Questions, But No Answers

I've been thinking about the concept of sharing recently because I can see Luke entering an anti-sharing phase. Ok, let me rephrase. I can see Luke entering an anti-sharing phase with Other Baby. He's fine with everyone else, in fact, he hands over toys as a way to woo other kids into playing with him. But with Other Baby? Forget about it. Part of it, I think, is that he and Other Baby have a very sibling-esque relationship, so they go from "Oh, it's my bestest buddy EVER," to "Ugh, whose idea was it to bring this kid into my life?" within an 8-second time frame. Add to that the fact that he has figured out EXACTLY how to push Other Baby's buttons (Step 1: Dangle toy in front of his face. Step 2: Snatch it away as he reaches for it. Step 3: Watch him fall apart.) and what we have is a recipe for sharing-related disaster.

Obviously, I put an end to the ridiculous button-pushing and make sure that Other Baby has lots of things to play with because he spends a lot of time here and really can't be expected to sit and twiddle his thumbs the entire time. But what about with others? Strangers? People we meet at the playground or the pool who want to play with Luke's sand shovel or ball or floaty toy?

I've heard that the consensus seems to be that if your kid brings a toy to a public place, they should be prepared to share it. Let's take this to its logical conclusions, shall we? I take my cell phone out in public ALL THE TIME. I don't hand it over to strangers on the street corner though. I don't leave my keys in my car so that other people can take it for a joyride around the block. I don't share my debit card with the other people in line at the grocery store. So...um...why teach our kids that once they take something they own out in public, the public somehow has shared ownership of this thing?

(And along slightly different lines, why am I spending so much time talking to him about what sounds animals make? Is it really integral that my one-year-old knows that cows moo? Wouldn't it be much more useful to teach him how to fill out his taxes instead?)

Thing 1 and Thing 2

• Thing 1: I've developed a new found appreciation for construction sites. Not because I like the dust or the noise, mind you, but because every time we pass by one, a little voice pipes up from the backseat: "Tuck! Tuck! Mama, Tuck!" (A "tuck," in case you're unfamiliar, is an excited toddler's version of the word truck.) This morning, we were on the way to the playground when we happened across a construction site, where we just HAD TO find a comfy spot across the street and sit and watch the trucks. For 30 minutes. We never did make it to that playground.

• Thing 2: Remember my Very Stupid Mistake? About two weeks ago, I got a postcard from the Maryland Metro Authority Lost And Found telling me that they had found an item that I had presumably lost and could I please come pick it up before they destroyed and/or donated it to charity. Since I didn't want my stuff burned, shredded, or donated, I promptly sent an emissary (aka: mom) to collect it and mail it back to me. Our guess is that the purse fell off the car near the bus stop and that someone gave it to the bus driver, who then passed it on to the lost and found. Of course, somewhere along the way, all the cash got taken out of it. Oddly, I'm okay with the $100-ish dollars being taken, but I'm a little bit annoyed they took my two dollar bill. Which I had saved for oh, about a decade. I mean, really, what are you going to do with two stinkin' dollars? (Then again, they also took the handful of nickels and pennies, so in that context, I guess two whole dollars is quite the windfall.)
  

Marching One By One

We have ants.

A seemingly innocuous statement--just three short, single-syllable words, and yet, if you've ever had ants, you know just how annoying this situation is for us. As an aside: I'm not fully convinced that anyone has ever HAD ants. I'm pretty sure that either (a) you HAVE ants or (b) you've never had ants. Because for the past week, we've tried everything, EVERYTHING to get rid of these stupid ants and yet, we find new lines of them every other day.

First, they were in the kitchen, so McMoose took some time out of the middle of his workday to spray them with bleach. (Luckily for McMoose, he was working from home at the time because I have zero desire to spray any living thing with bleach, ever, and if it had been up to me, we would have set a plate of crackers out for the ants and invited them to share in our bounty. McMoose flatly refused.)

The next day, there was another line of them in the guest bathroom, where they were gladly helping themselves to the cat food. The cats were not pleased. McMoose attacked those ones, too. Then, there was a line of them above the door. McMoose climbed on a half wall and nearly killed himself trying to get rid of those. Then, they were back in the pantry. McMoose emptied the entire pantry, threw away everything that had more than 5 ants in it (because 5 is apparently the critical mass of Ants Allowable In Food Items, as per McMoose), and sprayed not only clorox, but also wasp killer in the pantry. Because, ya know, THAT'S what you want in the place where you keep your OPEN BAGS AND BOXES OF FOOD. In fact, a full week later, the stink of Death Chemicals still wafts out every time I open the pantry door.

