How I Wonder What You Said
I turned in The Beaner's application to the nearby Montessori pre-school yesterday. (Long story about odds of him getting in; I'll probably explain in more detail at a later date.) Two of the questions on the Child Profile were "At what age did your child start speaking?", and the follow-up "Does s/he speak in 2-3 word phrases or sentences?"
I actually had to look up when The Beaner started speaking here in the blog (another reason I need to back up this site regularly: it's essentially our Baby Book), but the answer to Part B was a resounding yes. Every day The Beaner comes out with longer and longer sentences, and his pronounciation is improving by leaps and bounds, too. (Not everyone can understand everything he says, and we still sometimes have trouble with new words when they're said out of context, but his language skills are so far beyond what they were just a month ago that it amazes me.) He carefully repeats every new word we share with him, sounding like nothing so much as a student learning a foreign language. And then he stores it away, waiting for an opportunity to use the new word in a sentence. He's a vocabulary lesson cliché.
He still enjoys singing in almost-gibberish—and often as fast as he possibly can—but every now and then we hear a phrase come out so perfectly in the middle of a song that we do a double-take. This isn't the best version of Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star we've heard him belt out (he usually gets the part about "like a [mumble] in the sky" right, and he muffs it here), but it's representative of his enthusiasm for singing and his grasp of a few key phrases:
He seems to know it's the season for Christmas music now; whereas he rejected every one of my attempts to sing Winter Wonderland or Let It Snow back in October, he now eagerly requests "laughing all da way" (Jingle Bells) and "look at da show" (Sleigh Ride) when I snuggle him to sleep at night. He's also started a new bedtime ritual: the Slew of Questions. "What happened to Daddy? [He's downstairs, watching PTI.] Ooohhhh, PTI. What happened to Mommy? [I'm right here.] What happened to {beaner}? [You're right here, too.] Yeah, {beaner}'s right here. What happened to white Saab? [Grandma and Grandpa drove it home to their house.] What happened to black Jeep? [I'm not sure, honey. Maybe it's downstairs.] Maybe it's inna room. [It might be; I think I saw it in the kitchen.] Maybe it's in the chicken." (Inexplicably, he switches back and forth between "inna" and "in the".)
Yesterday after his birthday party, The Beaner also started calling his friend M, whom he's always referred to somewhat confusingly as "Muh-muh", by her real name. He's gone from saying "hep, peesh" (which sounded very similar to "up, please") to saying "I need help, please, Daddy." And then there's the ever-popular (and surprisingly specific) "I want watch Elmo onna DVD. No Tivo, no! DVD! What happened to DVD player?"
This newfound verbal sharing, the ability to have a conversation with our kid is why—among other reasons—this difficult month of parenting has also been one of such joy. It's really true: It does get better and better.
Obviously Taking a Break After NaBloPoMo
I didn't actually plan to take a blogging break after NaBloPoMo (I won prize for sticking with it, btw—yay!), but I'm actually on a roll with work at the moment, and I haven't wanted to take time out between snuggle breaks with The Beaner to convert all the notes I have on my desk into blog posts. Sorry about that.
Speaking of work, I found out last night that one of the most senior engineers on the team—and the only one in my time zone—is leaving. I'm sad for the team because he's going to be wicked tough to replace, and I'm sad for myself because it's going to mean three hours every morning when I won't have anyone to ping when I have a question. The odds of finding another engineer like him are low enough, but the odds of finding someone who'll be in my time zone are virtually nonexistant. It's hard to work remotely when you don't know the team or the product well, even if you're a superstar. Heck, it's hard to work remotely when you *do* know the team and the product well.
Oh well, at least my manager—who's also knowledgeable, patient, and willing to help whenever he's not in a meeting—gets up early most days.
Ugh, Green Onions
I've been planning on writing about the three simple but perfect nights we had this week, but I haven't had a chance yet. It was on my agenda for last night, but I found I was so tired that I just... couldn't... blog.
The three perfect nights started on Tuesday, when we went to the Cherry Hill Mall to buy The Beaner a winter coat and some new pants (I guess we should have expected him to grow out of size 2T quickly, since there's not much difference between 18-24 months and 2T, but somehow we didn't). There's some sale-related goodness around the clothing story that I'll explain in more detail when I actually write the Three Perfect Nights post, but the thing I wanted to mention right now is that I had some delicious Cheesy Fiesta Potatoes at the Taco Bell in the food court that night. The best thing about those potatoes—the garnish that made the dish, IMHO—were the green onions.
