the pieces of my life

What? You want to see pictures from Patriot’s Day? Yeah, I would, too. Only I broke our camera. Pure stupidity on my part that entailed a stroller bag, my camera, and a full sippy cup. So I’m posting this month’s pics on our photo page a bit early as there won’t be any more in the next few days (I tried taking photos with the video camera, but as you can see from the pics, they come out horribly). However to make up for it, I did take a bit of video footage there, which I’ve also posted. We’ll be buying a new camera ASAP. (And if you would like to see the pics but don’t have the password, just drop me an e-mail. You can even use my new e-mail address.)

Once upon a time, Doodles would only sleep on me. Sometimes it was nice and sometimes it was inconvenient. Then, one day, we Ferberized. And now Doodles sleeps wonderfully in his crib. Now, don’t get me wrong, I would never wish sickness upon my child, but having him sick the past couple of days has been nice because he once again rests his head against my chest, puts his finger in his mouth, and takes a nap. A sick Doodles is a quiet peaceful Doodles and occasionally that’s a nice thing. Of course, in the middle of the night, when he’s racked with coughs and crying in his sleep, I swear that I will happily give up the sweet naps on me for a healthy Doodles.

Samson’s power was in his hair. Doodles’s is in his fingernails. At least that’s the only explanation I can come up with for why he hates having them trimmed so much.

Am I the only one who hadn’t seen the Fed Ex M.B.A. ad? Never has an ad so concisely and precisely said what I feel.

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His new game: Insert rattle into mouth. Insert rattle too far into mouth. Gag on rattle. Cough. Cough. Remove rattle from mouth. Look at rattle. Repeat from “Insert rattle into mouth” until frustrated mommy takes rattle and hides it. Cry. Get rattle back. Repeat entire game.

So I’m sure that everyone’s read by now that TV by babies watching causes ADD in children. “For every hour of television watched daily, two groups of children — ages 1 and 3 — faced a 10 percent increased risk of having attention problems at age 7.” Web sites about kids are proclaiming that allowing your young child to watch television is akin to child abuse. So what’s a beleaguered parent to do?

For the record, Doodles does not watch a lot of TV, although he does watch some. I have a few DVDs and videos (Baby Mozart, the colors and animals videos of Baby’s First Impressions, and a few Shalom Sesames), and he watches maybe one a week (sometimes not even that much–he hasn’t seen most of the Shalom Sesame tapes yet–they’re really for older kids, but I love the idea of them; it’s an Israeli-style Sesame Street in English). On a few rainy days when we were cooped up and I was losing it (mostly when Doodles has had one of his many colds), I have given up, sat down, and turned on the Teletubbies to watch with him. And honestly, Doodles attention span for kid shows is limited.

The problem we have is that TV season has officially started in our house. The series that Adam and I watch all come on at night after Doodles’s bedtime. No problem. And if they start earlier, well, that’s what our Replay is for. But I’m sure all of you know what time of year it is: baseball season. Which has the unfortunate problem of seguing directly into football season. And neither Adam nor I believe in Replaying sports. It’s simply wrong. So what’s a sports fan to do? Do we not watch our games? Will we be dooming our son to ADD if we have them on while we go about our business? Are we child abusers because we have Pedro on our TV instead of Pavarotti on our radio? Our living room is the center of our house, where we hang out, where we play, where we watch TV. Right now [editor’s note: this entry was actually written on Sunday], Adam is watching the end of the Red Sox game, and frankly, Doodles could not care less. He’s happily playing with his Roll & Rhyme Melody Block (which he now loves because he can finally get his little arms over it to turn it over) and ignoring the fact that his father is nervously watching Toronto and the Red Sox in overtime (yeah, yeah, “extra innings.” Whatever. When is Adam going to learn to love a real sport? Go Dolphins!) (And if Adam is this antsy in the first week of the season, how am I going to deal with him next September/October?) (Just to have one more random aside, did anyone else hear Frank Deford give his NPR commentary on how the Yankee/Red Sox rivalry really isn’t because the Red Sox suck? I found the commentary entertaining but Adam just kept stomping around muttering something like, “Stupid, stupid. What a ridiculous report,” although the words he used weren’t quite that nice. What really amused me, though, was that Deford completely disses the Red Sox and WGBH cuts directly from his commentary into our local pledge drive. Way to increase Boston support, NPR!)

