sueeeus

It’s a good morning when you have two hours to get ready.  Oh, the things that can be done in two hours!  Let’s see.  A haircut, a shower.  Get dressed.  Eat some Cheerios while waiting for the oatmeal to cool down.  Eat the oatmeal.  Play.  Take some pictures to show and tell today’s outfit.  Upload the pics, pack the lunch bags, load the car, and hit the road…   …and all is well and it’s all smiles until the part where he gets four shots, two in each thigh.  Oh, the tears.  Oh, the betrayal.  Luckily, a 15-month old doesn’t have a very long term memory, and the smiles returned in, oh, about 45 seconds.

Today’s outfit is a onesie style white turtleneck, stretched to its limit on this long torsoed model.  He wears Genuine Kids overalls (from Target, most likely).  White socks, again from Target.  Light up shoes with The Incredibles caricatures.  Diaper, size 4, Kirkland (Costco) brand.  (Was show and tell supposed to be my outfit   Any outfit   Today’s outfit )  His is so much cuter and more interesting.  Mine is just blue jeans, also from Target, a navy blue mock turtleneck boxy cut tunic with 1/2 length sleeves from the Avenue clearance rack ($5), cotton socks and black Redback slip-on boots.

Caught red handed.  Here he is this morning, post-haircut, pre-shots, playing with his favorite thing. 

It’s a picture of his cousins.  Aren’t they gorgeous   He loves to play with this picture, for some reason.  This, and the Tiffany lamp.

I love this passionate phase in a young boy’s life.  He is fifteen months old and bursting with energy.  There are tantrums when he can’t understand why his mother won’t allow him to do, oh, dangerous things.  All he knows is that he’s not getting what he wants, so he must express his displeasure.  It’s so very dramatic.  I love it.  (To an extent.  I’m a very patient person, but I have my limits.)

There’s not as much snuggling and cuddling going on these days.  There are so many places to go, things to see.  So this is what I see of my little adventurer, most of the time.

Sometimes he takes my slippers and shoes hostage.  I find them all over the house.

My sweet little man still takes my breath away.  Literally.  I love that he has so many smiles in him.  Even after he bashes his head into my face so hard that I see stars and fear that I may lose my front teeth long before their time.  Especially when the teeth remain loose the next day, and the gums are sore and the head aches.  Even more amazing, is how it didn’t faze him a bit.  Not a peep, other than confusion as to why his mother was behaving so strangely, sobbing, reeling in pain, and all.  Not a peep, not a scratch.  How can he not be bruised or hurt with an impact of such magnitude   It escapes me. 

In addition to the bashed in face, I have a serious case of bedhead today.  Just like my beautiful Boo.  It’s so much cuter on him, though.  My beautiful Boo in blue.  He’s groggy this morning too, just like his mama.

I think it was (Amanda) Soule Mama who started a corners of my home theme.  I like the idea, and the phrase.  I think it’s a flickr group, but I haven’t joined.  I get chastised enough for the amount of time I spend blogging.  Which heralds in the far too easy to assume tidings of guilt.  I was raised Catholic, after all.  Actually, I was pondering guilt in general, and thinking of writing something in the Sunday Confessions theme, while sitting in a chair that I recently placed in the corner of what used to be the dining room, gazing at the photos on the far wall, and that led me to want to talk about the corners of my home.  It’s all related.  I find rearranging furniture and rooms to be quite cathartic.  I’ve been participating in the office pool weight loss challenge and have only lost 5 pounds.  My doctor suggested that I exercise at least 45 minutes, 5 days a week, and don’t eat anything after 5:30 p.m.  I don’t even get home before 5:30, so this is not the easiest thing for me.  My coworker, who is charting the group’s progress, also pointed out that his trend analysis shows that I won’t meet my goal.  Nice of him, wasn’t it   My life and lifestyle being what it is, I don’t want to give up watching TV.  To compromise, the treadmill is now center stage in the dining room, along with my reading chair.  From the treadmill I have an excellent view of the television.  From the chair, I have a view of my photo wall.  (It’s not hard to see which ones are within reach of a certain very busy and curious one-year-old.)  Which brings me to the corners of my home.  Like I said, all related (in a very convoluted way).

