ~~manhandled~~ embraced by a total stranger, but I could only fight it so long. She dealt with it well, but then, she’s a pro.

And L would have you believe she’s some frumpalicious housewife in a perpetual state of disarray. This is obviously a tactic to lull one into a false sense of security, so that one will feel like she won’t have to spend an hour picking out an ensemble and choosing Just The Right Shade of Lipstick to look cool enough to hang out with her. This e-persona of L’s is also misleading, because the only person who was frumpy at this gathering was yours truly, who decided not to spend, really, any time selecting an appropriate outfit and decided to wear no lipstick whatsoever.

L. is hip, she is beautiful, and while she claims to be slightly older than me, her skin puts one in mind of that of newborn babies, in that breathtakingly perfect phase the 5 minutes between Wrinkly Newborn and Zitty Infant. Seriously. I am just the kind of person who looks for confirmation that raising three beautiful children makes one’s face look like post-Christmas tissue paper, and I could find none. None. This strikes me as unfair, if only because L is also extremely witty and charming, and such a combination of virtues leaves girls like me with absolutely no competitive edge. Thank goodness all of us were sufficiently intimidated by PostHipChick’s utter coolness to invite her, or I’d have spent the entire party whimpering in a corner.

Uncle Roger and his wife are equally charming and also have painfully adorable offspring. Had I not had a toddler of my own, I might seriously have looked into a lease agreement on their daughter. I mean, she’s two and she was an absolute doll, which suggests to me that these people either live right or have made a deal with the devil. And Roger and his wife Rachel are the kind of people who fall all over themselves with self-deprecating comments which do nothing but reveal how great they are.

You know these kind of people—they so want you to feel better about yourself that you almost believe that they really might not be world-wide-web-reknowned wordsmiths of the first order, and then you catch yourself and sort of shake your head wryly at them, as if to say, “you almost got me that time!” Rachel has this beautiful skin and these big blue eyes and you think to yourself, wow, maybe she can give me some tips on how she gets that look (like she’s, you know, an issue of Glamour and not a human being with needs other than to be objectified by total strangers) and then you find out she doesn’t, in fact, wear any makeup at all ever, and you kind of want to weep.

And so everybody was really nice and totally went out of their way feed my inner Chinese Food Monster and give me directions, rides and free toddler advice. I felt comfortable with them almost instantly, and I was struck again at how amazing it is to have friends whom you feel funny calling friends but who you probably know more about than many of your local acquaintances with whom you use that appellation. Nowhere else do you make friends who, the first time you meet them, ask about your baby and husband and cats BY NAME because, well, they know them already. It is surreal, but it is also why we read and comment and link to each other, because we are searching for connection and understanding and solace. And when we are good and at least a little lucky, we find it.

And when we’re very, very good and more than a little lucky, we get to experience it in person, over steamy bowls of shrimp with black bean sauce and the drone of spongebob squarepants in the background.

Things are better, exhibits A-D

2006-10-11T21:42:00.000-07:00

Thanks to all of you who assured me that this is no time to pretend to get trapped under heavy household objects. My readers rock it like the Who.

Proof my son thinks I am way more hardcore than I actually am:

For the first time, D has noticed my tattoo, which is in the shape of an om (in my defense, I got it waaaay before everyone and their brother was getting their cool foreign language character tattoos). He pointed to it the other night and said “Motorcycle.” And I was all, dude, I wish I were that hardcore.

Evidence the boychild will one day be in a fraternity:

When I went to get him up for his nap on Sunday, he had taken off his shirt and was slapping himself on the stomach. And laughing.

Verification that the little dude is almost as bossy as his mother:

Among the two- and three-word combinations D has perfected are commands: his current favorite is to have mommy and daddy play “naptime” and then to demand we “Wake UP, mama.” This clip shows footage of him trying to boss around our striped tabby. Luckily, she is the only being in the house more stubborn than he.

Photo Sharing - Upload Video - Video Sharing - Share Photos

Data to support the "sometimes my son is too cute for his own good" theory:

Mama: ((yawning))

D: Daddy? Mama sleepy.

Mama: D, are you a tiny baby or a big boy?

D: ((frowning)) Yeah.

In which I am somewhat melodramatic

2006-10-11T21:18:00.000-07:00

The weeks since preschool started—or specifically, since I started working—have been incredibly difficult. If you were one of my detractors on the going back to work post, please feel free to gloat. It is hard. Hard in different ways from being a SAHM, but still hard.

Apparently, the boychild is a perfect angel for his teachers. There is even one little girl who, when her parents asked her, “Do you love mommy? Do you love daddy?” responded, “I love Davis.” He is painfully adorable for his father, and sometimes when it’s just him and me, is even so sweet I fear my teeth will instantly rot and fall out of my head.

But not always. Every day when I get home from work, which unfortunately is usually the first time I see him all day, he grins and runs to me. And then it begins: the refusal to hug, the asking for something and then pitching a fit when he gets it, the gagging-slash-whining whose drone sounds for all the world like an ailing Chinook helicopter, the throwing, the running pell-mell into the street, and the tantrumming. I consider slamming my head in the dryer door at least once per day.

I try to stay consistent, explaining to him that when he goes in the street, we have to go back inside, when he throws things, they go bye-bye, and that I will not listen to screaming and tantrums, but I can tell you it is the hardest thing ever, because all I want to do is soak up his essence for a couple of hours in the hopes that it will sustain me through the other 22 hours of the day.

Most times, I’m able to handle it well enough--I laugh it off or ignore the bad behavior completely. But there are days when I don’t want to be responsible and can’t figure out who was nutty enough to put me (however provisionally) in charge, and I either lose it or let him get away with behavior that is incorrigible and doesn’t even have the side benefit of being cute.

Usually by bedtime, however, we are okay again. First, we have a bath, brush his teeth, put on his diaper, lotion and jammies, and turn on his fan. Then we gather up the cadre of creatures who have suddenly become mandatory bedfellows: Lambie has quite the paci-posse now: “Buggy” is a small fuzzy pink bunny with “Barbie” embroidered on its foot, then there's “Ice Bat”(also called “Cookie Monster” on occasion), and “Alligator,” both of whom are Softie-like creatures. Then we read either the bunny story or the “sinewyday!” story, and he turns off the light, announces that it’s “DARK!” and I sing him some songs.

I usually hold him long after he falls asleep, watching his face and smelling the aroma of Clean Sleeping Toddler. It's like I’m refilling a tank it’s only taken an hour to deplete. But as hard as it is, I don’t know if being at home is any better. He clearly loves school, and I like my job and the fact that it’s going to help us get out of debt. I’ve got massive guilt either way. So it’s not that I want to stop just because it’s hard. I just want to know it’s going to get better.

El Mo

2006-10-04T13:49:00.000-07:00

The Mo. (That's what Elmo translates to, right?)

His Royal Mo-ness.

Elmojo.

I’ll admit it—I was a nonbeliever. A scoffer. A nay-sayer, if you will. It’s not that I had anything against a certain magenta Muppet Mafia boss (though I confess I find him a bit lower on charm than my old childhood hero, Grover), I just didn’t recognize the scope and vastness of his realm. I mean, I know he's on NPR game shows. He even has his own biography out, people (check out the dude who voices for Elmo. Should he really be that hot?). But I frankly didn’t buy the notion that the vermillion vendor of vowels had become part of the collective American gestalt.

I was wrong.

My child suddenly sees this siren of Sesame Street everywhere, even on his fabulous new boots; instead of accurately naming “Sponge-bum” as the character featured on said footwear, he insists, rather, that it’s “Elmo! ELMO! ELMO!”

But I’m getting ahead of myself: the episode with the boots wasn’t even our first Elmoment. No, that took place one night after I threw some disposable straw sippy cups into our cart at the store. D insisted on holding them, and since he acts as our own personal Customs agent during grocery trips, I obliged. He pointed to the afore-mentioned fiery-furred phoneme fronter and announced “Elmo.” Daddymatic and I looked at each other and said “Who? Who is that on your cup?” “Elmo,” he repeated, in the tone of voice that basically adds “you idiots” to everything he says.

Like other parents who discover such imaginary interlopers, we wondered where, where, WHERE he’d been introduced to the scarlet letter-monger, especially since, as I’ve mentioned, he resolutely refuses to watch TV. A friend of mine insisted that the knowledge and promotion of the squeaky-voiced squirt is an inborn trait, closely linked to whatever has hard-wired her daughter to Disney-princess-worship. Myself, I dunno. I tend to see it as something more viral, something passed on from kid to kid such that it doesn’t even require a child to be Sesame Streetwise—or even in any way knowledgeable about its context.

As long as the Elmeme doesn’t become a kiddie-themed HAL (and you thought the Matthew Perry voice in the Simpson’s house was annoying!), I don’t really care if it perpetuates itself. I mean, what could I really have against the crimson Kaiser of consonants? We could replace Baby Einstein with Elmozart. Elmozilla could be the new kid-friendly web browser. Starbucks could share the love and serve Elmochas, assuming they’d do some profit-sharing with CTW. I figure hey, if it helps the grand poo-bah of PBS, it’s gotta help promote high-quality kids’ programming, and I want D to have that and love it as much as I did.

(okay, I had a precious video of D naming all the Sesame Street critters on his sippy cup, but I'm in it and it was filmed the day before I finally sent the awful 'hair-met' packing, plus I look bloated, so if you really want, you can see it here but otherwise, I leave you with my son explaining that he is dressed in a 0-3 month-sized gown [stolen from his babydoll] because he is a 'tiny baby'. He gives no explanation as to why he's wearing the boots with it, however. Go figure.)

Photo Sharing - Upload Video - Video Sharing - Share Photos

This week: Not sucking as much as last week

2006-09-27T21:16:00.000-07:00

Can I help you? Oh, yeah, these boots are made for sittin'. And looking at. NOT for touching!

It’s been a much, much better week, proving to me that the thoughts and prayers of my readers are effective. And that I must have a lot more readers than I thought. Oh, don’t get me wrong—there is still crying and angst at preschool dropoff (sometimes even on D’s part, poor fella), there’s still some pretty spotty at-school nap performance numbers (but 2 hours (!!) on Monday! A moral victory!) and there continue to be some neat new behaviors that make me grateful preschool exists at all (hitting? screaming? For the totality of the mere 3 hours a day I get with you, D? Seriously?) But now I feel I’m ready to join the ranks of those of you who are in loooove with your children.

[it’s not that I’m not always loving my kid and, despite said behaviors, enjoying him, but there have been some days—like most of last week—when the loving required more of, ah, a concentrated effort.]

For instance, taking the child to Alta on Sunday to see actual SNOW for the first time in his toddlerhood was awesome enough to make me take back the litanies of snow-hating vitriol that six winters in Central PA carved into my heart. This is fortuitous, as I now live in the state whose motto is “the Greatest Snow on Earth.” (One video below. More videos here.)

Photo Sharing - Upload Video - Video Sharing - Share Photos

Also, the advent of new and complicate words [refrigerator! humidifier! see below!] has been exponentialized by (drumroll, please) two- and three-word combos! Imagine the difference between our old, somewhat tired, list-style three-word combos like “mama-dada-lala!” and the sparkling new innovations like “Mama, bicycle UP!” (or its friends “Bicycle. Seat. Up!” and “Mama, bicycle please.”)

We’ve also added some new politeness conventions like “Skyoo-me” (usually addended to his proud announcement “BURP!”) and “Sah-ree,” though most apologies feature two parts devilish grin to one part actual contrition.

We also have a new favorite garage-sale acquisition, as the lead-off picture indicates: a pair of electric-blue, fleece-lined, “Sponge-bum” Squarepants moon boots, which, despite their being three sizes too big, are worn everywhere and at all times. With pajamas. When it’s 90 degrees out. In the bath. To bed. This is to our benefit, since the preschool has banned the orange crocs* from the classroom, but still, even my extremely blunted sense of fashion knows that this child doesn’t own an ensemble cute enough to compensate for the hideousness of the boots (again, pictures to follow). But I figure I’d need to start adding a disclaimer to most of his outfits one day anyway, so perhaps we’ll just get a jump on that now.

Photo Sharing - Upload Video - Video Sharing - Share Photos

** EDITED TO ADD: The crocs were banned because D kept taking them off all the time and the preschool peeps need to be able to move the kids tout suite if an emergency occurs, not because they're dangerous in any way. Please continue with your croc-wearing activities.

Too gone for too long

2006-09-20T15:36:00.000-07:00

So where was I? Oh, yes—the first week of preschool. It went okay, actually, except that apparently, naps do not hold the mystical sway at school that they hold for the Matic family at home, where they are coddled and catered to like the sanity-saving idols they, in fact, are. So Tuesday (his first day) was pretty good. Wednesday was harder, but on Thursday afternoon, D decided Dada was chopped liver, and he’d rather stay and flirt with Miss Lacey, thanks. Daddymatic said the look he got was along the lines of, “Listen, pal, I’ve been trying to get this yummy dish alone since nine this morning, so run along, won’t you?”

D doesn’t go to preschools on Fridays (yet), so he went to school with Daddymatic and took a nap in his office for almost 2 hours. The guys met me for the end of my company’s picnic at Thanksgiving Point where we rocked out at the “farm” exhibit with the goats, cows and chickens. He didn’t seem to be feeling well, but we were sure he’d be back in the swing by Monday.

Uh, no. Instead we got to stay home all week long with an extremely unhappy toddler. Out-freaking-standing. I actually had chafe marks from where he clung to my side like an oversized howling lemur for nearly all of his waking hours. Which, naturally, occurred some nights at regular 45-minute intervals.

The worst part about it is that as time wore on, I felt like I was going a little crazy. I felt less and less sorry for him and more and more general annoyance—not at him, of course, but at the whole situation. Nothing quite makes you feel like mother of the year like snapping at your toddler because he’s whining over feeling lousy and you, selfish jerk that you are, just. can’t. handle. any. more. whining. And then fighting with your spouse about, well, you know, everything. And worrying about your job, which is entering its second week but which may no longer be there if you don’t show up for it soon. Good times, people.

So needless to say, when my sweet little boy reappeared on Sunday afternoon, I felt reborn. Every smile he offered, every bite of food he ate, every step he took in pursuit of something fun, every word he spoke felt like a huge victory over the depression and anxiety of the previous week. It was like getting a wonderful present you did absolutely nothing to earn, and I have been trying to remember to be grateful for it.

I did remember to be grateful for this gift yesterday when Daddymatic was late coming to meet us at the preschool (like Miles’s parents, we are also a two-car but one-car-seat family right now). We were waiting almost a half hour out in the parking lot because they were trying to clean up the preschool, but I tried to shelve my annoyance and enjoy this amazing, wonderful kid, this kid who was so happy just exploring the inside of the car, playing peekaboo, and endlessly locking and unlocking the doors. I was so grateful for his health, certainly, but more so for his joy—and for my own joy which he so effortlessly resurrected.

Tom Petty was wrong

2006-09-05T09:16:00.001-07:00

It's not the waiting that's the hardest part--it's the letting go. Don't get me wrong, waiting sucks, but it's got nothing on the letting go.

So my baby is in preschool today. Because the people who run the preschool are smarter than, say, me, they are stagger-starting the kids, so D is there with 3 of his new classmates and they have both teachers all to themselves. I forced Daddymatic to take him in because I thought I might cry and/or throw up and thus become the preschool mommy version of the dad who faints while his wife gives birth, thus distracting everyone from, ah, the events at hand.

I lost another “baby” this weekend—a cat-baby. Well, actually, she was 11 years old, but still—losing one of my pre-child “kids” was tough. She was not a nice or affectionate kitty—she hid most of the time, never let me hold or snuggle her and needed an entire defensive special team to hold her down during vet visits. Over the past few years, she had lost the ability to clean herself well and had earned herself the undignified nickname “Smudge,” for reasons which, while probably obvious, are too gross to explain in further detail here. She had also decided that our new leather, as-yet-unpaid-for sofa was The Enemy and release a fair amount of Delta Force action on it. This, for us, was the last straw, because it demonstrated just how unhappy she had become to be living in a new place where the toddler’s increased volume and mobility were stressing her to her limits.

After looking around for a new home for her (you would be SHOCKED at the lack of interest people have in a neurotic, skid-mark-leaving, reclusive, furniture-destroying cat of advanced age and substance), a vet and a person from a local group of animal lovers and experts recommended I let her try living outside, since she was a 3-month-old outdoor feral cat when I got her, and that maybe her goal has always been to get back outside. So I put her in the shed out back with food, water, a litter box and her favorite smelly sleeping bag and left the door open a wee crack. For a day and a half, she didn’t move, didn’t explore, and probably didn’t eat or pee. I had all but decided to bring her back in on Monday and try to find another alternative when the dog next door started barking like CRAZY on Sunday night. I won’t go into details, but our girl—who had probably fallen from the fence—came out the loser in a fight with said dog. The ER vet gave her virtually no hope, and so I told her she was a good girl, explained to her how sorry I was and how much I loved her, and kissed her—for the first, and, ironically, the last time. I said goodbye, and she was gone by 1 AM.

I know it seems there is little to no segue between my loss of a pet and my child entering preschool, but they are both goodbyes in a fashion, and they are not easy. The hardest part of goodbyes is, as I said, the letting go, the knowledge that, as much as you want, you cannot be there forever for the ones you love. You can’t fix everything; you can’t stop life from happening. I have tried to tell myself that despite the terror and pain she endured for the last hour of her life, my cat was as happy as she was capable of being for the preceding 11 years, and now, at least, she’s not scared anymore. I have tried to tell myself that even if D does decide preschool sucks (which, at last check, he had not), the experience of meeting other kids and getting more stimulation than schlepping around the grocery store with me as well as getting a routine and developmentally-appropriate guidance is worth a little discomfort on his part and on my part. It’s not wise to not try new things because they’re scary—change is always scary. Sometimes the best you can do when things like this happen is to try and be a sort of spiritual midwife, to be there and hold someone’s hands when tough stuff comes and to hope that out of pain, something wonderful is trying to be born.

Open letter to a toddler

2006-08-29T14:03:00.000-07:00

Dear Bug:

In just one short week, our lives will be changing more dramatically than they have since you were born. You will be going to preschool from 9AM-3PM for 4 days a week, and I will be working. Your daddy will be your primary caregiver during the week. I will join the world of beleagured working parents, who see their children for an hour or two in the morning and at night and then try to soak them up like sun on the weekend.

I am not at all sure how I feel about this yet. I am resigning my Stay-at-Home mom commission and turning in the badge I have worn so proudly. It has been amazing, and it has rivalled the Peace Corps in being the toughest job I'll ever love. And yet, I am giving it up. A huge part of me feels this act will generate a huge black mark on my motherhood resume, because I certainly could choose not to go back to work. My salary will help us to not worry about money all the time, but I still won’t be the primary wage-earner in this family. Money is not the reason I’m taking this job, but being paid for what I do in currency that isn’t poopy diapers or even mid-morning snuggles might be one of the big reasons. Does that make sense?

When I went to my interview yesterday and the people there talked about all the things I could do, how many hibernating parts of my intellect they could wake up and use in this job, how much good we could do, it was like getting a hit of something. We talked about education and energy and children’s learning and marketing strategies, and I felt like I was contributing more than just nods or distracted ‘uh-huhs.’ I felt charged, like I met a part of myself I hadn’t seen in a long time and was caught off-guard enough to be impressed. I knew then that I would probably take the job.

