Adventures of Fast Turtle and Baby Bug

Some pumpkin magic, courtesy of Aunt Tee.

Ready for the neighbourhood Halloween Party! In case you can’t tell, we’re dressed up as a ballerina and spiderman.

Courage is like — it’s a habitus, a habit, a virtue:  You get it by courageous acts.  It’s like you learn to swim by swimming. You learn courage by couraging.

Mary Daly, feminist theologian

One of my very favorite “mommy” writers, since before the birth of Turtle, has been Catherine Newman. If you have, oh, say, hours of free time, I urge you to check out the archives of her blog on BabyCenter (here). I promise, you will laugh, cry, laugh until you cry, make everyone in your office poke their head in your door to see just what in the world is going on. She is really that funny

Once she left BabyCebter, she showed up here, with her own blog. She also writes on a regular basis here. Thi gig is morphing from just fun stories to recipes-and-hopefully-fun-stories. I’m sure that, interspersed with some good food, there will still be nuggets of parenting wisdowm or just the occasional scatalogical humor.

Can you imagine yourself, swimming peacefully in the beautiful blue ocean, and seeing something with a mouth this big come swimming up next to you? Kind of makes Jaws look like a bath toy. It might kind of look like this:

Doesn’t that just give you the heebie-jeebies, just a little bit? Luckily, Turtle and Bug were much more fascinated than scared, and the whole exhibit was really interesting for the whole family, and very doable in one morning. I even wrote a review!  

My dear Baby Bug,

It’s almost your second birthday! Why, I really can’t believe it; I still remember you so small and helpless. I still remember the sleep-deprived haze of the first few nine months. I still remember….

THIS:

I’m sorry; when you are 15, or 13, or perhaps even sooner than that, you will read this post and want to kill me. I will show it to any prospective young men who come sniffing around, and you will REALLY want to kill me. I know, because we still have a picture of me at 3 months laying in the buff on a bearskin rug. I kid you not. So, Bug, I can empathize with your teenagerly outrage.

But I can’t help myself! Look at those baby cheeks! That little baby mouth! That round, round face! This is you at 6 months. Just be happy you have hair. Trust me.

And here you are, 10 months old. Still with the sweet cheeks, but looking slightly more like a person and slightly less like a stay-puft marshmallow baby. (Wait, did I just write that?? SORRY!)

I especially love how your little teeny toes are barely poking out of your pants.

Here you are on your first birthday…and you will LOVE me for this one! You really liked this crown, although we forgot about it until everyone had left and it was waaaaay past bedtime. Which is why, about 30 seconds after this picture, you fell over flat on your face (hey, you’d only just mastered walking) and were inconsolable. But hey, the crown was great while it lasted!

And, oh my goodness, brand new little you! Here you are, just one day old. And, except for the hair (which I’ve said before, you LUCKED OUT with the hair, little girl. I mean, little bald boys are fine. Bald girls get hair bows taped to their heads, and I don’t think you would have liked that very much.) you look just like your big brother. Just exactly, exactly like his little twin who is just maybe a little more soft and delicate looking. Or is that my culturally ingrained conceptions of “girl” coming out?

Anyway, looking at you now, I can hardly believe you were ever this small, but you were! Oh! but you were. Our tiny little mouse. Or, tiny little mouse-beast with a cry to wake all the wee dead mouse-beasties from the grave. I’m just sayin’–if you were baby #1, I don’t think we’d necessarily be a two-baby family right now. That’s all.

So, as we approach the big TWO for my little baby bug, I just wanted to capture a few of my fave Bug pictures.

[And also say a quick prayer of gratitude to whichever saint is in charge of peacefully sleeping-thought-the-night babies. I haven't forgotten what those first nine months were like, I promise. So, consider this my candle lighting of the year.]

I stole this from an old high school friend I recently caught back up with (thank you, facebook!) because a) I too am procrastinating and b) find my husband supremely fascinating and therefore you should too.

1. He’s sitting in front of the TV, what is on the screen?
News (preferably BBC) or that horrible “Catch a Predator” show about catching pedophiles. It’s his version of watching an awful car wreck, only this car wreck is the EXACT SAME each week, and invariably at the end he says, “This doesn’t happen in Turkey.” To which all I can do is nod sweetly. And roll my eyes at him, but only a little.

