I was so wrong.

April 22, 2009 | Clark

When you have a baby, sometimes people give you Stupid Clothes. If it’s a girl, I imagine these may take the form of shirts that say “Mommy’s Little Princess” or something like that. For Clark, there were some jammies that had a dog playing football, a sport I plan to forbid him to play. One time he was wearing them and I happened to have a Sharpie nearby so just wrote NO! on all the footballs. Much better.

Then there was this ducky onsie. I thought it was Stupid so it just kinda hung out in the botttom of the drawer. Today, after he barfed on his first cute outfit, I decided to put him in the Stupid duck onesie. Oh dear. I was wrong.

I was so wrong.

Prince Lives Here, We Got 10,000 Lakes

April 20, 2009 | Clark, Jenny Recommends

Clark’s good friend Dahli made him this sock monkey blanket and sent him this cute onesie. Both were featured in the last post, but an outfit this cute deserved further highlighting, don’t you think?

In other earth-shattering, possibly never to be repeated news, about a half an hour ago, around the time of Clark’s morning snooze, I set him in his sidecar thing while I was making the bed. He was laying there happily babbling, so I decided to see what would happen if I just walked away. So I grabbed the baby monitor and shut the door. He continued to babble for a few minutes, then he started to low level fuss. I decided to give him two minutes and see what happened. It was like, WAH! WAH!…Wah! Wah!…Wah….wah, wah, snoooore…

GET RIGHT OUT OF TOWN.

I can’t believe it! Usually, I swaddle him, put in a bink, rock him, sing, and stand on my head playing the banjo with my feet to get him to go to sleep. Who knows if this startling phenomenon will ever be repeated but holy shit, dude! I can’t believe that just happened.

__________

The title of this post comes from Atmosphere’s shout out to Minneapolis “Always Comin Back Home To You”. If you’re a midwest loving person, (and I know there are a bunch of you) you should download it right away. The first half is beautiful, haunting, hiphop, the second half is clever silliness, all praising places you can ‘drink tap water and breathe the air’.

[musical recommendation disclaimer: This is not new. I am not on any sort of cutting edge. I am aware of this.]

Month Four

April 16, 2009 | Clark

Dear Clark,

You are 4 months old! You’ve changed so amazingly in the last month. It’s nuts! You learn so much every day. In the last week, you’ve started giggling all the time, and my favorite thing ever, we can HAND you things. I love it. I say, “here, have this” and you zero in on it, slightly cross-eyed, and your starfish hands slowly uncurl and grasp whatever it is. Endlessly entertaining, that.

You can roll like crazy. You often get stuck on your side, but once you’re on your stomach, you can flip right back and start over.

We’ve also started putting you in your bed with the baby monitor when you fall asleep around 8:00pm. That’s a big change for your Mom and Dad, because now we can do whatever we want until about midnight when we go to bed. Then we change you and feed you again, and hope that you’ll sleep at least a few hours before you wake up again. The sleeping is still a challenge. There is no pattern. You usually wake up every two to three hours after that, but sometimes it’s just one hour. It’s pretty effing brutal, but it could be way worse. I know that one day you will sleep through the night. One day, you’ll also be a teenager and I’ll think it’s HILARIOUS to wake you up when you’d rather be sleeping.

You’re totally digging your Bumbo seat all of a sudden. The cuteness is almost hard to bear.

Oh! And you have a TOOTH! We just noticed it today! We are quite impressed because while you have your fussy moments and you do drool a good deal, you’re not THAT fussy or THAT drooly. Nice work, kid!

As I’ve said in each letter, you’re getting more and more delightful, but this time I really mean it. You’re pretty easy to talk out of your moods and you seem to know when your Mommy needs a break and you take a nap. I keep holding you because you seem to stay asleep longer if you’re held. While answering emails with one hand, I look down at your sleeping face and try my hardest to imprint the image on my brain, and the feel of your warm little body that still fits in my arms.

Love, Mama

babycall and Fat Tire

April 10, 2009 | Bits and Bobs

It’s Friday night, SB’s at a show, Clark’s asleep upstairs, and my laptop is bookended by a beer and a baby monitor. The evening stretches deliciously before me. I have all the time I wish for internet activities, which NEVER happens in my life anymore. Huzzah!

Anyway, I’m feeling rambly. There are a few topics I’d like to address, none of which seem worthy of individual posts. Here goes.

****

The other night whilst watching LOST on abc.com [aside to abc.com: you suck. you know where you can shove your 'click to continue'] SB and I were forced to repeatedly view a commercial for this product:

[Aside to advertisers on abc.com: having to watch your annoying purple waterslide, minty-face-making commercial 12 times makes me NOT want to buy your product.] We decided that purple definitely doesn’t clean. Right? Green cleans. Blue cleans, for sure. But purple? Purple is bullshit. What do you think?

