Penchants

Do you ever wish your pahdenah was more like you? When we were first married, you know, way back in the prehistoric era of 2.5 years ago, I kept waiting for Lovey Loverpants to morph into my he-bot. I really struggled with how patently different we were. His life's soundtrack was a hip-hop deejay's scattered, creative medley. Mine was a predictable symphony. He would get so annoyed that I could never just stay up late, just will myself to watch all of SNL, and I would get so irked that he could not respect the beauty of my circadian rhythm. Oosh.

But now, I acknowledge our differences, and I am learning to celebrate them. It helps that we share a dependent, otherwise known as The Cheeks That Could Launch a Thousand Ships, who requires that we work as a team with varied strengths. And the more I appreciate our differences, the more I realize what a wealth of varied good Baby Girl will be able to draw from as she grows.

Here is an itemization of Lovey Loverpants v. moi.

Lovey Loverpants Likes That Don't Apply To Me:

- Checking newsfeeds ad infinitum - Watching youtube coolness ad infinitum - Extreme sports, and the spectating thereof - Full body lay-outs in ultimate frisbee - Gear of any kind - Liberal Politics - Dousing everything with Tobasco sauce - Movies with Cars as the Major Focus - Eating the unrecommended amount of candy, e.g. the whole bag - Asking questions just to get your goat

My Likes That Don't Apply To Lovey Loverpants:

- Cheesy songs, of the John Denver variety - Chocolate in its richest form - Being an artist of BS - Not multi-tasking - Seeing where the road takes me - Quick showers - Hot-as-Bombay heat - Nostalgia Likes we share...too many to count, but namely cupcakes, particularly this one:

Hat by Haddy

If you give a parent a cookie...

My mother is getting remarried in a couple of months. Although she and her fiance have roughly a Chinese dynasty's worth of marital experience, they still have to go to marriage class since they are getting hitched in the Catholic church. So there they are, my mom and her man, both in their fifties, looking the total chaperones of Marriage 101, learning about the importance of not blowing the grocery money at the Clinique counter and remembering that the days of surfing match.com are over. So the priest teaching the class is trying to address the importance of Christian modesty and not dressing all skankalicious and he's basically shooting Hail Mary baskets in an attempt to make this relevant to the class. He says, "What if you had just walked out of the shower and you saw your grandmother -- how would you feel? What would you say?"

My mother pipes up, "I'd say, 'Oh Grandma! I thought you were dead!'"

She prudently kept mum the rest of class.

***

Baby Girl got a visit from her Pampa and Nana Jake (whom she met on her first day of life in the hospital) and also got to meet her Auntie TP for the first time. We had a very good, albeit short pow-wow. Walked the Harborwalk around JFK Library. Told the same stories about my poor grandmother with dementia for the eleventieth time. Converted TP to the ranks of Girlicious fans. Ate a small cow at the Vietnamese restaurant in celebration of Papa John's 29th birthday. No, really, he's really 29.

Pampa and Nana are over the moon with Madi and hang on every sigh and coo. They have always been very supportive of me; my father would sometimes make the four hour roundtrip visit to have dinner with me when I was in college just because he missed me. However, it's a whole different ballgame with a grandbaby. They drove a total of 20 hours to be here with Baby Girl for about 10 total. At one point, she smiled her wide gummy grin (the one that continues to make me feel like I've just been told by Carson Kressley that I already look good naked and don't need to be on his show) for a fleeting instant and Pamps remarked, "Oh thank you. That was worth the drive."

***

A few snaps from the happenins with my little alfalfa sprout & co.

The Power of Funyuns

Since our home is located on the corner of a busy street, the amount of debris that blows into our yard is truly upsetting. Slurpee cups and cellophane do a whimsical dance into our yard. Do they not know? Camera boy from "American Beauty" doesn't live here. Our back patio often looks like a construction crew took its lunch break back there, and just couldn't find a trash can afterwards. Needless to say, we are constantly campaigning: 7-Eleven, Not in My Backyard. A few weeks ago, I went outside and picked up a few pieces of trash from the yard and disposed of them in a trash can inside. One of the pieces of trash was an empty bag of Funyuns. Which to Lovey Loverpants can only mean one thing: Wifey went on a bender! She snuck outside just long enough to get her greasy food fix, but she's not clever enough to hide the traces of her habit. I tried to vindicate myself. But it was a long few days before the trash was to be curbed. Each day presented a new lesson for Baby Girl vis a vi Papa. "Mama likes Funyuns, Madi. Mama denies it, but she really likes Funyuns...I'm chopping onions; bet Mama wishes they were Funyuns." I was practically waiting to see it on the latest entry of Stuff White People Like: Hiding Their Funyuns Habits.

Even if I did get caught with my hand in the chip bag -- I put on my pre-preggo jeans today...and they zipped and snapped shut so BOOO-YAH.