Necessary and Absurd: Things I never knew I'd have to say.

There are things I swore I'd never say as a mother (most of which have come back to haunt me in the mere 43 months since giving birth the first time) - then there are things which, never in a million years, would I have dreamed would come out of my mouth.

Things like:

• Please stop trying to ride your sister like a horse.
• No, the fact that you licked all the ketchup off your plate and left everything else does not mean you ate most of your food (uttered just today).
• You may not wear your flip flops with your snow pants.
• You may only play outside if you promise not to go visit the neighbors and/or ask them for fruit snacks (the joys of sharing a backyard).
• It is not a good idea to invite strange men home to play with you (Woodstock can - and does - make friends with everyone - for this reason alone, I refuse to teach her our address and am grateful I have an out-of-state cell number)
• Please put your belly button away
• Do your really have to use the bathroom or are you just interested in seeing what this one looks like? (after realizing Woodstock always has to potty the second we enter a new establishment)
• Just because daddy shaves his chin doesn't mean it was a good idea to try it yourself
• Try not to drown your sister
• If you are going to drive backwards, please slow down in the kitchen.
• Your diaper is not a pocket - or a purse

Any one of these sentences would have been enough to question my sanity 4 years ago. And yet, in the course of 48 hours these days, I could easily utter all of them without blinking an eye.

No wonder childless adults think we've all lost our marbles.

Woodstock Funnies

Taking Matters into Her Own Hands. Woodstock started really walking late last week, after a week of some tentative (but only when prompted) steps. Now, she finds great joy in the journey. Whenever she stands up and walks around, she pauses, claps her hands together in glee and exclaims, "Yay!" Which is exactly what we did each time she took a few steps, under great coaxing, the first few days. Once she started doing it on her own, we stopped making such a big deal. It appears she has given up on us and now has formed her one-woman cheering section for such accomplishments.

Future Model. Himself called earlier to tell me that Woodstock climbed up on big Rubbermaid container of photos, etc. to get to the laundry basket (of clean laundry, thank goodness!). She sat down, pulled the laundry out all around her, put some on her head, looked at Himself and said, "Cheese!"

Strange Words. Every once in awhile, Woodstock says something that makes us go, "huh?" A couple of weeks ago, when I asked her if she wanted milk, she said "Boppie!" and started signing "milk." I've never used the term "boppie" before. As it turns out, Miss Jan uses that term for bottles. It doesn't matter if we ask if she wants milk or a bottle, she always replies "Boppie" without fail. Late last week, she started putting her hands high in the air and saying "Uppie!" when she wants up. Last night, she thought it might also work as a code word for "get me out of my car seat!" Sadly, she was mistaken. "Uppie" is another word I've never uttered in my adult life.

At All The Wrong Times. Heidi's LiLa gave Woodstock some blocks with cool little plastic canisters in the middle. Woodstock loves taking the middle out and wearing the block as a bracelet. She wore one all the way to church on Sunday. Midway through the most solemn (and quiet) point of the service, the block fell off her wrist. Not wanting to cause great commotion to recover it, I left it sitting on the floor and tried to distract Woodstcok with something else. She paused, looked at me with a puzzled expression, pointed at the block and (VERY loudly) exclaimed "UH OH!" When I sheepishly retrieved the block, Woodstock put it back on her wrist, clapped her hands and said, "Yay!" There was a barely disguised chuckle that rippled through our portion of the congregation.

Miss Independent. Woodstock has taken to eating her daily yogurt herself - which usually means her chair, tray, bib, face, hands ... everything within a 500-foot radius is covered in the stuff. When she is done, she gives you 0.3 seconds' notice that she is done - by raising her hands and saying "Alldeee, alldeee!" She has, however, discovered that she gets quite the reaction if she takes her yogurt-covered hands and pulls her hair on each side while saying "Alldeee!" sculpting it into a sugar-and-milk-crusted hairdo that only a bath can fix.

This Is The Stuff Nightmares Are Made Of

Thanks to an old friend for bringing this to my attention.

glumbert - Stop Sign Re-Design

Brings back memories of our all-day Thursday work sessions with our ad agency when I worked in Virginia.

Unfortunately, they were often just like this.

Martian Mariachi

I woke up this morning - at 5:15 a.m. - to mariachi music. Not only that, but staticky mariachi music.

It wasn't terribly loud - just loud enough (and staticky enough) that, combined with the rising sun, made me wake up 45 minutes earlier than I normally do. It was just annyoing enough to make me want to bury my head under my pillow and think of grumpy words.