In my home there is a wall of photos. Photos of family and friends.  Photos that bring back memories of life experiences.  I see Pea Soup in bloom with number one.  She is radiant.  I see my brother, the young sailor with hopes and dreams of family and fatherhood, of happily ever after.  A young man who lost hope.  I see brothers and sisters, parents and grandparents.  Children.  I see myself in times of love before love went sour.  Only three of the photos are new (Mr. Gadget’s kids, and my Boo, not visible in this image).  The others span about forty years, between 1956 and 1996.  I see a high school photo of my mother, a young beauty with hopes and dreams, so different from the woman I grew up with.  I see a brother as an infant, an innocent babe with a sparkle in his eyes.  Before life changed him.  Changed us all, with its ripples. My heart cries for the people in these pictures, wishing none of them had ever suffered any pain.  Wishing they could all have kept the sparkle, the twinkle, the effervescence of youth, of hope, of life, of love.  Wishing all their best dreams had come true.  “Life is pain, Princess.”  That’s what the Dread Pirate Roberts said to Buttercup.  He’s right, and it’s not all bad.  Pain brings with it lessons.  Lessons that open us up to the possibility of bigger and better things.  Had my own path not been what it was, with all its bumps, bends, turns, and sorrows, I wouldn’t have my precious Boo.  I can’t even imagine a life without him, and I wouldn’t change a single thing about the road that I have walked, if it meant I couldn’t have my Boo.  But my heart still cries for the sorrows of the people I love.  I wish that I could wish their sorrows away.  I wish that I could rain love down on them.

Young child with dreams
Dream, ev’ry dream on your own
When children play
Seems like you end up alone
…
Shilo, when I was young
I used to call your name
When no one else would come
Shilo, you always came
And we’d play

The lyrics aren’t the best match, but this song and these words entered my mind when I heard the news.  Someone I love passed away yesterday.  He was my father figure during my teenage years, when I so desperately wanted to matter to my own father.  I found a father figure in my friend’s dad.  He stood in for me when there was a father daughter banquet at school.  He always liked me, just because.  He would tease me and make me laugh.  He would ask me how I was doing.  He was proud of me, even though I wasn’t his kid.  I had the privilege of knowing him for the best of who he was, and it didn’t matter to me that he walked a rough road with his other children, before he came into my life.  My friend, his daughter, was the youngest of six, and the only girl.  She was his baby, and I was her friend.  I could do no wrong.  I looked up to him and admired him for being a man of men.  I respected him and I think that meant something to him.  Perhaps it helped smooth some of his regrets for rough roads of the past, troubles and trials with his own children.  I don’t know.  I just know that I loved him as a dad, and he loved me as a daughter.  I will always remember him and hold him dear, and I think he knows that.  Knew that.

He made me a wind catcher, many years ago.  Twenty five years ago, or more.  It’s been set aside for years and I’ve been meaning to hang it up.  This weekend I finally did.  Sunday.  The day before he died.  I was thinking of him, remembering him, loving him.  Thinking of how he made this with his own hands, for me, for all his children.

Buzz Sawyer.  My Shilo.

My little crumb cruncher tends to get these bug bite looking bumps on his face now and then, and I’ve been noticing them around meal times.  I have been meaning to try and find out what could be biting him.  Last night I was getting him ready for bed and noticed a couple of these bumps on one of his legs.  I looked closer to try and determine if they were bug bites.  Maybe we have bedbugs.  I don’t know.  It was a thought.  I moved my hand and his leg was covered with red spots where my hand had been.  I gently rubbed them to see what kind of bumps they were, and they seemed to get worse, before my eyes.  I asked Mr. Gadget what he thought, if it looked like chicken pox or not.  It sort of did.  I asked if chicken pox develops so quickly.  He didn’t know, and neither did I.  I decided to check the other leg, and saw three faint bumps, so I looked closer to try and determine if they were old or new.  As I touched them, it seemed as though they got more pronounced.  I told Mr. Gadget that it seemed like he was reacting to me, so I took my hands off and waited a few minutes to see if they’d fade (they did).  Meanwhile, I tried to think of what he could be reacting to.  I used a hand lotion that day which was out of the ordinary, but had since washed my hands at least a dozen times, so I didn’t think it could be the lotion.  I’d washed and dried the bedding and put an extra fabric softener sheet in the dryer, which was out of the ordinary as well.   He was on the bedding and not breaking out everywhere, so that left me.  We had a fabulous tossed green salad for dinner, with red, yellow, and green bell peppers, radish, green onion, cucumber, tomatoes, mixed organic greens, and leafy green lettuce.  (Big boy Boo had lentils and rice and green beans.)  I was done in the sense that I’d put my dishes in the sink, but I was still snacking away at what was left in the salad bowl, using my fingers to pick up pieces of salad and munch happily away.  It’s the most plausible explanation I can find at this point.  My baby is allergic to fresh vegetables.  At least one of the mix, anyway.  Now I will have to try and isolate the culprit.