Of course, part of me feels like I shouldn’t be allowed to be a mother if even a tiny part of my taking this job is so that I don’t have to hear about your bicycle, the lawnmower, the mysterious activities of the cats, and playing peekaboo over and over and over for most of my waking hours, but it is. It’s not that I don’t love a good stroll with the bike or a rousing round of peekaboo—it’s just that when that’s all I do, I feel like less of a Person, like the Mother side of me is all there is. When you are screaming because we won’t take a 5^th walk around the block on your bike, I sometimes wish I were somewhere else. And I don’t ever, ever, want to wish I were somewhere else. I want to love being with you, even if you’re crabby, even if I’m crabby. I want to be able to share my life with you without burdening you with feeling that you are my life.

I feel very selfish, since my desire for taking this job means, to me anyway, that my desire to be a full Person has superceded my desire to be a Mother. I am sure this is ridiculous and that my friend E would likely tell me that you deserve to have a full Person be your mom, too, but I’m not as wise as she is yet. She is also the person who pointed out to me that no decision is irreconcilable and that if I decide this isn’t working, I can stop. Do you see why I made you play with her son Jack for so many hours when we lived in Pennsylvania?

As I watched you meet your new teacher at the school Open House last night, I wondered where we would all be in 2 months or 6 months or a year. Maybe you’ll be screaming for Miss Jenny and your classmates as soon as you wake up in the morning, or maybe you’ll be here with a nanny, or maybe you’ll be here with me. Maybe I’ll be less anxious about money, or maybe I’ll be sitting on more debt, willing the dissertation to hurry up and get itself done already. Maybe daddy will like being the Answer Man around the house. I don’t know. Just know that whatever happens is because I always want what’s best for you and that I don’t always think that what’s best for you is all mommy, all the time.

I love you, love you, more than my heart can say,

Love,

mama

The power of a Juniper

2006-08-25T12:39:00.000-07:00

And I am not just talking about the 1000% (actual statistic) increase in hits to this blog the day it was mentioned at that far more famous blog. I mean, the power to so completely charm every member of the Matic household in a mere 18 hours that every time D sees the lovely red hat Juniper left, he smiles and says “baby! Baby!” The power to make me grateful that the internet exists in part so that people who should have been friends but never lived close enough to co-exist can find each other and strike up a friendship.

Now, there were some slightly awkward things about having them here, I will not lie. First, making sure I called them by their Real Names and not Wood and Dutch and Juniper all the time actually took some effort, not unlike trying to remember not to call Gillian Anderson “Scully” when discussing the movie House of Mirth. Also, Wood is pretty smokin’ hot, and the fact that Daddymatic refrained from ogling her while we talked their poor heads off over after-dinner coffee is further evidence that he is the picture of restraint. Similarly, when we went to the fabulous Liberty Park and Dutch offhandedly mentioned that “you totally don’t look any older than any of these other moms,” I was hard pressed not to just kiss him on the mouth then and there. And Juniper? It was the oddest thing to see my flesh-and-blood little rugrat hanging out with the internet icon Herself, especially when she was even more adorable than she is on the blog. I felt personally that she should come with some kind of warning about that, but I kept that opinion to myself.

I guess the overwhelming feeling I had as they drove off to hang with El Dooce (as Dutch calls her) was how important it is to have interesting, funny, clever people in one’s life, especially while raising children. Sweet Juniper was the first blog I read that was written by someone I didn’t know personally, and I remember that my reward for actually doing work as I sat in my office was to see if there were any new posts there. When Bee-bee started reading it, too, she summed up my feelings about it—and parenting—pretty well when she said, “It’s the way I wished I could have been when I was a young parent.” When Wood and I started emailing about sleep troubles, I felt simultaneously like I was thrilled to have such a cool friend but also a little freaked out to have a friend who, should I see her in the flesh, I couldn’t pick out of a crowd of one. When they accepted my offer to host them on their Great All-America Extravaganza, I was nervous—these were blogebrities! What if they derided my shopping choices and personal housekeeping decisions in front of The Internet?!

But of course that didn’t happen. They were just really nice folks that I happened to have a 14-month long almost-daily dossier on. And from now on, I’m going to stop referring to them as “these bloggers I know” and call them what they are: my friends.

Still. catching. up.

2006-08-23T19:57:00.000-07:00

In case you are sick to death about hearing me drone on about how great Salt Lake City is, here is the horrible thing about SLC I mentioned in my last post: My stylist doesn't live here. I know this is probably petty to those of you who are not hair-challenged and that everyone has to have a bloggy moment about hating their new haircut, but that's the way it is, and I will try to make mine brief: First, I got my hair cut by a person who didn't look like she was a total masochist--she was actually very nice--and it was horrendous. It's probably my fault for expecting her to interpret "I don't mind how much you need to take off" as what it really meant, which was "Please make it 3 inches longer and naturally straight and fine," so I accept full responsibility. But it was way, way bad. As in, I first left thinking, "Well, this is a little more Markie Post than I wanted to go" to "Markie Post? I wish. It's more like Marky Mark, but with less Funky Bunch." UGH. But my sister's miracle worker stylist triaged it for the wedding and I now feel I can at least go out in public without people going, "Dude, does that person with the manly-man hair-helmet have boobs?"

Okay, and as of today, I can now add another horrible thing about da SLC: the Junipers are no longer in it. But more about their visit and the absolutely insufferable cuteness that was allowed to proliferate between the Matic and Juniper offspring will have to wait for next time, because I have all this stuff I need to say about my sister's wedding and Traveling Alone.

My sister's been married before, you see. The only word I can use to describe her ex without getting sued is probably "unsavory." We [and I do mean "we"--the entire extended Matic family] were pretty darn happy when they split. Suddenly, she was herself again, and I realized how far apart we'd grown in the three years she'd been married and had placed herself in what amounted to a self-imposed exile from our family. We got together in New York City one weekend shortly after her divorce was final, and she became the first family member (outside of the two involved directly in the process) to find out D was going to become part of our family. I worried she might be hurt or pissed, anticipating even more pressure from my parents about her family situation, but my sister's not as selfish as me: she was thrilled. When we parted, she kissed her hand and pressed it gently to my still-flat belly, and I cried.

So when we heard about The New Guy about 2 years ago, we were skeptical. He's been married before, too. He has a child who's now six. So we ran him through the wringer the first weekend he met all of us: we teased, asked tough questions about his past, pressed him about his Intentions and were probably so inappropriately protective that had he not been so smitten with my sister, he might have had the presence of mind to be pissed about it. But he couldn't see anything but her, and so he survived. They moved in together last year and apparently he finds a great deal of charm in people who can be perky at 5AM and who keep giant, breathy boxer dogs that think they are throw pillows. So when I was asked to be Matron D'Honour at their wedding, I accepted. Once it was discovered that the wedding fell the weekend before Daddymatic's new job started, it was decided I would go Alone. As in, without my husband or my baby.

Unlike Rebecca, my nerves kicked in beforehand. I felt D had had so much going on this month that to add this to it wouldn't be fair. I mean, the twin pillars of his world had just left two days previously, and Daddymatic's work schedule would mean he'd need to have *gasp* a SITTER for several hours the first day I was gone.

But like Rebecca, I was also fine, and so was my kid. His babysitter Leah brought her daughter, who's two, and they taught him to high-five. Again. He's apparently pretty smitten with "Leeee-yah," and I tried to explain to Wood what a compliment it was that he kept calling her that. Daddymatic took him to parties, on hikes and to fun little markets as they explored the city together.

And I got to be with my sister, my beautiful, strong, smart, baby sister, and focus on her and her Big Day for a whole weekend. Her beloved and I stayed up late the first night arguing about sports and talking about war (he was in Desert Storm) and I got to crack jokes at the Bridesmaid's Brunch and the Rehearsal Dinner, when I read some funny haiku Daddymatic penned for the occasion. The wedding was gorgeous, and the reception was enough fun to probably not be totally legal. But what was most important was that I got to Be There for her in a way I never have before: no adorable but demanding toddler, no winsome but (wink, wink) distracting husband, no other demands on my time but hers. Now of course I felt totally awkward for turning their wedding night into a fun but completely uncomfortable pajama party while, at their insistence, we got takeout sushi and watched Wedding Crashers in our ratty post-partywear, so I finally took matters into my own hands and fairly pushed them towards their nuptial bed and retreated to my room across the house.

And the travel? People kept saying "Oh, twelve hours in an out of airports! Poor you." "A 4-hour layover? In Newark? That stinks." And I just smiled, knowing that I'd see my baby soon, but also that I could enjoy twelve hours of mystery-novel-readin', boutique-browsin', crossword-doin', coffee-sippin' relaxation before that happened.

But I'm back, and I'm happy. I missed my man and my boy and even my 6AM-noisy cats, and where they are feels like home.

The week(s) in review

2006-08-16T13:56:00.000-07:00

Okay, it totally sucks that I have had so little time to blog that I basically have to break each entry down into bulleted lists with important highlights instead of giving each event the attention it deserves, so bear with me--the next few posts will be playing major catch-up.

A few items from last post: the job I was offered was at a used bookstore. It was awesome in every way but the money way. As in, between preschool and wages, I'd end up paying $100/month to work there. Not really what comes to mind when I utter the words "gainfully employed," is it? But I have interviewed for what I could in all fairness call a Dream Job and have a few less exciting prospects in the pipeline, too, so we'll see if I'm going to be Working Mom Barbie this year or not. I'm not sure what she'll do to Dissertation-Finishing Barbie, but we'll burn that bridge when we get there. Dissertation-Finishing Barbie has turned out to be something of a deadbeat anyway, so it's anyone's guess.

What I haven't figured out yet is why I want to work (other than to help alleviate some of money hemmoraging we've been doing over the last couple of months) and/or why I feel guity for wanting to work. But that's something I will have to bat around in another post.

What I really want to post about is my parents' visit here. We truly had a wonderful time, and not because we got what can only be called slave labor from Grampy while he was here. For the low, low price of the occasional Bismarck (a chocolate covered donut with eclair creme inside), we completed a number of important home improvement projects so that when the hordes of guests we will be getting arrive, they don't have to feel like they are living in a work-in-progress.

We also exploited Bee-bee's prowess with bicycle-pushing and toddler-entertaining to grab a few showers without an audience, drink coffee without having to share half my breakfast with someone who already ate two eggs, a waffle, yogurt, sausage and a banana, and go out on a date.

We also did some fun stuff as an extended family. Here we are at the Great Salt Lake, which, as it turns out is not so much Great as it is shrinking and stinking, and sad. But since Stank Lake City doesn't have quite the ring to it that Salt Lake City does, its poignancy and pungency will have to remain a mystery for everyone but you, dear reader(s?).

What's cuter than a little boy with orange crocs? Maybe a Grampy with big-boy crocs? Maybe a little boy putting big crocs on over his wee crocs? It's like a moibus strip of cuteness.

Hey, brine shrimp. And wow, the edges of the waves turn black and fly up into the air. It would be cool if they didn't look suspiciously like thousands of tiny little bugs. Mommy, why are you making the throw-up face?
Salt crystals. Whoa. What's a lotta fries' worth right there.
I don't know why people seem to know immediately that Grampy belongs to me. Hm.
This is the somewhat sad Saltair Resort. It used to be quite the hangout--the Starbucks of Pioneer Mormon days, if you will, only, like, glamorous and stuff. Old pictures of the Saltair show that the Salt Lake came in under the resort, which was on pilings so that swimmers could float in the water without having their skin seared off by the high desert sun. Now the lake's a good thousand feet out from the building, and the abandonded rail cars parked next to it only add to the wistful feel of the place. I so want to bring Juniper's dad Dutch here when he visits!
Mommy, come ON. Bee-bee and Grampy are going to get all the good horrifcally smelly dead seagulls before we do!!

And then there were the trips to Liberty Park, which is so cool it shouldn't even be allowed, let alone FREE:

Wow, two things I love: Splashing in my crocs, and then getting to repeat the words "watew" [water] and "shooooooes" four hundred times.
Hey dudes, what's up? Wait up, and I'll just give Bee-bee the slip and climb on into the wading canyons with you to see what all the hype is about.
Niiiiiice birdie. Mama, don't look it in the eye, and no pictures. I SAID NO PICTURES.
This picture's cuteness might seem only skin-deep, but it's actually even cuter than that--I'm trying to feed the flowers my goldfish crackers. I know, right? In case you're wondering, it does hurt to be this cute, but I suffer it for you. I'm all about my fans, people, all. about. my. fans.

Next time: further intra-Mommymatic debates on going back to being paid for what one does in something other than sticky smiles and laundry, At Least One Rotten Thing About SLC, and mommymatic's 4-day journey away Alone, in which I play Matron D'Honour to my adorable sister and pinchable-cheeked brother-in-law, the infamous marital unit known as Kimnjim.

Some good things

2006-08-03T13:00:00.000-07:00

1. This picture. There are so many things I love about it: the lunchbox behind him and the belly suggests he's just had lunch, the vacant expression that says he knows he should go back to work but can't find the energy, and of course, our new constant companions, the slightly too-big orange crocs (thanks for the tip, Foo).

2. We have a sofa! And a big bed! And did I mention the orange crocs? Juniper will surely have competition for her shoe fetish.

3. Mochas at Sugarhouse Coffee.

4. We live within walking distance of a fine German bakery called Schmidt's. Bismarck, anyone?

5. I may have a job.

6. Did I mention Bee-bee and Grampy are coming Monday? And did I mention the new orange crocs? (I'm trying the toddler it's-cute-to-repeat-everything-in-a-tone-of-wonder scheme to see if it's any more workable this way. Didn't think so.)

This kind of evens out the fact that SOMEONE is getting up earlier and earlier every morning and that the car had to be fixed AGAIN and that my internet connection is totally screwy, yes? Kind of makes me want to stop whining about everything, actually.

But how are YOU?

In da SLC

2006-07-31T21:44:00.000-07:00

Okay, and now to the meat of the matter: the new digs.

My first impressions are that SLC is pretty darn cool--I think I could with all fairness say that it, even in light of the fact that it's been in the *triple digits* EVER SINCE WE GOT HERE (okay, not today, but up until today) that it is a mother's paradise. Changing tables almost everywhere. Some with diaper genies, even! Everything's stroller-accessible. There are ankle-biters of all ages, thick on the ground, ready to befriend your kid. Kids' coloring menus with crayons must be required by the chamber of commerce for all restaurants, too, because we ate in a buttload of restaurants the first several days and EVERY ONE had kid-friendly menus and built-in kiddie entertainment (now if they would just come with a mentor to convince D to not eat the crayons...).

Seriously, kids are factored into almost everything: the botanical gardens at Red Butte (wish I made that name up, but I didn't) has a kids' garden that is spectacular, the Children's Museum is a DREAM, the library (which is not at all oversold by being Library of the Year for 2006--it's that good) has little alcoves for reading and hiding and playing--one is called The Attic because it's all skylights, stairs and exposed beams. I would have been all a-quiver for such a library during my awkward, library-loving preteen phase.

And the parks? Well, they must feel outclassed by all the other stuff in town and went and so Liberty Park went and got itself a water area with a fake fire hydrant and a sprinkler tunnel and everything which would be so awesome if D wasn't terrified of it and runs directly away from it to the metal playground equipment which, invariably, is too hot to touch. But the parks have potential.

So as far as Stuff to Do With the Under-2s, it's got it all over State College, of course. But it doesn't have my dear Beth and E, and that makes it have to work a hell of a lot harder to win my admiration. I mean, what good is a Children's Museum if the people you meet there, while perfectly nice, find ways to work sentences like "So I thought, well, shoot, we're a good, patriotic, Republican family, why NOT live near a military base?" into the conversation. I am not even kidding. In addition, there was an incident here involving a little girl which is just too horrible to talk about, and that makes me ache for a small town with ZERO badness happening to small children.

Also? I wouldn't mind not being the oldest first-time mom by at least a DECADE every. single. place. we. go. I mean, if a woman in SLC is MY ripe old approaching-mid-thirties age, well, she's already got herself a football team at this point. She might even be close to being a GRANDMOTHER. HEL-LOOOO. I feel like a *freak*.

So I've met some other moms. I try to seek out the more hippie-ish moms, if only because they are the only ones who remember a world with rotary-dialing telephones and cassette tapes. We Slightly Older Moms (SOMs) are easy to spot, too, because evidently, having a baby in your 20s or teens means you have boundless energy to put on makeup, do something with your hair other than the dated Winona Ryder Tiny Barette look, whiten your teeth, and iron your crop pants.

Now, lest I sound too much like I'm smacking on my youthful breeder brethren and sistren (that's the real plural of "sisters," isn't it?), I will say that the one good thing about Babies Everywhere is that most kids are AWESOME with D and actually PLAY with him without my having to bribe, threaten or trick them. Two little 5 or 6-year-old girls were playing with him at the library--toting him around, handing him the plush pig he kept throwing at them and laughing at his tricks. I almost asked if they babysat before I realized that was probably inappropriate considering their age and offered instead to adopt them, so engrossed was my child with these older women. They politely declined. It seems my mother-of-the-year-award-inspiring reputation proceeds me.

Despite my somewhat muted display of Important Mothering Skills (you know, like Patience and Not Yelling), D has been, by the way, the best sport ever about the whole move. He was voted Very Best Baby on the flight from Dallas to SLC by the flight attendants, which is saying something, since there were roughly half a million screaming children on that flight. I wish I could say Am3rican was the Very Best Airline to fly with tots, but alas, their failure to help me (until I was leaving the LAST of two flights) in any way with my giant carseat, 2 carry-on bags, and stroller was almost as unconscionable as the fact that THEY DO NOT PRE-BOARD PEOPLE TRAVELLING WITH SMALL CHILDREN. Even if they have carseats. I'm sorry, what?!? Their answer was, "Well, at this time of year, lots of families fly with us." Hmm. Really? Probably not this family again, I should think.

But D, oh, he was a trouper--he's been (knock on wood) sleeping pretty well, has generally been well-behaved on our numerous trips to restaurants, discount stores and Home Depot, and continues to (much of the time, anyway) charm the very marrow from our bones.

He has learned what I call "calling intonation"--when we call to Daddymatic from D's room in the morning, he says "DAAAAA da" with that sort of falling intonation we all remember our mothers using when we were late for supper, and when he can't find Lambie, he'll say "LAAAAA la." It is too cute. He is so in love with my mother that he melted down every time she left the room, and just the other day, he looked at me and said, very firmly, "Bee-bee. GRAH-di-grah (how he says Grampy, my dad's call sign). Na-nuh (Nana is my paternal grandmother, and he saw her almost every day in Charlotte)." And I told him they weren't here, we'd have to call them because they were in North Carolina, well, the little bugger started saying "GRAAAAAAH-di-grah. BEEEE beeee. NAAAAH nuh." because to him, that's how you "call" someone. Not a linguistic prodigy, perhaps, but dashed entertaining.

