Nov
21
Dylan has suddenly transitioned from his gutshot-soldier-dying-in-a-field-begging-his-comrades-to-just-leave-him-for-the-love-of-god forward movement that involved lying somewhat flat but gruntingly pulling himself along with one side of his body (other less than kind descriptions include the Stroke Victim and the Unmerciful Roadkill-in-Progress) to a slow-going but far more official looking hands-and-knees crawl. JB and I applauded his efforts last night as he lurched his way across the carpet in pursuit of an emory board (which he loves to steal and gnaw, making perhaps the most horrific sand-grit sound in the history of the universe), while Riley shouted that HE could crawl TOO, WATCH!
Riley is very good natured about his little brother these days and no longer seems to teem with jealousy, but he does have the hilarious habit of loudly announcing that he can SO TOTALLY do whatever we’re encouraging Dylan to do, then proudly demonstrating his 3-year-old prodigy genius skills of, say, waving bye bye. Or while I’m in the midst of trying to get Dylan to finish his dinner (and doing that helpless mascara-face thing where you open your own mouth as the spoon looms closer to the baby’s mouth, am I the only one who does that?), Riley will casually inform me that he knows how to eat all by himself. “That’s because,” he’ll say, shoveling in a mouthful of macaroni, “I’m a big strong pirate.” Indeed!
I feel like I spend half my time wishing Dylan would outgrow the various annoying stages of babyhood — the not-sleeping thing, the freakout screaming-and-crying when he’s impatient or tired thing, the constant need for attention thing — and the other half feeling panicked over the fact that in February he’s going to be a whole year old already, what the hell.
Perhaps the best example of this emotional dichotomy happens every single night when I’m changing him and getting him ready for bed, and he reacts as though I’m in the process of peeling his skin from his body — my god, the mighty protests! The thrashing, arched-back kicking! I grimly wrestle him into his pajamas while my ears ring and my blood pressure climbs and I’m thinking, holy shit I am so unbelievably ready to be done with this baby business, and then I hold him in the rocker and his body is this warm soft bundle and he burrows his head sideways into my chest and relaxes into me like I’m his personal Barcalounger. Then I think, I don’t want this to end, ever.
One of those wishes will come true, and the other will not.
*giant watery sigh*
Anyway! With our upcoming holiday card design in mind, I spent a fair amount of time last night trying to get an image of all four of us together, taking about a thousand different photos using the camera’s self timer. They all failed in various unflattering ways — I’ve decided it’s like trying to bend the laws of space and time to get two small children looking towards the camera with non-dopey expressions, not to mention the faces of the adults — so I resorted to some Photoshop trickery to end up with this:
I’m not even going to tell you what all is going on behind the scenes digitally in this picture, but fuck it, if National Geographic can alter the placement of the pyramids, then by god I can dummy up a halfway decent family photo.
Nov
20
I actually didn’t even consider the fact that it might be Extremely Controversial to disclose that I resorted to drugging my infant (albeit with half a nippleful of a children’s antihistamine instead of, say, a well-aimed dart containing a large dose of Phenobarbital, which I for one am just glad I did not have on hand at 4 AM because it would have been TEMPTING, VERY TEMPTING) until a few of you left comments that told me I was brave for admitting it, which . . . gosh, no, you are sweet, and are you doing something different with your ass because it looks fantastic, but it totally didn’t occur to me that maybe it wasn’t a good idea to talk about slipping unneeded medication into a howling baby in order to get some sleep.
Uh, it does seem kind of obvious in retrospect.
Anyway, thanks for not poking me with a CPS-stick, even if you were privately horrified at my Torrid Confessional. I hesitate to even mention a follow-up, because every time I write down what Dylan is doing sleepwise he seems to merrily switch things up because god knows we wouldn’t want a little consistency around here, ha ha ha AIIEE, but after an initial mighty protest of bedtime last night he slept just fine.
Yeahhh. I don’t know.
In other news I am waiting for an appliance repairperson to show up today because our dishwasher seems to be clogged, a situation for which I have been squarely blamed. I’ll take the hit on this one, I do occasionally put things in there without rinsing every speck of food from their surfaces, but I would also like to point out that a SUREFIRE way to avoid such reprehensible behavior on my part would be for the other adult member of the household — whose dishwasher-loading skills are apparently faultless in every way — to pitch in, let’s say 50% of the time. Why, that’s HALF as many chances for me to clog anything! Everyone wins!
I’d also like to mention that only I seem capable of understanding that cramming the washing machine to the brim before turning it on and walking away 1) does not constitute the full chore of “doing laundry”, and 2) means that everything just turns around in the dryer in a giant ball and comes out in a wrinkled clump; that while the dishwasher has been out of commission the task of hand-washing dishes fell entirely on my shoulders; and that JB views the notion of actually touching the vacuum handle exactly the same as holding a woman’s purse, which is to say he fears the briefest of contact will shrink his testicles. In comparison, a few stray mushrooms left in the dishwasher? SAINTLY HOUSEHOLD BEHAVIOR.
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