Thankfully, the beaner refused to eat any potatoes, though he did have a few bites of my beans-only Crunchwrap Supreme.
Three Perfect Nights
I can't believe how fast I slipped back into my usual mode of having tons of things to write about, but not making the time to write about them. (Notice I said making the time and not having the time; I obviously made the time in November.) Before the backlog becomes crushing and I stop writing for weeks on end (er, too late), I wanted to write about three really great evenings we had last week. When you read about them, you might think, "what's so great about that?", but what I liked about each night was that it gave me a warm glow. Each night made me feel happy. Each night made me appreciate my little family. You can't get more perfect than that.
Tuesday
I proposed walking to the Children's Place on Walnut to buy The Beaner a winter coat, but as they closed at 7pm and Al didn't get home until after 6, the odds of us being able to make it down there in time to shop were slim. We were about to attempt it anyway when The Beaner insisted on going in the car rather than the stroller. At that point we realized a trip to Cherry Hill Mall would kill several birds with one stone: I'd been wanting to check out the sale rack at Gymboree (and use my 20% off your entire order coupon), both of us would rather eat a food court meal than cook dinner, The Beaner would get his ride in the car, and the Children's Place was open mall hours (until 9pm, I think).
I found two pairs of pull-on pants (key when you're toilet training), a hooded sweater, and a fleece pullover—all on the Sale rack—at Gymboree. All sale items were marked down an extra 20%, and I used my 20% off coupon, so despite Gymboree's notoriously high prices, we got a pretty decent deal. I'd received a $100 AMEX gift check as a reward for something I did well, so I paid with that (and got lots of change).
Next we went to the Children's place, where we found winter jackets on sale (I think they were 30 or 40% off). The Beaner protested, of course, when we tried to zip him into the jacket, but he eventually chilled out when I explained very carefully that we were just trying it on for size, and that we wouldn't be so silly as to make him wear a heavy winter coat indoors. The size 3T fit well with room to grow, so we got that, a pair of gloves (to see if he'd wear those instead of the mittens he's rejected), three pairs of socks, and an orange-and-olive striped sweater. I used the change from the gift check, and still had money to spare.
From there we went back to the Food Court, where we agreed that bean tacos and bean Crunchwrap Supremes would hit the spot. We also got a Cheesy Fiesta Potatoes, a half-seltzer/half-Sprite from the Subway, and a vanilla milk from the Starbucks (for The Beaner). The kicker? I had enough money left over from the gift check to buy dinner. The whole trip to the mall was stress free: The shopping was easy, the cashier at Taco Bell was the friendliest I've ever encountered (I kinda wish I'd gotten her name, so I could say nice things about her to her manager/the company), we got everything we came for, and we had some lovely family time together.
Wednesday
I'd been craving lychee martinis ever since our dinner at Nobu, and for some reason I just crave alcohol in general during the holidays (it must be all those old movies where people ALWAYS have cocktails in their hands, because I'm usually just a half-a-glass-of-wine or two-sips-of-beer-and-then-abandon-the-bottle kind of gal), and I decided to do something about it. I proposed taking a family walk to the liquor store to buy a good vodka and some lychee liqueur, and to Tampopo to pick up dinner.
The only tough part about this walk was that The Beaner neither wanted to walk nor wanted to ride in his stroller, which meant I had to carry him. My arms cramped into twisted claws halfway to the liquor store, but I made it. Al and the stroller went to Tampopo to pick up the spicy pork, brown rice bibimbap with egg, and sushi rolls with egg cake and avocado that he'd pre-ordered by phone, and then he met me at the liquor store. Sadly, they had no lychee liqueur, but I made do with some Grey Goose vodka, a splash of dry vermouth, a generous dose of the liquid from the canned lychees I was using, and three actual lychees. Lychee martini + brown rice bibimbap + conversation with the family = LOVELY. Hm, I wonder if it'd be a bad thing to go make another martini right now...?
