Clockwise:
- Family portrait
- The boy, the husband and the big yellow house
- The boy and the water buffalo at the zoo
- The boy trying to understand why we still have the metal post for a political sign long gone in our yard
- Peacock at the zoo
- Run, boy, run!
- Our anniversary
- Daddy and the boy
- Toddler lunch carnage
- The boy and the elephants
- Sunflower seedlings
- The boy and the window well
Books: I Like It When . . .by Mary Murphy – We still have this in our possession. The boy memorized it after one freaking reading. He loves it. Where Is Home, Little Pip? by Karma Wilson – This was a hit and miss. I think it was a little too long to hold a toddler’s attention, but he did ask for it regularly, if even just to get through 1/2 of it before screaming for something else. Bear and Ball by C. Wright – This was a little too young for him. He memorized it and read it to himself by the end of the day. Build A Burrito by Denise Vega – We still have this one, as well. He’s a big fan, especially of the “chiles picantes”, which he repeats the moment we get past the “yummm, tortillllllllla!” Buenos Dias by Berner – He liked repeating the animal noises in Spanish. He thought they were hilarious.
We did a whole lot more B week than I can remember. We ended up taking a week off thanks to everyone feeling a little tired, run down and not making it to the library. He got to watch a whole lotta Happy Feet, probably more than he should have, but, hey, he can sing some Earth, Wind and Fire now! Talk about educational!
Denver’s February has been mild, to say the least. It hit 67° today, 65° yesterday. The entire month has been like this with no end in sight. So, I got complacent and maybe a tad overexcited with the sunflower seeds we picked up at Home Depot a couple of weeks ago.
To be fair, I did wait a week before ripping open the package and, by the time I thoroughly thought through the whole “threat of frost looming until April” thing and “these suckers may pop well before April” thing, I’d already added water to the dirt pellet and had talked up the, “oooh, we’re going to PLANT SEEDS” thing to the boy. I had no choice but to go forward with the “planting too damn early” thing. I just hoped and prayed that these little seedlings would either be duds, or sleepy. They weren’t. Less than a week later, that picture is what we have.
I’ll either be needing to transplant those little suckers into their own clay pots very soon, or follow my nearly uncontrollable urge to plant them, along with my anniversary lily bulbs, and kill them all when the inevitable big March dump comes. If I’m going to slaughter new plants, I may as well do it all at once. Efficiency, people, efficiency. I am so very close to officially losing all semblance of sanity that I went out on Monday, armed with a rake and a one year old wielding a shovel, and raked all the mulch off of my flower bed, making many worms very, very angry at me in the process. I raked for an hour only to pull out a devil weed with a root as big as my freaking fist, rake all the mulch back into place and try to talk my screaming, shovel wielding toddler into coming back into the house with me. Forget Freddy Krueger, trying to take a mini plastic shovel away from a 19 month old that’s screaming and shaking is entirely more terrifying.
Since the weather’s been so nice, Tuesday we took advantage of the last free day at the zoo. And so did everyone.in.Colorado. We spent 30 minutes grumbling and and hollering curse words (the boy was sleeping) at the mass amounts of raging idiots capability-challenged drivers who either couldn’t figure out a stop sign to save their lives or thought it was perfectly acceptable to stop dead in the middle of the lot (with 30 cars piled up behind them) in order to drop their 4 trillion family members off and/or wait for a spot where the family (with 3 kids in strollers) has newly arrived at their car, because putting kids into car seats? Totally only takes 10 seconds. My favorite was the entire family that was having a tailgate party just so they can piss off the entire state of Colorado trying to find parking in order to, I don’t know, maybe ENTER THE ZOO. At right around the time I stuck my head out the window to yell how stupid people were 30 minute mark, it dawned on us that there was a near empty parking lot just down the block. Unfortunately, I cannot share this spot information with you, dear reader, because all 7 of you may make a beeline for that spot next time, which will be good for neither of us, what with my screaming rage and all.
We parked in our Super Secret Spot and ended up in the zoo in 10 minutes flat, that’s including pulling out a sleeping child, removing the stroller, opening the stroller, having a fight with the diaper bag in an attempt to fit it into the giant-but-not-giant-enough stroller basket, placing said (now awake) child in the stroller, getting through the insane amount of strollers, laughing at the people still trying to park, getting through the gates, and receiving our map along with a, “There’s a baby giraffe.” To which the boy looked completely unimpressed and I hooted, “OOOH! BABY GIRAFFE!” because I’m working on embarrassing the crap out of him now so I don’t have to put in as much work later.
We got to see the gorilla eating a banana, the elephant pretend to nearly commit suicide (because it’s gotta be hilarious to just take a step near the edge and hear a billion parents gasp at once), and the bears trying to rip out each other’s jugulars. The boy go to tell every child within ear distance what it was they were looking at over and over again. “OOh! Dat’s…dat’s…dat’s an el-phant! Look at dat! Ooooh! Dat’s…dat’s a big bear! Wow! Look at dat! Dat’s…dat’s…a gowilla! Gowilla eat banana! Wow! Look at dat! PEACOCK! PEAAAAAAACOOOOOOOCK!” It was quite a bit more memorable for the boy than our first visit, if only because he has not stopped reminding us there was a gorilla! And it was eating a banana! And there was a peacock! PEACOOOOOOOOOCK! Because we absolutely would not be able to remember that had he not hollered it 2 inches from my face at 3 o’clock this morning. Absolutely not.
