Saturday, January 21, 2006

lather rinse repeat

wile has begun to listen to things i say and spit them back out at me. which is exciting! really really exciting! but also leads to conversations like the one we had in the car today after a particularly long traffic light:


"that light was shhh....kunky"

"excuse me? did you say 'shkunky'?"

"well, i didn't want to say....what i wanted to say."

"so you settled on 'shkunky'?"

"yeah"

"shkunky."

"well, 'skunky', really."


so, yeah, we're going to sound like idiots for a couple of years. which might be better than sounding like a longshoreman, which i often do now. find me a word that can't be improved by inserting a "fuck" in the middle. i dare you. but those days are behind me now, sadly....

the upside is, of course, the unbelievable cuteness of the quasi-words coming out of wile's mouth.

today we were in the living room playing cars and i smelled that telltale smell and said "wile, do you have poop in your diaper?" and he looked at me, tilted his head to one side, pointed to his butt, and said "poo?".

i'll trade a few "motherfucker"s for that, any day.

Sunday, January 08, 2006

and he likes loud music, too

i've always thought that the 2 - 4 years are the puberty of childhood—you rebel, you assert your independence, you've got a bad attitude, you tell your parents how things should be.... just like the sweet 6th grader who loves cats and anne of green gables is suddenly the megabitch door-slamming 7th grader in blue eyeliner, the darling giggling little baby is suddenly the screeching toddler marching around the house giving orders and loudly protesting all challenges to his authority.

so wile is in the "tween" stage—not a full-on teen-baby, but showing the warning signs. oh-ho-ho, yes. definitely showing the warning signs.

i mean, look at this picture:
Fwd: 9 great iPhotos
"dad. come on. leave me alone. seriously. god."

one of wile's favorite games is stair ball: we sit at the bottom of the stairs and i throw the ball up the stairs and we watch it bounce down. sooooo fun. the other day, he picked up a ball, led me over to the foot of the stairs, pointed me to sit on the bench, and then handed me the ball and pointed at the stairs. okay, fine. but when i threw it up, he turned around and walked into the living room. i thought, "okay, he changed his mind" and got up to do something else. he saw me get up and yelled at me ("eehhhhh!!!"), pointed me back to the bench, and pointed at the stairs again. then turned back and went into the living room again, turning, when he got there, to look back and make sure that i was playing. as if to say "look, mama, i have some stuff to do over here, so you play stair ball so i can get it done, okay?" i threw it a couple times. when he heard the thud, bounce-bounce-bounce stop, he looked over at me and pointed and yelled again. okay, fine.

changing wile's diaper used to be cake—he liked laying on his changing table, watching the ceiling fan spin, or listening to me sing to him.... now it's like wrestling a monkey covered in motor oil. a howler monkey. and getting the clothes on and off him? nearly impossible. the only easy wardrobe change i've had in the past two months was the other day when, after i'd finally managed to get his pants over his big ol' butt and zipped and snapped, he went over to the dresser, emptied out a drawer full of overalls, picked out a pair, and brought it over to me, clearly saying "take those dorky pants off me and put my rad overalls on, woman." i did. he stood stock still, only moving to obligingly lift his fat little feet up to step in to the overalls.

other signs of baby adolescence? he's made out with two girls in the past two days. today he tackled poor luella to the ground and planted one on her while she cried. yesterday he fared much better: he and gwen were pretty much making out at her birthday party. mona and i were like "um, do you guys wanna go in the other room and turn the lights down and 'watch a movie'?"



ps - that picture up there is actually a few weeks old—we've been cast-free since december 14th! check it:
IMG_3697.jpg
there are more pics of the big day on wile's site.

pps - yes, i put clips in his hair. no, i don't want to cut it; i'm waiting for it to get long enough to tuck behind his ear. no, i don't think it makes him look like a girl. anyway, his nana told me that all the hot european soccer stars wear clips in their hair, so it's cool.

ppps - happy new year!