So here are the things I need to worry about other than George Bush: improperly put-in car seats; Kawasaki Disease (I read two articles about it: one in the New Yorker and one in a back issue of Brain, Child); the state of our public schools; kidnapping; falls off the changing table; autism (which, until recently, large heads were thought to be a sign of); accidentally eating something with peanuts because the doctor told me that will make Doodles susceptible to peanut allergies; that my son will be gay and the Constitutional ban on gay marriage will be passed so he can’t get married to the person of his choice; did I start solids too early or too late, putting my child at risk of diabetes?; Doodles took antibiotics for an ear infection and for suspected pink eye so we’re already helping him on his way to developing drug-resistant infections; Doodles rolls over onto his stomach when he sleeps and what if the doctor is wrong about it being okay at this point?; we circumcised him so we scarred him for life; and vaccinations? Let’s not even start on the vaccination debate. And now? Well, now I have to worry that TV is going to seep into my little Doodles brain and make everything a mess.

Of course, this is but the tip o’ the iceberg. I worry about many, many more things. It was all on the paper I signed when I agreed to this motherhood thing. But the TV? Do I really need to stress out because we want (okay, Adam wants) the Red Sox on on a Sunday afternoon? Am I the only one out here who’s worked up over this?

I don’t normally take online quizzes. Life is simply too short. However, I was tempted by Daniella’s link to a grammar quiz. While this blog may not accurately represent my love of grammar (if I worried about grammar here, I’d never get anything posted), I do have a fetish for the particulars of the English language. So I took the test. And my title was broadly proclaimed on its site:

You are a GRAMMAR GOD! If your mission in life is not already to preserve the English tongue, it should be.
Congratulations and thank you! How grammatically sound are you? brought to you by Quizilla

Cool, I’m a Grammar God. I can live with that.

BUT (and there’s always a but isn’t there?) Adam put this nifty little program on my computer so that I can see my desktop computer on my laptop. This is helpful because there are plenty of times that Doodles is playing happily in the living room, but I’d like to answer e-mail, which is only on my desktop. This way I can work off my desktop while on my laptop (for you geeky folks, the program is Real VNC). Stick with me, there is relevance here. When Adam set it up, though, he also made it so my laptop could work off of his computer, for those days when he was too lazy to go get his laptop from his office downstairs. This afternoon, Doodles was happily jumping in his Jumperoo and both Adam and I were busy on our laptops (I was finally catching up on the blogs I like to read and Adam, most likely, was commenting on Sons of Sam Horn). I I.M.ed him the quiz link across the whole two feet separating us and he took the quiz. Just because I’m nosey, I decided to spy in on his computer to see how he was doing (with his permission, of course–because my computer will control his computer there’s no way for me to do it without his knowing about it). Oh, how gleefully I watched as he mixed up his “which” and his “that.” I giggled at his misunderstanding of the possessive with a final “s.” I felt superior as he mixed up his “I” and his “me.” And I waited for him to get back his final score–would he do well enough for an “average” or was he going to get “You are a complete and utter BASTARDIZATION of the English tongue!” But then it showed: Adam came up with Grammar God as well. I’m not saying I got all the answers right and he got them wrong. But I will say that on at least four out of twenty questions we differed in our answers. One of us is not a Grammar God. And I’m not naming names here, but someone ask Adam what a “misplaced modifier” is. Stupid quiz.

I really don’t have much to say this week. We had a guest in town from Seattle, which was fun. It’s always surprising to me who’s good with Doodles and who isn’t. I know some people who I would be sure would be fantastic with babies, but then they get near Doodles and they hold him at arm’s length, as if he smelled bad. (Okay, so odds are he does smell bad, but real baby people don’t mind.) (And for the record, I never say, “Do you want to hold Doodles?” I think that’s so rude. I never liked it when people asked me because you always felt like you had to say yes. If anyone asks though, I’m happy to hand the stink bomb over.) I wouldn’t have expected this friend to be particularly good with Doodles–really for no other reason than I’ve never seen him with a baby before–but he was great with him.

I wish I had something more exciting to report this week, but I really don’t. Sometimes it’s just like that.

The photo speaks for itself: