I Glimpse Into the Mind of a 2 Year Old

Anybody that has kids knows they peroidically says things that give us great insight into how their minds work. Bella is no exception and I am frequently bewildered by some of things that she says.

I think it is interesting how they catergorize people and things together. One of her latest statements/questions has to do with what she can do and when. "Nammy, I can drink coffee when I become a Nammy"? I imagine she must think a lot of things along the same lines but not always question them. She must think that Daddies brink Diet Pepsi, Dappies work on computers all the time, Great Nammy and Great Dappy always bring candy and presents, etc.. I wonder when these "rules" become fuzzy. It will be interesting to see.

I feel his aspect of a two year brain I am just getting into. Being nervous that at any moment she could say something completely inapprioate and embarassing. I think this is because that are so uber observent and dont yet have the social filter that we adutlts have. This one example wont be so horrible, but no less I didnt want her shouting it from the roof tops. We were headed to a mall today and she casually asks "Nammy we going to the diaherra mall"? Well the name of the mall happened to sound kinda like diaherra, so she just made a minor mix up. After seeing mine and my mother reaction, she thought we was the "last comic standing". This was all she could talk about. Diaherra mall this and diaherra mall that. I was waiting for it to shouted when we actually got into the mall.

It is for this reason I am always nervous when we get in an elevator with a person in a wheel chair or a person with a cane gets behind me in line. Maybe I am worried too much about nothing and my parenting skills will kick in, but I am forever worried about it. I know what is going to happen. As soon as I stop being on guard about it, it will happen. I guess it is kinda a like a right of passage through for parents.

I dont say these things to give the impression that Bella isnt smart. I think she is incredibly smart it is just fascinating to think of all the thing we have to store in our memories to function in the world. We have to know all the given things that we take for granted that people know. I love looking at the world through my childrens innocent minds and I had to laugh today when on our way home from getting Bellas hair cut, she asked me "Mommy can I wear my layers to bed"?

The Curious Incident of the Underpants in the Babybook Bag

For those of you who know me, you know I am constantly traveling back and forth between my house and my parents. Because of this Steve is occasionally asked to bring this or that. In this incidence it was my baby book bag. I am forever try to keep up with updating them and thought I could use my time at the parents house to do just that. So Steve obiendently brought them.

The day after he arrived at the rents house he went to get the car cleaned. In preparation he took everything out of the car and put it in the garage in a wheelbarrel, which just seems to be the most logical place to put things such as baby books and booster seats.

When I found my free time, I went out in the garage in search for the books and much to my surprise found stuffed in my bag a strange pair of mens underwear. My minds is always racing and this was no exception. Most people know I am a forever jumping to the most outlandis(sp?) conclusions (I blame Oprah and the plenthroa of information online). My first thougt; Steve is having an affair........with a man??

I go inside and try to compose myself because I know my mother is going to ask why I am holding mens underwear that clearly arent the kind Steve normally wears. At this piont I am trying to hold back giggles at the obserdity of it all. Luckily my mom is isnt around, so I head straight to the phone.

Steve answers and I can hear a gang in his office. I ask casually, "whose underwear is in my baby book bag"? He replies, "Oh yeah I was going to ask you about that". Okay is this a normal reaction if you are a man and you find mens underwear, that arent yours, in your wife's car. I can not believe he even asks me this. I tell him that he knows it is absolutely nuts to think I am to blame for this. I 99.99% of the time have 1 or 2 children literally hanging from me, yet I have the time to do something that would warrant it to be my fault that strange underwear is in the car.

Now from the outside I think this must sound ridiculous. He is laughing at the explanations I am offering. I have no reason not to trust him, and certainly no reason to think he is gay, but I am away from him for long peroids of time and who knows what other people do if you are not with them all the time. And besides I am now playing out the Oprah episode I would be on. "Cheating Gay Husbands". Oprah would ask, so you can no indication that your husband was cheating on you"? I would answer no and she would say "but what did you think when you found mens underwear in your car"? AAAAAA Duh. The audience would be saying in their heads; stupid, stupid, stupid.

I come back to relatity and tell him he better find out whose they are right away or I am going to lose it. A couple minutes later he calls back and says they belong to the schools trainer. They fell out of his bag when Steve drove a couple of people to a football game a few weeks back. Mystery solved....but why wouldnt said trainer wonder why his underwear disappears and how does he feel about me having them at my moms house? Oh well crisis over.

Adventures in Attachment Parenting

So ever since Winston was born he has slept with me. There was no question about it. This, at our house, is not normally a problem since our mattress is on the floor (Bella did a head dive when she was 11 months). At mom's, it is a completely different story. We usually do alright on a normal bed at a normal height; I either stay with him the whole time while he is sleeping or as soon as I hear the slightest movement I fly like the speed of light up stairs to check it out. This means that I essentially never get a real relaxing break. I am either unconsicous (sleeping with him), trapped in a room - forced to be quite (subtitles are a whole another story), or so on edge and ready to fly that I knew this day had to be coming soon. How could we have survived almost three years like this, in a normal bed?

It started today when I was downstairs checking email and my mom came down. We started talking and I hear a brief rustling, didnt sound like anything to serious. I casually asked my mom to go check. She did. Then I hear on the monitor.....WINSTON NO.

She caught him, right before he did a half asleep nose dive off the bed. While most people know I am nuts, my mom is nuts too. Well that was the end of it. "He can't sleep like that anymore", she said, " We have to do something, put him on the floor, get a little air bed". The unacceptable options rattled on. We finally decided that after all this time we were going to put a mattress on the floor here. This is were the fun began.

It sounded simple enough, right? Well think again. We got right to it. We pulled the mattress on the floor, next to the box spring on the frame. So now picture the mattress with the box spring and frame flush on one side, a small space between the mattress and the wall on the other, a drop to the floor at the foot of the bed and a desk at the head of the bed. The first problem with this set up was the hole were the chair should sit in the desk. "He could easily slide down there and hurt" we both conclude. Well stuff it with pillows. Next problem, the TV on the desk. "He could pull it down on himself, you know how he has been obsessed with turning TVs on and off" I offer. This simply wont do. We decide now that there is now choice but to move the mattress and then move the desk to another side of the room. (Keep in mind we are trying to do this all while managing the two children). We get out our "EZ moves" and start to it. Not so bad. We get everything situated and get the mattress back on the floor after a valiant effort of shoving a bizillion pound mattress on a thick carpenting. My mom then calls to my attention the that 6 inch gap between one side of the bed and the wall. What to do; pillows, a guard rail? I decide that pillows should be the way to go, after all what if Winston flipped over the guard rail and did something horrible to his neck in that itty bitty space and was paralzed forever. We get the pillows and stuff them down in. Everybody looks happily, everything looks good and I have to say......What if he smothered himself in the pillows?

Hey nobody said this parenting thing was easy right? Espically for the worry wort. I have often wondered how other AP parents co-sleep safely. Are they all as nuts as me?

Why am I doing this? Better yet, am I really going to have time to do this?

So I have been wanting to keep a journal for a long time, mainly to record all the stuff the kids do that I say I will remember and end up forgetting a week later, but the actual act of pyhsically writing is now painful. Somewhere between highschool and now I seem to have lost the ability to actually write. I figured that blogging is the perfect answer. So here goes........