But still, the ants kept coming back. So we moved the pet food bags out to the deck. Then, we switched to new dog and cat food--food that's individually wrapped and costs, oh, a FORTUNE, so that there wouldn't be open bags of pet food sitting around. And then, we moved the cat food from the guest bathroom to the tub in our bathroom because the enamel is too slippery for the ants to climb. Yellow Cat, in particular, is Very Unhappy about this development because the tub usually has left over water droplets from baths and showers and such, so he now spends much of his time wiping his wet paws on my pillow to express his displeasure.

So I've been researching how to get rid of them once and for all and after learning way more about ants than I EVER wanted to know, I've come to the conclusion that really, we're just going to have to move.

Oh, Honestly

I recently read an article about why parents hate parenting. It said something about how people love their children, but hate the job of raising them. I've also been reading Mama-blogs and books that are hailed as being "honest about motherhood," and it appears that being honest equates to saying that they don't enjoy it. It equates to admitting that it's difficult work, that the hours are long, the pay is non-existent, there are no vacation days, no sick days, and you're constantly covered in someone else's slime.

All of this is, of course, true. The slime, in particular, is less than enjoyable. But after reading that article, I had to ask myself why my experience seems to be so, so different from the people surveyed. Because yes, I love my kid, but also? I really, really love the work of parenting. Even when I experience a moment of frustration, right below the frustration is the abiding knowledge that I am, possibly, the luckiest person on the planet for being able to do what I love AND spend most of my waking moments with a very small, very clownish person. A person who came up to me yesterday, hugged me, and said "Aww!" And then licked me and ran away.

I'll admit that the first 10 weeks or so of Luke's life were ridiculously difficult and that there were many moments when I felt like it would never end. But we made it out of that period and for the past year or so, it's been good. Great, even. All those things that I was worried about--loss of Self, loss of Sleep, increase in Stress? Those things haven't really panned out yet. I mean, the loss of sleep has, but even at my worst moments, I was nowhere near as tired as I was when I was working at the daycare full-time, going to school full-time, volunteering at the Psych lab, and then going out with my friends at night. Not. Even. Close.

So here I am with some honesty of my own: I love this job. When my kid is throwing a tantrum in CVS, I still love this job. When it's 4 in the morning and he wakes up screeching, I still love this job. (Although not during the actual screeching, you understand. I'm not a masochist. I do not enjoy being woken up from a sound sleep by loud, high-pitched noises. In fact, I have been known to yell at my kid to "Stop yelling!" when this occurs. But then, I wake up enough to realize that hey, all I have to do is nurse the kid and he'll shut up and then, we're all on the Happy Train again.) And you know, I'm even getting used to the slime.

Speaking of Speaking

This seems to be the beginning of the language explosion for Luke and since his baby book is woefully lacking in space to write down his "words," I figured I'd just record it here.

• His favorite word continues to be Dada. He uses it to refer to McMoose, as well as other men who talk to him, as well as to mean "That," or "Hey, that's interesting," or "I'm not sure what word I should be using here, so I'll just say Dada."
• And there's Mama, which means me, but also means "Help" and "More" and "I don't like whatever's going on here, so I'm just going to contort my body and yell Mama a lot."
• Uh-oh, used when something falls or when he intentionally throws something that he's not supposed to throw (ie-food from his high chair).
• Bye-bye, usually accompanied by frantic waving.
• Ball, which is used for every circular object he sees. (But if you ask him where the ball is, he finds his basketball and then dunks it in his basketball hoop.)
  
• There's Cat and Dog and Duck, as well as "Ummmmm," which is his current version of Meow (actually, Yellow Cat sounds very much like he says Ummmmm, so I can see where Luke is coming from on this one), and "Arf!" and "Quack, quack, quack!" He's not completely sure about the animal noises yet and although he can usually identify a dog as saying arf, a cat as saying ummmmm, and a duck as saying quack-quack-quack, he also assumes that bears and birds and frogs and lions make some combination of those noises. He understands enough Tamil (an Indian language) that when I ask him questions in Tamil about what noises dogs, cats, and ducks make, he can give me the right answer.
• Toto and Sasha (names of Dog and Yellow Cat). I was pretty surprised when he started attempting Sasha, but he's pretty clear when he says it.
• He's starting to say Truck and Car and kind of differentiate between the two.
• He's also starting to say Banana and baby.
• There's "Bop-bop-bop," which is said as he's advancing in a menacing manner towards Other Baby, usually holding some hard plastic or wooden toy which he intends to use to bop Other Baby on the head.
  