Thursday
I think we all ate separately, but we still got lots of family time in. While Al was changing out of his work clothes upstairs, I started unloading the dishwasher. The Beaner came over to see what I was doing, so I decided to try an experiment. "Do you want to help me unload the dishwasher?" I asked. "Yes!" said The Beaner. "OK, then, can you find all the plastic bowls and stack them together?" And he did. Just like that, he picked out only the four plastic bowls, stacked them, and handed them to me. He then reached for a porcelain bowl, tugged it out, and handed it over with a "here ya go, Mommy!" At first I thought, "oh no, what if he breaks something?" And then I thought, "who cares? He's obviously enjoying himself, and I really do want him to feel useful around the house—and to get used to helping." We ended up unloading the entire dishwasher together, with The Beaner handing me every glass, bowl, cup, lid, and utensil. Makes me smile just thinking of how well he did the job, and how proud he was when we were finished.
After getting something to eat, The Beaner voted to go out in the car again. I proposed that we go out to see some Christmas lights (which I prefer to do by bicycle, but The Beaner wasn't into that; I talked up the idea, though, so he'll be more excited about it next time). We drove up Kelly Drive toward Manayunk, and then into Manayunk itself. Sadly, we didn't get to see any real houses decorated for the holidays, but Manayunk's downtown was decorated nicely (I wonder if they got the balls that used to hang in Rittenhouse Square off of freecycle? ;). The Beaner requested "milk!" halfway up Kelly Drive, so we went in search of a Starbucks. We found one on the main drag, and I took him in to buy a vanilla milk (plus a latte for myself). It was a beautifully crisp, cold winter night, and the cozy coffee shop and the twinkling lights made me want to sing Sleigh Ride for the 100th time.
Al drove for the return trip, and he crossed Falls Bridge to get to West River Drive. I'd never been on that road before; I imagine as a commuter one would feel the urge to drive as fast as possible around its curves, but as someone who was in the mood to drive at a sleigh's pace, the 35mph speed limit seemed too fast. There was no one behind us, so I asked Al to slow down to 25. He did, and it was magical. Not quite as slow as a bike ride, but similar—and when the lights of Boathouse Row came into view, I forgot my earlier lament that we'd seen no houses dressed for Christmas.
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So, were those three nights boring? Probably, to anyone who didn't experience them with us. But they're exactly the kind of December nights I could have over and over again, and feel like I was in a feel-good movie from the 1940s. Cocktails and sleigh rides in the stroller, anyone?
Unfortunate
Eden was just talking about the burden of being named Eden, and how her husband trumped her by being named Jack Kennedy. From Fussy I cruised over to the NY Times website, where I happened to find this quote in an article about how circumcision can cut the risk of getting HIV from heterosexual intercourse in half:
Circumcision is “not a magic bullet, but a potentially important intervention,” said Dr. Kevin M. De Cock, director of H.I.V./AIDS for the World Health Organization.
Oh yes. I think we have a winner.
Failed Experiment #52, Makeup Edition
Since I regularly mix a bit of foundation with my moisturizer, smear it on my face, and call it makeup, I was intrigued when I saw Neutrogena Healthy Skin Enhancer Tinted Moisturizer on drugstore.com. I was shopping during the 20%-off-your-entire-order sale, so I bought one. Unfortunately, "Light to Neutral" turned out to be about 40 shades darker than my actual skin tone, and I didn't realize that drugstore.com guaranteed the color of makeup, so I threw out the packing sleep (<-Freudian sleep there, I guess) slip I'd need to return it.
Anyway, undeterred, I went to CVS last night to see if there was a lighter color of the stuff. There was; in fact, there were two shades that were lighter than the one I'd ordered. I went with the lightest, Ivory to Fair. Alas, still too dark by several shades:
Does anyone want a bottle of tinted moisturizer in Ivory to Light (10) or Light to Neutral (30), each used only once? I'd rather mail them to a reader than have a Freecycle stranger come all the way to my house for a bottle of makeup.
Poop Dreams (And Nightmares)
I have a reputation in this household for always being right. Not in a "because I said so" way; no, it's more that I either know what I'm talking about or guess accurately most of the time. This reputation was shot all to hell (at least in my own mind) when we went shopping on Saturday, and The Beaner had to poop.
We're in the process of toilet training (something I haven't talked much about here, because I consider it to be a mostly private experience for The Beaner), so when I saw him get into pooping position in Jo-Ann Fabrics, I said, "do you need to poop? Do you want to find a toilet?" He answered in the affirmative to both questions, so I scooped him up and asked the fabric cutter where the bathroom was. Thus began the start of my series of wrong turns.