ETA: I almost forgot the high-low-light of the day. There is a Nemo-esque clown and blue tang fish mini-aquarium at the zoo. A seemingly sweet 9-or-so year old little girl was standing, alone, next to us screeching, “HI, DORY!” at the blue tang fish. This seemingly sweet 9-or-so year old lone, little girl then proceeded to SMACK the tank, Darla style, scaring the shit out of the fish in the process. To which both Eric and I exclaimed, “WOAH!” and stared at her like she was from another planet. Would the proper response then have been to tell her not to do that? Or would it have been to, I don’t know, walk away while questioning where the hell her parents were and discussing how sweet she LOOKED until she went all Osama Bin Laden on the fish? I’ll let you guess which one I chose.
On Sunday, my husband and I celebrated our second anniversary. It didn’t quite go off as planned, but neither did it two years ago when we did it in the first place.
We had planned to drop the boy off at my folks’ as we did last year. Unfortunately, my folk’s opted to go “up the hill” (code for “going gambling just to tick Jess off and cause her to give us an hour long lecture on the economy”) the week previous and, as usual, came home sick. While my dad insisted that it was a sinus infection, I didn’t want to risk it. Something funny happens when you become a parent, you become downright terrified of any and all risk of infection because there is nothing worse than being sick with a sick child.
We had a nice, loud dinner at the restaurant in which Eric proposed (well, a sister of the restaurant), and then went grocery shopping, just the three of us. My anniversary present was a bag of my favorite lily bulbs and a million on-sale Yo Gabba Gabba shirts for the boy (it is the year for cotton afterall). Eric got more knick-knack boxes.
I forget, sometimes, how much Eric does for us, for me. He keeps our cars running (in fact, he’s outside doing that right now), he loves to cook, he’s happy doing the dishes (if only because he has to re-do them after I’m done), and he’s willing to put up with hanging up all the laundry because I not only despise it but am too lazy short to get them up there right. I’m much more grateful for him than I let on most of the time and that really needs to change. He should’ve gotten more than knick-knack boxes.
While our anniversary night out won’t be until this weekend, it will be without the boy screaming, “More agua! More WHEEEEE!*” which will make it at least 40x less fun. I must be the only girl who doesn’t entirely look forward to a date night with her husband. I should, and I feel kinda awful that I don’t but, really, I’m not sure if I know how to have adult conversation anymore. I have a feeling it’ll be a whole lot of, “I miss the boy. When are we going to see the boy? Did you see the boy when he did that ridiculously awesome thing that I bet no other child on the face of the planet has ever done? When are we going to see the boy again?”
On occasion, I get a little worried that I may have lost myself. Which would entirely suck, because it took a long time to find myself in the first place. Of course, if this is me forgotten, I think I’m okay with that. I have a wonderful family, a caring husband and a beautiful son. I don’t think I could ask for more.
Happy 2nd Anniversary, Eric. I love you.
* Wheee is the boy’s term for, “run me down the aisles in the shopping cart at break(other-shopper’s)neck speeds while I stare at the ceiling and yell, “WHEEEEEEEEE!”
I haven’t painted since well before Ben was born. The moment I found out I was pregnant, I stopped painting. I didn’t want to deal with the fumes. After that, I just didn’t have any time or energy.
After my computer opted to go explode on me again, I decided to sit down and paint something for our kitchen, since it has nothing hanging in it but a calendar. The husband’s calendar that he calls mine so that he can have an excuse for having n+1 calendars flying around the house. So, during the boy’s occasional moments of “Hey, I guess I can live without nursing for the next 10 minutes”, I sat down and painted.
This picture does not do the painting any justice. At all. I took it with my blackberry then spent countless frustrating minutes on Eric’s computer trying to make it look somewhat non-6 year old got into mommy’s paints-ish. It didn’t work. Hopefully, I can get a better shot uploaded soon. A shot with my amazing garlic. The rest of the painting is eh, but my garlic? Best freaking 1/8th inch garlic ever painted. Ever. I dare you to prove me wrong.
I’m proud of myself for finishing this and, now that I’m back into it, I’ve caught the bug again. I may not be very good at it, but I enjoy it and it makes me feel a little more like me. I mean, there’s nothing wrong with being the boy’s mama. That’s the best title I could ever have. Still, once in a while, I’d like something to just be Jess. Is it strange that saying that out loud makes me feel like a selfish hag?
– We still have this in our possession. The boy memorized it after one freaking reading. He loves it.
– This was a hit and miss. I think it was a little too long to hold a toddler’s attention, but he did ask for it regularly, if even just to get through 1/2 of it before screaming for something else.
– This was a little too young for him. He memorized it and read it to himself by the end of the day.
– We still have this one, as well. He’s a big fan, especially of the “chiles picantes”, which he repeats the moment we get past the “yummm, tortillllllllla!”
– He liked repeating the animal noises in Spanish. He thought they were hilarious.
, probably more than he should have, but, hey, he can sing some Earth, Wind and Fire now! Talk about educational!