• He understands "water" in English and Tamil. He also understands "milk" in English.
• If you ask him whether he'd like to go out, he brings you his shoes.
  
• He's recently started holding his hands out, palms facing up, if you ask him a question (Where are your shoes? Where's the cat?) that he doesn't know the answer to.
• His "sign" for fan is to point up to the ceiling and then twirl his hand around in a circle.
• He spins if you tell him to spin and splashes if you tell him to splash during his bath.
• He puts things in the trash and has started saying "Ash" while taking things to the trashcan.
• He says Yes...kind of...he actually says "Ass" while nodding vigorously.
• He sometimes says no, but mostly just shakes his head.
• He has a numbers book that he loves, but at some point, I apparently read him the "Eight" page and inadvertently pointed to the picture of the baby on the page, so since then, he has been calling babies "Eight." Oops.
• And of course, the new favorite: Boom!
  

Boom!

Last 4th of July, Luke was small and hungry and McMoose's mom and sister and nephew were visiting and since we didn't want to go to our town's fireworks display with two young children, we decided instead to do our own little fireworks show in our parking lot. In the end, Luke, being small and hungry, decided that he would rather spend the evening eating, so the two of us sat by the window and listened to the fireworks while he nursed for oh, about two straight hours.

So this year, I was excited about getting to go to the big fireworks display in a neighboring town. We figured out where the festivities were held. We checked the time. We got directions. We picked up food and packed a blanket and made sure to put sunscreen on Luke. In other words, we thought of EVERYTHING.

Except for this: websites lie. So when the website said the fireworks would start at 7:30 pm, we took it at its word. We got there at 7, figuring that would give us time to eat and for Luke to run off some energy before the fireworks. We ate. Luke ran. And collected pine cones. And pulled pieces of bark off nearby trees. And tried to "clean up" all the pine straw on the ground. And then, he ran some more. Because the fireworks that were supposed to start at 7:30? Yeah, they started at 9:30. Which, oh by the way, was about 30 minutes after Luke should have been asleep tonight.

Luckily, he was in a pretty good mood and by the time the good mood was fading, kids around us had started lighting sparklers and one family even gave him a glow stick, all of which served to hypnotize him for just long enough for the fireworks to start. The fireworks were dazzling and impressive and after his initial uncertainty, he loved them. (In fact, he spent the entire Very Long Walk back to the car pointing to the sky and saying "Boom!") So all in all, the night was a success. And now, we know that next year, we should just wait until sunset and THEN head out to the park instead of relying on some ridiculous website.

My Very Own Oscar

Dear Luke,

Could we talk about your current interests for a minute? You have a bazillion toys. Literally, a bazillion. I counted. (Did you know your Mama could count to a bazillion? Pretty impressive, isn't it?) We take you to parks and playgrounds and pools and restaurants. We sing to you and read to you and make funny noises to you and generally act like buffoons to entertain you. And yet, you choose to play with trash.

Trash at home. Trash at the park. Trash on the sidewalk. Last week, in Maryland, I took you to a playground, where you ignored the other children, the slides, the swings, the various climbing structures, the walking trails, the large grassy hills--all so you could pick up five candy wrappers. And carry them around. And guard them with your life. And once you felt you had sufficiently showed them off to everyone, you carried them home and put them in the trashcan. Kid, I gotta tell you: this isn't normal.

Today, you have come to me no fewer than ELEVEN times with some scrap of paper of piece of string or clump of dog hair. (By the way...did you actually pull the dog hair OFF THE DOG? Because I notice he's been avoiding you and he looks a bit traumatized.) And then, you lead me to the trash can, where you stand and bounce until I put whatever you handed me in, which is apparently the FUNNIEST THING EVER.

The only thing that's better than me putting something into the trash is when I let YOU put something into the trash. Oh, man. That's the instant cure-all. Bumped your head? Why don't you go throw away this piece of carpet fuzz. Cat clawed your hand? Here's a bottle cap you can put in the trash. You're hungry and tired and bored and you just got word that the apocalypse is coming TODAY? Here, let's go throw out this stick that you insisted on dragging into the house. And all of a sudden, the sun is shining and the birds are singing and life is wonderful again.

The problem, of course, is that you seem to have a "What goes in must come out" kind of mentality, which is probably why I found a banana peel on the floor yesterday. And even worse, you seem to believe that things like shoes and keys and cell phones also belong in the trash. THEY DON'T. And if I have to fish through the trashcan ONE MORE TIME to find the dog leash, I'm duck-taping the thing closed FOREVER.