All of my spare time has been consumed lately with a big project I’m working on. You have not been crazy about that fact, and you’ve been acting out a bit to get my attention, making not-so-subtle demands like, “No phone, Momma.” “No work, Momma.” In the craziness, I have gotten way behind in blog updates of your life and world. This is an attempt to remember accurately and catch up.
mulch floats: Daily we head outside to the garden to see what bounties await us. You luh-huh-huh-OVE picking raspberries, and you have learned which ones are ready and which ones have to hang around for another day or two. We get a handful or two of the crimson delights and head to the bench in the garden to snack on them. You shovel them in, and I’m usually lucky to get one or two. One warmer day I had a small plastic container of water out on the bench, so you could play with your squirt toy. Tiring of that quickly, you just thrust a small handful of mulch in the water and said, “Momma, mulch. Float!” Brilliant!
me!: Daddy desperately needed new shoes, and he needed Momma’s help picking them out, so we went to Marti and Liz. I convinced you to stay in the aisle Daddy was looking for shoes in, to not pull shoes off the shelf, to leave your shoes on and to use your inside voice—no easy feat. I offered the padded bench as entertainment, and you climbed up and down for a few minutes, turned around, saw yourself in the mirror in front of you, laughed heartily and shouted, “Ha-ha. Me!”
goosebumps: Sometimes to help you pee—which often helps you poop—I sprinkle water on your legs while you sit on the toilet. This must’ve given you a chill, and you rubbed your legs and looked up at me with the most concerned look. I felt your legs: goosebumps. You didn’t know what they were, and it worried you that they were suddenly on your legs. Hilarious!
imperatives: I don’t know how complex different sentence structures really are, but it struck me as needing a pretty good grasp of the English language and a decent idea of what you hope to accomplish with statements like the the ones you put forth recently. Playing and wrestling on the bed in our room is one of your favorite activities. I was busy getting dressed and not paying attention to you, so you demanded, “Momma, push me.” It was not mean, not aggressive; it was simply something you wanted and needed. Another example along those lines came when we were having lunch. As usual, you polished off your cheese right away (you take after your dad), and I was just breaking into mine. You said to me: “Share me, Momma.” Oh! So I’m supposed to share my cheese with you! I had no idea. Don’t those statements seem like they require a sophisticated thought process? Maybe not; maybe I’m just a proud momma.
misunderstandings: You chatter up a storm these days, and you want me to understand all of it. With some context, I am a veritable interpreter for you, often clarifying things you are saying to Daddy or Mammy. Sometimes though, with no context, I cannot understand what you are telling me, and you get very frustrated. You’ll repeat it… louder and more emphatically. I try and repeat it back to you—exactly the way you’ve just said it—but you hear it from me far differently than you hear yourself saying it. You repeat it again, this time even louder and with more visible frustration. At this point I have to resort to a cheat-sheet of sorts and ask you to show me. With context, as I said, I can figure out what you’re talking about. You’re so relieved and pleased when I finally get it, as if to say, “Duh, Momma!”
dinner request: The other night I was stumped by what to fix for dinner, so I thought I’d ask for your input. I said, “Hey, sweet potato, whaddya want to eat?” “Food,” you replied… without a hint of sarcasm. I think you might have inherited your daddy’s sense of humor; you seriously crack me up. And that was no help, by the way.
