| elf on a shelf |
[Dec. 2nd, 2011|02:09 pm] |
Elf on a shelf. It's this super-hot kid thing right now - just google it. Anyway, Ellen bought one for us and Rob is doing it with the kid. (Sounds like too much work to me.) Yesterday, I was informed our elf is named 48.
"48?"
I gave Norah a skeptical look. Apparently, they were trying to get the kid to go for "007" (because the elf is spying on him for Santa), which resulted in:
"His name NOT double-oh nennen [seven]. His name Fotty-Eight." |
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| no one will care... |
[Oct. 28th, 2011|10:10 am] |
Ok, so I kind of got into Waldorf dolls when looking for a soft doll for Little Dude. At this point, I'm way more into it than he is, and I'm ok with that. Half the fun of having a kid is re-living your own childhood and having an excuse to do/see/collect kid things.
In the process of trying to find what I wanted, I got onto a bunch of waldorf enthusiast sites. I'm kind of addicited to internet drama and chat, so this is where I am getting my current fix.
Anyway, I just want to put it out there that it's kind of disingenuous to go on at length about how materialistic our society is if you have 30+ $200 dolls. Just sayin. |
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| (no subject) |
[Sep. 29th, 2011|03:41 pm] |
Ugh. I have decided to do a short Facebook cleanse and stay the hell off it for a couple of hours. It's proving difficult. What does that say, I ask you?
I was off it for a whole week at Pennsic, and really wasn't tempted at all. I blame data hygeine work. |
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| (no subject) |
[Sep. 13th, 2011|11:14 am] |
Well, I'm probably not going to the gym tonight as once again I spaced on calling child care 24 hours in advance. Trying to balance work, life and kid is a challenge on its own, and once you throw "gym" in there.... it just all goes to hell. Maybe I'll put Little Dude on the bike and go to the park - that counts as exercise, right?
I am so bad about getting him out of the house. We went to the library yesterday since the cloth diapering people cancelled their workshop 4 hours before it was supposed to happen. I figured I could bring a basket, and if anyone showed, talk to them about what we do. If not, the kid could look at books and play with the library's toys. Anyway, 20 minutes in and I remembered why I hate taking him to the library. He's only willing to read one or two books, then wants to spend the whole time playing with the library's puzzles. About half of the puzzles are missing at least one piece. This trips my OCD so hard.
If you're at the library and see a parent turning over every article of furniture in search of missing puzzle pieces... wave. It's me. |
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| (no subject) |
[Sep. 5th, 2011|10:51 pm] |
I really need to get back ito the habit of LJ. Facebook is great and all, but I totally feel like a gerbil in a lab experiment, constantly hitting the bar in the hopes that this time something good will fall out.
Anyway, life is good, which admittedly makes for boring posts. Little Dude and I went to Water Country, which was ok. I have to admit, I haven't quite managed to scale back my expectations properly for it. Pennsic is still fun with the kid in tow because I go in with the mindset that I will do a little shopping and talk to my friends and anything else is gravy. It irks me that Water Country - ostensibly a family attraction - is basically inhospitable to the really little ones. Pretty much anything with more than 10 inches of water requires a life jacket, they were kind of pissy about how I couldn't use our own floaty, and they wouldn't let me and the Little Dude go down the slide at the pirate ship together. Fucking psycho, litigious, risk-averse society. Next time, I guess I will bring the life jacket we bought him for canoeing, which is Coast Guard approved and hasn't been mangled by every other guest.
Despite the above, we had a pretty good time. We were in the wave pool for a good hour before someone noticed our non-standard floaty and made a fuss. Little Dude found some other kids whose guardians didn't mind him hassling them. There was a little girl who coyly ran just slow enough that she never quite lost him and a pair of Hispanic boys who were much, much faster but happy to run loops around him and pretend to be scared by his monster impression. I think they might have been casting spells on him by the gestures, but since they were speaking Spanish at a rapid fire rate, we'll probably never know for sure. Unless he sprouts horns or something tomorrow. Which you would have to admit, would be pretty impressive.
Little dude's strongest memory of today is that as I was strapping him into the car seat to go home, a flock of seagulls descended on the hood of the car and ate the last of his basket of potato chips, which I had foolishly left there:
"Boird ate my pawowo cips. ::heavy sigh::"
Rats with wings, I tell you. |
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| I have a little fish! |
[Jul. 11th, 2011|12:23 pm] |
Little Dude can totally swim without me now, given a floaty barbell to hang onto. It gives me palpitations to see him blithely heading out to the deep end, one hand grimly gripping his barbell and one hand outstretched for rubber-ducky collection. I feel like a goalie, or an orbiting moon as I follow him. If I get too close, though, he's all "No mommy do it. Baby do it by self."
He's taken a couple duckings for his pride, and of course, I never want to be so far off I can't just fish him back out. Still, it's a mixed set of emotions, watching him swim off alone. Pride, fear, admiration...
