opposites

Baby Bug: What’s the opposite of pretty?

Fast Turtle: Ugly!

Baby Bug: What’s the opposite of a star?

Fast Turtle: The sun!

Baby Bug: What’s the opposite of a spoon?

Fast Turtle: A knife and fork. No-wait! A spork!

Baby Bug: What’s the opposite of a octopus?

Fast Turtle: A squid!

Baby Bug: What’s the opposite of silly?

Fast Turtle: Boring!

After this exchange, I didn’t have the heart to explain opposites to them…but I did tell them that the opposite of a star is a black hole. I’m either the coolest mom ever or I’ve just totally screwed their science aptitude for life.

Where are you, Summer?

It’s only July 2nd, and yet I already feel the summer slipping away. Perhaps that’s too melodramatic; what I really feel is the summer weekends filling up with activities. All fun activities, all things I’d like to do, but still. When you’re working and in school, weekends are about the only time you have to do all those fun chores like cleaning the bathroom. Attempting to make food for the week. Or, much more likely in my case, playing with the kids. I have pretty much given up on cleaning the bathrooms in any way which cannot be satisfied with one of those clorox wipes (in my defense, I do try to at least wipe-down the bathroom regularly) in favor of rolling around on the floor with the babies. I also have discovered a new solution to clutter: don’t put it away. Give it away! In fact, we have gotten so good at this that Fast Turtle regularly finds a too-small teeshirt or a baby toy and brings it to me, saying, “Mama, this is for a baby. Let’s sell it!” or “Let’s give it to Baby Cousin!” And we do.

This is my son!

ACTORS: Turtle and grampa (otherwise known as “Beeba”)

SCENE: Turtle is running around the house with a cowboy hat on his head.

Beeba: Wow, look at you, cowpoke!

Turtle: I’m not a COWPOKE, I’m George Washington, leading the army! [I swear, he really said this.]

Beeba: Oh, you’re George Warshington? [Note the mid-west/Ohioan "warsh" for "wash"]

Turtle: No, Beeba, it’s not Warshington, it’s WASHington!

Hahaha, this is so great. I’ve even been careful to curb my proneness to making fun of Warsh-talk in front of the kids, maybe out of some great maturity that struck after having babies (ha!). But, clearly, Turtle has inherited both his mom’s fine ear for languages and her ability to correct those around her ruthlessly.

Of course, I blame aunt Tee, because if anyone is merciless in the anti-Warsh movement, it’s her.

Not an End, Just a Transition

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.

It’s almost your birthday, Baby Bug!

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.]

Laughing so hard I’m crying

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.

Private Parts

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!]

Crying it out

My poor little Baby Bug, she’s just not an easy-to-bed little girl. She’s happy enough to head upstairs, and thrilled to be able to sit on Fast Turtle’s bed for story time (and they are so adorable sitting there together, drinking their milk, asking me to “read” a story, which really means tell them a story). She’s usually the one who decides when the story about Kah-Sharkie and his sister Cah (Jah)-Sharkie is done, and lets me know that she’s ready to go to her room and rock with mommy. So we rock, we hug kitty and pillow and 2 blankets (shades of Turtle’s old animal family, long since retired to the animal basket–isn’t it funny how siblings can be so the same without even trying?), and mommy sings the same song that I sung for Turtle back when he still needed to be rocked. But then, once my voice has nearly given out and I’m dying to escape downstairs to finish the dishes or get some school work done or have a cup of tea, I try to put Bug to bed. And that’s where–more often than not–the waterworks begin. Ever since she was born, this little one has been able to shed some tears at a moment’s notice. So she stands there, sobbing, “Where are you, mommy? Where are you? Rock me, rock me!” I stand in the hallway just outside her door, trying to determine if the crying is growing in intensity or lessening, if she’s still standing or if she has laid back down as a prelude to soothing herself to sleep.

Whoever thinks that cry-it-out is hard with a little baby, I can assure you, it’s much harder with a sobbing two year old who demands, “Come BACK, mommy, come back and rock me some more!” and then, “Wipe me, wipe my eyes, mommy, wipe my eyes!”

How do you think the story ends? I think that I spent another 30 minutes rocking and singing “Oh, B’darlin’!” until Bug was finally ready to lay down with kitty and pillow and “more blankets! more blankets!” And yet, there’s too much that goes wrong in life to really wish that the evening had turned out any differently.

the departure

The departure for Turkey was, how can I put this…complete chaos. It’s a miracle they made the flight!

