stotangirl

... it's been raining since we got up, the Zweeb and I are just damp, and there's a funny smell in the kitchen again. You know what we--and you--need? This:

Seriously apropos of nothing:

"That lady in Mary Poppins? She's a jerk."

... my husband and I will have been married for the same amount of time as we were together before the wedding.

I like balance and symmetry.

And our relationship will be old enough to vote. :)

Happy Anniversary, Scott. I love you a ton.

We went to the park with the glitter shoes today, as this park is not 95% dirt (although I found that mulch in the shoes is almost as grody). The first adult to see the Zweeb (an older lady, I think a grandma) said, "What beautiful shoes!"

Then one little girl asked, "Why does he have girls' shoes on?"

Me: "He wanted them."

Girl: "But why? They're for girls."

Her ex-frat boy looking dad: "He likes them." Then he goes on to discuss his daughter's current obsession with superheroes, as Z. has on a superhero shirt.

Then the hip-hop dad, when his daughter asked the same thing, said, "He likes them. They're pretty cool, aren't they?"

Rock on, guys, rock on.

---

In other shoe-related news, the damn glitter is coming off already. And not in the little bits of shedding I'd expect from something encrusted with glitter, but enough so you can see the shoe underneath. Had I realized this would happen so fast, I'd have bought him the 8s, rather than having him trip around in the 10s.

---

You can anticipate a number of parenting issues you'll have, before you have kids. But some will always surprise you. Today, as my son ran around the playground telling people, "I'm Zweeble. What's your name? Wanna play with me?" I realized--he's not shy.

I'm shy. I was a shy kid, and I'm a relatively shy adult. I would never just walk up to someone and introduce myself like that. It freaks me out that the Zweeble does this, but it's totally me reacting the way I would if forced to do what he's doing naturally.

So, yeah, something to work on. I want him to be wary of stangers, but I don't want him to be shy if he isn't already. Luckily, his father isn't shy (he hates people; it's not the same thing), so I have someone to hep me reel in my id. :)

Lots to do this morning, and today:

Xmas shopping
find the boyo a pair of sneakers that fit
music class
buy milk
get an anniversary card (yes, dealio, that's a reminder
make stroganoff
clean the kitchen
clean the Zweeble's lair
fold laundry
get ready and go to the Evil Empire's Christmas party

I am not entirely sure I will get all of this done. Plus, I woke up this morning with a sore throat. It could be allergies triggered by the cold front that's apparently on its way, or it could be the start of a cold. I'm leaning toward allergies right now, but I'm going to start the Airborne, just in case.

Oh, and I made myself a little iGoogle homepage last night, and they have comics themes! And by that, I mean actual comic book comics--one of which is Owly! The Zweeb loves Owly, and so do I, so my current hompage theme is Owly. Rock!

Parental cliches my husband and I have used over the past five days:

Scott: "Zweeble, I swear, I will pull this car over!"

Laura: "Because I said so, that's why."

(I think Scott was more disturbed at his than I was at mine; one, his is so much a Dad chiche--you want to buy him a sweater and a pipe, you know?--and two, I remember being a kid and thinking that grown-ups liked that whole "Because I said so" routine a lot, I would have to try it when I was old, too.)

So now we figure we need to just give in and burn though as many as we can, but all I can think of is, "Because I'm your mother/father, that's why!" which is really just a variation more than an outright cliche.

Also, the ZQOTD:

(wailing) "I don't want 'no' to happen!"

The Trouble With Tribbles by Edward Gorey.

My father brought the Zweeble five plastic whistles on Saturday (thanks, Dad, really). We took them to the park. They got tangled up by their strings. As we tried to untangle them, a little boy we sort of vaguely know from meeting his mother once about a year and a half ago asked us if he could have one. We asked the Zweeb, he said yes. Kid took the orange one. No meltdowns, things were good.

(there's a bit about a crowd of children then materializing nearby asking for whistles, like something out of an English ghost story except louder and with light-up sneakers, but I digress.)

Today, the Zweeb wants to know where the orange whistle is. Because its best friends, the other whistles, miss it. Can we go by the playgorund and get it? Can we call the kid's mom and ask her for it?

Yaaaaaaaar.

We had finished up dinner, and the Zweeble had squirmed out of his booster-ed seat and was bouncing around.

Z: Okay, what next? (one of his new favorite phrases)

Scott: Well, you need a shower.

Z: (excited, he likes showers now) Yes! Because I am stinky! Smell me, Daddy!

Scott: No!

Z: Smell me, Mommy!

Laura: (pretends to take a whiff) Wow, you are stinky!

