The Wee One is now officially mobile, though not in any traditional crawly way. She pushes up on her hands, raises her back legs, and pivots on her belly. Then she either rolls over and over or pushes herself backward until she finds something, or somewhere, that’s interesting. I left the room for thirty seconds today and came back to find her under the couch, gnawing on one of its legs.

Also in Wee One news: She’s eating rice cereal and yams. We use the two-spoon method, wherein she seizes one food-filled spoon from us, shoves it into her mouth, spits out half the food, and throws the spoon to the floor. We then hand her another spoon, and she repeats the performance while we retrieve the first spoon.

She’s not a little baby anymore, a fact which makes me misty-eyed until I realize I’m that much closer to the point when I can expect to sleep for more than three hours at a stretch, or make it through the day without someone shoving their fingers up my nose. Ahh, these are the days!

"I'm just following orders, sir."

Y'all film-minded folk, go to Dierdorf's blog! Fishsuit! Posthaste!

Scott's "wicked cool" film festival, Stockstock, is gearing up for another run, and I am shamelessly plugging it. You can enter, I could enter if I still had a brain (and a lot of film-making equipment, experience, etc), it's the film festival for the masses. Go check it out!

Sobering Realization of the Day: I have now been out of the “work force” for as long as I was in it.

From the Mindworks Division:

“Mom, thinking is like a morning dream.”

Mom of Two Part...Three? It Feels Like Nine Thousand.

We are rockin’ today. Doing laundry. Doing dishes. Meal planning. Grocery shopping. IRONING, for God’s sake. We are the CEO of the home. We are an efficient homemaking machine. Yeeha! But then the migraine fairy, who is always sitting on our left shoulder, starts to cackle. Hee, hee, HEE.

It starts when I am on the phone, because it always starts when I am on the phone. I should blow up the phone, and then maybe these things wouldn’t happen. I step in to the Kidderito’s room with some laundry and am hit by a wall of...smell. Yes, it’s that smell. The smell that every parent dreads. The smell of the potty-training child taking things, literally, into her own hands.

I hang up the damn phone. Trudge downstairs, take sweet child’s face into hands, ask gently, “Is there something you forgot to tell me?” “Um...no?” “Are you sure?” “Um, did I poop?” “Yes, you did.” We march up the stairs with rags and cleaner. “Look, I used two pull-ups, one for each poop! And I cleaned my own self up!” Sigh. Scrub, scrub, scrub. “Mama, you did a good job of cleaning that mess!” Thank you, dear, polite child of mine.

I foolishly get back on the phone. Yak yak, hi Mom, how do you make mashed potatoes? The bathroom door slams. This is always a bad sign. I open the door and see my darling child, who now has tomato-red hands, surreptitiously trying to wash them. Sigh. The wee one starts screaming her I-am-stuck-under-the-LaZBoy scream and I run. There is nothing obvious wrong. Nurse nurse nurse, change diaper, put her down, she’s still screaming. Sling her onto hip, head back to the bathroom. “I washed my hands, Mama!” She dances into the kitchen, and when I turn to go, there I see...a wall of red handprints. “Um, sweetie, is there something else you forgot to tell me?” She gives me a genuinely quizzical look. “No?” Shaking of small brown head. “Did you do some art?” “Oh, I made some handprints!” “You know what, sweetie, that is NOT OK.” “I’m sorry Mama. Will you clean it up?” “No, YOU are going to clean it up.” More rags, more cleaner. “Mama, are you going to still be grumpy when I am done cleaning?” Grrr.

OK, so the Husband of the Blog has pointed out that if number nine in the previous list were really true, then really, number ten should be to eat MORE broccoli. I’m sure the blogging world was afire with that debate.

For the Novices Out There: 10 Ways to Make a Baby Happy

1. Let her chew on your face.
2. Leave her bare-butt. (It is just pee-pee. You might as well get used to it.)
3. Hold the kitty down so she can rip out fistfuls of her fur.
4. Let her hold you down and rip out fistfuls of your hair.
5. Disappear and reappear multiple times, preferably making a nonsensical exclamation (e.g. “Boogedy!”) upon reappearance.
6. Throw her in the air repeatedly until she spits up in your mouth.
7. Walk, walk, walk. DO NOT SIT, EVER! YOU WILL BE PUNISHED!
8. Cure-all: The Change of Pace. If you are inside, go out. If you are outside, go in. If she is dry, jump in the shower. You get the picture.
9. Visibly and audibly share her enthusiasm for her toots.
10. Speaking of which (this one is just for the moo-cow): Do not eat too much broccoli.

You're welcome.

In the Parental Twilight Zone (aka the "Is This MY Kid?" Dept.)

Me: “I think we should have some pink ice cream.” Kid: “No, I don’t want any ice cream. It’s time for me to go to bed.”

The wee one is happy all the time, like someone is always telling her jokes. She makes little yodeling sounds at her feet when you leave her by herself, and then when you come back into her field of vision she greets you enthusiastically with rapid, staccato coos. This is what we call her “baby story.” “The cat licked my head! The rug tastes good! I got half of my foot in my mouth!” She’s trying to sit up now, and when I hold her on my lap she rocks furiously back and forth, like I’m a mechanical bull.

I have visited Home Depot’s web site approximately one thousand times since our offer was accepted. Visions of red granite countertops and frosted glass cabinet fronts dance through my dreams.

We did it! We bought the house in the hand, yeeha! Of course it’s all dependent upon the inspection, major structural defects, blar-dee-blar-blar. I am already envisioning myself retiling the kitchen backsplash. Yikes, I know what a backsplash is. Does this mean I’m a grownup now?

Oh, and in case you’re wondering why your kid needs to leave all three lights on in her room when she trundles into your bed at 3:30 am, it’s because if she doesn’t, all of her toys will shrink and disappear.

Sorry, all two of my loyal readers, that there has not been much bloggage lately. The wee one was in the hospital for four days with pneumonia and general wheeziness, which is a whole other very NOT funny story. We are now spending a lot of quality time with a nebulizer, which she mostly just tries to eat. And of course we are trying to cut down on her smoking.

The Quistilton Family is also attempting to purchase a home, an endeavor which is absorbing much of our waking time and all of our emotional energy. I do not help this process by falling instantly in love with every house we view. “Oh, the flaking paint in the kitchen sink is charming (yes, a painted SINK)...No off-street parking isn’t such a big deal, we only get ten or so big snowstorms a year...Small bedrooms are fine, we’ll teach the girls to live simply...” etc. We are currently trying to decide between an inexpensive home which needs some work and is located on a busy, perhaps not friendly street, and two new homes (one with an ENORMOUS yard) which are coming on the market in the next couple of months. With the frustrating way that the (otherwise wonderful) non-profit we’re working with does things, we don’t know if we have a real chance at either of the two new homes because there will be a lottery to decide who gets them...it’s a very clear illustration of the “bird in the hand” thingy. (Proverb? Metaphor? Did I GO to college?) As in, “The slightly crappy, enticingly cheap, busy-street-no-offstreet-parking, small-yarded house in the hand is worth two chances-to-get-the-only-brand-new-houses-in-the-city in the bush.” Or something like that, maybe with less gratuitous punctuation.

Add to this whirlwind the mid-life crisis I'm too young to be experiencing, a babe who will not sleep off the boob since leaving the hospital and the Kicking Kid who comes into our bed when she wets her own, and you get one very nutso mama. Whine, whine. I need a time-out!

The Kidderito, after a particularly high-volume trip to the playground: “Mom, I’m sorry I was such a banshee at the park.”