Their flight left at 5:45. So, we planning on being there at 3:45. Leaving our house no later than 3:00. At 2:00 Recep had one bag to pack–his carry-on. I thought we were fine. Oooooh no, was I ever wrong! He’s running around until nearly 3:00 doing last minute who-knows-what, and THEN tells us that we’re driving his aunt and uncle, too, which means we have to take the seat–with kid’s car seats–out  of the van, go get them, load them up…knowing how they are (perpetually late) I call over there at around 3 to tell them to be
ready in 5 minutes. Recep’s other aunt answers the phone and says “they aren’t packed yet.” After a couple minutes of my saying “Are you teasing me, and everyone is really all pack and standing there, laughing in the background?” I finally believe her, and tell her to tell them to get ready NOW.

At this point, I am starting to really panic. In the meantime, we are finally getting the van loaded up, the kids packed up in mom & dad’s car, and I have to empty the entire freezer (2 of those GIANT Ikea bags full!) because everything is starting to defrost, and I don’t want to have to throw away all that food. My parents take off, and we leave to go get everyone else. It’s about 3:15. We get there, and Recep starts to bring bags out.

It’s 3:30 and we still haven’t left yet. More bags coming out. (Everyone can take 2 bags to be checked, weighing 50 lbs or less, and 2 bags to be carried on, and they have ALL maxed out. Doing the math…that’s 8 GIANT suitcases and 16 carry-ons, plus a car seat and a stroller.) It’s after 4:00 before we finally get everyone in the car and we RACE to the airport. We pull up, everyone jumps out, I wave over one of the baggage guys with the big rolling carts, and…someone tells them to go away, that we don’t need help. So I went and got two of the little carts that you have to pay for with quarters instead, and tell Recep that if he wants to make the flight he has to RUN to go check in and get their tickets. Somehow they get all their luggage together and go, and since I didn’t hear otherwise, I assume that a miracle happened and they got on the flight. Update: Recep has safely landed in Turkey!

And I went home (well, to my parents’ house, as we have no electricity at home) and crashed.

Bedtime Routines

Bedtime is a funny time for little kids. And by funny, I of course mean long, drawn-out, tortuous, and full of all their least-favorite things to do: diaper changes, clothing changes,  teeth-brushing, and leaving the fun that’s going on to go to sleep. A parent’s natural reaction to their wee one’s dislike of bedtime? Let’s draw it out as long as possible! Let’s have a bath, brush teeth, get in pyjamas, read two stories, cuddle, sing a song, say night-night to every object in the room, get in bed, rub their back, whisper “night-night, sleep tight!” as you back slowly from the room…and that’s not even considering those poor parents who have to do this routine more than one time!

With Fast Turtle, we have the bunny and bear family. He must have all five (yes, 5) of them in his crib at night. He must name them all (Mama Bunny, Daddy Bunny, Baby Bunny, Blue Bear and Pink Bear. Daddy Bear must be within sight but vehemently insists that he not be in the crib; I often wonder if it’s because he doesn’t like Daddy Bear, who is a more recent addition to the line-up and maybe isn’t ready to move all the way from the toy shelf to the crib,and so he ends up in the no-bears land of sitting on the floor, forlornly looking up at Blue and Pink.) and he must be physically touching, if not laying on top of, all of them.

Before the bunnies and the bears, however, there’s the milk and the rocking. We have an exact routine of how he drinks his milk, what I sing when I rock him (“Oh B’Darlin” he calls it; our version of “Oh My Darlin’ Clementine!”), how when he finishes his milk he must say “Done, done!” and then I put the cup on the nightstand, he says “Hands, hands!” and I tuck the blanket over his arms. Then it’s a few minutes of rocking and singing, and then into the crib with the bears. And bunnies. And did I mention the three blankets? And how they all must be covering him? And his ears–his ears must be covered. You’d think we had no heat or were living in an igloo, the way this one insists that I cover his ears (“I ears, I ears, mommy!”).

The good thing about his little family of woodland creatures is that they are only for sleeping, not for dragging all around the house, so that at least the hunting around for them I have to do is limited to digging them out from between the crib and the wall where he shoves them. Because evidently at night they like to wake up and party and then “animals jump in the hole!” Of course they do.