Also, he did his first two-word combination the other day. As I mentioned, my Nana pushed D around on her wheeled walker (aka "bicycle') a few times and it was big fun for all involved, so the first night here in UT, he saw a similar walker and looked at me, pointed at it and said "Nana. Bicycle." After I picked myself up off the floor, I told him "Yeah, sweetie, that's just like Nana's bicycle."

Right now, we're stamping our feet waiting for Comcast to come and hook us back up to the world of the internet, which they say they can't possibly do until tomorrow (that's two weeks we've waited, whine, whine). We are also STILL trying to fix the car, which Daddymatic used to run over a large metal pipe in the road just outside of Kansas City. I shouldn't even joke about it, because it's a miracle he's alive, given that the gas tank and fuel pump were complete toast, but it's been something of a logistical voyage, what with the rental cars, insurance peeps, air tickets to KCI and a 15-hour marathon drive back in a still-mostly-broken car for Daddymatic. As the house gets more put together, I'll post some pix on flickr, but for now, we're here and we love it and I miss you and I'll be back to visit your blog or send you an email as soon as we are hot-wired. Or wire-free. Or whatever.

Finally, another update (while all the cool kids are at BlogHer)

2006-07-28T22:20:00.000-07:00

Okay, I am sponging off of a neighbor's wi-fi just to write this, so I'll have to put the rest of the trip into one long-ish post, but let me sum up the trip to Fayetteville and Charlotte by sharing these three observations:

1) No matter how much I love the Matics-in-law and no matter how much trouble they have gone to to make a fabulous stay for us (renting a crib, totally babyproofing the house, scoping out parks/museums/etc), three days is still the limit for in-law visits.

2) The Airborne/Special Ops Museum in Fayetteville is a WONDER. Seriously. If you're stuck in the big Fay for a few hours, check it out. It's Smithsonian-quality, IMHO, and you can find t-shirts that say "HOO AH." Here are some pix:

Anybody seen the keys to this baby? I'm just going to pull it into the garage.

Um, General Yarborough? Asia's going to be hell for a while after the Vietnam Conflict, so trust me when I tell you that you might be needing this.

Excuse me, sir. May I have one of those? I've been a very good boy. Also, can you remove this protective plexiglass?

Oh, I am SO making a break for it. That big ole gun is mine, suckas.

Dude, even the exhbits play peek-a-boo here. Awesome.

Daddy, daddy, wait up. Small legs. Can't keep up. Besides, the gardens here at the museum are lovely, don't you agree?

3) If you get mad at your mentally handicapped SIL, even if you have very good reasons, like the fact that she sometimes acts more like a manipulative toddler than your own offspring does and then watches you lose it with your hitting, squirming, fire-spitting toddler and then says to her mother within your earshot that "You know what, mom? *I* will be patient and calm when MY baby acts up," you will feel like the biggest. jerk. ever. There is no way around it. Especially when you remember that she won't ever get to test that promise she's just made. Yes, wanting to throttle someone who is 27 but has the mental function of someone half her age is akin to, as Anne Lamott puts it, "bitch-slapping E.T." There is no help for it. Let the self-loathing begin.

4) Ditto the above for your 88-year-old grandmother. You just can't be mad at someone who's old and not doing terribly well without hating yourself. Even when you schlep your tot over to see her almost every single day in the horrid heat, in the car with no A/C, and your mother hosts her every other night for dinner, she complains that it's not enough. You will hate yourself for being irritated by this, because you know deep down that she's right--it's not ever going to be enough. In so, so, so many ways. I wish D could get to know the Nana I knew as a kid, but he can't. The only thing that softens the sadness that I feel is knowing that they did have some good times together, and he will remember her, if nothing else, as the cool old lady with the funny bicycle (she uses a wheeled walker, and he went nuts for it). When the tension between my almost-painful love for and my almost-painful frustration with my Nana got too much for me, though, I remembered my friend E speculating that maybe older people become ornery because it's easier to let them go when it's their time. Dunno.

5) My parents absolutely have to move to Utah. As in NOW. D loves them fiercely and it was all I could do to coax him away with me when it was time to head to da SLC. So I've informed my new town that the GrandMatics will be in town starting 8/7 and I expect everything to go perfectly while they're here. Meals on the house. No traffic. Primo parking and free admission everywhere. Cooler temperatures. A pony for my mom and an RV for my dad. You know, basic stuff.

I promise tomorrow I'll sponge again (it's a victimless crime, DM keeps telling me) and send my impressions of da SLC...

So long, farewell, auf wiedersehen, adieu

2006-07-15T19:05:00.000-07:00

In the driving/flying/overnight-staying/family-and-friend-seeing extravaganza that is our move to the great state of Utah, this is part one, In Which The Familymatic Leaves State College, Drives to Washington DC and Treks Onward to Fayetteville, NC to See the Matics-in-law.

Mom? Any room for this shoe in that box? Kinda full-up here.

We bid a sad farewell to our friends and family (no blood relatives, it’s true, but family nonetheless) in State College. D’s fab godparents Connie and Chuck and the rest of my church threw us a party that was so good and sweet and moving that it scored a solid 3 on the How Many Times Will Mommymatic cry scale, which may be a new record. They gave us sweet gifts and enough money to fund a revolution in a third-world country and left us thinking that the fact that they’d give us so much to LEAVE a place either means they really like us or are really relieved we’re finally going. Connie also took us out to lunch on a day when we badly, badly needed a break and it is for this reason among many that she will have a king's ransom of jewels in her crown when she gets You Know Where (hint: it's a place where I probably won’t be allowed in.)

D’s Unky Jon and Auntay Emily also threw us a totally excellent going-away party complete with a party mix Emily burned onto a CD for us. There was fried chicken, sweet tea and this totally adorable cake (in case you're wondering, that's a map of PA and a map of UT, with me and D in a plane above the road, and a red moving truck and blue car with Daddymatic in it, trekking across the country). Said cake was both tasty and a great “exhibit A” for those who doubt Jon has too much time on his hands.

Thus it was with heavy hearts that we departed SC for good on July 3rd. Well, my heart would have been heavy if I hadn’t been so freaked by the move itself and then sneezing my fool head off after sweeping out 6 years’ worth of cat hair, dust and other Matic Family Detritus as we closed the joint down. D loved the moving boxes but wasn’t so jazzed about all the changes going on in His House nor was he particularly stoked about the 4-hour drive to DC. We decided not to mention the fact that the trip to Fayetteville would be almost twice as long.

The trip was mostly Hell with a side of Finally Sleeping for the last half-hour, but we got there and our hosts with the most, the lovely Nancy and David and their tres adorable offspring Donovan (3) and Harper (11 weeks) had a totally smokin’ veggie lasagna waiting for us. D covered himself in it, we hosed it off and he promptly collapsed into bed and slept until 7:30 the next morning, a feat he had not been able to achieve for a number of sad weeks in the Matic household.

Let me say at this point how much I LOVE staying with other parents of young children. For one thing, we didn’t have to schlep the high chair, pack-n-play, or any toys because Donovan had evidently been exploiting his copious personal charm in order to amass Anything One Would Ever Need for a Boychild. And no having to apologize for not wanting to do X or Y because of your child’s nap/eating/nighttime schedule. Bliss, I tell you. Also? Built-in entertainment for D in the form of an older child: I finally got a glimpse of how a-freaking-mazing it would be to have a child who watched just a little TV—D observed Donovan like he would have to write down field notes later, and I had time to drink a cup of coffee!

I got to see two dear friends in addition to our amazing hosts whilst in DC: Shera, my best friend from about the 5th grade whom I hadn’t seen in about 7 years. She has a fancy job at a very cool and educational cable channel and she came for lunch and we talked about how much our lives have changed since we saw each other last. It was great to see her, if for no other reason than to find out where to get beauty products which, by the looks of her, allow one literally to stop aging.

I also had the chance to meet up with Nancy—if you haven’t read her blog, you are missing out. Seriously. Go read this and this and tell me if I’m lying. Go ahead. I’ll wait. Anyway, she’s as funny and adorable and witty in person as she is on the blog but her bod is waaaay more smokin’ than she admits online. In this picture of us, you see, I'm not even worried that I look like something someone scraped up off of I-95, because Nancy just draws the eye towards the Happy Place that is her face.
When Nancy admitted to having angst over what to wear to our meeting, I thought I might kiss her on the mouth, but then I thought her husband J might not be too keen on my way of showing appreciation. You know how you feel like you’ve known someone forever and can totally tell them anything and then you find out some cool new fact about them that just makes them that much cooler? I pretty much had a whole afternoon of that. Meeting Nancy made me think that going to BlogHer would be way more fun and way less scary a propostition if all the blog-girl meetings would be like that. She’s that cool.

And her kids? Don’t even get me started. Rosie totally wowed D with her prowess in balloon-snatching by leaving a trail of teary, surprised-looking kids in her wake, and Mimi could not have been more the consummate Big Sister, herding, entertaining, and looking out for the little ones. I thought seriously of asking if I could swab some of her DNA but thought Nancy might think that was weird.

And J? Well, just when you thought Nancy was so perfect no guy could ever live up to that, you meet J. I think I might actually have swooned at his wit a little when, in desperate search for a pacifier, I pulled a tiny binky out of my pocket that D had swiped from our hosts’ 11-week old daughter, and J just grinned and said “Dude, any bink in a storm, right?” So when you’re done reading this, go tell Nancy it’s OK if J does posts for her every now and again. I'm sad Daddymatic didn't get to meet Nancy and her fam, but he was whiling away the afternoon at a Nationals game with David--nothing's more 4th-of-July than baseball, a 9th-inning win and a big foam finger, right?

And then we went to Fayetteville, NC, home of the Matics-in-law, which is continued in the next segment of our program. So stay tuned for Part 2, In Which D Plays an Organ, Learns Why Overalls Have Bib pockets, and Offers His Pacifier to a Vietnam War General.

T minus 6 and counting...

2006-06-27T05:59:00.000-07:00

So much happens in a week around here these days. The child grows his vocabulary by roughly 75%, we use enough packing tape to secure the Vatican's vast holdings, and the reality of leaving this place I have lovingly complained about for 6 years begins to dawn on us. Since thinking about leaving my church, E. and Beth, the two best real-live toddlermom-friends a girl could ever ask for (one of whom had her THIRD baby yesterday--Sam and Nina's little brother, Milo, a healthful and winsome 7 lbs, 12 oz.) and my many other beloved State Collegians in T-minus-6 days makes me weep, I will simply update you on other not-so-sentimental goings-on here in the Matic household. (and yes, hyphens are a girl's best friend. At least this girl.)

One: Another haircut. I was feeling at one with the clippers this time, so we boldly went for an almost Daddymatically-short hairdo. Behold, the before and after:

Before: What? I do NOT look like a shaggy dog. My eyes are under these bangs somewhere, Mama.
After: Okay, the haircut I get, but the Peter Pan collar? Is this really necessary? Really?

Two: St. Bee-bee has arrived--alas, without the Grampy-matic--and it's every bit as good as advertised to have her here. D delights in his new game, which is to yell "BEE BEE!" and have her yell his name right back at him. Of course, the downside is that we all tire of this game waaay before he does, but whatever. Here he is, naming the other important members of his immediate family, including himself, and at the end, Lambie, whose has been re-christened Ya-ya, by the various twists and turns of toddler phonetics:

Video Hosting - Upload Video - Video Sharing

Three: At long last, we proudly announce the advent of MANNERS. Yes, when asked "what do you say?" we now get a "please" (as seen below) and often, even without prompting, are rewarded with a "day-choo" (that's "thank you," for ye of little imagination). Observe the toddler in his usual habitat (smack dab in the middle of the kitchen floor, cracker container in hand.). I was trying to get him to repeat "cracker" but instead was pleasantly rewarded with a "please?"

Video Hosting - Upload Video - Video Sharing

Four: And finally, for our final act, those of you who insisted that there is some biologically-based attraction between a boy and his truck, I am sorry for pooh-poohing you. I think you are right, and my mother-in-law crows with delight when I tell her of D's various "all-boy" antics. But just when I think it's nothing but football and testicle-grabbing from here on out, my boy surprises me. Here's a video I call "fancy lady" just for my in-laws:

Video Hosting - Upload Video - Video Sharing

So that's it for now. Wish us luck and you may not hear from us until we're ensconced in our new home, but probably, I will not be able to wait that long to blab again. Especially since I am hoping to meet Nancy over the 4th-of-July.

That's DOCTOR Daddymatic to you.

2006-06-20T18:06:00.000-07:00

So the big DM passed his doctoral defense today, and we are just all kinds of hopped up around here. Since D's god-mama babysat him (for the last time, possibly--sniff, sniff), I got to go see the d-fense (though I was asked to leave my big foam finger at home). It rocked. I mean, Daddymatic was saying junk like "Most people probably don't see themselves as resisting subjects in the global hegemony that is English" totally off the cuff, and--wait for it--he knew what that meant! I know, right?

Here's the PhD himself. And that woman with her arm around him is someone else's wife. But we like her anyway. I mean, can't blame chicks for diggin' docs, right?

And here's D, enjoying Daddy's post-defense party with Mama, Auntay Emily and Uncle Tony, who is showing him exactly how much beer you have to drink before you find soccer a compelling sport (it's a lot, evidently).

So I'm gonna go see if there's a doctor in the house, 'cause Mama needs a checkup, okaaay?

The Daddy Dozen

2006-06-18T18:56:00.000-07:00

I've been going back and forth quite a bit on whether I should write this father's day post about Daddymatic or my very own father, Bee-bee's often-silent partner in the southern parental unit referred to as "mamandiddy." Since I figure most of you are probably thoroughly nauseated by my constant blabbing about what a perfect spouse and parent the big DM is, I figured it was time to introduce you to my Dad.

For much of my young life, my dad was indeed the silent member of the parenting partnership. I don't think this is because he wanted to be excluded, but more because my mother felt that kids were her domain and, like me, didn't want to be accused of fobbing her responsibilities off onto anyone else. So Dad was always there, always supportive, always crazy about his girls, but not really the one who was able to answer Important Queries like whether Mary Katherine could spend the night and why we always have to shop at K-Mart, where none of the cool kids would be caught dead. It wasn't until I was in 8th grade and met a girl who really, really loved her father (not in a gross way--ew!) and actually rhapsodized about how cool he was that I started to think, "Well, crap, my dad's WAY cooler than hers. Maybe I should look into this." And so my dad and I became friends. And now I want you to meet him. And just so I don't blather on all night, I'll only list twelve of the things I just adore about my Pops.

1) My dad's first date with my mom was a double-feature of Oedipus Rex and Finnegan's Wake. (While I'm at it, let me add that one of the things I love about my mother was that she agreed to go out with him AGAIN. ) Dad also is reported to have eyed her thigh-high boots and curdoroy mini-skirt and told her, "Uhhh--my mother warned me about girls like you." To her credit, my mother, a young widow not about to take any flak from some math nerd, no matter how cute, smiled and said, "Honey, your mother doesn't know any girls like me."

2) Dad's not a letter-writer. The first letter he ever wrote me was when I was living in Germany and casually mentioned on the phone with my parents that now that I was at the ripe old age of 14, it was probably time I started experiementing with smoking. Daddy wrote me a letter explaining his disappointment with my choice but of course added that he'd still love me even if I opted for tar-filled lungs and stinky hair and clothes. He's also not usually much of a talker: if my mother's within a 500-ft radius when I call, our conversation often consists of an exchange of pleasantries followed immediately by, "Here's your mother." But we have debated about lots and lots of things, and every time I'm amazed at how smart and thoughtful he is.

3) Food is often equated with love in our house, so it should be no surprise that Daddy has purchased Lucky Charms, gallons of Breyer's ice cream, and enough salty snacks to help a marathon runner recover whenever we go to visit. One time Dad traveled to Philly on business and brought back hoagies from his and my mother's favorite deli packed in his suitcase. I remember feeling that I should take note, as such acts of kindness seemed to be an important part of a healthy marriage.

4) You know those Laura Ingalls-type stories where people say "we didn't have a lot of money, but we had everything we needed?" Well, my early childhood was very much that, and my present-day, child-having self is proud of my parents' decision to eschew rampant materialism. My seven-year-old self was not as understanding, and thus I remember vividly that back in the days of sticker collecting, which I was into in a big way, my dad brought me back a liquid crystal sticker (remember when they were all the rage? anyone?) of a dolphin, and I thought he was the coolest guy ever for getting me something so cool and something my mother would not have labelled "necessary."

5) When I was 13, Dad took my sister and me to DisneyWorld. My mom stayed home because she had to work and because the cat was dying, and dad was in charge of herding us around Epcot. I was horrified when a band of "Renaissance" traveling actors accosted us and asked my dad to be in a skit. Not only did he agree to be in the skit, he wore a mophead as a wig and pranced around like a princess. Wait for it: he made everybody laugh!! MY dad.

6) My dad rode his bike to work every day for about a year a few years ago. This is amazing for a number of reasons, two of which are: one, my folks' town is notoriously bike-unfriendly, and he ended up having to ride on the sidewalk most of the time. Two, my dad's physique is not what most people think of as "streamlined." In fact, many people might compare him favorably with a box. But he kicks butt. Obviously.

7) My dad told me once that he didn't smoke, use drugs or drink, ever, even when he was serving in Vietnam. Like most children, I assumed he was lying to set an example of moral piety, so I asked him why the heck he wouldn't do it in 'Nam, for heaven's sake. I'll never forget his answer. He said "There were a lot of guys there who were really hooked on that stuff, and just in case any of them ever wanted to stop, I wanted them to know it was possible to survive there without it." I am not making this up.

8) Dad's a pathological fixer: As a young driver, I didn't realize what a huge chunk of my income would be eaten up by mechanic's bills because I was spoiled by a man with a garage full of tools. My first car was a 1977 Honda CVCC (the Civic prequel, if you will), and we fixed it up together, which is to say, he fixed it up, and I popped gum on the phone with my friends. He also re-caulked our bathroom in while I was in the hospital after D was born, because he was bored. He's also quite the woodworker: he made me a beautiful toy chest that is still in use by Mister D himself, and a dollhouse and two canopied doll beds that I am trying to find an excuse to move back into my home.

9) Until I was in high school, the only music my parents had that was ostensibly my dad's contribution were all of Ray Charles's albums and some by the Kingston Trio. Now, he evidently listens to the Bee-Gees and still to this day calls my mother Mamma-jamma, as in "She's a bad...." *sigh* Parents these days.

10) When I was little, Dad would watch Bugs Bunny with my sister and me and his favorites were always the Coyote and Roadrunner cartoons. He would laugh so hard tears would run down his face, and I remember wanting more than anything to understand why it was so funny. We still watch TV together sometimes. During high season, we are like teenaged girls, calling each other after episodes of the Gilmore Girls and the new-defunct West Wing and Joan of Arcadia.

11) My dad is the undisputed King of the Non-sequitur. He's probably not actually worse than anyone else in our family, but when I was an angsty pre-teen (as opposed to an angsty thirtysomething), I was in the middle of a Long and Very Important Story about my love life, and my dad looked up and said, "Did you know they grow a lot of cabbage in Korea?" There was a moment of silence, and then he started to explain about the importance of kimchee in Korean culture, and my mother, sister and I all looked at each other and cracked up. "Cabbage in Korea" is now family slang for all random conversational tidbits.