Scott has to heed a call of nature. But the Zweeble wants a shower, by dinghy! I turn around--still at the kitchen table--and find him pushing his jeans down. Now they're stuck halfway down his thighs.

Z: Help me, Mommy. Why are they stuck?

Laura: Traditionally, one unbuttons and unzips pants before removing them. (unsnaps and unzip the jeans) Now try.

Dude gets the pants off, the diaper off, and ... well, okay, I have to help with the shirt, and at one point he has the thing halfway oover hius face with one arm trapped behind his head. But he does 75% of the shirt himself. Once naked, he runs to the bathroom to inform Daddy of his new pants-removing prowess, then scoots to the other bathroom. Where he locks himself in.

Laura: (tries the door) Did you lock the door, Z.?

Z: Yes!

Fortunately, we anticipated this when we moved into the house--or Scott did, anyway, which makes sense, just ask his mother--and there are keys over every door to every room in our house. I unlock the door.

Laura: Just for future reference, when one locks oneself in a room, one should turn on the light before turning the lock.

Z: Can I play with the key?

Laura: No.

Z: (shuts door)

So today I ran diagnostic tests on my son.

The backstory: the husband heard about a really good local daycare/preschool,** and he went looking at all the stuff they teach the kiddos: numbers, letters, large and small motor skills, and so on.

I'm on the fence about day care. Pre-K I'm all for, but that's in another year or so. Scott's all right with that--I don't think he's totally set on sending the Zweeb to day care at this point, either, he's just thinking it might be cool and good for our little smartypants--but he did ask what I thought of our starting to work with Z. on some of that stuff he'd seen that the good day care teaches. And that I'm into.

So today while we were drawing, I took some crayons and wrote out the alphabet, numbers 1-10, drew some shapes (if we're going to work on shapes we need some flash cards or something, because my squares are not entirely square. Any confusion about squares on the Zweeble's part is totally my fault), and scribbled all the colors they'd mentioned on the website (blue, green, yellow, orange, red, black, brown, gray, pink, purple).

He did pretty well. He recognizes a lot of letters, but he's getting letters that look similar (like C and G) confused, and he only recognizes 1-5, though he can count to 10 (more or less). He did great with shapes and colors. So I'd say he's on par with the other kids his age in terms of what he knows in these areas. Maybe a little higher in the stuff he's interested in (he digs colors).

I don't want to push him to learn anything at this age. Learning stuff as a toddler should be fun and somewhat self-directed, I think. But we can keep doing what we've been doing, just with an eye to, say, recognizing the difference between O and Q, and focusing more on 6-10 when we do counting.


**let me just add, when I was researching Pre-Ks a month ago, I had heard about and looked at the same school, but at the time Mr. dealio was not that interested. I'm not sure what caused the wind-change, but I want it on record that I was there first!

I spent pretty much all day yesterday cleaning the house, and when Scott got home, you could not tell. The joys of a clingly toddler, let me tell you.

The weird smells are both gone, though, so there's that.

Today I have to get the kitchen under control. Then the laundry. And run errands.

Gah.

I thought, when I had a kid, that it might make me like the holidays more.

Nope.

Today we made Christmas cookies. That sounds warm and cozy and very Norman Rockwell, yeah?

Well, it doesn't include the screaming fits at 8:00 last night when I wouldn't make cookies then, the nagging and mini-meltdowns while I tried to clear off the counter and find a recipe this morning, the weird smells in the kitchen and the bathroom that I needed to work on removing while the dough set up, the freakout about how the cookies didn't like being in the hot oven because it was, obviously, hot, and the mini-meltdown over letting the damn things cool for two minutes.

On the other hand, it does cover the mixing, the surprisingly calm acceptance of letting the dough set up in the fridge for 2 hours, the rolling and cutting of the dough, making and sprinkling the sprinkles, the Zweeble's blue tongue from eating the sprinkles, and the fact that he pronounced them "Very very good. Yummy yummy"

And this, just now: "Thank you for that cookie, Mom. I love it, love it, love it."

(He also just "wrote" me a note and claims it says, "You are the best hugger. Thanks." Obviously he's planning something.)

Alton Brown sugar cookies for the win, by the way.

We have an artificial tree, which we're putting up while the Zweeble is at Grammie's (he can decorate it, but putting it up is something better done without a 37.5 pound ball of chaos with feet running around). Thus, we have to spread out and arrange the branches.

Laura: "Oh, it's a little starburst at the front!"

Scott: "Yeah, I'm just sort of making the tree look like, 'Oh! Jazz hands!'"