I thought for sure someone was out working in the yard and listening to the radio. I got up to investigate. I'm not sure why I thought I could see anything, given the fact that our room is in the basement.

What I discovered was even more bizarre. The mariachi music was coming from ... the baby monitor.

I crept into Baby Girl's room, where she slept blissfully in a warm, steamy silence. No mariachi music. No music at all, in fact. The only noise was the purr of her humidifier.

Puzzled, I walked back into our room. The music was still playing over the baby monitor.

Himself wanted to know what on earth I was doing (especially after yesterday's closet incident). I told him about the Martian Mariachi music over the monitor. He just rolled his eyes.

--

On a related side note, some months ago I heard a baby crying over the monitor. I rushed to check on Baby Girl, who was sound asleep. Thinking it was odd that she would fall back to sleep so immediately after such choking sobs, I returned to my task at the other end of the house only to discover ... there was still a baby crying over the monitor.

Someone ELSE's baby was crying on MY monitor.

Curiouser and curiouser.

The Great Bedroom Escape

Sleeping in a new place is always difficult for me. I don't sleep well as a general rule, but I sleep even worse if I am in someone else's bed or someone else's house. That includes the first few nights in a new home.

However, either the new house has good karma or I am suffering from sheer exhaustion over the drama of the last month, because I have slept blissfully well all three nights I have spent in the new house (new being a very relative term, of course, it's 30 years old).

Additionally, while Baby Girl has her bedroom on the same level as ours, she is back in the far corner - so we had to drag out the baby monitor. I have grown unaccustomed to hearing her cries so loudly over the monitor on the rare occasion she wakes up in the night.

Last night I went from a dead sleep to a frenzied stupor in 0.7 seconds when Baby Girl let out a series of wails from her room. It shocked me so completely, I forgot to just wait it out to see if she would rescue her binky and drift back to sleep, and I launched myself out of bed in a mess of bedding, flailing limbs and grunts. Completely disoriented, I stumbled around in the blackness of our bedroom until I found the door. I opened it, and walked out.

Strange, I thought. I would have thought there would be at least some ambient light from the window in the family room. I was unable to find the banister in the dark, which indicates the necessary place to turn toward Baby Girl's room. Instead, I ran into a wall.

Still in a state of heavy delirium, I stumbled back into the bedroom and fished for my cell phone to use the LED display and brighten up my path to Baby Girl's room a little.

Imagine my surprise when my cell phone illuminated the room just enough to reveal my "adventure" had been in our completely empty walk-in closet. The door out of the bedroom wasn't even on the same wall.

By the time I found my way out of the bedroom, Baby Girl had given up and gone back to sleep. Funny how easy it is to feel so dumb at 3 a.m., even when no one is around to witness it.

Signs of Imminent Cerebral Atrophy

Monday night I fell asleep on the couch (as often happens).

Himself gallantly woke me up to send me to bed (gallantly because I am not the sort of person you want to wake up once I'm asleep). I apparently didn't wake up completely.

I stumbled into the bathroom, brushed my teeth from a nearly empty tube of toothpaste and reached blindly for the green tube containing my face wash on the side of the sink.

I squeezed out a small amount - funny, it didn't lather very well. Too asleep to care that I probably wasn't doing a very good job of washing my face, I began to rinse it. I toweled it dry and thought "wow - my face feels very ... brisk."

I went into bed. Himself commented on the minty fresh smell.

Sometime later I sat up in bed. My facial cleanser is not in a green tube. Nor is it kept on the side of the sink like the toothpaste.

I rushed into the bathroom. Sure enough, there were two tubes of toothpaste on the counter - one nearly empty. One brand-new one with the slightest of dents in it.

No wonder it didn't lather well.

Houdini, The Great Diaper Escapade and Red Bean Paste

Three totally unrelated items, but I can't help but share them.

Houdini
I'm afraid. Very afraid. Baby G seems to be able to do remarkable things with her remarkably uncoordinated body. This morning, I put her down for tummy time on a blanket on the floor. I was two feet away, turned around, turned back and voila! Baby G was on the other side of the blanket. I asked her how on earth, at 16 days old, she'd pulled that trick off. She just stared at me and made funny baby noises. She's been able to roll from back to side since she was four days old, meaning she slept on her back for all of four nights. If her arm is not in the way, she can also roll from her tummy to her back. She started this round of tricks on Day Six. Apparently, she is now able to roll from tummy to side to back, which scares the living daylights out of me. Newborns aren't supposed to be mobile!

