Trying to figure this whole parenting thing out.

Thursday, October 7, 2010

Thursday, Oct. 7, 2010: Gavin, phone home

It's been awhile since I posted. You're all like, "Wait, you're still a mom? We thought you'd quit." Ha. Easier said than done. Seriously. Being a mom is the kind of job that people look down on you for quitting. Blogging, not so much. But I haven't quit. I'M WORKING ON IT. I mean, here I am, right now, writing while Gavin hollers from his crib. So give me a break. I'm doing the best I can.

And by "hollering" I don't mean I'm ignoring him. Well, I guess I am ignoring him, but it's not neglect-level ignoring. It's "you've only been in your crib for 15 minutes and you were hard-core rubbing your eyes and crabbing like crazy so, no, I am not going to get you up right now. Parenting. It's a balance act between their desires and your sanity. I'll let you know which one ultimately wins in about 18 years.

Gavin fell and hit his lip yesterday at day care. He's got a black and blue lip now. It's quite sad. Poor guy. He doesn't care at this point. He's fine, but it looks pretty ouchy. He chomps his bottom lip a lot, actually. Maybe because he's got such huge teeth. Or maybe they aren't huge so much as they just take up a lot of the real estate in his mouth. I don't know. I'm not a teeth scientist. I just hope he doesn't ever have to get stitches in his lip like his Aunt Laura did when we were kids. I don't know how old she was, but she was pretty young. I would say four at the most. They stitched her up at the hospital and on the way out the door she chewed the stitches out. My parents had to turn around and take her right back in. Dumb Laura. I kid Laura. She's not dumb. But, man. That must have hurt. Maybe her lip was still numb or something. I don't know. Thinking about it is kind of making me want to pass out.

Waving is Gavin's new thing. And for those of you thinking, "Isn't 14 months a little late to be waving? Don't sign your kid up for MENSA or anything," I'll have you know that he used to wave back before he could even walk. They one day he just stopped. He was all, "I'm so over waving. Waving is so two months ago." But he's waving again now all of a sudden. His technique has changed a lot. Instead of just sticking his arm out and flopping it around in a rough approximation of a greeting or farewell, he now uses only his hand, twisting at the wrist pageant style. See for yourself.


Talking on the phone is another new trick. He's always loved the phone but up until recently it was all button pushing all the time. Now he holds the phone up to his ear as if he's actually talking and listening. Well, he IS actually talking. Usually very seriously. He makes really important calls. At daycare Shelly plays "phone" with the kids. In fact, the other day when Stacy went to pick Gavin up he was sitting on the floor with her and a little girl and Shelly held the phone out to the girl said, "It's your daddy." Then she held it out to him and said, "Gavin, it's Mama D." Pretty much one of my favorite day care stories ever. So, yeah, talking on the phone is my new teenage son's hobby. Calculators, too, will do in a pinch. He was walking around this morning with a pocket calculator up to his head yammering away. It took me a minute to realize that he thought it was a phone. Which makes sense since it's roughly the same size as my Blackberry and has a bunch of buttons on the front. He's also very fond of Aunt Laura's phone since she often leaves it in her unzipped purse.

I'm jealous because Gavin likes Aunt Laura better than he likes his Mama D, always giving her hugs and kisses. As Lisa pointed out, that's probably because she's still new and having her here is novel. "You," she said, "he expects to be there." This makes sense and is somewhat comforting.

Gavin and I have a big adventure planned for today: going to buy a new microwave since ours caught on fire last night. The enamel wore off and started to rust in this tiny spot on the inside of the door and what do you know, it was a blue spark light show. I suppose getting a new microwave is long overdue. I mean, for years we've only been able to use the "one touch cook" button, which basically means you can heat something for as long as you want so long as it's in 30 second increments and not longer than 4 minutes. A few of the number buttons still worked, but power outages were always a pain in the ass because we couldn't reset the clock until it was 5:55 or 8:55. We'd set the over timer to let us know when we were getting close. I mean, it was a lot of suspense and all, but that's all in the past now. It's time to move on. Oh, and did I mention that Stacy accidentally ground up a glass baby food jar in our garbage disposal? So that doesn't work any more, either. Actually, I take that back. It might work. But the fact that rotting-food-infested water now leaks out of the bottom via several different holes, we are choosing not to use it.

Gavin's been quiet for awhile now. I think he's actually asleep. Tuesday he took a morning nap but his afternoon nap was for shit. Hopefully today will be a good nap day. Man, I'd like to take one or two of those myself.

No comments:

Post a Comment