Vampires in the Snow

Josh likes re-enactments...he is especially fond of reenacting the scene from AIRPLANE where "Ted" was describing his drinking problem. Josh has never really had any fondness for bottles and hasn't been overly impressed with sippy cups, so Jon decided that we should try getting him onto "big-boy" cups. Josh will raise the little cup to his lips with both hands, pause to grin at us while we mime the motions to drink, and then he will bring the cup level with his mouth -- where he will then splash his face and dump its entire contents into his lap. Oh, he can drink well enough now, but I think he gets a kick out of watching me scramble and fuss to clean it up. We are also attempting to teach Josh how to use a spoon...and I'm trying to tarp off the entire room -- although given Josh's aim and skill in the matter, it might be wiser to cordon off ten miles around our home. Josh will stab at his food with his spoon, and then when he's caught something in it, he will throw it over his head...and down his back. I know Josh has to learn this stuff, but I really think I should be delegating some of these joys of parenting to his father. Jon keeps asking if he can do anything more to help out, and I think I should be encouraging the male bonding. Years from now, Jon can tell all of Josh's future girlfriends about the miraculous ropes of snotty oatmeal that he dragged out of Josh's nose. I like this idea. I REALLY like this idea. Yep...I think as of this weekend, Daddy and Josh work on Spoon Practice, and I will watch from the safety of a Haz-Mat suit, and laugh hysterically.


Speaking of bio-hazards...I think I'm going to have to add more garlic to our diet. Jon and I usually try to be fair about who gets to deal with the diapers, but there have been times when we try to stall, and whoever gets the best line (or at least the line that we find both amusing)usually gets to sit it out and the other has do go in and wade through whatever needs waded through. "Oh yeah? Well, I changed a diaper that had more ___ in it than a full session of Congress in an election year." (I said it made us laugh, I didn't say you'd be amused.) Josh has little patience with either dirty diapers, or our jokes, and he'll only let this go on for a few moments. He has learned the art of "glomping" -- which is a term we picked up at the anime conventions. It means "a full-out charge culminating in a flying-bear-hug" -- (you ain't seen nuthin' yet until you've seen a grown adult in a Sailor Moon costume hurling herself at some poor sap at the end of the hall at top speed -- of course, there was one year when a six-foot tall, black gentleman was the one in the Sailor Moon costume...and watching him glomp the poor saps at the end of the hall brought the experience to an entirely different level -- ah, memories).



An impatient, glomping Roo is not a good thing (just look at what he's done to his crib rail !).








A week ago he not only glomped me, but leaned in like he was going to hug or kiss me
-- AND BIT THE CHEST THAT FEEDS HIM!!!! Jon didn't fare much better two days ago. We were playing the same game again, and by God! Josh had had enough...He marched up to Jon and stared him down, and tapped him. When poor Jon smiled and reached out for him (totally misunderstanding Josh's true intent), Josh reached out and with a quick swipe, he attempted to rip out a substantial swath of Jon's chest hair. So, having finally learned our lesson, we (I) have decided that from now on, Jon will simply change all of the really horrible diapers and I won't. Heck, that was easy. I'm getting really good with this whole delegating thing. Decision made and no more stalling -- and both of our chest areas shall remain intact from now on.

Which is more than can be said for my lower back and my arm. Josh's so big...he's almost outgrown the 18 month-old clothing, he wears a size 8 in children's shoes, and he's almost up to my waist now. He has gotten so incredibly tall, but more importantly, he's finally figured out how strong he really is. When I was little, I found a beagle puppy with a collar wandering our neighborhood. I got the bright idea to find its home and wouldn't you know, that stupid beagle nearly dislocated my arm as it literally dragged me up and down every darn block in town. Three hours later I found its owner and went home nursing my damaged shoulder and grousing about beagles...( it was a full two months after this incident before I would be able to bring myself to even read PEANUTS again. Stupid beagles.) -- Josh isn't stupid, but in strength and sheer determination, he reminds me of that racken-fracken beagle puppy. More importantly, he's reminding my arm, which keeps locking at the elbow while attempting to bend in the wrong direction. We're still trying to get him back on his sleeping-through-the-night routine...but it's been hampered by a couple of things. Josh tosses around in his sleep and kicks off his blankets...and his stomach's still adjusting to the heavier, spicier adult food we've been offering him -- He would have to have inherited my love of pepperoni pizza. So, we put him down for the night, and he starts to talk or laugh or yell...in his sleep! Sometimes, I lean against his crib and stroke the back of his neck and he settles back down...other times, when his stomach is rebelling against the big-kid food, I have to reach all the way down to him and haul up what feels like thirty-pounds of dead weight. I have to stand on tip-toe to get positioned and balanced well enough to get him out of the crib, and most of the time he continues his sleeping conversations. A few doses of gripe water and some time in a fuzzy blanket, and he snuggles down to sleep...but it does tend to shorten the nights substantially.

