Trying to figure this whole parenting thing out.

Thursday, November 11, 2010

Thursday, November 11: Sandpaper covered slide

It has been so long since my last update you probably figured that I'd given up on parenting and went to go live in some kind of Failure Palace for former moms. You would be wrong on at least one count. I am happy to announce that I am not a failure. I have given up on parenting, though. Gavin is clearly grown enough to take care of himself now as is clearly evident in his employee work badge school photo. I'm pretty sure I see the hint of a mustache. Is it necessary to mention that I screamed out loud when I saw this photo and then almost died from the cuteness? No it is not. It is the only sane reaction.

So, yeah, I've been wanting to write about all of the amazing things happening IRL (in real life), but I have been swamped with work, which is what pays the VRB (very real bills. Though soon Gavin's Initech salary will take care of that). Obviously a mother's love is measured by how much she blogs about her son -- so I would like to make clear that I have been BLOGGING IN MY MIND and yes, that counts.

Emma the greyhound, living large at 14-years-old, has been having a harder and harder time getting down the deck steps to go potty in the backyard. So the other night I bought her a ramp. It came via UPS today and she and Gavin both tried it out. Both ended up with bleeding feet. Emma had a difficult time grasping the concept of going up the ramp (going down was no problem) and slipped off the side near the bottom, scraping her paw. And Gavin thought it was a slide and tried to slide down it. The ramp has some pretty heavy duty grip surface and so his sliding ended up being more like a pants-shredding scooting. He was barefoot (yes, it's a little chilly today, but we were outside very briefly, I swear) and ended up scraping his heel and toes up.  I don't know why it didn't occur to me that he wouldn't get the "ramp" concept and just walk down it considering he'd never really seen or interacted with a ramp before. Apparently that's not a concept kids have from birth like wiping your dirty hands on your shirt or letting your body go all limp when you're throwing a tantrum making it physically impossible to be picked up. In any case, he was wearing these black leggings during the ramp incident (usually reserved for wearing under other things, like long johns, but Aunt Laura dressed him today after a Red Bull incident whereupon Gavin took her Red Bull and proceeded to dump it down the front of his chest while attempting to "get wings") and the crotch of his pants now looks like Swiss cheese. Oh well, they were ugly anyway. My dad called them his Peter Pan tights. Then again, they'd be really useful in the winter. Alas.

Gavin has a cold right now. Poor guy. It's time to bust out the humidifier. He's taking a nap right now -- although he did just start crying. Shit. I hope it passes. He really needs the rest. The last couple of nights he woke up late cry-screaming briefly before going back to bed. Night terrors, I guess, though I don't know what's causing them. He and Aunt Laura have been listening to a lot of Morrissey lately. That's probably it.

Dancing is still one of Gavin's latest and greatest tricks and he's only getting better. As I said, he and Laura have been listening to a lot of Morrissey. But he dances to good music, too. He will actually ask us to put music on. He'll go up to the cabinet the CD player is in and pull on the handle and look at us and bounce up and down a little bit. It's pretty much the most adorable thing ever.

"Dog" has seemingly left his vocabulary. In fact, most words have. He was racking up quite the little lexicon and now he's pretty mum. Well, at least in terms of actual decipherable English words. He babbles a lot. But he's apparently tucked his previous vocab away somewhere while he's busy working on other stuff. Like dancing and art. He's quite the artist, in fact. Here's a picture he and Aunt Laura drew while I was at the gym:

Laura drew the bird, cat, person and sun and Gavin drew their, um, environment. Laura said that the kitty is peeing all over everything, which she claims was Gavin's idea. Who am I to question my son's artistic intentions? Also, thank God for washable markers. Except Laura didn't have him use the washable ones. So that grey marker on his foot will be there awhile.

3 comments:

  1. the cat has a nice set of hoots.

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  2. That's what I thought, too. But don't cats have, like, six of them?

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  3. Those are PAWS, jerk-o faces. And YOU try to be all "detail focused" when your co-creator keeps trying to put the markers in his mouth. Haters.

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