Baby-isms

Listening to a toddler talk has to be one of the great joys in life. Whether she gets her words right on or miles away, one of my favorite pass times is to sit back and listen to what E has to say.

The other day I was banging around some pans trying to find something in the cabinet. E called from the other room, "Mommy, what was that?" "It's all right," I answered. "I'm just making some noise." She came into the kitchen and patted me gently and said, "It's okay, Mommy. It was an ass-gannet." Huh? It took a minute for me to register that she was saying 'accident.' It was an accident. Later, I tried to get her to repeat the word...I asked her, "Remember before, what Mommy was doing in the kitchen? What was that?" She thought about it for a minute and answered, "A stake." A mistake. Wow. She has a baby-ism thesaurus in that brain of hers.

She even knows what she wants to be when she grows up. To anyone who will listen, she announces, "When I grow up, I can save people in a baliance." She says it with great emotion, like a little actress...and 'a baliance' means 'an ambulance.' E is fascinated by sirens. I think she dreams of being Dora or Diego, saving the world one baby jaguar at a time. Whenever she hears an emergency vehicle, she yells, "I can help!" and runs off in any which direction. Sometimes she grabs the little piece of string she calls her 'rope'. Presumably, she will use this to save whomever is in trouble.

As my husband M has talked about in his blog, I'm amazed at how quickly she is losing the charming little mistakes in her speech. She can sing "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star" perfectly...no more missing words, no more pauses. She no longer calls my friend 'Camera', switching consonants at will. But worst of all, she has lost the extra syllable in 'chocolate.' Sigh. She will be graduating from high school tomorrow...how does this happen? How does the time pass? And WHO TOLD HER IT'S NOT PRONOUNCED CHO-LO-CO-LATE? Whoever you are, you are in BIG trouble.

My Presence

When I was in graduate school, there was a time when I felt such a weight of stress on my shoulders that I was beginning to see myself as an unhappy person. I was having trouble sleeping, complaining all the time, snapping at everyone. It was not the way I wanted to live. I asked a friend for some advice, and she told me something that I've never forgotten...she said, "Be an un-anxious presence."

I've thought about this phrase a lot...it's like a motto, a quote to model my life after. For example, when I enter a room full of people, do they think, "Good! Look who's here!" or do they wonder, "Uh-oh...what kind of mood will SHE be in today?" I want to be a presence that makes everyone comfortable. I want to calm tensions, not add to them. My sister-in-law, L, has this down to a science. She's a natural at being un-anxious. No matter how late she's running, or what crisis is going on in the room, she never loses her cool. I can imagine her saying something like, "You know what? You need to put that fire out, and then go to your room. That was not a good decision. Get going, you know where we keep the fire extinguisher."

It is not in my nature to be un-anxious. I remember my music teacher in elementary school scolding me for worrying aloud about another student who was late to class. My kindergarten report card grades me down for trying to finish the projects of other children. But I strive, and sometimes even succeed, to be calm when I really want to explode. I did make it through grad school, through the exams and the edits, all the red pen marks, without having a breakdown. Sometimes I'm even proud of how I keep my cool with E, or confrontational students at work, or a computer that hates me.

I don't even know if un-anxious is a word, but this simple phrase has really helped me be a better person, sometimes. I keep it written on a sticky note in my office...too bad I didn't have it stuck to my forehead when I was going through a bad break-up or planning my wedding! Oh well. No body's presence is perfect all the time! I'm sure even L has lost her cool...but I'll bet she never threw someone's Christmas present at them during a fight. Yes, I actually did that. It was a lacrosse stick. Don't judge me. That was before I had the sticky note.

Family History

This afternoon, my sis and I were chatting about funny things her kids used to say when they were little. Her oldest son, C, would want "smaviches" for lunch, as in, "Can I please have a peanut butter and jelly smavich?" One of her kids changed the TV channel with the "mokey-matrol," and another called me "Muggy." (Which is NOT my name.) Well, the conversation got rolling, and we got into a "remember when" kind of conversation which had me really laughing.

For one thing, I have a very vivid memory of a squirrel finding its way into my sister's apartment...the picture in my head is of her daughter S chasing the squirrel around yelling, "Kitty!" while my sister follows closely with a broom. Nobody else remembers this occurrence, which leads me to believe that I either saw it in a movie, dreamed it, or made it up. It doesn't matter, really...because now that I have made it a family event, denying and insisting it happened IS the story. Fun, right? Try it sometime...just start talking about something that didn't happen as if it was real, and see how everyone reacts.

But my most favorite story really did happen...one Thanksgiving, my mother made an apple pie and she forgot to put a bottom crust into the pan. The pie tasted great, but it was more like an apple soup with a crust on top. The part that makes it extra fun is that she INSISTS that she put a crust in there. What happened to it, you ask? She says it got "absorbed" into the pie. Now, I'm no baking expert, but I'm sure that's impossible. I've eaten a pie with a burned crust, and a raw crust, but I've never heard of a crust just disappearing into the apples. Sorry, Mom, but that's one for the family history book.

Boys Will Be What?

I'll admit it...before we had Baby m, I was very apprehensive about the possibility of having a boy. We chose not to find out the sex of our babies before their birth days, so we were surprised in the delivery room twice! When the assisting doctor slipped and referred to Baby m as "He" during the c-section, I did not feel the dread that I thought I would. Instead, I felt joy and anticipation at the thought of M being the father of a son. I cried.