It's funny, because I have heard some people say they felt the same way when their kid learned to walk. I was pleased when the Little Dude took his first steps, but I think I just took it for granted more. Everyone learns to walk, sooner or later, unless one is subject to some physical disability.
Seeing him strike off on his own in the water, though - fearless, determined, joyful... It pulls at my heart. |
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| (no subject) |
[Jun. 20th, 2011|02:33 pm] |
Ok, you know I don't usually do this, but...
This is seriously the best kids sticker book ever made:
We love it so much, I wrote directly to the author to beg her to make another one. She just emailed back that there is another in the works, but thus far the publisher doesn't think sales justify issuing a second in the series. If you are in the market for a sticker book, please boost sales of this one!
From my email to her:
"What Do You See Under the Sea" has made my last two overseas flights bearable, and is the only activity which will occupy my toddler for more than 15 minutes. I'm afraid I hide it between cases of desperate need, so that the blush doesn't wear off the novelty - I really need that magic guarantee of an hour's peace. I bought two back-up copies, because I am afraid he will manage to lose all the stickers despite my best intentions and it will go out-of-print. We have some other sticker activity books, but this one is so far superior, it's barely comparable. Please, please could you consider creating another, similar book? Plants, maybe? Birds? I don't have any particular notion, but the free-form base shapes and add-on fish-parts of "What Do You See Under the Sea" are pure genius. Our nanny (a personal friend from before we had kids) says you should be knighted. I'm not even kidding.
If you don't believe me, believe The San Francisco Book Review
Douglas, maybe your work would be interested in some of these as stock for their kid's section?
Feel free to repost this everywhere. |
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| On weaning, with regard to my child the innovator... |
[Jun. 15th, 2011|04:16 pm] |
So, Little Dude has been weaned since shortly after his second birthday. I had some hopes that it would work to do Baby-Led Weaning (it's a thing, Google it) but the baby had no intention of ever voluntarily giving up nursing. I was tired of being touched-out, and it was affecting my marriage. So, around his second birthday, I went away for a conference for two days. Upon my return, I just told him "Mommy's boobs sleeping" whenever he asked to nurse. Eventually I shifted to "Mommy's boobs empty" and that was that. Or so I hoped.
On the whole, he's taken it in good part. No wailing or carrying on, just a sincere bafflement that Mommy's body is not exclusively devoted to his use. However, this should not in any way be confused with acceptance, and his new idea of a game is to attempt to latch on in the shower. WTF kid, it's been six months? Give up already.
The other day, he dives for my boobs (again) and I told him they were empty (again) and he looks at me quite seriously and says "Mommy go store. Buy cow milk. Dump in Mommy boobs."
Sigh. |
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| (no subject) |
[Jan. 9th, 2011|10:24 pm] |
I'm kind of freaking out about the Tucson shooting, retrospectively.
I was off the net most of the weekend, and so missed it until now. Jack mentioned something this morning about a shooting, but said he'd already checked in with my family and everyone was ok. I had a screeching toddler on my hands and didn't parse anything but that there was a situation, and that it did not directly affect me personally in a way that meant I should drop what I was doing.
We got home this afternoon, and I started trying to find out what happened. I just realized that the shooting happened at Ina and Oracle, which is a seven minute drive from my folks' house. In Tucson terms, that is fucking close. You can bike to there, and as a teen, I did. It's another seven minute drive in the other direction to my friend Bryan's house, where they have a toddler roughly the same age as Nathan. Family friends avoided being at the shooting only by virtue of being congenitally late. (Close friends may or may not remember Blythe, who visited us while staying in a little B&B in Brookline a few years back. Thank merciful god that she and her husband are never on time for a damn thing. I promise never to complain of their tardiness again.)
Rationally, it shouldn't make any difference. The deaths and injuries which actually occurred are tragic and affecting, no matter how close or far they happen from [my person/my people]. The hypothetical possibility of injury to people I know can't compare to the real suffering of the people directly afected.
Still... no one likes to think of something so insane happening so close to home. ugh. |
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| (no subject) |
[Jan. 3rd, 2011|11:51 am] |
I'm always way behind in documenting the cute things Nathan does, but I wanted to write this one down.
I'd been reading the Just So stories to him every time we went to Tanya's house, and usually my favorite - the Elephant's Child. We also found a youtube version which he quite enjoys. Anyway, at one point last week, the kid got out the holographic book that had a picture of a crocodile, flipped to that page, and held his plastic elephant to it. The he wiggled the page to make the alligator "bite" the elephant's nose, while saying "no! no!" and miming pulling.
This probably doesn't seem like a big deal to the non-parents, but I was so excited to see him actually play out a known story! He certainly is familiar with stories in their context. He knows exactly what will happen on the next page of his favorite books. Whenever he sees a bear, he might fake a sneeze, as that is the plot apex of Bear Snores On. I'd never before seen him take a favorite story and play it out - in sequence - with his toys. Brain development for the win! |
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