To Where Does Cool Move?

My friend Stef is putting her condo up for sale which she did not consult me about, rendering me embittered, sulky, and tying a POLICE LINE DO NOT CROSS around her building so no one will want to buy her unit and she and her adorable fam will have to be my neighbor forever. But I'm happy for her, especially because I know she's moving to a more junior town for all the right reasons. "We're not saving anything living here," she said, "And it would be so cool to be able to be saving, to be able to explore Montessori [for her daughter Mbel]."

It really would be cool. Would it be cooler than cool?

As I look around our place with the spiral staircase which Baby Girl is inevitably going to take a skate down since I myself who has mastered steps over 28 years have already skated down...As I consider the attributes of our home's location: Close to the T, within walking distance to everything you could want, a 10 minute drive to the airport, I begin to consider all those attributes as part of our Cool Urban Life. I love the life we have cultivated here, but the priorities are shifting, sometimes rapidly, sometimes as slow but large glaciers roving over the peninsulas of my twentysomething desires.

We have no plans to move any time soon, but I feel its imminence in a way, and I'm okay with it, I have to be okay with it. I've got a cool girl to be providing for, and she's worth the sacrifice of a spiral staircase.

Even if she is not a genius...

she's a cute little Easter egg, isn't she?

In Case There Were Any Doubts

Yes we were a stop-off on the US Breakdancing Tour. (Featured CMJ from Southie - holla!)

Yes we do endorse protective headgear for indoor recreation.

Yes we do tell our daughter that hens lay pastel-colored eggs.

Yes we haven't opened the Pizza Dome yet because the box is too much fun.

Yes we do die laughing when Vera Bradley is on parade.

Yes we do love this trollop of a dirtball of a little girl.

These Teens

My daughter is now 14. Months. The past month has been a very helpful one, both in my relationship with her and in my understanding of her in a more global sense. Intimately, I feel as though we have our own cues, our own little games and that only I, the maven of all games that include expired credit cards and crevices of couches, get.

On a more macro level, I feel that I am starting to grasp what it is I am supposed to be doing in her character development. I see what areas need attention, improvement.

For example, Big Girl was really FAILING with a capital EFF at the notion of "gentle hands." I care for another little boy with outrageously gorgeous curly hair one day a week. This little boy has suffered week after week from the clutches of Baby Girl. She has been absolutely incorrigible to master gentle hands. She would see those luscious locks and instantaneously become one of those arcade games with the revolving claw that grabs busted looking stuffed bunnies that you finally scored after inputting $7 worth of tokens. She could not unlearn grabby hands.

Until yesterday when she was just almost completely reproved of it. She stroked those angel tresses with the gentleness of a caterpillar sneezing. I was so proud of her, and we all had a much happier day. It sounds strange that a 14 month-old would finally be disabused of a habit that causes harm to one of her peers, but I am just so proud to say Mama ain't raising no dummy.

***

The 14 month-old flex

You can almost hear it, can't you? What are you doing in there, Baby Girl?

...NOTHING....