Well, actually, let me back up a bit. The first wrong turn had to do with the strategy of parking over near the Costco and walking to the rest of the box stores we needed to visit in the giant strip mall on Route 38. (It drives me nuts that you have to DRIVE from one store to another in a box store complex. It's enough to make me pine for old-school indoor shopping malls.) Al suggested that we bring the stroller to help us carry packages, but after ramming it into every display in the sporting goods store, I took it back to the car. I then walked back to the sporting goods store, and we continued on to Jo-Ann Fabrics.
OK, so here I am in the Women's room at Jo-Ann Fabrics (hey, at least they had a bathroom!), holding a toddler who's doing his best to hold in as much poop as he can while I put down a seat cover and figure out how to balance him over the gap in the seat. (WHY is there a gap in the seat, anyway? Can anyone tell me why commercial toilet seats are split in the middle?) I finally get him to put a leg on each side, but I can't scootch him back very far because his legs don't go that wide... and besides, I'm now contradicting his nanny, who tells him to keep his legs together while on the toilet so she can avoid being sprayed accidentally.
Meanwhile, Al has dashed back to the car to get diapers, because we didn't bring any with us when we left the car. Whose stupid idea was it to park the car and walk, anyway?
So I'm holding The Beaner up on the toilet and checking to see if he's done when I notice the water turning yellow. I immediately try to scootch him back a bit farther on the seat, but as I mentioned, there's only so far he can go with that gap in the middle. I look down, and sure enough, there's a puddle growing in his pants. While still holding onto him, I wedge my cell phone between my scarf and my ear as best I can, dial Al, and shout, "BRING PANTS!"
I manage to get The Beaner wiped and off the toilet, and I remove his shoes and pants and set them aside on the floor. It's then that I realize I'm in the Women's room, and Al is not a woman. I shout, "honey, are you out there???" He replies that he is, so I leave The Beaner standing, pantsless, in the middle of the bathroom while I take the diaper bag handoff from Al.
I seem to have taken over the whole bathroom, what with the pants and the shoes in one stall, the changing table in another, and The Beaner walking around half-naked. I get only halfway through undoing the strap on the changing table before deciding that The Beaner's probably over the weight limit for the thing and instead just change him standing up. As soon as I get the backup pants (thank GOD Al brought the whole diaper bag, and not just a diaper) on him and his shoes back on, I send him out to his dad and then start picking up all the detritus. Needless to say, my last stop was at the sink to wash my hands and to try to blot the pee stain on the inside of my right knee.
When I finally emerged from the bathroom, I was all, "WHAT THE HELL WAS I THINKING, ASKING IF HE WANTED TO USE THE TOILET???" How do you carry on toilet training and still run errands? Does anyone have any strategies for balancing toddlers on public toilets? (I finally ended up turning him sideways, but then I got all eeky because his bare legs were touching the toilet—the turn fouled up the seat cover.) To my knowledge, only Babies 'R Us has a stall just for kids; I thought it was cute when I saw it, but now I'm wondering why every store doesn't have one.
Al said the adventure reminded him of the very first time we had to change a poopy diaper in public (that link goes to a post that was intended to be a parody of Martha Stewart's holiday letter from prison, but since the link to her "marthatalks" site seems to be dead now, it might not be obvious). He's totally right, of course. The only difference that time is that he came into the Women's room with me, other patrons be damned.
On a related note, I've been having a ridiculous number of poop-related dreams lately. Actually, I don't think I've ever had a dream about poop—that I can recall, anyway—until last week. I think it was before the Jo-Ann Fabrics Incident that I had a dream, just before waking, that was like the trifecta of poop. I dreamed I was on the toilet in the living room of a rented condo, chatting with someone (my sister?) while I pooped. Just then a work colleague walked in, and I was mortified. I'M POOPING, for god's sake! The horror didn't end there; it was like a messy diaper that requires 28 wipes to clean up. The poop was just everywhere, and no matter how determinedly I tried to wipe it away once and for all, I couldn't seem to do it.
There was a quick scene change at that point; I was off the toilet, and my work colleague and my sister had gone, but I was still in the living room of the condo. I looked around on the floor, and there were clumps of manure all over the Berber carpet. I yelled to Al, "good god, this is a rented condo! We've got to get all this shit cleaned up! OH MY GOD! There's manure EVERYWHERE!"
At this point I thought I woke up to Al telling me I had to get out of bed because The Beaner had a leaky diaper, and the poop had shot up into his hair. He needed help cleaning it up. It turns out that this was part of the dream, too; when I actually woke up, I was alone, and Al and The Beaner were still downstairs playing.