2. You’re out to eat; what kind of dressing does he get on his salad?
Turkish dressing: oil, lemon & salt. Or, ranch, if lemon is unavailable.

3. What’s one food he doesn’t like?
Let me tell you what his ideal meal is: soup, salad, rice, “watery food.” Anything outside of that is a stretch. Even such crowd-pleasers as meatloaf, turkey and mashed potatoes, spagetti and meatballs….it’s been a long, hard road, but we have both just accepted the fact that he likes what he likes, and although he’ll eat whatever is put in front of him, he doesn’t have to like it.

4. You go out to the bar. What does he order?
Coke. Wait, why are we in a bar? We’re never in bars. Okay, ASSUMING for the sake of argument that we hapen to be in a bar…coke. With no ice. Or hot tea, only he’ll make me ask for it. For a nice cup of hot tea. In a bar. See why we are never in bars?

5. Where did he go to high school?
Istanbul-Ortakoy.

6. What size shoe does he wear?
10

7. If he were to collect something, what would it be?
Garage sale finds.

8. What is his favorite type of sandwich?
Feta and tomato.

9. What would this person eat every day if he could?
See above, #3. Plus tea. (And I would add that he actually does eat these things *most* every day).

10. What is his favorite cereal?
Not a cereal fan.

11. What would he never wear?
A speedo.

12. What is his favorite sports team?
Fenerbahce! (Soccer)

13. Who will he vote for?
He can’t vote. NO, he’s not a felon.

14. Who is his best friend?
His uncle Zafer, his friend Goksal, me?

15. What is something you do that he wishes you wouldn’t do?
Haha, a loaded question. Clip my toe/fingernails in any location other than DIRECTLY INTO THE TOILET. No more than 1 inch above the toilet seat, lest an offending nail leap away from the bowl to hide somewhere only he can find it…

16. How many states has he lived in?
One-good ol’ Virginia.

17. What is his heritage?
Turkish, proud, proud, ancient Ottoman civilization.

18. You bake him a cake for his birthday; what kind of cake?
Something very moist, not too sweet, and definitely little-to-no icing. He’d be fine with brownies, too.

19. Did he play sports in high school?
Soccer.

20. What could he spend hours doing?
Kissing the babies! Organizing our millions of baby photos. Talking about the cute things the babies did that day.

If you can think of a reward, we used it to try and bribe her: more princess toys, a Barbie dream house, a weekend in Cancun with Dora, a chocolate pony that shits M&M’s.

This lady, Dooce, is so far beyond funny, I can’t even tell you. I’m literally choking back the laughter/tears reading her blog.

Last night, Fast Turtle, Baby Bug and I sat in the bathroom for at least a half an hour, singing songs and trying to poop. (The kids, not me. I was just singing.) After a fun–but, sadly, unproductive–time in the bathroom, we started getting ready for bed. Turtle was laying on the floor, getting diapered, and Bug was standing near him, narrating the process: “Now mommy get the diaper, that’s your diaper, not my diaper, and mommy put on the diaper on the boy parts…”

Turtle is just listening to her narration when he all of a sudden points to her, as she is standing there, naked, and says: “And that’s your girl parts!”

Evidently his pointing came a little too close for Bug’s comfort, because she backed away a little, and covered her girl parts with one hand. She shook her finger at Turtle and said: “NO, Turtle, don’t touch my girl parts!”

At this point, I saw a teachable moment to reinforce how girl and boy parts are private.  I started to interject, “That’s right, we don’t touch your girl parts because they are private–” and Baby Bug jumped in to explain:

“And they’re BREAKABLE!”

[Of course, like all little kids, Bug and Turtle have learned that some things we don't touch--like mommy's tea cups--because they are glass and they are breakable. So, it's no surprise that Bug would extrapolate from untouchable cup = breakable cup to untouchable private parts = breakable private parts. But, still...I haven't stopped laughing yet at the sight of her standing there, naked as a little jay bird, chiding Turtle about her breakable girl parts!]