Houdini has also foiled every single one of my swaddles. Try as I might - regardless the blanket, how straight her arms are, my technique or how tightly I bundle the little burrito, she always manages to wiggle one hand out. Clearly I'm failing at the swaddling, because that isn't supposed to happen. Right now she's lying next to my leg, swaddled. I looked over and voila! Her little left hand pops out and is wreaking havoc on her psyche as she plays "get the hand to my mouth for long enough to suck on," which is a futile game, since she's not actually coordinated in her Houdini tricks, just lucky.

The Great Diaper Escapade
While Baby G is now 2.5 ounces heavier than birth weight, she's also grown 1.5 inches, meaning she still looks like a little old man with a saggy behind, cute, scrawny legs and virtually no fat to speak of. It also means that the leg openings in even her preemie diapers are gaping holes, just waiting for liquid poop to shoot out. It's almost like carrying around a secret weapon. Baby G seems to store up her excrement and let loose one whopping gusher once a day. Last week, she did so as I was picking her up - we spent half an hour scrubbing her, my uncle's brand-new carpet, me and my cousin's 9-year-old, who was in the wrong place at the wrong time and shell-shocked by the whole experience.

Today, while eating, Baby G let rip her daily expulsion. I was pulling clothes off of her in an attempt to minimize the amount of laundry she was creating as I took her into the nursery. The onesie was a lost cause. There wasn't a square inch of diaper inside that wasn't covered. The changing pad ended up covered. I was covered. Baby G's entire lower half was covered, even before I opened the diaper. She screamed at the top of her lungs as I spent 10 minutes cleaning her off, vowing she was definitely getting a bath tonight. I reached for a new diaper, just as things began to feel warm and wet in her nether regions. Apparently, she wasn't finished.

I cleaned her up again and wrapped her naked (except for a clean diaper) little self up in a blanket, as I wasn't about to attempt a third outfit today. I had no sooner settled her back down to eat when *squirt* I hear the dreaded noise again. Amazing! We had a repeat show in under five minutes. Same pattern. New diaper. New vow to bathe this little wonder tonight. New blanket. Same naked body wrapped up. I'm not taking chances.

Red Bean Paste
Turns out, Red Bean Paste is actually made from beans. I knew this, I promise, but that was before nine months of pregnancy and the arrival of Baby G, who apparently sucked out the rest of my common sense brain cells on her way into the world.

Baby G loathes beans. I should have been smart enough to put two and two together after a Cafe Rio experience left her fussy. Instead, it took me eating a big helping of my dad's secret baked beans (the only ones I'll even touch) and Chipotle to realize it was the beans that were the common factor in extraordinarily long nights and noisy little tummies.

Yesterday evening was one of those times. Baby G's tummy sounded like it was inhabited by a hungry monster. It roared and burped and roiled. Baby G wimpered, screamed and hiccuped, burped and passed gas until I was smart enough to remember the gas drops in the cabinet.

I sat back, trying to figure out what dreaded food I'd consumed this time - golden grahams, water, lemonade, homemade chicken noodle soup from my mom, red bean paste pastry ...

Red WHAT pastry? I had stopped at the Asian market yesterday for some items and discovered that they sold one of my favorite treats - red bean paste pastry (they taste better than they sound, I promise!). Without thinking, I purchased one and gobbled it down on the way home.

I then asked Himself what, quite possibly, is the world's stupdidest question:
"Does red bean paste actually come from beans?" (Remember - this is my post partum brain talking, I promise I already knew this - it was a momentary lapse in sanity).

Himself roared with laughter and said, "Not only that, but it is made from FERMENTED beans."

Oh. Dear. That does explain a lot now, doesn't it?

Viral Marketing At It's Best

I have to post this - I heard about it through a blog I subscribe to for work on viral marketing.

A woman got $142 for her $2 pack of Pokemon cards, due, mostly, in part to her humorous story in the auction listing.

Of course, it's spread like wildfire. The woman is a natural with words and the world is still puzzled at how she managed to make $140 profit on her kid's "accidental" contribution to the grocery cart.

Of course, it is great leverage for me to use when telling clients how to craft messaging that will enable something to become viral (it does not, as it seems the entire non-marketing world thinks, just 'become viral' for no reason and with no effort).

More than that though, I have another blog to read, Because I Said So. It's just as funny as the E-bay post.

It makes me never want to have six kids, but I definitely admire a woman who can and still be sane enough to be humorous and write about it.

And I'm happy to have a great viral marketing case study to peruse.