He has so many looks.  I love the blue of  his eyes.  In some photos he is absolutely gorgeous.  In others, he’s a silly little thing.  I love them all, all the funny looks he comes up with.  He’s so active now; I can hardly get him to hold still for a photo.  It’s wonderful that he has so much fun.  I’m loving it.

I’ve been busy busy busy lately.  Wanting to blog.  Not having time to blog.  That, and it’s taking me a long time to tweak my template to look the way I want.  I’m new to php, so I’m rather slow at it.  Little things can be so annoying to me, and I have a hard time just letting them be.  For instance.  I want my hundred things list to have numbers.*  Yes, I have it defined as an ordered list.  But when displayed on the About page, the numbers don’t show.  I have a style sheet, and probably something in there is overwriting my “ol” definition, but it’s not making sense to me.  It should be straightforward and for whatever reason, I’m not seeing it.  Exasperating!

Blackbird has asked to see windows this week.  I don’t have any particularly interesting windows.  If I did, I could integrate them into the corners of my home theme as well – I think Amanda Soule Mama started that one.  I might be able to find some interesting corners of my home to share eventually.  As for windows   I am remiss.  I see there is a window in the background of this picture of my Boo.  It will have to do.

My Boo is growing out of  his nickname.  He’s getting to be such a big young man, I’ll have to think of a more mature nickname.

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*update:  When I enclosed my list in a blockquote, the formatting took effect.  I chose lower case roman for my default.  Just because. 

We have a whole lot of woo around here.  Woo is a good thing.  There’s the woo woo train.  If we say, “Woo, woo,” the boy perks his ears, and starts looking for his train, crawling about with an air of keen determination.  When he finds it, he presses the part that makes the woo woo sound, and off it goes.  It’s a great toy.  His second-cousin has one, which is how we discovered it.  It has turned out to be one of his favorite toys.  The woo woo train.  It’s actually a Fisher Price Peek-a-Block Press and Go train.  It has neat lights and it drives forward, makes funny train sounds like woo woo and plays some various melodies as it moves the blocks.  Some spin and some move up and down.  Very clever toy.

 

The other woo we’re enjoying is the woo hoo in the black horse and cherry tree song by KT Tunstall.  I don’t know why, but I’m really digging this song.  It’s just one of those things that appeals to me for some reason that I can’t quite pinpoint.  It’s sort of bluesy but upbeat and fun at the same time.  I really like the woo hoos.

We get the Sunday paper and use it to fill our recycle bin. Sometimes we look at the sale inserts. Once in a while we look at headlines. I used to do the crosswords, before the boy came along. But now… …in the hands of a one-year-old…
…it is great fun! Oh, what a mess a little boy can make.
Of course, there is usually more to a scene than first meets the eye.