The weather has been causing any number of troubles lately...we probably got about four or five inches of snow and several days of freezing rain, and my attempts to gallivant were rather curtailed. I've had to do a boy-hand off to the neighbors so that I could do battle with the frozen pipes, armed only with a hairdryer and a fuzzy robe...Our basement is dry, but sooooo low, and I felt like I was trying to audition for the part of a hobbit as I ducked my head below the droopy insulation and cobwebby beams...It took me forty-five minutes and a scalding bath to finally stop walking around like Quasimodo. We've lost power once, and on a few particularly cold days, we even found a leak in our water system ... that got resolved quickly, but it was not fun...well, not fun for me...For Josh, though....

We took him outside to enjoy his first two real snow days. It took about thirty minutes to get two pairs of pants, one pair of socks, two coats, two mittens and the fabulously silly penguin hat (Thank you, "Grandma" Nancy -- it was adorable!!!)

on him for two twenty minute jaunts outside. The snow was almost up to his knees, but he was so happy. He waddled around, arms out as though he were getting ready to take off, stomping firmly into the snow, tasting it on his tongue and just watching it in absolute wonder. As with every new experience he's had, he waited, watched and studied every aspect he could with an intensity that seems well beyond his years. I am really enjoying this part of the Mommy-hood thing...when he discovers something new, it's like I'm being allowed to discover something new right along with him.






Wait a minute...does that mean that I have to discover puberty again?!! Aw, He-yell, No. Jon, really I mean it this time --- find that contract we got when Josh was born...there's got to be a loophole somewhere.

(Josh's very first snow angel)

Josh Gets Twitterpated

Josh's first play date (with a girl!) was darn close to being an only child affair, as I had his box to Abu Dhabi packed and ready to go...and all that was needed was to stuff the small howly creature in and send him off with a wave and a smile. Goodbye, Josh. He was up almost ALL NIGHT last night. Which meant _I_ was up almost ALL NIGHT last night (let's be fair, Jon was probably up too). I'd get him to sleep. I'd snuggle, I'd nurse, I'd hold...and the second I laid him out on his bed -- it would start all over again. Ahhhhhhh!! Ahhhhhhh!!! Pick him up, he was fine...put him down, and the Inquisition couldn't have pulled a better confession. Jon thought initially that his tummy was upset due to the cardboard pizza that had made up our dinner the night before...but at five o'clock in the morning, I thought I was in the clear...I put him down and he was out and I wobbled badly into our room and flopped on the bed...and the howls began the moment I touched the mattress. I was about to bolt from the bed, looking (and all too ready to act) like a Fangora centerfold, when Jon wisely tapped me out, and went in to do bedtime battle with the boy. If Jon held him upright, Josh would stay asleep...but if you put him down, he'd wake up and howl. I never did go back to sleep, but the boy was safe and soothed and he finally stayed out. You'd think that as many times as I've gone through this that I would have realized that it was his teeth...but NO-Oh-Oho-no! He now has four teeth breaking the gums, which brings the tooth total to 7! I never thought to check...and a little Tylenol would have gone a long way to a calmer night. Well, hopefully, between now and when the next seventeen teeth come in, I will buy a clue and keep well stocked on the Tylenol squeegee tubes. I should have it embroidered on my forehead - "Check Gums First, Give Tylenol, THEN send the child to Abu Dhabi." Of course, with my luck, I'll forget to look in a mirror. Yeesh! Then again, I don't seem to have the market cornered on clueless maternal habits. I was watching a show on Animal Planet called MS ADVENTURE that had a segment on the Tasmanian Devil. Seems that this poor creature spends only six weeks of every year in a non-preggers state, and the rest of the time she's hauling around three to four kits in a backwards facing pouch. As the kits get older, they start hanging on with teeth and claws, but the pouch can only hold them around their heads and shoulders. For several weeks, until they are totally weened, as the mother Tazzie runs up and down the rocky areas around her den, the four little kits hindquarters are bounced and jounced off of every rock and stick and bump in the path she can find. She may not do it deliberately, but it's really as absolutely funny as it sounds.