****

You know times are bad when the local funeral home holds an open house and papers the neighborhood.

Really. Coffee and Tea will be served!

****

In news of the boy, he is giggling. GIGGLING. There’s got to be no better sound in the whole world than your baby giggling. Incidentally, there’s nothing I won’t do, nothing too ridiculous, to tease out one of these giggles. I’m currently sporting a crick in my neck from earlier, when he thought it was funny when I head banged my hair in his face.

****

Just because:

Flotsam pt. 5, and other ramblings

Bits and Bobs

Hello my friends! Have I mentioned I am B.U.S.Y? I suppose that’s clear by the the tumbleweeds blowing around here. I was just exclaiming to SB, I can’t BELIEVE how busy I am. I never would’ve guessed that when I got to be a stay at home mom, I would feel more overwhelmed by tasks than ever before. I just used to get so much more DONE, you know? Now I feel like I’m constantly scrambling to keep the house remotely in order, get my photography work done, keep up with emails and whatnot, get some exercise, and on and on, while of course caring for the wee one. He is terribly bored by the internets, unfortunately.

I’m almost through all of the Flotsam posts, but here are a few non-entire-post-length questions:

This one comes from jonniker who is one of my favorite bloggers ever. She has the most awesome conversational style to all her posts, and girl is HILARIOUS. Her baby is a couple of months younger than Clark. She asks:

Have you started Clark on People Food yet? How did that go? анус секс 35лет

Yes! Indeed we have! He now eats rice cereal which we mix with prune juice to keep the wee pipes flowing, sweet potatoes, avocado, carrots, pears, broccoli, apples, peas, bananas, peaches, and I think that’s all so far. I put off the solids for longer than some people do for various rational and irrational reasons, but I gotta say, I LOVE feeding him. It’s so fun! I love how he opens his little mouth in anticipation of the spoon, then grins when he likes the flavor. It’s funny, but I guess whenever you care for a small creature, a kitten or a puppy or even a fish, it’s always fun to feed them, right?

As Jonniker mentioned in her comment, she’s not looking forward to the real food because of what it does to the Poop. Ah, the poop. Yeah. And since we’re using cloth, we have to be more uh, intimately involved with it than we otherwise might be. All I can say is it’s really gross at first, to change from the relatively not-gross milk-poo, to you know, actual shit. But it gets better. Now his turds are pretty solid, not terribly stinky, and fall right out of the diapers into the toilet, plop plop. Yum! Aren’t you glad you asked?

This next one comes from Kelly, who is actually the neighbor of a friend. My friend is very lucky to have such a fabulous neighbor.

How about your opinion on couples that dress alike…not coordinate, mind you. But wear the same shirt, sweater, coats & hats, etc. I saw some atrocious offenders this weekend. Even THE DOG had on the same sweater!

What an interesting question! I am of two minds about this. On the one hand, I think that it shows a willingness to dress up, and I’d assume that said dressers were good sports. I love a good sport! On the other hand, it also indicates a bit of Attention Seeking Behavior which makes me uncomfortable. I suppose it depends on the outfit and the venue, as almost everything always does.

Well, I hope to be back around these parts sooner rather than later. The next question is really good and I look forward to answering it! If you’re feeling chatty, let me know in the comments what you’ve been up to this summer!

PSA

April 4, 2009 | Uncategorized

I’m sorry it wasn’t clear. The previous post was most definitely an April Fools. Clark is NOT sleeping through the night.

HAHAHA! Ha. Ho.

No. Not sleeping through the night. The largest chunk he EVER sleeps is about 3 hours.

There was further confusion as to my birthday in the comments. Dear Kelly thought it was my birthday because her neighbor, my BFF, was coming up here to see a show, the tickets to which were given to me by my sister as a birthday gift. It’s actually the 28th, though.

Okay. As you were.

Fishing

April 2, 2009 | Clark, Navel Gazing

Just because I feel like I don’t have much to say at the moment, you should not be deprived of the uber-cuterness that is my Clarkie.

Have I ever mentioned how ENORMOUS his feet are?

They’re delicious. I understand why he needs to put them in his mouth.

So, I’ve never done this before, but I need to ask a favor. Could you help me get back on my blogging horse with some topic ideas? Have any burning questions about the care and feeding of a 6 month old? I am expert! (bonus points for saying this in a Karl Hungus voice) Are you one of my few imaginary internet friends? Anything you want to know? IRL peeps, do you remember a funny story that should be recorded for posterity’s sake? (bonus points for saying that last bit in a Count Rugen voice) Whatevs!

Please help my Mama. I stole her brain cells.

I feel so rested!

April 1, 2009 | Clark

Clark is sleeping through the night!

I hope everyone is aware of the date.