You know what? I'm tired. Physically and mentally. It's gray and raining, there's not a damn thing on my to-do list that can't wait an hour or two, and the Zweeb is asleep. I'm going to take a nap.

So I was reading my Friends List, and read in dealio's recent post:

I have to make an emergency disk for one of our stations -- an emergency disk is an actual cd of songs and imaging that can be played if the main audio program goes kerflewie -- and a song that came out in high school, the only song that I tried to make an "our song" to cement a relationship came up on the play list. I haven't heard it in ages, my god this is a crap song. No, I'm not going to name the song, I'm *really* not.

So of course I immediately called him and asked him what the song was. He refused to tell me until I offered him a bribe, and I swore I'd never tell the name of the song. (Which I won't. I want to, but I won't.)

He said, really fast and kind of mumbled, "It was [Really Cheesy 80s song That Laura Actually Still Kind of Likes] by [But She Digs Cheesy Songs, So That Doesn't Say Much]."

"Oh my god, that was me! You did that on a mix tape for me in college!"**

"Uh ... no, I did that in high school, and I guess I did it for you in college."***

I was, at this point, laughing like a loon. "I was a repeat! You cad!"****

(Now I'm wondering what of his other college moves were originally used in high school.)



**he was so cool, all, "Just listen to the lyrics."

***he really probably doesn't remember. I have the mix tape around somewhere, so I can prove it to him.

****Okay, I don't think I said "cad." I was laughing a lot, so I'm not sure I remember exactly what I said after the repeat thing. But close enough.

---

Oh, and let me take this opportunity to inform the world that on the same mix tape as The Unnamed Song of Shame, Scott included a Sinead O'Connor song and wrote on the liner notes that I was not allowed to tell anyone he had a Sinead O'Connor tape. BUT HE DID.

Today I have:

1. let the Zweeble play in the kitchen sink (literally, he was in it) and mopped up the resulting mess

2. ordered Scott's Xmas gift, for my grandmother (she needed me to order it so we could get the discount)

3. found out, with Z's help, where all the bloody ghost ants have been coming from: they'd made a nest in the plastic covering for a Pokemon DS game. Mostly the nest was between the plastic box part and the plastic sheet holding the cover, which made for some very disturbing crunching as I took the box out of the cabinet next to the couch.

Usually, finding the nest means the end of the bugs for a while. But I'm going to get some ant bait and childproofing locks, just in case.

(You live in Florida, you get bugs. We had bugs even when were had a contract with Truly Nolen. There's no serious winter here to kill them off, just dry spells and rainy spells that send them inside. Spider season seems to be over, now it's ghost ant season.)

I'm all itchy now.

4. gotten a phone call from Scott, saying that the next time I order his Xmas gift on line, I might want to either tell him to not check our shared e-mail for a while, or use a different e-mail address. You know, like the gmail account I got specifically for this sort of thing.

[insert long, oedipal version of my favorite bad word]

On the plus side, he found this hilarious and this is the gift of which he said, "Someone's getting me X, right?" (I say X because it ought to be a surprise for somebody, yes?) So really, the story to go along with it is the real gift. That's right, dealio, I did it on purpose to make your Chirstmas bright. Because I love you. Yup, I was an airhead for love.

My son ... is adorable. And has inherited my shoe fetish. But lately, there's a new aspect to his shoe love. He has a pair of shoes for whomever he's pretending to be on a particular day.

This morning, he was WordGirl, so he had to wear his Thomas the Tank Engine shoes. Right now, he's June from Little Einsteins, so he has to have ballet shoes, and those are his Elmo slippers. If he wants to be either Cinderella or Lightning McQueen, he wears his McQueen-shaped crocs.

But my favorite was the very first time he did this--he decided to be the Doctor, so he got "a Doctor short and Doctor pants." Once he was dressed, he said, "I need my Doctor shoes!" He took off running into his bedroom and returned with ... his Chucks!

He cracks me up.

This was, at one time, Scott's and my anniversary. It was an arbitrary date, chosen mostly because I had too many other birthdays and such in November.

We met and started courting in September/October 1991, got serious in November, so I tend to round the years we've been together up in the Fall, anyway.

(We discovered later that our chosen anniversary was World AIDS day.)

Anyway, happy old anniversary, Scott. In 16 days, I'll be wishing you a happy new one!

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Oh my god, cute cat feet!!!



Seriously, I just watched this and laughed the entire time. I have to show the Zweeble when he wakes up.

Okay, back to being cranky, cynical, and a dog person.

... okay, one more time. Then back to it.

Oh my god. Jason, do you read this?

One for Scott, actually.

And my new response to "I don't really read."

And I found something Tiffany needs.