12) D's first name is also my dad's (and his dad's) middle name. Of course, when I told him we were naming D after him, he said "Huh. I always wished my middle name was something else." Um, okay. But he was the only person to know immediately that A. Daddymatic was The One (I think he knew even before I was sure) and B. That D was a boy. So he's forgiven.

So what can I say? In addition to helping finance my first two years as a stay-at-home mom, my dad has been my cheerleader and support system for so long that I can't imagine ever having to be without him. And I can't wait until D feels the same way.

2006-06-14T18:42:00.000-07:00

So like I said, I'm back. It's been an interesting few weeks.

Some highlights:

1) The child has launched himself into the World of the Verbal with a ferocity that is both exciting and terrifying. Often it will be some time before we recognize that the collection of syllables he's been producing is actually a word. "Ca-kah," he'd say over and over until one of us realized he was asking for a cracker. "Kak kak kak!" he'd shriek, pointing wildly from his highchair into the air. This one took several days to figure out: he was pointing at a mobile of clay doves that hangs in our kitchen and wanted us to make them fly. To him, they were ducks, hence the "kak, kak," which duh, Mama, everyone knows is what ducks say. On the other hand, however, birds, apparently, hiss. So now he clarifies himself by pointing to the mobile and hissing. Of course.

By the way--cats? They say "gon." If we engaged in a serious game of "what do animals in YOUR culture say?", I think we'd discover he's actually Cambodian. But we're trying not to plumb that line too much.

Video Hosting - Upload Video - Video Sharing

The above is a video of him saying his new Everyword. It seems that all children must go through a phase where a particular word gains so much currency it must be used in every possibe circumstance, even the ones that seem outside of the bounds of logic. Foo, evidently, had her doggies and Juniper had her apples. Us? We've got bicycles. Oh, have we got bicycles. Big-boy bikes, tricycles, exercise bikes, even wheelchairs and wheeled walkers--all are bicycles, and all must be announced with the same fervor and zeal, often in a sort of bicycle mantra: "Biiiiiiicycle," he'll chirp, dragging syllabies out, and then suddenly rapid fire repitition takes over "bicycle-bicycle-bicycle-bicycle-bicycle."

We actually think that in some way the word 'bicycle' has become the 'smurf' of its time---as in "dude, that is sooo bicycle of him to give me that cookie!" or "I cannot have a bath, the water's too bicycle for me." In fact, a few days ago, I put him in his crib at nighttime, and he looked at me, smiled a sweet sleepy smile around his paci and said "biiiiiicycle." Then he rolled over and went to sleep.

Fortunately, it seems a NUMBER of D's favorite things have a similar "initial bilabial stop-middle syllable voiceless velar stop" phonetic pattern like bicycle. For those of you not pursuing graduate study in linguistics, that means that many of his favorite words have a B or P (called bilabial stops because you stop the flow of air with both lips) at the beginning and a hard K sound (called a voiceless velar stop because--you guessed it--you stop the flow of air by touching your tongue to your soft palate, also called the velum) in the middle. To whit: bicycle, peek-a-boo, breakfast, Sparky (the dog downstairs), pinecone, backpack. It's frightening how much of one's vocabularic needs can be met by that one sound combination.

2) In the intervening weeks, we have learned to savor the forgotten joys of home ownership. We hired an outfit called Bet Your Grass (sorry, nice Mormon neighbors) to deforest our property on a regular basis only to be reminded that "The Dry Season" is just about upon us, which means we need to hire another party to water our lawn. So that it will grow. So that we can pay to have it cut again. This strikes me as silly, especially since in the high desert we are going to be diverting, like, rivers and stuff so that the stupid Kentucky fescue on our yard can survive. Needless to say, we are vigorously exploring xeriscaping (sorry again, nice, green-lawn havin' Mormon neighbors).

3) One grad student income - one mortgage payment - rent - bills for two places of semi-residence = we need a money tree, and fast. Maybe we can xeriscape one.

4) We are almost officially grownups. Want to know what finally convinced us? It wasn't having a baby together. It wasn't getting a mortgage. No, it was choosing a new sofa. Almost our entire married lives, we have plunked our butts on the futon from my college days, and we decided it was time. We've found the one we want, and we're waiting to see if it feels the same way about us. All I can tell you is that it's dark brown leather, very comfy to be with, and probably has an infectious laugh. Since this blog is officially for D to have a record of his life, I want him to know that his mama was such a dork that she personified the new queen sleeper sofa upon which he will probably make a pass at his prom date one day.

5) It's my blogaversary today. Mommymatic's a year old! There is no way I can say how much blogging has helped me on this parenting path, but you have only to glance at my blogroll to know that I've had some very fine company on this journey. I want to do an individual blurb about each blog on the roll, but it will have to wait, I'm afraid. All I can say right now is that when I feel I have no home at all, no community, nobody who gets me, my eyes wander to that list, and I remember something--and usually several things--about each person there that reminds me that somebody somewhere does get me.

Anniversary-matic

2006-06-07T20:38:00.000-07:00

So Daddymatic isn't sold separately this time. I'm back, and the big DM agreed to come with me this time. It's our wedding anniversary today, so we decided to each write a version of the same story and post them. His is better, so mine goes first. Enjoy. It's way too frigging long for a post, but think of it as my way of making up for lost time. (oh, and yeah, the pic is a digital picture of our wedding photo, because I'm too cheap to buy a scanner. I have no idea who those young'uns in the photo are--he looks like somebody's date for Shelly Silverstein's bat mitzvah party, right?)

Mommymatic's version:

I went on a study abroad program to Oxford in 1993. I met Daddymatic my third day there--I had traveled alone, but he arrived with the rest of the group, and we started talking when he decided that learning to play croquet would be a good remedy for jet lag. He mimicked the headmaster so perfectly that I just knew we were going to have to be friends. After a few days of hanging out, playing spades and drinking tea, we were inseparable. He and our friend Candy and I went everywhere together--we made fun of each other crying at Les Miserables, told as many Monty Python jokes as possible during a long weekend in Scotland, drank tea in every scone-and-clotted-cream-serving establishment in England, and discovered that malt vinegar is as addictive as crack for those who eat fish and chips on a daily basis. But he had a girlfriend, so when the trip was over, I wrote him a cheesy letter and said goodbye.

We kept in touch over the next three years; he was the first person to ever e-mail me (yes, Virginia, there was a time before e-mail. It's called half my college career); he called to tell me he was going to propose to his girlfriend, and he called me when I was living in Baton Rouge to ask what I thought of his decision to leave law school. I remember this call as being odd--he asked what I thought and I asked what his finacee thought and he confessed he wanted to know what I would say because he knew I'd be honest and think primarily of his needs, whereas said finacee was more, how to say, interested in having her lawyer-marrying needs met. He did leave law school, and she split before he even took his last exam.

I didn't hear from him again until May, when he called to tell me about a job he'd been offered with his alma mater. We talked about the job, his ex, my by-then ex, and the conversation took what I thought was a "whimsical turn down What-if Lane." To whit, he told me we should "go out sometime" when I was back in North Carolina. I remember scoffing at him, only because I'd crushed so hard on him when we were in England only to find he was dating a girl that Candy nicely referred to as someone who "would probably do pretty well on a multiple-choice test, but not someone you'd want to let loose on an essay question." Well, that and the fact that we were separated by, oh, say 1200 miles.

A week went by. Another friend visited me en route to his new home in Colorado and I remember telling him I was never getting married, and he laughed and said he was sure I'd have a big Southern wedding within a year. [This is what's known in the writing world as "foreshadowing", kids]. We came back from a quick trip to New Orleans to a call from my dear Daddymatic, demanding to know how I could just ignore such an important letter as the one he'd written me. In my typical eloquent fashion, I think I said, "Huh?" He asked if I'd gotten a letter he'd sent and when I said no, he tried to end the conversation with a hearty oh-I-got-ya-that-time chuckle. Nothing doing, I said. And so then he confessed that he hadn't been kidding when he'd made the crack about getting together, and how he was sure that it was Providence that had kept us in touch for all these years and didn't we owe fate this chance?

I was floored. I mean, he wouldn't have had to do much to look good against the Parade of Losers that was my love life up until that point, but here was the funniest, cleverest, cutest guy I'd ever met, and he was actually interested in me? I, ever witty, made some crack about his coming down to Louisiana, seeing as he'd never even visited the Other South, and he took me up on it.

The month between that phone call and his actual visit was possibly the longest of my life. We sent each other reams of email every day, heavily pun-laden cards a few times a week, and I think I even sent him flowers at work. On one level, I was so sure something stupid would happen and he'd end up a psycho like all my other boyfriends, but in my heart, I knew This Was It. By the time he got off the plane on that sultry July morning (are July mornings any other way in south Louisiana?), I was a smitten kitten. He was The One. He'd been my friend so long I had no idea how to move the relationship to another level, but apparently, he knew just how--we got to the car and he kissed me so hard my watch fell off (that should be an expression, shouldn't it? to kiss you so hard your watch falls off?).

That night, I made him crawfish etoufee. Twice. (we were, ah, 'busy getting reacquainted' while the roux was simmering the first time and it burned). That night, he told me he wanted to see the sunrise over the levee, despite my assurances that levees are nothing more than grassy hills and certainly not worth getting up at 5:45 AM for. So we woke before dawn and crept two blocks to the levee, where he proceeded to recite FROM MEMORY my favorite John Donne poem. I ask you. The rest of the weekend was kind of a blur--Driving the 90 minutes to New Orleans. Sharing bread pudding. Sweating in a no-A/C-having apartment in July. Drinking iced coffee. Other, perhaps more scandalous, activities. Falling in love.

Within a month, I was driving back to NC, where he would propose to me in a mushy moment as we spooned in a tiny twin bed. As I recall, I was telling him how much I wanted to go to the Peace Corps, but how much I did NOT want to leave him. He suggested we go together, and I wistfully noted that only married couples were eligible. He said, "Well, right." We decided later that this was not nearly romantic enough for a proposal story, so the Official Version is the one about his coming to Baton Rouge again in August with the ring and doing the whole schmear during dessert at the Creole restaurant. The ring, he said, had four rubies: one, because I was born in July, two, because we met in July, three, because we fell in love in July, and four because--at that point--we were getting married in July.

Turns out we couldn't wait that long, so we were wed on June 7, 1997. I was 23. He was 24. Since then, we've braved the US Peace Corps in Poland, getting a mortgage and buying a house TWICE, grad school, traveling to Italy, Spain, the Grand Canyon, Joshua Tree, the Badlands, Zion and Arches National Parks, and, of course, bringing an amazing little person into our lives. And now I'm living the dream. Marriage and certainly parenthood is harder than I thought, but it is the most transformative, transcendant experience. I feel like I'm not just a person experiencing these things--the person I am is continuously shaped by them, like a mountain range (only, on fat days, bigger) being molded by larger forces. I hope it ends up making me a better person; it has certainly made me a happier one.

Daddymatic's version:

I arrived at St. Benets Hall, Oxford, UK, in early July 1993. I was part of a group of students from UNC-Asheville and NC State who were doing a "summer" (really a month) at Oxford, taking a couple of classes and traveling around England and Scotland. I had never been out of the country before, and I had certainly never experienced jetlag. So Father Henry Wansborough--headmaster of the hall at the time--tried to keep us active during the first (very long) day. One of the things he suggested was croquet.

Now, not everyone who was part of the group came over on the same flight. A few people had arrived in Oxford a few days before and were already used to the time difference. One was a girl who introduced herself to me in the dining hall: she extended her hand and said, "I'm Stefanie." A few minutes after that, Stefanie and I were on the croquet pitch behind the hall. Or croquet lawn. Or field.

Anyway, I beat her. The trick was to get used to the idea that you hold a croquet mallet in front of you and tap the balls (or hedgehogs or whatever the British call them) using a kind of pivoting motion. You don't hit them like golf balls. It also helps if you're competitive, because it works a little like shuffleboard or curling: you win when you move through the course and keep your opponent from doing the same. That involves knocking your opponent's balls out of the course. One of the first things I learned about Stefanie was that she was not as competitive as I was. I debated in high school, and that experience stayed with me in a bad way. Stefanie did speech events, too, but she apparently still had lots of good humor left afterwards: she was into the croquet match, but she laughed at my impressions of the impossibly English Fr. Henry.

It was a short hop from croquet to shopping, having tea, visiting London, and taking the train to Edinburgh. Stefanie and I got to know a third: Candy, from Asheville. The three of us were joined by a desire not to do what everyone else was doing: taking advantage of the lower drinking age in the UK to go to pubs as often as possible. We were more interested in making sure we had enough Earl Grey to get through the afternoons (you miss tea right around 4:05, and you have to find a tea house at that point) and in finding actual, authentic Doc Martin shoes. (The pair I bought stayed with me until long after Stef and I were married. By the way, this story turns out well.)

With classes, shopping, and travel--including a Stefanie-organized trip to Scotland that included the most run-down hostel ever that was very close to the best deli ever--the month went by fast. You were expecting more scandalous details, right? I don't really have any. I was attached at that point. Granted, I was attached to someone who would NOT have laughed at my Fr. Henry impressions, but I was attached nonetheless. And I was smart enough to know even then that you don't go creepin' on your girlfriend with someone else in an attempt to make the someone else your girlfriend, because new girlfriend will end up wondering if the scenario will repeat itself. And, frankly, for most of the time in England, I didn't think of Stefanie that way. There was the time she came to dinner in a white dress that I hadn't seen before. That was a little awkward, because the Stefanie I had gotten to know was more into floppy hats and pack jackets (it rained a lot that month). THIS Stefanie made the white dress look good.

But it was traveling companion/sister-Stef I stayed in touch with after the month was over. At least, tried to stay somewhat in touch with. I spent way too much time my last 2 years at UNCA trying to repair relationships that were beyond repair or just not worth it. And I spent the semester after I graduated from UNCA going to law school. Not a bad place if you want to be there, but the trouble was that I didn't. The trouble also was that my fiancee really, really wanted me to be there. Or at least, she wanted me to finish and make $$$. I knew that because I saw $$$s in her face when she looked at me most of the time. That vision kept her somewhat happy--happier at least than my sense of humor did. This fiancee was the same one who appeared in an earlier paragraph as "girlfriend"--the one who wouldn't have appreciated my British accent in quite the way Stefanie had.

I don't think that was what made me decide to tell Stefanie I was leaving law school before I told her, though. I remember thinking at the time that my fiancee would be upset with my decision in any event but that she would be even more upset if I didn't have a plan. And I didn't yet. So, I called Stefanie, who was in grad school in Baton Rouge by now. She and I had exchanged email messages (which still felt novel then) and an occasional phone message, but we always ended up at opposite ends of NC when we traveled. Stefanie would come see Candy in Asheville, but I would be down east. Still, we had become such fast friends that I wanted to tell her. And I wanted her advice. I don't know if I've ever told her this, but I knew something in me changed when she said without hesitation that I should leave--and go do whatever I wanted. That's what my parents said, too, even though I was afraid of disappointing them. They loved me unconditionally. Stefanie seemed to be acting the same way. My fiancee was not.

The problem was--even though I didn't see it as a problem just yet--Stefanie had found someone. Serious, that is. Right about this same time, she told me over the phone exactly how serious it was, and I replied, "hmm. Err." That's what hesitation sounds like. I hesitated because there was a very, very small part of my brain that told me Stefanie's reaction to my decision to leave law school meant that I needed her. At that point, I didn't know HOW, but I did know THAT. And her clear attachment to someone else posed a problem. I couldn't very well say that; she was excited about her guy. In fact, it's only as I'm writing this that I'm able to find words for expressing what that feeling was like. I didn't want to intrude on her relationship, but I wanted a relationship of some kind. Being gay might have been convenient, but only while I was with her. It WAS the south, after all.

I did leave law school. My fiancee, strangely, left right around the same time. I became a kind of human placeholder for several months: oddly, I worked in a lawfirm back home. One day, I wrote a friend at UNCA to ask if there was anything to do there, and she wrote back that there were students to recruit in high schools and tours to lead. So, I became an admissions officer. Not before, mind you, talking to Stefanie about it, who by this time was most likely wondering if she should start charging me for career consulting.

At this point, the pace picks up. Not because things happened appreciably faster during the first half or so of 1996 than they usually happen in a six-month period, but because so many bad and good things happened that it's hard to keep them straight. And the bad was bad enough to make me forget things like dates and timelines, which I have an otherwise freaky recollection of. Here's what I do remember:

March/April: a couple of phone conversations with Stefanie. Also, I get Internet access for the first time. The vast universe of information is mine at 2,400 bps.

June: UNCA job opens up. I tell Stefanie. We joke that my moving to Asheville would mean she could visit me, too, when she visits Candy. I half-joke that we could even "go out." Stefanie laughs.

June 8 or so: I send a letter to Stefanie letting her know that I was actually less-than-half joking about the going out thing. I write that we were able to maintain a friendship over 3 years with occasional messages, so it just might be worth it to try. The letter is held up at Louisiana customs for payment of Napoleonic Code taxes and is delayed.

June 11 or so: I call Stefanie and ask if she was planning to reply to the letter. She responds, appropriately enough, by asking what I'm talking about. I distill 8-10 pages into a fumbling attempt to ask her out from 800+ miles away. She says, come to New Orleans.

June 12: since 1996 predated the ability of most airlines to offer online services, I drive to Raleigh-Durham International Airport and buy tickets to Baton Rouge for mid-July. I apparently calculated that Louisiana is in the Southern Hemisphere and that July would be temperate there.

June-July: Stefanie and I account for slightly more than 60% of the total email traffic for LSU and fayetteville.net. She sends several mix tapes. As in MIX TAPES. Not playlists. Not favorites. Not iTunes gift certificates.

July 12? (we'll check this): I arrive in Baton Rouge. Stefanie is there at the gate (back in my day, you could go to the gate if you weren't a ticketed passenger) wearing a purple dress and holding purple flowers. She had sent a recent picture of herself (as in a photograph. Through postal mail), but I was still surprised at how I could at once remember her as a fast friend and be amazed at how beautiful she was when I looked at her for the first time in 3 years but in an entirely different way.

In the parking lot, I kissed her, and her Goofy watch fell off of her wrist. I still maybe think she staged that.

August (I'm skipping details here for the sake of the kids): I'm in Asheville, and Stefanie is visiting. I tell her I want to spend the rest of my life with her, and I wasn't even less-than-half joking this time. Yes, it WAS fast, but it's also been pretty fast for several of the people who told us, "you're moving too fast." With my fiancee, going to dinner sometimes felt like we were going too fast, because we were so particular about keeping our lives separate. She and I had gotten out of other relationships that smothered us. We overcorrected: we made so much space for ourselves apart from each other that it took us a while to notice that there wasn't really anything in the center anyway. No chance of that with Stefanie. We never spoke about the risk we were creating for our friendship--maybe because we thought, even though on paper we barely knew each other, we wanted to know each other even better.

June 7: the big day. It was fun, but so many other things with Stefanie have been fun that I can't pack but so much into our wedding day. I have her to thank for that--especially for the first few years when things happened that made me tough to live with. Poland was a challenge. So was working in a very vanilla job that made me feel like less than I was. Stefanie has always made me feel like MORE. Grad school has tried sometimes to make me a specialist. Stefanie has insisted that I be many other things that are more important: a friend, a husband, and a father among them. Now, she has Davis to help her.

