Brilliant Innovation

One of the residual effects of attending an all-girls high school is that I have had to spend the rest of my life trying to learn What Everyone Else Learned in High School About Eye Make-up when I was busy Not Looking Presentable and Wearing Messy Buns Wrapped in Scrunchies in Public. As if that weren't punishment enough, I now must attempt to apply make-up while trying to buffer the wee one from falling down the drain while choking on packing peanuts.

Tell you my latest for keeping her in my peripheral.

Hey there, Baby Girl. I see ya peekin' over that there tub...

Staying so fresh and so clean clean while playing in your empty bathtub while Mama puts on mascara?  Awesome.

Fickle, Frick Frick Frick Frickle

I have been scampering around for the last 23 minutes in nothing but a too-tight shirt and my underoos and let me further say that there was not a modicum of beauty about it. The sucktopus was attached to my hip the entire time while I yanked out every last item of dark clothing in the bureaus, in the laundry piles, in already folded laundry baskets, in the drawers with cheese graters and rolling pins, in the jar of TUMS. Frick Frick Frick on a Stick, where are the PANTS I just BOUGHT the other DAY and TOTALLY FOLDED and put on the BED IJUSTSAWTHEMMMMMMMMM. Wah.

Have I mentioned how fickle the sucktopus has been? One day, totally silly, docile, eager to practice her butt levitation. Next day, totally needy, whiney, disinterested in so much as wiggling her big toe. Sometimes it's Jekyll and Hyde, back and forth, to and fro, rolly polly pell mell every 15 minutes! Month 7! Who knew! I just put her down for the second nap o' the day and it's only 11:36a.m. Let's hope she wakes up as sweet as a vanilla wafer, shall we?

Well I am going to take this pantsless act elsewhere. Before that, though, let me meditate upon 3 happy thoughts:

1. Nana Red is coming in a few short days and you know she be bringin' the girly baby loot, n'ah mean? 2. My friend Shanananana just offered to babysit Baby Girl so I could go to a restaurant tasting. That was so sweet of her. 3. It's almost sweatah weathah. And also. Apple cider!

***

Put on ya 'at and be 'appy....

Disclaimer: Lovey Loverpants wants you all to know that he does not always wear a wife beater and that he is not trying to be all "Ernest Goes to Jail" in his trashy swag. He is trying to be "My Name is Earl."

Something Specific

Remember the part in "Saving Private Ryan" where Tom Hanks tells Matt Damon to remember home, but that you can't just remember home as a generic, you have to remember something specific? Hanks says he remembers his wife tending the roses in an old pair of his work gloves. Damon remembers his brother getting busy with Alice Jardin in the barn.... ***

If I were soldier today, dispatched to a remote part of the world, trying to will myself to fall asleep against the din of fighter jets, I wonder if I could find comfort in the somethings specific from home. If I could warm myself by the light of their vivid memory, or if they would just flash like distant air raids across my mind...

*** Hearing the crescendo of bleating cries from Baby Girl in the morning as the first light of dawn warms the magnolia walls of her room. I see that little expectant bobblehead peaking through the slats of her crib, and then there's that half-awake smile that reminds me every morning of who I am to this world.

Or my husband's voice reading a Sandra Boynton book in the voice of Sean Connery to Baby Girl for the 83rd time this weekend.

Or voicemails from my brother which take up half the bandwidth of my voicemail capacity, which completely recap everything that we would otherwise phone chat about, but which always end with, "Okay, well, talk to ya -"

Or asking Lovey Loverpants if he wants milk to drink with dinner, to which he sometimes responds, "No, thanks. I'll pass on grass." Which doesn't make sense but which makes me double over, and incapable of pouring my milk into the cup.

Or Baby Girl deciding half-way through her diaper change that lying on her back is overrated and then taking to her knees and scooting away without a care about the moose tracks she is leaving on the bed.... ***