I see now as I transcribe this poop trifecta dream that it was as much about *cleaning up* the poop as the poop itself, which is interesting because I had two more poop dreams last night, one of which was also about getting stuck with the cleanup. In the first dream Al and I were trying to figure out how to manuever The Beaner on the toilet in either the Men's or the Women's room without any help from the other parent when I discovered that there was also a Family restroom. "GRAB IT!" said Al, and I did. Miracle of miracles, it was open.
In the other, which I had shortly before waking this morning, a cat who reminded me of Annie got away from me and pooped partly on the hardwood, partly on the rug before I could let her outside to do her business. Of course, I had to clean it up... and man, that was the biggest pile of cat poop I'd ever seen.
I'm wondering if these dreams are really about poop, or if they're more a message to clean the crap out of my life or something like that. They could also just be a message to clean the damn house, period...
The Perfect Gift for a Proper Philadelphian
Overheard in the Starbucks yesterday, a conversation between two professional-looking women who were probably in their late 20s or early 30s:
Woman 1: How about cuff links?
Woman 2: No, he'll never wear them. He says nobody wears cuff links anymore.
Woman 1: [untranscribeable snort of shock] What? Does he LIVE here?
Jingle All the Way
I think I've mentioned here before that The Beaner's favorite Christmas tune is Sleigh Ride (also known as "look at the show"), though he's also fond of Jingle Bells ("jingle all da way"), Let It Snow ("weather outside"), and The Little Drummer Boy ("parum pa pa pum"). He's been singing a few selections at the top of his lungs lately; listening to a song 30 or 40 times in a row is apparently paying off when it comes to lyric memorization (or mangalization, as the case may be). It's pretty interesting, to me at least, to see what he gets wrong (and what he sings instead).
NOTE: I switched to Flash because not everyone could see QuickTime.
Two Items on the Environment
I hate it when I have a logjam of things to write about; usually the result is that nothing at all comes out. I'm in the process of trying to clear the jam and let a couple logs through at a time. To whit:
We spent Christmas weekend with my parents, and on Christmas Eve Al and I had a grand plan to put The Beaner to bed early and then dash out to the 8:00 showing of The Good Shepherd while my parents kept an ear out for any cries from the crib. The Beaner cooperated by going down at the unheard-of hour of 7:05pm, but alas, our plan was wrecked when we discovered that moviefone.com was wrong: there was no 8:00 showing of The Good Shepherd at the local mall (the one with a Bible store but no Gap) on Christmas Eve. On our way back from the theater we stopped at the still-open Blockbuster and, after scanning the racks and considering both Scoop (me) and My Super Ex-Girlfriend (Al), finally rented The Al Gore Movie (actual title: An Inconvenient Truth).
SCARIEST DAMN MOVIE I'VE SEEN IN YEARS.
I used to be all concerned about the environment and global warming and such in my 20s, but after protesting and writing letters to leaders and giving money to Greenpeace and all that, nothing seemed to come of it. Everyone seemed confused about whether global warming was even real... even though evidence of it mounted on an almost-daily basis. And, honestly, inertia overtook me. When nothing happened right away (either in the environment or in the fight against global warming), it became an easy issue to ignore. I know I should be using less energy, and what we do use should be from renewable sources—I go around turning off lights after Aura and Al all the time, I pay the extra $7.50 or so a month to get some of our electricity from wind farms, and I prefer to walk or use public transit instead of driving—but I also know I could be doing so much more.
I think that's partly why I didn't want to see this movie: I didn't want to face the fact that I wasn't doing all that I could... and I didn't really want to know how bad things were. They're bad, but the situation is not entirely hopeless. Everyone should see this movie, especially Americans. It's time we woke up and faced what we're doing to our planet—what we're doing to our OWN future, not just our children's—and to learn what we can do to reverse the trend, if not all of the effects. At the very least, we need to be talking about global warming—because as Gore says in the movie, nothing much happens in Congress unless an issue is on the tip of every constituent's tongue. This movie will get you talking, I guarantee.
The other environmental item I wanted to mention was this article in today's New York Times: Farmers and Conservationists Form a Rare Alliance. We need more partnerships like this one, where everyone benefits. We as Americans and citizens of the world need to value a clean and healthy environment—not just give it lip service, but attach an actual monetary value to it. It's a short article, and worth reading all the way through for the details about how the deal is structured and what benefits both the shorebirds and the farmers can expect to reap.