I can't tell her how thankful I am, and I can't begin to tell her how much I love her. I used space above on what may look like little details that don't matter much, but those details are landmarks in an amazing history. They help me remember a word, a look--all of the things that populate my memory of my wife and my best friend.

Stop this blog, I want to get off. Kinda.

2006-05-16T19:12:00.000-07:00

There's so much I want to record about my life right now. For posterity. For D. I want him to know that the greatest mother's day present ever was not the orchid corsage, the fancy dinner or the fabulous cake, but hearing him say his second Real Word: On Saturday, I watched with tears in my eyes as he strode around the house shouting "DADA! DADA!" as he looked for Daddymatic.

I want him to know that even though the books I call "list books" (no real story, just pictures of animals/people/objects) drive me kind of crazy, I will continue to read him "Traffic Jamboree" five times a day every day until he decides narrative is no longer for wimps.

I want to tell him that his daddy and I laugh ourselves silly when he plays with his friend Jack's Winne-the-pooh car and it, like most toys, interrupts one sound with the new one whenever a new button is pushed, so when he pushes the Winne-the-pooh theme song button over and over and over and over, all we hear is "Winne the-Winne the-Winne the-Winne the-Winne the-". Also, when Pooh starts his phrase "You are the friendliest kind of friend" or "Oh, look, our band is moving to the music" but is interrupted by the horn, he becomes Road Rage Pooh, sounding something like " You are the HONK HONK HOOOONK" or "Oh, look! HONK HONK HOOOONK."

I want to tell him the awful, cold rainy weather we're having won't last forever, that mama and daddy will stop stressing about absolutely everything eventually, and that it is 85 degrees and sunny in Utah right now.

I want to tell him how Jack's mommy E and I laughed at Jack's daddy when he offered to take Jack to the store so that E could do some shopping, but then insisted E stay around because "I said I'd take him shopping, I didn't say I'd take care of him!" Wha-?

I want to tell him my last post got me thinking even more about Mommy Guilt, which has been a nearly omnipresent condition of my life for so long that I am now convinced each pregnancy test should print out a "free guilt for life" coupon with every positive result. Every decision is tinged with guilt: Should I let him keep his pacifier for now? Will it be bad for his self-esteem later? Bad for his teeth? Or will it shatter him if I take it away now? Should I, for instance, wash his hair even though he hates that or cut it so that it doesn't offend my vanity to see it constantly slicked with yogurt, peanut butter and cheese? Should I, I wonder, discontinue eating my adored junk foods all together and resent having to do so or just sneak them while he's sleeping and pretend to be a good example during his waking hours?

Should I--and now we come to the point of this post, finally--take a sabbatical from the blog world until I figure out better how to balance my time so that I'm not ignoring my child/husband/plethora of crap that comes with picking up one's life and moving it 2000 miles away, and until I uncover why, all of a sudden, blogging tends to make me feel worse rather than better most days? Because I'm discovering that no solution is guilt-free anymore.

I want to keep friends and family up to date on what D's doing and what a trip motherhood is turning out to be. I want to keep up with my new "friends in the computer" and celebrate their accomplishments, mourn their losses and raise my fist in concert with their righteous rage-fueled rants. But I suck at balancing things and figuring things out, and that's something I need to be doing right now. I hope I won't--as I fear--go on a junkie-esque blogging/commenting/picture-posting spree after two weeks off. But I also hope I'll be posting now and then, and I hope I'll be commenting. I just don't know. All I know is that I have a situation that needs a remedy, and I'm casting around for solutions.

In lieu of a real conclusion to this post, I leave you with this, these two most gorgeous reasons for my trying to figure out what's what:

There's no problem that can't be fixed with a helping of self-doubt

2006-05-10T09:24:00.000-07:00

There have been some rough days around here in the last week. For the most part, my offspring is a delightful child: he has learned some (suprisingly noisy) signs for certain things in the last week: he sniffs loudly when he sees flowers (so much so that every time he sniffles, I look around for tulips, lilacs, daffodils or--the clear favorite, probably because they are the only ones he is allowed to pick--dandelions), he pants when he sees a dog (or, frankly, any animal he really likes. Horses, apparently, are very large, cool dogs), says "mmm" while sticking his tongue in an out when he sees a frog and muttering "oo oo, ah, ah" sotto voce when he sees a picture of a monkey (monkeys, it may surprise you, are kind of thin on the ground in Central PA).

So for the most part, he has busied himself making towers of blocks and knocking them down, making animal signs, playing with the hideously loud Winne-the-Pooh bus we borrowed from his friend Jack, and eating every bit of fruit that isn't nailed down (as an aside, I think grapes are like heroin for babies--I keep hearing him on the phone saying things like "We need another shipment of Chilean reds" or "We're paying extra green for the organic Californian stuff" and "That bunch last week was FULL of seeds, do I need to switch suppliers?").

But there are times when he's tired, hungry, or plain short on charm, and things get bad really fast. He is, for example, obsessed with climbing on chairs. He is allowed to SIT on chairs but not STAND, and usually, we just tell him "no standing" when he stands up, and if he ignores us, which is often the case, we haul him down. Most of the time, this is fine with him, but occasionally, he finds the standing embargo to be a total infringement of his Toddler Rights and has a screaming fit.

Also, apparently, there are visiting hours for the inside of the fridge that we weren't informed about, and sometimes (but only sometimes, which is even more crazy-making) when we shut the fridge without his express written permission, he has a screaming fit. Since screaming fits make me want to run in front of the first fast-moving SUV I see, we've been experimenting with brief (20 to 30-second) time-outs in his room, which make me feel like a jerk and like I shouldn't even be allowed to celebrate mother's day.

And it was even worse when my friend and I were having a perfectly nice chat about it and, because I was crabby and she was tired, when she said "yeah, I don't think that would work for me, because I wouldn't want my son to think that his behavior made me love him any less," I of course heard, "But you, on the other hand, clearly don't care if your son thinks you love him or not. For which they should, effective immediately, revoke your Mother of the Year nomination."

Which of course isn't what she meant at all. I mean, we've been friends forever, and she has left her child solely in my care before, which is saying something, since I think it's only been family members who have cared for him thus far. So I knew she was just talking through it, exploring this new method of discipline with her friendly neighborhood momfriend, and then I went and got all defensive and nervous. I had pretty much talked myself off the ledge about it when she called in the afternoon and confirmed that she of course didn't mean to hurt my feelings and thinks I'm a wonderful mother and blah, blah, blah, and then it struck me that maybe, just maybe, part ("part," I said--not "all") of the so-called Mommy Wars isn't about Other People Being Nasty and Judgemental but about some of us (i.e., yours truly) being the teensiest bit defensive/underconfident/totally neurotic (well, in my case, anyway--I am sure you are fine). I mean, if I'd had confidence or more experience with the method I was using, I'm sure I would have been able to engage in the conversation instead of rolling up into a ball and spitting through my fangs.

The catch-22, of course, is that this is precisely why we need other mothers--to help us feel better about ourselves, to reassure us that we probably aren't emotionally scarring our child for life, even when we *gasp* make a mistake. I guess I'm learning that I'm going to have to start doing some of that for myself, especially since I'm going to be moving 2000 miles away from the two best real-live momfriends a girl could ask for. Any advice?

2006-05-04T18:19:00.000-07:00

So somebody needs a haircut. I mean, this picture of our dear boy and his ~~Sarge~~ Daddymatic should demonstrate exactly how his male parent thinks a young man's hair should look. (It's not DM's fault--he had the 70s Dutch-boy hairdo as a kid and was referred to as "she" one time too many. )

Oh, the days my boys had the same hairdo.

But no more. No, these days, D's hair is a little bit more Mark Hamill.

See?

And now, Mr. Hamill.

Am I kidding?

Winsome smile--check.

Long bangs--check.

Feathery sides--check.

I mean, can you even tell them apart?

You can? Seriously?

Well, what about *this* pic:

Yes, he's ducking out of the picture, but don't worry--those wings'll keep him aloft.

I know, I know--what is he, climbing in his landspeeder? Right?

So yeah, we're thinking about getting a little bit of snippage for the kid. My friend Beth offered to make him and her son Sam appointments at the kiddie's kut place in her town for the boys' spa day, but I'm not sure. I mean, how do you get these buggers to hold still? I recall that Foo was bewitched by a video or some such when she got her new 'do, and I'm sure Miles and Juniper are so deft at styling their dolls' hair that they can now do their own, but I'm kind of lost. I knew someone who was given a coconut and told it was a "pony egg" and that if he kept still, it might hatch, and if it hatched while he was holding it, he could keep the pony, and that sounds brill, but I'm not sure it works on the under 2 set.

Any ideas?

You know you're a sucker for your kid when...

2006-04-30T19:48:00.000-07:00

. . . you watch a video of yourself and your child over and over and over again, despite the fact that said video makes you and your family look like you are one hilarious Bob Saget voice-over away from being on America’s Funniest Home Videos: White Trash Edition, what with the child being clad only in his diaper, yourself in pajamas that, you are sure, could only look more sad if you had the top three inches of a thong showing in the back, a view of your son’s room which, despite only being about 10 seconds long, will no doubt lead your friend to remark a second time that she is “so relieved to know I’m not the only mom whose house is a total train wreck,” and the nice view of the futon mattress that’s been on his bedroom floor since JANUARY and shows no signs of going anywhere (because padded floors and toddlers belong together). Seriously, all this video needs is the alley-oop whistle sound when D falls over, and it’s production-ready for Fridays at 8PM.

But you watch this video over and over again anyway, because every time you see it, you are sure this child has the best belly laugh you have ever heard. Also because you want to be able to prove to him later that at one time in his life, he was completely entertained by having a parent throw a ball to the floor and yell, “BOOM!”

Video Hosting - Upload Video - Photo Sharing

Mommymatic's 1st Celebrity Comment and Other Randomness

2006-04-27T19:41:00.000-07:00

So remember back when we were having a ton of sleep problems and I wrote this really snarky “questions for the experts” post?

Well, one of them WROTE BACK this week. Seriously! Elizabeth Pantley, author of “The No-Cry Sleep Solution” answered my questions and was, I admit, much nicer about it than I could possibly have deserved. In fact, if you read the comment she left, I think you’ll agree she’s kind of a class act. When I emailed her back to try and figure out if, in fact, it was her and not someone with waaaaay too much time on their hands impersonating Elizabeth Pantley, she confirmed that she was, in fact, who she said she was, and even said we could be friends despite the fact that I do in fact now employ the “Some-Cry Sleep Solution.” So I feel this is a milestone for Mommymatic. My first celebrity drive-by. Woo hoo.

In other news, we in fact have four, count ‘em, FOUR molars currently making inroads in the mouth of one small boy in our house. When I first discovered this tasty nugget o’ news, it made me kind of second-guess the whole 'intelligent design' bit, but then I figured, what the hey, at least we only have to go through it once-ish instead of four. separate. times. And those molars are freaking HUGE. I mean, I had no idea there was that much available real estate in D’s mouth. I thought maybe he was chewing on, say, a hankie or bedsheet or something, but, no, it was just the 50-inch home theater system of baby teeth.

Okay, almost enough randomity. I leave you with two small scraps of cuteness for your weekend: One, we discovered today that D can correctly identify his

bellybutton

nose

foot

head

penis

And two, he now does this when he finds flowers:

Video Hosting - Upload Video - Photo Sharing

The View from Lambie

2006-04-24T12:08:00.000-07:00

So I’m guestblogging for Mommymatic since she’s had what she calls a stressful weekend (stressful-ha! I get dragged around by one foot, gnawed on, tossed to the floor and pounced on, and that’s BEFORE I EVEN GET UP IN THE MORNING). I had some catching up to do myself, since I’m just coming off my 2-month hiatus in Mommymatic’s underwear drawer (yeah, the job is hell, but the vacations make up for it). I’m not entirely sure what happened to my body double, but from what I understand, there was some crotch-diving during a particularly messy diaper change that totally went wrong, so she’s out for a while, so I had to take a few days to acclimate myself.

One thing I discovered is that the Small One has apparently learned how to air-kiss. Of course, I never benefit from this new skill since he’s apt to take my entire muzzle in his mouth when WE kiss, but apparently, it’s cute to the Big Ones, so whatever. He also said his first discernible, meaningful word. I know what you’re thinking: Out of gratitude for all my thankless hours of service here at Casa Mommymatika, it was “Lambie,” right? No? No. It was “bay-bee,” referring, I’d imagine, to that stupid newcomer “Baby Doll,” who is just so smug I could punch his lights out. Oh, the injustice. But you know, I’ve read the Stuffed Toy Manifesto, so I know who’s going to get to be real one day, and it ain’t the plastic baby dolls. We’ll see who’s laughing then.

Oh, and I thought that once the Small One started banging his own head onto the floor/wall/window, he’d finally get how I feel for most of the day and we could do a little empathy training, but no—he thinks it’s funny. Naturally. Of course, I have to say I much prefer this new time-to-get-me-out-of-my-crib mechanism than the old one, which was jamming me in and out of the crib slats, so it’s not all bad

And evidently, there was some sort of Chair Strike while I was away, because all the chairs were lying face down my first day back from vacation, and the Small One seemed upset about it. Now they are all upright and clocked back in on the job, though, so maybe they’ve come to an agreement with Management. I think everyone’s worried they’ll strike again, though, because every time the Small One climbs up in them and sits down, all I hear is “Gooooood sitting!” I mean, they’re chairs, people. That’s what they do. Do they really need the stroking? I mean, No one ever says “Gooood comforting, Lambie! Good abuse-taking!.” Hmph. Maybe I need representation.

All boy

2006-04-20T11:12:00.000-07:00

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about how incredibly often I do things I SWORE, pre-parenthood that I would never do. Some of these things were fantasies destined to die an early death: I’ll never give him formula, I’ll never sit him in a bouncy chair just so I can check email, I’ll never let him eat the crap that gets stuck to the high chair cushion, I’ll never let him play with inappropriate/disgusting/potentially dangerous objects (tube of sunscreen, bottle with a small cap, the gross and ancient tub plug, etc.). These, as most parents know, are what people think they will or won’t do before they actually have children (and if you actually have children and enforce these kinds of rules, good for you. I’m sorry we can’t be friends anymore, but still—good for you.) As far as I’m concerned, once the baby comes, all bets are off.

But these are more physical-care type oaths that I swore. I swore other oaths, ones that were more a matter of principle or life-ethics, which, at the time, I felt were more important and less likely to completely fall by the wayside than these other, more arbitrary rules about, you know, cleanliness and safety. I’m compelled to try and revive some of these more moral-type oaths now, but I am also very tired and not sure it’s worth trying to fight the vast societal tide that keeps pulling me under.

Let me explain. One of the things I swore as a feminist mom was that I would try really hard not to genderize my offspring. I would buy dolls for a boy. I would teach a girl to play football. That kind of thing. I didn’t freak over but rather joked about D’s early love of horrid, sparkly-furred, Barbie-accessorizing toys. I was pleased when he decided he loved beads and scarves and hairbrushes above most other toys. His lambie is referred toas “she,” and his baby doll is actually an anatomically correct little boy.

But insidiously, the gendering is creeping in. On a semi-weekly basis, people say to me, “Well, he’s just all boy, isn’t he?” when they see him climbing everything in sight, scaling the playground stairs or filling a dump truck with rocks. They remark on his activity level, assume he’s interested in playing with balls and trucks (which, I admit, he is), laugh at his burps and farts (which I do, too, just because he thinks he’s so funny) and insist that we need to get him a dog (which we probably will one day, if only because our Cat occasionally needs backup). But the reason people comment on these things, I think, is because they feel it makes him more “boy.” If he avoided the sandbox, they’d say “Oh, look, he can’t sit still long enough to be bothered with the sand!” But they say things to girls like “Oh, look, she doesn’t want to get dirty; she’s avoiding the sand.”

I don’t get this, and I don’t know how to deal with it. I know it’s not my problem that other people aren’t okay with the fact that my little man isn’t always such a man, but I feel I should speak up—if for no other reason than to make people think for one second about the gender-norming we’re all doing all the time. Is this my responsibility? Is it enough that I remark on girls being good climbers, assume they want to play with the trucks as much as my son and encourage the boys to play dress-up and feed their baby dolls, or do I have an obligation to address the issue in more overt ways?

Oh, and don’t get me wrong: if D ends up being The Man’s Man and doing everything society associates with masculinity (whatever THAT is—burping the alphabet? Collecting posters of scantily clad twins? Wearing baseball hats to every public function he attends?), I will be fine with it. He’ll always have the option to play with dolls, but if he doesn’t take in lieu of some other activity, I’m cool with that. I just don’t want him to do “boy stuff” because someone else brainwashed him into thinking that’s what he should be doing.

Easter Egg Hunt

2006-04-16T20:17:00.000-07:00

So, on Friday we went to an Easter Egg Hunt. (Good Friday: Good for the Matics, but probably not so great for, say, Jesus Christ, what with being crucified and all. Thank goodness that story has a happy ending.)

Beth, one of my two live-in-the-flesh momfriends, invited us. Here she is with the inestimable Nina and Sam, her twins who are D's best buds:

While we were there, we met Erin and her son Jack. Again. Turns out we'd actually met in the grocery store when the kids were 3 months old, exchanged numbers and promptly entered into the "I-wonder-how-she's-doing, it's-been-too-long-to-call-now" stage.
Hosting the party was the lovely Shana, who has a rather large 11-week-old Huck strapped to her chest. She also has a 2 1/2 year old, Gus. And yes, Beth is pregnant. I don't drink the water in their neighborhood anymore.

So here is D's version of what happened:

Oh, sweet, there's stuff in here. Do we, like, get to KEEP what we find?
Yep, that's affirmative, Mama. Beth said we get to keep whatever's in our egg. Sweet.
Dude, how did he get an egg with that truck in it?? And all I got was this lousy pinecone?

Ok, big guy, watch and learn: Sam's the master, and if he can get a truck out of an egg, you can too.

Nina, honey, I need your help. Which egg has the truck in it?

Nina, hon, I need you to focus. Which. Egg. Has. The. Truck?

You know what, Nina? I guess what I really want in my Easter basket is...YOU! Grass and all.

Happy Easter, internets. Hope the day brought a resurrection to your spirit and renewal to your mind and body!

Tidbits

2006-04-15T18:50:00.000-07:00

Some tidbits that Mrs. Davis, Sofrito Gringo, and Mom-101 evidently thought y'all couldn't live without knowing:

(1) Daddymatic and I met in high school, two years before we actually met. His debate partner and my debate partner 'dated' (which is to say: hooked up on debate trips, made mix tapes for each other, and spent way too much money on pre-cell-phone long-distance calling), and we are sure we were introduced to each other at some point, but neither of us remembers any specifics. We also joke that we “spent the night together” 3 years before we dated b/c we took an overnight train to Scotland while we were on summer study in Oxford. And in case you're wondering, yes, debaters are among the dorkiest humans ever. Even when they're not wearing t-shirts that say "Debaters do it orally." Oy.