So, back to the play date. For at least two days, I had been channeling my mother in all of her cleaning frenzy fury. This is not a common occurrence. I don't like cleaning, as a general rule. I like beating a path and occasionally poking things...I do NOT do the Dance of the Martha Stewarts, but the house usually looks comfortably lived in (and in fairness, Jon is usually the one that sets the cleaning pace, so it's not really a disaster area). The only time this is different is when we have company coming that has never been here before, and I become possessed with the desire to bluff-clean my way into their good graces. Since getting me in a cleaning mood usually takes poking me with a sharp stick over a period of months, Jon was all too willing to throw in if I were charging around like a wild cleaning dervish. Countless dust bunny warrens lost their lives, and our home is emptied of hundreds of "Bobs" (*for those of you just tuning in, we call all Dust bunnies, "Bob"). Our dining room became a dining room again, and lost its overwhelming storage area look (Well, Josh claimed our old storage room...it had to go somewhere), and anything that didn't move got file-13'd with a vengeance (and yes, if you must know, Josh moved...but for the record, Jon is still dead convinced that we could get at least a fiver for him in the yard sale). I needed two more hours to clean the day Heidi H. and Anna showed up...and so I changed Josh, got him nursed and set with some books and toys in his crib and began the last mad dash. For the first bit, Josh was fine. He would "read" out loud to himself, or talk to his bear or dog. I'd check in every couple of minutes between projects, and sometimes cart him around when I could work one handed, but for a while he had to be in the crib. Then he ceased to be amused. He usually has the run of the living room and while his crib is huge, he was not impressed. He started taking out his issues on the pop-up book Mom had given him. He ripped out every single pop-up, and just in case I didn't get the message, he would hold the pieces up in my face and shake them at me as I cruised in and out of his room, all the while yelling at the top of his lungs. Very subtle, our boy.



And so, at last, the girls arrived, and for the first thirty minutes, neither Josh nor Anna seemed to know what to do. Anna stayed firmly in her mother's lap, and Josh, in abject awe, kept poking Anna in the nose and patting her head. Anna took all of this with amazingly good grace, and pronounced Josh cute. Josh began talking in excited bubbly speak, and Anna began to feel comfortable enough to check out the toy selection, and Josh refused to leave her side. Where she went, Josh would march determinedly after. We opened up the house and the two of them began to explore, but Josh never wanted to be far from his new friend. She found some of our pinwheels, and began to play...and then Josh, who had never taken an interest in pinwheels began charging around the house with them. Anna loves bread (and boy, will she fit in well with this crew) and at lunch Josh just kept handing her his with these big ol' smiles all over his face. He was enraptured with everything about her, and Anna was simply amazing. She was such a little lady and so vocal. She's eighteen months old, and can label everything and can not only contribute to conversation, but can initiate it. The only down side was that I had it in my head that the kids would play, and Heidi H. and I would sit down, do the coffee thing, and chat. Ha! You can't do the coffee and chat thing with two small ones in the mix...you must always being playing corgi, and riding herd on the little critters. Sadly, I learned little more about Heidi than I had already known. Maybe we can rectify that later on, as both Anna and Josh have limited experience with other kids, and we plan to have many, many play dates in the future.



Anna has claimed me as a friend. She was often grabbing my hand and dragging me to see something (usually the dragging would mean that I would have to step over and around Josh, who didn't want to be left out of the fun), like Koda (or as Anna called him, "Soda-Kitty...who has claws" -- a new experience for Anna who comes from a clawless kitty home). We ate spaghetti and made elephant ears, and both of them just played and played and played.





When Heidi finally had to pack up and go, there wasn't any fussing or fighting (although in my head I was wailing, "NOOOOOOO!!! I DON'T WANT YOU TO GO!!!! I Wanna Keep Playing!!!!") and Anna was apparently totally zonked within minutes of being strapped into the car seat. Josh was able to see them off, but he was fighting a losing battle. He had been up all night, and hadn't slept at all during their visit. I carried him into the changing table, which has been the scene of numerous battles of wills, and all he could muster was, "Mmm-Um, Um." in a whispered mumble. He slept hard until almost six, and then slept hard from 9:30 until six the next day...Yes, Virginia, we had a full night of sleep for the first time in weeks! Whoo-Hoo. Darn Skippy, I'm inviting the girls back again. 'Cuz Josh has to socialize and all that. Yeah, right...socialize...I'm not thinking of sleep at all, just the boy. It's all about the boy.