the pieces of my life

Adam made us cookies tonight. He ate half his share and then went off to solve a bathroom sink plumbing problem.

“Hey,” I finally told him, “you still have two cookies left here. You can’t just leave two chocolate chip cookies next to a pregnant woman. They’re not safe.”

“I trust you,” he said.

Trust me? Trust me? What does trust have to do with it. This is a medical condition we’re talking about. I’m pregnant. There are cookies beside me. This has nothing to do with trust. This has to do with the involuntary compulsions that force me to scarf down anything with sugar in a three-block vinicity.

“I trust you.” What an idiot!

The little monkey is developing in leaps and bounds. And I actually mean that literally. Doodles’s gross motor skills are starting to catch up to his peers’ (not that he was that far behind, but gross motor skill are his weakest area–I learned that babies who don’t crawl on hands and knees are often a little slower on things such as climbing. Crawling develops a baby’s pectoral muscles, and since Doodles commando crawled, he didn’t get a chance to develop those muscles). So he has all sorts of new Doodle tricks. He’s now jumping. Off of things. Oh, he tries to jump up from the floor, but he can’t actually clear the ground. Instead, he learned how to climb. And jump off. And give a little screech as he does so. Me Mommy. Him Monkey.

I’m actually not sure when the climbing started. This evening we had a playdate and Doodles wanted to eat. It wasn’t quite dinner time. I told him so and went back to my conversation with Doodles’s friend’s mom. Two seconds later, I turn around and Doodles is sitting in his booster seat, buckling himself in. Um, hello? This is the kid who isn’t tall enough to climb up on the couch and he suddenly got himself into his chair? I pulled him down, let him have his temper tantrum, and then, about twenty minutes later, when he said, “Eat, eat,” I said fine. And sure enough, he ran back to his chair, hoisted that tiny little leg up, pulled himself up, and crawled into the chair. We’ve got a whole new level of baby proofing to deal with.

Combined with the climbing, I’m really appreciating the throwing. Especially the rocks. Nothing is more exciting than to find rocks and chuck them. Particularly if you have no aim and there are lots of other little kids around. He’s become quite adept at it. By the way, it appears our little Doodles is a lefty. Adam is thrilled. As he has often said, “Southpaw pitchers make more money.”

Doodles’s language is also rapidly improving. He’s now regularly using two word sentences (“More fish!” “No touch,” “Daddy’s shoes,” “Wake up”) New words are added daily: otpus (octopus), necklace, ray (a ray fish–he’s still completely obsessed with fish), snorkel (I know, he’s learning words that are going to serve him well in our little suburban New England neighborhood), filthy, nasty, yucky (the last three courtesy of Adam–oh joy!).

And in the world of eating? Oh, the changes! Now, instead of eating just crunchy carbs and yogurt, he now eats… just crunchy carbs. Nice to know that some things will remain the same.

Many Doodle stories are ones I won’t blog. A few that I find very amusing, I’ll send around in an e-mail to friends. I think that some things are just a little too personal. This is actually one of them, however I’m so annoyed at my child for not sleeping, I’ve decided to take my revenge by telling this story so that if you meet him someday in the future, you can say, “Oh, I remember the time you…”

Adam gets up with Doodles every morning. Doodles is often good about independent play, but not great. He loves to be read to over and over and over again. So the other morning, Adam was in the kitchen making coffee and getting himself breakfast and he heard Doodles making his “I’m very busy noises,” this sort of little hum he makes when he’s thoroughly enmeshed in some project.

Adam peeks out the kitchen to check to see what Doodles is up to. And he spies him sitting on the floor behind the dining room table. Doodles is quite involved so Adam comes out to further investigate, only to discover that Doodles has removed his pajama pants, undone part of his diaper, and is happily, um, discovering himself. Unsure of what to say and a little worried that the morning poop could come at any moment, Adam exclaimed, “So, what do you have there?” Possibly not the best question, but it was what came out at the moment. Adam let Doodles, um, play a little longer and then got him up to get him dressed.