(2) I shaved my legs on the Orient Express. There wasn't any hot water on the Budapest-to-Vienna leg of the trip back in '88, though.

(3) In an effort, apparently, to be whimsical, I started my graduate school application for studies in southern literature with this line from an Indigo Girls song: "When God made me born a Yankee, He was teasin'." Seriously. I was that much of a dork. My former advisor still rags me about it, as he should.

(4) Daddymatic and I lived for six months in Suwalki, Poland, whilst serving in the US Peace Corps. The coldest I remember it being was -25C.

(5) I took my second pregnancy test ever in Badlands National Park, South Dakota. I walked back to the tent, shared the news, and Daddymatic and I picked D's name within 5 minutes of said pregnancy test.

(6) For some reason, I can remember almost every line from Eddie Izzard’s Dressed to Kill routine and most of the prologue—in Middle English, no less—to The Canterbury Tales, but I cannot remember the name of the mom I JUST introduced myself to at the park like 5 minutes ago. Or what I wore yesterday. Mommybrain goes away, right?

And because I am always one to share the love, I'm tagging five of you for this meme:
Chris
Emily
Lisa
Kat
Kristin

Your mission, should you accept: Post 6 strange or interesting things about yourself, and then choose 6 people to do the same (I know I only did 5: do as I say, not as I do.). Tell them they are tagged in their comments box. You can report back to me when you've done it or not. Just remember that we're all counting on you.

Oh, and one final tidbit: of course we caved and got the Volo. Yes, it's everything Wood, Mom-101, Nancy and Foodmomiac suggested it might be. Of course, it took me 5 hours to figure out that BRU=Babiesrus (probably because we call it "babysaurus"), but once I did, we drove to the nearest one (1.5 hours away!) to comparison shop. Here's the thing: if you don't want to spend a buncha money, don't even LOOK at the Volo. 'Cause it's pretty. And light. And it is sooo well designed. And you will find that you can justify almost anything to yourself, even spending $50 more than you wanted to (or, let's face it, $50 more than you even have) . So anyway, there it is. Thanks for your help; photo essay to come, I'm sure.

Finally, I also have to report that if you're wondering why it takes us so long to get through lunch, this is why:

Video Hosting - Upload Video - Photo Sharing

So what was YOUR day like?

2006-04-13T20:33:00.000-07:00

I’ve been inspired by certain cool, cool, and very cool (had to come back and add Mo-Wo, who my mommybrain had temporarily neglected to remember--sorry, wo) kids who have recorded all their activities on a given day; I felt like their posts gave me such insight as to what it is that SAHMs do that writing one might help me answer the question “So what did YOU do all day today?”

So here it is.

5:30 AM D wakes, fussing. I sigh, remembering that he awoke at the exact. same. time. yesterday, and when we finally got him up at 6:30, he was UNBEARABLE, screaming all through breakfast and generally being such a pain in the rear that he went down for a nap at 8:45. So this morning, we decide to wait it out. After the initial fussing, he calms and begins babbling to himself, fussing again every 10 minutes or so to test the waters and see if now, NOW is it time to get up?

6:00 D is quiet—probably sleeping. Daddymatic also sleeping. In a rare moment of coincidence, so are the cats. Mommymatic is the only one still awake.

6:45 I finally fall back to sleep.

7:15 D wakes again, happy and chatty. No fussing, which means he finally got enough sleep. I go into get him, and I remember why this is my favorite part of the day—he’s happy, smiley, cute. Such a morning person. Worse, he’s threatening to turn me into one.

7:25 Breakfast. I have little appetite, since I wasn’t feeling well yesterday, so I just have half an English muffin and a cup of tea. Normally, I’d follow that with some turkey bacon and several Tastykakes, but like I said: I'm off my feed.

I make Daddymatic some coffee. The moral of this story is when you take care of me and D (which daddy did yesterday) when I’m under the weather, I let you sleep in and will make you coffee the next day. As long as I can keep up with D. This child LOVES breakfast—he eats a ton (waffle with yogurt on it, turkey sausage, scrambled egg, half a banana and some canned pears, yum yum) and is happy, happy, happy about it. He reminds me of the Jonathan Richman song: “I eat with gusto! Damn, you bet!”

8:00 Bottle and diaper change. D commences running around the living room, opening up his tunnel, playing with blocks, and having me read books. I ask him if he seriously doesn’t know yet how Dinosaur’s Binkit ends, as we have read it several hundred times. This morning.

8:30 Daddymatic gets up. I am reminded that he needs to take our car in for its woefully overdue inspection, so I fix him a quick lunch while he gets ready.

9:15 Daddymatic leaves. We watch him out the window, which produces some consternation on D’s part. Not unlike a dog, however, he is quickly distracted from his grief by a toy car, a tennis ball, or the vaccum cleaner.

9:30 I remember that we need to go to the post office, and since it’s close by, I decide that we’ll take the hateful stroller. The MomHair is not doing well, so I get in the tub for a quick wash. D sticks his hands under the faucet and we wash them. He also dumps most of his tub toys in to keep me company.

10:00 Daisy-fresh and blown-dry, we leave the house only to discover two things: One, that the stroller is, of course, in the car. Which is being inspected. I also remember that my wallet is in the carseat because I let D play with it yesterday. I utter several off-limits curse words with fervor and zeal. I then call Daddymatic and utter same curse words to him.

10:02 Change Go To Post Office Plan to Play Outside Plan. D digs in dirt, finds “treasures” (rocks, pine cones, burrs, bottlecaps, other random unidentified bits I’d rather not think too deeply about), carries them about, does several laps around the house. For some reason, I decide it might be fun to blow up D’s inflatable dinosaur pool from last summer. I get halfway through before realizing I can no longer feel my hands. I stop.

11:00 Return inside for lunch. I note that there is decidedly less vigor in D’s eating, probably because of all the yawning he’s doing.

11:30 Diaper change. Avec poop. I signal naptime by closing the curtains, grabbing lambie and a paci, turning on the humidifer (also known by its common name, The Worthless Piece of Crap) and giving it a smack so it sounds less like a dripping-water-torture-machine meets-small-helicopter and more like a noise-masking Nap Soundtrack. And voila, we have naptime. D and I have a deal: At nap, I sing three songs while holding him in my lap. If he can manage to fall asleep before I’m done, so much the better. If not, he goes into the crib anyway for “quiet time.” This day, he barely makes it through the second song before he’s out.

12:15 Daddymatic returns with the car. And my wallet. And the stroller. He returns to school in the other car while I read, clean up a little, eat some saltines. M, the striped tabby, curls up on my chest for a brief nap.

1:45 D wakes, happy and chatty. We have a snack, another diaper change, a little more milling around in the apartment.

2:30 We go back outside. I finish blowing up the pool. Sparky, the friendly neighborhood beagle who lives downstairs, comes out to bestow kisses and be granted some cinnamon graham crackers. We all hang out a little.

3:30 Finally retrieve the loathsome stroller and wallet from the car and head to the post office. We see a horse on the way and stop to pet it. D is enthralled, but perhaps that is because he thinks it’s just the biggest cat he’s ever seen.

4:15 Daddymatic arrives home. We chat while D brings us treasures and squalls when said treasures get stuck inside a flowerpot.

4:45, I hand D over since I have a conference call to make. Daddymatic makes ready to take D to the park, and I drop heavy hints about how I’d love a coke and some fries, which signals to Daddymatic that I am ready to join the land of eating again.

5:35 The boys arrive home, buoyant but starving. D eats massive amounts again—deli ham, carrots, green beans, a whole wheat pancake, toast, apples. I surreptitiously eat fries in the living room while Daddymatic cooks dinner.

6:15 D poops, so I decide to go ahead and bathe him and get him ready for bed while Daddymatic finishes making dinner.

6:30 D discovers a bar of soap, which distracts him from his first love for several minutes. Eventually, of course, he rediscovers the drain plug. Bath over.

6:45 Freshly diapered, lotioned and pajamaed, my clean-faced little guy cavorts around the living room for a few minutes while I clean the Worthless Piece of Crap from D’s room and get it fully functional. Repeat getting-ready-for-bed exercises from naptime, only for nighttime, we repeat Guess How Much I Love You? and Good Night, Moon (sorry, GGC) from memory and sing a song, tell him his daddy and I and his grandparents and aunts and God all love him, and say a prayer. He’s asleep by the time I put him in his crib.

7:00 Daddymatic and I eat a peaceful dinner. We retire to the couch, where I watch way too much TV while checking blogs and email and forget completely about the dishes, the diapers that need to be washed, and the fact that I promised to go to bed early this night.

11:00 I remember dishes. Curse myself for forgetting them. Curse us for using dishes in the first place. Curse the cats for not helping out. Curse the fact that cats have no opposable thumbs. Reconsider last item and realize it’s probably a good thing.

11:30 Decide I need a small snack (since, you know, the dishes are now done). Read for a while and finally retire to bed with my book.

12:31 Daddymatic nudges me to turn the light off, as I’ve been sleeping with it on for approximately 20 minutes.

And you thought my dissertation was boring, huh, Bee-bee?

Yo, internets. I need your help!

2006-04-12T20:01:00.000-07:00

I need an umbrella stroller. Nothing fancy, nothing super-expensive (I'm cheap like Dutch), just something that gets the job done, preferably with at least a sun canopy, since we are soon to be moving to the Land Closer to the Sun (at 4330 feet). I have one made by Carter's that I LOATHE because 1) it squiggles all over the road 2) its handles are too short, even for my 5' 6" frame and 3) it doesn't FOLD UP LIKE AN UMBRELLA. Huh?? It seems implicit in the NAME that an umbrella stroller should fold up like an umbrella, no?

Perhaps I'm being too literal.

Anyhoo. We had a wonderful Gracosaur (thanks to Mo-wo for that name) that I liked, even as bulky as it was, but we've loaned it to some really cute kids who are even cuter and more po' than we are, so I'd feel like a class-A jerk to ask for it back, and plus, I'd like something a little more travel-friendly, what with The Big Move coming up and everything. So I figured I'd turn to my trusty internets and ask y'all. Do you guys own an umbrella stroller? Do you love it? Did you pay less than, I dunno, $75 for it? HELP. I've gotta Ebay or online-order it, most likely, because the State College Retail Philosophy is, apparently, "If You Can't Get it At Wal-Mart, You Don't Really Need It." (we do have a Tar-zhay, but it's one of the smaller stores and their baby section is kee-rap).

Any helps? Oh, yeah, and you get bonus points if the stroller you rec either has a shoulder/5-pt. harness or can be easily adapted to one I've made myself (I know, I know. But D thinks it's best to ride in a stroller with his face INCHES from the ground. Sigh.)

When the cat's away...

2006-04-09T11:12:00.000-07:00

While we were househunting, finding a preschool and (at least on my part) begging for a job in SLC, the highly lauded and soon-to-be-beatified Bee-bee and Grampy came to care for the Boy Wonder and his feline friends, because they need a highly qualified staff to attend to their needs and are used to a high level of service (though the cats will have you know that the service has REALLY slipped around here in the last, ph, 15 months or so). We left a disposable camera laying around, and when we developed it, we found a photo essay of their visit together, most of which apparently consisted of D playing at the park. You can view the rest of the collection by clicking the flickr thingy on the sidebar, but for now, I will confine my creative juices, such as they are, to providing commentary on the pix:

My visit with Grampy and Bee-bee
by D

You may already know this, but in case you don't, my people have a thing about photographing me in or near this tunnel. Myself, I'm not sure why. I mean, I do LOTS of other things at the park!

Like using very small hills in the sandbox to prepare for the advent of my ski-jump training once we're withing spitting distance of Park City.

Or testing to see how well they sanded the benches in the little league dugout. Smooth as ~~a baby's~~ my bum, it turns out.

Or what about swinging? Is it totally gauche to swing now and no one told me?

But no, they prefer to get shots of me in the tunnel. Always with the tunnel!

I can hear them now, "Oh *snap*! Looks like D's going in the tunnel!"

I mean, I can't even stand UP in here, for pete's sake.

Luckily, grampy rescued me from that mind-numbing, frighteningly hamsterlike tunnel exercise and we got to do some man-stuff together.
Like hugging and watching construction vehicles. Manly. And sweet. Kind of like the Village People.
And here's Bee-bee giving me my first chocolate chip cookie. Right after this was taken, she muttered something to Grampy about "thanks for capturing her violation of the Daddymatic no-cookie manifesto for posterity," but Grampy explained that with mommy as my Other Parent, liking cookies is kind of my destiny. They are helping me get in touch with my mother's people, he said.

Okay, Grampy didn't really say that. He's never said that many words voluntarily in his life. But that's what he was thinking, I'm sure of it.

Where the baths have no water

2006-04-03T19:53:00.000-07:00

Friends, I am concerned. My child is obsessed (obsessed, I tell you!) with, of all things, the tub drain and its plug. The second his feet hit the tub water (and it’s only feet, peeps—the only water that butt sees is whatever I slosh on it with a washcloth), he reaches for the plug and pops it out. And after a few seconds, plugs it back in. And then takes it back out. Lather, rinse, repeat. He. will. not. stop. As in, I could have a laser-light-show-making, show-tune-singing, sequin festooned tub toy that is the envy of all children in the universe, and he would completely ignore it. As in, not even the cute bubbles I blow with the wand that comes in the California Baby bubble bath distract him. As in, I bought a SECOND plug in a weak attempt to keep some of the water in the tub for more than say, 15.6 seconds, and he grabs it, too whenever I try to sneak it back in there. He howls in protest if I hold my hand over the plug so he can’t take it out, but would happily stay in there forever once all the water is drained out. Even the spurned tub toys merit a second look once the tub is empty.

So of course, every tubbie-time begins with either daddymatic or me holding our little paws over the plug, insisting that “we need for the water to stay in the tub, D” enduring said shrieks of protest and much clawing of toddler hands. After five minutes of this, we give up, allow him to let the water out while swiping him off with a washcloth so he doesn’t reek of sweat/poo/encrusted food, and let him play in the empty tub for several minutes before proceeding with the rest of the evening routine.

So at this point, you might be asking, “why don’t you just stop wasting so much freaking water and put him in the dry tub, swipe him off with a washcloth and cut your losses?” My only answer is because, well, it’s weird. It’s weird to take nothing but what my friend Laurie used to refer to as “ho” baths (but what the more genteel of you might call “sponge” baths). It’s weird to be able to play fairly normally in a pool, play with water all day long but then become unable to function in a tub with a plug in it until that plug is pulled out. I know it is a battle I will lose, and I know in the grand scheme of things, it’s not a big deal, but it bugs me. If for no other reason than the sheer weirdness factor.

However, it is every bit as cute as it is weird. So here is your penis-free (can’t wait to see what google searches THAT merits) video of Bath With No Water. Oh, and Kristen? Daddymatic’s singing on this one as a tribute to the Flock of Seagulls hairstyle he gave D. It’s just for you, girl.

For the record, yes, D is pulling at his, ah, personal “plug” as we end the scene, and I am the person having trouble with the English language. Enjoy.

Video Hosting - Upload Video - Photo Sharing

Where I've been

2006-04-02T18:01:00.000-07:00

I’m not dead. I’m here, I’m trying to catch up on blogreading, so if I haven’t left a comment, it’s only because I’m lazy and not because your wit isn’t as sparkly as it used to be. Although to be fair, blogger has been peevish lately, so often, it’s not even that I’m lazy.

I’ve been away, and while I’ve been gone, you people have been busy. Many of you have been ~~frittering~~ slaving away the hours describing the reality of motherhood as compared to the propaganda cover-up we got from books that actually say things like “you will wonder what you ever did without a baby” (I mean, come ON, I love my son deeply [ah, the phrase that MUST precede any complaint about the difficulty of motherhood] but yes, I remember what life was like before baby: lots of sleeping in and having sex/watching a movie/eating junk whenever we wanted). Even more of you are talking about—or at least around—the now-famous post by my girl MIM, and a very lucky, select group of you punks actually got to meet each other! No fair!

But the Parent-matic Whirlwind Western Wandering has been completed and I’d say it was a qualified success. First, we found a most excellent preschool for D. I love this place so much that I am seriously considering applying for a job there if things don’t work out elsewhere [more on that later]. They use the Reggio Emilia method, which might as well be called How Mommymatic Would Run a Preschool if She Knew Anything About Kids. I have mentioned my lack of enthusiasm for daycare in my personal family situation (that’s what we call a disclaimer, kids: I don’t mind daycare in general, just am not crazy about it in my own sitch), but this place made ME want to bring my blankie, plunk down for ‘music and movement’ and ask “what’s for snack?”

Also, and perhaps most excitingly, we are Under Contract for this totally adorable house (yes, it's pink. But did I mention the fireplace in the master bedroom?).

For those of you who don’t believe in God, the fact that we found this house could easily be, as Anne Lamott says, called “Exhibit A.” Seriously. The day before and the day of finding the house, I SOBBED IN DESPAIR over the offerings available in our price range. Anything that didn’t have a creative interpretation of the words “3 bedrooms” (actual utterance by Daddymatic: “doesn’t it need to at least have a door and/or a closet to be a bedroom?”) was really, really far from Salt Lake proper and whatever native charm it might have had was sucked out by freeway noise and the presence of strip malls on all sides. So we got lucky with this baby. I don’t want to jinx myself by going on and on about how nice it is, but dude, it is. Decent location, nice remodel job, good space in which the Wee One can play, etc., etc.

So that's where I've been...I have other stuff percolatin', so I hope to have more updatage this week. But enough about me...how are YOU?

Sunny weather

2006-03-27T20:38:00.000-07:00

Aww, every one of you was so nice about my last post that I actually felt guilty for not creating a Real Post for today. I promise there will be something interesting coming this week, but until then, here is how we celebrate sunshine and over 50-degree temps in Central PA: we go to the park with Sam and Nina, aka The Most Adorable Twins in PA, and mommymatic manages to capture a few pics before her camera batteries totally die. You asked for pictoral cuteness, and we deliver. Your satisfaction is our number one priority here at Mommymatic, so without further ado:

Because, Sam. Sometimes you feel like a nut.

Man, that yappy Jack Russell is lucky that 14 month olds have such bad aim. (of course, this caption is for satirical purposes only. Mommymatic does not condone nor find amusing the Throwing of Objects for Painful Purposes, even at Yappy, Football-shaped Dogs.)

Heeey, Nina, what's up? You wanna catch a cup of milk later? No?

What?? Just because she is in there and I am out here does NOT mean I am stalking her. I'm just, aaah, brushing up on my tunnel-cruising technique.

One for the mommybloggers

2006-03-23T10:27:00.000-07:00

Well, I'm just brimming with pride and joy from all the support my dear readers left in the comments section of my last post. Thanks, dudes. You know how to help a sistah out.

But I have a confession. After reading this post by Kristen, I have realized that--gasp!--I'm a mommy blogger, not a mom-blogger. Apparently, my un-hip, posting-pictures-of-our-offspring sisters and I are in the "mommy blogger" category, while those of you who are Cool and Have Things to Say and Do It With Style are in the mom-blogger (or, if you prefer, parent blogger) category. Now, I'm not saying I'm totally humorless (and Mrs. Davis says that the main difference is the funny factor), and I'm not saying I do nothing but blather about how fun life is with my child (because, let's face it, it isn't ALWAYS nonstop laughs around here), but I'm definitely more of a mommy-girl than a mom-type. But you know, I'm cool with that.