It was a normal morning. I was late, as usual. I could have left tried to leave earlier, but I wanted to spend some time with my scrumptious little munchkin. Plus, I needed to give get some extra snuggles and cuddles after the harrowing nose aspiration grapple of the morning. Call me overbearing, but I want my child to be able to breathe. I’m just that way. Oh, how he doesn’t like the aspirator! My, oh my, is he a strong little guy. And fast, too. He can grab that little blue bulb, yank the tip out, fling it away, and yank my finger backwards (the one that’s attached to the hand that is trying to hold him steady) all in the matter of a split second. He. Does. Not. Like. It. Understatement. Thankfully he’s all smiles the second it’s over. He will even try to play with the bulb, stick it in his mouth, or even put it to his nose. To which I give much encouragement. Good boy! However. If I get anywhere near his nose with that thing, all hell breaks loose. I’ve tried making a game of it. I’ve tried to gently sneak it to him while he’s sleeping. He’ll have none of it. Sigh. We had a nice little bit of play time, snuggles, bounces and jumps (still his favorite thing to do), and I handed him over to Mr. Gadget, the morning daycare express driver.
I picked up my bag, reached for my keys, and didn’t find them. I could have sworn I put them on the hook. It’s part of my routine. Routines are important in my world. I’m not overly obsessive (IMHO), but there is something to be said for routine, for order. Without order there is chaos. With chaos there is stress. Stress is bad. With order, there is harmony. Harmony is good. Order is good.
I checked all the surfaces downstairs for where I might have left my keys. I checked again. I went upstairs. I went through the laundry basket. I was getting frustrated and I suppressed the natural blame response thoughts that were welling in my mind. No, I’m not going to blame Mr. Gadget for this. I’m giving him the benefit of the doubt. I could have left them on my desk. (I didn’t.) I could have left them on the kitchen counter. (I didn’t.) I could have put them on the cedar chest and Boo might have found them, played with them, and dropped them in the freshly folded laundry basket. He was, after all, helping me*. (I didn’t. He didn’t.) Or, he could have dropped them in the diaper bag. (He didn’t.) Still suppressing the blame thoughts, but not quite as much, I decided to check Mr. Gadget’s pockets. I felt a bit guilty when they came up empty. I was ready to say, AHA! Upstairs. Again. Downstairs. Again. I checked my bag again. Did I leave them in the car I’ve never left my keys in the car. Ever. I checked anyway. No keys. Upstairs again. Laundry basket again. Diaper bag again. Downstairs again. Office again. Laundry room again. Breathe deeply. Remain calm. Stress is bad. (I read only yesterday that stress, and the stress hormone cortisol, play a major role in obesity, even in people who don’t have horrible eating habits, thank you very much.) Breathe deeply. I dumped out the entire contents of my purse, in the off chance that I overlooked the keys. Nope. No keys. Upstairs again. And the phone rings. “Hello ” It’s Mr. Gadget. “Ummmm… You have my keys, don’t you,” I ask, nicely, softly, slowly, calmly. “Sahwwwy,” he says weakly, quietly. “Just take my keys,” he says. “Yes, well. You don’t have a key to my office cabinet, where I keep my computer, the one I need to do my job, now, do you ” “Sahwwwwy,” he says again.
And that is why I was late (today).

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*He especially loves finding the socks in the basket. He gets one, flings it behind him with a flourish, and reaches for another. He likes to help with things that are already folded too. In the kitchen we have a lot of small multi-purpose towels, stacked neatly on a shelf. He likes to pick them off, one at a time, and fling them, just like the socks. We also have face cloths that I use to wash his face and hands after eating. They’re softer than the others. I usually drape them over a rail to dry after use. Sometimes while I’m wiping down surfaces in the kitchen, he grabs the face cloth and starts scrubbing things he can reach. He’s such a good helper, I tell him, and thank him profusely. One of these days, when he’s older, I hope this encouragement will click and he will be happy to help clean up his room. 

If it’s your dad’s 80th birthday, and you call him to wish him well and ask how he’s been, don’t ask about the diabetes. If he mentions that his toes are numb, and that his quack of a doctor thinks he should see a specialist and start insulin injections, and you say, humbly, that it’s not as bad as it sounds, because you yourself were faced with just such a need. When you say that yes, it’s traumatic at first, and no, it’s not convenient and yes, it is annoying that the necessity exists, but no, it’s not that bad once you get used to it, and yes, it’s worth it if it helps preserve your health and life, don’t feel snubbed if he completely ignores you. Or if he sounds surprised. Oh You had diabetes When did you have diabetes
If you try to explain that one shouldn’t ignore signs like numbness in the toes, and he says you are no better than his quack of a doctor, don’t let it get you down. If you offer to take time off from work to travel 300 miles and take him to the specialist, to which he restates that they are all quacks and the bittermelon he is taking now will surely put all things back into balance, you might want to let the conversation end. But if you are a fool and try to reach past the denial, because you are truly concerned, because you’ve had this conversation before, a year ago, and the toes were numb then, and dare you mention that one could lose ones toes, if the numbness goes unchecked, and God forbid, you mention the g word (gangrene), and all hell breaks loose and you are called uncharitable and malicious, just like your mother, don’t take it to heart. If he says that you say these things in the guise of concern, just like your mother, but at the core are simply wicked and malicious, just like your mother, and don’t mean well at all, just like your mother, and if he makes reference to being intellectually superficial, just like your mother, ignore it (just like your mother). If he goes on to say more admittedly bitter things, just interrupt and say Happy Birthday in a bright voice, and that you called to wish him well for his birthday. If he says “Bye” and hangs up on you, don’t cry or feel bad. Just know that, all the same, he was delighted to hear from you today. He is 80, after all.