See, Doodles. This is what you drive your mother to when you don’t nap. Take this as a cautionary tale.

Some weeks I just don’t feel like posting and this is one of them. My desire to post is often in direct correlation to Doodles’s napping schedule. Today, for instance, is a no-nap day. He slept for exactly six minutes in the car and then refused to do the transfer. So now I have an eye-rubbing yet awake Doodles who won’t go anywhere near his crib and he thinks he can get away with it (which, I suppose, he can) because he just looked up to me from his toy truck and said sweetly, “Hi!”

However, I have the ability to blog because I did the toy rotation today. Doodles has more toys than… well, to be honest, he probably has many toys as your kids have, but you know that’s an awful lot of toys. I only put out about a third or a half of his toys at a time and keep the rest hidden in the basement. Then, periodically, I do a rotation, hiding some current toys and pulling out toys he hasn’t seen for a while. He has a small ride-on truck that makes lots and lots of noise that the last time he saw, he was too young to use (despite that the age range on the box said 10 to 36 months–it lied). It’s been keeping him occupied for much of this day. Of course now, my child who is supposed to be smarter than a monkey (but who is giving us plenty of evidence that either monkeys are incredibly dumb or the theory is a bunch of malarky) is using his riding toy as a step stool, which mean any minute now I’ll be running to pick him up from a face plant. Can you tell I’m cranky? I am so totally cranky.

We had a late afternoon play date on Monday at one of Doodles’s friends from day care’s house. Things went along beautifully except at one point, Doodles really wanted his phone. I never leave home without his phone because if I ever need to use mine, he can have his and I can talk in peace (his phone is identical to mine except, well, it’s a dummy phone). So I got him his phone and he happily played with it for about ten minutes and then he set it on the table. His little friend, N., decided Doodles’s phone looked intriguing and went to play with it. It was then that Doodles looked up and for the first time uttered–loudly and clearly–those dreadful words: “Mine! Mine! Mine!” The “terrible twos” are just four months away and I think I see them heading our way now.

After a hectic morning with Doodles, I took him with me to Whole Foods to shop for our Passover seder. I was happy, as he was quietly entertaining himself. As we were checking out, the bagger looked at Doodles and then looked at me and said, “Um, your child is eating his shoe.” Sure enough, Doodles, as he’s been wont to do lately, pulled off his shoe and had stuck it in his mouth. He’d chew a little and then take a nice lick of the bottom. “Yeah,” I said, “he tends to do that.” The bagger gave me this look–can’t tell whether it was complete disapproval or horror–and it occurred to me that she expected me to do something about it. Um, I have a quiet child who isn’t demanding “snacks! snacks!” or ordering “All done! All done!” Let him suck on his shoe all he wants. I don’t comment on what you eat, after all.

Why is this night different from all other nights?
On all other nights, we have just one toddler to wrangle. On this night, we have nine adults, six toddlers, and two babies to feed, get through the Haggadah, search for the afikomen (note to self: two year olds don’t quite get the concept of searching for matzoh), and get out the door before Doodles’s 7:15 p.m. bedtime.

Why do we eat only matzoh on Pesach?
We don’t if our name is Doodles. In that case, the question is “Why do we only eat Goldfish, three meals a day, seven days a week, fifty-two weeks a year?” And why is it that matzoh, that looks and tastes pretty much exactly like a cracker, we won’t touch?

Why do we eat maror, the bitter herbs?
Because trying to cook a seder dinner (matzoh ball soup, brisket, potato kugel, Israeli salad, matzoh crunch, berry melange) with a toddler under foot who refuses to nap is enough to make any grown woman cry as she demands for the twenty-third time, “Doodles! NO! The oven is not a toy! No touch!”

Why do we dip our foods twice tonight?
Twice? We dip our foods over and over and over again. And then we lick them. And then we examine them. And then we hide them under our booster seat and hope that Mom never finds them. And then we demand a cookie.