And with that, I give you yet another picture-laden post of my offspring and one of his first face-to-muzzle encounter with the dog downstairs. I call it "Boy Meets Beagle":

WHAT THEY'RE THINKING:
D: Nice doggie.
Sparky: How 'bout a treat?

D: Okaaaay: Sit. That's the sign for sit, right? No? Roll over?
Sparky: No treat here. Dang.

D: Seriously, dude, SIT.

Or, you know, just look for something on the ground. That's cool, too.

With friends like these...

2006-03-21T09:46:00.000-07:00

Actual transcript of a conversation I had on Sunday with a 'friend' I'll call PK:

PK: Wow, I do not know if I could handle moving to Salt Lake City.

Mommymatic: Yeah, well, it's a big change, but I'm trying to stay positive, you know, in realizing that it's a great place for kids, and hey, Mormons are way into being family-centric, right?

PK: Well, my neighbors, who are ex-Mormons, just moved from there a couple of years ago because their sons were in middle school, and they said that once you're in high school in Salt Lake City, you're either Mormon or you're in a gang.

Mommymatic: Really?

PK: Yep, it's like one or the other.

Mommymatic: Wow. Well, hey, thanks for helping me stay positive, because I'll tell ya, what I needed to hear right now was your advice to stock up on bandannas and learn some C*rips lingo and not, say, your secret tips on how to pack china and glassware so it doesn't chip. You know, while we're at it, if you've got some lemon juice handy, I have a couple of paper cuts from yesterday that haven't healed up yet...

Okay, I didn't say the last part. I kind of wish I had, but I didn't. I know I'm overreacting, but dude, what's UP with people?

Now if I only spoke the same language...

2006-03-20T06:13:00.000-07:00

My weekly D-video fix. Sorry, Kristen, still no good vids from DM. Your request *is* being processed.

Video Sharing at DropShots.com

Grown-up questions

2006-03-14T20:48:00.000-07:00

So in our frenzy to getamortgagefindahousebuyahousemoveallourcrap2000miles, I have started asking myself some Big Questions. To be fair, I asked myself some Big Questions when I found out I was pregnant, but I was awfully busy marathon-napping, throwing back saltines and fries and hating myself for not following the What To Expect Pregnancy Bible to focus all that much brain power on them. But now that the Baby is a Toddler, and Daddymatic is getting a Real Job and we are embarking on a move that someone else is at least partially paying for (which means not renting, packing and driving our own truck for once), the Questions will not rest.

They cluster around a theme, which is to say they all start with the words “Would a Real Grown Up do X?”

If I may?

Would a Real Grown Up seriously consider just throwing most of her stuff away so she won’t have to worry about packing it up?

Would a Real Grown Up allow her child to suck on fresh diaper wipes just so changing his diaper is easier than, say, branding him with a small tattoo of her initials, thus saving her priceless energy which might then be spent perusing homes on the internet she no doubt cannot afford?

Would a Real Grown Up put her hand over the phone and mock the moving company representative to her toddler while the representative explains in detail why it’s simply NOT possible to guarantee my stuff will get to Utah in less than 3 WEEKS?

Would a Real Grown Up not only fob the mortgage guy’s call off to the answering machine but also refuse to play the message so she can pretend she never got it?

Would a Real Grown Up allow her child to eat half a dozen graham crackers just so she can talk to the nice lady from Daddy’s new department about child care options?

Would a Real Grown Up actually cry at the new Century 21 commercial—you know, the one with the kids who are 3 and 1 and the husband gives in and goes for the house while the realtor cheers from the speakerphone?

So what are your “Would a Real Grown Up” questions? Lay 'em on me. Tell me I'm not the only one.

The Four Cutest Seconds of Last Week

2006-03-12T21:00:00.000-07:00

Well, once he heard Juniper could find hers, he had to try too. This is what D learned to do this week.

Video Sharing at DropShots.com

My apologies to Kristen: Daddymatic indeed shot an adorable video of D last week, chock full of audio and everything, but he shot it "portrait" so you'd have to hold your head (or your monitor) sideways in order to view it, and none of the cheapo editing software I have will allow you to rotate the orientation (not that there's anything wrong with that) of the video. But I hope next week, Daddymatic will have footage for y'all.

2006-03-09T11:51:00.000-07:00

Haloscan commenting and trackback have been added to this blog.

Mommymatic turns 100

2006-03-08T21:11:00.000-07:00

Well, 100 posts, that is. To celebrate, I got my man Jon and Daddymatic to help me out with some updating. Like it? Jon designed the fuh-abulous new banner--ain't it sweet? Daddymatic helped me with the tedious (and possibly ongoing) job of tweaking fonts and colors. Unfortunately the colors may need more tweaking than we first thought, but it's a blog in progress, right?

Since I know you all see the new tagline, you're thinking you didn't win--NOT SO!! There are TWO--well, three, kinda--other winners, but I put Jon's up first since he helped me so much with the new banner. The other winners were Nancy with "I'm a mom, not a machine" (this banner is organge) and Izzy with "Don't make me turn this blog around!" (this one is blue). would also like to ask Cookie if I can add her "Salty as the lake, sweet as candy" tagline to the rotation once we move to Salt Lake. I'm hoping Jon will hook me up with a script that will allow me to rotate through all three banners automatically (or mommymatically, if you will) but until then, I'll swap 'em out every few days or so. So Nancy, Izzy, and BMC, send me an email at stefanierj at yahoo dot com and lemme know if you want a bag or a sweet treat, where to send it, and if you choose the bag option, include a couple of pix of your cherubic offspring so's I can put them on the bag.

And can I say now what an EXCRUCIATING process it was to have to choose between all the totally brilliant suggestions you peeps came up with? I really appreciate the time everyone took to think about my lack-of-tagline panache, and I hope the haloscan comments eventually reappear so that I can look at the "32" in the comments box and get a little teary that you guys cared. (I'm feeling a little Sally Field 'you like me, you really like me' right now--can you tell?) Suffice it to say: THANKS!! You guys ROCK.

So I've been busy with the blog-sprucing, move-prepping, diss writing (yes! actual writing! note that I didn't say great writing, but hey--gotta start somewhere) and all that other mess, but I promise the next post will be back to business as usual. I'm hoping to make the weekend video post a regular thing, and daddymatic said he got a cute one today (he may have drawled a little extra on the audio just for Kristen). So stay tuned for that!

The tease

2006-03-04T08:16:00.000-07:00

I hope you like ham with your post:

Video Sharing at DropShots.com

I need help (but you knew that)

2006-03-02T19:01:00.000-07:00

I want a good tag line. You know, like Mom-101's "I don't know what I'm doing either" or Cookie's "My life as a professional amateur." I was going to full-out ~~steal~~ borrow Misfit Hausfrau's "Better living through yelling" (and give her credit, OF COURSE!) since she isn't using it anymore, but then I thought, shoot, I have the most funny, creative, adorable, not-immune-to-being-flattered people stopping by the ol' blog, so maybe they can help!!

So I'm caving in to the new blogtrend and offering a prize for some help. Unfortunately, I'm on a grad-student budget, so I can't offer custom onesies or softies or cool t-shirts, but I'll make you a cute (read: very simple) tote bag with your offpring's picture on it. I made one for Heather and she kinda dug it and wrote about it and posted pics of it here. Or I can get Daddymatic to make you a suh-weet treat. (he's the baker in the family, and D and I are the eaters).

So help a sistah out, wontcha? Post your ideas in the comments section. Bee-bee sent me an email with the line "If it's not one thing, it's your mother" in it, which *is* a contender, but I know you guys can come up with something even bettah!! I'll announce the winner--and unveil the new tag line-- in a week.

Out of the mouths of babes...

2006-02-28T08:40:00.000-07:00

Okay, so to review: we first thought the Boy Wonder had graced us with the word "broccoli" as his initial foray into the land of the linguistically capable. Alas, it seems that was a one-off, as it has been repeated several ~~thousand~~ times by his parents without so much as one repeat performance on the part of the babe.

Then, there was last week, when we thought we were getting manifestations of "baby" and "kitty," (okay, it was more like "heeee-teeee," but cripes, throw me a bone here) which made sense, in that his two favorite things in life are his own reflection and the furry residents of the home. We've had a couple more instantiaions of "kitty," so I no longer fear he'll be the only kindergartener grunting and pointing instead of "using his words."

Then today, we had some pretty indisputable evidence that his first words are slowly gaining intentionality--like motive is quietly leaking into his parroting of phrases we say all the time.

The scene:

In the bathroom, D is standing on his step-stool at the sink (which will be the subject of a cute, cute, cute, vid later this week), holding Lambie.

D: Heeee go. (first word said at a high pitch, second word lower.) ((Holds Lambie out to me))

Mommymatic: What, sweetie? Is that Lambie?

D: Heee go ((proffering Lambie to me once more, with a decidedly less patient tone of voice)).

M: Daddy, come look at this. What's he saying? ((at this point, D drops Lambie, which Mama picks up and hands back to him. )) Here you go, sweetie.

D: ((beaming, holding Lambie out yet again)) Heeee go.

M: I don't know what that means, sweetie. Do you want your toothbrush? Here you go.

D: ((all but rolling his adorable blue eyes and the sheer stupidity of the "highly educated" total idiot standing in front of him.)) Heee go.

Finally, thank God, Daddymatic realizes D is probably saying "Here you go" which of course is what we say to him when we hand him stuff 89765 times a day. He has figured out that's what you say when you're handing someone something, so now it's his turn to try.

Right. I knew that. I just wish they had more about this in my babe-ese-to-clueless-parent dictionary.

Weekend Update with Mommymatic

2006-02-26T19:48:00.000-07:00

I know I'm due for a real post and not just a "post some cute pictures with captions and be done with it" post, but I'm burning prime sleeping hours, so I'll give you the short version of what's been going on around here other than trying to mentally gear up for the whole logistics-of-a-2000-mile-move thing:

For one, this weekend was a gustatorial triumph: Daddymatic and I had barbecue TWICE (being from NC, we are snobs about The Art That Is Barbecue, so it was a rare treat to have totally yummy 'cue more than once over a weekend), Red Red Rine and I drove 40 minutes for the pleasure of being able to visit a Legitimate Multi-Retail-Outlet Establishment (read: a mall that doesn't totally SUCK) and found ourselves at the mercy of several adorable Brownies (the little girl kind, not the gooey chocolate kind) and were summarily talked into relieving them of several boxes of Girl Scout Cookies. We also discovered possibly the only eating establishment in Central PA that serves real Sweet Tea (also known by its official title The House Wine of the South), and we managed to squeeze in a Dunkin Drive-by to complete the Girls' Day Out, so of course the trip was a success.

The weekend was a sleeping triumph as well: Daddymatic, the hero of this story, saw that I was tired, tired, tired and offered to tend to the night wakings so that I could sleep uninterrupted, and oh, it was a beautiful thing. No sweeter, more seductive words were ever, I think, uttered than, "I've got him tonight, sweetie. You sleep now." Under Reasons Daddymatic is The Man, this is Exhibit A.

The weekend--this morning, anyway--was a gustatorial triumph for the Younger Member of the Household as well: whilst mommy was diligently ~~reading blogs~~ working, she noticed that Someone had become very quiet, which is not usually a Good Thing. It seems that yes, in fact, his arms are exactly 1 inch longer than I had calculated, and he had managed to pull his half-full (I'm an optimist, see) container of yogurt down on himself and was enthusiastically smearing as much of it as possible on every bodily surface, clothed or not. He was pretty much basted in it by the time I figured out what was going on: it had pooled on his socks, for pete's sake. So file that one under Why Mommy Should Only Visit Bloglines Under Strict Supervision. But just so you don't miss a minute of the burying-the-thrill-meter action around here, I snapped a few pics of the Yogurt Debacle:

What? Do you really think I'm going to smear this stuff everywhere? Am I so transparent to you?

Yeah, you're right. I am.

But the look can't be beat: it's like Jackson Pollock meets Andy Warhol at Old Navy, right?

What he does 457 times a day

2006-02-22T20:20:00.000-07:00

Video Sharing at DropShots.com

The Big News

2006-02-20T11:47:00.000-07:00

No, I'm not pregnant. Our big news is that Daddymatic has accepted a job at the University of Utah, so we will be moving to Salt Lake City as of this summer.

I know what you're thinking: But you guys aren't Mormon, are you? No, we're not. But apparently, neither is 60% of the SLC population. So there's that.

This has been a heartwrenching process for the Familymatic--or at least the adult members of the household. Daddymatic's other job offers were in VA and Toronto, Canada. While a HUUUUGE part of me really wants to be back in the South, close to our parents, we both decided that, for now anyway, we need to go where the job seems like it will be the best fit. Daddymatic decided that was Utah, so I'm turning my thoughts away from sweet tea and southern accents and towards learning to say things like "Gooooo UTES!" Also, I am beginning the Convince Bee-bee and Grampy to Move to Utah campaign as well.

To kick off the campaign (and for the sake of my own morale), I'm going to publish a list of the 20 coolest things I was able to find out about Salt Lake City over the weekend. I need your help, though-- if you've heard anything especially funky and/or cool about Salt Lake City (or Utah in general, or heck, even Mormons), now's the time to share. If someone you knew lived in SLC and hated it, I probably don't need to know about that.

Also, if you live in the Far West or California, remind me how much fun it's going to be to be a day's drive or so away from all of you. Also, you could tell me that we *might* get out there in time for me to drive to Blogher, which would be freakin' sweet, as I could finally meet the amazing women in person that I've been so fortunate to ah, "meet" in blogworld. So in the comments, please add stuff I've forgotten and if you have nothing to add, well, some nurturing words of support will substitute just fine.

20 Coolest Things about SLC:

1. The largest parade in SLC is the Days of ‘47 parade, which I think celebrates the day Brigham Young looked at the Wasatch Front and said, “Yup, this is the place. We’re stayin’.” The second largest parade? Utah Pride. I love a city that’s not afraid of its schizoid side.

2. Good football at the U. Plus the view from the stadium is stunning. And the My Cousin Vinny jokes you can do with a team called the Utes is not to be underestimated.

3. Two words: Arena. Football.

4. There’s a zoo, a children’s museum, some great city parks and a fuh-haaabulous public library. Thank you, Mormons, for having many offspring and building a city to accommodate said offspring.

5. SLC is within spittin’ distance of, oh, say, a BILLION national parks: Arches (setting for all Roadrunner/Coyote cartoons), Zion, Bryce, Grand Staircase Escalante, Capitol Reef, etc. It’s right purty in them thar parts.

6. Park City is home to Sundance. And if that’s not indie enough for you, try SlamDance, which is the anti-Sundance. Because you gotta have people for whom Sundance is just, you know, like sooo mainstream and has-been.

7. It’s a dry heat. Plus there will be an approximately 400% increase in Hours of Sunlight, since Central PA, as my friend Jon is wont to say, is “The place where low pressure systems come to stay.”

8. Heavy D will be able to pursue rock climbing, camping, snowboard cross, hiking, cross-country skiing, and snow shoeing, all of which means I get to buy lots of Gear.

9. There will be an IKEA in the area next spring. There is also, apparently, a Roots store. All we need now is a Bojangle’s restaurant, and my retail trifecta will be complete.

10. Donut shops. Plural.

11. Dooce, of course, is from SLC. So the blog vibes are good. Or something.

12. Public transpo that’s not limited to buses.

13. Foods they have in SLC that they do not have here: Thai, Mexican, Moroccan, Afghan, Lebanese, Tibetan, Turkish, Polynesian, Russian, Swiss (are you kidding me? Swiss? OH YEAH.) and Filipino. Thank you, Mormons, for going on missions around the world and being better than the British at bringing back food to spice up your otherwise underwhelming native options.

14. Next week, Motley Crue is playing in SLC. Who’s a has-been now, huh??

15. The state bird of Utah is…the seagull. Bonus points if you know why without Googling it.

16. You can turn around an oxcart on most streets in SLC. Seriously. Brigham Young said so. There are also buckets at each crosswalk with orange flags in them so you can play Crossing Guard EVERY time you cross the street.

17. You know where you are in the city at all times based on the address. For instance, if you’re at 655 East 3400 South, you know you have 34 blocks between you and The Temple. Thank you, Mormons, for being as anal as I am when you laid out your city. (except that in MY city, everything would be relative to MY location. But that’s being nitpicky.)

18. No nonstop flights to Bee-bee and Grampy’s hometown, but there are nonstop flights to a number of Mexican beaches. That takes the edge off of winter (if you’re counting, that’s another TWO reasons why Bee-bee and Grampy need to move to SLC).

19. The Best Friends Animal Sanctuary is in Utah. Having done work with abandoned/abused animals in North Carolina at the Horse Protection Society, this warms the cockles of my heart. Thanks to my friend Elizabeth for remembering one.

20. I can finally train for the sport for which I was born: the art of après ski. The hot cocoa, the silk jammies, the bad mystery novels being read by a fire: what is not to love? In fact, I’m so stoked about this that I’m going to skip the whole skiing thing and go directly to the bon-bon eating part.

Softie-Matic

2006-02-18T18:42:00.000-07:00

Behold, the softie, fresh from the hardworking nimble fingers of Heather-Miles’s mom (when I was a little kid, I called friends’ moms by their kids’ names: Billy’s mom was “Mrs. Billy” and Jen’s dad was “Mr. Jennifer,” so Heather would be Ms. Miles, since I’m all up in the PC with the titles and stuff these days).

Anyway—doncha LOVE? Doncha want one? Heather and I did a trade, but if you have more cash than craft (as is the case with me—she will probably wish she’d just let me buy one when she gets the item I made for her), you can buy one. So whatcha waitin’ for? Click on over to this post to get your ordering info and see pix of adoptable softies.

The beautiful thing about Heather is that she appears to have an innate sense of what a family needs, softie-wise: For instance, for the Junipers, she made ~~voodoo softies~~ softie replicas of Wood, Dutch and Juniper. For us, however, she realized the only thing missing from the Familymatic unit was…a DOG!! We have dubbed her Rosiedog O. Matic.

I’ll go ahead and answer the burning questions you’re slavering to ask:

Is the softie adored by your child? Check. It even gets the N. O. R. The little boy is D-voted.

Is the softie adored by other Matic household members? Check. I’m a big fan of red as my alma mater is NC State (Go Pack!). And Daddymatic loves red for reasons that will be revealed later. And see, even the LBC likes it (That’s Little Black Cat, Snoop--not the 213).

Is the softie chock-full of T3 (Textures Toddlers Treasure)? Check. Corduroy on one side, flannel on the other, felt bits for eyes. And that star? Getting some serious love from One Who is Not Easily D-stracted (okay, that last nickname is cheating, but give me a break: it’s Saturday night and I’m BLOGGING, ‘kay?).

Can grown-ups get their own softies? Check. I have half a mind to order one for my friend Ellen, who loves blobbies, which are a kind of second cousin to softies.

Is Heather nice to deal with? Check, check, check. Go see if you don’t believe me.

