Secondhand Habits
If you ever want to know all the strange quirky things that you do, have a child. It turns out that it starts as soon as three months. They start making faces and as a result, you start recognizing the bizarre things you do because you have the most effective little mirror image in the world with you all day long. You spend your day thinking to yourself, “Why is he doing… oh dear! I do that all the time, don’t I?”
The latest example:
#1: Sniffing. Sniffing has always been my form of fake emotion. If I’m mock sad, or angry, or even happy, Bryce usually gets a sniff. Now Little has started sniffing. I, being the oblivious person that I am, had no idea where he could’ve picked that up until Bryce pointed out my little fake sniffing habit. Of course Little’s sniffing has turned into an entirely different habit now and he just sits there and sniffs away for fun, but still… it probably came originally from me.
#2: Fake Laughing. Now, I’m not sure if this is directly from me or not, but all the same, Little has started fake laughing. When he thinks you are not paying attention to him or he wants something, he starts doing this little machine gun chuckle. Originally it was a cough, but now it has morphed into the fake laugh. The best part is that he knows it makes me laugh so he does it and I laugh, so he does it louder, so I laugh harder, and the cycle continues. (Hopefully someday I’ll be able to get this on film)
Most of them up to this point have been pretty funny, but it gives me new goals to work on constantly because now when I do things I think, “Would I want Little to pick this up?” And it’s not as though I have an excess of unspeakable habits to rid myself of, but there are so many things that I could do better.
Quoth the Raven
I think someone has laid a curse on our apartment. We have what looks to be an enchanted wood in the back of our apartment complex so that is helpful. However, the main factor is that there is a raven that has taken up residence at our little section of the complex, and I don’t just mean hanging out in the trees or on the fences. I mean perched on the railings of my front steps or pacing the wall two feet from the door. When someone comes in or out he relocates to looking ominously from the roof top, but most of the time he is nearby which of course leads to one conclusion: our little section of the complex has been cursed.
Incidentally, Bryce just informed me that Edgar Allen Poe attended the University of Virginia
The Great Bonk of 2010
We survived our first little bonk. And by “little bonk” I mean “Oh my LANDS! I let my child get a black eye.” I submit that there are few things to make you feel like a worse mom than to have your Little’s eye swollen and every hue of purple and know it was because you weren’t quick enough on the draw. All told it barely even counts as a black eye and Little’s being a trooper about it. He barely even notices it is there unless he sneezes or rubs his tired eyes. That doesn’t stop me from wanting to cry every time I look at it though. I’m sure this will be the first bonk of many as he learns how to get around a bit better and I’m sure I’m in for much worse bonks, but I’m already not a big fan of bonks.
It's Not Lazy... It's Energy Efficient
Things that make me chuckle: people using the handicapped button when they don't have to. More accurately, the lengths people will go to use it. I watched a woman (nothing in her hands) take 4 steps out of her way, 4 steps back, wait 5 seconds to watch the door open, just so she didn't have to raise her arm and pull. When you get to the point where it takes more effort to make the door open automatically than it would manually, doesn’t it sort of defeat the purpose? It seems now-a-days that we might put more effort into our laziness than we do to just do it the “hard way.”
Green Beans and Other Horrid Things
Maybe this makes me a bad mother, but I love to watch Little eat green beans. Why does this make me a bad mother? you ask. Because he hates them. Absolutely loathes them and I find that there is nothing funnier than watching him consume every last bite. This probably sets my little man apart from other babies, but when he doesn’t like a food he doesn’t just refuse to eat it. No, no. I can pretty much get him to eat anything, anytime, anywhere. The way that I can tell the extent of his feelings for the dreaded green bean is because while eating them my sweet tempered little man turns into a monster. Angry faces, growling, gnashing of teeth (well, the two of them that he has anyway), the works. From the moment the first mush of green beans hits his tongue his face contorts (eyebrows knit, eyes narrow, mouth sets) and he begins growling. Now this isn’t terribly unusual as he growls at everything these days whether he is happy or sad, but this growl is an entirely different monster. He barely opens his mouth and lets this tiny growl start in the back of his throat and keeps it ever so quietly going all the way through the green bean atrocities. No matter how much I laugh or how many faces I make to try to break his concentration, the growl never stops and the face is firmly in place until the very last bite has left his mouth. When the torture finally ends (either he has finished all the beans or I give in and let him have something different), he immediately relaxes his face and goes back to being my smiling happy Little. And usually there is a laugh that accompanies it; I translate it as a sort of triumphant guffaw.
So maybe this makes me a bad mom, but I just want to feed him green beans for every meal. What did I do for entertainment before I had him?
This is the relief after being rescued from the green beans.
This Just In...
I can't spell. Seriously. It turns out that having a baby plants a little "erase all" bug in your head and makes it impossible to spell, add 2+2, hold an intelligent conversation, or remember your name half of the time. I have put my wonderful husband on brain duty as a vouchsafe for my stupidity and yet again he saved me. I made a rather mortifying error in my first post (mortifying only because any English major should know better and if you don't know what it was, I'm not saying a word) and being the fabulous person that he is, he told me as soon as he got home.
Though I am already starting to regret sharing this, I feel that I have to mention the worst of the spelling mishaps to relate the severity of the situation. For our family night activity last week we decided to play my favorite game: Scrabble. I love it! Mostly because I am the champion of champions and I always kick trash. However, having not played since I had Everett, I was in for a shock. Scrabble doesn't go well when you can't spell. Who knew? Not only did Bryce win by 99 points, but I tried to spell the word "socks" with an x. I wish I could say that I was trying to pass it off as a proper noun, but I wasn't. Painful. At least we had a good laugh at it when I realized what I was doing; however, it has given me a new goal. I have to do three intellectually taxing things a day until I can at least function on half mast instead of maybe 1/33 mast.
Oh brain, where have you gone?
Welcome, Welcome
I’ve started a blog. It’s official. I finally gave in because… Frankly, it just seemed like it was time. I can’t make any promises, but will endeavor to keep up with it the best I can and use it to share our escapades whenever possible.
In addition to that… I have an announcement, a confession really: I’m writing a book. More like five of them if we are being accurate. They seem to keep spawning. It started with one idea, and then that idea begat another, and then that idea decided that it was actually two ideas, and so on and so on. No good. Or good I guess, but better if these little ideas would stop getting ideas of their own and allow me to finish one idea before creating twelve more.
Either way, I have always been a closet writer, never quite brave enough to own up to the fact that yes, I would indeed love to publish one of these ideas. Not that I have delusions of going straight to publishing all my works and becoming world famous and beloved by generations to come or anything, but it’s time to admit it: Like every other housewife in America
The point of this is, I decided to start a blog in an effort to
a: see if these spawning ideas are anything worth,
b: write what we do that is of worth, and
c: get some blabbing out of my system.
a: see if these spawning ideas are anything worth,
b: write what we do that is of worth, and
c: get some blabbing out of my system.
That said, welcome to the blog.
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