Why do we lean tonight?
Because, Doodles, you’re heavy and I’ve got this parasite growing in my belly and my lower back is killing me and there’s no way possible for me to straighten up.

Has anyone else noticed that technically there seem to be five questions? What’s up with that?

When Doodles learns a new word, he says it over and over. It makes him happy. It makes us happy. Everyone loves new words.

I also know that there are certain things that we, as parents, should not be encouraging. And here the two clash. Because Doodles has learned a new word that he adores saying: fire truck. Only, he has some problems with the pronunciation. To be more specific, he says “fire truck” but he can’t pronounce the i-r-e-t-r. He has a fire truck flashcard. He has a Little People fire truck. He has a fire truck bathtub toy. Oh so many opportunities to utter this lovely word.

And I simply can’t help myself. “Doodles!” I say. “What is this?” as I hold up any fire truck I can find, just to hear my little guy exclaim with glee, “F*uck! F*uck!” It’s an afternoon’s worth of enjoyment for me (hey, we stay-at-home moms have to get our fun where we can!).

So cute. And I just know it’s going to come back to bite me in the ass. Oops. I mean tushie.

Our mother’s helper is on school vacation week, so this week’s blog is being brought to you by the letter “J” and the number 9.

–We’re having a really tough time coming up with a name for the baby. Oh, we’re pretty much decided on what her name will be post-utero. What we’re struggling with is her in-utero name. Doodles was so obviously and completely a Brown Brown and it flowed naturally. Deucette doesn’t flow. Neither do any of the other names we’ve chosen. Through one of those long succession of this name leads to that name, I started calling her Bubbles, which I actually really liked. But the minute Doodles heard “Bubbles,” he became overly excited, shouting out, “Bubbles! Bubbles!” It took much consternation on his part before I realized, “Oh, he wants me to blow bubbles.” Since I refuse to blow bubbles every time I mention the name of his sister, that’s out. So for now, our little blob is nameless. So sad.

–Doodles has a doll. Now that I’m showing, I went to Toys R Us and picked him out a baby doll. I saw one I really liked, complete with pacifier, bib, bottle and whatnot. And then I saw the price tag. $49.95. For a lousy hunk of plastic? Luckily, if you dig deep enough down on the shelves, you can find the no-frills $9.95 doll, which is what Doodles ended up with. He occasionally likes to cuddle the baby and once or twice has given her a kiss, but she’s nowhere near as fascinating as his own belly button.

–Speaking of pink, someone in town was giving some toys away, and I went to get some. She had a nice pink tricycle and she said, “Oh, it’s pink. You wouldn’t be interested in that.” I said, “Well, Doodles doesn’t know the difference [and if you ask him the color of anything right now, he’ll say “red” no matter what the color] and if it makes you feel better, the next one will be a girl.” But it struck me as odd that in this day an age anyone would even care anymore about that pink/blue thing.

–While I was in Toys R Us, I noticed that they were having a sale on sundresses. There were some really cute sundresses. I was totally tempted to buy a whole bunch of them because, you know, by next summer, sundresses may not exist anymore and then my poor unnamed daughter will not only be unnamed, she’ll be naked too. So sad. I was able to refrain, though. I’ve only bought one flowered onesie at Costco, and that was simply to try and get me into the mind set of “girl.” Didn’t work.

–I started chatting with a mom on the street, and she asked me, “When are you due?” There was a rather uncomfortable pause as I tried to figure out what the hell she was talking about. Finally, it clicked. “Oh, September 3.” Amazing how I can not only forget I’m pregnant but when I do remember, forget that I have this big belly that advertises to the world that I am indeed with child. Hope I remember by the time she is born, because otherwise she’ll be unnamed, naked, and left behind at the mall by the mother who forgot about her. So truly sad.

All those years, if only I had known. Growing up, I always thought that parents were in charge. Now I understand. It’s the kids with all the control. Think of all I could have gotten away with….