Okay, I’m done with the shameless promotion of fellow bloggers’ merchandise. For now. But you might wanna click on the MotherDuds button over on the sidebar if you’re in the market for a very groovy, mama-hood-promotin’ t-shirt. I’m trying to find a reason for Daddymatic to buy me the cap-sleeved one that says “No more Mrs. Nice Mom.”

**One final nugget before I sign off for the weekend: check back Monday for some BIG FamilyMatic news.**

Belated Sappage

2006-02-16T19:54:00.000-07:00

I do things late, if at all. Whenever we’re home and we go to my parents’ church as a family, my sister likes to point out that we actually sing three hymns during the Sunday service, since I have yet to make it in time for the first one. That’s just how I roll. I’ve tried to change it, and I was doing well until I had a baby, which, coincidentally, also doubles as a perfect reason to be late to ANYTHING. Poor D-lovely has become an excuse for every delay: “Sorry, we had to have a snack/diaper change/bottle/car seat adjustment/pacifier recovery, but we’ll be there in 5 minutes.”

However, being punctuality-challenged does not excuse me for not posting a sappy love declaration for Daddymatic on That Hallmark Holiday Which We Spent Cleaning Out Kitchen Cupboards* So here it is.

Daddymatic, I have known you for almost 13 years, and this summer will make a full decade that you have been on the business end of my slightly neurotic but vast and devoted love. You were a great friend to me first: you made me laugh for hours on end during the magic month we spent as classmates at Oxford. One story I’ll never forge: our friend Candy lit a cigarette and offered you one, and you declined. She jokingly said, “You don’t smoke? What do you do after sex?” and you mildly replied, “Oh. I just do it again,” I knew at that point that underneath your fine-upstanding-Methodist Young Republican** exterior was a boy whose funny needed to run free. I never thought I’d be the one who was lucky enough to watch it grow and sharpen over these last dozen-plus years, but I’m so glad I got to be.

You have also shown me such piercing sweetness that it takes my breath away. Kindness permeates what you do: you make sure I sleep. You make sure I eat. You understand why I have to spend so much money on haircuts you can’t always tell I’ve had, you know why a dirty sink bugs me and you know when to step in nicely and gently ask (over my swearing) if I need help with a misbehaving computer.

You’ve never lost your sense of adventure, either. Going to Poland to teach English and living with a host family who could only be called słabo, braving the wilds of corporate banking culture, moving to Pennsyltuckey, slogging through windstorms in a tiny tent on the prairie with a pregnant wife, and then helping hatch and nurture a baby boy: you have been so brave and so dedicated and so. much. fun.

What you did last week kind of sums up our relationship for me: you wrote an email from school asking me a mundane question and I, being in a funk, replied somewhat despondently. I didn’t get a reply, so I figured you’d gone back to your project or were just leaving me alone to work out my blues. You could have knocked me over with a feather when you appeared 20 minutes later with flowers, candy, a funny cardand open arms.

But that’s what happens with us: just when I feel so alone, like I’ve alienated everybody with my gritchy temperment and bad moodiness, you appear. No matter what’s up with me—whether I’m being a jerk, being depressed, doing my best “come hither, big Daddy,” you show up. You’re there, no matter what. I don’t know what I did to deserve you, but I hope you keep renewing that contract of ours. I love you.

Here we are as young'uns, back in 2002, in front of the Getty in LA.

*In my defense, we were afraid we were getting another infestation of Indian meal moths which, as you can see from this post, is pretty much unbearable and deserved attention STAT.

** Interestingly, you are no longer either a Methodist nor a Republican anymore. But you are still Young, and Fetching and Fine.

D-unit's new trick: The Noise of Recognition

2006-02-15T20:04:00.000-07:00

Okay, so D-liverer still isn’t talking, but he does have this totally adorable gleeful squeal we have come to call the Noise of Recognition. Here are the things in our house that get the N.O.R:

(1) Any of the kitties: M, Cat, a rare Sula sighting. Shere Khan, the stuffed tiger gets the N.O.R. as well. Even the kitty sculpture at the library gets it.

(2) The Veggie Booty bag. Thanks, Junipers.

(3) The graham cracker jar. (seeing a pattern here? Kid loves to get his grub on.)

(4) His stuffed horse and, of course, Lambie. (see the video of dubious image quality below--the tiny squeal from across the room is the N.O.R., not to be confused with the S.O.G. [Shout of Greeting] upon contact with Lambie)

(5) The Musini, also known as A Toy I Thought Was Cool When It Was Given to Us But Which Now Wears Badly on my Nerves.

(6) Many of his books. Notably, Everywhere Babies, Owl Babies (we gots us a thing about babies) and Guess How Much I Love You.

(7) The vacuum cleaner, which, as on the Teletubbie s, is called the “Noo-noo.”

(8) Other babies. Or himself in a mirror. Daddymatic reports that he also has said “baaay-beee” a couple of times as well, but I'm still skeptical.

(9) Any phone.

(10) And of course, us. Usually it’s whichever parent didn’t get up with him, which seems grossly unfair, but hey, it makes for an awesome day for whoever gets to sleep in AND get the red carpet welcome.

Share Video at DropShots.com

He's ba-ack

2006-02-13T19:45:00.000-07:00

So Daddymatic has been home about a week from his whirlwind International Please-give-me-a-job Tour. We missed him so much, and it's great to have him back. Even if I didn’t love him so darn much, I would be deeply grateful for his return because it meant a reprieve from single parenthood.

So anyway, during one of his lightning switch-suits-get-underwear-and-wash-some-shirts stopovers, he was just dog-tired and he said, “I think I finally know the difference between being tired and being fatigued. Being tired is like, ‘Man, I got up too early this morning. I need to go to bed earlier.’ And fatigued is like…”

He trailed off, and I thought about the events of the past weeks, the 25 loads of laundry, the 12 trips to the grocery store, the 62 diaper changes, 13 baths, 3 outings to the library, 6 trips to the pool, the 39 high-chair-tray wipedowns, 15 naps, 34 bottles and the 876 repititions of "not in the mouth, sweetie." And I put my hand on his, looked deeply into his eyes and as gently and nicely as I could, I said, "Sweetie? I think I know the difference between 'tired' and 'fatigued'."

To his credit, my amazing spouse smiled and said "Oh. Yeah. I guess it's kinda like my saying, 'I know you're in labor, but this hangnail is the most painful thing EVER,' a la Ross and Rachel. Sorry." I assured him this wasn't what I meant--it's just that when you feel so exhausted, you're sure no one else can understand. But we all do. So now we're catching up. It is deeply, deeply cool to have our Daddymatic back.

And I know I bitch about all the laundry I do, but for the love of LOST, what about the cuteness of these diapers?! It's. just. too. much

Come on, Foo. You know you want the Boy in Blue.

I can almost hear him singing "Baby in reeeeeed, is looking at me"

What's the meme-ing of this?

2006-02-12T19:35:00.000-07:00

Dang! Memed again--I feel so like the kid who came late to the party on the meme thing. Anyway, I was tagged this time by Lisaopolis. My answers won't be as exciting as hers, I'm sure, but heeeere we go. I won't tag anyone for this one, but if you end up doing it, let me know in the comments box.

Four jobs you've had in your life (in my case, Life Before Mommyhood):
Mosquito Control for Meckelenburg County, NC. I wish I were kidding.
Tagger of Red Cockaded Woodpeckers at Carolina Sandhills National Wildlife Refuge, McBee, SC. You cannot make this stuff up. Seriously.
Oral History Transcriptionist, Lousiana State University in Baton Rouge. Firsthand stories of the Civil Rights Movement. Can't beat it.
Peace Corps Volunteer, Suwalki, Poland.

Four Movies you would watch over and over:
[disclaimer: I am a child of the 80s. This is important.]
Steel Magnolias (I'm also from the South)
Any of the original Star Wars Trilogy. (An unspoken rule in the Matic household is that if Star Wars, Empire or Jedi are on a station we're clicking through, we must stop and watch whatever's left of the film)
Ace Ventura, Pet Detective. The dolphin scene. Dude.
Dangerous Liaisons. John Malkovich=H.O.T.

Four places you have lived:
Radom, Poland. Arguably, the armpit of the universe.
Asheville, NC, as in "God kissed the ground and called it Asheville."
Raunheim, Germany (back when there was an "East" and "West" Germany--it's on the S-14 between Frankfurt and Wiesbaden)
State College, PA. Obviously.

Four TV shows you love to watch:
The West Wing
CSI: Miami
Scruuuubs
Conviction (even though not one single episode has aired yet, my husband has already crowned me a total slut for this show once the Olympics are over. Sadly, I think he's going to be right.)

Four places you have been on vacation:
Out West, A Driving Trip On Which I Found Out I was Pregnant, May 2004 Click the link to see our interactive map with pics
Torremolinos, Spain, Where I discovered I do, in fact, love topless beaches as much as Daddymatic does, May 2001
Italy, Christmas 1998
Hungary in its "Behind the Iron Curtain-Call" phase, June 1988

Four websites I visit daily:
Bloglines (to see if Cookie, The Junipers, Lisa, Kat, T'pon, Granny, Emily , Belinda or Heather have updated overnight)
Yahoo for mail
My own dang blog, to see how my 5 readers are doing
Site meter's site, to see if I can win this dang contest

Four of my favorite foods:
Fresh pineapple
Penn State Creamery ice cream (it's where two guys named Ben and Jerry learned their stuff)
Daddymatic's chocolate chip cookies
Bacon. Or sausage. Pretty much any pork product. I mean, I did live in Poland.

Four places I'd rather be right now:
Any of the sunny, warm ones
Visting where-ever in the heck we're going to be living next year (because then I'd know where we're going to be living next year)
Baton Rouge, LA, eating crawfish etoufee and beignets
Right here with the D-train and Daddymatic, as cheesy as that sounds, only with Bee-bee, Grampy, Nana, and kimnjim here with us.

Talk to the Experts: Your Questions

2006-02-09T20:07:00.000-07:00

So every parent blogger—including me—has done at least one post about Sleep Issues. This is sort of one of those. We’ve been having a rough time as of late, and I’ve been thinking back over the books I’ve read and their differing philosophies on sleep. One thing I’ve noticed is when these authors predict and answer “questions” they think their readers will have, kind of like a book version of a pre-emptive strike. What I’ve found, however, is that these questions are the ones the authors hope their readers will have; they do not represent the actual questions. What follows are the actual questions I’d ask if I met any one of these folks.

Dr. William Sears: The Attachment Parenting Guru, Promoter of Co-sleeping, Sensitively Working Through Sleep Issues With Patience and Longsuffering

Dear Dr. Sears: During the time you were raising your 8 children, when, exactly, did you get to have sex?

How many nights of 4 hours of sleep or less in a row did you suffer through? Were your patients understanding when your lack-of-sleep-induced irritability caused you to snap at their brats and take a perverse pleasure in administering blood tests?

Dr. Marc Weissbluth: Cry-it-Out Aficionado, Guilter of Parents Who Don’t Care Enough to Let Their Children Cry

Dear Dr. Dub-yah: When, during the hours and hours of crying parents must endure under your method, do most parents start attempting to put their heads through solid wood doors?

When a child throws up after crying for 6 ½ hours, do you clean it up or figure, “well, she/he made the choice to throw up, so he/she can figure out how to sleep in it”?

Elizabeth Pantley: Schiller of the “Babies-shouldn’t-cry-but-they-shouldn’t-keep-you-up-all night-either” Bit

Dear Miz Pantley: Is it worth it to try and maintain your baby’s trust if, after the first mind-blowingly tedious hour of standing by the crib “helping” your child fall asleep, you feel a rage so palpable that you believe you might, in fact, never speak to her/him again?

What if, instead of maintaining a calm, relaxed demeanor over sleep issues that have yet to be overcome, I point out unhelpfully the irony that the child could simply GO BACK TO FREAKING SLEEP instead of being awake and whiny at an ungodly early hour? Does it matter that sarcasm is lost on babies and most toddlers?

Parents, are there any you'd like to add? Come on--here's your chance!

Meme 'em and Weep

2006-02-08T19:36:00.000-07:00

Okay, so I got memed by Belinda, and I felt like I was finally in. Everyone I know around me gets memed all the time, but not me. Always the meme-reader, never the memed. So thanks for sharing the moment with me.

Ok, now, the deal is this: The person who's been memed thinks of 3-5 movies that make them weep. Like really weep. Then that person goes to Google images and finds a pic from the movie that doesn't totally give it away, and paste the image into his/her blog. Then, the memed one highlights the pic and creates a link to the movie's IMDB page (that way, if someone doesn't know what movie the pic is from, they can click on the picture and it'll take them to IMDB so they can find out!).

The final step is that the memed becomes the memer. If you get tagged here, pick some folks and meme them, too!

Ok, so here are four of my weepers. I am ashamed of the last two, but I gotta be me. After the images, I'm naming the folks I hope will do this, but naturally, anyone's welcome to do it. Let me know in the comments if you guessed my movies and if you're going to do it, too, so I can check out your list.

And the one I'm MOST embarassed to admit...

Okay, now for the tag-you're-it bit. Do it if you want. If you do, I can't promise you that you'll get an email with a funny video in it or a free computer from Microsoft or anything, but I can promise you that if you don't, you won't have seven years of bad luck or anything:

Kat

Lisa

Emily

Ann

Heather (since I'm sure Brian doesn't cry at movies)

Justify, my love.

2006-02-07T20:08:00.000-07:00

Why do we as parents feel like we have to justify every single thing we do? Like, we went to our WIC appointment the other day (your tax dollaz, hard at work) and the nutritionist mentioned that a Certain Little Boy needed to be giving up his 3 bottles-a-day any time now. I told her I understood the worry about tooth D-cay and that I was going to start brushing his teeth after bottles, but that while he would drink vast amounts of water from a sippy cup, he simply won’t drink milk from a cup, sippy or otherwise. So the bottles would be difficult to give up. She said, “Well, as long as he’s off by 15 months, he should be fine.” Or else. . .what?

Of course, I didn’t question this, and spent the rest of the day fretting that I’d start finding tiny decayed teeth laying around the apartment, lodged in his favorite board books, lined up in rows on his bookshelf. I Imagined him, all toothless in his high school graduation pictures or, better yet, with a couple gold teeth up in his griiiill.

So of course, as I am wont to do, I formulated a plan: cold turkey off the bottle. Well, I managed to get him to take a whopping 6 ounces of milk via cup the next day, and I held off on bottles as long as I could. However, by bedtime, we were both exhausted and pretty cranky, so he got an 8-ounce bottle. Since he was about 10 ounces shy for his daily milk intake, he of course woke up for a night bottle, and I decided we’d just have to live with the fallout: bottles aren’t going anywhere for now.

And here’s the thing: I felt like I needed to justify this. I actually found myself saying things like, “But don’t lots of babies breastfeed way after their 2nd birthdays? Why are bottles so evil?” and “Well, at least they’re not his permanent teeth.” Um, I’m sorry, WHAT? Let’s put aside the fact that having bottles past the Deemed-Appropriate Age has never, to my knowledge, messed anyone up wicked bad. What’s more disturbing is how quickly I thought of ways to justify my choice to refuse to follow Status Quo Thinking. I mean, it’s like eating cheeseburgers in bulk while you’re pregnant (which I also did), right? People would think I was a terrible parent!

What I’ve realized is that anyone who would judge me for putting what’s best for my kid at this stage of his life before what I think of people who think I’m ruining him for not following the advice of someone who’s never even met him are jerks. (Wow. longest. run-on. sentence. ever.) It was a good lesson to learn: sometimes, you gotta trust that you know your kid best, and you don't need to justify that to anyone but yourself and him (or her). Anyone else feelin' this?

SteelerMatics

2006-02-05T18:51:00.000-07:00

Live from Superbowl XL:

Actually, no. "During the Superbowl" is after bedtime, so this photo was taken and tape-delayed for your viewing pleasure.

And yes, that's a playbook that Big D is chewing on. Let's hope the wheels on Da Bus keep going round and round.

I'm not your monkey, mother

2006-02-04T18:25:00.000-07:00

Oh, but he is. Here's his new trick. The vid is super-short (because I could only get him to do it once) but cute, cute, cute.

Enjoy!

Share Video at DropShots.com

Developmentally appropriate?

2006-02-03T19:22:00.000-07:00

Okay, first—some clarifications. When I say junk like, “I am the one who looks like her kinda butchy lesbian lover,” that’s what we language people call FISHING. Like for a compliment. Or at least a knee-jerk denial, as in, “Butchy?! Oh heavens, you delicate flower, you don’t look butchy. Maybe a little androgynous in a totally come-hither sexy way, but goodness knows, woman, you’re not the least bit butch.” It’s my fault; I should have specified that this was a self-deprecating comment and not an Oxygen movie concept you were supposed to run with. So it’s tooootally my fault—but hey, now we’re clear, right?

So, on to the real point of this post. I’ve been thinking about those wretched words “developmentally appropriate” quite a bit lately, because I really want the D-veloping child in the Matic household to be, you know, normal. I like that he’s walking and climbing (though someone last week guesstimated his age at six months. SIX MONTHS? Wha-? Has anyone seen a 25-lb. six-month-old recently?), but part of me wishes he’d start talking already. I know all kids are different, and I’m sure all the hoopla we threw at him for the one-off “buh-guh=broccoli” incident put him off language totally, but a mother worries. Especially a linguist mother. Darn the growth charts and baby books!

So anyway, when he started insisting that I drag out the playmat we put him on when he was but a wee bairn, I got a little concerned. Was this a regression? What did it mean? Why wasn’t he focusing on, say, learning to say my name or Daddymatic’s? Did we need remedial classes to get him back on track?

Of course, it turns out he simply wanted to conquer it, which in his case means pushing down the whimsical toy-laden arches and sitting on them in triumph. Which is—you guessed it—developmentally appropriate. Oh.

Here he is, pre-triumphing.

Interestingly, the other children in the house like it, too:

Sula likes it. And dude, she's, like, ten.

So does Cat (because sometimes you run out of original, witty, kitty names).

Even M, the incredibly vain tabby, and her "friend" Shere Khan like it. Though they'd NEVER admit it.

When Blogworld meets Real World

2006-02-02T13:06:00.000-07:00

So I have written before about Davis’s Honorary Aunt Emily, who is a fellow blogger (and do yourself a favor and read this post of hers about blog popularity—you’ll be glad you did). Anyway, Emily comes over, coos over D-Money and spoils him rotten to the core. You know this. But I have barely blogged at all about his Other Blogger Aunt, Lisa, who is largely responsible for the New and Different D-monikers that have been appearing of late. She also came over on Tuesday for some Toddler Love and to provide Mommymatic with some much-needed adult conversation (or, rather, “grown-up conversation” since for the sociolinguistically sensitive of you, the word “adult” might have skeevy connotations, as in “adult film” or “adult content.”)

ANYWAY. It was very cool of her to stop by, share a cup of coffee with me, and bring kisses and a very cool gift for my offspring, and I wanted to say thanks. Here’s a pic we snapped of the 3 of us, which I am calling “When Blogworlds Collide.” Lisa's the luscious blonde holding D-Lovah, and I am the one who looks like her kinda butchy lesbian lover. Not that there's anything wrong with that.