As Baby m has grown, I have hardly thought of anything but love for him..."Why," I ask myself, "did I ever worry about this?" After all, as he grows, we grow...it's not like someone just throws a twelve year old boy in your lap. Well today, at E's new playgroup, I got a not-so-gentle reminder of why I was anxious. A twelve year old boy is one thing...but a four year old boy, in a group of other four year old boys, is downright terrifying.

When E and I walked into the room, just one of the little guys was there, playing quietly with play dough. Not too bad...he shared, he spoke politely, he walked from one toy to the next. Then another one arrived. The energy level rose, the play dough hit the floor, E walked over to the play kitchen, keeping her eye on the growing problem. By 10 minutes into group time, there was a gang of four, tearing around the room and throwing the toys at each other. They were uttering guttural noises, overturning chairs, and smacking each other with flashlights. To their credit, their mommies were intervening as necessary to make sure nobody got hurt...it is playgroup after all, and boys need to be allowed some room to be boys. And to her credit, E played happily in the kitchen, waving a tiny frying pan and yelling "NO!" anytime they got close to her.

My guess is that in a few years, Baby m will be a true toddler boy, and E will be waving some pretend cooking utensil at him too. And then all will be forgiven...at the end of playgroup, boys and girls alike came together for circle time, and joined Miss K in a round of "The Hugey Wugey Spider." As we made our exit, the gang of four was lined up in the hallway getting ready to race to the parking lot. Today I shuffled my little girl out of their way...tomorrow I may be rooting for Baby m to win.

Habitat

Our backyard makes me very happy. On Saturday, M cleaned up the pond...big time. He not only scooped out all the muckity-guck, he pulled the liner, scrubbed it, reshaped the edges, and refilled it with fresh water. Now the birds are very happy...the nesting robins are using the fountain as a whirlpool. Yes, we have nesting robins. There are three little baldy-beans in the nest, and when they open their mouths to beg they look like Baby m trying to nurse! Who knew that all the babies of the world look just the same?

We also have plenty of fat squirrels, wire-chewing chipmunks, cardinals, goldfinches and a horny pair of mourning doves. Soon, we may even have magical re-appearing frogs in the pond...they find us every spring, even though M redistributes them to overwinter in a deeper pond nearby. Really, I think we have a true wildlife haven. Our nearest neighbor has a grass plot as a backyard, with (seriously) not a tree, not a plant, not a weed, not a stick, not a rock, not even a leaf for a slug to hide under. The bunnies tear across his mowed field and take shelter under our shrubs and perennials.

E helped me hang a hummingbird feeder full of sugar water, and we've already had one visitor. Once the coral bells bloom, I'm sure there will be more. I so enjoy looking out the back windows and seeing life in our slice of the world. We're not in the country, but the doves don't need to know that. To them, our suburban "sitting rocks" are just as good as any country rocks to do their, um, spring business. Go doves!

Struck

M is on strike. I think today is day 20. We are trying to enjoy it, and of course he is trying to "get things done." We are not hearing any news about the progress of GM and the UAW...it seems we are completely in the dark. It would be nice to know SOMETHING, so we could, say, take a vacation, or plan DINNER. But no...we can't plan a single thing, because M could be called back to work at any minute.

I have been so spoiled on maternity leave, with both of us taking the Family Leave Act...12 "extra" weeks off (without pay, of course). Now with this strike, we are getting even more time together in the evenings, dinners at the dinner table, and daddy gets to put E to bed. How will I adjust again to a second shift lifestyle? I put both the kids to bed tonight because M is on strike duty...the obligatory 4 hours required to get strike pay. I just have to keep telling myself, "Be calm. Be un-anxious. You will need to do this by yourself every night, and soon." And I MUST stick to the 2 book rule with E. She would have me read all night if I wasn't careful.

Truth be told, if we won the lottery tomorrow, I would not go back to work...and I'm pretty sure that M would not either. I never understood those big money winners who say, "My life won't change...I will got to work tomorrow just the same as yesterday." No. I don't know exactly what I would do, but this family time is priceless, and I would pay a lot for more of it. So thanks UAW, for giving me this gift.

Baby Pirate

E loves geocaching...for about a year, we've been searching the woods for treasures hidden by fellow geocachers, and E has really taken to it. We get her motivated to walk the trails by announcing, "Let's go find treasures!" When we find a cache, I open it and place it in front of her for the looting. She will pick out every last prize, setting some aside, flinging others over her shoulder, even trying to put some into her pockets. We need to watch that she doesn't walk away with the log book or the pen.

"I want sign it," she says, so I give her the pen and she scribbles some little "letters" as she spells her name out loud. Then we pack everything up, letter her pick one prize, and we leave something behind in trade. Today's cache went pretty well, considering that it was a quarter mile walk shortly after nap time. E was a real trooper, but she did NOT want to select just one prize. She wanted to take ALL of the marbles from a little ziploc bag, and I made her take just one. All of her screaming and rolling around did not change my mind....I needed to win this one. She may be young, but M and I are really trying to cultivate her already unselfish nature. "We need to leave those behind for someone else to find, sweetie." Scream, Scream, Scream, Kick. Seriously...she really does have an unselfish nature.

Oh well. We left with just one marble in her pocket, and a big frown on her face. When we got home, M helped her retrieve her treasure, and she ran off down the hall. I forgot about it until I went to put Baby m to bed. Walking to the crib, I felt something under the throw rug...E's stash. She had lifted up quite a bit of a heavy rug and put her marble underneath. I had to laugh. What a little pirate...stashing her loot. What will she do when she finds it missing tomorrow? I'd better watch my back.