the pieces of my life

–All of my mom friends have e-mail. And at about 8 p.m., e-mail suddenly comes to life. All day long, I get one, maybe two e-mails. But once all those kiddies have been put to bed, suddenly I get six, eight, or ten e-mails at a time.

–Doodles’s poops smell worse than other kids’ poops. I unfortunately have empirical proof of this.

–Finally new videos up (if you want to see them but don’t have the password, just drop me an e-mail). But in looking at what videos to post, I see that a good half of our videos have extremely abrupt endings. Generally as you hear me saying, “Doodles! No touch!” or you see Doodles do something like grab the telephone and start to dial and then suddenly, bam! the tape stops.

–I no longer believe in Darwinism. It’s the natural selection part that’s done me in. By the laws of natural selection (basically that nature selects the best adapted varieties to survive and to reproduce), there’s no way my child would still be alive. Let’s take his Sit N Spin. We have the same conversation multiple times a day. “Doodles,” I say, “that’s a Sit N Spin. Not a Stand N Spin. Remember what happened five minutes ago when you stood on it?” But apparently he doesn’t because he flashes me one of his melt-me Doodle grins and proceeds to stand on it. And, hey, what a look of shock on his face when he goes flying off and hits his head on the floor!

–I rue the day I put batteries in his toys. In any of the toys. Truth be told, the toys taken individually don’t bother me. It’s when I have a CD on and Doodles runs to push the song on his Sit N Spin and then runs over to one of his song books and hits the button and then he sets off his Laugh and Learn Home at the same time. That reminds me: I need to put Tylenol on the shopping list.

–Aha! More evidence that the rules of natural selection do not apply in our household. I’m sitting at the dining room table typing. All of a sudden I looked up and saw my child’s grinning head above the table, grabbing for my keys. Okay. He’s allowed to have my keys. Except my child is quite short. About 30 inches. He’s never been above the 25th percentile for his height. And the table is about 36 inches tall. I peek beneath the table. Did my child grab some books to stand on? Nah. What about his Lego Table? Not that either. Try his plastic rocking horse (I call it a horse; I’m not sure what it is. Rocking Blob would probably be most accurate. Most of these toys mentioned have been generous hand-me-downs from neighbors). He’s standing on the one thing that doesn’t have a flat bottom. Hey, guess who was surprised when he fell? Will wonders never cease?

How am I posting mid-day, you might be asking. I tend to be a late night poster, once the Doodles is safely off to bed. Well, Doodles got a present today from my mother. And suddenly, I can bring my laptop out and get work done, because there are no little hands begging for my keyboard. I’m not sure how healthy it is to feed Doodles’s addiction, but hey, if it buys me five minutes of peace, I’m all for it. The computer is old and doesn’t work too well. It does have Windows 95 on it. As soon as Doodles figures out that a computer turned off isn’t that interesting, then I’ll plug it in for him. However, at the rate he’s going, I think that won’t be for another few years.

He’s wearing me out. Simply wearing me out. So many new milestones. So few of them restful.

–Playgroup at our house, Doodles, as usual, climbs the bottom rung of his high chair so he can latch the straps. One of the mothers says, “Is he allowed to do that?” “Oh, yeah,” I reassure. “He can’t climb up.” In two seconds the kid had scaled the high chair and was happily climbing up the seat back. You know, whenever I say things like that, they bite me in the butt. You’d think I could harness this power and make it work for me. But apparently it only works selectively. For instance, just now I said out loud to no one, “Oh Doodles never does the dishes by himself.” And lo and behold, the dishes are still not done.

–At the same playgroup, we had our first experience of Doodles trying to grab a toy from a child. Doodles pulled, the child resisted. Doodles had a full-scale meltdown of screams and lying on the floor hollering. It was so attractive.

–A positive thing: he now points. If you ask where something is in a book, he’ll now point at it. He also has started putting things away. In music class, he happily put the instruments back in the bin.

–He’s becoming a creature of habit. For the longest time, we couldn’t get him to wear a hat. Finally, we won the battle with his red Old Navy winter hat. My in-laws came over and brought him an adorable new LL Bean winter hat. Very cute. Doodles had fun playing with it. And then it came time for all of us to go out to lunch. We put on Doodles’s shoes. We put on his jacket. And then we put on his new hat. Or tried to. The kid ripped it off his head the second we got it on and dug into the pile of our jackets until he found his red hat. And refused to go out without the red hat on. I’m starting to see shades of my father in him, not necessarily a good thing… (Peter, don’t even ask why that’s like you. You are a creature of habit. Mom, back me up on this.)

–He says “ashes, ashes, dooooowwwwn!” when he wants to play Ring Around the Rosie. Although he hasn’t mastered walking in the circle. Or falling down (on purpose; he is a pro on the accidental falling).